Scientists find ancient asphalt domes off California coast

High-resolution bathymetry shows extinct asphalt volcanoes on the sea-floor off California. Credit: Dana Yoerger, WHOI

About 35,000 years ago, a series of apparent undersea volcanoes deposited massive flows of petroleum 10 miles offshore. The deposits hardened into domes that were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Their report—co-authored with researchers from UC Davis, the University of Sydney and the University of Rhode Island—appears online today (April 25) in the Journal Nature Geoscience. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy and the Seaver Institute.

"It was an amazing experience, driving along…and all of a sudden, this mountain is staring you in the face," said Christopher M. Reddy, director of WHOI's Coastal Ocean Institute and one of the study's senior authors, as he described the discovery of the domes using the deep submersible vehicle Alvin. Moreover, the dome was teeming with undersea life. "It was essentially an oasis," he said, "almost like an artificial reef."

What really piqued the interest of Reddy—a marine geochemist who studies oil spills—was the chemical composition of the dome: "very unusual asphalt material," he said. "There aren't that many opportunities to study oil that's been sitting around on the bottom of the ocean for 35,000 years."

Reddy's unique chance came courtesy of UCSB earth scientist and lead author David L. Valentine, who first came upon the largest of the structures—named Il Duomo—and brought back a chunk of the brittle, black material in 2007 from an initial dive in Alvin, which WHOI operates for the US Navy. Valentine and Reddy were on a cruise aboard the WHOI-operated research vessel Atlantis, following up on undersea mapping survey by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and the work of UCSB earth scientist Ed Keller.

"The largest [dome] is about the size of two football fields, side by side and as tall as a six-story building," Valentine said. Alvin's robotic arm snapped off a piece of the unusual formation, secured it in a basket and delivered it to Reddy aboard Atlantis.

"I was sleeping," Reddy chuckled. "Somebody woke me up and wanted me to look at the rocks and test them."

It turned out to be quite an awakening. "I was amazed at how easy it was to break," Reddy recalls, "which confirmed it wasn't solid rock" and lent credence to Keller's theory that these structures might be made of asphalt.

Without access to the sophisticated equipment in his Woods Hole lab, Reddy employed a "25-cent glass tube, the back of a Bic pen and a little nail polish remover" to analyze the crusty substance. He used the crude tools like a mortar and pestle to grind the rock, "and literally within several minutes, it became a thick oil."

"This immediately said to me that this was asphalt," Reddy said. "And I remember turning to Dave [Valentine] and saying, 'We've got to back. Please take me back there'" to the dome.


Diagram showing formation of an asphalt volcano and associated release of methane and oil. Credit: Jack Cook, UCSB

After making some schedule changes, Valentine cleared the way for him and Reddy to take Alvin back to several sites in 2007. This work also set the stage for a follow-up study in September 2009, when the investigators returned to the domes with Alvin and the Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) Sentry to study the unique structures. They were joined by, among others, WHOI collaborators Dana Yoerger, Richard Camilli and Robert K. Nelson and Oscar Pizarro, now at the University of Sydney.

"With that combination, we were able to go in and do very detailed mapping of the site and very detailed sampling at the seafloor," Valentine said. Using mass spectrometers and radiocarbon dating in their respective laboratories, the scientists were able to confirm the nature and age of the domes.

"To me, as an oil-spill chemist, this was very exciting," said Reddy. "I got to find out what oil looks like after… 35,000 years."

What it looked like was "incredibly weathered," said Reddy. "That means nature had taken away a lot of compounds. These mounds of black material were the last remnants of oil that exploded up from below. To see nature doing this on its own was an unbelievable finding."

A few asphalt-like undersea structures have been reported, says Valentine, "but not anything exactly like these…no large structures like we see here." He estimates that the dome structures contain about 100,000 tons of residual asphalt and compares them to an underwater version of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, complete with the fossils of ancient animals.

The researchers are not sure exactly why sea life has taken up residence around the asphalt domes, but one possibility is that because the oil has become benign over the years that some creatures are able to actually feed off it and get energy from it. They may also be "thriving" on tiny holes in the dome areas that release minute amounts of methane gas, Reddy says.

The scientists plan to continue studying the domed structures. "We have some very fundamental questions that remain," Valentine says. "It would be nice to know what is going on deep down under these things.

"One future direction is to try and actually drill into them," he says. "We also need to turn it over to some geologists to figure out where this oil is really coming from. More fundamentally, we're going to look at the actual degradation of the oil by microorganisms and maybe even see what organisms are trapped in this…very much like the La Brea Tar Pits."

From a chemical point of view, Reddy says he will continue to probe the question of exactly which of the chemicals that make up the domes "stayed around" all these years.

"Instead of this taking place at a refinery, nature used a variety of its own tools," he said, to manufacture the asphalt substance. With some heating and a few chemical tweaks, he added, this is essentially the same material that paves highways and parking lots. After all, it is California.

Provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news191397828.html

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Acidifying Oceans Dramatically Stunt Growth of Already Threatened Shellfish, Research Finds

ScienceDaily — New research shows that global warming and its effects -- in particular, ocean acidification have descended upon shellfish reefs, particularly those formed by the Olympia oyster.

More than one-third of the world's human-caused carbon dioxide emissions have entered the oceans, according to Brian Gaylord, a biological oceanographer at the Bodega Marine Laboratory of the University of California at Davis.

"Similar to what happens in carbonated soda," says Gaylord, "increasing carbon dioxide in seawater makes it more acidic."

Even with small changes in acidity, seawater becomes corrosive to the shells of aquatic organisms.

That's not good news for most marine life, especially for oysters.

Gaylord is investigating the consequences of this increasing ocean acidity on the growth of larval and juvenile Olympia oysters native to the U.S. West Coast.

"Such early life stages can be extremely sensitive to environmental stresses like ocean acidification," says Gaylord.

"These stages operate as bottlenecks that drive overall population numbers. If larval and juvenile Olympia oysters decline as a result of an acidifying ocean, what does that mean for the species as a whole?"

Likely nothing good, he and colleagues say.

"Changes now happening in the ocean's chemistry are expected to continue far into the foreseeable future," says David Garrison, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s biological oceanography program, which funds Gaylord's research. "They may have myriad effects on marine animals."

Gaylord conducted experiments on larvae and juveniles produced by adult oysters in Tomales Bay, California. Adults were collected in the bay, then held at the Bodega Marine Laboratory until they released larvae.

In the lab, the free-swimming larvae were reared into early juvenile life.

Carbon dioxide concentrations in laboratory seawater were controlled to match present-day conditions in the oceans, 380 parts per million (ppm), as well as two carbon dioxide scenarios projected to occur by the year 2100 (540 and 970 ppm).

