The Senate and the Spill

Editorial
The New York Times
September 27, 2010

The Coast Guard’s announcement a week ago that BP’s runaway Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico was “effectively dead” brought a collective sigh of relief from the company, the citizens of the Gulf Coast and President Obama — indeed from anyone who for nearly five harrowing months had been transfixed by one of the worst environmental disasters in American history.

Unfortunately, it may also have given the politically paralyzed United States Senate one more excuse not to move forward on a controversial but necessary bill that would build on the lessons of the gulf and make offshore drilling safer in the future.

The House has already passed such a bill. It would be irresponsible of the Senate not to do likewise. The Senate has not distinguished itself on environmental issues over the last two years, failing even to vote on comprehensive energy and climate legislation that the House had passed. The least it can do is muster a meaningful response to the spill.

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, has in hand an honorable bill that is the product of endless hearings by several committees and could be quickly brought to the floor. Like the House bill, it would tighten environmental safeguards and reorganize the agency at the Interior Department that oversees drilling in order to eliminate the conflicts of interest that allowed BP to manipulate the system and short-circuit regulatory reviews.

Like the House bill, it would also require companies to furnish more detailed response plans before receiving permits to drill, and would eliminate the $75 million liability cap for companies responsible for a spill. That cap is moot in BP’s case, since the company has already agreed to pay $20 billion in damage claims. But lifting the cap would provide a powerful incentive to other companies to behave responsibly.

As an added fillip, both bills would provide long-term financing (from oil company fees) for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the government’s main program for acquiring open space.

With so much to like, what’s the holdup? Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, complains that lifting the liability cap would discourage smaller drillers without deep pockets that could be bankrupted by a single accident. Surely this can be resolved with compromise language providing for a sliding scale.

The real reason — no surprise here — is intense opposition from the oil companies and their allies in both parties who claim, without persuasive evidence, that the new rules, fees and penalties would raise costs, inhibit domestic production and increase American dependence on foreign oil. The Senate should ignore these complaints, pass a bill and then move forward to a conference with the House.

If it doesn’t, voters should hold it accountable. Congress cannot undo the effects of the spill. But it can ensure a safer future.

Taking the Pulse of Coral Reefs

Photo Credit: University of Bristol
Las Perlas Archipelago coral reef.

Science Daily
September 25, 2010

Healthy reefs with more corals and fish generate predictably greater levels of noise, according to researchers working in Panama. This has important implications for understanding the behaviour of young fish, and provides an exciting new approach for monitoring environmental health by listening to reefs.

Contrary to Jacques Cousteau's 'Silent World', coral reefs are surprisingly noisy places, with fish and invertebrates producing clicks and grunts which combine to produce cacophonies of noise. Each reef is subtly different depending on the size and composition of the resident community.

By analysing recordings of coral reefs from the Las Perlas Archipelago in Pacific Panama (Central America), marine biologists have found that some reefs are noisier than others, and these differences in noise provide useful information about the state of the reef. Exeter University PhD student Emma Kennedy and her supervisor Dr Steve Simpson, working with an acoustician Dr Marc Holderied, also from the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, found that healthier reefs were louder, with a clear association between overall noise level generated and the amount of living coral.

A more detailed investigation of the sound produced by some of the reefs showed that lower frequency sounds provided more information on the numbers of fish living on the reef, while the intensity of higher frequency reef sounds gave an indication of coral diversity. This is the first time that a link has been made between noise generated by individual reefs and the specific habitats and communities making up that reef.

Previous work by Dr Steve Simpson has shown that larval fish and corals returning to reefs after spending their first few weeks out in the plankton, search for habitat by listening out for, and moving towards, reef noise. Sound travels well underwater, meaning that noise produced by a reef can propagate several kilometres out to sea.

Dr Simpson said: "This study provides evidence that reef generated sound contains a real richness of information. This would provide fish and invertebrates with the cues they need to assess the quality of potential settlement sites before they can see them, a bit like wandering around a music festival eavesdropping on different bands before choosing where to pitch your tent. It may even provide the information that enables some fish to return to the very reef on which they were originally spawned."

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Is this the ugliest creature beneath the waves? Say hello to the plump pink sea pig

Photo Credit: PlanetOddity.com

Sea pigs are usually found in groups of
300 to 600 on ocean floors all over the world

Depending on your point of view, this alien-looking entity might resemble a potato that's been left in the cupboard too long and sprouted shoots. You could mistake it for a fat slug with legs. You might even think it's cute.

