Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Source: LiveScience
Sea ice may have covered the Earth’s surface all the way to the equator hundreds of millions of years ago, a new study finds, adding more evidence to the theory that a “snowball Earth” once existed.
The finding, detailed in the March 5 issue of the journal Science, also has implications for the survival and evolution of life on Earth through this bitter ice age.
Geologists found evidence that tropical areas were once covered by glaciers by examining ancient tropical rocks that are now found in remote northwestern Canada. These rocks have moved because the Earth’s surface, and the rocks on it, are in constant motion, pushed around by the roiling currents of the planet’s interior, a process called plate tectonics).
The rocks from Canada’s Yukon Territory showed glacial deposits and other signs of glaciation, such as striated clasts, ice-rafted debris, and deformation of soft sediments.
The scientists were able to determine, based on the magnetism and composition of these rocks, that 716.5 million years ago the rocks were located at sea-level in the tropics, at about 10 degrees latitude. The period of glaciations that occurred then is called Sturtian glaciation, one of the two greatest ice ages known to have taken place on Earth.
“This is the first time that the Sturtian glaciation has been shown to have occurred at tropical latitudes, providing direct evidence that this particular glaciation was a ’snowball Earth’ event,” said lead author of the study Francis Macdonald, a geologist at Harvard University.
“Our data also suggest that the Sturtian glaciation lasted a minimum of five million years,” Macdonald added.
One intriguing question suggested by the finding is how life forms — particularly those more complex than microbes — survived throughout this harsh climate. Their survival suggests that sunlight and surface water remained available somewhere on Earth’s surface, perhaps in patches of open water that formed in the sea ice and provided a refuge for life.
“The fossil record suggests that all of the major eukaryotic groups, with the possible exception of animals, existed before the Sturtian glaciation,” Macdonald said. “The questions that arise from this are: If a snowball Earth existed, how did these eukaryotes survive? Did the Sturtian snowball Earth stimulate evolution and the origin of animals?” (Eukaryotes have a true nucleus and are more complex than so-called prokaryotes.)
“From an evolutionary perspective,” he added, “it’s not always a bad thing for life on Earth to face severe stress.”
Scientists don’t know exactly what caused this glaciation or what ended it, but Macdonald says its age of 716.5 million years closely matches the age of a large igneous province — made up of rocks formed by magma that has cooled — stretching more than 932 miles (1,500 kilometers) from Alaska to Ellesmere Island in far northeastern Canada.
This coincidence could mean the glaciation was either precipitated or terminated by volcanic activity.
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Polar Continental Shelf Project.
Labels: 'snowball Earth', Live Science, National Science Foundation, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute, evolution of life, ice age, signs of glaciation
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Ice Once Covered the Equator
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
By Seth Borenstein
In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet.
Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That’s why a NASA team was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera’s cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.
“We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there,” said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will be presenting the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. “It was a shrimp you’d enjoy having on your plate.”
“We were just gaga over it,” he said of the 3-inch-long, orange critter starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it’s not a shrimp. It’s a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to shrimp.
The video is likely to inspire experts to rethink what they know about life in harsh environments. And it has scientists musing that if shrimp-like creatures can frolic below 600 feet of Antarctic ice in subfreezing dark water, what about other hostile places? What about Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter?
“They are looking at the equivalent of a drop of water in a swimming pool that you would expect nothing to be living in and they found not one animal but two,” said biologist Stacy Kim of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, who joined the NASA team later. “We have no idea what’s going on down there.”
Microbiologist Cynan Ellis-Evans of the British Antarctic Survey called the finding intriguing.
“This is a first for the sub-glacial environment with that level of sophistication,” Ellis-Evans said. He said there have been findings somewhat similar, showing complex life in retreating ice shelves, but nothing quite directly under the ice like this.
Ellis-Evans said it’s possible the creatures swam in from far away and don’t live there permanently.
But Kim, who is a co-author of the study, doubts it. The site in West Antarctica is at least 12 miles from open seas. Bindschadler drilled an 8-inch-wide hole and was looking at a tiny amount of water. That means it’s unlikely that that two critters swam from great distances and were captured randomly in that small of an area, she said.
Yet scientists were puzzled at what the food source would be for these critters. While some microbes can make their own food out of chemicals in the ocean, complex life like the amphipod can’t, Kim said.
