On the Ground and in the Water, Tracing a Giant Wave’s Path

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Published: December 25, 2007

TEMPE, Ariz. — Next to the office of Harindra Joseph S. Fernando at Arizona State University is a 107-foot-long wave tank that can mimic oceanic motions.

“This tank is one of the most wonderful pieces of equipment I have,” said Dr. Fernando, 52, the director of the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Program at Arizona State. “It’s amazing.”

After a tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean in 2004 and killed an estimated 300,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, Dr. Fernando used his amazing piece of equipment to determine why the wave was so lethal.

He and colleagues confirmed that human activities at southern Asian seashores — like coral poaching, dune destruction and mangrove harvesting — had made a natural disaster even more deadly.

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Photos Document Coral Forest Annihilation

by John Nielsen
Morning Edition, December 26, 2007

When ancient forests are cut down, there's usually a big public uproar — unless it's a coral forest at the bottom of an ocean. In those cases, hardly anybody sees what's being lost. As a result, it's easy to forget what's gone.

But that's not what has happened to a set of ruined coral reefs found off the coast of Florida, thanks to 70,000 underwater photos taken back in the 1970s and 1980s. For decades these pictures have been sitting in the office of John Reed, a senior scientist of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. He and the late Robert Avent found and mapped these deep water reefs 30 years ago.

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Advocates Hope Science Can Save a Big Tuna

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 24, 2007; Page A06

For centuries, humans have mythologized the bluefin tuna, an elite, warmblooded fish that can traverse the Atlantic basin in less than a month and a half and grow to weigh three-quarters of a ton. Romans put bluefin on their coins; Salvador Dali painted them.

Now, researchers are using hard science to prevent the fish from going extinct.

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Researchers find new deep water coral

Mon Dec 10, 2007
Yahoo News

HONOLULU - Researchers have discovered what they believe is a new deep water coral and sponge beds found several thousands of feet below the ocean surface, officials said Monday.

The a lemon-yellow bamboo coral tree and a giant sponge were discovered last month in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument by the Pisces V submersible operated by the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL).

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All About: Coral Reefs

By Rachel Oliver
For CNN
December 11, 2007

Story Highlights:
- Coral reefs are home to 25 percent of the world's marine fish species
- UNEP: About 30 percent of world's coral reefs are already damaged
- Coral reefs have been used to treat cancers, HIV, and cardiovascular diseases

CNN -- Coral reefs are often referred to as the canaries of the ocean -- because, like the canary in a mine, they give an indicator of the dangers that lie ahead. Judging by the state of coral reefs these days, if you happen to be a fish, it's not looking good for you.

Coral reefs are home to 25 percent of the world's marine fish species, and cover 1 percent of the Earth's surface, making them the largest single living structure on Earth. They are now also one of the most endangered: As of the end of this year, for the first time in history coral reefs have been included on the World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species.

According to the United Nations Environment Program, or UNEP, around 30 percent of the world's coral reefs are already damaged, some irreparably. At the present rate of destruction, by the year 2050, a breathtaking 70 percent of the world's reefs will have disappeared, according to the Nature Conservancy.

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Fin Whale at Feeding Time: Dive Deep, Stop Short, Open Wide

In the New York Times
By CARL ZIMMER
December 11, 2007

The word “big” doesn’t do justice to whales. Humpback whales can weigh up to 40 tons. Fin whales have been known to reach 80 tons. Blue whales, the biggest animals to have ever lived, reach 160 tons — the same mass as about 2,000 grown men or 5 million grown mice.

It takes a lot of food to build such giant bodies, but how exactly the biggest whales get so much has long been a mystery. “We don’t have much of a sense of these animals in their natural environments,” said Nick Pyenson, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. For decades, whale experts had only indirect clues. “It’s primarily from dead animals or from a few people standing on a ship seeing whales come to the surface,” he said.

With so little information, scientists have struggled to make sense of several enigmas about the biggest whales. “It’s always been a mystery why they have really short dives for their body size,” Mr. Pyenson said. The bigger a marine mammal is, the longer it should be able to dive for food, because it has more muscle tissue in which it can store oxygen. Other species follow this pattern, but the biggest whales do not.

Mr. Pyenson and his colleagues may have solved some of the gastronomical mysteries of these leviathans by creating the first detailed biomechanical model of a feeding fin whale. In essence, they have created the world’s biggest gulp.

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Blue in Green

Dec 10th 2007
From Economist.com

It's time to put greens in their place

EVERY day the world we live in seems to get a little greener. There are green politics, green economics, green living and, well, Green.view. The colour is used as a synonym for environmentalism.

This is bad. Whilst chlorophyll is, without doubt, hugely significant to life on this planet, the anthropocentric, terrestrialist view of the world that dubs those that care as "green" needs to be challenged.

Simply because those who would save the planet have feet and not flippers, and breathe air rather than water, they've called themselves greens rather than blues. Yet Earth is mostly water. As any schoolchild can tell you, the planet is blue. When did you last hear of the Earth from space described as the "Green marble"? Never, that's when.

Such terrestrialism has had serious consequences. We've spent decades following a green agenda that has ignored some of the biggest environmental issues and most important places on the planet.

We've spent years listening to greens complaining about the loss of the rainforests, acid rain, and extinctions of mammals, birds and plants. All serious issues. But while we’ve been worrying about them, we have eaten 90% of the world’s large fish, destroyed much of the world’s coral and nurtured algal blooms the size of entire American states.

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Efforts to Harvest Ocean’s Energy Open New Debate Front

In our national efforts to reduce carbon emissions, wave energy may provide an alternative energy source. This New York Times article gives a good overview of efforts along the Pacific Northwest to test wave energy technologies. But will the benefits outweigh the potential downsides?......


NEWPORT, Ore. — Chris Martinson and his fellow fishermen catch crab and shrimp in the same big swell that one day could generate an important part of the Northwest’s energy supply. Wave farms, harvested with high-tech buoys that are being tested here on the Oregon coast, would strain clean, renewable power from the surging sea.

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A Win-Win for Fish and Fishermen

From: Tierney Lab
By: John Tiereny
Dec 6th, 2007

How can a fishermen make more money? By catching fewer fish.

That happy lesson is well known in the waters of Australia, as I discovered when I visited the lobster and tuna fisheries there for a New York Times Magazine article. But now there’s even better news, for both fish and fishermen, in an Australian study published today in Science. It turns out that profit-seeking fishermen should want to catch even fewer fish than the “sustainable” number calculated by biologists, because leaving more fish in the ocean leads to bigger populations that make for easier and more lucrative fishing in the long run.

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China's Endangered Species

A New York Times Video:

China's rapid economic expansion has jeopardized the nation's prized wildlife and biodiversity, such as the Yangtze turtle.

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