But these fascinating creatures are sea pigs, and they lives 1,000 metres down on the deep sea bed. The bizarre looking life forms are scotoplanes, but earned their nicknames because of their little legs and plump, pinkish appearance.

However, the 'legs', arranged in a circular row around the its base, are actually elongated feet which are used to push food into their mouths. Sea pigs feed on organic particles which they extract from deep sea mud and studies have shown a particular taste for food that has freshly fallen from the ocean's surface. And what might appear to be antennae on the front of the head are also actually feet, which help them tread water in the oceans of the world. About the right size to hold in the open palm of your hand, sea pigs are classified as Holothurians from a division of creatures called Echinodermata, popularly known as sea cucumbers.

They live alongside starfish, coral, clams, sponges and sea urchins and thrive best on the abyssal plains of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.

Scientists from the New Zealand’s National Institute Of Water And Atmospheric Pressure (NIWA) collected 30,000 deep sea animals including the sea pigs during a marine census of southern Antarctica.

Sea pigs abound in most parts of the world but not in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean or eastern part of Pacific Ocean, or in central and South America.

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Unfreezing Arctic Assets

Photo Credit: Ray Bartkus

By Laurence C. Smith
The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2010


Imagine the Arctic in 2050 as a frigid version of Nevada—an empty landscape dotted with gleaming boom towns. Gas pipelines fan across the tundra, fueling fast-growing cities to the south like Calgary and Moscow, the coveted destinations for millions of global immigrants. It's a busy web for global commerce, as the world's ships advance each summer as the seasonal sea ice retreats, or even briefly disappears.

Much of the planet's northern quarter of latitude, including the Arctic, is poised to undergo tremendous transformation over the next century. As a booming population increases the demand for the Earth's natural resources, and as lands closer to the equator face the prospect of rising water demand, droughts and other likely changes, the prominence of northern countries will rise along with their projected milder winters.

If Florida coasts become uninsurable and California enters a long-term drought, might people consider moving to Minnesota or Alberta? Will Spaniards eye Sweden? Might Russia one day, its population falling and needful of immigrants, decide a smarter alternative to resurrecting old Soviet plans for a 1,600-mile Siberia-Aral canal is to simply invite former Kazakh and Uzbek cotton farmers to abandon their dusty fields and resettle Siberia, to work in the gas fields?

European explorers first started pressing north five centuries ago, searching for an alternate passage to the Orient. By the 19th and early 20th centuries, urban donors around the world were funding expeditions to the Northwest Passage and North Pole. Fears of Japanese invasion and communist ideology opened up the region as military spending poured in during World War II. During the Cold War, American and Russian forces played cat-and-mouse war games there with spy planes and nuclear-armed subs.

Today, scientists studying oil and gas potential—and how shrinking summer sea ice might make it easier to access offshore deposits—are convincing governments and investors that the region has rising strategic value. Private companies have snapped up Canada's northernmost railroad and port of Churchill, bought $2.8 billion in Arctic offshore energy leases, and begun developing specialized tanker ships and platforms for offshore drilling in icy environments. This year, Russia and Norway resolved a four-decade-long boundary dispute in the Arctic Ocean, which could pave the way to more offshore development. Canada, Norway and Russia are bolstering their militaries with ice-strengthened patrol ships, frigates, attack submarines and fighter jets.

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'Rapid' 2010 melt for Arctic ice - but no record

The Arctic on 3rd September, as visualized using
data from Nasa's Aqua satellite.

By Richard Black
BBC News, September 16, 2010

Ice floating on the Arctic Ocean melted unusually quickly this year, but did not shrink down to the record minimum area seen in 2007.

That is the preliminary finding of US scientists who say the summer minimum seems to have passed and the ice has entered its winter growth phase.

2010's summer Arctic ice minimum is the third smallest in the satellite era.

Researchers say projections of summer ice disappearing entirely within the next few years increasingly look wrong.

At its smallest extent, on 10 September, 4.76 million sq km (1.84 million sq miles) of Arctic Ocean was covered with ice - more than in 2007 and 2008, but less than in every other year since 1979.

Walt Meier, a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, where the data is collated, said ice had melted unusually fast.

"It was a short melt season - the period from the maximum to the minimum was shorter than we've had - but the ice was so thin that even so it melted away quickly," he told BBC News.

The last 12 months have been unusually warm globally - according to Nasa, the warmest in its 130-year record.