Mid-way through the larval phase at day nine, oysters in the high carbon dioxide treatment had shells that were 16 percent smaller than those reared in control, or ambient, conditions.

These effects continued through the time the larval oysters settled onto hard substrate at day 12. Shell size was seven percent smaller for oysters in the 970 ppm treatment than in the control group.

By a week later, the effects were dramatically magnified. The bottom-dwelling juveniles in the 970 ppm treatment had grown 41 percent less than juveniles under control conditions.

The consequences persisted, even after the juveniles from all treatments had been returned to present-day conditions.

"One and a half months after being transferred back to normal seawater," says Gaylord, "juveniles that had come from the high carbon dioxide environment were still 28 percent smaller than oysters reared for the entire experiment in control conditions."

The results strongly suggest that the effects of ocean acidification on oyster larvae persist well into the juvenile phase, he says, with potential consequences for oyster populations.

"If similar impacts happen to species beyond the Olympia oyster, there could be repercussions for oysters around the world."

Globally, 85 percent of shellfish reefs have been lost, making oyster reefs one of the most severely threatened marine habitats on the planet.

"Shellfish reefs in some places are at less than 10 percent of their former abundance," says Garrison. "Oysters have gone extinct in many areas, especially in North America, Australia and Europe."

Just as coral reefs are critical to tropical marine habitats, shellfish like oysters are the ecosystem engineers of bays and estuaries, creating dwelling places for countless plants and animals that find refuge in their three-dimensional structure.

The surface area of an oyster bed across its dips and folds and crevices may be 50 times greater than that of an equally extensive flat mud bottom.

Shellfish reefs also provide important services to people by filtering water, and serving as natural coastal buffers from boat wakes, sea-level rise and storms.

Oysters have supported civilization for millennia, from the ancient Romans to railroad workers in California in the 1880s. In the 1870s, eastern oyster reefs extended for miles along the James River in Chesapeake Bay. By the 1940s, they had largely disappeared.

"It's unclear whether we will ever be able to return to that by-gone era," says Gaylord. "The constellation of environmental and other pressures on oysters--including the consequences of ocean acidification--places them at grave risk."

Gaylord and colleagues presented early results of their research at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon, in February. They plan to publish a paper with updated findings later this year.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100420152841.htm

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Your Trash Found in Dead Gray Whale

OLYMPIA, Wash. —

A gray whale that died after stranding on a West Seattle beach had a large amount of trash in its stomach, ranging from a pair of sweat pants to a golf ball, said biologists who examined the animal.

Scientists with the Cascadia Research Collective said Monday that the examination did not immediately determine why the 37-foot near-adult male died, but it was found to be in better nutritional condition than some other gray whales that have died recently. Starvation was not considered a major contributor to its death.

In a news release, the research organization said the animal found on the beach Thursday had more than 50 gallons of material in its stomach. Most was algae - typical of the bottom-feeding whales - but "a surprising amount of human debris" also was found.

Besides the pants and golf ball, the trash included more than 20 plastic bags, small towels, surgical gloves, plastic pieces and duct tape.

The debris made up only 1 percent to 2 percent of the stomach contents and there was no clear indication it caused the whale's death. But Cascadia said the junk showed the whale had tried to feed in industrial waters.

Gray whales feed by sucking in sediment in shallow waters and filtering out small organisms that live there.

Cascadia said the whale had cuts on the head, possibly from a boat propeller, but they did not appear fresh or deep enough to have contributed to its death. A large number of samples were taken and will be analyzed, but results will not be known for weeks or months, the organization said.

So far this year, five gray whales have died in Washington waters, four of them in Puget Sound in the last two weeks. That number is far below the 50 that died in Washington waters in 1999 and 2000, The Olympian newspaper reported.

"I'd say we are concerned but not alarmed yet," Cascade Research biologist John Calambokidis told the newspaper.

Three of the four whales to die in April appeared emaciated and all four apparently were stragglers from the nearly 20,000 gray whales that typically migrate north each spring from breeding grounds in Mexico to feeding grounds in Alaska. Whales that didn't get enough to eat in Alaska last year may now be running low on reserves, researchers told The Olympian.

State Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists also participated in the examination. Moving the animal to the remote examination site was coordinated by NOAA Fisheries with the help of Highline Community College, which hopes to preserve the whale's skeleton.

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Information from: The Olympian, http://www.theolympian.com

Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011649627_apwastrandedwhale1stldwritethru.html

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We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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Shen Neng 1's masters charged over Great Barrier Reef

THE captain and watch officer of the Chinese ship blamed for causing unprecedented damage to a coral shoal on the Great Barrier Reef will face court today on federal charges that attract heavy fines and jail.

Australian Federal Police arrested the two Chinese nationals yesterday, as clean-up crews moved to contain oil from the holed bulk carrier Shen Neng 1 that had washed on to the second-largest coral cay on the reef.

The 47-year-old master of the coal carrier and his first mate, 44, who are alleged to have been in control of the vessel when it slammed into Douglas Shoal on April 3, were held in custody last night before their appearance today in court in Gladstone.

A statement by the AFP yesterday backed The Australian's reporting last week that the ship ran aground after leaving Gladstone and steaming through a designated turning point, possibly while the watch officer was not fully alert.

The Shen Neng 1 was refloated on Monday night, but not before it had gouged a 3km-long furrow in the reef about 70km off Gladstone, smearing the coral with anti-fouling paint from the hull.

The damage to the coral was described by Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority chief scientist David Wachenfeld as the worst known to have been caused by a ship grounding.

The charges followed a joint investigation by the AFP and Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

"It will be alleged in court that the men were the master and chief officer-on-watch of the vessel that caused damage to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park," the AFP said yesterday.

"Investigations showed that the Shen Neng 1 failed to turn at a waypoint required by the intended course of the ship. A waypoint is a location at which a ship is to alter course."

The captain has been charged with having liability for a vessel that caused damage in a marine park, an offence carrying a fine of $55,000.

The officer-on-watch has been charged with being in charge of a vessel when it caused damage to the marine park, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of three years' imprisonment and a $220,000 fine.

Conventional shipping practice is that the first mate takes command of the ship between 4pm and 8pm. The vessel hit the reef at 5.10pm on April 3.

Unlike the Queensland coal ports of Dalrymple Bay and Abbot Point, Gladstone does not have compulsory use of pilots to navigate tankers through the reef, or electronic surveillance of vessels in Australian waters.

The federal government is set to extend the electronic surveillance - possibly as early as today - although it will stop short of demanding that all foreign coal ships use pilots to get them in and out of the Great Barrier Reef.

Under a system of electronic surveillance, a ship straying outside shipping channels is immediately contacted by authorities and sent back to those channels.

