'Yes, we can' eat Asian carp, chef says

Asian Carp
Photo Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service

By Jill Moon The Telegraph, October 26, 2010 Tasting is believing when it comes to realizing Asian carp as a delicacy and an economy boost.

"I broke the code of this fish," French chef Philippe Parola said Tuesday at the dedication ceremony for the Jerry F. Costello National Great Rivers Research and Education Center Confluence Field Station. "It took a chef to break the code of this fish."

Parola said taxpayers' money is being wasted in science studying the Asian carp invasion problem, when taxpayers could be saving by eating this clean, good fish.

"Yes, we can," exclaimed Parola, who lives in New Orleans, is president and CEO of Chef Parola Enterprises, stars in his own television series, and has his own culinary school and accessory line.

The fish, as prepared by Parola - which simply consists of breading and frying, pan-frying in butter or poaching - gives absolutely no "fishy" taste. The taste is mild and clean. The filets are bright white.

Parola's breaded patties taste like a crab cake. In a blind taste test, it seemingly would be a close call as to which one is the crab cake.

The benefits of maximizing Asian carp for the U.S. market are many, said Parola, who already produces his products in Louisiana, where the state government embraces his "Asian Carp Invasion Solution."

Parola said having a domestic market for the fish versus an export would create a lasting, ongoing, stable process that will help regulate the nationwide Asian carp population crisis. Asian carp are an invasive species that feed on plankton, which is food for Illinois native and smaller fish. But because Asian carp eat plankton, they have little or no mercury content.

He also said creating the U.S. market would put Americans to work by creating full- and part-time jobs. In Grafton, a group called Grafton Summit Enterprises LLC plans to build a fish processing plant. Grafton Summit Enterprises member, resident and Grafton businessman Oliver Ready said it would put 60 people to work and put 10 more boats on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

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Tagged Narwhals Track Warming Near Greenland

Tagged nawhals migrated south into Baffin Bay
where they collected and transmitted temperatures
from the pack ice through the following spring.
Photo Credit: NOAA/University of Washington

Science Daily, October 27, 2010

In a research paper published online October 27 in the Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans, a publication of the American Geological Union (AGU), scientists reported the southern Baffin Bay off West Greenland has continued warming since wintertime ocean temperatures were last effectively measured there in the early 2000s.

Temperatures in the study were collected by narwhals, medium-sized toothed Arctic whales, during NOAA-sponsored missions in 2006 and 2007. The animals were tagged with sensors that recorded ocean depths and temperatures during feeding dives from the surface pack ice to the seafloor, going as deep as 1,773 meters, or more than a mile.

Scientists have had limited opportunities to measure ocean temperatures in Baffin Bay during winter months because of dense ice and harsh conditions. Cost is also a factor -- it requires millions of dollars to mount a conventional expedition using an ice-breaking vessel and other specialized equipment and people. As a result, for the past decade, researchers used climatology data consisting of long-term historical average observations rather than direct ocean temperature measurements for winter temperatures in the area.

The published study reported that highest winter ocean temperature measurements in 2006 and 2007 from both narwhals and additional sensors deployed using helicopters ranged between 4 and 4.6 degrees Celsius (39.2 and 40.3 degrees Fahrenheit). The study also found that temperatures were on average nearly a degree Celsius warmer than climatology data. Whale-collected temperatures also demonstrated the thickness of the winter surface isothermal layer, a layer of constant temperature, to be 50 to 80 meters less than that reported in the climatology data.

"Narwhals proved to be highly efficient and cost-effective 'biological oceanographers,' providing wintertime data to fill gaps in our understanding of this important ocean area," said Kristin Laidre from the Polar Science Center in the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory. "Their natural behavior makes them ideal for obtaining ocean temperatures during repetitive deep vertical dives. This mission was a 'proof-of-concept' that narwhal-obtained data can be used to make large-scale hydrographic surveys in Baffin Bay and to extend the coverage of a historical database into the poorly sampled winter season."

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Alaska's untapped oil reserves estimate lowered by about 90 percent

By: The CNN Wire Staff
CNN, October 27, 2010

The U.S. Geological Survey says a revised estimate for the amount of conventional, undiscovered oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a fraction of a previous estimate.

The group estimates about 896 million barrels of such oil are in the reserve, about 90 percent less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels.

The new estimate is mainly due to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of the area, the geological survey said.

"These new findings underscore the challenge of predicting whether oil or gas will be found in frontier areas," USGS Director Dr. Marcia McNutt said in a statement. "It is important to re-evaluate the petroleum potential of an area as new data becomes available."

The organization also estimates 8 trillion cubic feet less gas than a 2002 estimate of 61 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, conventional, non-associated gas -- meaning gas found in discrete accumulations with little to no crude oil in the reservoir.

"Recent activity in the NPRA, including 3-D seismic surveys, federal lease sales administered by the Bureau of Land Management and drilling of more than 30 exploration wells in the area provides geological information that is more indicative of gas than oil," the geological survey said.

The petroleum reserve in Alaska has been the focus of significant oil exploration during the past decade, stimulated by the mid-1990s discovery of the largest onshore oil discovery in the U.S. during the past 25 years, the organization said.

Coast Guard investigates slick off Gulf coast

By Matthew Bigg
Reuters, October 23, 2010

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating a large brown slick floating near the mouth of the Mississippi river and said on Saturday it could be weathered oil from the BP spill or just algae bloom.

A Coast Guard vessel went out on Saturday to the orange-brown substance, which stands around 2-3 miles offshore at Tiger Pass, northwest of Venice, Louisiana, according to spokesman Jeff Hall.

"Our number one concern is it coming ashore and getting into sensitive areas," Hall said, adding that an initial visual inspection suggested the slick, about 2.5 miles long and 200-300 yards (meters) long, was algae.

"If it does turn out to be a patch of oil we will clean it up," he said in an interview, adding he expects results from the tests on Tuesday.

Millions of gallons of oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico in the world's worst offshore oil spill that began in April when a BP rig exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana. The well was capped in July.

The oil hurt wildlife and marine life and damaged the wetlands that make up a large part of Louisiana's coastline. It also harmed the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida as well as crippling local economies.

The U.S. government contends much of the oil has now dissipated but some scientists and local fishermen dispute this.

