How does the sound of a tiny tremor of the earth differ from the sound of a huge passing whale? That is one of the things that scientists had to figure out while listening for the sound of methane release from the sea floor.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2Iiqp6B
via IFTTT
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Coromandel mangrove row hits Parliament
|
from mangroves - Google News https://ift.tt/2H1Yysg
via IFTTT
Friday, March 30, 2018
Did highest known sea levels create the iconic shape of Mount Etna?
New research suggests the Mediterranean Sea may have played a major role in the development of its iconic shape tens of thousands of years ago.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2GD5AWq
via IFTTT
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2GD5AWq
via IFTTT
Boost for RoRo water transport project: Bombay HC allows Cidco to replant mangroves in Nerul
Injured golden jackal rescued from Mumbai housing complex near Vikhroli mangroves
A Mangrove Misunderstanding: Silent Guardians of the Coast
|
from mangroves - Google News https://ift.tt/2pWAjEz
via IFTTT
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Herring larvae could benefit from an acidifying ocean
Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the oceans more acidic. Some studies show that's bad news for fish, including commercially important species. But a new study shows that herring might be able to tolerate this change.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2IhDTjh
via IFTTT
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2IhDTjh
via IFTTT
NASA visualizes the dance of a melting snowflake
NASA has produced the first three-dimensional numerical model of melting snowflakes in the atmosphere. The model provides a better understanding of how snow melts can help scientists recognize the signature in radar signals of heavier, wetter snow -- the kind that breaks power lines and tree limbs -- and could be a step toward improving predictions of this hazard.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2GUKAYN
via IFTTT
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2GUKAYN
via IFTTT
Weather phenomena such as El Niño affect up to two-thirds of the world's harvests
Large-scale weather cycles, such as the one related to the El Niño phenomenon, affect two-thirds of the world's cropland. In these so called climate oscillations, air pressure, sea level temperature or other similar factors fluctuate regularly in areas far apart in a way that causes rain and temperature patterns to shift significantly.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2IXNbBX
via IFTTT
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2IXNbBX
via IFTTT
The Arctic sea-ice loss and winter temperatures in Eurasia
A long debate of the role of the sea ice and the winter temperatures in Eurasia has got a new contribution. Probably no connection, a new study says.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2GDfGXa
via IFTTT
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2GDfGXa
via IFTTT
Anthropogenic lead still present in European shelf seas
Over many decades lead (Pb) has been released into the atmosphere due to human activities, such as combustion of leaded fuel. Researchers have now been able to show that following the phase-out of leaded gasoline in Europe over the last decades, there has been a 4-fold reduction in Pb concentrations in the European shelf seas. Nevertheless, the legacy of the historical global Pb pollution is still evident.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2utpPkH
via IFTTT
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2utpPkH
via IFTTT
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Dee Estuary coastal walk to help improve the area
Westport Island cuts taxes on KELT properties
|
from estuary - Google News https://ift.tt/2GjtjeT
via IFTTT
Kus-kus-sum
|
from estuary - Google News https://ift.tt/2IdfJWO
via IFTTT
State plans to haze cormorants in estuaries
|
from estuary - Google News https://ift.tt/2GjtdE3
via IFTTT
Sea Shepherd Saves 25 Critically Endangered Totoabas in the Height of Spawning Season
Conservationists intercept and remove illegal gillnet minutes before recovery by poachers, saving entire school of totoaba bass from black market trade.
SAN FELIPE, BAJA CALIFORNIA MEXICO – March 26th, 2018 – At 7:45 pm PST Sea Shepherd vessel M/V SHARPIE came upon an illegal gillnet within the Vaquita Refuge in the Northern Sea of Cortez, Mexico. The gillnet was entangled in a longline. As the ship’s crew began to separate the illegal fishing gear, they noticed live totoaba bass in the net, embarking on an unprecedented rescue operation.
It is the height of totoaba bass spawning season in the Upper Gulf of California, when the endangered fish migrate directly to an area inhabited by the vaquita porpoise. The vaquita is currently the most endangered marine mammal in the world, and continues to be threatened as bycatch in the illegal totoaba trade.
Tensions are rising in the Upper Gulf of California. Poachers have become more aggressive towards Sea Shepherd vessels, using firearms to shoot down drones and incendiary objects to intimidate the crew. Thanks to the addition of armed Enforcement Agents, and an emboldened pact with Mexico’s Environment and Fisheries Ministries, Federal Environmental Attorney’s Office and Federal Police, security has drastically improved, allowing Sea Shepherd to continue its important work protecting the Vaquita Refuge.
The totoaba bass is highly sought after due to its valuable swim bladder. Much like shark fins or rhino horns, totoaba bladders are sold in Asian markets as medicinal quackery. One totoaba bladder can sell upwards of 10,000 USD in Asia.
Although poachers in the Gulf of California see only a fraction of the street price, they do well by local standards, which has added the totoaba to the economics of extinction, consequently pushing the vaquita porpoise to the brink of extinction as a tragic side effect.
All seemed normal the evening of March 25th as the Sea Shepherd M/V Sharpie patrolled the protected vaquita area looking for illegal activity. The ship’s captain, Fanch Martin from France, spotted a net by deciphering ship’s sonar data, a new method developed by Sea Shepherd in recent months.
“It was a challenge to maintain the ship’s position in the strong current while the crew pulled the net and saved the fish quickly and efficiently, while at the same time, keeping the longline tight enough so it would not entangle my propeller” said Captain Fanch, adding “The coordination of the crew and the authorities on board was intense. Everyone was involved and focused, it was an all hands on deck moment, and the crew did an amazing job, with the extraordinary outcome of saving every single totoaba in that net; this has never happened before.”
