Bush to go out with a green bang?

New Scientist
November 22nd, 2007
by: Phil McJenna

ONE of the George W. Bush's final acts as US president could be to create the largest marine conservation area in the world. White House officials say that Bush is considering a proposal to turn up to 2.3 million square kilometres of tropical waters, coral reefs and remote island atolls in the Pacific Ocean into US National Monuments (see map).

"As bad as his environmental record has been, he could, as one individual, protect more of the Earth's surface than anyone else in history," says Lance Morgan of the US Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

Under the American Antiquities Act of 1906, a president does not need congressional approval to preserve public land or water for conservation as a National Monument. In 2006, Bush used the act to designate a 365,000 square kilometre Marine National Monument incorporating the northernmost islands of Hawaii, creating the world's largest protected marine area. In late August this year, he announced his interest in conserving additional areas of the Pacific Ocean.

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Ecologist: Hope remains for world’s oceans, but swift response is needed

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Outspoken marine ecologist Jeremy Jackson says humans have caused widespread and difficult-to-imagine damage to the world’s oceans and that the response needs to be of immense proportions. He says it boils down to two simple concepts: Become citizens instead of consumers, and elect real leaders, not facilitators of consumption.

“I felt good last Tuesday,” Jackson said of the election of Barack Obama, who on Tuesday was televised pledging a federal cap-and-trade system to limit carbon dioxide emissions and to invest billions in alternative energy. The hundreds of people attending the Fall 2008 Honors Colloquium on Global Environmental Change at the University of Rhode Island responded with enthusiastic applause.

Jackson, a 66-year-old ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, said he realized about 15 years ago that many of the sea grass beds and coral reefs he studied as a young man were largely gone. That includes the grass beds of Chesapeake Bay and Florida Bay, and the reefs of Jamaica. Much of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef looks like a garbage dump, Jackson said. Fish populations are dramatically reduced and dead zones are growing in oceans around the world.

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"road-kill" whales

and we don't seem to want to do anything about it

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-house-delay-on-ship-speed-limit-endangers-whales-810402.html

A Seafood Snob Ponders the Future of Fish

By MARK BITTMAN

Published: November 15, 2008

I suppose you might call me a wild-fish snob. I don’t want to go into a fish market on Cape Cod and find farm-raised salmon from Chile and mussels from Prince Edward Island instead of cod, monkfish or haddock. I don’t want to go to a restaurant in Miami and see farm-raised catfish from Vietnam on the menu but no grouper.

Those have been my recent experiences, and according to many scientists, it may be the way of the future: most of the fish we’ll be eating will be farmed, and by midcentury, it might be easier to catch our favorite wild fish ourselves rather than buy it in the market.

Read More...

Graph: The breaking point

Graph: Threatened

Daily News Clips

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Oceanographic Institute installed 16 auto-detection buoys in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a 638-square-nautical mile area off the ...
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Scientists look to future of cloning endangered species
Daily Vidette - Normal,IL,USA
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Biologist says marine closures yielding bigger fish
Ventura County Star - Camarillo,CA,USA
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An environmental legacy of distinction?

by Jane Lubchenco, Guest opinion
Friday November 14, 2008

In the twilight of President George W. Bush's final term, opportunities to strengthen his mark on history diminish by the hour. As attention shifts to executive actions that will not be undone by the next president, Bush has a golden opportunity to strengthen his environmental record and create lasting benefits for oceans and for generations of people from all nations. A decision to protect two remote regions under U.S. jurisdiction in the Pacific Ocean could leave a unique legacy of distinction.

The president is expected to decide next week whether to create the world's largest fully protected marine reserve. He's considering places in the western and central Pacific that together would total more than 750,000 square miles, an area more than twice the size of all the land conserved by another Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt.

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Obama urged to end overfishing

Reuters
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama could protect ocean wildlife and save jobs in commercial fisheries by ending widespread overfishing, environmental and economic leaders and scientists reported on Thursday.

About 70 percent of the world's fisheries are over-exploited or have already crashed, the report said. If this long-term trend continues, scientists have predicted that all current salt-water fish and seafood species will collapse by 2048.

The report said this could be remedied by instituting a system known as catch shares, where the total amount of fish allowed to be taken in a given fishery is capped and fishermen are given a share of the fishery's quota.

That is different than the conventional way of trying to limit the number of fish taken, which is to shorten the length of the fishing season, which prompts fishermen to get the absolute maximum during whatever time they are permitted to fish.

Read more...

Daily News Clips

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Mongabay.com - USA
The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) authorized the Navy to implement "alternative arrangements" to NEPA compliance in light of "emergency ...

Obama will act quickly on climate change: adviser
Reuters - 17 hours ago
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Two marine reserve proposals highlight complex process
Newport News Times - Newport,OR,USA
NSAT members say it features a broad range of diverse habitats, including sandy bottom, rocky reef, kelp forest, and bird sanctuaries, and “is not heavily ...

Last chance for the oceans?
Guardian Weekly - UK
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Off-shore Drilling Moves Forward in Va.
Media General Washington Bureau - Washington,DC,USA
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New Species Discovered by Marine Census

Check out photos of the new species discovered by the deep-sea marine census.

The Census is a ten-year effort among marine biologists around the world to catalog and understand ocean life. Scientists from more than 80 countries have two more years to examine and document the 95 percent of Earth's oceans that remain relatively unexplored. Their comprehensive report is due in 2010.

Click here to see pictures

Daily News Clips

Coast Guard removes tons of debris from Kure Atoll
Honolulu Advertiser - Honolulu,HI,USA
According to Cynthia Vanderlip, manager of the State of Hawaii's Kure Atoll Wildlife Sanctuary, DLNR and NMFS officers rescued seven Hawaiian monk seals, ...