Predators Gone, Small Fish Get Bolder

A seaweed-eating surgeonfish (Acanthurus nigricans) grazing
on reef algae while keeping a watchful eye out for predators.
Photo Credit: Elizabeth Madin

By: Sindya N. Bhanoo
The New York Times, October 21, 2010

Little fish are cautious and timid around big, hungry fish, and rightly so. But when populations of predators like tuna and shark shrink because of human fishing, small prey are more adventurous, according to a forthcoming study in The American Naturalist.

“They took bigger excursions to feed, or to go to find mates,” said Elizabeth Madin, the study’s lead author and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

Dr. Madin did the research in the remote Line Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean, while pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Using snorkels, scuba equipment and video cameras, she and her colleagues captured the behavior of more than 600 parrotfish, damselfish and sturgeon.

Two of the Line Islands are owned by the United States, which has designated them a protected no-fishing zone.

Three other islands are part of the Republic of Kiribati and are home to active human settlements that fish.

In waters untouched by humans, the researchers found that the little fish were spotty in their feeding habits. Some parts of the coral reefs, where fish feed on seaweed, were heavily grazed. In other areas, perhaps where predators lurked, there were large tufts of untouched seaweed.

But where fishing was happening, their grazing formed a more even pattern across the reefs.

Further study is needed, but this feeding pattern could affect coral growth, since coral grows where seaweed is not present, Dr. Madin said.

Coral algae (symbiodinium) discovered in black corals at never seen before depths

Hawaiian Black Coral, Antipathes griggi.
Photo Credit: Daniel Wagner, HIMB/SOEST/UHM

Carlie Wiener
University of Hawaii at Manoa, via EureakAlert!, October 20, 2010

Researchers at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), an organized research unit in the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology have made a remarkable new discovery.

When most people envision coral, they typically think of shallow-water reef-building corals found along beaches and tropical nearshore habitats. These "typical" corals are dependent upon photosynthetic algae (also known as Symbiodinium or zooxanthellae) found in their tissues to obtain nutrients to live off of. In deeper less known waters, closely related black corals were considered to be void of these algae because of the light shortage to support photosynthesis. In fact, all black corals were considered to lack Symbiodinium (algae), because they are typically found at great depths where light levels are very low. Black corals are of substantial cultural and economic importance in Hawai'i. Some species are harvestedcommercially for the precious coral jewelry industry in deep waters off Maui, and black coral is considered the official gemstone of the State of Hawai'i. Even though most people have heard of black coral jewelry, very few ever get to see these corals in their natural environments because of the depths they are found in. As a result of their remote habitats, very little is known about the basic biology of black corals.

Scientists at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), examined 14 black coral species collected between 10 and 396 m from around Hawai'i for the presence of algae using molecular and histological (tissue studies) techniques. Surprisingly, 71% of the examined species were found to contain algae, even at depths approaching 400 m. These black corals exhibited very similar traits to those of corals commonly found in shallow-water (use of algae). PhD student, Daniel Wagner at HIMB was the one who led the investigation. He states: "because black corals are predominantly found in deep and dark environments, most people assumed that they could not harbor these photosynthetic symbiotic algae. At this point we do not know how these algae are able to exist in extreme environments, and it certainly highlights how little we know about deep reefs."

This is a new and important discovery for coral biology, representing the deepest record of Symbiodinium to date. This research also implies that some members of these algae have extremely diverse habitat preferences and broad environmental ranges. The prestigious Royal Society will be publishing the full research report in their journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B this month.

For More information on this research contact Daniel Wagner at wagnerda@hawaii.edu or Carlie Wiener at cwiener@hawaii.edu.

U.N. summit sends S.O.S. on biodiversity

The U.N.'s biodiversity summit in Nagoya, Japan will set global
targets for governments worldwide to protect ecosystems
Photo Credit: CNN

By Matthew Knight
CNN, October 18, 2010

Delegates from all over the world descended on Nagoya in Japan on Monday for talks considered crucial to sustaining the future of animal, plant and human life on Earth.

For two weeks, delegates at the 10th meeting (COP10) of the Convention on Biological Diversity will attempt to agree a 20-point plan for the next decade following the comprehensive failure of any government to meet previous targets set out in 2002.

"Nagoya is the main global event to communicate the value of nature and the costs of its loss to the whole world," Pavan Sukhdev, special advisor and head of UNEP's Green Economy Initiative told CNN.

What is the Convention on Biological Diversity?

The U.N.'s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a legally-binding treaty consisting of 193 members or "Parties" (192 governments plus the European Union).

It was set up at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and came into force in December 1993.

Its stated aims are to conserve and sustain biodiversity, while trying to promote a "fair and equitable" sharing of benefits made from plant and animal life.

Why is the summit so important?

Ecologists and politicians agree that the planet's ecosystems are in crisis. The U.N.'s third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) -- published in May 2010 -- painted a depressingly bleak picture of biodiversity loss in recent times.

"Alarming" declines in natural habitats (freshwater wetlands, sea ice, salt marshes, coral reefs), vertebrate species (down by a third in the past 35 years) and genetic diversity were recorded.

The targets set out in 2002 to achieve "a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level..." by 2010 were not met by any government, the report said.

The losses were, concluded GBO-3, of "profound concern" which has "major implications for current and future well-being."

More recently, WWF's biennial Living Planet report published in October said "our demand on natural resources has doubled since 1966, and globally, we are using the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support our activities."

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Sandra's Still Sailing....in the Gulf of Mexico with Greenpeace

Daily Updates from the Arctic Sunrise, Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Impact Studies

While the team, co - lead by Dr. Sandra Brooke (above) and Dr. Steve Ross, is out on the water, we will mark the six month anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Drs. Brooke and Ross are part of an independent team of scientists studying the impacts of the spill on deep sea corals.

This is Dr. Brooke's blog:

Day 1 (15th October)
We set sail yesterday in the late evening in slightly choppy seas and headed out to our first dive site, Viosca Knoll 826, probably the best studied deep coral reef in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a good location for comparison of pre and post oil spill since we already have so much baseline data on the reef communities and the corals themselves.

The first task on station was to deploy our Benthic Lander; this is a metal frame with a heavy weight and an array of floats that we use as a platform for a variety of instruments and experiments. The instruments will collect data on temperature, oxygen, turbidity and current speed over a 12 month period, will tell us how the physical environment varies over time. There is also a revolving sediment trap that will collect particles falling through the water column every month for a year. This gives us some idea of the food flow to the animals on the reef.

