Conservation & Environment

November 3, 2014 — An interview with Sam Rauch, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs at NOAA Fisheries.

Reading the environmental news these days can really get you down. The climate is changing, sea levels are rising, and in many parts of the world, the oceans are being emptied out by overfishing. But there are a few good news stories out there, and here's one that you might not have heard about: In the United States, we've brought overfishing under control. That means healthier ocean ecosystems and a brighter future for fishermen and coastal communities all along our coasts.

Read the full story and listen to the audio from NOAA Fisheries

 

November 3, 2014 — Hawaiian ono swimming off the California coast? Giant sunfish in Alaska? A sea turtle usually at home off the Galapagos Islands floating near San Francisco?

Rare changes in wind patterns this fall have caused the Pacific Ocean off California and the West Coast to warm to historic levels, drawing in a bizarre menagerie of warm-water species. The mysterious phenomena are surprising fishermen and giving marine biologists an aquatic Christmas in November.

Temperatures off the California coast are currently 5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than historic averages for this time of year — among the warmest autumn conditions of any time in the past 30 years.

"It's not bathtub temperature," said Nate Mantua, a research scientist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Santa Cruz, "but it is swimmable on a sunny day."

In mid-October, it was 65 degrees off the Farallon Islands and in Monterey Bay, and 69 degrees off Point Conception near Santa Barbara. In most years, water temperatures in those areas would be in the high 50s or low 60s.

The last time the ocean off California was this warm was in 1983 and 1997, both strong El Niño years that brought drenching winter rains to the West Coast.

But El Niño isn't driving this year's warm-water spike, which began in mid-July, experts say. Nor is climate change.

What's happening is winds that normally blow from the north, trapping warm water closer to the equator, have slackened since the summer. That's allowed the warm water to move north.

Read the full story at the San Jose Mercury News

October 31, 2014 — The marine species featured on the latest stamps from the United Nations Postal Administration may be beautiful but they are also under threat.

Since 1993, the UN Postal Administration has released 22 sets featuring endangered animals. This year's collection of 12 stamps, produced by artist Amadeo Bachar, includes Denise's pygmy seahorse, which measures just 1.5 centimetres long, a whale shark, the world's largest fish, the distinctive scalloped hammerhead shark and the Asian arowana, which is a symbol of good luck in some cultures.

Read the full story from New Scientist

October 29, 2014 — Scientists studying kelp beds along the coast of Southern California have detected "pervasive" amounts of a radioactive isotope known as Iodine-131 in the waters off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Steven Manley, a marine biologist with California State University-Long Beach, says the most probable source of the contamination is the Terminal Island Water Reclamation Plant.

Iodine-131 is regularly used to diagnose and treat cancers of the thyroid gland. The material is later expelled, and it enters sewer systems and water treatment facilities.

The isotope is also used as a radioactive tracer in the hydraulic fracturing process. But Manley said the most likely source of the contamination in the ports was wastewater from medical facilities.

I-131 is not naturally occurring, and could harm fish and other marine animals if it is absorbed in large amounts. 

The discovery of the iodine isotope was made as part of a project called Kelp Watch 2014, which aims to determine if nuclear material from the Fukushima disaster has reached the West Coast of North America.

Researchers across the region have been sampling kelp because the ubiquitous rubbery sea plant soaks up radioactive material like a sponge. So far no Fukushima-related material has been found, Manley said.

However, during a survey of kelp in the two ports, Iodine-131 turned up in what Manley called "low but significant" concentrations. 

His team took further samples near the ports to home in on the contamination.

"Everyone of those samples has I-131 present in kelp," Manley noted.

Read the full story form South Carolina Public Radio

October 28, 2014 — The woman sat in the muck beside the Bronx River in the northern part of New York City, measured the oyster between a pair of calipers, and called out to her partner. “31 … no, 32 millimeters. Um, dead. No, alive! Wait.” She paused, noticing the two halves of the oyster shell had separated and filled with mud. “Dead,” she said sadly.

Live oysters were what this small group of volunteers, scientists and activists fervently hoped to find in this distant corner of New York City, called Soundview, on that crystal clear morning in May.

The volunteers wore borrowed waders over old sneakers. They ventured out into the dark water, using walking sticks to avoid stumbling in the deep mud that coated the bottom of the river. Reaching down into water, about 20 yards offshore, they pulled out baskets of oysters and carried them carefully back to the riverbank to check for winter survivors.

This was phase two of something known as the Oyster Restoration Research Project, run by the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper program, the Hudson River Foundation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and other partners, to restore oysters to an ecosystem they once dominated.

In the first phase, the other test restoration locations – off Governors Island, in the Bay Ridge flats, Jamaica Bay – all failed, the oysters washed away by rough waves or smothered to death in mud. The reefs at Soundview are now the only active oyster restoration effort in New York City waters.

“Soundview was the only one that didn’t blow away and where we saw at least a little bit of growth on the oysters,” said Dr Allison Fitzgerald of NY/NJ Baykeeper. “They can survive. The question is how long they are surviving. There’s a big difference between surviving and thriving.”

Read the full story at The Guardian

October 27, 2014 — Forty percent of the oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe was not consumed by bacteria and did not stay on the ocean’s surface due to the use of dispersants.

The oil sank to the ocean floor and remains there today. New research conducted by David L. Valentine with the University of California at Santa Barbara and colleagues proved that as much as forty percent of the oil still remains on the ocean floor. The discovery was reported in the Oct. 27, 2014, edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers examined 500 spots around the Macondo Well where the disaster began. The entire search area covered 1,235 square miles. The scientists searched for signs of hopane (17.alpha.(H)-21.beta.(H)-hopane) because this compound is known to be a marker for the biodegradation of crude oil. The results indicate that between four and 31 percent of the oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is still on the ocean floor. Estimates for the entire area that was contaminated are two million gallons.