The M/V Sharpie’s bosun, Willie Hatfield, who coordinated the deck activities stated, “This is a quintessential moment for Operation Milagro, saving a whole school of spawning critically endangered totoaba at once means so much.” After the two intense hours it took to save all the fish and remove the illegal fishing gear from the Sea of Cortez, he added. “As we were leaving, we saw a skiff coming to retrieve the net.
Those fish were five minutes away from death and we saved them, it was a miracle.”
Sea Shepherd operates two former Island Class US Coast Patrol ships in the area protecting the vaquita as part of Operation Milagro IV, the M/V Sharpie and M/V Farley Mowat. Each ship hosts five Enforcement Officers from the Government of Mexico on board, with the ability to make arrests, prevent poaching in the Refuge and assure the proper disposal of dead totoaba fish. The officers were essential in saving the totoaba, as they tirelessly helped the Sea Shepherd crew, both in keeping the fish alive while being freed from the net, and ensuring the vessel’s safety from armed poachers.
To date Sea Shepherd has removed 596 pieces of illegal fishing gear from the Sea of Cortez since starting its effort to protect the vaquita porpoise in 2015, saving 2661 animals in the process. That accounts for over 100 kilometers (62 miles) of nets removed, which is the distance from earth to outer space and the height of nine Everest mountains. Sea Shepherd works with members of its partner network to ensure these illegal nets will be recycled responsibly and never find their way back into the ocean.
from Sea Shepherd https://ift.tt/2pMKr2l
via IFTTT
West Greenland Ice Sheet melting at the fastest rate in centuries
The West Greenland Ice Sheet melted at a dramatically higher rate over the last twenty years than at any other time in the modern record, according to a study led by Dartmouth College. The research, appearing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, shows that melting in west Greenland since the early 1990s is at the highest levels in at least 450 years.
While natural patterns of certain atmospheric and ocean conditions are already known to influence Greenland melt, the study highlights the importance of a long-term warming trend to account for the unprecedented west Greenland melt rates in recent years. The researchers suggest that climate change most likely associated with human greenhouse gas emissions is the probable cause of the additional warming.
"We see that west Greenland melt really started accelerating about twenty years ago," said Erich Osterberg, assistant professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth and the lead scientist on the project. "Our study shows that the rapid rise in west Greenland melt is a combination of specific weather patterns and an additional long-term warming trend over the last century."
According to research cited in the study, loss of ice from Greenland is one of the largest contributors to global sea level rise. Although glaciers calving into the ocean cause much of the ice loss in Greenland, other research cited in the study shows that the majority of ice loss in recent years is from increased surface melt and runoff.
While satellite measurements and climate models have detailed this recent ice loss, there are far fewer direct measurements of melt collected from the ice sheet itself. For this study, researchers from Dartmouth and Boise State University spent two months on snowmobiles to collect seven ice cores from the remote "percolation zone" of the West Greenland Ice Sheet.
When warm temperatures melt snow on the surface of the percolation zone, the melt water trickles down into the deeper snow and refreezes into ice layers. Researchers were easily able to distinguish these ice layers from the surrounding compacted snow in the cores, preserving a history of how much melt occurred back through time. The more melt, the thicker the ice layers.
"Most ice cores are collected from the middle of the ice sheet where it rarely ever melts, or on the ice sheet edge where the meltwater flows into the ocean. We focused on the percolation zone because that's where we find the best record of Greenland melt going back through time in the form of the refrozen ice layers," said Karina Graeter, the lead author of the study as a graduate student in Dartmouth's Department of Earth Sciences.
The cores, some as long as 100-feet, were transported to Dartmouth where the research team used a light table to measure the thickness and frequency of the ice layers. The cores were also sampled for chemical measurements in Dartmouth's Ice Core Laboratory to determine the age of each ice layer.
The cores reveal that the ice layers became thicker and more frequent beginning in the 1990s, with recent melt levels that are unmatched since at least the year 1550 CE.
"The ice core record ends about 450 years ago, so the modern melt rates in these cores are the highest of the whole record that we can see," said Osterberg. "The advantage of the ice cores is that they show us just how unusual it is for Greenland to be melting this fast."
Year-to-year changes in Greenland melt since 1979 were already known to be closely tied to North Atlantic ocean temperatures and high-pressure systems that sit above Greenland during the summer -- known as summer blocking highs. The new study extends the record back in time to show that these were important controls on west Greenland melt going back to at least 1870.
The study also shows that an additional summertime warming factor of 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit is needed to explain the unusually strong melting observed since the 1990s. The additional warming caused a near-doubling of melt rates in the twenty-year period from 1995 to 2015 compared to previous times when the same blocking and ocean conditions were present.
"It is striking to see how a seemingly small warming of only 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit can have such a large impact on melt rates in west Greenland," said Graeter.
The study concludes that North Atlantic ocean temperatures and summer blocking activity will continue to control year-to-year changes in Greenland melt into the future. Some climate models suggest that summer blocking activity and ocean temperatures around Greenland might decline in the next several decades, but it remains uncertain. However, the study points out that continued warming from human activities would overwhelm those weather patterns over time to further increase melting.
"Cooler North Atlantic ocean temperatures and less summer blocking activity might slow down Greenland melt for a few years or even a couple decades, but it would not help us in the long run," said Osterberg. "Beyond a few decades, Greenland melting will almost certainly increase and raise sea level as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases."
