Marine species ‘fleeing towards earth’s poles to escape rising ocean temperatures’

‘Some marine species appear to benefit from climate change, meanwhile some marine life is not able to adapt fast enough to survive’

Marine species are fleeing towards the earth’s poles to escape rising ocean temperatures near the equator, scientists have found. 

Researchers made the discovery after looking at data spanning more than a century on more than 300 animals, birds and plants living in the world’s oceans. 

The team, which included scientists from the universities of Bristol and Exeter, found a “general pattern” where species showed growing population densities towards the poles but declines in numbers near the equator. 

They believe their findings, published in the journal Current Biology, indicate rising temperatures have led to widespread changes in the population size and distribution of marine species. 

Stock image ( iStock/Getty )

Researchers gave examples of Atlantic herring and Adelie penguins, whose populations they said were both declining in abundance near the equator but increasing in abundance towards the polar regions. 

Martin Genner, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Bristol and senior study author, said: "The main surprise is how pervasive the effects were. 

"We found the same trend across all groups of marine life we looked at, from plankton to marine invertebrates, and from fish to seabirds." 

The research suggests certain species are thriving well in cooler regions where rising temperatures have opened up previously inaccessible habitats. 

However, others are not able to keep up with the rising temperatures. 

Louise Rutterford, a study author based at both Exeter and Bristol universities, said: "Some marine species appear to benefit from climate change, particularly some populations at the poleward limits that are now able to thrive. 

"Meanwhile, some marine life suffers as it is not able to adapt fast enough to survive warming, and this is most noticeable in populations nearer the equator. 

"This is concerning as both increasing and decreasing abundances may have harmful knock-on effects for the wider ecosystem." 

The world's oceans have warmed by an average of 1C since pre-industrial times, according to the researchers. 

To find out how this temperature change has affected marine life, the team reviewed 540 published records of species abundance changes - their occupancy trend over time. 

With warming predicted to increase up to 1.5C over pre-industrial levels by 2050, the researchers said species are likely to undergo further shifts in population distribution in coming decades. 

Martin Genner, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Bristol and senior study author, said: "This matters because it means that climate change is not only leading to abundance changes, but intrinsically affecting the performance of species locally. 

"We see species such as Emperor penguin becoming less abundant as water becomes too warm at their equatorward edge, and we see some fish such as European seabass thriving at their poleward edge where historically they were uncommon." 

(Source: Independent)

The divers rescuing a drowning island

Vaan Island in India’s Gulf of Mannar has been rapidly disappearing into the Laccadive Sea. But a team of marine biologists is working to save it.

Hundreds of fishing boats bob on the bright blue waters surrounding Vaan Island, a tiny strip of land between India and Sri Lanka. The island marks the beginning of a fiercely protected fragile zone, the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve. These waters are home to India’s most varied and biodiverse coastlines. Teeming with marine life, it is home to 23% of India’s 2,200 fin fish species, 106 species of crab and more than 400 species of molluscs, as well as the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, the finless porpoise and the humpback whale.

Fishing is a crucial source of income in the coastal towns and villages of Tamil Nadu state in southern India (Credit: Getty Images)

Nearly 150,000 fishermen depend on the marine reserve for their livelihoods. And Vaan Island is the gateway to this world. Half an hour by boat from the mainland and easily accessible to the 47 villages that are the backbone of this heavily populated coastline, Vaan has always been a refuge from storms for fishermen and a hotspot for researchers. But for the past 50 years it has been rapidly shrinking.

In 1986, 21 such islands in this region were protected when the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve, the first of its kind in Asia, was established in the Laccadive Sea. Now there are only 19. Two have been submerged and Vaan Island is the next at risk of vanishing. In 1973, Vaan was 26.5 hectares (65 acres), shrinking to just 4.1 hectares (10 acres) in 2016. At that point the erosion was so extreme that researchers estimated that it would be entirely underwater by 2022.

The reason that small, ecologically rich islands like Vaan are vanishing is a combination of unsustainable fishing practices, rising sea levels due to climate change and historic coral mining, which has now been banned in the area. Artificial reefs were deployed to help buffer waves reaching the islands, and they were effective. But to give Vaan and its neighbours a longer-term future, the ecosystem as a whole needed replenishing.

When researchers first investigated the seabed around Vaan Island, they found its sea meadows to be in a poor state (Credit: SDMRI)

Gilbert Mathews, a marine biologist at the Suganthi Devadason Marine Research Institute (SDMRI) in the nearby coastal town of Thuthukudi in southern India, turned to seagrass, a plain and innocuous-looking type of marine plant, as a way to save the island ecosystem. Often mistaken for seaweed, seagrasses are plants that grow underwater and have well-defined roots, stems and leaves. They produce flowers, fruits and seeds, and play a vital role in maintaining a marine ecosystem.

These tufts of grass provide a habitat to many splendorous sea-creatures, such as seahorses and lizard fish – Gilbert Mathews

“Like corals, these tufts of grass provide a habitat to many splendorous sea-creatures, such as seahorses and lizard fish, which can be found in seagrass throughout the year,” says Mathews. Seagrass provides the right environment for young fish and invertebrates to conceal themselves, while absorbing dissolved carbon dioxide and creating an oxygen and nutrient-rich environment. With its ability to trap sediments, seagrass also acts as a natural filter, clearing the waters and slowing erosion.

