Scientists at One Tree Island, the University of Sydney’s research station on the Great Barrier Reef, say sea cucumbers reduce the impact of ocean acidification on coral growth.

‘When they ingest sand, the natural digestive processes in the sea cucumber’s gut increases the pH levels of the water on the reef where they defecate,’ said Tree Island director professor Maria Byrne.

This works to counter the negative effects of ocean acidification.

One of the by-products when sea cucumbers digest sand is also calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which is a key component of coral.

‘To survive, coral reefs must accumulate CaCO3 at a rate greater than or equal to the CaCO3 that is eroded from the reef,’ said Prof Byrne.

‘The research at One Tree Island showed that in a healthy reef, dissolution of calcium carbonate sediment by sea cucumbers and other bioeroders appears to be an important component of the natural calcium carbonate turnover.’

The ammonia waste produced when sea cucumbers digest sand also serves to fertilise the surrounding area, providing nutrients for coral growth.

From Sky News:

Sea cucumbers are among the largest invertebrates found on tropical reefs.

Some 30 species are commercially harvested by the fishery industry along the Great Barrier Reef and throughout the tropics.

‘We urgently need to understand the impact of removing sea cucumbers and other invertebrates on reef health and resilience at a time when reefs face an uncertain future,’ Prof Byrne said.

 by

Charmaine Coimbra

January is a prime month to view northern elephant seal birthings, particularly at Piedras Blancas near San Simeon, Ca.

On Sunday, January 8, 2012, I was near a birthing.  It was a surprise because the pup’s fins exited first.  It was a breech birth. 

Breech Birth Beginnings. C. Coimbra photo

Mother begins vocal imprinting. Photo by C. Coimbra

 This northern elephant seal pup weighs between 60-80 pounds and is just over 3-feet long.   It will gain approximately 10 pounds a day.  It will nurse for 28-30 days then begin its hard life when its mother abandons it at this time.  But at about 300+ pounds at 4-weeks old, it should be able to survive on the beach until April when it is likely to make its first foray into the sea.  Yes, each elephant seal pup/weaner must learn to swim and hunt on its own. 

This is another newborn pup and mother on the beach. C. Coimbra Photo

From Reuters:

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE80702K20120108

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Three Australian environmental activists were detained on board a Japanese whaling ship on Sunday after boarding in protest at Japan’s annual whale cull in the Antarctic, anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said.

The three activists from Forest Rescue, an Australian group specialising in direct action to prevent logging, boarded the ship early on Sunday with assistance from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Sea Shepherd said in a statement.

U.S.-based Sea Shepherd is tailing Japan’s whaling fleet as it heads towards the Southern Ocean to try to prevent the cull.

The statement described the activists as “prisoners now detained on a Japanese whaler.”

Speaking while en route to the Antarctic, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson told Reuters by satellite phone that the activists were still on board the Shonan Maru 2. He said the Japanese vessel had been sent to disrupt Sea Shepherd’s longstanding campaign to stop the cull.

There had been no contact from the Japanese and the activists’ radios appeared to have been seized, Watson said from aboard the Steve Irwin, one of two ships heading south with the aim of preventing the hunt from taking place.

“The Shonan Maru won’t talk to us. They don’t respond to our radio calls,” Watson said. “They are chasing us.”

A New Zealand-based spokesman for Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, which coordinates the annual hunt, confirmed the three men were on the Japanese boat and uninjured. He did not rule out that they might be taken to Japan.

“The three men are on board,” spokesman Glenn Inwood told Reuters. “They are being questioned now and they remain on the vessel.”  

The Japanese boat, he said, was 40 km off the Australian coast when the trio boarded it.

Forest Rescue spokesman Michael Montgomery had earlier said the action was to protest at inaction by the Australian government to stop the hunt and to demand the departure of the whalers from Australian waters.

“We don’t need to kill these beautiful creatures any more,” he told Reuters.

Sea Shepherd said the three activists came in a boat from Australia’s western coast and approached the Shonan Maru 2 in the dark, with assistance from two Sea Shepherd boats.

“The three negotiated their way past the razor wire and spikes and over the rails of the Japanese whaling vessel,” the statement said. “They are being held in Australian territorial waters by an invading Japanese vessel containing armed Japanese military personnel.”

They carried with them a message reading: “Return us to shore in Australia and then remove yourself from our waters.”