So how do they survive? That’s the key question, Kim said.
“It’s pretty amazing when you find a huge puzzle like that on a planet where we thought we know everything,” Kim said.
Labels: Antarctica Research, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, NASA, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
NASA Finds Shrimp-Like Creature, Jellyfish Beneath Antarctic Ice Sheet: ‘We Were Just Gaga Over It’
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
By Thomas Morton
I’m not one of those guys who corners folks at parties to rant at them about biodiesel or calls people “*#@*! idiots” for being skeptical about global warming. But I should also point out that I’m not one of those Andrew Dice Clay “*#!@ the whales” types either.
The problem with all the bravado on both sides of the ecology debate is that nobody really knows what they’re talking about. Trying to form opinions on climate change, overpopulation, and peak oil hinges on ginormous leaps of faith based around tiny statistical deviances that even the scientists studying them have a hard time understanding. It gets so convoluted with all the yelling and the politics that sometimes you just want something huge and incontrovertibly awful to come along for everybody to agree on. Something you can show anyone a picture of and go, “See? We’re screwed.”
Well, I have just such a thing. There is a Texas-size section of the Pacific Ocean that is irretrievably clogged with garbage and it will never go away. And I have seen it with my own eyes. Case closed. Oh, you want to hear more? OK, fine.
In the middle of the 90s, Charles Moore was sailing his racing catamaran back to California from Hawaii and decided on a lark to cut through the center of the North Pacific Gyre. The Gyre is an enormous vortex of currents revolving around a continuous high-pressure zone—if you think of the rest of the Pacific as a gigantic toilet, this zone would be the part where your poop bobs and twirls before being sucked down. Boats typically avoid it since it’s essentially one big windless death trap, so when Moore motored through it was just him, his crew, and an endless field of garbage.
As long as it’s existed, the middle of the Gyre has been a naturally occurring point of accumulation for all the drifting crap in its half of the ocean. Once upon a time, flotsam circled into the middle of the Gyre and (because up until the past century everything in the world was biodegradable) was broken down into a nutrient-rich stew perfect for fish and smaller invertebrates to chow on. Then we started making everything out of plastic and the whole place went to shit.
The problem with plastic is, unless you hammer it with enough pressure to make a diamond, it never fully disintegrates. Over time plastic will photodegrade all the way down to the individual polymers, but those little guys are still in it for the long haul. This means that except for the slim handful of plastics designed specifically to biodegrade, every synthetic molecule ever made still exists. And except for the small percentage that gets caught in a net or washes up on a shore, every chunk of plastic that’s dropped into the Pacific makes its way to the center of the Gyre and is floating there right now.
After watching junk lap against the side of his boat for the better part of a week, Captain Moore decided to convert his boat into a research vessel and make semiannual trips into the Gyre to study the trash. I tagged along on his most recent voyage, joining a divorced, 40-something doctor and a Mexican chemist and mother of two as his crew. It was like a family vacation, but with more science and way more bummers.
The garbage patch is located at one of the most remote points on earth. It takes a solid week of sailing just to get there. Considering how torturous the average daylong car trip gets, you can well imagine the kind of zap job that seven days on a 50-foot boat will do to your brain. You lose sight of land the first day, then you stop seeing other ships, then you stop seeing anything at all except for endless waves and occasionally a seabird, which, after days of nothing but water, becomes as exciting as spotting a UFO. Right at the point where you’ve come up with a separate song for every bird in the ship’s guidebook and have begun integrating them into a full seabird opera, you start seeing the trash.
I had assumed (completely without any basis in research or common sense) that there was some contiguous mass of concentrated garbage the captain was steering us toward, but (sadly?) this was not the case. The debris patterns shift with the currents, so you just have to aim the boat in one direction and hope for crap. Every so often we’d spot a few different pieces of garbage floating sort of near one another, but for the most part it was just a steady stream of junk, passing one piece at a time. It was a little underwhelming at first, but keep in mind we were cutting a razor-thin course through one of the biggest expanses of open water on the planet. The fact that we couldn’t look out the window for the better part of the trip without seeing some piece of junk bobbing by holds some seriously ugly implications for the rest of the ocean. The first few times we spotted garbage, we made a big production of stopping the boat and going out to scoop it up. Then we began just picking up whatever trash we could snag from the front of the deck. Then we just grabbed whatever looked interesting.