Story Source:
Materials provided by Dartmouth College. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2Ibo1yC
via IFTTT
Dramatic increase in flooding on coastal roads
High tide floods, or so-called "nuisance flooding," that happen along shore roadways during seasonal high tides or minor wind events are occurring far more frequently than ever before. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have found that in the past 20 years roads along the East Coast have experienced a 90 percent increase in flooding -- often making the roads in these communities impassable, causing delays, as well as stress, and impacting transportation of goods and services.
"This could be just the beginning of impact on these areas," said Jennifer Jacobs, professor of civil and environmental engineering. "With the continued rise in sea levels, nuisance-flood frequency is projected to grow and the effect on the physical roads and the people that live along the coastline is concerning."
In their study, recently published in the journal Transportation Research Record, the researchers found that tidal nuisance flooding threatens over 7,500 miles of roadways along the entire East Coast, with over 400 miles of that being interstate roads. They estimate that this causes over 100 million hours of delays each year for drivers on those roads and that number could rise to more than 3.4 billion hours by 2100. By the middle of the century (2056 -2065), they predict nuisance flooding could occur almost daily at specific sites along the shores of Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia, North Carolina, and Florida under an intermediate sea-level-rise scenario.
"As tidal coastal flooding increases in the coming years, there will also be issues with the transportation infrastructure," said Jacobs. "We've already seen billions of dollars in damage to coastal roadways from recent hurricanes. In the future, with rising sea levels, we expect to see more frequent issues, more damage, and impact to roadways even farther inland."
Researchers note that these impacts are not limited to storm events. They say that critical transportation infrastructure is at risk from sea level rise alone; which numerous transportation agencies project to be between one to eight feet, along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.
The researchers say that the goal of this study is to better understand the type and extent of roadway infrastructures that are vulnerable to high tide flooding and the transportation impacts now and in the future due to sea level rise. This study focuses on the East Coast of the United States and includes all coastal states from Maine to Florida, including the Gulf Coast of Florida and Key West.
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of New Hampshire. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2pNJkPk
via IFTTT
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Untangling the role of climate on sediment and reef evolution over millennial timescales
Climatic variability like precipitation changes or increase in extreme events such as storms and tropical cyclones is known to significantly modify the Earth's surface. Yet, our understanding of how sediment dynamics and reef evolution might respond to these changes is still limited.
In a recent study, a team of researchers from the University of Sydney's School of Geosciences has designed a new model that simulates sediment transport from mountains to coasts, reworking of marine sediments by wave-induced currents, and development of coral reefs.
Using the Great Barrier Reef as their study case, they estimated the evolution of the region over the last 14,000 years and showed that (1) high sediment loads from catchments erosion prevented coral growth during the early phase of sea level rise and favoured deep offshore sediment deposition; (2) how the fine balance between climate, sea level, and margin physiography enabled coral reefs to thrive under limited shelf sedimentation rates at 6,000 years before present; and, (3) how over the last 3,000 years, the decrease of accommodation space led to the lateral extension of coral reefs consistent with available observational data.
By validating model results against geological observations, the study indicates that changes in runoff, sea level and wave energy have profoundly affected the past evolution of the Great Barrier Reef not only in regard to reefs evolution but also sediment fate from source-to-sink.
Even though the actual rate of global warming far exceeds that of any previous episodes in the past 14,000 years, large changes in global climate have occurred periodically throughout Earth's history.
Knowing how these past climatic changes have altered sediment transport from landmasses to coasts and how sediment accumulation influenced reef development help to identify specific patterns and improve future predictions. The new proposed model could allow a better quantification of the impacts that will likely occur under changing climate and could be considered in future ocean resources and land use management.
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Sydney. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2IaWyND
via IFTTT
Councillors back £5m cycle trail linking Exeter, Mid Devon and East Devon
Travel writer's walk and talk along the Dee Estuary
Mexican Government Announces Immediate Fixes to Stem Tijuana Sewage Flow
Three Rivers, One Estuary
|
from estuary - Google News https://ift.tt/2IYgRif
via IFTTT
Join 'the Bald Hiker' on a coastal path walk as he seeks views on the Dee Estuary
Kingsbridge Estuary Rotary Club are offering grants of up to £750 - apply now
Study offers pearl of wisdom on contested oyster restoration in NYC waters
COLUMN: Take an easy hike on Woodpecker Trail
|
from estuary - Google News https://ift.tt/2pJlUue
via IFTTT
Monday, March 26, 2018
So, You Want to Live in the Water? A Tale of Why Aquatic Mammals are So Big
Guest post by William Gearty (Ph.D. Student at Stanford University)
Blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) skeleton at the UC Santa Cruz Seymour Marine Discovery Center. Photo by William Gearty.
It’s summertime and you’re sweating from the heat and humidity. You jump in the pool and feel a rush of relief as you suddenly feel cooler. The water might not be colder than the air, but it sure feels like it, and it does a great job of relieving you from the heat. We’re all familiar with this, but did you know it may also explain why whales are so big?
Almost 4 years ago, I began my PhD studies at Stanford University. I was interested in how changes in the environment impact biodiversity through time. I first decided to tackle the question of how transitions from land to water impact body size. Mammals are a well-studied group of animals, and they’ve made this transition multiple independent times. There’s also lots of data on their body size, of species in the modern and the fossil record, so they seemed like a great place to start to answer this question. The original goal was just to test whether aquatic mammals are bigger than we expect by chance, but I was really surprised by what we discovered about the drivers of their evolution.