Since this is the spawning period for the reef building coral Lophelia pertusa, we have specially treated plates hanging on the Lander to try and assess coral larval settlement. Finally there are three Plexiglas chambers, each holding three coral fragments that are stained pink. After a year, the new growth (which is white) will be visible and can be measured. We have pre-spill data on coral growth rates so this will be a post-spill comparison.

The Lander was deployed just before lunch (which was delicious!) and the Deepworker was launched in the early afternoon with the objective of finding the Lander, making sure it was properly positioned and that the corals were happy. Unfortunately we didn’t find it this dive, but we’ll try again tomorrow.

Day 2 (16th October)
Today was another sunny slightly choppy day, with a nice breeze. We launched the Deepworker in the morning and an hour later it found the Lander, safe and upright with the corals seemingly doing fine.

This was a relief since there is a lot of time and funding invested in these instruments and experiments. So far so good, but it will be even more of a relief to get it back next year!

The submersible continued surveying the reef nearby, which was a low lying series of hummocks capped with Lophelia colonies and dense carpets of small black corals. We had never seen anything quite like this site, but it appeared to be healthy and thriving.

As we watched the high definition video footage after the dive, we were surprised to see a small fish swim close by an anemone and disappear. There ensued a battle between the struggling fish and the anemone which seemed unwilling to relinquish its lunch. As we drifted on by, it seemed the poor fish was losing the fight.

A little further on we saw three squat lobsters, each gnawing on a mid-water salp. This certainly seems like a bad place to be for a small pelagic animal.

Day 3 (17th October)
The deepworker had some problems today and we could not do the deep dives we wanted, so we changed our plans and headed for a shallow site called Alabama Alps. This is a large rocky feature just 5 miles up slope from Viosca Knoll in approximately 100m.

This kind of depth is known as the ‘twilight’ or mesophotic zone, where light is dim but may support some photosynthesis.

The species of stony corals that live at these depths either have specialized zooxanthellae or can live without them. The visibility at this site was pretty miserable (less than 4 m for the most part) so we were fumbling around a little.

The Alabama Alps are aptly named; they are giant jagged boulders over 20m tall that pop up out of nowhere. They are covered in soft corals, black corals and some stony corals, we saw many different fish hiding in the crevices. Some of these were Caribbean species such as angel fish, and like red snapper and amberjack are common in the Gulf of Mexico.

This was a very lush and rugged habitat and would have been a spectacular dive if visibility had been better, but it was a little stressful creeping though the gloom waiting for the next wall of rock to pop up in front of the sub.

The good news is that nothing had apparently been impacted by the oil. There was no obvious impact to the dense sessile communities on the rocks and there were lots of different fish visible.

There was a lot of ‘marine snow’ in the water column, but it is hard to tell whether or not this is normal. The trouble with measuring subtle impacts on little studied systems is that we have limited understanding of baseline conditions.

These data should have been collected years ago, but it is not too late to start, especially with the recent harsh reminder of potential environmental disaster, and the specter of climate change snapping at our heels.

Day 4 (18th October)
We managed a good dive today on one of our Viosca Knoll sites; it is the shallowest of these deep coral sites, and is a little different from the others.

There are isolated colonies of Lophelia on large carbonate blocks, but they do not form the tangled thickets here that we see in many deeper places. This area has lots of large fish including schools of Barrelfish that cruise around the large blocks.

We traversed the areas that we have studied before the spill and nothing seems amiss, but we will continue to collect samples to analyze for sub-lethal effects.

Day 5 (19th October)
Today we were accompanied by a pod of dolphins as we were waiting for permission to descend. They did not follow us far into the depths, but we could hear their clicks and whistles for quite a while.

We reached the bottom, but the dive was shortened because the communication with the sub was not stable. We saw the base of the reef and were just reaching the really dense area at the top of the mound when we were ordered to the surface – like reaching the doors of Disneyworld and finding it was closed! Very unfair, but we’ll try again tomorrow.

Day 6 (20th October)
Today’s dive was fantastic. We saw a Manta Ray on the surface and it was so large, it was still quite visible at 400ft. This is the first time I have seen one in the wild, and they are quite impressive.

The coral mound we dove on was quite small but very lush with large Lophelia colonies and dense patches of fluffy-looking black corals. As in previous dives we saw no signs of damage from the oil spill.

The coral polyps were open and there was a fantastic abundance of life around the reef with all of the expected fauna present and apparently in good health. We saw squat lobsters feeding on animals that are usually in the water column, but obviously ventured too close to the reef. We even saw an anemone snatch a small fish that wandered too close. The reef is a dangerous place to be if you are small and tasty!

Todays dive was the last unfortunately; the sub team noticed a small crack in the plexiglass dome of the Deepworker so that was the end of operations. Although this is disappointing, its not worth risking two lives and a million dollar sub. We will pack up everything tonight in preparation for unloading tomorrow, say our goodbyes and head off home.

It’s always bittersweet at the end of a cruise; you get to know people pretty well in a short space of time and most of them you never see again. On the other hand, cruises are hard work and long days with no day off and it always nice to go home.

Paid not to fish

Photo Credit: Hololulu Weekly

By Christopher Pala
Honolulu Weekly, October 13, 2010

Some folks made a killing depleting the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Wait ‘til you see how much they’ll make not to fish there anymore.

The news came innocuously enough, in a press release earlier this year from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. As a result of former President George W. Bush’s designation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a marine national monument in June 2006, Congress appropriated funds to compensate the owners of seven bottomfish licenses and 15 lobster licenses because they would no longer be able to fish there.

The bottom-fishermen would share $2.2 million, the lobster fishermen $4.3 million. All licenses had been given out for free.n the bottomfish fishery, a study found fishermen were unsustainably depleting the stocks of slow-growing fishes like ‘opakapaka and onaga. Their catch had dwindled to 63,249 pounds last year from 250,000 pounds, the average in the first years of the fishery, according to the press release. Some environmentalists wondered why the fishermen should be rewarded for that? In addition, the Bush proclamation gave them five years to wind down their operations.

The bottom-fishermen had turned down an offer from the Pew Environment Group to buy their licenses in exchange for an immediate end to fishing in the area. Pew proposed to use its tax returns as a basis for compensation, a plan that one fisherman, Gary Dill, called “insulting.” The talks went nowhere.