Some of the flotsam is fun stuff that fell off the side of container ships, like entire crates of hockey masks and Nikes. You might have read about the shipment of rubber duckies that got lost in a storm back in 1992 and have been used by oceanographers to more accurately plot the movement of water currents. I guess that’s something of a silver lining to the situation, although it’s a lot like thanking AIDS and cholera for all the advances they’ve provided to epidemiologists.
Before we became equal parts bored and depressed with hauling garbage out of the sea all day, we managed to score a motorcycle wheel, a hard hat, and some children’s life preservers with shark bites in them. We also narrowly missed running into what was either a ship’s mast or a telephone pole. The majority of our haul, though, was just average crap like Coke bottles and grocery bags. A lot of it seemed to come from Asia, meaning it had to have traveled at least 5,000 miles just for us to find it. The scary, staggering thing to consider while holding this stuff is that only a fifth of it is tossed from boats. Most of it is land-born trash that somehow ended up in a waterway and worked a slow path out to sea. As the captain said a good ten or so times, “The ocean is downstream of everything.”
Once we were firmly inside the patch, Captain Moore rigged up a trawl and started taking water samples in little petri dishes. I figured these would be snoozers without a microscope, but when the first one came in it was more horrifying than anything we’d seen floating past.
There were a few water striders and tiny jellyfish here and there, but they were totally overwhelmed by a thick confetti of plastic particles. It looked like a snow globe made of garbage. Based on previous samples, Moore estimated the ratio of plastic to the regular components of seawater in what we were pulling up as 6 to 1. As we moved closer to the middle of the Gyre, the ratio got visibly higher, until we started pulling in samples that looked like they contained solely plastic.
This is the part of the trip that weighs heaviest on my mind. It’s terrible enough to litter sections of the planet with things that can conceivably be removed—I mean, even oil spills and radioactive dust can be cleaned up to a certain extent. But to fundamentally alter the composition of seawater at one of the farthest points from civilization on the globe is a whole different ballpark of fucking the planet. It’s fucking it right up the ass, for good and forever. Without lube.
But wait, here comes the scariest part.
Once the plastic confetti gets small enough to fit inside a jellyfish’s mouth, it gets sucked in and starts its way up the food chain back to us. As the jellies float out of the debris field, little fish eat them, absorbing all the built-up plastics. Then big fish eat a bunch of little fish, even bigger fish eat a bunch of big fish, and by the time you get to the point where we’re hoisting creatures out and eating them, you’re looking at entire milk crates’ worth of particles built up in their fat. It’s the cycle of life reimagined as a dystopian sci-fi cliché. We are eating our own refuse.
Aside from clogging up the digestive tract (biologists in the Pacific have found the bodies of birds who starved to death because their stomachs were completely packed with trash), degraded plastics also have the tendency to sop up foreign chemicals that have leached into the water. There’s a whole class of pesticides and solvents called persistent organic pollutants that are basically tailor-made to attach themselves to loose synthetics and wreak havoc on whatever living thing happens to swallow them. The chemist on our boat was studying a pair of the most prevalent of these pollutants in the Pacific water, DDE and DDT. Yep, the same DDT that kills baby eagles. It’s also a probable carcinogen with links to diminished sperm counts and developmental retardation. The ocean is brimming with this shit.
What’s worse than this is even when the plastic is free from outside toxins, its components can potentially wreck your body. Bisphenol A is a compound used in things like Nalgene bottles and dildos. It’s also a synthetic estrogen and can completely derail the reproductive system. Dr. Frederic vom Saal of the University of Missouri has been studying the effects of bisphenol A on lab mice for the past decade and has noticed ties to its exposure with an absurd suite of health problems including low sperm count, prostate cancer, hyperactivity, early-onset diabetes, breast cancer, undescended testicles, and sex reversal. Does the fact that humans can suffer SEX REVERSAL symptoms from inadvertently eating a compound that is used to make dildos qualify as irony?