Whales get the right of way
Bethany Beach Wave - Bethany Beach,DE,USA
... within the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary -- an 842-square-mile whale feeding area that reaches from Cape Cod to Cape Ann off Massachusetts. ...

Hawaii At Work Keeping it real for the seals
Honolulu Star-Bulletin - Honolulu,HI,USA
Q: How many other people at the aquarium work with the Hawaiian monk seals? A: I'm the primary, and then, because we have two seals and I can't be out there ...

Report: Greenhouse gases imperil oceans' web of life
The Miami Herald - FL,USA
-Cooler water holds higher levels of carbon dioxide and becomes more acidic. The current trend of carbon dioxide emissions would leave cold-water corals ...

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Gulf of Mexico marine sanctuary idea dead for now
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — President Bush's proposal to create a string of marine sanctuaries in the Gulf of Mexico, known as the "Islands in the Stream," has died ...

Greenhouse emissions prepare ocean disaster
Green Left Weekly - Chippendale,NSW,Australia
Corals and sea urchins were absent, while invasive algae thrived. Higher acidity is believed to have damaging effects on the physiology of finfish in their ...

Major Progress Made Towards Historic Census Of Marine Life In 2010
Science Daily (press release)
22) Antarctic expressway: In the Southern Ocean, Census CAML explorers find evidence that deep sea octopuses ride the “Antarctic thermohaline expressway. ...

Net of warring interests surrounds West Coast fishery changes

Friday in San Diego, after years of studies and debate, a federal fishery council is to vote on a plan to try to create a more profitable, sustainable and safer fishery. The plan would vest the region's trawl-boat owners with shares of the public seafood resource that can be sold like private stock.

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Census of the ocean discovering new wonders

A city of brittle stars off the coast of New Zealand, an Antarctic expressway where octopuses ride along in a flow of extra salty water and a carpet of tiny crustaceans on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor are among the wonders discovered by researchers compiling a massive census of marine life.

Click here to read the article

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One year later, oil spill impacts of Cosco Busan unknown
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Mystery 'Gunshot' Sounds Are Whale Threats
LiveScience.com - New York,NY,USA
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Marine species’ invasion sends alarm waves in Qatar waters
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Daily News Clip

Bush hits choppy water over ocean sanctuaries
San Francisco Chronicle - CA, USA
The original plan, which included four potential "marine monuments" and was well received by environmentalists, has already been scaled back. ...

Bush’s parting moves on the environment
Christian Science Monitor - Boston,MA,USA
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Corals to get more protection
KeysNet - Tavernier,Florida,USA
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FACTBOX: President-elect Obama's positions on energy issues
Reuters - USA
Obama opposed lifting the congressional moratorium on drilling in federal lands off US coasts, but now says he would support limited expanded offshore ...

Obama's energy plan may be curbed
Globe and Mail - Canada
Falling petroleum prices will also ease the pressure on Congress and Mr. Obama to expand offshore drilling, possibly allowing a reinstatement of a federal ...

Obama on Ocean Policy
By Peter Etnoyer
... protect the ecological integrity of that body of water - Obama wants to work with Congress to reauthorize and enhance the Coastal Zone Management Act, as well as the National Marine Sanctuaries Act and the Oceans and Human Health Act.

Daily News Clips

Eastern Pacific tuna hang in the balance
Trading Markets (press release) - Los Angeles,CA,USA
... regional marine conservation director said that, Less than one percent of the Eastern Pacific Ocean has been designated as Marine Protected Areas, ...
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Election Results Bring Conservation Opportunity and Need for Action
MarketWatch - USA
The Department of the Interior should systematically review and reverse decisions made by the past Administration under the Endangered Species Act that were ...
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Malaysia seizes rare turtle eggs
BBC News - UK
The smugglers escaped but abandoned 20 sacks of eggs, which police say are from endangered species like the Green and Hawksbill turtles. ...
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Bush Ocean Plan Is Criticized: Cheney Among Those Objecting

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 4, 2008; Page A13

President Bush's vision for protecting two vast areas of the Pacific Ocean from fishing and mineral exploitation, a move that would constitute a major expansion of his environmental legacy, is running into dogged resistance both inside and outside the White House and has placed his wife and his vice president on opposite sides of the issue.

With less than three months before Bush's term ends, his top deputies are scrambling to try to execute a plan that would shield some of the world's most diverse underwater ecosystems. The original plan, which included four potential "marine monuments" and was well received by environmentalists, has already been scaled back.

Read more...

Daily News Clips

Bush Plan to Protect Ocean Draws Economic Objection
Washington Post - United States
In 2006 he designated the nearly 140000-square-mile Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, creating what at the…

Eating smelly fish could save endangered species
Canada.com - Don Mills,Ontario,Canada
Increasing demand for small pelagics would also reduce the pressure on more endangered species, she said. The challenge is convincing the public that small ...

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In Bush's end-game, lots of changes on environment
Reuters India, India - Nov 2, 2008
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the US presidential candidates sprint toward the finish line, the Bush ...

Artificial Oyster Beds Could Revive Ocean Health
WBUR - Boston,MA,USA
So the Massachusetts Audubon Society is building artificial oyster reefs at its Wellfleet Bay wildlife sanctuary on Cape Cod. The hope is to learn new ways ...

Baby Turtles Released to the Sea
KTLA - Los Angeles,CA,USA
CHIAPAS, MEXICO -- Dozens of people lined up along the beach on Tuesday at the Puerto Arista sea turtle sanctuary to help set approximately seven thousand ...