This is partly down to El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which have the effect of raising temperatures globally.

With those conditions changing into a cooler La Nina phase, Nasa says 2010 is "likely, but not certain" to be the warmest calendar year in its record.

Arctic ice is influenced by these global trends, but the size of the summer minimum also depends on local winds and currents.

This means ice can be concentrated in one region of the Arctic in one year, in another region the next.

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Extreme Heat Puts Coral Reefs at Risk, Forecasts Say

The New York Times, Justin Gillis


This year’s extreme heat is putting the world’s coral reefs under such severe stress that scientists fear widespread die-offs, endangering not only the richest ecosystems in the ocean but also associated fisheries that feed millions of people.

From Thailand to Texas, corals are reacting to the heat stress by bleaching, or shedding their color and going into survival mode. Many have already died, and more are expected to do so in coming months. Computer forecasts of water temperature suggest that corals in the Caribbean may undergo drastic bleaching in the next few weeks.

What is unfolding this year is only the second known global bleaching of coral reefs. Scientists are holding out hope that this year will not be as bad, over all, as 1998, the hottest year in the historical record, when an estimated 16 percent of the world’s shallow-water reefs died. But in some places, including Thailand, the situation is looking worse than in 1998.

Scientists say the trouble with the reefs is linked to climate change. For years they have warned that corals, highly sensitive to excess heat, would serve as an early indicator of the ecological distress on the planet caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases.

“I am significantly depressed by the whole situation,” said Clive Wilkinson, director of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, an organization in Australia that is tracking this year’s disaster.

Read More...

White House Says Gulf Drilling Ban Hasn't Hurt Jobs

By Jared A. Favole
The Wall Street Journal
September 16, 2010

The Obama administration said Thursday that a six-month moratorium on offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has had a limited effect on employment despite concerns the ban would cripple coastal economies.

The number of workers with jobs in the five Louisiana parishes that support most deep-water drilling activities rose in July, two months into the ban. Unemployment-insurance claims in these parishes also declined from April through August, according to an interagency report the Obama administration compiled for Congress.

Most oil employers haven't laid off highly skilled workers despite the ban and have used the moratorium to do maintenance and repairs on some of their rigs, the report says.

The report notes, however, that based on current data, the ban could result in 2,000 rig workers losing their jobs or leaving the Gulf. That would represent 20% of the rig workers who worked in the Gulf on April 20, the day BP PLC's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, triggering one of the worst oil spills in U.S. history.

The report may help ease concerns about the ban, which is scheduled to be lifted at the end of November. It could also raise more concerns, since the report doesn't include recent unemployment figures and unemployment-insurance claims from states other than Louisiana that were affected by the moratorium.

Louisiana's U.S. Senators stepped up their criticism of the moratorium despite the report.

During a hearing Thursday of the Senate Small Business Committee, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) and David Vitter (R, La.) criticized the administration for failing to review the effect of the ban on regional businesses and workers before issuing the first version of the moratorium in May.

The senators also urged the administration to consider the number of jobs that have been lost as a result of a slowdown in issuing permits for shallow-water drilling. The moratorium doesn't apply to shallow-water drilling, but the Interior Department has approved significantly fewer shallow-water drilling permits in recent weeks, in large part because of new safety standards that require longer reviews of the applications.

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Coral Disease Outbreaks Linked To Winter Temperatures, Not Just Warm Summers

NOAA
September 16, 2010

For the first time, scientists have linked mild water temperatures during the preceding winter period with outbreaks of coral diseases on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. By studying satellite measurements of unusual sea surface temperatures, the international team of scientists also examined the magnitude of stress upon corals from unusually warm temperatures, particularly in summer, and confirmed a strong relationship with coral disease outbreaks.

The study, a collaboration between scientists from NOAA, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was published Aug. 17 in PLoS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication.

“Previous studies examined the relationship between warm conditions throughout the year and the likelihood of disease,” said Scott Heron, Ph.D., physical scientist with NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch. “We considered the influence of summer and winter separately, taking into account both cold and warm stress, to find that winter temperatures are just as important as summer stress in determining the susceptibility of corals to disease outbreaks.”

The decline and loss of coral reefs has significant social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts on people and communities in Australia, the United States and throughout the world. As the “rainforests of the sea,” coral reefs provide services estimated to be worth as much as $375 billion each year.