Bad weather on the reef curtailed further diving inspections yesterday of both the damaged reef as well as the ship, but a statement from Maritime Services Queensland said that "inspections by divers showed substantial damage to the bottom hull surrounding the engine room at the back of the ship".

Several small islands around the grounding site were yesterday checked for oil spills after small oil balls were found on North West Island, a nesting spot for seabirds and turtles.

Queensland Transport Minister Rachel Nolan said an aerial inspection of North West Island showed the spill was isolated.

"Flights over the island this morning could not detect any further oil in the water," she said yesterday.

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/shen-neng-1s-masters-charged-over-reef/story-e6frg6nf-1225853839670

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Creatures lurking under the sea

Researchers from HPU and UH-Manoa find unique marine life in waters off the Hawaiian Islands

Deep, underwater canyons off the Hawaiian Islands support abundant and unique marine life habitats just like the canyons off continents, according to a recent study by researchers from Hawaii Pacific University and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Some of the creatures, astonishingly odd in appearance, seem to have stepped off the pages of a Dr. Seuss storybook.

The researchers base their conclusions on observations from 36 dives off Oahu, Molokai, Nihoa and Maro Reef in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

They were aboard the UH Pisces IV and Pisces V submersibles that descended between 1,100 and 4,900 feet off Oahu, Molokai and Maro. A submerged video camera was used in the survey off Nihoa.

The authors of the study, published in the March issue of the journal Marine Ecology, are Eric Vetter, professor of marine biology at HPU, and Craig Smith, a UH-Manoa professor of oceanography.

"Craig Smith and I wondered if the same dramatic contrast in (ocean floor) food resources between canyon and noncanyon settings seen in continental margins would also occur in tropical oceanic islands," said Vetter, who had previously studied canyon systems off California.

He and Smith had expected to see sparser marine habitats because tropical islands and atolls transport less nutrient-rich sediment from land into the ocean to feed deep-sea organisms. They also believed the steepness of the ocean floor and the islands' curved coastlines would limit how far the sediment could travel to the canyons.

"Perhaps the biggest surprise of this study was the large number of species -- 41 -- that we found only in canyon habitats," Smith said in an announcement of the discovery. "This suggests that canyons support a substantial specialized fauna that would not (otherwise) exist in the Hawaiian archipelago."

UH-Manoa doctoral candidate Fabio De Leo, who also took part in the research, said the canyons are ideal candidates for protection from commercial fishing because they can provide a critical habitat for bottom fish and shellfish.

Human activities like dumping dredged material could also harm the canyon life, Smith added.

Oahu and Molokai were picked as examples of mountainous islands that have a lot of organic matter slipping downslope. Nihoa and Maro were selected to represent low-lying islands.

Future studies will attempt to determine whether nutrients feeding the habitats come from ocean microorganisms or sediment that originated on land.

Source: http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20100412_creatures_lurking_under_the_sea.html

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About Oceanic Defense
We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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U.S. Leads New Bid to Phase Out Whale Hunting

WASHINGTON — The United States is leading an effort by a handful of antiwhaling nations to broker an agreement that would limit and ultimately end whale hunting by Japan, Norway and Iceland, according to people involved with the negotiations.

The compromise deal, which has generated intense controversy within the 88-nation International Whaling Commission and among antiwhaling activists, would allow the three whaling countries to continue hunting whales for the next 10 years, although in reduced numbers.

In exchange, the whaling nations — which have long exploited loopholes in an international treaty that aims to preserve the marine mammals — would agree to stricter monitoring of their operations, including the placing of tracking devices and international monitors on all whaling ships and participation in a whale DNA registry to track global trade in whale products.

Officials involved in the negotiations expressed tentative hope that they could reach an agreement in coming weeks. But ratification by the overall group remains uncertain.

“This is one of the toughest negotiations I’ve been involved in in 38 years,” said Cristián Maquieira, the veteran Chilean diplomat who is the chairman of the commission. “If this initiative fails now, it means going back to years of acrimony.”

Some pro-whale activists say the deal would grant international approval for the continued slaughter of thousands of minke, sei and Bryde’s whales. They also say that the agreement does not prevent Japan and the other nations from resuming unlimited whaling once the 10-year period is up.

“From our point of view, it’s a whaler’s wish list,” said Patrick R. Ramage, global whale program director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “It would overturn the ’86 moratorium, eviscerate the South Ocean Whale Sanctuary, subordinate science and I.W.C. precedent to reward countries that have refused to comply by allocating quotas to those three countries.”

“Rather than negotiate a treaty that brings commercial whaling to an end,” he concluded, “they have created a system under which it will continue.”

But Monica Medina, the No. 2 official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American delegate to the whaling body, said that Mr. Ramage and other critics were demanding a complete halt to whaling, an impossible goal, at least today.

“We can’t stop it; we can only try to control it,” Ms. Medina said in an interview.

“If we can prevent thousands of whales from being hunted and killed, that’s a real conservation benefit. This proposal would not only help whales, we hope, but also introduce rigorous oversight, halt the illegal trade in whale meat and bring respect for international law back to the I.W.C.,” she added. “Are we there yet? We’re not, and we have hard negotiations to go yet.”

Despite a 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling, the numbers of whales killed annually has been rising steadily, to nearly 1,700 last year from 300 in 1990, as the three whaling nations have either opted out of the treaty or claimed to be taking whales only for legitimate scientific study. Most of the meat from the slaughtered whales is consumed in those three countries, although there appears to be a growing international black market in whale products.

Some officials warn that if this effort at compromise fails, the commission’s efforts to police whale hunting, long crippled by irreconcilable political divisions, will collapse.

“The I.W.C. is a mess. It’s a dysfunctional international organization,” said Sir Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand and chairman of the I.W.C. group trying to negotiate a deal. “I think this is probably the last chance the I.W.C. has to cure itself.”

Representatives to the whaling commission from more than a dozen nations — including the three whaling countries and New Zealand, Australia, Chile and other nations backing the compromise proposal — are in Washington this week to negotiate terms of the agreement, which would protect as many as 5,000 whales from hunting over the next decade, officials said. They said they hoped that the reduced hunt would give whale stocks time to recover and give negotiators time to write a new treaty that would bring an effective international ban on all commercial whaling.

The group plans to release a new draft of the compromise proposal next week, but it still must win the approval of three-quarters of the members of the whaling commission at its annual meeting in Agadir, Morocco, in late June.

The Japanese, who killed 1,001 whales last year, are the linchpin of any deal. Although the Japanese taste for whale meat is steadily declining, the Japanese see their ability to continue to hunt whales, not only in their coastal waters but in the open ocean around Antarctica, as a question of sovereignty. Critics say that the practice survives only with heavy government subsidies. But a single whale can bring as much as $100,000 in Japanese fish markets. Japan is driving a hard bargain to demonstrate strength at home and perhaps to use as leverage in other international negotiations, officials involved in the talks said.