Whaling was banned under a 1986 moratorium, but Japan continues to hunt hundreds of whales annually under a loophole that allows whaling for “scientific” purposes.

______________________________

1/10/12 Update from LA Times:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/01/japan-whaling-industry-sea-shepherd-environmental-protests.html

Hardline whaling opponents attempting to stop Japan’s annual whale hunt in the Antarctic said Sunday they had intercepted and photographed its whaling fleet using pilotless drone aircraft.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said it located the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru off Australia’s western coast Saturday using the drones, the first time this season it has made contact with the whalers.

However, other Japanese ships shielded the vessel “to allow it to escape,” Sea Shepherd said in a statement.

“We caught them due west of Perth,” founder Paul Watson told Reuters by satellite phone from the ship Steve Irwin. “For the next few days we will be chasing them. We are heading south.”

The two drones are equipped with cameras and detection equipment and allow Sea Shepherd to monitor the whaling fleet from a distance, he said.

Watson said Sea Shepherd’s three ships were well outside Antarctic waters when the Japanese vessel was seen. The Sea Shepherd waited for the Nisshin Maru after hearing from fishermen it had sailed through the Lombok Strait in Indonesia on its voyage to Antarctic waters.

The Sea Shepherd society’s annual attempts to stop the Japanese whale hunt by “direct action” have been widely criticised by other environmentalists and governments, particularly Japan. However, it also has influential supporters.

Watson said sympathisers in New Jersey in the United States contributed to the cost of the two drones.

An international moratorium on whaling has been in place since 1986, but Japan exploits a loophole allowing whaling for scientific purposes to justify its annual hunt.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Charmaine Coimbra

I celebrated my mid-December birthday with a hike along a Central California bluff.  The day was warm and eucalyptus blended with salt air invigorated  my soul.  When I finally reached trail’s end on a bluff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, a California sea otter busily cracked open  its afternoon snack with a rock while raucous waves bounced it about the near shoreline.  Its antics entertained me and made me laugh out loud as brown pelicans soared just feet away.  I hoped to share joy with leaping dolphins but none were found.  Instead, I hollered, “Whale spouts at twelve o’clock.”

Gray Whale Spout. Photo by C. Coimbra

I thanked the three southbound gray whales for the special gift.  At the same time, it seemed a bit early to watch their migration, but as Neptune 911 reported earlier, a juvenile gray whale recently washed ashore dead near San Diego.

Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times noted,”Although the gray whale-watching season doesn’t typically start until the end of December, the unprecedented number of early arrivals is delighting tourists, boaters and divers as the animals travel south along the coast to Mexico.”

And the LA Times piece, written by Tony Barboza,  concurred my curiosity: ”By this point in December last year, the observers had spotted 26 gray whales. The previous record was 133, spotted in 1996.”

In a SLO New Times editorial I wrote last year, I tracked the obstacle course each gray whale must swim its way through in order to reach its Mexican spawning grounds and then return to its Artic summertime feeding grounds.    At the same time, the California Gray Whale Coalition (CGWC) had petitioned the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (USNMFS) to list the species as depleted, and to spur a conservation plan.

USNMFS denied the petition about the time the gray whales began their return trip north.  Concurrent to the denied petition was CGWC’s CEO, Sue Arnold’s visit to Laguna San Ignacio.  She visited me days after her Laguna San Ignacio visit  and reported that the gray whale numbers were up. 

This happened on the same day as the Japan tsunami. Sue’s news landed  a mix of joy for the whales  while the reports from Japan brought me desperation for the people of Japan.

As the Japan disaster developed with the failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, a new, and even more deadly concern swept over us like a tsunami. 

Conjecture, concern, and hypothesis  jammed the environmental world with wonder as to how the released radiation from Fukushima would affect the Pacific Ocean and the life it harbors.  What I determined through the blogs, magazine articles and pod casts was, “We don’t know.  It’s a wait and see issue.”

Less than a year later, yesterday, December 28, 2011,  Reuters reported :  ”Scores of ring seals have washed up on Alaska’s Arctic coastline since July, suffering or killed by a mysterious disease marked by bleeding lesions on the hind flippers, irritated skin around the nose and eyes and patchy hair loss on the animals’ fur coats. 

Biologists at first thought the seals were suffering from a virus, but they have so far been unable to identify one, and tests are now underway to find out if radiation is a factor…’There is concern expressed by some members of the local communities that there may be some relationship to the Fukushima nuclear reactor’s damage,’ ” said John Kelley, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in the report.