Vom Saal’s research is at the center of a messy dispute because it involves exposure in such infinitesimal quantities and nobody is exactly sure how the endocrine system works. There’s also a tricky “magic bullet” sort of quality to his findings, but after talking with him it seemed like even he was a little taken aback that this one chemical could be at the root of almost every major US health crisis of the past 30 years. And even if he’s only right on one of the above counts, yeesh.
Still worse than any of this is the possibility that the same chemicals can simultaneously trigger massive disruptions in DNA. “All it takes is one misaligned chromosome and you’ve got things like Down syndrome,” vom Saal says. “If you examine the genetic material in animals exposed to low doses of bisphenol A, it looks like someone fired a shotgun into the chromosomes.”
On the outer edge of the Gyre, we ran smack into the white whale of the maritime trash world: a ghost net. Ghost nets are loose tangles of fishing line and nets that float freely across the ocean, snagging anything in their path. They are the langoliers of the sea. Ghost nets have been found that are miles long with oars and sharks’ skulls and full turtle skeletons peeking out of their knots. The one we caught wasn’t anywhere near that big, but it was easily twice my size, weighed 200 pounds, and housed both a toothbrush and its own school of tropical fish.
There was no way we could tow the massive clump of nets to shore, so we hoisted it onto the back of the ship, attached a GPS tag so that oceanographers could track its movement, and lowered it back into the water. Our camera guy Jake jumped in after it to film it drifting away in a cloud of slaked-off string and plastic. When he hopped back on board it looked like somebody had smeared body glitter across his chest. It was tiny chunks of plastic.
Labels: Charles Moore, Garbage Island, Gyre, Pacific Ocean, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
OH, THIS IS GREAT-Humans have finally ruined the ocean
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: CBC News
Supporters of a farm-like environmental preserve near the village of Wakefield in the municipality of La Pêche, Que., are upset over a proposal to develop part of the land as an industrial park.
La Pêche has ordered an engineering survey of the land, which has been in Midge Minnes’s family since 1974. Minnes was saddened to hear that the municipality could expropriate part of the land, which is about 35 kilometres north of Ottawa.
“It was quite a shock to find out. It means the front half of the property would be taken up, and that doesn’t really leave too much open field after that,” she said.
The general manager of La Pêche said the municipality needs the new jobs, services and taxes that come with an industrial park.
Charles Ricard said the first step is getting the land surveyed and evaluated. Then an offer could be made to the Minnes family. He said expropriation would be the last option.
People who live in the area are upset because the 65-hectare property has been a popular environment preserve called Eco Echo, which leases the land from the Minnes family.
“If people were given the choice [between] Eco Echo and this alternative industrial park, which we know very little about, I think the choice would be very clear for most people who live in La Pêche and Wakefield that Eco Echo provides a much more substantial vision,” said Paul Brown, who lives nearby.
Brown and other neighbours are part of an orchard co-operative. Last fall, they plowed the land in preparation to plant apples, pears and even kiwi fruit this spring.
Other plans for the property included an outdoor amphitheatre, and a summer camp. But Brown said some of the plans are in jeopardy now that the municipality is looking at developing an industrial park on about a third of the land.
Labels: Eco Echo, La Pêche, environmental preserve
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Quebec Environmental Preserve Under Threat
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
By Marlowe Hood
They are known as rogue or freak waves, though some people simply call them monsters of the sea.
By any name, the outsized swells that can appear suddenly in open waters are big enough to swamp the largest of ships, experts say.
While it has yet to be confirmed that the trio of eight-meter (26-feet) waves that smashed into a cruise ship Wednesday off the Mediterranean coast of Spain were rogues, some of the right conditions were present.
Two passengers were killed, and a third seriously injured in the incident, which shattered plate-glass windows at the bow of the vessel.
Rogues come about in different ways, but are almost always generated by storm-related winds, whether near or far.
“The winds transfer energy into the waves,” said Peter Challenor, an oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton in Britain.
“Then you get interactions among the waves, with the large ones taking energy from the smaller ones, getting bigger and bigger in the process,” he said by phone.
The highest wave ever recorded on the high seas is a 34-meter (112-foot) monster spotted in the Pacific by a U.S. Navy-chartered tanker in the 1920s.
On January 1, 1995, a 25.6-metre (84-feet) wall of water — famous among oceanographers as the “new year wave” — slammed into a oil rig off the Norwegian coast in the North Sea.