Joji Morishita, a senior official of the Japan Fisheries Agency and Tokyo’s representative to the whaling talks, said in a brief telephone interview that he was not authorized to discuss his country’s negotiating position. But he confirmed that Japan was at least willing to talk about a new whaling program that may result in a substantial reduction in its whale harvest over the next decade.

“We are fully engaged in this process,” he said.

Populations of some whale species have been growing since the moratorium ended decades of uncontrolled hunting, but whales around the world remain under threat, not only from hunting but also from ship strikes, pollution, habitat loss, climate change and entanglement in fishing nets.

Under terms of the compromise deal, which is being negotiated behind closed doors and remains subject to major changes, the three whaling nations agree to cut roughly in half their annual whale harvest. That would result in the saving of more than 5,000 whales over the next 10 years, compared with continued whaling at current levels.

The deal also proposes that no new countries be permitted to take whales, whale-watching ships would be monitored by the whaling commission and all international trade in whale products be banned.

In addition, whalers would have to report the time of death and means of killing of all whales and provide DNA samples to a central registry to help track the end use of the dead animals.

Limited subsistence whaling by indigenous peoples in the United States, Greenland, Russia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines would be allowed to continue.

“Our goal is a significant reduction in the number of whales killed, but some limited whaling will be authorized as a price for that,” said Mr. Maquieira, the whaling commission chairman. “This is highly controversial and very difficult. I would prefer something different, but there is nothing out there.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/science/earth/15whale.html

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We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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From the Sea to a Sushi Plate, a Trail of DNA

One element of negotiations now under way to try to reduce the number of whales killed is the proposed creation of a central registry of whale DNA to improve efforts to track whale populations and monitor the international trade in whale meat.

Such tracking is already being conducted on a limited scale by academic researchers and the makers of the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove.” These researchers, using hidden cameras and sophisticated DNA analysis, uncovered the illegal sale of whale meat at a Santa Monica restaurant and at a sushi restaurant in Seoul.

They found that the meat sold at The Hump in Santa Monica, which has since closed, came from a sei whale, probably one taken in the North Pacific under Japan’s so-called scientific whaling program.

A mixed plate of whale sashimi sold at the Seoul restaurant came from an Antarctic minke whale, a sei whale, a North Pacific minke, a fin whale and a Risso’s dolphin, the researchers found.

Only the Japanese have killed sei whales, found in waters surrounding Japan, since the imposition of an international whaling moratorium in 1986.
“This underscores the very real problem of the illegal international trade of whale meat products,” said Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University.

Dr. Baker said the samples taken from the Santa Monica restaurant could not conclusively be linked to an individual whale because the Japanese

government does not share genetic information on the whales it harvests.
In a paper published Wednesday in the British academic journal Biology Letters, Dr. Baker and his co-authors, including “The Cove” filmmakers, call on Japan to share the DNA information on the roughly 1,000 whales it kills each year.

“Our ability to use genetics as a tool to monitor whale populations around the world has advanced significantly over the past few years, but unless we have access to all of the data — including those whales killed under Japan’s scientific whaling — we cannot provide resource managers with the best possible science,” Dr. Baker said.

Investigators from the Korean Federation of Environmental Movements and Seoul National University helped identify the types of marine animals served at the Korean sushi restaurant. One sample, from a fin whale, genetically matched meat purchased in Japanese markets in 2007, strongly suggesting it came from the same whale, Dr. Baker said.

“Likewise,” he said, “the Antarctic minke whale is not found in Korean waters, but it is hunted by Japan’s controversial scientific whaling program in the Antarctic. How did it show up in a restaurant in Seoul?”

Source: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/from-the-sea-to-a-sushi-plate-a-trail-of-dna/?scp=1&sq=john%20broder%20green%20inc&st=cse

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About Oceanic Defense
We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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'Black Box' Plankton Found to Have Huge Role in Ocean Carbon Fixation

ScienceDaily — Scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened "the black box" of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon fixation by phytoplankton.

Carbon fixation by phytoplankton in the open ocean plays a key role in the global carbon cycle but is not fully understood. Until now researchers believed that cyanobacteria overwhelmingly accounted for phytoplankton's role in carbon fixation in the open ocean. But now scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened "the black box" of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon fixation by phytoplankton.

Blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, grow in vast numbers in the sunlit surface waters of the oceans, the photic zone. They use sunlight to 'fix' carbon by converting carbon dioxide into sugars and other organic compounds through photosynthesis.

Cyanobacteria belong to the 'picophytoplankton', the tiniest phytoplankton. Until now they have been thought to dominate carbon fixation in the open ocean, with species belonging to the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus being particularly abundant.

Like all bacteria, cyanobacteria are prokaryotes, distinguished from eukaryotes by the absence of a cell nucleus. However, although much less abundant than cyanobacteria, the photic zone also has a high biomass of small eukaryotic phytoplankton capable of carbon fixation.

"The eukaryotic phytoplankton community has long been a 'black box' in terms of its composition as well as contribution to carbon fixation," says Professor Dave Scanlan of the University of Warwick; "Determining how much carbon different groups fix into biomass is required for a full understanding of the Earth's carbon cycle," adds Professor Mikhail Zubkov of the National Oceanography Centre.

In research, published April 15 in the Journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology, the scientists report how they measured carbon fixation by dominant phytoplankton groups in the subtropical and tropical northeast Atlantic Ocean, using samples collected from surface waters during a research cruise aboard the Royal Research Ship Discovery.

They discovered that eukaryotic phytoplankton actually fix significant amounts of carbon, contributing up to 44% of the total, despite being considerably less abundant than cyanobacteria. "This is most likely because eukaryotic phytoplankton cells, although small, are bigger than cyanobacteria, allowing them to assimilate more fixed carbon," says Zubkov.

Two groups of eukaryotes were distinguished, 'EukA' cells being more abundant but smaller than 'EukB' cells. Molecular techniques revealed that EukB largely comprised photosynthetic organisms called prymnesiophytes, most of which have never been cultured in the laboratory. Many of these are probably previously unknown species.

"Prymnesiophytes accounted for up to 38 per cent of total primary production in the subtropical and tropical northeast Atlantic Ocean," says Scanlan: "This suggests that they play a key role in oceanic carbon fixation, but this needs to be confirmed by widespread sampling from the world's oceans."

Zubkov recently showed that small eukaryotic phytoplankton can obtain carbon by feeding on bacteria, supplementing carbon fixed through photosynthesis.