The lobster fishery was much bigger and hugely profitable and was stopped after a bitter court battle in 2000. Catches had fallen from 2 million lobsters in 1983 to 38,000 in 1995, even after fishing was suspended in 1992 and 1993.

Even those figures don’t tell the whole story. In 1983, the fishermen reported catching an additional half a million lobsters, or 28 percent more, that were undersized or carrying eggs, and throwing them back in the sea, as required. A 1996 NOAA study found that virtually all died anyway. By then, the proportion of illegal lobsters had risen to 62 percent of the legal catch, mostly juveniles. Instead of forcing the fishermen to use methods that would ensure a higher survival rate of the illegal ones, the government changed the rule that year and allowed the fishermen to keep the small ones, which were categorized as “garnishes,” as well as the egg-bearing females.

The Players

After two temporary closures by NOAA, the Honolulu federal court closed the fishery again in 2000 because of still-disputed evidence that the collapse of the lobster population had triggered mass starvation among monk seal pups, and that in turn caused a 5 percent yearly decline in the monk seal population. The fishery was never reopened, presumably because the lobster stocks never recovered, and the monk seal pups in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are still starving.

“It’s precisely because fisheries mismanagement in Hawaii has been so abysmal that the marine national monument was created,” says Jay Nelson of Pew, who coordinated support for the monument. “The irony is that it’s only because of the definitive nature of the monument designation that the fishermen were able to argue for compensation.”

Still, why would taxpayers have to compensate a group of fishermen who made fabulous profits in the ’80s and ’90s by depleting one of the world’s last pristine stocks of spiny lobsters and, as a result of that depletion, hadn’t fished lobsters there in 10 years?

I wondered exactly who these lobstermen were and how much they got, so I asked

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Whale Poop Pumps Up Ocean Health

A conceptual model of the whale pump.
Photo Credit: Peter Roopnarine, Joe Roman, James J. McCarthy

Science Daily, October 12, 2010

Whale feces -- should you be forced to consider such matters -- probably conjures images of, well, whale-scale hunks of crud, heavy lumps that sink to the bottom. But most whales actually deposit waste that floats at the surface of the ocean, "very liquidy, a flocculent plume," says University of Vermont whale biologist, Joe Roman.

And this liquid fecal matter, rich in nutrients, has a huge positive influence on the productivity of ocean fisheries, Roman and his colleague, James McCarthy from Harvard University, have discovered.

Their discovery, published Oct. 11 in the journal PLoS ONE, is what Roman calls a "whale pump."

Whales, they found, carry nutrients such as nitrogen from the depths where they feed back to the surface via their feces. This functions as an upward biological pump, reversing the assumption of some scientists that whales accelerate the loss of nutrients to the bottom.

And this nitrogen input in the Gulf of Maine is "more than the input of all rivers combined," they write, some 23,000 metric tons each year.

Nitrogen limits

It is well known that microbes, plankton, and fish recycle nutrients in ocean waters, but whales and other marine mammals have largely been ignored in this cycle. Yet this study shows that whales historically played a central role in the productivity of ocean ecosystems -- and continue to do so despite diminished populations.

Despite the problems of coastal eutrophication -- like the infamous "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico caused by excess nitrogen washing down the Mississippi River -- many places in the ocean of the Northern Hemisphere have a limited nitrogen supply.

Including where Roman and McCarthy completed their study: the once fish-rich Gulf of Maine in the western North Atlantic. There, phytoplankton, the base of the food chain, has a brake on its productivity when nitrogen is used up in the otherwise productive summer months. (In other parts of the ocean, other elements are limiting, like iron in some regions of the Southern oceans.)

"We think whales form a really important direct influence on the production of plants at the base of this food web," says McCarthy.

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Ocean Acidification Poses Little Threat to Whales’ Hearing, Study Suggests

More-acidic conditions reduce the amount of borate in seawater, which
led some researchers to suggest that ocean acidification will lead to less
absorption of sound energy,allowing wavesto travel father in the ocean then
they do at present. WHOI scientists showed that the effect will be minimal.

Photo Credit: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

ScienceDaily, Oct. 11, 2010

Contrary to some previous, highly publicized, reports, ocean acidification is not likely to worsen the hearing of whales and other animals, according to a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientist who studies sound propagation in the ocean.

Tim Duda, of WHOI's Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering Department, undertook a study in response to warnings that as the ocean becomes more acidic -- due to elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)--noise from ships will be able to travel farther and possibly interfere with whales and other animals that rely on sound to navigate, communicate, and hunt.

Duda and WHOI scientists Ilya Udovydchenkov, Scott Doney, and Ivan Lima, along with colleagues at the Naval Postgraduate School, designed mathematical models of sound propagation in the oceans. Their models found that the increase would be, at most, 2 decibels by the year 2100 -- a negligible change compared with noise from natural events such as storms and large waves. Noise levels are predicted to change even less than this in higher-noise areas near sources such as shipping lanes, Duda said.

Their work is published in the September 2010 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Russian "scallop garden" will monitor pollution

An oil terminal at Russia's Far-East port of Kozmino
Photo Credit: Reuters/Jessica Bachman

By Jessica Bachman
Reuters, October 8, 2010

Some prefer them grilled or steamed, but Russian scientists will now use sea scallops to monitor pollution levels at a Pacific oil terminal.

An enormous sea scallop garden will be set up at the end of this month in Russia's Far East Kozmino Bay, eight time zones east of Moscow. It will be the first Russian port to use mollusks as a water-monitoring instrument.

"Scallops are a very good measure of water pollution because they are very sensitive to contaminants. They absorb and retain impurities" said Natalia Vykhodtseva, the organic chemist at the helm of Kozmino's ecological safety department.

She added that while sea scallops -- which prefer to live at depths of 20-22 meters (64-70 feet) -- are known for their ability to filter contaminants such as oil or heavy metals, the main purpose of the garden at present is to monitor the bay.

"If the monitoring is successful, we have an idea to create large permanent colonies for scallops, mussels and seaweed at the bottom of the bay and use them to filter the water and keep it clean," said Vykhodtseva.

The Kozmino port, launched at the beginning of this year by Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, sits at the bottom of a forested hill range in a bay on the Sea of Japan.

