The New York Times

February 4, 2010 Thursday

Late Edition – Final

BYLINE: By DAVID JOLLY

BODY:

European officials are increasing pressure for an international ban on the commercial fishing of bluefin tuna, a threatened species whose fatty belly is prized for sushi. But they are facing a delicate balancing act as they try to weigh economic interests of a Mediterranean fishing industry, a sushi-loving Japan, and a species that some experts say is on the verge of extinction.

In the latest move toward protecting the fish, France said Wednesday that it would back a ban starting late next year on international trade in bluefin, which are found in the Atlantic as well as the Mediterranean Sea. About 80 percent of the bluefin catch is exported to Japan.

”The species is in difficulty,” Jean-Louis Borloo, the French ecology minister, told journalists in Paris on Wednesday. A ban, he added, is ”the most powerful measure possible.”

Bluefin stocks have plummeted as demand for sushi has risen and powerful industrial fishing boats known as purse seiners have come into use. The stocks are now below 15 percent of their historical level, a team of scientific experts from tuna-fishing nations concluded at a meeting in October in Madrid.

In July, Monaco proposed that bluefin tuna be listed as an ”Appendix 1” endangered species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Such a listing would provide the same level of protection accorded pandas and some whales, effectively banning international trade in the fish. A panel of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization concluded in December that the species met the criteria for an Appendix 1 listing. Monaco’s proposal will be lodged officially when the 175 nations that are parties to the treaty meet next month in Doha, Qatar.

Because most of the European Union, including Italy, has already lined up behind Monaco, France’s support should help bring the 27-nation body in line for a unified position in Doha. Spain, which currently holds the union’s presidency and is widely thought to oppose a ban, would have to present the union’s position. The incoming European Commission — the bloc’s executive arm — is expected to take up the issue as early as next week.

The French government’s stance had been in doubt. France, along with the European Union, had initially applauded Monaco’s proposal, but it later joined several other tuna-fishing nations, including Italy and Spain, in objecting.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has had to balance public support for a bluefin trade ban, as well as a public appeal from Prince Albert of Monaco, with the danger that angry fishermen might seek to embarrass his center-right party by blockading French ports before March regional elections.

France’s backing for a ban comes with strings attached. Mr. Borloo and Bruno Le Maire, the French agriculture and fisheries minister, said support was conditional upon an 18-month delay in implementation, which they said was to obtain additional scientific data. The delay would allow two more fishing seasons to pass.

They also said a ban should not affect sales of bluefin tuna caught by line and pole or by longline within Europe. Like Italy, France will also seek financial aid from the European Union to help the fishing industry.

Sergi Tudela, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s Mediterranean fisheries program, said: ”We’re disappointed with the delay. They’re saying that they need time to gather more scientific data, but there’s more than enough information on the table already. We’re asking them to drop that condition.”

Still, the move is ”positive,” he said. ”France has understood that an Appendix 1 listing is the only way to save this fishery.”

The fishing industry was quick to voice its disapproval.

Mourad Kahoul, president of an association representing industrial fishing fleets in France, Italy and Spain, said that his group ”is doing everything it can to change the government’s mind on this,” and that there were differing scientific views on the outlook for the fish.

”What is not about to disappear are the boats, which cost 3 million euros a few years ago and which they now want us to scrap,” he said. ”Well, why did they let us build them in the first place?”

The United States fishing industry is ‘’strongly opposed” to listing the fish under the endangered species convention, said Rich Ruais, executive director of the American Bluefin Tuna Association, who said the trade ban ”would create a huge black market.”

”In fact,” he said, ”we believe a listing has the possibility of doing more damage than good.”

Japan has not yet made its own position official, though it is widely expected to fight the proposal, as was the case in 1992 when Sweden sought to have the bluefin listed. The United States initially said it supported Monaco, but it has not made clear its position.

Click here for original article.

We eat a great variety of seafood, from Sea Scallops dredged from Atlantic waters, Catfish farmed in Asia, to Swordfish caught in the Pacific Ocean. Several species remain our favorites, however, and represent much of the 16 lbs of seafood that we eat on average every year. These seafoods include Atlantic Cod, Shrimp, Atlantic Salmon, and Salmon from Alaska, and all were ranked several years ago by Blue Ocean Institute. Species abundance, management practices, and farming methods and impacts change over time, so our seafood research team is constantly updating existing reports to provide the most up to date information. Plus we are doing new rankings for seafoods that are entering the US market. Each report involves weeks of research and writing, and all new and updated reports are peer-reviewed by scientists who specialize on that seafood to make sure that every report is accurate. During the last month, BOI has updated some of our favorite seafoods including farmed Atlantic Salmon, Salmon from Alaska, and Atlantic Cod caught off the United States and Canada, and from Icelandic waters. We have also done a new report for Shrimp caught from US waters in the Gulf of Mexico and south Atlantic region. This report examines the various types of shrimp caught including White, Brown, Pink and Rock Shrimp that you may be devouring as you watch the Super Bowl this weekend. Click on the following link to read our seafood reports: http://www.blueocean.org/seafood/seafood-guide

(Credit: iStockphoto/Edwin Van Wier)

New research suggests that closing reef areas to fishing can delay the effects of one of their biggest threats: climate change. Such ocean “parks” may give reefs a fighting chance.