It is likely that some of the organic carbon of prymnesiophytes and other eukaryotic phytoplankton is eventually exported from the photic zone to the deep ocean, rather than being returned to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

"Given their clear importance, it is crucial that we now go on to understand the factors controlling growth of small eukaryotes in the oceans," concludes Scanlan.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100415085344.htm

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Florida's natural springs in crisis: Which ones are cleanest, most polluted?

Time running out this session for bill aimed at repairing, protecting Florida's aquatic gems

Fanning Springs had a lush garden of native underwater plants when the artesian jewel became a state park a little more than a decade ago.

Today, a witch's hairdo of algae dominates Fanning's waters. About 35 miles from Gainesville, the cluster of springs has earned recognition as among the state's most polluted and a prime example of what's killing ecosystems at many of Florida's best-known springs.

Sweeping water legislation aimed in large part at repairing and protecting springs across the state is pending in Tallahassee, marking at least the fifth year in a row of serious attempts to bolster safeguards for one of Florida's environmental treasures. But with just three weeks left in the current legislative session, it is unclear whether this year's bill finally will succeed.

"This is the biggest change in water law in at least 20 years," said state Sen. Lee Constantine, R- Altamonte Springs, the author of SB 550. "When you do something like that, it's always dicey."

Ecosystem disasters have been emerging at the biggest of nearly 700 known Florida springs, including Wakulla near Tallahassee; the most iconic, such as the mermaid playground at Weeki Wachee north of Tampa Bay; and even ones as highly protected as the Wekiwa near Orlando.

In essence, complex and rich arrangements of aquatic plants, fish and wildlife are being snuffed out by simple but overwhelming forms of algae.

The culprit is an extremely common type of water pollution, soaking deep into the ground from a variety of sources, including septic tanks, sewage plants, agriculture, lawn fertilizer and dirty stormwater. It's called nitrate, a form of nitrogen and an essential nutrient for plant growth.

Peer into the massive pool created by Silver Springs near Ocala, and to the untrained eye there's not much sign that anything is wrong.

Even through the glass bottoms of the vintage Yahalochee and Charlie Cypress tour boats, the basin seems to thrive with turtles, fish and long, skinny plants that look like giant blades of grass.

Scientists suspect, however, appearances are deceiving at Silver Springs.

Bob Knight, University of Florida professor and springs researcher for 30 years, and other aquatic scientists have documented how rising nitrate levels initially act as a growth booster for a spring's plants and then wreak havoc.

Alexander Springs, deep in Ocala National Forest, is possibly the state's cleanest — nearly what Mother Nature originally designed — with a nitrate level of far less than 1 part per million and measuring consistently at about 0.05 parts per million. That tells scientists healthy springs have extremely low levels of nitrate.

Serious harm begins in a range of 0.2 to 0.4 parts per million of nitrate. At that point, native spring plants are getting force-fed a high-calorie diet. The signature vegetation of healthy springs — eelgrass and tape grass — surges with growth.

The nitrate level at Silver Springs has pushed to 1.4 parts per million and is still rising.

"At higher concentrations, what we see is a flip where the system stops supporting the submerged aquatic vegetation — like the tape grass and the eelgrass — and it starts supporting more and more algae and a different kind of algae: filamentous algae," Knight said, referring to the type that looks like an unruly wig.

"The thickness of these algae mats can be a foot or more, and it totally replaces submerged plants," he said.

Knight studied under one of Florida's earliest springs scientists, Howard Odum, and has at his fingertips a half-century of data on Silver Springs biology and chemistry. He fears the system is vulnerable to that flip.

At Fanning Springs, the nitrate level is about 6 parts per million, which approaches a concentration too toxic to drink. The loss of eelgrass and related variety of other plants was relatively sudden, leaving an ecosystem "pretty much sterile" compared with the flora and fauna once in place, said park manager Sally Lieb.

At Wekiwa Springs, where algae growth is rampant, nitrate levels often exceed 1 part per million.

Knight thinks if dramatic action were taken to prevent nitrate from getting into springs — for example, by connecting septic tanks to modern sewage systems and limiting use of farm fertilizers in sensitive areas — the problem would still persist because of the heavy load of pollutant now stored in the aquifer system that supplies water to springs.

"The springs are just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "We've got a Floridan Aquifer contamination issue with nitrate. It's going to take years, even if you stopped fertilizing in Florida, for rain to rinse that nitrate out."

There is evidence springs can be salvaged. Nitrate in Wekiwa Springs, for example, has lessened slightly as a result of closure of the massive farms around Lake Apopka and the decline of the area's citrus industry.

The city of Tallahassee has been revamping the way it disposes of treated sewage in an attempt to lessen nitrate turning up in waters of Wakulla Springs.

"It's worth noting we are already seeing improvements," said Michael Sole, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and a strong supporter of most of Constantine's water bill.

Late last week, Constantine held a six-hour meeting in Tallahassee with bill opponents, including representatives of farming, construction and other industries. He agreed to consider modifying some of the bill's provisions, which include measures to improve septic tanks, reform stormwater regulations, establish springs-protection zones and put Florida on a path to adopting more-precise water-quality standards. He also is working to align his legislation with various sections of water legislation in the House.

The bill is slated for one more committee stop before advancing to the Senate floor for debate.

"We've got a good shot," Constantine said. "A lot better shot than we did last year."

Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5062.

Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/os-floridas-dying-springs-20100411,0,7837975.story

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Hawaiian Submarine Canyons Are Hotspots of Biodiversity and Biomass for Seafloor Animal Communities

ScienceDaily — Underwater canyons have long been considered important habitats for marine life, but until recently, only canyons on continental margins had been intensively studied. Researchers from Hawaii Pacific University (HPU) and the Universtiy of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) have now conducted the first extensive study of canyons in the oceanic Hawaiian Archipelago and found that these submarine canyons support especially abundant and unique communities of megafauna (large animals such as fish, shrimp, crabs, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins) including 41 species not observed in other habitats in the Hawaiian Islands.

The research is published in the the March issue of the journal Marine Ecology.

The researchers used both visual and video surveys from 36 submersible dives (using UHM's Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory submersibles Pisces IV and Pisces V) to characterize slope and canyon communities of animals at depths of 350-1500 meters along the margins of four islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago. The coastlines of Oahu and Molokai were selected as examples of high, mountainous islands with large supplies of terrestrial and marine organic matter which can be exported down slopes and canyons to provide food to deep-sea communities. Nihoa Island and Maro Reef were chosen to represent low islands and atolls that are likely to export less organic matter to feed the deep-sea fauna.