I’ll “wait and see” how this report resolves the ring seals’ issues.

Neptune911 was created to inform readers, in a plain manner, about the seas and how they are changing.  Our goal is to bring an understanding about what we do, regardless of where we live, affects this 71% of Planet Earth. 

The higher numbers of gray whales is wonderful news.  But as Sue Arnold noted in an email, “(In November) Dr. Kevin Arrigo at Stanford (University)… had just come back from the Arctic and showed  me a fifty fold increase in phytoplankton under the deep-sea ice, something they have never seen before.  So we know there’s some really weird stuff going on in the Arctic, but no one knows why or what the source of nutrients might be or whether it will last…The higher number of gray whales  are not unexpected after my meeting with Kevin.  But these kinds of flushes are always cause for concern. The flush can be followed by massive collapse, let’s hope this is a permanent state.”

Again, we wait and see, but jump for joy every time a gray whale passes by and salutes us with a tip of the fluke.

San Simeon Bluff. Photo by C. Coimbra

Highlighted portions of this reproduced story were highlighted by Neptune 911.

From People For Puget Sound

Nov. 30, 2011

by Robin Lindsey

As we approached the whale on Arroyo Beach that April morning, I was filled with anticipation. This was my first gray whale stranding with the NW Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Kristin Wilkinson, NOAA’s marine mammal stranding expert, told me, “Be prepared for the media – this is the fourth dead gray in two weeks.”

 Kristin and orca researcher, Jeff Hogan, immediately began to assess the animal and take measurements. I noticed Jeff’s young son, dwarfed by the massive body, wide-eyed as if trying to take it all in.

Why had the whale died on our Salish Sea shore? I could not ignore the gnawing feeling that somehow we had played a part. The thin whale, a male measuring 37 feet, was estimated to be 3-6 years old (a gray whale’s lifespan is 50-70 years). The massive creature needed to be towed to a remote location where biologists could perform their work.

Necropsy Photo by Robin Lindsey

As we left, Kristin began making calls, arranging the logistics for a move and necropsy. A volunteer from MaST* offered his boat and towed the body to a restricted island south of Tacoma. Two days later, boats carrying biologists and volunteers from WDFW’s Marine Mammal Investigations Unit, Cascadia Research, NOAA Fisheries and other local stranding networks landed on the island. Crates of gear and coolers were shuttled onto shore and the business of unraveling a mystery was begun.

Cascadia researcher Jessie Huggins was perched high atop the back of the whale cutting blubber samples. Dyanna Lambourn, WDFW biologist, examined vital organs amidst seeming miles of intestines. Others were collecting and labeling samples, entering data. It was an impressive sight.

Cascadia’s renowned cetacean researcher John Calambokidis explored the contents of the whale’s stomach. He noted there was a significant amount of algae with little evidence of food. He reached his hand inside the whale and removed a piece of plastic. Then, a length of rope, a golf ball, a plastic bag, a piece of cloth. Another piece of plastic, more cloth. Duct tape. A towel. Electrical tape.Fishing line. More rope. Surgical glove. Plastic funnel. More plastic bags. A huge piece of fabric – it was half a pair of sweatpants.

Work around us stopped and everyone gathered, stunned.

Over twenty plastic bags in all were removed from the whale’s stomach. John shook his head. In 20 years examining over 200 whales, he said he had never seen anything like this.

Suddenly, I felt sick. I struggled not to cry. I couldn’t stop thinking of the nursery in San Ignacio Lagoon where mother gray whales, named friendlies by locals, lifted their calves up beside our small skiff. Some of those females still bore harpoon scars. The gentle grays were old enough to remember whalers who once called them “devil fish” because they so fearlessly fought to protect their young. In the lagoon, I was overwhelmed at the whales’ trust as we reached out to touch them. And now, I thought, we have betrayed that trust. With our reckless obsession with plastic, our careless abandon with trash and chemicals.

My emotions were swirling. I knew all about that monstrous mass of plastic floating in the Pacific. Plastics break down into micro-particles, in some places far outnumbering per square inch the plankton that sea life depends on. These particles attract storm runoff containing flame-retardants and PCBs like a magnet – entering the food chain. The plastic toxins are ingested by marine mammals and stored in their blubber, contaminating our orcas and seals.