“Satellite monitoring of sea surface temperature has been useful in predicting coral bleaching,” said C. Mark Eakin, Ph.D., coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch. “Now we’ve used satellite measurements to find links between disease and temperature stress. Our new product should allow us to predict the risk of potential disease outbreaks in Australia, providing reef managers with vital information and enabling rapid management response. We look forward to expanding it to other areas as well.”

Advanced warning will not stop coral disease or bleaching, but will give managers time to reduce human-use stressors like diving, swimming, fishing and boating. The paper also describes the analysis that underpins a new experimental Coral Disease Outbreak Risk Map product, available online. This regional product provides a seasonal outlook based on winter metrics and an outbreak risk assessment updated in near-real-time during summer for the Great Barrier Reef. Ongoing work will soon expand it to the Hawaiian archipelago.

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Gulf oil spill: After it hit beaches, where did it go?

Birds roam the shore after a rainstorm in Grande Isle, La.

The beach was reopened to the public in early August, having

been closed in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill.

Photo Credit: Gerald Herbert/AP

On a morning stroll down the serene beaches of Grand Isle State Park, a visitor can watch as waves quietly lap the shore, birds sail overhead, a porpoise pokes above the water.

Yet it takes only minutes of digging into the sand to reveal a menace that experts say permanently threatens this picturesque landscape: pools of crude oil lurking less than a foot below the surface.

The April 20 explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico released an estimated 205 million gallons of oil into these waters. It remains unclear how much oil was actually recovered, how much remains, and – most important for the fragile coastal ecosystems – where it ended up.

A report published in August by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that 74 percent of the oil has been recovered, evaporated, or naturally dispersed, leaving a residual 26 percent “on or just below the surface” of water or in sand. But many scientists question the validity of that report, saying that, due to the unprecedented scope of the spill and the record volume of dispersants used to mitigate its impact, it is too soon to make any determination about where or when the oil landed.

Recently, NOAA itself has indicated that the report is a work in progress.

Ron Kendall, director of The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and a member of the assessment team for the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, says it will take “extensive environmental sampling” over a period of years to determine how much oil is embedded into coastal habitats, and where.

Oil that remains trapped under a marsh or buried beneath a beach is particularly threatening because the lack of oxygen will prevent bacteria from breaking down the oil, meaning “it will be there for all time,” says Nancy Kinner, codirector of The Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Twenty-one years after the Valdez spill, oil remains submerged in the beaches of Prince William Sound in Alaska.

The same is true in Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay, where a 1969 spill released 175,000 gallons of diesel fuel; 41 years later, sampling shows oil three to eight inches below the land’s surface.

When oil gets buried that deep, says Ms. Kinner, it creates a “trade-off” to mitigate, especially when it involves a fragile habitat, like the coastal wetlands, whose survival is already threatened.

“Is it better to leave it there than to dig up the whole marsh? Because when you dig up the whole marsh, you do a tremendous amount of damage. You’ll never get the marsh back,” she says.

The risks of having oil hidden so deep below the surface are numerous. Among them: Drinking water is degraded; the food chain is affected because organisms like mussels and crustaceans are threatened; and animals such as sea turtles have no place to bury their eggs.

Oil that makes its home below sand is also vulnerable to seasonal storms, which means it is potentially mobile and can represent “a new release of oil into the environment” when it returns to the freshwater table, Kinner says.

Read more:

World pays high price for overfishing, studies say

A fisher sells salmon from his boat in Steveston,
British Columbia September 1, 2010.
Photo Credit: Andy Clark/Reuters

By: Allan Dowd
Reuters, September 14, 2010


Decades of overfishing have deprived the food industry of billions of dollars in revenue and the world of fish that could have helped feed undernourished countries, according to a series of studies released on Tuesday.

The Canadian, U.S. and British researchers behind the studies also said that overfishing is often the result of government subsidies that would have been better spent conserving fish stocks.

Fisheries contribute $225 billion to $240 billion to the world economy annually, but if fishing practices were more sustainable, that amount would be up to $36 billion higher, according to the four papers published in the Journal of Bioeconomics.

The researchers said the data demonstrate that the reasons for protecting world's ocean fish stocks from unsustainable fishing are more than just biological.

"Maintaining healthy fisheries makes good economic sense, while overfishing is clearly bad business," said Rashid Sumaila, an economist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who led the research.

The researchers estimated that from 1950 to 2004, 36 to 53 percent of the fish stocks in more than half the exclusive economic zones in the world's oceans were overfished, with up to 10 million tonnes of fish catch now lost.