Eric Vetter, the lead author of this paper and a Professor of Marine Biology from HPU, had previously studied four canyon systems off the coast of California and found that the productive waters along southern California had resulted in the delivery and accumulation of substantial amounts of organic material. "Craig Smith (Professor of Oceanography at UHM and co-author of this study) and I wondered if the same dramatic contrast in benthic food resources between canyon and non-canyon settings seen in continental margins would also occur on tropical oceanic islands," says Vetter. "We reasoned that the low productivity in tropical regions would result in reduced source material for organic enrichment in canyons and that steep bathymetry combined with curving coastlines would limit the area over which material could be transported to individual canyons. On the other hand we thought that any amount of organic enrichment might have a measureable effect given the very low background productivity."

Canyon systems can enhance abundance and diversity of marine life by providing more varied and complex physical habitats, and by concentrating organic detritus moving along shore and downslope. On most continental margins, the continental shelf and slope are dominated by soft, low-relief sediments; in contrast, canyons crossing these margins often have steep slopes, rocky outcrops, and faster currents that can support fauna with diverse habitat requirements. The margins of oceanic islands generally are steeper than continental margins, making the physical contrast between canyon and non-canyon habitats potentially less dramatic than along continents. "We wanted to learn, given all of these differences, if tropical oceanic islands would be regions of special biological significance, particularly in terms of productivity and biodiversity," says Vetter.

To conduct the research off Oahu, Molokai, and Maro Reef, Vetter, Smith and UHM Doctoral student Fabio De Leo took turns in the submersibles counting marine life on the ocean bottom using visual transects and recording results into a voice recorder. The survey off of Nihoa Island was conducted using a video recorder attached to the submersible. The results of the 36 surveys showed that the highly mobile megafauna (like fish, sharks, shrimp and squid) were much more abundant in the canyons than on the open slopes at all depths studied. This suggests that canyons provide an especially good habitat for mobile species that are able to feed on accumulated organic matter but can escape the physical disturbances in canyons resulting from high currents and mobile sediments (e.g., migrating sand ripples).

"Perhaps the biggest surprise of this study was the large number of species, 41, that we found only in canyon habitats," says Smith. "This suggests that canyons support a substantial specialized fauna that would not exist in the Hawaiian archipelago in the absence of canyons. Thus, submarine canyons are contributing uniquely to biodiversity in the islands and merit careful attention for environmental protection and management."

The elevated abundance and biodiversity of megafauna (especially highly mobile species of fish and crustaceans) in canyons suggests that those environments experience greater food availability, and may provide critical habitat for commercially important bottom fish and invertebrate stocks. "From a conservation standpoint, these regions would be ideal candidates to become Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), especially due to the higher turnover of species diversity when compared to regular slopes," says De Leo. "If we prove that the animals are using the canyons as a feeding ground because the organic debris accumulates there and nowhere else outside the canyons, that's another argument for an MPA." Adds Smith, "if we allow the Hawaiian canyons to be overexploited or impacted by human activities such as dredge-spoil dumping, there is likely to be a significant drop in biodiversity in the deep waters of Hawaii. Clearly, canyon habitats merit special attention for inclusion in Hawaiian MPAs."

Future studies by the team of the Hawaiian canyon fauna include analyses of the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in shrimp, urchins and other bottom feeders to identify their main food sources. Because different potential food sources, such as land plants, seafloor algae and phytoplankton, often have different stable isotope "signatures," these analyses will help the researchers to understand what exactly is fueling the rich animal assemblages in the canyons. "We need biochemical proof that the canyons are really channeling this type of material," says DeLeo. "Carbon and nitrogen isotopic signatures could tell the difference between the detrital plant material and the phytoplankton material pools, so you can see if the animal in the canyon is eating phytoplankton cells coming from pelagic production or macroalgae coming from the coast."

Vetter says that their current research is also formulating conceptual models that will allow the researchers to predict which features associated with different canyon systems act to influence biological patterns including animal abundance and diversity. "DeLeo's PhD research will include data on megafauna and macrofauna (smaller animals living in the sediments) patterns in canyons along the U.S. West Coast, Hawaii, and New Zealand, which should make important strides here."

This research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ocean Exploration Office, by the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at UHM, and by the Census of Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life (CeDAMar). We also thank Capes-Fulbright for a fellowship for DeLeo.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100407185958.htm

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World's Deepest Known Undersea Volcanic Vents Discovered

ScienceDaily — A British scientific expedition has discovered the world's deepest undersea volcanic vents, known as 'black smokers', 3.1 miles (5000 metres) deep in the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean. Using a deep-diving vehicle remotely controlled from the Royal Research Ship James Cook, the scientists found slender spires made of copper and iron ores on the seafloor, erupting water hot enough to melt lead, nearly half a mile deeper than anyone has seen before.

Deep-sea vents are undersea springs where superheated water erupts from the ocean floor. They were first seen in the Pacific three decades ago, but most are found between one and two miles deep. Scientists are fascinated by deep-sea vents because the scalding water that gushes from them nourishes lush colonies of deep-sea creatures, which has forced scientists to rewrite the rules of biology. Studying the life-forms that thrive in such unlikely havens is providing insights into patterns of marine life around the world, the possibility of life on other planets, and even how life on Earth began.

The expedition to the Cayman Trough is being run by Drs Doug Connelly, Jon Copley, Bramley Murton, Kate Stansfield and Professor Paul Tyler, all from Southampton, UK. They used a robot submarine called Autosub6000, developed by engineers at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton, to survey the seafloor of the Cayman Trough in unprecedented detail. The team then launched another deep-sea vehicle called HyBIS, developed by team member Murton and Berkshire-based engineering company Hydro-Lek Ltd, to film the world's deepest vents for the first time.

"Seeing the world's deepest black-smoker vents looming out of the darkness was awe-inspiring," says Copley, a marine biologist at the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES) based at the NOC and leader of the overall research programme. "Superheated water was gushing out of their two-storey high mineral spires, more than three miles deep beneath the waves." He added: "We are proud to show what British underwater technology can achieve in exploring this frontier -- the UK subsea technology sector is worth £4 billion per year and employs 40 000 people, which puts it on a par with our space industry."

The Cayman Trough is the world's deepest undersea volcanic rift, running across the seafloor of the Caribbean. The pressure three miles deep at the bottom of the Trough -- 500 times normal atmospheric pressure -- is equivalent to the weight of a large family car pushing down on every square inch of the creatures that live there, and on the undersea vehicles that the scientists used to reveal this extreme environment. The researchers will now compare the marine life in the abyss of the Cayman Trough with that known from other deep-sea vents, to understand the web of life throughout the deep ocean. The team will also study the chemistry of the hot water gushing from the vents, and the geology of the undersea volcanoes where these vents are found, to understand the fundamental geological and geochemical processes that shape our world.