We did (unsurprisingly) find that aquatic mammals are bigger than expected, but also noticed that, despite each group of aquatic mammals evolving from differently sized terrestrial ancestors, they all evolved to the same size of about 500 kg! Even stranger, we found that aquatic mammals are much more constrained in their body size than their terrestrial counterparts! This goes against almost all the reasons why people believe aquatic mammals are big. Once you’re in the water, the idea goes, you should be able to get as big as you want without being hindered by the limitations of gravity and food shortages. Rather, we found that aquatic mammals must get bigger.
After hitting the books, I was shocked that I was able to develop a simple mathematical model that explained the minimum, maximum, and average sizes that we were seeing in aquatic mammals. The minimum constraint in the model shows that these mammals need to produce more energy in their bodies and lose less of that energy, relatively speaking, to the water, to have any energy left over for reproduction and growth. Otters are the one exception to this trend: we’re thinking that this is because they only spend part of their lives in the water or are more efficient at conserving their body heat with their thick fur, although we haven’t been able to test either of those hypotheses yet.
Sea otter (Enhydra lutris) carrying a crab just off San Juan Island, WA. Photo by William Gearty.
Through developing the model, I also discovered that there’s a maximum limitation on size too. At a certain point, aquatic mammals just can’t eat enough food, no matter how much there is, to sustain larger sizes. For toothed mammals, it appears that this maximum is about the size of a sperm whale. However, baleen whales have figured out a way to eat more efficiently than their toothed cousins, in which they filter entire schools of krill at once from large gulps of water. This feeding strategy seems to allow them to exceed this maximum limit and achieve superwhale sizes.
Long story short, if you want to be a mammal and live in the water for your entire life, you need to get a lot bigger, but you also need to be careful, because you can’t get too much bigger. It’s a tricky balance that aquatic mammals have amazingly mastered at least three times! I’ll stick to my occasional dips in the pool, thank you very much!
William Gearty, Craig R. McClain, Jonathan L. Payne
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Mar 2018, 201712629; DOI:10.1073/pnas.1712629115
from Deep Sea News https://ift.tt/2um1H3b
via IFTTT
Ban costs town traditional material for its ceilings, boats and buildings
Marriages break in Lamu as mangrove loggers lose jobs
Big Read: Marriages break in Lamu as mangrove loggers lose jobs
Sidebar: Ban costs town traditional material for its ceilings, boats and buildings
Greens contest panel's Goregaon mangrove report
Threatened blue carbon ecosystems store carbon 40 times faster than forests
Sunday, March 25, 2018
[OPINION] Climate change and PH seas: Unlocking blue carbon solutions
BMC gets go-ahead for transplanting 87 acres of mangroves
Mangrove conservation prominent in campaign
|
from mangroves - Google News https://ift.tt/2G7E5kj
via IFTTT
Messing about in the Mangroves
|
from mangroves - Google News https://ift.tt/2GnFbvG
via IFTTT
This mangrove safari has an all-female crew
|
from mangroves - Google News https://ift.tt/2GbPsYI
via IFTTT
High court directs forest dept to inspect wetlands, mangroves on Palm Beach Road
MNS: Road project to affect Sepang mangroves
|
from mangroves - Google News https://ift.tt/2GmaAyx
via IFTTT
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Protect our mangroves
|
from mangroves - Google News https://ift.tt/2ugoLjP
via IFTTT
Marina campus mangroves relieved of litter burden
|
from mangroves - Google News https://ift.tt/2pBoT8Z
via IFTTT
HC to finalize orders for protection of mangrove
Friday, March 23, 2018
Arctic wintertime sea ice extent is among lowest on record
Sea ice in the Arctic grew to its annual maximum extent last week, and joined 2015, 2016 and 2017 as the four lowest maximum extents on record, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.
On March 17, the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 5.59 million square miles (14.48 million square kilometers), making it the second lowest maximum on record, at about 23,200 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) larger than the record low maximum reached on March 7, 2017.
More significantly from a scientific perspective, the last four years reached nearly equally low maximum extents and continued the decades-long trend of diminishing sea ice in the Arctic. This year's maximum extent was 448,000 square miles (1.16 million square kilometers) -- an area larger than Texas and California combined -- below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum extent.
Every year, the sea ice cover blanketing the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas thickens and expands during the fall and winter, reaching its maximum yearly extent sometime between late February and early April. The ice then thins and shrinks during the spring and summer until it reaches its annual minimum extent in September. Arctic sea ice has been declining both during the growing and melting seasons in recent decades.
The decline of the Arctic sea ice cover has myriad effects, from changes in climate and weather patterns to impacts on the plants and animals dependent on the ice, and to the indigenous human communities that rely on them. The disappearing ice is also altering shipping routes, increasing coastal erosion and affecting ocean circulation.
"The Arctic sea ice cover continues to be in a decreasing trend and this is connected to the ongoing warming of the Arctic," said Claire Parkinson, senior climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It's a two-way street: the warming means less ice is going to form and more ice is going to melt, but also, because there's less ice, less of the sun's incident solar radiation is reflected off, and this contributes to the warming."
The Arctic has gone through repeated warm episodes this winter, with temperatures climbing more than 40 degrees above average in some regions. The North Pole even experienced temperatures above the freezing point for a few days in February.
In mid-March, cooler temperatures and winds pushed out the edge of the sea ice pack and caused a late surge in ice growth that brought the maximum extent closer in line with the past few years.