It was two-and-a-half times larger than those coming before and after, proving for the first time that such an aberration was possible.
“Not so long ago, when sailors described such waves, people assumed that they had had too much to drink. Today, with our observational tools, we know they are real,” said Christian Kharif, a scientist in Marseille and co-author of “Rogue Waves in the Ocean”.
Between 1985 and 2005, over 200 supertankers and container ships longer than 200 meters have sunk in severe weather, with extreme waves certainly being “a main suspect”, according to University of Hawaii oceanographer Peter Muller.
“These giant waves can be produced by different mechanisms,” said Kharif.
One is through amplification, whereby two or more waves moving in the same direction overlap.
“As wind increases in intensity, it is first going to create small waves, and then bigger ones, which travel faster. Eventually the big ones will catch up, and the energy is concentrated as the waves pile up,” he said by phone.
The net effect is greater than the sum of its parts.
“The interaction is non-linear, so when you add the waves together you actually generate more energy and you get a really big one,” said Challenor.
Another scenario that can give rise to rogues fits some of the conditions leading to the incident Wednesday.
“There is a mechanism where crisscrossing swells meet, creating a sudden upsurge,” Kharif explained.
Two dominant wave patterns affected the region where the Louis Majesty was hit, one pushed by a northeasterly wind and another — created by a distant weather depression — at right angles from the first, said an official from the French national weather bureau.
The same official, however, cited data that could cast doubt on the rogue wave hypothesis.
“The waves in the area measured about five meters on average,” according to data collected by a Spanish weather buoy just before the accident, Jean-Michel Lefevre said by phone.
“Under those conditions we would expect eight-meter waves every 15 minutes.”
Besides the regularity, the size of the waves reported would appear to fall short for a rogue, which is defined as a wave at least twice as high as the so-called significant wave height, an average of the largest third of waves over a given period.
Scientists disagree on just how frequently freak waves occur.
Some studies suggest that approximately one in 3,000 swells fit the profile, while others argue they are in fact far rarer.
But all agree that they often come in sets of three, a phenomenon long known — and dreaded — by sailors as “the three sisters,” said Kharif.
In contrast, the tsunami waves generated by earthquakes, while devastating to coastal areas, are “barely perceptible” in open waters, he said.
Labels: freak waves, oceanography, rogue waves, tsunami
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Rogue waves, towering terror on the high seas
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Mesquitelocalnews.com
The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the bi-state population of greater sage-grouse meets the necessary criteria for recognition as a Distinct Population Segment under the Endangered Species Act, and that adding this population to the federal list of threatened and endangered species is warranted.
However, listing the bi-state DPS of the greater sage-grouse at this time is precluded by the need for listing actions on other species that have a higher priority need for protection under the Act.
As a result, the bi-state DPS of the greater sage-grouse will be placed on the list of species that are candidates for Endangered Species Act protection. The Service will review the status of the bi-state DPS annually, as it does with all candidates for listing, and will propose it for listing when funding and workload permit.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has announced that the federal government will expand its efforts to protect open lands that are important to the survival of the bi-state population and the greater sage-grouse range-wide.
In collaboration with local, state, and tribal partners, Interior will use new science and mapping technologies to improve land-use planning and to ensure that energy production, recreational access and other uses of federal lands will continue where appropriate, while additional measures are taken to protect the bi-state population and the greater sage-grouse across its range.
The bi-state area population of greater sage-grouse, previously referred to as the Mono Basin population of sage-grouse, occurs in portions of Carson City, Lyon, Mineral, Esmeralda, and Douglas Counties in Nevada, and of Alpine, Inyo, and Mono Counties in California.
The State wildlife agencies in Nevada and California have jointly identified six bi-state area Population Management Units (PMUs): Pine Nut, DesertCreek–Fales, Mount Grant, Bodie, South Mono, and White Mountains.
The current analysis of available information suggests only Bodie and South Mono PMUs are likely to persist over the next 30 years, and may also contract in size without increased conservation efforts or implementation of recovery actions.
Threats to the species include destruction, modification, and fragmentation of habitats in the bi-state area caused by urbanization, infrastructure development (e.g. powerlines and roads), mining, energy development, grazing, invasive and exotic species, pinyon–juniper encroachment, wildfire, and the likely effects of climate change.