The only export terminal for crude tapped from new East Siberian deposits, it will ship out 200 million barrels next year, meaning the number of tankers calling into port will double, raising greater concern over pollution.

"If oil happens to leak into the water, the scallops will imbibe it, filtering back out the clean water," Vykhodtseva said.

In the same bay, a short distance from the oil terminal, rusting Soviet-era ships, pipelines and old navy infrastructure jut out from the water.

The port's General Director Boris Melnikov said the water-monitoring project begins later this month when marine biologists will lower 80 long tubular nets filled with 10,000 of the meaty sea scallops into the frigid Pacific Ocean waters.

Melnikov added that the scientists are contracted from the Pacific Ocean Institute of Bio-Organic Chemistry in Vladivostok, and that divers will study the bay and plot the scallop garden this week.

SANITARY SEA CREATURES

Since the mid 1990s, scientists at the Far East branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Bio-Organic Chemistry have studied scallops' chemical and medicinal properties, and their environmental and sanitary capabilities.

Once a month, they will draw up several hanging scallop gardens to analyze and document the mollusks' chemical composition, contamination levels, weight and mortality rates.

Organic sea bacteria helped break down the oil that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico following the rupture of BP's Macondo well, but experts say they do not have the same pollution-cleaning potential in Russia's cold waters.

"The colder the water, the less quickly and efficiently bacteria can work to break down the hydrocarbon. So in Russia, their use is very limited," said Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace's energy department in Russia.

Follow Sandra on her Deep Sea Coral Cruise!

Daily updates from the RV Cape Hatteras, Gulf of Mexico deep coral cruise

Day 1

We set sail from Gulfport Mississippi in the early evening after spending all day loading and stowing gear while the ROV team (University of Connecticut) assembled a mobile operations lab on the back deck. Our research vessel, the RV Cape Hatteras is 40m long, but every inch of deck and lab space is packed full with science gear. We have many objectives to fulfill in the next two weeks and the days will be long and busy.

There is a gentle breeze off the Gulf of Mexico as we head out of the docks at dusk. If the weather holds, with a little luck we should have a productive research cruise.

Day 2
The ROV crew was up early constructing the complicated array of video monitors and communications systems that feed the images from the seafloor through to the pilots and observers in the ROV van.

The ROV, named the ‘Kraken’ after the mythical sea monster, was being equipped with a variety of sampling devices and instruments to gather samples and environmental data from the deep coral sites.

Our first site is called Viosca Knoll 826, which is a large feature with several areas of well developed thickets and bushes of Lophelia coral along the slopes and top. The Viosca Knoll site is located less than 100 km upslope from the Deepwater Horizon well-head and was the area of greatest concern after the explosion.

A recent research expedition visited these coral areas and they did not report any injury, but sometimes damage is not immediately apparent. Our research will follow up initial observations to look for evidence of any damage to the coral ecosystems.

The first ROV dive was a learning experience; flying the ROV along the seafloor takes a delicate balance of movement between the ship, the ROV depressor weight and the Kraken itself. With the wind blowing from one direction and the current pushing us in another - coordination took a little practice and we spent a lot of the first dive working on vehicle positioning.

Despite these challenges, we collected some nice branches of Lophelia for assessment of reproduction and genetics, and some coral associates like small crabs, shrimp and sea urchins for research into food webs. This is the time of year when Lophelia reproduce so we are keeping some alive in chilled aquaria to see if they will spawn so we can study their larvae and learn more about how this coral colonizes new habitat.

Day 3
Today the dive went a lot more smoothly and we worked on the top of the knoll in a dense patch of Lophelia. It is a gorgeous site and does not appear to have suffered any direct damage. The coral polyps are open and the expected suite of associated animals were observed in abundance, which is an encouraging indication that the oil did not impact these coral ecosystems. A closer look at the animals we collect will tell us whether there are any sub-lethal effects; these are impacts that do not cause death, but may impact the growth, reproduction or overall condition of an animal.

Although the ROV is our primary collecting tool, it is not very useful for catching fish! We are using a variety of nets and traps to sample the fish communities on the seafloor and in the water column. This evening we pulled up a fish trap which we deployed on the first evening on station, but despite a really stinky bait of menhaden the fish remained elusive.

We did however catch a giant deep sea Isopod and a golden crab. The former looks like a huge pill-bug with Darth Vader eyes, but the golden crab is a fishery species in the Gulf of Mexico and is often found in or near the coral habitat. Unfortunately the large specimen we caught was not destined for the dinner table!

Day 4

This is our third dive day and we are staying on our original site since it is the area of most extensive coral (as far as we know) in the northern Gulf of Mexico, and is also the closest to the oil well.

The ROV and ships crews are working well together and have coordinated the ‘dance’ between the RV Cape Hatteras and the Kraken. The weather is a little breezy, but it is still hot and sunny – a good day to dive.

One of our objectives out here is to take water samples, both in the water column and near the corals for chemical analysis. One of the side effects of increasing atmospheric CO2 is a reduction of pH in the water. This happens because when CO2 dissolves in water, it creates carbonic acid, and as the ocean absorbs more anthropogenic CO2, the water becomes increasingly caustic.

Unfortunately those animals with carbonate skeletons, such as corals, may begin to dissolve or be forced to channel energy into maintaining their skeleton instead of growing or reproducing normally. Intuitively it seems that animals at depths of over 400m would be safe from changing surface conditions, but because of complex oceanography, this is not the case.

To take water samples near the corals, we attached a ‘Niskin’ water bottle to the ROV. The water column is also sampled using a Niskin array (20 bottles), which provides real-time continuous data as it travels through the water column, and allows us to close the bottles at the depths we want.

We have some indication that the Gulf may have a naturally fairly low pH, so this is a good opportunity to study the effects of ocean acidification on corals, using a natural system that is already dealing with ‘future’ water chemistry conditions.

Day 5

Yesterday evening we moved to another site a little further west and a little shallower (350-400 m); this area is more rocky and has less Lophelia coral than the main Viosca Knoll, but has high diversity of animals that like hard rocky habitat.

We started as usual by launching away from our target feature on sandy substrate and headed off upslope. Small patches of cobble or rubble are the first indications that we are nearing a coral area. Even these small chunks of hard substrate are covered with anemones, tiny ‘lollipop’ glass sponges and the occasional small soft coral, and any structure in the deep ocean seems to have a fish or crab sheltering beside it.