In February, a large area of open water appeared in the sea ice cover north of Greenland, within the multiyear ice pack -- the Arctic's oldest and thickest ice. Most of the opening has refrozen but the new ice is expected to be thinner and more fragile, and a new opening might appear during the melt season. This could make the ice in this region more mobile and prone to exiting the Arctic this summer through either the Fram or Nares straits, ultimately melting in the warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
"This old, thicker ice is what we expect to provide stability to the Arctic sea ice system, since we expect that ice not to be as vulnerable to melting out as thinner, younger ice," said Alek Petty, a sea ice researcher at Goddard. "As ice in the Arctic becomes thinner and more mobile, it increases the likelihood for rapid ice loss in the summer."
Despite the fact that this year's melt season will begin with a low winter sea ice extent, this doesn't necessarily mean that we will see another record low summertime extent.
"A lot will depend on what the wind and temperature conditions will be in the spring and summer," Parkinson said.
Starting March 22, Operation IceBridge, NASA's aerial survey of polar ice, is flying over the Arctic Ocean to map the distribution and thickness of sea ice. In the fall, NASA will launch a new satellite mission, the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), which will continuously monitor how sea ice thickness is changing across the Arctic.
For NSIDC's analysis: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/03/arctic-sea-ice-maximum-second-lowest/
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2pzVZWC
via IFTTT
Mangrove Planting Highlights World Water Day 2018 in Jakarta
Maharashtra relaxes 50-metre buffer norm for projects near mangroves
Good and Bad News for Mangrove Research
|
from mangroves - Google News http://ift.tt/2IIFwrf
via IFTTT
Stop Lamu coal plant and lift ban on mangrove logging, state told
Fish can be found when the water clears
Mitigate risk for Malaysia's mangroves
|
from mangroves - Google News http://ift.tt/2G1PnGH
via IFTTT
DENR halts 'balling' of mangroves
|
from mangroves - Google News http://ift.tt/2IKbx1Y
via IFTTT
Embracing Yes/Also: Marine Protected Areas Are Not An Either/Or Proposition
Ocean science and conservation, like any human enterprise, is subject to its fair share of internal messiness from time to time. As someone whose expertise and experience intersects several discrete domains (coral reefs, sharks, marine protected areas, and policy), I’ve witnessed plenty of dust-ups, arguments, and spats over the years. And this week’s flurry of discussion instigated by a New York Times editorial on ocean protected areas is just the latest kerfuffle. In his op-ed, Bigger Is Not Better for Conservation, coral reef scientist and California Academy of Sciences curator, Dr Luiz Rocha, argues that large-scale, remote marine reserves are a disservice to ocean conservation. It’s Dr Rocha’s perspectives, however, that seem more damaging.
Rocha’s argument hinges on four key points:
- The current tally of big, remote marine reserves is in low-conflict, easy to protect (ie, low-hanging fruit) areas of the ocean where human reliance upon them is negligible and therefore government willingness to protect is strong;
- There’s nothing worth protecting in these big, remote areas;
- More important, smaller, near-shore ocean areas with high levels of human use are in dire need of protection;
- Marine protected areas should be science-based (eg, protected zones should be guided by “sustainable catch limits” of commercially targeted species).
Let’s go one-by-one to see if any of these points hold water. [Note: For the sake of brevity, I’ll be using the acronym MPA frequently in this piece for “marine protected area,” but it will also serve as shorthand for “marine reserve,” “protected area,” “locally managed marine area,” or “marine managed area.” I recognize that an MPA may not be managed or enforced, but let’s forego that technicality for the moment.]
POINT 1: “Big MPAs are easy and less consequential.”
As of today, there are approximately 20 large-scale protected areas across the ocean (ranging from tens-of-thousands to millions of square kilometers in protected area). This includes a range from the Marianas Marine National Monument’s 16,400 square kilometers to the 1.15 million square kilometers of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawai’i. These MPAs may consist of fully-protected, no-take (no fishing/extraction) designation to protection that still allows multiple uses. According to the folks at MPA Atlas, there are approximately 15,000 small, coastal MPAs around the world. Some of these, like Cordelia Banks off the island of Roatan in the Bay of Honduras, encompass only 17 square kilometers. Many are even smaller. Totaling all of the massive/remote and small/near-shore MPAs together gets us to approximately 2% of the ocean under some form of protection.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, held in Hawai’i in September 2016, called for member nations to set aside “30% of each marine habitat” in “highly protected MPAs and other effective area-based conservation measures” by 2030, with the ultimate aim being ”a fully sustainable ocean, at least 30% of which has no extractive activities.”
For rhetorical effect, I’ll reiterate that as of March 23, 2018, only 2% of our global oceans is protected, and 2030 is only twelve years away.
As someone in the MPA biz, I can testify that there are at present a small handful of big, deep-pocketed, international NGOs working on big international MPAs: The Pew Charitable Trusts, Conservation International, Oceana, and National Geographic. These folks have the gravitas, influence, and resources to capture heads of state attention and convene forums necessary to get things done. You can bitch all you want about the pros and cons, but this is the reality. Alongside the big NGOs, there are tens-to-hundreds of small to medium-sized NGOs that are working simultaneously on everything from big/remote MPAs to smaller/near-shore MPAs. Sometimes the big NGOs work in concert with the smaller ones. Sometime not. It’s all site dependent.
Having worked on everything from massive MPAs to tiny MPAs over my career, I can say that none of them were “easy wins.” So-called “low hanging fruit” may represent a unique opportunity in time. You may have a receptive government or local community that welcomes the process. It’s always easier to work with the willing than the resistant. But every MPA effort in which I’ve participated involved strategy, identifying champions, public consultations, negotiations, community organizing, building political will, battling nefarious characters, rebooting strategy, sweating-out votes, and of course finding funds to support all of this. If there are “easy wins” out there, big or small, I sure would appreciate someone pointing me in that direction.