They said many governments underestimate the financial impact of overfishing, such as the affect on related industries, and, as a result, they have less incentive to protect fish stocks.

It is the poor in developing nations who are hurt the most by overfishing because they cannot replace through imports the nutrition and revenue that is lost, the researchers said.

Fish that would have been available had it not been for past overfishing could have helped feed nearly 20 million undernourished people a year in poorer counties, the researchers estimated.

The researchers used international data on ocean fish stocks in their studies, and did not include data from aquaculture and fresh water fisheries, although they said they hope to include that information in future studies.

Governments around the world provide up to $27 billion in subsidies annually to the fishing industry, but about 60 percent of that goes to supporting unsustainable fishing practices, the studies said.

"Taxpayer money is directly contributing to the decline of worldwide fish stocks," Sumaila said.

The researchers said counties are also missing economic opportunities by not promoting alternative uses of fisheries, such as whale watching and other marine recreational activities.

Opinion: Deep sea fishing is 'oceanocide'

Glowing Sucker Octopus - Up to 50 cm long, light passes through the
internal organs of these deep sea-dwelling octopi
giving them a diaphanous, luminous appearance.

Photo Credit: Claire Nouvain

By Claire Nouvian
CNN, September 13 2010

Fewer than 300 boats in the world are destroying the deep sea, the largest reservoir of biodiversity on Earth.

They are wiping off the map deepwater coral reefs and sponge beds thousands of years old as they chase their lucrative quarry: a few highly priced fish, known to be extremely vulnerable to over-fishing because they are long-lived, slow-growing and late at reproducing.

The entirety of the deep-sea catch, without exception, is sold to rich industrialized countries that certainly don't need those fish. And deep-sea bottom trawling continues despite a scientific consensus that emphasizes how utterly unsustainable and destructive this fishing practice is.

In blatant ignorance of science and oblivious to common sense, bottom trawling -- or "bulldozing," as it should be called -- goes on with the complicity of our governments and our own support.

Large subsidies are paid to trawling fleets with our tax money. Every one of us is thus paying for industrial-scale ships to go out and pillage our planet's last pristine wilderness, contributing to an unprecedented "oceanocide", the largest and fastest ecological crime of all time.

The deep ocean is home to a diversity of animals beyond anything our brain can handle, comprising millions of new species yet to be discovered.

Wherever deep-sea trawlers pass, they remove 98 to 100 percent of what's on the seafloor: sponges and corals, of course, but also all sorts of animals.

Uprooting 4,000-year old corals with trawl-nets and dumping them off the side of the ship as ocean waste is akin to exhuming Egyptian mummies and disposing of them as trash.

Fish are typically the last wild items on our dinner menu, along with a few mushroom species. Harvesting wild resources means being in tune with what nature can give, as opposed to what we have planned to get from it.

So what can the deep sea give us?

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Fish…It’s What’s For Dinner

Growing up, I ate like a typical child. My staples were Spaghettio’s, Easy Mac, and Ramen noodles (which I still secretly love!). My favorite flavors had no relation to meat loaf, vegetables, and definitely not seafood. As I’ve grown wiser, and my taste buds have matured, I’ve started to enjoy eating things like mushrooms, brussel sprouts…and even sushi! Ok, ok, I must be honest…I was still eating like a 5 yr old when I met Jason, but since then, he has introduced my palette to an entirely new world…the Pacific Northwest to be exact. Here, there is a Starbucks AND a seafood restaurant on every corner, so rather than fighting it…I jumped on the wagon and embraced it.

After getting over the “texture” thing, I’ve actually begun to enjoy meals of lobster, crab, and halibut…to name a few. Not only is seafood delicious, but it can be healthier than your everyday ground beef, so I find myself ordering the salmon over a burger more often than not! But as much as we all love to dine on these delectables from under the sea, the majority of people probably fail to ask if their seafood is “sustainable”.

Sustainable what?

As many of you probably don’t realize, some fishing methods can be really destructive to our oceans. For example, bottom trawling is a method that drags a giant net along the sea floor, destroying everything in its path including coral and the sea floor habitat that many fish live in. Bottom trawling also catches a lot of bycatch, which is unintended catch that is thrown back overboard dead or dying. To get specific…shrimp trawling can catch up to 9 pounds of other fish, which ends up being thrown overboard, for every pound of shrimp caught!