"We hope our discovery will yield new insights into biogeochemically important elements in one of the most extreme naturally occurring environments on our planet," says geochemist Doug Connelly of the NOC, who is the Principal Scientist of the expedition.

"It was like wandering across the surface of another world," says geologist Bramley Murton of the NOC, who piloted the HyBIS underwater vehicle around the world's deepest volcanic vents for the first time. "The rainbow hues of the mineral spires and the fluorescent blues of the microbial mats covering them were like nothing I had ever seen before."

The expedition will continue to explore the depths of the Cayman Trough until 20th April.

In addition to the scientists from Southampton, the team aboard the ship includes researchers from the University of Durham in the UK, the University of North Carolina Wilmington and the University of Texas in the US, and the University of Bergen in Norway. The expedition members are also working with colleagues ashore at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Duke University in the US to analyse the deep-sea vents.

The expedition is part of a research project funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council to study the world's deepest undersea volcanoes. The research team will return to the Cayman Trough for a second expedition using the UK's deep-diving remotely-operated vehicle Isis, once a research ship is scheduled for the next phase of their project.

Additional information

(1) The expedition aboard the RRS James Cook began in Port of Spain, Trinidad on 21st March and ends in Montego Bay, Jamaica on 21st April. It is part of a £462k research project funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council.

(2) The RRS James Cook is the UK's newest ocean-going research ship, operated by the Natural Environment Research Council. The current expedition is the 44th voyage of the ship.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100411214117.htm

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Congress schedules hearing on marine mammals in captivity

Prompted by the recent death of SeaWorld trainer, a Congressional committee will hold hearings that may lead to more oversight

They've entertained millions at marine parks and aquariums — whales, dolphins and other sea mammals spinning and splashing to the delight of audiences for decades.

But the recent death of a SeaWorld trainer by a killer whale in Orlando and the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove," about dolphin captures in Japan, have cast unprecedented attention on the industry that brought us Shamu and Flipper.

A Congressional committee has scheduled an oversight hearing April 27 to hear testimony on marine mammals in captivity. The Sun Sentinel confirmed the hearing by the House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife through federal officials who have been asked to testify.

Animal welfare advocates are hoping for tighter regulation of a multibillion-dollar business that they say has profited at the expense of sea animals.

"There's a whole other side to the industry that I think the public is beginning to understand,'' said Courtney Vail, a spokeswoman for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, which opposes keeping marine mammals in captivity. "It's not all sunshine and happiness.''

The Sun Sentinel explored the world behind marine parks in a 2004 investigative series. It found that over the previous three decades, about 1,500 sea lions, seals, dolphins and whales in marine parks had died at a young age, some from human hazards such as capture shock and ingestion of coins and foreign objects.

The industry took root in Florida when the first marine park, Marineland of Florida, opened in 1938, and fostered an international trade with killer whales now worth up to $5 million each.

Until the 1980s, many of the marine stars came from the wild, with Florida waters supplying bottlenose dolphins that ended up at parks in Europe, Israel and Canada. U.S. attractions stopped capturing marine mammals more than 15 years ago and now rely on breeding.

Today, of the 1,243 marine mammals in the nation's parks, zoos and aquariums, only 15 percent were caught in the wild, a Sun Sentinel analysis of federal data shows. Another 14 percent were found stranded on beaches, and the rest were born in captivity.

Florida still leads the nation with 391 marine mammals at 14 attractions. SeaWorld in Orlando has the most, 207. Miami Seaquarium, the country's fourth-largest facility, has the oldest living killer whale in captivity, Lolita, captured in 1970 and estimated to be 43 years old.

Marine parks say they educate and expose visitors to animals they might never see in the wild. Congress recognized that value in 1972, exempting "public display'' facilities from a ban on capturing and importing marine mammals as long as they provide education or conservation programs.

But the National Marine Fisheries Service, one of two federal agencies with oversight responsibility, never adopted regulations for those education programs. The Fisheries Services has been asked to testify at the Congressional hearing this month.

Naomi Rose, senior scientist at the Humane Society International, said more oversight is long overdue. "If [parks] are in fact misleading people and spinning the message to improve their bottom line, that should be a real concern,'' she said.

Sally Kestin can be reached at skestin@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4510.

Source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/fl-congress-marine-parks-20100408,0,2834308.story

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Futuristic underwater resort to be built off Palawan

MANILA, Philippines—Imagine an underwater hotel room with a panoramic view of tropical fish swimming over large coral reefs, manta rays gliding in the water and turtles chasing after tiny squids.

Science fiction? Not if businessman Paul Moñozca can help it.

Moñozca, a Singapore-based financier who heads a group of international investors, plans to start a futuristic underwater resort off the island of Palawan as part of an aggressive venture into the ecotourism business.

The project, dubbed “Last Frontier Resort,” is expected to bring in a total of $1 billion in investments spread over a 10-year period—an average of $100 million a year which, its proponents hope, will help create thousands of direct and indirect jobs in the Palawan.

Moñozca—known for his advocacies of helping improve the overseas remittance business, acquiring stakes in the US professional basketball league and junior circuit stock car racing teams—is the main driver of the project.

His Monaco-based philanthropic fund, dubbed “Spirit,” plays a lead role in the development of marine habitats and ocean protection initiatives.

The Last Frontier Resort will be built with submarine technology. When completed, the proposed underwater habitat will be the biggest in the world.

The project has been in the planning stage since last year, and its proponents have identified a group of islands in the Calamianes cluster as the site for development.

The site is owned by businessman and resort developer Steve Tajanlangit. It is made up of a group of seven islands in close proximity to each other, and another group of seven islands outside the main cluster.

The resulting 14-island project will be the largest of its kind in the world.

Sea spiders

The first phase calls for semi-submersible units called “Sea Spiders,” which will be built by a US firm that specializes on submarines, to serve as observation decks. Each sea spider can accommodate 30 tourists.

To rival similar projects such as the underwater resorts of Dubai, Fiji and the Caribbean, the second phase calls for a 100-room underwater hotel in partnership with a high-end boutique hotel brand spread over the cluster of seven islands.

Suite-size rooms will have a 270-degree view of the ocean underwater with 20-to 40-meter visibility. These rooms will be connected by underwater corridors. A further 85 rooms will be built on another cluster of seven islands.

Quake-free zone

Project proponents chose the pristine islands of Palawan because of its recent standing as a quake-free zone and its clear and cove-protected waters.

One of the site’s islands sits adjacent to the Calauit Nature Reserve. The islands nearby are ideal jump-off points for scuba diving.

“The blue print encompasses a strict adherence to protect the environment and the biodiversity of Palawan,” the group said in a statement.