Protecting big/remote areas or smaller/near-shore areas is not an either/or game. This is not a binary proposition of doing one or the other. It’s a yes/also. We need to protect small, not so small, medium, larger, big, bigger, and massive tracts of the ocean. We need to protect what is easy to protect, and what is harder to protect. We must gather every bit of low-hanging fruit, and plan to reach the currently out-of-reach fruit. MPAs occupy a spectrum or continuum, and we need to be prepared to work with everything along that spectrum. Some NGOs will have a mandate (and talent) for pursuing big swaths of ocean. Others are more tuned to work on local needs. But there is a lot of real estate between the biggest and smallest MPAs for organizations, individuals, and yes, even FUNDERS to find their niche.
POINT 2: “There’s nothing worth protecting.”
This is just wholesale wrong. What is Rocha considering as “worth” protection? Certainly, there are species whose entire life cycle may be captured by the boundaries of an MPA. Other species may only spend a portion of their lives within the boundaries of protection. Protected areas are designed to factor in these variables. But not all MPAs are envisioned around biological significance alone. The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary in North Carolina, the very first marine national monument designated by the United States in 1975, honors the historic significance of the shipwreck of the famed Civil War ironclad, USS Monitor. Similarly, the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and the entire Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, including the 110 seamounts, open waters, and all life in that area are considered biocultural resources and linked to the Hawaiian people through environmental kinship.
The ocean as a cultural seascape is vital to Hawaiian identity, their being, and essential dimension to their cognitive understanding of the world. The ocean waters in Papahānaumokuākea were an ancient pathway for a voyaging sphere that occurred between this region and the main Hawaiian islands for over 400-500 years (ca. AD 1300-1800). The practice of traditional wayfinding and voyaging—recently popularized in the film Moana and which is one of the most unique living traditions of the world—requires protection of the entire marine environment and open waters, not just the islands and reefs, because it relies on biological signs and natural phenomenon, such as winds, waves, currents, and the presence of marine life and birds at key moments and locations.
At the same time as Papahānaumokuākea was successfully expanded in 2016 by President Obama, the State of Hawai’i also supporting the establishment of small, coastal community-managed makai areas, driven by and for the community. Yes, both can happen at the same time and using the same human capital, as many of the same people fought for both the small makai areas and the big Papahānaumokuākea effort.
Big swaths of protected, healthy ocean also have a role in climate change mitigation. Seventy one percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by ocean. It is the planet’s largest ecosystem and plays a crucial role as a climate regulator. The ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle is critical – it is by far the biggest carbon sink in the world; over the past 200 years the ocean has accumulated twenty six percent to half of atmospheric carbon emissions. The ocean has significantly reduced, and mitigated, the impacts of increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Considering all of this, large-scale, remote ocean protection cannot be driven by species-level/biotic considerations alone.
POINT 3: “There are more important, smaller places to protect.”
Importance is relative and subjective. It is place-driven and context-heavy. What is important to someone in Brazil, might be less so to someone in Hawai’i. So instead of casting stones at our neighbors, perhaps we should recognize that there are seriously limited resources, conservation bandwidth, and political will, and try to triage our priorities. I recognize that the reality is that not all NGOs/organizations like to play-well together. Furthermore, some places and approaches are simply not tenable due to practical considerations and political and social realities. Again, this is a reality of modern conservation. But as I mention above, effective MPAs do not occupy one half of a binary state. It’s not either small or large. Remote or near-shore. Fully managed/enforced or paper parks/un-enforced. Every single MPA in existence occupies a position somewhere along a continuum of effectiveness. Even an un-managed, unfunded, and unenforced MPA is a work in progress along that continuum.
POINT 4: “They’re not science-based.”
Science should help inform MPA zoning and designation. No questions or arguments here. But the science needed may at times be incomplete or lacking. Many decisions around the world, particularly in developing nations, on “sustainable catch limits” are not acted upon because data is deficient. Should we be expected to wait for the science to be decided and settled (whatever that might mean) before action/conservation measures can be activated? And science is but one arrow in our quiver that we should use to scope, establish, and manage MPAs. The social sciences and economics are also driving MPA priorities and planning.
Finally…
I find an editorial like Rocha’s to be, quite frankly, dangerous. Staking-out a claim on one side of a false dichotomy or constructing straw man arguments is the purview of graduate school. I get it… Rocha would like to see more love shown to near shore/coral reef areas (including where he has worked in Brazil). But what is the benefit to conservation as a whole to publish these half-baked propositions that large, remote MPAs are a waste of time in the pages of The New York Times and under the banner of an august and internationally recognized organization like the California Academy of Sciences? We are not currently living in normal times, and this sort of rhetoric plays right into the hands of those keen to see less ocean protection, not more.