Moving upslope, we see larger patches of rock with black corals, bamboo corals and the ever present anemones. The Lophelia colonies were near the top of the feature and do not form large mounds here, but are moderate sized and they look very healthy with open polyps and very little dead skeleton.

This is a very pretty site, with a large area of low relief hard substrate covered in patches of coral and sponges, but the elevated section with Lophelia is quite small. There are also many large fish here, and several observations of fishing line indicate that other people know that too.

Day 6

Today is Saturday, but unlike shore based work weeks, there are no days off at sea. The ship and ROV time are so precious that we cannot waste them with R and R!

Days at sea are generally very long; the day shift starts at 7am and we are usually still working at 10.30pm. We also have a night shift that conducts non-diving operations such as mid-water trawling for animals that live in the pelagic zone, fish traps, water column profiles for water quality data (temperature, salinity, oxygen, turbidity) and plankton sampling. This kind of data gives us a comprehensive ecosystem view to put the seafloor communities into perspective, allows us to describe the pelagic community structure and collect samples for food web analysis.

Today's collecting went well and I have more good healthy corals to keep alive for laboratory studies on Lophelia reproductive biology and physiology.

Day 7

Today we woke to torrential rain; it was so heavy that we could not see beyond a few meters around the ship. It feels cozy standing under the shelter of the upper deck in the early morning with a cup of coffee watching the steel grey ocean and feeling completely isolated from the rest of the world.

The ROV crew are not so happy as they prepare the Kraken for launch in hot heavy rain gear.

Today we are exploring a site we have never visited. From the multibeam map, it looks like a feature that should have coral, and today we will find out.

Multibeam mapping involves shooting sound waves through the water and analyzing the return signal to create a three-dimensional image of the seafloor. We have multibeam maps for our main target areas, and it opens up a whole new perspective for exploration, and understanding the shape and location of coral habitat.

Without this technology we relied on the ship’s fathometer and navigation charts to tell us where there might be ‘bumps’ to investigate, which is a very ‘hit and miss’ way of trying to find these small features on a vast seafloor.

This dive paid off – one more coral feature documented! We found a small but gorgeous area of coral habitat, with Lophelia, black corals, bamboo corals and sponges as well as a very diverse community of mobile invertebrates such as crabs, sea urchins, sea stars and fish. The conger eels were especially numerous, peeping from the safety of their burrows near the corals while we slurped up and grabbed their neighbors in the name of science.

Day 8

Today was a long transit day to our next study area, 22 hours away on the West Florida Slope, so now we get some down time to wash stinky salty clothes, nurse the variety of bumps and bruises that inevitably happen when you carry heavy objects around a rocking ship, catch up on data entry…and sleep.

The transit was smooth and sunny, but the weather news tells us a tropical storm is brewing in the Caribbean, and it may head our way. This time of year in the Gulf it is not unusual for tropical systems to pass through, and all we can do is hope it goes and bothers someone else.

The live corals are doing well but they are hard work to maintain. These corals need good clean cold water so we have a chiller system set up for their maintenance. We collect their water using an array of water bottles to avoid any contamination or freshwater layers that may be floating on the surface of the water.

Previous cruises have provided samples to study the reproductive cycles of Lophelia and other corals in the Gulf of Mexico, and we now know that this is the time of year that Lophelia releases eggs and sperm into the water to create tiny planktonic larvae. One of our objectives out here is to study the development, lifespan and behavior of the coral larvae so we can have some idea of where they go and how quickly they may colonize new or damaged areas. We are collecting small fragments and holding them to see of they will oblige and spawn.

Unfortunately there is not much we can do to force them, so it’s a waiting game.

Stay tuned.

Day 9

Today was our first dive at a new site and it is spectacular, lots of live coral, good diversity of sessile animals such as corals and sponges, and lots of mobile invertebrates (crabs, starfish, sea urchins) and fish.

It’s always exciting going to a new area, but it is doubly so when it turns out to be a lovely new reef.

One of our projects involves studying the population genetics of Lophelia coral, and for this small fragments are needed from many different places. This work links well with the larval study since it will tell us where the corals came from and whether the reef is made up of a few or many individuals.

Understanding the population dynamics tells us which areas are critical sources of new colonies, and whether these Gulf populations are connected to those in the Atlantic. So far we have lots of samples from the northern Gulf of Mexico and the east coast from North Carolina to Florida, but the gap is right here on the west Florida slope so these samples are very important as they provide the linkage between the Gulf and Atlantic.

Tomorrow we will carry on exploring this area, which looks extensive from the multibeam maps.

After the ROV dive the seas started picking up so we worked late into the night securing everything that had become scattered around the lab and deck during our period of calm seas.

Everything looks nice and tidy again as the night watch comes on and the day watch goes below, but that won’t last long with so many people doing work on a small ship.

Day 10

The dive today was a little deeper than yesterday in an area that nobody has visited before. Exploration is always a gamble; if we find new coral areas, we can make significant contributions to deep coral ecology. If not, well all information is useful, but since ship and ROVs time is so expensive we would prefer not to spend it on mud flats.

This location was a success – we found a very diverse coral community with several different species of stony corals, sponges, gorgonians, hydrocorals and some large white soft corals that have not been documented in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

There are plenty of live colonies as well as lots of standing dead coral and It is not unusual to find a higher diversity of sessile filter feeders in dead coral areas. Live Lophelia has large polyps that are equipped with batteries of stinging cells, and there are few larvae that seem to be able to settle on live coral branches. We did not see many mobile animals at this site, which is curious as Lophelia reefs are usually teeming with associated invertebrates. Every time we visit one of these reefs it seems to raise more questions than answers.

Day 11

Today’s dive was spectacular! We visited a new mound west of our first dive and the first sight we saw when the bottom came into view was a massive carpet of shrimp – thousands of them just hanging around near the edge of the reef. These were some deep sea species that we had seen occasionally on previous dives here, but not at this abundance. It is possible that this is a breeding aggregation and we will know more when we identify them and look at their reproductive status – and even then we will not know for sure.

Since we see these systems so infrequently, we often do not have the data we need to fully understand their ecology, we can only make logical deductions based on the information we have. As we neared the top of the mound we came across large live thickets of Lophelia, mixed with other stony corals that are rarely seen in the northern Gulf of Mexico, or the Atlantic.