“Groups of scientists from the Philippines and around the globe are part of the project’s protective strategy especially focused on its long stretches of coral reefs which have previously encountered illegal dynamite and cyanide fishing,” it added.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Philippines serves as financial adviser to the project, which developers expect to be completed by 2013.

By Daxim Lucas
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100405-262424/Futuristic-underwater-resort-to-be-built-off-Palawan

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Plastic Bags Used in DC Drops From 22 Million to 3 Million a Month

The Most Effective Tax Ever?
Washington DC's 5 cent tax on plastic bags, instated just this past January, has already proven to have a phenomenal impact: the number of plastic bags handed out by supermarkets and other establishments dropped from the 2009 monthly average of 22.5 million to just 3 million in January. While significantly reducing plastic waste, the tax simultaneously generated $150,000 in revenue, which will be used to clean up the Anacostia River.

The Washington Post reports:
Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), sponsor of the bag tax bill, said the new figures show that city residents are adapting to the law far more quickly than he or other city officials had expected.

The tax, one of the first of its kind in the nation, is designed to change consumer behavior and limit pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Under regulations created by the D.C. Department of the Environment, bakeries, delicatessens, grocery stores, drugstores, convenience stores, department stores and any other "business that sells food items" must charge the tax on paper or plastic bags.

I love this--I really do. A simple 5 cent tax--with revenues going towards an environmental cause voters rallied around--and consumer behavior is changed for the better in a truly big way. I love that 5 cents, which makes up a tiny percentage of total cost of your purchase even if you were just buying a bag of chips and a beverage, was enough to make consumers reconsider taking a plastic bag.

We're going to have to wait to see if this trend continues, of course, but the results are nothing short of stunning so far--there are 19 million less plastic bags in a landfill because of this tax.

Let's hope other municipalities--and dare I suggest, states?--are paying attention.

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/plastic-bag-use-dc-drops-22-million-3-million.php?campaign=th_weekly_nl

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Slipped Through the Nets. EU misses target by more than 30 years.

ScienceDaily — At the Development Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, the European countries agreed to rebuild their fish stocks to levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield, no later than 2015. According to scientists of the Excellence Cluster "Future Ocean," that goal is already out of reach: Of 54 analysed stocks, only saithe, western horse mackerel and Baltic sprat have a sufficiently large stock size and are fished at a sustainable rate. The state of 12 stocks, including North Sea cod, plaice and halibut, is so bad that they can not recover sufficiently until 2015, even if all fishing was halted. Other stocks could reach the target if fishing pressure was reduced substantially, but that has not happened so far.

These results were published by Dr. Rainer Froese, Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) und Prof. Dr. Alexander Proelß, Walter-Schücking-Institute of International Law of the University of Kiel, in the journal Fish and Fisheries. The German scientists, both members of the interdisciplinary Excellence Cluster "Future Ocean," point out that the continuous overfishing of European stocks constitutes a breach of the precautionary principle, which is a binding principle of Community law.

"The precautionary principle is a binding legal principle for the organs of the European Commission and for the Council of Ministers. The current practice of continuous overfishing violates international law as well as Community law," says Prof. Dr. Alexander Proelß, expert of international law at the Walter-Schücking-Institute.

The obligation to manage fish stocks such that they can produce the maximum sustainable yield is part of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982, which entered into force in 1994. In the "Johannesburg Plan of Implementation" (2002), the European Union as well as Norway, Russia and Iceland, agreed to rebuild their fish stocks to the level that can produce the maximum sustainable yield, no later than 2015. "Until now, the provisions of the Law of the Sea have not been introduced into national law, and the plan of implementation had no visible impact on European fisheries management," says Proelß.

On the contrary: the fishing quotas for 2010 decreed by the Council of Ministers again exceed by far the catches that would allow the rebuilding of the stocks. "If this practice continues, Europe will miss by more than 30 years the goal that it has propagated," says Dr. Rainer Froese, fisheries biologist at the Kiel Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR).

Yet, catches from sustainably managed stocks could be substantially higher. "Our analysis suggests that landings could be 79% higher if stocks had been managed according to the international agreements," says Froese. "However, in European waters stocks are intentionally managed such that they stay close to the brink of collapse. This policy makes no sense from an ecological or economic point of view."

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121155224.htm

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Slipped Through the Net: Europe Misses by More Than 30 Years the International Goal of Rebuilding Its Fish Stocks

ScienceDaily — At the Development Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, the European countries agreed to rebuild their fish stocks to levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield, no later than 2015. According to scientists of the Excellence Cluster "Future Ocean," that goal is already out of reach: Of 54 analysed stocks, only saithe, western horse mackerel and Baltic sprat have a sufficiently large stock size and are fished at a sustainable rate. The state of 12 stocks, including North Sea cod, plaice and halibut, is so bad that they can not recover sufficiently until 2015, even if all fishing was halted. Other stocks could reach the target if fishing pressure was reduced substantially, but that has not happened so far.

These results were published by Dr. Rainer Froese, Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) und Prof. Dr. Alexander Proelß, Walter-Schücking-Institute of International Law of the University of Kiel, in the journal Fish and Fisheries. The German scientists, both members of the interdisciplinary Excellence Cluster "Future Ocean," point out that the continuous overfishing of European stocks constitutes a breach of the precautionary principle, which is a binding principle of Community law.

"The precautionary principle is a binding legal principle for the organs of the European Commission and for the Council of Ministers. The current practice of continuous overfishing violates international law as well as Community law," says Prof. Dr. Alexander Proelß, expert of international law at the Walter-Schücking-Institute.

The obligation to manage fish stocks such that they can produce the maximum sustainable yield is part of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982, which entered into force in 1994. In the "Johannesburg Plan of Implementation" (2002), the European Union as well as Norway, Russia and Iceland, agreed to rebuild their fish stocks to the level that can produce the maximum sustainable yield, no later than 2015. "Until now, the provisions of the Law of the Sea have not been introduced into national law, and the plan of implementation had no visible impact on European fisheries management," says Proelß.

On the contrary: the fishing quotas for 2010 decreed by the Council of Ministers again exceed by far the catches that would allow the rebuilding of the stocks. "If this practice continues, Europe will miss by more than 30 years the goal that it has propagated," says Dr. Rainer Froese, fisheries biologist at the Kiel Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR).

Yet, catches from sustainably managed stocks could be substantially higher. "Our analysis suggests that landings could be 79% higher if stocks had been managed according to the international agreements," says Froese. "However, in European waters stocks are intentionally managed such that they stay close to the brink of collapse. This policy makes no sense from an ecological or economic point of view."

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121155224.htm

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About Oceanic Defense
We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

Join us on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/OceanicDefense
Visit our official website:
www.oceanicdefense.org
Follow us on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/OceanicDefense