For the first time in US history, an administration is rolling back protections on national monuments, both land and sea. Australia just this week has announced the possibility of cutting in half the protections for the Coral Seas MPA. Conservation in one place in the ocean is not the enemy of conservation in another place. And MPAs are not a binary switch of either big or small… Local or remote… Fully protected or not. If we are going to get to the IUCN recommended target of 30% of our oceans under strong protection by 2030, we need to ramp up protections everywhere along the MPA continuum. Yes/Also should become our mantra! We must embrace a process of continuous improvement in our MPA work, not display a reflex of undercutting other conservation efforts. And we need to keep our focus and attention on the real threats to a healthy ocean: over-fishing, illegal fishing, pollution, climate change, and lack of political will for action.
from Deep Sea News http://ift.tt/2IJPEzQ
via IFTTT
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Deep impact: Deep-sea wildlife more vulnerable to extinction than first thought
We have only known about the existence of the unusual yeti crabs (Kiwaidae) -- a family of crab-like animals whose hairy claws and bodies are reminiscent of the abominable snowman -- since 2005, but already their future survival could be at risk.
New Oxford University research suggests that past environmental changes may have profoundly impacted the geographic range and species diversity of this family. The findings indicate that such animals may be more vulnerable to the effects of human resource exploitation and climate change than initially thought.
Published in PLoS ONE, the researchers report a comprehensive genetic analysis of the yeti crabs, featuring all known species for the first time and revealing insights about their evolution. All but one of the yeti crab species are found on one of the most extreme habitats on earth, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, which release boiling-hot water into the freezing waters above above them.
The research was conducted by ecologists from Oxford's Department of Zoology, Ewha Woman's University in Seoul, South Korea and additional Chinese collaborators.
The results reveal that today's yeti crabs are likely descended from a common ancestor that inhabited deep sea hydrothermal vents on mid-ocean ridges in the SE Pacific, some time around 30-40 million years ago.
By comparing the location of current yeti crab species with their history of diversification, the authors suggest that the crustaceans likely existed in large regions of mid-ocean ridge in the Eastern Pacific, but have since gone extinct in those areas.
While the reasons for this are unclear, the findings point to a specific event, when a shift in deep sea oxygen levels was triggered by climate change and changes to hydrothermal activity at mid-ocean ridges. At the same time yeti crabs appear to have changed the way they disperse their larvae between hydrothermal vents.
Christopher Roterman, co-lead author and postdoctoral researcher in of Oxford's Department of Zoology, said: 'Using these genetic techniques, our study provides the first circumstantial case for showing that hydrothermal vent species have gone extinct in large areas. The present-day locations of these animals are not necessarily indicative of their historical distribution.
'The findings have implications for our understanding of how resilient deep-sea hydrothermal vent communities might be to environmental change and the consequences of deep sea mining.'
Hydrothermal vents are just a small fraction of the deep sea environment. However, researchers are finding new species continuously and building a better picture of deep ocean life and its potential resources. Overtime these insights should help us to understand whether we can or should responsibly utilise them.
Roterman, who was also co-author of a study published last year, highlighting shocking gaps in our knowledge of deep sea environments, added: 'Our understanding of deep sea ecosystems is still very basic and we need to adopt a cautionary approach to exploitation. Before we go bulldozing in, we need to more aware of not only what lives down there, but how resilient their populations are likely to be to human activity.
'Animals like the yeti crabs are potentially vulnerable to resource exploitation in the deep sea and I believe that humans, as a species, have a responsibility to preserve and steward our planet's biodiversity as prudently and ethically as possible.'
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Oxford. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily http://ift.tt/2GhiPfm
via IFTTT
When the Mediteranean Sea flooded human settlements
Around 7,600 years ago, the emergence of agricultural settlements in Southeastern Europe and subsequent progress of civilization suddenly came to a standstill. This was most likely caused by an abrupt sea level rise in the northern Aegean Sea. Researchers of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, the Goethe University in Frankfurt and the University of Toronto have now detected evidence of this oceanographic event and an earlier sudden sea-level rise in the fossils of tiny calcifying marine algae preserved in seafloor sediments in the Aegean Sea. The impact of these events on historical societal development emphasizes the potential economic and social consequences of a future rise in sea levels due to global climate change, the researchers write in the study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Originating in the Middle East, the Neolithic Age witnessed one of the most significant upheavals of civilization in human history: the transition from a culture of hunter-gatherers to an agricultural and sedentary lifestyle. During the Neolithic revolution, agricultural societies also began to spread toward Southeastern Europe. However, archeological digs show that the development of settlements temporarily declined about 7,600 years ago. Researchers from Frankfurt have now identified one of the likely causes for this.
"Approximately 7,600 years ago, the sea level must have risen abruptly in the Mediterranean regions bordering Southeastern Europe. The northern Aegean, the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea recorded an increase of more than one meter. This led to the flooding of low-lying coastal areas that would have been ideal areas for settlement," says lead author Professor Dr. Jens Herrle of the German Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre and Goethe University.
The new study is based on a sediment core from the ocean floor of the northern Aegean Sea, which allowed Herrle and his collaborators to reconstruct the level of salinity in this part of the Mediterranean between 11,000 and 5,000 years ago. The ocean floor is richly abundant in tiny fossils of the calcified algae species Emiliania huxleyi. Viewed up-close under a scanning electron microscope, size changes in these algae preserved a signal of the level of salinity in the surface water of the Aegean during their lifetime.
"These calcifying algae evidence two rapid decreases in the salt content, at approximately 8,400 and again 7,600 years ago, which can only be explained by the fact that a higher volume of low-saline surface water flowed from the Black Sea into the northern Aegean at these times. A prerequisite for this is a rapid rise in sea levels that would lead to an increased outflow of surface water in this direction. The source of this may have been Lake Agassiz in North America. This glacial meltwater lake was enclosed in ice and experienced a massive breach during this period, which emptied an enormous volume of water into the ocean," explains Herrle.