Coral reefs are complex, living structures. It is their complexity that allows an extraordinarily diverse community of organisms to live within a reef ecosystem. However, these fragile environments are threatened by increased water temperatures, ocean acidification, overfishing, coastal development, and other human activities.

Currently, about 2% of the world’s reefs are protected from human activity such as overfishing. As temperatures continue to rise and ocean chemistry changes, climate change poses a risk to all reefs.

However, scientists at the University of Exeter in the U.K. found that on reefs protected from fishing, fish graze off harmful algae that would otherwise cover coral and stress it, leaving it vulnerable to other stresses like warming water or pollution. Research in the Bahamas suggests that, within reserves, corals can recover from stress and continue growing and spreading.

“In order to protect reefs in the long-term we need radical action to reduce CO2 emissions,” says study director, professor Peter Mumby. “However, our research shows that local action to reduce the effects of fishing can contribute meaningfully to the fate of reefs.”

To view original article click here.

- Tara Duffy, Blue Ocean Institute Graduate Intern, Stony Brook University

ARKive needs YOUR images of life underwater

Hi there. Have we met before? I am a Green sea turtle and I need your help. Donate your films and images of me and my fellow endangered marine species to ARKive to help educate the world about my fellow friends and me.

Films and photographs are an emotive, powerful and effective means of building environmental awareness. Not only bringing species to life, films and images demonstrate quickly and simply what makes them so special and so vital to our planet.

With species extinction now occurring at a faster rate than at any time in Earth’s history, effective awareness raising and education programs are ever more vital. Quick and easy access to this imagery is essential in the digital mass communications society we live in today.

However, until now, this valuable imagery has been scattered throughout the world, in a wide variety of private, commercial and specialist collections, with no centralized collection, restricted public access, limited educational use, and no coordinated strategy for its long term preservation.

ARKive is now putting that right, gathering together the very best films and photographs of the world’s most threatened species into one centralized digital library creating a unique audio-visual record of life on Earth. Preserved and maintained for future generations, ARKive is accessible to all, from scientists and conservationists to the general public and school children, via its award-winning website: www.ARKive.org.

Threatened marine species make up just ten percent of the current material held in ARKive, reflecting just how hard these films and photographs are to collect. We at ARKive are reaching out to you, both marine experts and ocean hobbyists alike, asking you to urgently send us your best films and images and help fill the watery gaps in our rapidly growing library.

www.ARKive.org

Focusing on the 17,000 species on the IUCN Red List, ARKive has complete media profiles for over 5,000 species including over 38,000 images and 17,000 films. More than 3,000 media donors are actively contributing to the project, from major broadcasters, film and photo libraries to conservation organizations and academic institutes, as well as many individual filmmakers and photographers. All media is donated freely on the understanding that it will be used as a resource for scientists, conservationists, educators and the general public, and not for commercial purposes.

A list of our “most wanted” images is published on the ARKive website www.arkive.org. Anyone wishing to donate images can email ARKive’s media research team – arkive@wildscreenusa.org,  or upload images directly to www.flickr.com/groups/arkive.

- Liana Vitali, ARKive (a Wildscreen initiative)

Interesting article about two humpback whales who save a seal from a hungry pod of ten killer whales!  This compelling story blurs a line in our conceptual perception of instincts and compassion. 
 

The following article originally appeared in Natural History Magazine:

Save the Seal!

Whales act instinctively to save seals

By Robert L. Pitman and John W. Durban

Last January we sailed from the tip of South America to the Antarctic Peninsula on the sixty-five-foot yacht Golden Fleece, in search of killer whales. The kind we were looking for—which potentially constitute a new species—prey on seals that live on and around the sea ice. We hoped to document one of their remarkable hunting techniques: sometimes as many as seven whales swim side by side to make a wave that washes a seal off an ice floe. The journey brought some surprises.

