Science

The effects of this spring's extreme flooding of the Mississippi River have been – pardon the pun – spilling over into every possible corner of the area's residential, commercial, and agricultural life over the last two months. And it looks like the environment hasn't escaped either: researchers from the University of Michigan predict that the largest Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” on record will result from the flooding.

The dead zone is forecast to be between 8,500 and 9,421 square miles – an area roughly the size of New Hampshire, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The zone is a threat to aquatic organisms as well as the humans who depend on them in the gulf's booming seafood industry.

"Stream flows were nearly double normal during May, delivering massive amounts of nutrients to the Gulf, and that's what drives the dead zone," said Donald Scavia, Special Counsel to the U-M President for Sustainability and director of the Graham Sustainability Institute.

Scavia noted that the most likely 2011 scenario is a Gulf dead zone of at least 8,500 square miles. This estimate far surpasses the 6,000-square-mile average of the past five years, as well as the current record, set in 2002, of 8400 miles.

Read the complete story from Time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 13, 2011 – Today Oceana launches the first of a three-part scientific expedition exploring Important Ecological Areas (IEAs) in the ocean with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and high definition video camera. The West Coast expedition commences in Monterey Bay this week, followed by a week off the southern Oregon coast and a week in the Olympic Coast off Washington state.

This year’s expedition builds on Oceana’s pilot California Current Large Marine Ecosystem expedition conducted in Monterey Bay last fall where high definition video captured spectacular never before seen underwater areas. A sampling of the amazing biodiversity and vivid colors of our underwater backyard included coral gardens, sponges, rocky reefs, numerous adult and juvenile fish, octopus, sea pens, swarms of tiny krill, deep rocky canyon walls and high rocky pinnacles.

The expedition goal is to identify and characterize seafloor habitats in each of the three regions to inform management decisions on existing and future ocean protection efforts, and educate the public about the splendor and importance of the ocean floor as habitat for healthy oceans.

The Monterey Bay portion of the expedition will focus on augmenting sites explored last year in deeper depths (up to 1,200 feet) and survey areas currently protected from bottom trawling that are under threat of being re-opened to this destructive practice. Bottom trawling is the most damaging fishing method to the West Coast ocean floor, dragging weighted nets along the seafloor, catching high levels of untargeted species, and flattening structures (such as corals and sponges) that provide complex habitat for fish and other marine life on the seabed.

The expedition is an integral step in Oceana’s efforts to identify, protect, and monitor Important Ecological Areas, which are ocean hotspots critical to maintaining ecosystem health. Important Ecological Areas off the West Coast include places like migration routes, sensitive seafloor habitats, breeding and spawning areas, nursery areas for young fish and wildlife, and foraging areas.

Video and still images will be available on Oceana Facebook, our website (www.oceana.org – click on ‘Our Work’ then ‘Oceana on the Water’) and will be added to Google Earth. This project is in partnership with CSU Monterey Bay, Sealife  Conservation, and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Media and guests are invited to come aboard the research sailboat, the Derek M. Baylis, and join us for the day. Interested parties, please call Ashley Blacow at (831) 324-7484 to reserve a space. High definition video footage and images will be available for interested media.

What: Oceana Important Ecological Areas Expedition

When: June 13-17, 2011

Where: Monterey Bay, departing daily from Fisherman’s Wharf

 

 

 

 

Cate O'Keefe, a graduate student in fisheries science, has partnered with New England sea scallop fishermen for a research project aimed at reducing unintended catch of yellowtail flounder.

This month’s “Voices From the Waterfront”, produced by NOAA, features Cate O’Keefe, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) in New Bedford, Mass., who is working with sea scallop fishermen to find innovative ways to prevent the unintended catch of yellowtail flounder in scallop fishing dredges.

Read the complete story from NOAA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When in 2009 a team of Romanian and Norwegian researchers attached a satellite transmitter to Harald’s 2.9 meter (9 ½-foot) body, they hoped the data beamed back would show them ways of halting the rapid drop in the sturgeons’ numbers. But now the Beluga sturgeon is missing, presumed to be a victim of poachers.

Sturgeon have thrived in the Danube for 200 million years, migrating from feeding grounds in the Black Sea to Germany 2,000 kms (1,200 miles) upstream. Archaeologists have found wooden sturgeon traps in the ruins of Roman fortresses behind the willow trees on the Danube’s banks, along with sturgeon bones dated to the 3rd century.

In the 1970s and ‘80s Romania built giant dams across the Iron Gates gorge, cutting off half the sturgeons’ spawning grounds.

Read the complete story by The AP at The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A coral reef may save your life one day. Why have we done so little to return the favor?

The vast majority of medicines, from powerful narcotics to common headache pills, were derived originally from nature — that's up to 70% of new drugs in the past couple of decades in the United States alone.

This is hardly surprising. Many animals, from chimpanzees to parrots, have been seen to search for favorite plants or mineral deposits during times of stress. Even our pet dog gets in the act, nibbling on grass perhaps to ward off tummy trouble. Perhaps our early ancestors watched and emulated.