This is a unique type of assemblage and unlike yesterday’s site there are lots of small crabs, brittle stars, sea urchins and other mobile animals. At one point we were completely surrounded by a school of squid that blocked the camera view and followed is for several minutes. This was truly a lovely reef and today was a great dive despite rather choppy seas.

Day 12
Today we dove on a site close to where deep corals were first seen on the west Florida Slope by John Reed of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. The habitat he documented was different from those we have seen during this trip, but he was a little closer to shore and the seafloor was more exposed rock than coral bioherms.

We have noticed that the amount of live coral and the types of animals we see can vary quite a lot between sites. We do not fully understand why we see these differences; depth seems to be one of the primary drivers, along with the type and shape of the substrate, but there are probably other more subtle factors such as food supply, current regime or water conditions that make the environment more favorable to some animals more than others.

One of our study objectives involves analyzing our video footage from different areas and correlating the community structure with habitat type and environmental conditions to see if we can tease out why these differences occur and how we might use this information to predict where we might find more coral ecosystems.

Since we cannot hope to explore the entire seafloor, our ability to predict where corals are found is an important tool for agencies tasked with protecting these ecosystems.

Day 13
This was our last dive day and we were several miles north of our previous dive site on another new ‘bump’ on the multibeam map. This one was quite large and we were optimistic that it would be as spectacular as our previous explorations.

We were not disappointed – although the dive was shorter than usual (only 5 hours), we covered enough territory to know that this was a well-developed deep coral ecosystem similar to the others we had visited, with the usual abundant reef-associated animals. The ROV van was peaceful and quiet as the pilots flew the Kraken over the reef and the two science crew took notes and pictures.

The rest of the ship however, was a frenzy of activity as equipment was stowed for the transit to shore, and the working chaos of the lab was forced to order and re-packed. As soon as the ROV was on the deck, the Captain headed east to St Petersburg, Florida. It was mid-afternoon and we were scheduled to arrive the next morning around breakfast.

It has been a great cruise with no apparent damage to the corals, a lot of new sites explored and enough samples to keep everyone busy for months. As much as I love being at sea though, it’s always nice to come home.

New Deep-Sea Hot Springs Discovered in Atlantic: Hydrothermal Vents May Contribute More to Oceans' Thermal Budget

Chimney-like structures spew hot fluids of up to 300 degrees Celsuis

that contain large amounts of methane and hydrogen sulfide
Photo Credit: MARUM

Science Daily, October 7, 2010

Scientists from the MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen on board the German research vessel Meteor have discovered a new hydrothermal vent 500 kilometres south-west of the Azores.The vent with chimneys as high as one meter and fluids with temperatures up to 300 degrees Celsius was found at one thousand metres water depth in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery of the new deep-sea vent is remarkable because the area in which it was found has been intensively studied during previous research cruises. The MARUM and Max Planck researchers describe their discovery in their video blog.

The Bremen scientists were able to find the hydrothermal vent by using the new, latest-generation multibeam echosounder on board the research vessel Meteor that allows the imaging of the water column above the ocean floor with previously unattained precision. The scientists saw a plume of gas bubbles in the water column at a site about 5 kilometers away from the known large vent field Menez Gwen that they were working on. A dive with the remote-controlled submarine MARUM-QUEST revealed the new hydrothermal site with smokers and animals typically found at vents on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Since the discovery of the new vent, the scientists have been intensively searching the water column with the multibeam echosounder. To their astonishment, they have already found at least five other sites with gas plumes. Some even lie outside the volcanically active spreading zone in areas where hydrothermal activity was previously not assumed to occur.

"Our results indicate that many more of these small active sites exist along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge than previously assumed," said Dr. Nicole Dubilier, the chief scientist of the expedition. "This could change our understanding of the contribution of hydrothermal activity to the thermal budget of the oceans. Our discovery is also exciting because it could provide the answer to a long standing mystery: We do not know how animals travel between the large hydrothermal vents, which are often separated by hundreds to thousands of kilometres from each other. They may be using these smaller sites as stepping stones for their dispersal."

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OSPAR High Seas MPAs

Above is a map showing what is the one and only collection (beginnings of a network) of high seas MPAs: 6 new ones + Rainbow Hydrothermal Vent which was protected previously. Totalling 285 000 km2, these six new sites were recently passed by the OSPAR Commission for the Northeast Atlantic at a high level ministerial conference in Bergen, Norway.

There were lots of ups and downs along the way, but the end result is most certainly up.

This could not have been achieved without the persistent efforts of initially WWF, and then later some very forward-thinking EU countries such as The Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, and of course Germany. Also, had the OSPAR Secretariat not been open to stepping out into this untested legal realm, none of this would have happened.

Modern day heroes can be found, and in government and multinational bodies yet!

Let this be an inspiration to us all seeking to protect the high seas.

All the best from Lisbon,
Jeff

Report Shows Anatomy of a Political Crisis

Boats hose down a massive fire on the oil rig
Deepwater Horizon, April 21, 2010.
Photo Credit: ZUMApress.com

By James Herron
The Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2010

The latest unflattering revelations about the U.S. authorities’ handling of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico should hardly come as a surprise. A report from investigators lays out in glorious detail the classic structure for any political crisis:

• Step one. Hope the problem just goes away.

One of the reports compiled by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling said:

“For the first ten days of the spill, it appears that a sense of over optimism affected responders.”

BP, the Coast Guard and the White House clung, for far too long, to the not-so-scary-sounding estimate that 1,000 barrels a day was leaking from the well, despite video images of a powerful subsea gusher that were running almost 24 hours a day on TV news.

This obvious denial of reality allowed ever more alarming theories about the true extent of the spill to flourish–that the well was leaking in excess of 100,000 barrels a day, that ocean currents would spread the spill up the entire eastern seaboard, that the whole surface of the Gulf of Mexico was about to rupture like an over ripe fruit.

Suddenly, the world was ending and step two was required.

• Step two. Overreact.

At this point commission staff wrote:

“The arguable overreaction to the public perception of a slow response resulted in resources being thrown at the spill in general, rather than being targeted in an efficient way.”

As media criticism rose to an intolerable pitch, all sense of proportion was cast aside in the rush to make amends. By the time the spill response had actually built up to a sufficient scale in May, President Barack Obama was ordering a tripling of federal manpower devoted to the effort. The result was personnel being sent where they weren’t needed.