Read the full story from the Examiner

October 21, 2014 — Recreational fishermen prize large trophy fish. Commercial fishing gear targets big fish. After all, larger fish feed the egos of humans as well as their bellies.

A new compilation of research from around the world now shows that big, old, fat, fertile, female fish – known as BOFFFFs to scientists – are essential for ensuring that fishery stocks remain sustainable.

"Information on many different kinds of freshwater and marine fish tell the same story," says lead author Dr. Mark Hixon of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. "The loss of big fish decreases the productivity and stability of fishery stocks." This loss, known as "size and age truncation," typically occurs in all fisheries.

Methods of saving big fish include slot limits, where regulations allow only the capture of medium-sized fish, as well as marine reserves, where some fish are allowed to spawn over their entire life spans.

There are multiple ways BOFFFFs benefit fish populations.

First, larger females produce far more eggs than smaller fish. For example, in Hawai'i, a 27-inch bluefish trevally or 'ōmilu produces 84 times more eggs than a 12-inch fish.

Second, co-author Dr. Susan Sogard of the National Marine Fisheries Service reports that "larger fish can produce better quality eggs that hatch into young that grow and survive better than young from smaller females."

Third, "BOFFFFs often spawn at different times and places than younger females, which increases the odds that some young will find favorable environments in an unpredictable ocean," adds co-author Dr. Darren Johnson of California State University at Long Beach.

Finally, old fish can outlive periods that are unfavorable for reproduction, providing a "storage effect" where BOFFFFs are ready to spawn successfully when the time is right.

"Increasingly, fisheries managers are realizing that saving some big old fish is essential to ensure that fished populations are stable and sustainable," says Hixon.

Read the full story from Phys.org

October 22, 2014 — A new study led by researchers at Occidental College and the University of California at Santa Barbara has found that the oil platforms dotting the California coast are fantastic for sea life.

Never let it be said that Mother Nature doesn’t appreciate irony.

A new study led by researchers at Occidental College and the University of California at Santa Barbara has found that the oil platforms dotting the California coast are fantastic for sea life.

In a 15-year study, researchers found that the ecosystems that build up around artificial rigs host 1,000 percent more fish and other sea life than natural habitats such as reefs and estuaries.

The California rigs outstripped even famously rich ecosystems such as the coral reefs of French Polynesia.

Now, as a big fan of artificial reefs, I think this is exciting news. There are many who oppose the idea of improving on God’s — or, if you prefer, Gaia’s — design. This strikes me as crazy, given the fact that virtually all of the food we eat and the clothes we wear are the products of human innovation.

When humans ran out of gazelles or bison to hunt, they had the great idea of catching a few and raising a renewable supply. When picking wild seeds and berries no longer fed the tribe, it dawned on humans to plant their own.

Read the full opinion from the New York Post

 

October 22, 2014 — More than two-thirds of Long Island's coastal waters did not contain enough oxygen this summer to enable fish to survive, according to research to be released Wednesday by Stony Brook University.

Results from 30 monitors placed in the waters surrounding Long Island over the summer showed poor or lethally low levels of oxygen at 21 of the sites, said Christopher Gobler, a professor at the university.

Read the full story from Newsday

 

October 21, 2014 — The Croatian Pride pushes off the dock and cuts slowly through the grey Gulf of Mexico, its engine growling. The air hangs thick and steamy, and the movement of the 40-foot oyster boat brings relief as it breezes past marshy areas where blue herons stand sentinel. The boat’s captain, John Tesvich, is a fourth generation oysterman, but on this early fall day, it’s journalists, not oysters, that he’s hauling.

Reporters are on board the Croatian Pride to learn about Louisiana’s $50 billion plan to restore the state’s rapidly vanishing coastline, a crisis the New York Times Magazine termed “existential,” and the impact those plans will have on Louisiana’s legendary oyster fishery. The discussion jumps, however, from coastal restoration, to the lingering impacts of the Deep Water Horizon spill, to Hurricane Katrina, and finally the Gulf’s “dead zone,” a huge swath of ocean the size of Connecticut that forms every summer and is essentially devoid of life.

Coastal Louisiana faces a complex web of environmental challenges from land loss, to declining fisheries, water quality problems and climate change. On the Croatian Pride this September day, the stepchild issue is water quality, or more specifically the nutrient-laden agricultural fertilizer and wastewater that wash into the Gulf and boost algae and microbe blooms that gobble up oxygen and kill other marine life—while creating the second largest dead zone in the world.

Nitrogen run-off from the nation’s booming Corn Belt is the single largest source of nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River basin, which drains a stunning 41 percent of the waterways in the contiguous United States. Massive amounts of water, sediment and nutrients wash off cornfields from as far away as Minnesota, enter the Mississippi River system, and eventually reach the Gulf.

The problem may worsen if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) raises the ethanol mandate for blended gasoline next month—despite earlier commitments to reduce it. Fully one-third of corn grown in the U.S. already goes to ethanol refiners today, and that number could climb.

The Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone forms far offshore, but even oysters are not immune to the low-oxygen condition, called hypoxia, that agricultural wastes can create.

Shallower marsh waters can get hit as well. “You hear of it,” says Tesvich, who chairs the Louisiana Oyster Task Force. “Crabbers see it too.”

“If you get a dead zone over your bed, it’ll wipe you out,” adds Tesvich. Some summers he says he’s lost 20 to 30 percent of his oysters from it. “You’ll see the water is a brownish color or there’s algae on top. Maybe you’ll see some fish floating on the water or dead crabs. When you start to see some dead oysters, you get out.”

Read the full story from National Geographic