The new evidence supports a conclusion of extensive flooding along the edges of the northeastern Mediterranean, coinciding with two standstills in the Neolithic revolution. The earlier change in sea-level approximately 8,400 years ago highlighted by the new salinity record coincides with archeological dates suggesting that settlement on low-lying areas had already been significantly impeded by rising sea levels and the subsequent climatic changes. The renewed rise in sea levels 800 years later likely further hampered the transition to agricultural communities.
"Our results show that the timing and severity of past fluctuations in sea level has already had a significant effect on human history during its early agricultural development," explains Herrle in closing. "Due to climate change, we expect global sea levels to rise by up to one meter over the next 100 years. Millions of people could thus be displaced from coastal regions, with severe social and economic consequences."
Story Source:
Materials provided by Goethe University Frankfurt. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
from Oceanography News -- ScienceDaily http://ift.tt/2GffCgo
via IFTTT
Business case for carbon credit: 'Mikoko Pamoja' in Kwale
The Philippine seas and climate change: Unlocking Blue Carbon Solutions for a cooler planet
What is blue carbon?
|
from mangroves - Google News http://ift.tt/2DKEE1E
via IFTTT
'Loss' of mangroves: NGT orders joint inspection of Kutch district
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Soft robotic fish swims alongside real ones in coral reefs
This month scientists published rare footage of one of the Arctic’s most elusive sharks. The findings demonstrate that, even with many technological advances in recent years, it remains a challenging task to document marine life up close.
But MIT computer scientists believe they have a possible solution: using robots.
In a paper out today, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) unveiled “SoFi,” a soft robotic fish that can independently swim alongside real fish in the ocean.
During test dives in the Rainbow Reef in Fiji, SoFi swam at depths of more than 50 feet for up to 40 minutes at once, nimbly handling currents and taking high-resolution photos and videos using (what else?) a fisheye lens.
Using its undulating tail and a unique ability to control its own buoyancy, SoFi can swim in a straight line, turn, or dive up or down. The team also used a waterproofed Super Nintendo controller and developed a custom acoustic communications system that enabled them to change SoFi’s speed and have it make specific moves and turns.
“To our knowledge, this is the first robotic fish that can swim untethered in three dimensions for extended periods of time,” says CSAIL PhD candidate Robert Katzschmann, lead author of the new journal article published today in Science Robotics. “We are excited about the possibility of being able to use a system like this to get closer to marine life than humans can get on their own.”
Katzschmann worked on the project and wrote the paper with CSAIL director Daniela Rus, graduate student Joseph DelPreto and former postdoc Robert MacCurdy, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
How it works
Existing autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have traditionally been tethered to boats or powered by bulky and expensive propellers.
In contrast, SoFi has a much simpler and more lightweight setup, with a single camera, a motor, and the same lithium polymer battery that’s found in consumer smartphones. To make the robot swim, the motor pumps water into two balloon-like chambers in the fish’s tail that operate like a set of pistons in an engine. As one chamber expands, it bends and flexes to one side; when the actuators push water to the other channel, that one bends and flexes in the other direction.
These alternating actions create a side-to-side motion that mimics the movement of a real fish. By changing its flow patterns, the hydraulic system enables different tail maneuvers that result in a range of swimming speeds, with an average speed of about half a body length per second.
“The authors show a number of technical achievements in fabrication, powering, and water resistance that allow the robot to move underwater without a tether,” says Cecilia Laschi, a professor of biorobotics at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. “A robot like this can help explore the reef more closely than current robots, both because it can get closer more safely for the reef and because it can be better accepted by the marine species.”
The entire back half of the fish is made of silicone rubber and flexible plastic, and several components are 3-D-printed, including the head, which holds all of the electronics. To reduce the chance of water leaking into the machinery, the team filled the head with a small amount of baby oil, since it’s a fluid that will not compress from pressure changes during dives.
Indeed, one of the team’s biggest challenges was to get SoFi to swim at different depths. The robot has two fins on its side that adjust the pitch of the fish for up and down diving. To adjust its position vertically, the robot has an adjustable weight compartment and a “buoyancy control unit” that can change its density by compressing and decompressing air.
Katzschmann says that the team developed SoFi with the goal of being as nondisruptive as possible in its environment, from the minimal noise of the motor to the ultrasonic emissions of the team’s communications system, which sends commands using wavelengths of 30 to 36 kilohertz.
“The robot is capable of close observations and interactions with marine life and appears to not be disturbing to real fish,” says Rus.
The project is part of a larger body of work at CSAIL focused on soft robots, which have the potential to be safer, sturdier, and more nimble than their hard-bodied counterparts. Soft robots are in many ways easier to control than rigid robots, since researchers don’t have to worry quite as much about having to avoid collisions.
“Collision avoidance often leads to inefficient motion, since the robot has to settle for a collision-free trajectory,” says Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. “In contrast, a soft robot is not just more likely to survive a collision, but could use it as information to inform a more efficient motion plan next time around.”
As next steps the team will be working on several improvements on SoFi. Katzschmann plans to increase the fish’s speed by improving the pump system and tweaking the design of its body and tail.
He says that they also plan to soon use the on-board camera to enable SoFi to automatically follow real fish, and to build additional SoFis for biologists to study how fish respond to different changes in their environment.
“We view SoFi as a first step toward developing almost an underwater observatory of sorts,” says Rus. “It has the potential to be a new type of tool for ocean exploration and to open up new avenues for uncovering the mysteries of marine life.”
This project was supported by the National Science Foundation.
from MIT News - Oceanography and ocean engineering http://ift.tt/2FOagJo
via IFTTT
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)