Early one morning, we located a pod of ten killer whales that we had previously tagged for satellite tracking, and found they had a pair of agitated, adult-size humpback whales in their midst. The humpbacks were bellowing loudly through their blowholes and slapping the water with their tails and fifteen-foot flippers. At first we thought that the humpbacks were under attack, but we saw no overt signs of aggression, so we concluded that they were probably just being harassed. Killer whales often test larger whales, perhaps to check for weaknesses that they might be able to exploit. We ducked below deck to quickly review some video footage of the event, however, and noticed a Weddell seal between the humpbacks—perhaps that’s what the killer whales were after.

The killer whales moved on, and fifteen minutes later they spotted a crabeater seal on an ice floe. They created a wave that broke up the floe and left the distraught seal on a piece of ice not much bigger than it was. Just when it seemed the killers were about to have their way, the same pair of humpbacks charged in, swimming around the floe, bellowing and thrashing the water. The killer whales seemed annoyed and finally left the seal alone, still safe on the floe. We concluded that perhaps this deliberate intrusion by the humpbacks was some jumbo-size form of mobbing behavior, comparable to the way songbirds pester birds of prey to drive them off.

A week later we witnessed a similar event that suggested a somewhat different interpretation. Another group of killer whales was attacking a Weddell seal on an ice floe, and a different pair of large humpbacks had inserted themselves into the fray. At one point, the predators succeeded in washing the seal off the floe. Exposed to lethal attack in the open water, the seal swam frantically toward the humpbacks, seeming to seek shelter, perhaps not even aware that they were living animals. (We have known fur seals in the North Pacific to use our vessel as a refuge against attacking killer whales.)

Just as the seal got to the closest humpback, the huge animal rolled over on its back—and the 400-pound seal was swept up onto the humpback’s chest between its massive flippers. Then, as the killer whales moved in closer, the humpback arched its chest, lifting the seal out of the water. The water rushing off that safe platform started to wash the seal back into the sea, but then the humpback gave the seal a gentle nudge with its flipper, back to the middle of its chest [see photograph]. Moments later the seal scrambled off and swam to the safety of a nearby ice floe.

It occurred to us that in all three of these encounters, the menacing behavior of the killer whales may have triggered a protective maternal response in the humpback whales. Even though they did not have calves that were at risk, they acted immediately and instinctively to counter the threat posed to a smaller animal.

When an animal provides maternal care to another that is not its own offspring, it is termed allomaternal care [see “Meet the Alloparents,” April 2009]. Maternal behavior may even cross species boundaries. Perhaps the most common example of that is when humans raise pets, but there are plenty of cases of domestic cats and dogs adopting orphaned animals. Such behavior has been documented less frequently in undomesticated animals—though in 1996 a mother gorilla at the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago made headlines when she gently picked up a three-year-old boy who had fallen into the gorillas’ enclosure and carried him to the zookeepers’ door.

When a human protects an imperiled individual of another species, we call it compassion. If a humpback whale does so, we call it instinct. But sometimes the distinction isn’t all that clear.

 Click here to view the original article.

World leaders gathered last week in Copenhagen at the UN Climate Summit to discuss climate change with the aim to set targets to reduce CO2 emissions. The scientific community stated that industrialized nations needed to cut emissions by 40% by 2020 to reduce the severity of climate change. Although climate change is a global problem, and will impact small island nations more than most, it was left largely to the USA and China to broker a political agreement. Although the agreement recognizes the scientific merit of limiting temperature rises to no more than 2 C (3.6 F), it does not set CO2 targets to achieve this. In that sense, the UN Climate Summit was a failure.

Due to weak leadership by all, our oceans will suffer affecting millions of people that rely on the sea and the coasts for food, protection and livelihood. Our oceans will warm, forcing some species to move to higher latitudes; become more acidic, affecting creatures with calcium carbonate skeletons; and will continue to rise, eroding coastlines and flooding some island-nations.

Considering the severity of Climate Change, and that our collective future is at stake, you would think that our leaders could have spent a few more days in Copenhagen discussing options and setting meaningful goals.

The planet’s largest animal just might be singing the blues.

Researchers recently discovered that blue whales are lowering the frequencies of their songs, year after year. No one knows why, but scientists speculate that it is linked to human-caused changes in whale populations or in the ocean itself.

Whale populations were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century. Some scientists speculate that lower frequency singing allows individuals to communicate with the remaining whales that are few and far between. Other possibilities point to the whales adjusting their song to compensate for changes in their environment. For example, shipping traffic has increased ocean noise by 12 decibels since the 1950’s and the whales may need to sing ‘louder’ to communicate. In absence of ocean noise, blue whale songs can reach over 800 miles.