Current regulatory mechanisms are not adequate to address these habitat-based threats or other threats such as disease and predation, or impacts from recreational activities.
In addition, the relatively few local populations of the bi-state DPS, as well as their small size and relative isolation, contribute to the risk of extinction.
The Service based its final determination on the accumulated scientific data provided by state and federal agencies and tribes, as well as data and information provided through non-governmental, commercial and public comments. The review of relevant materials included 25 chapters of new information and or analyses contained in the peer-reviewed monograph entitled: Ecology and Conservation of Greater Sage-Grouse: A Landscape Species and Its Habitats which was edited by the U.S Geological Survey for publication in the near future by the Cooper Ornithological Society in their Studies in Avian Biology Series. Thirty-eight scientists from federal, state, and nongovernmental organizations collaborated to produce the analyses, synthesis and findings presented in the chapters of this monograph.
The Service assigns a listing priority number to each candidate species based on the magnitude and immediacy of the threats they face. This ranking system is used to determine which candidate species should be more immediately proposed for addition to the list of threatened and endangered species. Because it faces more immediate and severe threats, the Bi-State DPS of the greater sage-grouse has been assigned a listing priority number higher than that for the range-wide greater sage-grouse, which will also be added to the candidate list.
The Service received two petitions to list the bi-state population, one from the Institute for Wildlife Protection (dated December 28, 2001), and the other from the Stanford Law School Environmental Law Clinic (dated November 10, 2005) on behalf of the Sagebrush Sea Campaign, Western Watersheds Project, Center for Biological Diversity, and Christians Caring for Creation.
A series of actions by the Service was taken in response to the petitions, which included publication (in 2006) of a 90-day finding that these petitions did not present substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned actions were warranted.
In response to legal challenges, the Service agreed to reconsider this decision. The Service has also announced a finding regarding a petition to list the western subspecies of the greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act.
A western and an eastern subspecies of the greater sage-grouse were described in the 1940’s based on comparisons of a limited number of specimens, and many scientists subsequently questioned the validity of these subspecies designations.
Based on a thorough evaluation of the best scientific information available, including new genetic analyses, the Service found no evidence to support recognition of either subspecies.
As a result, the Service announced today it has made a finding that listing the western subspecies is not warranted, as it is not a valid taxonomic entity eligible for listing under the Act. The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is a large, ground-dwelling bird, measuring up to 30 inches in length, is two feet tall and weighs between two to seven pounds.
It has a long, pointed tail with legs feathered to the base of the toes and fleshy yellow combs over the eyes. In addition to the mottled brown, black and white plumage typical of the species, males sport a white ruff around their necks.
The sage-grouse is found from 4,000 to over 9,000 feet in elevation. It is an omnivore, eating soft plants (primarily sagebrush) and insects.
Labels: Endangered species act, mesquite, sage-grouse, wildlife
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Sage-Grouse Takes Next Step Toward Endangered Status
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Source: IUNC.org
A team of the world’s leading marine experts, paired with scientists from the Indian Ocean region, have just returned from a six-week research expedition above seamounts in the high seas of the Indian Ocean with a whole new understanding of seamount ecosystems. They gathered a very rich collection of data and specimens, including some strange-looking marine creatures.
The scientific survey was organized by IUCN and its partners to improve knowledge of seamounts across the southwest Indian Ocean ridge. Seamounts, underwater mountains of volcanic and tectonic origin, are known to be hotpots of biodiversity and attract a range of oceanic predators, including seabirds, whales and sharks. They also attract deepwater fisheries, as they host many species of commercial interest, most of which are very vulnerable to over-exploitation. The results of the research do not only have a scientific interest, but will help improve conservation and management of Indian Ocean marine resources.
“I am extremely pleased with the data that we have collected and the number of species that we have encountered”, says Dr Alex David Rogers, Chief Scientist of the Cruise and Senior Research Fellow at the Zoological Society of London. “The diversity of species that we sampled is higher than what I would have expected. Some species have been recorded for the first time in the region, and we hope to have found some species new to science. It was also very interesting to discover that the six seamounts we surveyed are very different from each other, and I believe our findings will certainly improve our global knowledge of seamount ecosystems”.