There are some ways to reduce bycatch. For example, shrimp trawlers legally must have TED’s (Turtle Exclusion Devices) installed on their nets. This is basically a trap door to let turtles escape, but it is suspected that many fishermen during the BP oils spill tied their TED’s shut, causing the turtles to die. It is scary to think that people are consciously destroying our beautiful oceans, but there are people out there, however, that are working to rate, label, and buy seafood that is caught only in the best manner possible.

So now you’re probably thinking, “I’m not the one catching the fish, so how in the world can I help resolve this problem!” The answer is simple…ask! Next time you are picking up a nice piece of salmon at the grocery store, or being treated to your areas finest lobster tail, just asked if the seafood they have is “sustainable”. Any good fishmonger or grocer will always know. As the demand for sustainable seafood grows, fishermen will have no choice but to work in a manner that is safe for our oceans and the creatures living in it.

It’s the little things that go a long way. As cliché as it sounds, if we all do our part…we can help make this world a better place “from sea to shining sea”!

U.S. and Cuba discuss alliance to save sharks

By: Jeff Franks
September 11, 2010
Reuters

team of U.S. scientists and environmentalists met with Cuban officials this week to discuss a proposed alliance, including Mexico, to protect the Gulf of Mexico's declining shark population.

The meetings were a product of both improved U.S.-Cuba relations and concern that only a joint effort by the three nations that share the gulf can protect sharks, whose numbers are said to be down as much as 50 percent for some species.

"The Gulf of Mexico is one ecosystem, it's not just the U.S. gulf. The shark is a highly migratory fish that moves between the countries and it is troubled," said Pamela Baker, gulf policy advisor for the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, which is spearheading the effort along with the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida.

Shark populations have fallen worldwide, primarily due to overfishing to satisfy China's demand for shark fin soup, which is rising as China becomes more prosperous, scientists say.

An estimated 73 million sharks are being killed annually mostly for their fins, the EDF said in a recent publication.

Still unknown, said shark expert Robert Hueter at the Mote Marine Laboratory, is the effect of the massive BP oil spill this summer in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sharks were able to swim away from the spill, but it drifted into estuaries and coastal areas where juvenile sharks spend their early lives, so damage to the population may not be obvious for a while, he told Reuters on Friday.

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'Safe to eat' or 'Frankenfish'?

Size comparison of an AquAdvantage® Salmon (background) vs.
a non-transgenic Atlantic salmon sibling (foreground) of the same age.
Photo Credit: AquaBounty

Add an extra copy of the king salmon growth gene to an Atlantic salmon, toss in a gene from an eel-like fish called an ocean pout, and voila! You've got a new fish that grows twice as fast.

You've also got some unhappy Alaskans. U.S. Sen. Mark Begich calls it a "Frankenfish" and Trout Unlimited worries the new fish could contaminate wild stock as well as undercutting wild salmon on price.

The Food and Drug Administration is close to approving the new salmon, which is named AquAdvantage Salmon and was created by AquaBounty, a Massachusetts-based company. FDA scientists have declared that the new salmon is safe to eat and does not pose a threat to the environment (read their analysis here) but public meetings scheduled for Sept. 19 will open the issue up to the public. The Washington Post also reported the new fish would be the first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption.

"Let's call this genetically engineered fish for what it is: Frankenfish," Begich said in a press release, which also called the AquAdvantage Salmon "risky and a threat to the survival of wild species."

Not so, said John Buchanan, the director of research and development at AquaBounty. There is no threat to wild stock because as a result of FDA requirements all of the AquAdvantage Salmon would be female, sterile, and grown in buildings located on land, Buchanan said.

And another big benefit of fast-growing salmon is that raising the fish indoors is suddenly economical, Buchanan said, whereas with normal-growing fish it's not.

"We think we could compete on price with salmon grown in net pen facilities," said Buchanan, who is also "optimistic" about the fish's chance for FDA approval. "The data that we've provided (to the FDA), in our opinion, satisfies all the requirements for approval."

Still, some Alaskans are unconvinced. "The underlying principal is that once you open this door, you open up the potential for accidental immigration of genetically modified salmon into Pacific waters," said Elizabeth Dubovsky, director of the WhyWild program, which is run out of Trout Unlimited's Juneau office.

Dubovsky also worries about how more cheap salmon might affect the price of the more expensive wild salmon. The AquAdvantage Salmon could undercut the price of wild salmon, she said, "and that undermines our fishing communities in Alaska."