This study, led by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a whale song monitoring company, Whale Acoustics, found this change occurred in populations in seven different oceans.

“It’s even more remarkable, given that the songs themselves differ in different oceans” said blue whale research expert, John Calombokidis. “There seem to be these distinct populations, yet they’re all showing this common shift.”

Read the full story: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/blue-whale-song-mystery/#more-14978

- Tara Duffy, Blue Ocean Institute Graduate Intern, Stony Brook University

Ocean acidification has long been considered “the other carbon problem”, taking a back seat to discussions about global warming.

In reality, scientists are beginning to see signs indicating that ocean acidification is a serious and immediate threat.

The Gulf of Maine, for example, is exhibiting signs of acidification, both real and speculative. Mark Green, professor at St. Joseph’s College studies the effects of acidic muds on survival of juvenile shellfish. Green studies clams in Casco Bay and points out that ”a huge amount of these juvenile clams are dissolving when they hit the sediment.” Clams from this area were once thought to be disappearing due to predators. Green’s research points to acidification as the main culprit.

These clams, and other organisms with hard shells made of calcium carbonate, are dissolving because of increased acidity. The ocean acts like a sponge to absorb about 25% of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. It is carbon dioxide, that when introduced into water forms an acid that reduces a buffering compound called carbonate. Carbonate is an essential compound that these organisms use to form protective shells. When these organisms can’t make a proper shell it is left vulnerable to predators, diseases and other stressors.

Other researchers in the Gulf of Maine are studying the impacts of acidification on the hardening of lobster shells and even the growth of tiny, calcium carbonate covered phytoplankton that are the base of the food chain. William Balch of Bigelow Laboratory in Boothbay Harbor has seen a reduction in these types of phytoplankton in the Gulf of Maine and in locations like the Patagonian shelf off of Argentina. While these drops in abundance are only speculated to be the result of acidification, Balch points out that is important to have a baseline to study the effects of an acidified ocean on plankton. ”That’s the bottom of the marine food web, on which all life in the ocean depends.”

For decades, many people assumed any excess carbon dioxide would be absorbed by the ocean with no change to the acidity of the ocean. ”But it turns out, if you produce the quantities of carbon dioxide that we’ve been producing, the buffering effect is not there,” he said. ”When all is said and done, I think it might be the more significant problem.”

- Tara Duffy, Blue Ocean Institute Graduate Intern, Stony Brook University

The organizers of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London have committed to only serving seafood that’s shown to be sustianable.

When you’re talking about 82,000 metric tons (or

180 779 055 pounds) that’s quite an Olympic feat!

The organizers will be souring from Marine Stewardship Council certified fisheries and excluding fish found on the Marine Conservation Society’s avoid list (the Marine Conservation Society is a UK marine conservation non-profit that ranks seafood).

The study in Jamaica funded by the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund has two parts. One part that is examining the effects of climate change on coral reef sponges is going very well and will finish in a few days. The second part is to examine the potential of farming bath sponges to provide an alternative and environmentally friendly source of income for local fisherman, similar to work that I did with Torres Strait Islanders in Australia. “Bath sponges” are the cleaned spongin skeletons of certain sponge species. Sponges are easily farmed in mesh panels or on lines and can double in size in 6 months when grown in optimal conditions.

Torres Strait Islander examining his farmed bath sponges

In the Caribbean, bath sponges are typically found in shallow-water, often in sea-grass habitats or attached to the submerged roots of mangroves in protected lagoons and estuaries. In the Discovery Bay Lagoon, sea-grass habitats are common and often large, while mangrove forests are small and scattered. After many days of searching in both habitats, several different sponge species were found but unfortunately no bath sponges.

Sea-grass habitat in Discovery Bay Lagoon

The distribution of many sponges is “patchy”, that is common in some areas but not in others even though all areas look similar to the naked eye. Thinking that bath sponges may be found away from Discovery Bay, I obtained a car for a day and drove 40 km west to the port of Falmouth, which has extensive mangrove forests (and supposedly an odd crocodile or two). Unfortunately the results were the same: no bath sponges.

Fishing boat in the mangrove forests at Falmouth

Next strategy was to go deep and search the surrounding coral reefs. Donning SCUBA tanks, my dive buddy and I searched from the reef crest (0m) down to the reef edge (approx. 35 m or 120 ft). Coral reefs in Jamaica have high sponge diversity, and we recorded over 40 species in various locations up and down the coast, but unfortunately no bath sponges. This is not the result we were hoping for, but science and nature works to its own plan not ours. The good news is that the climate change study is going very well and will soon be finished.

Sea turtle, corals and sponges (but no bath sponges) at 120 ft