As media criticism rose to an intolerable pitch, all sense of proportion was cast aside in the rush to make amends. By the time the spill response had actually built up to a sufficient scale in May, President Barack Obama was ordering a tripling of federal manpower devoted to the effort. The result was personnel being sent where they weren’t needed.

State governments competed to buy the most floating boom to protect shorelines and distributed it according to political imperatives. This meant time was wasted placing boom, “everywhere, including in passes where swift tidal currents rendered it ineffective, and in places where it was unlikely to encounter oil.”

The competition to mount the most impressive response inevitably led to the next step.

Read more:

What Have They Learned?

Editorial
The New York Times, October 5, 2010

The six-month federal moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is scheduled to end on Nov. 30. Complaining of job losses, politicians in the gulf and many in industry are demanding that it be lifted now. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, is threatening to block President Obama’s nominee for budget director unless drilling is allowed to resume quickly.

The only question that should matter is whether government and industry have learned enough since the BP blowout to proceed safely.

As to the Obama administration, the answer is mostly yes. After a shockingly slow and disorganized start, it has reorganized and strengthened the regulatory agencies, stiffened environmental reviews and otherwise raised standards for approval for all deep-water drilling projects — not only in the gulf but elsewhere on America’s Continental Shelf.

Government and industry have to improve their capacity to respond to a major spill. And Congress needs to give these reforms the force of law (making it harder for another administration to backslide) and provide more money for increased inspections and oversight. But after years of serving industry, the regulators seem finally to understand that their first responsibility is to the public and the environment.

It is impossible, at this point, to tell whether industry gets it. Four major companies — ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips — have promised to invest $1 billion in new response capacity that would broadly replicate the “top kill” technology that took BP months of floundering to find; BP says it will join the effort. Yet the list of what went wrong is long, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is right to say he will lift the moratorium only when he is comfortable that industry has “significantly reduced” the risks of another blowout.

Last week, Mr. Salazar announced the specific conditions the 33 deep-water rigs affected by the moratorium must meet before they can go back to work. Blowout preventers — the device that failed in the BP explosion — must be inspected and certified by industry, government and third-party professionals. New rules governing the cementing and casing of wells must be strictly observed. Every stage of the drilling must be monitored and certified by independent engineers.

Mr. Salazar sensibly made clear that the moratorium will not be lifted en masse and that each of the idled rigs will have to meet the new specifications. He told The Times that he expected oil companies to complain that the regulations are too onerous. “There is the pre-April 20th framework of regulation and the post-April 20th framework,” he said, “and the oil and gas industry better get used to it.”

Some environmental groups would like a permanent moratorium on all new offshore drilling. And, clearly, the country must develop cleaner and more secure energy sources. But until then, oil and gas will have to be a part of the energy mix. What the administration is doing is establishing the conditions under which exploration can proceed responsibly. We need to hear a lot more from industry about what it is doing to meet those conditions.

Global Census of Marine Life reveals thousands of new species, other discoveries

Photo Credit: Gary Cranitch-Queensland Museum

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff, October 4, 2010

A lone deep-sea snail living within a hydrothermal vent. The migratory tracks of great white sharks crossing ocean basins. Audio recordings of schools of fish the size of Manhattan, swimming in concert.
hese are just a handful of the discoveries that came out of the Census of Marine Life, a decade-long project that finished Monday. Encompassing more than 2,700 scientists from 80 nations and territories across the world, the census sought to answer a basic but daunting question. In the words of its scientific steering committee chairman Ian Poiner: "What did live in the ocean, what does live in the ocean and what will live in the ocean?"

Ten years after the study was launched, much of the sea remains unknown. At its start only 5 percent of the ocean had been seriously explored, and even now, there are no observations for 20 percent of the sea, while more than half of the ocean has only been subject to minimal exploration.

Still, the project has, in the words of its co-founder Jesse Ausubel, "defined what is unknown" about the ocean, and shed light on how it functions. "The oceans are richer than we imagined, more connected than we imagined, and they're more altered," said Ausubel, program director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the census's vice president.

The $650 million initiative, $75 million of which came from the Sloan Foundation, launched 570 expeditions that journeyed from Antarctica to the tropics. Ranking as one of the world's largest scientific collaborations ever, it produced more 2,600 academic papers and collected 30 million observations of 120,000 species. Researchers have identified potentially 6,000 new species in the course of the project, 1,200 of which have been formally described.

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Researchers comb Monterey Bay for ghost fishers

A reserach team uses a remotely
operated vehicle to look for lost fishing gear
Photo Credit: NOAA Monterey Bay

By Jane Lee
The Monterrey Herald, September 30, 2010

A research team led by NOAA's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary recently went in search of ghosts in the waters off Monterey.

They found them — or at least their gear.

Fishing lines, nets or traps lost or abandoned by fishermen can still snare animals, an occurrence known as ghost fishing.

Because the gear continues to work after the fishermen are long gone, marine animals can get caught or trapped in areas specifically set aside for their protection.

"Most of the gear we found was in marine protected areas," said Karen Grimmer, deputy superintendent of the sanctuary.

Although they find gear inside and outside of marine protected areas, the kinds of gear they find tend to differ with location.

Grimmer said gear inside marine protected areas tends to be older, left before the areas were designated as protected. Newer abandoned gear tends to be found outside marine protected areas.

The newer gear is especially worrisome, she said, because it is more resilient than older gear.

Lost and abandoned fishing gear can float in the ocean for years. Lines and cables can drag along the bottom, gouging the sea floor and ripping up animals, while floating nets can entangle and drown marine mammals. Abandoned gear poses a danger to humans by creating underwater hazards for swimmers and divers.

Local dive shop manager Keith McNutt said the most common piece of equipment he comes across is broken fishing line.

"You learn to look for it and avoid it," he said, but most divers carry a knife or scissors to cut themselves free if they get snagged.

Jim Barry, senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, said he has been on research cruises where the tether connecting a remotely operated vehicle to the boat became entangled in abandoned fishing gear at the edge of Monterey Canyon.

Although debris on the seafloor is not a good thing, Barry said, there are communities of invertebrates that can settle on abandoned equipment, creating a collection of life in otherwise sparse areas of the ocean.

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