The Norwegian research vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen left on 12 November from Reunion island, and travelled 6,000 miles in 40 days to study five seamounts on the southwest Indian Ocean Ridge, and one seamount further north on Walters Shoal, south of Madagascar, before docking in Port Elisabeth, South Africa, today. All features were located in waters beyond national jurisdictions, at two to three days’ sailing from the nearest land. Two of them had been set aside on a voluntary basis as protected areas by the Southern Indian Ocean Deepsea Fishers Association, which would allow comparison between fished and unfished seamounts.
“It is gratifying to know that this work is not an isolated scientific trip, but will directly feed into conservation and management recommendations”, says Sarah Gotheil, Programme Officer with IUCN’s Global Marine Programme. “Through our study we hope to confirm the conservation benefits of protecting seamount features on the ridge. This will inform future management of deep-sea ecosystems in the high seas globally”.
In total, nearly 7,000 specimens have been collected and labeled, from two-metre long fish to tiny crustacean larvae. They include an impressive variety of fish, shrimps, squids and gelatinous marine creatures. Many more microscopic species of phytoplankton and zooplankton, representing the base of the food chain in the ocean, have also been collected. The two seabird and marine mammal observers recorded thousands of seabirds from as many as 36 species, and 26 marine mammals. Two of them, majestic humpback whales, even offered the team a wonderful 30-minute show of jumping around at just a few metres from the ship.
A team of the world’s leading marine experts, paired with scientists from the Indian Ocean region, have just returned from a six-week research expedition above seamounts in the high seas of the Indian Ocean with a whole new understanding of seamount ecosystems. They gathered a very rich collection of data and specimens, including some strange-looking marine creatures.
The scientific survey was organized by IUCN and its partners to improve knowledge of seamounts across the southwest Indian Ocean ridge. Seamounts, underwater mountains of volcanic and tectonic origin, are known to be hotpots of biodiversity and attract a range of oceanic predators, including seabirds, whales and sharks. They also attract deepwater fisheries, as they host many species of commercial interest, most of which are very vulnerable to over-exploitation. The results of the research do not only have a scientific interest, but will help improve conservation and management of Indian Ocean marine resources.
“I am extremely pleased with the data that we have collected and the number of species that we have encountered”, says Dr Alex David Rogers, Chief Scientist of the Cruise and Senior Research Fellow at the Zoological Society of London. “The diversity of species that we sampled is higher than what I would have expected. Some species have been recorded for the first time in the region, and we hope to have found some species new to science. It was also very interesting to discover that the six seamounts we surveyed are very different from each other, and I believe our findings will certainly improve our global knowledge of seamount ecosystems”.
The Norwegian research vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen left on 12 November from Reunion island, and travelled 6,000 miles in 40 days to study five seamounts on the southwest Indian Ocean Ridge, and one seamount further north on Walters Shoal, south of Madagascar, before docking in Port Elisabeth, South Africa, today. All features were located in waters beyond national jurisdictions, at two to three days’ sailing from the nearest land. Two of them had been set aside on a voluntary basis as protected areas by the Southern Indian Ocean Deepsea Fishers Association, which would allow comparison between fished and unfished seamounts.
“It is gratifying to know that this work is not an isolated scientific trip, but will directly feed into conservation and management recommendations”, says Sarah Gotheil, Programme Officer with IUCN’s Global Marine Programme. “Through our study we hope to confirm the conservation benefits of protecting seamount features on the ridge. This will inform future management of deep-sea ecosystems in the high seas globally”.
In total, nearly 7,000 specimens have been collected and labeled, from two-metre long fish to tiny crustacean larvae. They include an impressive variety of fish, shrimps, squids and gelatinous marine creatures. Many more microscopic species of phytoplankton and zooplankton, representing the base of the food chain in the ocean, have also been collected. The two seabird and marine mammal observers recorded thousands of seabirds from as many as 36 species, and 26 marine mammals. Two of them, majestic humpback whales, even offered the team a wonderful 30-minute show of jumping around at just a few metres from the ship.
Labels: Indian Ocean, Octopus, PSMI, Silver spinyfin, ecosystems, marine mammals
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
21st century explorers return with unique data from Indian Ocean
Monday, October 6, 2008
The International Union for Conservation of Nature updated the “Red List” which may be the world’s most respected inventory of biodiversity.