"It's really disconcerting to hear the FDA is leaning in the direction of approving this," Dubovsky said.

Buchanan said that in the last 10 years AquaBounty has spent $50 million on studies that have shown no differences between their fish and farmed fish.

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill’s 30-Year Legacy

Piece of tar mat cut from mangrove floor in July.
Photo Credit: Wes Tunnell

By Matthew Berger
International Press Service
September 3, 2010

A surprisingly small number of scientists have studied the impacts of the oil spill resulting from the 1979 blowout at the Ixtoc I oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Wes Tunnell, who first studied the spill’s effects in July and August of 1980 and has returned many times since, is one of the few exceptions.

Days after speaking to IPS in June, he flew back to Veracruz to see what remnants, if any, are still present from the disaster - the largest accidental oil spill in history before the spill resulting from the Apr. 20 blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig eclipsed that record this summer.

"We’re going to do a really good search to see if there’s any [oil remnants] left or if they’re all gone, just to fill in the story," Tunnel, a biologist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, said in June.

Later that week, he was snorkelling in Enmedio reef, north of Veracruz, where he has watched the tar mats that settled there in 1979 slowly degrade over the decades.

"So I pretty well knew where the [tar] was," he told IPS in a phone interview. "Instead of being a foot thick like it was back in 1979, though, it was about two inches thick."

But when he picked up a piece in shallow water and broke it open, he could still see the shininess inside and the smell of petroleum. "It kind of surprised me. It’s kind of inert on the outer edge but you can still see or smell the petroleum on the inside," Tunnell said.

On his next trip, in July, Tunnell went to mangrove forests along the western Yucatan - the first time he or anyone has studied the spill’s effects there since there were no roads leading to the area when the Ixtoc spill occurred, he says.

There, he found a landscape not unlike that near where the brunt of the Deepwater Horizon spill’s impact is likely to be felt. "All that open marsh just faces the open Gulf of Mexico, so it’s kind of the tropical counterpart of the eastern side of the Mississippi Delta," Tunnell says.

After some searching, his team again found tar, about three-quarters of an inch thick, that when cut open unlocked the shininess and smell of petroleum.

What effects might these crusted-over oil remnants be having? Tunnell thinks there is no impact once several inches of shell and sand build up on the tar found in the reefs. And in the mangroves, he even observed roots "going down through where the tar was."

But the picture may be a bit more complicated for the mangrove habitat. He describes open areas in the vegetation - an anomaly in the normally dense thicket of branches and roots.

He and his team went into one of those open areas and found something that looked like peat, "but you wouldn’t typically find that in a mangrove swamp, so I think it was probably degraded oil," he says. Upon further searching, they found another three-quarters-of-an-inch-thick band of tar.

Without further sampling, though, it is impossible to say whether that tar is left over from Ixtoc or another, smaller, more recent spill.

Days after speaking to IPS in June, he flew back to Veracruz to see what remnants, if any, are still present from the disaster - the largest accidental oil spill in history before the spill resulting from the Apr. 20 blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig eclipsed that record this summer.

"We’re going to do a really good search to see if there’s any [oil remnants] left or if they’re all gone, just to fill in the story," Tunnel, a biologist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, said in June.

Later that week, he was snorkelling in Enmedio reef, north of Veracruz, where he has watched the tar mats that settled there in 1979 slowly degrade over the decades.

"So I pretty well knew where the [tar] was," he told IPS in a phone interview. "Instead of being a foot thick like it was back in 1979, though, it was about two inches thick."

But when he picked up a piece in shallow water and broke it open, he could still see the shininess inside and the smell of petroleum. "It kind of surprised me. It’s kind of inert on the outer edge but you can still see or smell the petroleum on the inside," Tunnell said.

On his next trip, in July, Tunnell went to mangrove forests along the western Yucatan - the first time he or anyone has studied the spill’s effects there since there were no roads leading to the area when the Ixtoc spill occurred, he says.

There, he found a landscape not unlike that near where the brunt of the Deepwater Horizon spill’s impact is likely to be felt. "All that open marsh just faces the open Gulf of Mexico, so it’s kind of the tropical counterpart of the eastern side of the Mississippi Delta," Tunnell says.

After some searching, his team again found tar, about three-quarters of an inch thick, that when cut open unlocked the shininess and smell of petroleum.