Our Northwest orcas are the most toxic marine mammals in the world. These plastics will contaminate our oceans for hundreds and hundreds of years. Plastic bottle caps that fill the stomachs of sea birds. Plastic grocery bags, mistaken for food, that suffocate sea turtles and other mammals. Plastic rings and box straps that strangle and mutilate. Plastic nets and fishing gear that choke and drown. We have all read the statistics – countless marine mammals, sea turtles and sea birds are impacted each year by our plastics and marine debris. Many thousands die. And now, this beautiful, majestic whale was dead before me**. A whale who sieved the floor of Puget Sound searching for food – but instead, found only our human trash and plastic bags. I will never forget this young whale. We can honor him and wake up to the toll that plastics take on our marine life by the simple act of choosing reusable bags.

Like good stewards, we can change our habits – and ensure that future generations can say they share this world with whales and seals and seabirds.

_________

NOTES:
It is estimated that 292 million plastic disposable bags are used in Seattle annually with only 13% recycled. Washingtonians use more than 2 billion single-use plastic bags each year.

**While the necropsy determined that the trash did not cause the death of this whale, it was one of several contributing factors. However, the large piece of sweatpants could have eventually created a blockage. For a full list of items and photo of the stomach contents of the whale, click here. An average of 2-10 gray whales die each year in Washington as they make the 10,000 mile migration from Baja to Alaska.

*MaST (Highline Community College Marine Science and Technology Center) will have the skeleton of the whale on display for educational purposes beginning in Spring of 2012.

From Ocean Elders

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental issues facing our oceans today. The Clean Oceans Project (TCOP) has developed a unique approach to solving this problem that not only removes plastic from our oceans, but transforms it into a valuable commodity; fuel.

The Problem
As a result of poor or non-existent recycling and waste handling practices, millions of tons of plastic garbage find their way into the marine environment every year, profoundly altering fragile ecosystems and threatening humans at the top of the food chain. Marine mammals, birds, and fish die from ingesting or becoming entangled in this carelessly discarded trash. Plastic pollution also damages coral reefs, litters beaches, discourages tourism, poses a navigational hazard to ships, and destroys fisheries.

The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG) is a slow moving spiral of ocean currents where millions of tons of floating plastic pieces of every size, shape, and color tend to congregate. The sheer size and remoteness of the affected areas coupled with the financial and technical challenges of operating in a deep-sea environment have thus far stymied remediation efforts. This problem is not isolated to the Pacific; gyres containing massive amounts of plastic trash have been discovered in each of the five major oceans of the world.

TCOP believes that research, education, and policy efforts aimed at reducing plastic pollution at its source are important components of an overall strategy for addressing the issue, but ignoring the plastic already fouling our oceans because of the challenges involved in cleaning it up is shortsighted. We have devised a unique solution that will complement these efforts by transforming this waste product into a useful and valuable resource.

The Solution
TCOP has developed a targeted, multi-phase approach to achieving our goal of locating, removing, and processing ocean borne plastics into fuel. The process utilizes commercially available technology but is unique in its application, and is patent-pending. Remote sensing technology will be used to locate debris field concentrations, while collection systems developed by the oil spill response industry will harvest the debris without trapping or injuring marine animals. Our unique plastic-to-fuel technology will then generate diesel fuel from the harvested debris to power our vessels.

From KGRV.Com

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND – Fishermen fishing along the jetties on Tuesday made a sad discovery when they found an illegal net with nearly 1,000 fish trapped inside, including endangered sea turtles.

They’re bringing in their sixth load of the day, but these are not fishermen. And the nearly 1,000 dead fish are victims of a crime.

“It’s just a shame, killing indiscriminately,” says Jarret Barker with Texas Parks & Wildlife.

The Texas Parks & Wildlife game warden pulled out a mile-long worth of illegal gill net that had washed into the jetties.

“The jetties is kind of a congregating point for a lot of different species of fish and a lot of fish,” says Barker. “As a fish tries to swim through it, they get hung in their gills.”

That’s what happened to the several hundred sharks and a dolphin who died in the net. Nearly 20 endangered green sea turtles also got caught.

“All of the turtles we cut them out of the net, and we turned them over to the Sea Turtles Inc. Some of them appeared to be really lively; others had cuts on their fins and their flippers,” says Barker.

They’re nursing 13 of them back to health. Four sea turtles did not make it. The sea turtles will be released back into the ocean as soon as they are healthy.

If the person responsible for the net is caught, he or she could serve jail time.