Our earliest records of written history prescribe natural remedies for various ailments, and some have even made it into modern prescriptions. Best known is the common aspirin, a derivative of salicylic acid. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, knew this, and as far back as 400 BC. willow bark — which contains salicin — was prescribed for a host of aliments.

Read the complete story from The Huffington Post.

 

 

 

 

 

Spiny dogfish are one of the rare success stories in the management of shark fisheries, with the U.S. Atlantic population representing one of the few shark stocks ever to fully recover from overfishing.  At first glance this doesn’t seem to make any sense: spiny dogfish are one of the longest-lived and slowest-growing of the sharks that regularly interact with human beings, and with a 2-year pregnancy it doesn’t seem as though they could replace their numbers in anything less than the decades that have gone by without successful recovery from several other heavily-fished sharks.  So how have spiny dogfish been able to succeed in recovering from overfishing where so many other sharks struggle?  The answer may very well be in adaptations related to that seemingly long reproductive cycle of theirs.

The essential book Biology of Sharks and Their Relatives has a good overview of the reproductive systems found in elasmobranchs, and that’s where we’ll lay the groundwork for the potential reproductive edge of dogfish.  Carrier et al. (2004) summarize that there are two different basic reproductive cycles found in sharks and rays.  Both involve two different processes, the development of pups and the development of eggs.  Where these cycles differ is the timing of egg development.

In some sharks, including members of the large coastal shark complex like blacktip and sandbar sharks, pup development occurs, followed by the development of the eggs.  Basically, only one reproductive stage happens at a time.  The mother shark puts all her reproductive resources into developing the pups, then develops the eggs that will hopefully be fertilized to develop into the next pups.  Factor in the “resting period” that usually immediately follows birth and you have a reproductive cycle that can be considerably longer than the length of pregancy.

Read the complete story from the Ya Like Dags blog.

 

 

 

 

 

A major aspect of the presentation was based on the fact that that the cod populations off Canada have not recovered despite years of essentially no fishing effort.

Dr Rothschild suspects that we should look causes other than "overfishing" for species biomass fluctuations.

He demonstrated that stocks have fluctuated dramatically over centuries and that predator prey relations do not explain everything because sometimes the fluctuations in predator and prey stocks are correlated and sometimes not.

He presented a hypothesis for the Canada cod example based on ice melt fluctuations in the Labrador Sea. Measurements indicate that the cod off Canada recently are putting on weight about half as fast per year as healthy cod. They are starving.

Read the entire blog at Cape Ann Online.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alaska Fisheries Science Center has just launched its biennial comprehensive survey in the Gulf of Alaska, during which National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers will help determine the next catch rates.

NOAA is using two chartered commercial fishing vessels, each carrying six scientists in addition to the crews, to conduct a bottom trawl groundfish survey over the next 90 days. AFSC’s deputy director of Resource Assessment and Conservation Division, Guy Fleischer, said that about 750 tows will be completed during this time.

Once complete, scientists will calculate the data on fishing efforts, catch rates and biological data to generate fishery-independent estimates of geographic and depth distribution, abundance and population size and age. These estimates should be completed by the end of September.

Read the complete story from Juneau Empire.

 

 

 

 

 

Two University of Washington scientists have just published a study in the journal Conservation Biology in collaboration with colleagues from Rutgers University and Dalhousie University arguing that the gloomiest predictions about the world’s fisheries are significantly exaggerated.

The new study takes issue with a recent estimate that 70 percent of all stocks have been harvested to the point where their numbers have peaked and are now declining, and that 30 percent of all stocks have collapsed to less than one-tenth of their former numbers. Instead, it finds that at most 33 percent of all stocks are over-exploited and up to 13 percent of all stocks have collapsed.

It’s not that fisheries are in great shape, said Trevor Branch, the lead author of the new study; it’s just that they are not as badly off as has been widely believed. In 2006, a study in the journal Science predicted a general collapse in global fisheries by 2048 if nothing were done to stem the decline.

Read the complete story from The New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

ScienceDaily – Apr. 28, 2011 — Fish and marine species are among the most threatened wildlife on earth, due partly to over exploitation by fishing fleets. Yet there are differences in assessing trends in worldwide fishing stocks which, researchers writing in Conservation Biology argue, stem from inappropriate use of time trends in catches.

"Estimates of fishery status based on catches suggest that around 30% of fisheries are collapsed and 70% are overexploited or collapsed," said lead author Dr Trevor Branch from the University of Washington in Seattle. "Our assessment shows that the data are seriously biased, and that instead we should be looking at biomass data."

Biomass data from scientific stock assessments indicated a much smaller proportion in these categories (12% collapsed, 26% overexploited or collapsed), and that status trends are stable. Dr Branch's analysis suggests that in most regions fisheries management has led to stabilization, and even recovery, of fished populations.

Read the complete story from Science Daily.