What effects might these crusted-over oil remnants be having? Tunnell thinks there is no impact once several inches of shell and sand build up on the tar found in the reefs. And in the mangroves, he even observed roots "going down through where the tar was."

But the picture may be a bit more complicated for the mangrove habitat. He describes open areas in the vegetation - an anomaly in the normally dense thicket of branches and roots.

He and his team went into one of those open areas and found something that looked like peat, "but you wouldn’t typically find that in a mangrove swamp, so I think it was probably degraded oil," he says. Upon further searching, they found another three-quarters-of-an-inch-thick band of tar.

Without further sampling, though, it is impossible to say whether that tar is left over from Ixtoc or another, smaller, more recent spill.

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FDA considers approving genetically modified salmon for human consumption

By Lyndsey Layton
The Washington Post
September 6, 2010

The Food and Drug Administration is poised to approve the first genetically modified animal for human consumption, a highly anticipated decision that is stirring controversy and could mark a turning point in the way American food is produced.

FDA scientists gave a boost last week to the Massachusetts company that wants federal approval to market a genetically engineered salmon, declaring that the altered salmon is safe to eat and does not pose a threat to the environment.

"Food from AquAdvantage Salmon . . . is as safe to eat as food from other Atlantic salmon," the FDA staff wrote in a briefing document.

Those findings will be presented Sept. 19 to a panel of scientific experts which will advise top officials at the FDA whether to approve the altered salmon. The panel is holding two days of meetings to hear from FDA staff, the company behind AquAdvantage and the public.

AquAdvantage is an Atlantic salmon that has been given a gene from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish, which allows the salmon to grow twice as fast as a traditional Atlantic salmon. It also contains a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon.

AquaBounty, the Massachusetts company that first applied to the FDA for permission to sell its fish in 1995, said the modified fish is identical to the Atlantic salmon, except for the speed of its growth.

"We've been studying this fish for more than 10 years," said Ronald L. Stotish, the company's president and chief executive. "In characteristics, physiology, behavior, this is an Atlantic salmon. It looks like an Atlantic salmon. It tastes like an Atlantic salmon."

The team of scientists at the FDA that reviewed AquaBounty's application seems to agree. "We have found no biologically relevant difference between food from [AquaBounty salmon] and conventional Atlantic salmon," the briefing documents said.

But independent scientists, consumer groups and environmental organizations are concerned about both the pending decision and the process that the FDA uses to determine whether the genetically modified fish is safe for human health and the environment.

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Why wartime wrecks are slicking time bombs

New Scientist
September 1, 2010
By Mick Hamer

Thousands of ships sunk in the second world war are seeping oil – and with their rusty tanks disintegrating, "peak leak" is only a few years away

THE battle for Guadalcanal was one of the pivotal moments of the second world war. The Japanese occupied Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands, in August 1942. When the Americans landed a few months later, the Japanese set out to reinforce their troops by sea. The struggle for naval supremacy that followed was confused and bloody, but by February 1943 the battle was over and the Japanese had evacuated their remaining troops.

The battle has a hidden legacy, however. Before the war, the stretch of water north of Guadalcanal was called Sealark Sound. Now it is known as Iron Bottom Sound, because of the number of wrecked ships there. One of these is the 6800-tonne Japanese freighter Hirokawa Maru, lying stranded off what would otherwise be an idyllic, palm-fringed Pacific island beach. Every now and then the ship leaks oil, threatening coral reefs, marine life and subsistence fishing.

Compared with the spill from BP's Deepwater Horizon field in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil from the Hirokawa Maru is a drop in the ocean. But this is not an isolated case of one ship blackening the shores of one Pacific island. The second world war saw the greatest-ever loss of shipping: more than three-quarters of the oil-containing wrecks around the globe date from the six years of this war. Sunken merchant ships are scattered around trade routes, the victims of attack by U-boats and other craft aiming to disrupt enemy nations' supply lines (see map). Then there are the naval ships sunk during great engagements such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the battle of Chuuk Lagoon, the Japanese base in the Pacific where the US sank over 50 Japanese ships. In some locations these hulks are already leaking oil, threatening pristine shorelines, popular beaches and breeding grounds for fish. This year, for example, oil has begun to leak from the Darkdale, a British naval tanker that sank in 1941 near the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic Ocean. It was carrying more than 4000 tonnes of oil when it went down.

So how long have we got before there is a sharp increase in leakage from this lost fleet, and how big a problem could it be? What, if anything, can we do about it - and who will foot the bill?

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