On Monday, at the IUCN’s World Conservation Congress in Barcelona many experts agreed that the Earth is undergoing the “first wave of mass extinction since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years go.”
Aggressive, commercial fishing techniques have more than tripled the amount of fish being harvested from the worlds oceans. Trawlers and factory ships using radar and sonar have been able to find fish with nearly pin point accuracy as they prowl the oceans stalking their prey. Using nets as large as jumbo jets has led to the extinction of some intended catches, and other unintended catches.
Over the past two decades an 89 percent decline in hammerhead sharks in the Northeast Atlantic have been attributed to bycatch. The Caribbean monk seal was officially, albeit woefully late, extinct in June of this year. Though the last reported sighting of this monk seal was reportedly in 1952.
I hope I’m not dead 56 years before anyone notices I’m gone.
The seals demise is also officially attributed directly to man. Will it be too late to save the last two monk seal species? There are now estimated only 1,200 Hawaiian monk seals, and only 500 Mediterranean Monk seals inhabiting the planet.
The photo was taken May 27, 2007 of two Hawaiian monk seals. One died from drowning after being tangled and trapped in fishing lines. The other followed his friend to shore barking at people for assistance at Makua Beach on Oahu.
The IUCN estimates that 25% of the planet’s known Mammals are at risk of disappearing forever and in reality that number could be as high as 36%.
Experts say the window of opportunity to save great apes and monkeys appears to be closing far more quickly than Scientists realised.
Can Mankind be far behind?
Ocean-dwelling mammals are reportedly dying at a rate of 1,000 per DAY, victims of mile-wide fishing nets, vessel strikes, toxic waste and sound pollution.
For many decades man’s hubris has increased as the quality of life in the world around him has decreased. If mankind has believed the world was his oyster, the Planet is setting out to prove him wrong.
Photo thanks Gordon Olayvar/ Hawaii Dept. of Land and Natural Resources.
Labels: IUNC, Mass extinct, Monk seal, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Ocean Mammals, marine mammals
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Tangled up and blue. Marine mammals and primates forecasted to be the first victims of mass extinction.
Friday, August 22, 2008
The Petermann glacier is breaking up. An 11 square mile area of the glacier in northern Greenland broke away after July 10th and before
July 24th. The Petermann Glacier is one of Greenland’s largest glaciers.
Petermann has a floating section 10 miles wide and 50 miles long. At 500 square miles it is the longest floating glacier in the Northern Hemisphere.
A 33.5 square mile of the Petermann broke away 2000-2001, but the Byrd Polar Research Center is predicting continued disintegration and more imminent breakup in the coming year.
An already large crack is widening even more while it moves toward the calving front of the glacier. The loss could be as much as an addition 60 square miles of the Massive ice tongue or 1/3rd. “The crack is advancing to a point where a massive breakup seems imminent, in which case, the area of break-up would be 60 square miles.
Greenland’s fastest moving glacier, Jakobshavn is suddenly speeding up and has nearly doubled its ice flow from land into the ocean. Its flow has contributed to roughly 4% of the sea level increase of the 20th century.
When every dim-wit at the coffee shop argues that is glass never over-flows when the ice melts in his drink, you can remind him this ice is moving from land into the sea. His glass would overflow if he added ice to it from his refrigerator.
Researchers have found the glacier’s speeding up is also coinciding with the very rapid thinning of the ice. It’s loosing as much a 49 feet of thickness per year since 1997.
The glaciers ice-tongue, which began to break apart in 2000, had a restraining effect on the ice behind it. As it thins and breaks it opens a path for even yet more ice to pile into the ocean.
Waleed Abdalati, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center says, “…We think there is a dynamic effect in which the glaciers are accelerating due to warming.” They believe the thinning of ice is too much to be attributed to melting alone.
Photo Thanks: Waleed Abdalati, GSFC
NASA MODIS
Byrd Polar Research Center
Labels: Glacier, Greenland, Jakobshavn, NASA, Petermann, Sea level
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Sea level rise already increasing as glaciers melt faster than
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Sometimes there just aren’t any words.
Labels: Baby Whale
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Baby Whale thinks boat is its mother. Outcome looks grim.