The seagrass around Vaan Island was patchy and brown before the transplants took place (Credit: SDMRI)

Mathews first surveyed the seagrass around Vaan Island in 2008, diving into the shallow waters twice a month, for up to eight hours a day. With a sense of dismay, he saw many tufts of seagrass floating in the water around him. These islands were home to the most luxuriant seagrass meadows of the Indian sub-continent, but they were coming loose.  

The sprigs had been pulled out by fisherman operating trawler boats, who rig two or more nets to scour the shallow waters. Fishing along shallow waters and the disruption of seagrass beds is illegal in India, but because of poor monitoring, the law is not strictly enforced. Along with trawlers’ haul of crustaceans and fish, they would pull out hundreds of green sprigs of seagrass that were later discarded in heaps along the shore. By destroying the seagrass, the trawlermen were inadvertently destabilising the ecosystem on which they relied – without seagrass as the base of the ecosystem, fish stocks dwindled. 

We believed that by restoring the seagrass meadows along these waters, we could strengthen the island and possibly save this and prevent others from submerging into the sea – Gilbert Mathews

In studies between 2011 and 2016, Mathews found that 45 sq km (17 sq miles) of seagrass cover had been degraded in the Palk Bay, where the waters of the Indian Ocean meet the Bay of Bengal. In the Gulf of Mannar, 24 sq km (9 sq miles) had died. “We believed that by restoring the seagrass meadows along these waters, we could strengthen the island and possibly save this and prevent others from submerging into the sea,” he says.

The marine biologists brought hefty sacks of fresh seagrass to the surface for transplantation to weaker spots (Credit: SDMRI)

Mathews knew that restoring seagrass would be a challenge. A global assessment of 215 studies, led by marine biologist Michelle Waycott of the University of Adelaide, Australia, found that seagrass had been rapidly disappearing all over the globe. Meadows spread over an area of 110 sq km (42 sq miles) – equivalent to an area the size of the Indian city of Chandigarh – have been vanishing every year since 1980. Overall, 29% of seagrass has been lost since records began in 1879.

But if the seagrass meadows could be reinvigorated around Vaan Island, they could also act as a carbon sink. “Plantation and restoration provide a growing solution towards mitigating climate change and affording some protection in this very fragile part of the world, which is often shaken by hurricanes and strong winds,” says Edward J.K. Patterson, director of the SDMRI.

At first, the researchers tried pulling up tufts directly from the sandy bottom of the seabed, and moving them to sites that had been badly depleted. But it didn’t work – the trawlers still pulled them out, undoing their painstaking work. 

It became evident that the team needed to find another way, but most of the usual rehabilitation techniques used in other parts of the world were expensive, even more labour-intensive and therefore not viable. For instance, one well-known method was the dispersal and sowing of seagrass seeds. But this wasn’t practical: the beds had to be dug out underwater and each seed planted by hand.

Mathews and his colleagues spent the next eight years trying to work out a better way to save the seagrass. Meanwhile, the erosion continued and in 2013 Vaan Island split in two as the sea encroached. In 2016, the Gulf of Mannar experienced its worst ever coral bleaching episode, losing 16% of its coral cover. Restoring corals and seagrass were twin projects, as both corals and seagrass act as natural barriers, affording some protection from strong waves and reducing erosion.

The scientists had a short window to sort the delicate seagrass before transplanting it to its new home (Credit: SDMRI)

Scientists from the SDMRI had by then perfected a better transplantation technique for restoring seagrass. Mahalakshmi Bupathy, a researcher specialising in soft corals, joined the team in 2016 along with her “diving buddy”, coral sponge scholar Arathy Ashok, to try out this new method.

I found giant barrel sponges that had been last sighted in these waters 30 years ago – Arathy Ashok

Several times a month, Bupathy and Ashok’s day began at 5am with a dive down to the seabed. First, they surveyed the sites along the 19 remaining islands of the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Straight and noted which underwater areas needed more seagrass and which harboured luxuriant growth. The latter could be promising “donors” to replenish the weaker sites. They also took stock of the area’s biodiversity, recording the vegetation and the fish population. Where there was plenty of seagrass, the ocean life was surprisingly rich. “I found giant barrel sponges that had been last sighted in these waters 30 years ago,” says Ashok. “These are such enigmatic creatures.”

Next, the pair collected mature seagrass sprigs from chosen donor sites. “One had to be particularly careful while digging them out,” says Bupathy. The sprigs have two kinds of roots – one set that grew vertically and other horizontally, which needed to be teased out without damaging them.

Before dropping the sprigs into the bags, Bupathy and Ashok washed them thoroughly in seawater to clear away any sediment. The initial unsuccessful attempts had revealed that replanting with excessive sediment blocked the sunlight and prevented photosynthesis, stunting the sprigs’ growth. The team then put the bags on the boats where the other team members were waiting with containers filled with seawater. Immersed in these containers, the seagrass then had to be transported to the transplant sites within an hour, or the sprigs would die.

When they reached their target – barren areas of former meadows – the shoots were then tied to a 1 sq m (11 sq ft) plastic quadrat using jute twine. A total of six pieces of twine could bind nearly 120 shoots to the squares. The roots had to be left intact, so that they could embed in the soil when the transplant took place. Depending on weather conditions, the team fixed up to 80 quadrats a day, each bound with the shoots that might, if they were lucky, hold Vaan Island together.

The degraded seagrass meadows recovered with the help of the targeted transplant process, and the donor areas replenished their lost stock too (Credit: SDMRI)

“It took two to three months for the roots to bind to the sandy and muddy underwater terrain,” says Ashok. Once it had, they would dive back to retrieve the plastic quadrats.

They monitored the rehabilitated sites closely to see whether the seagrass was taking hold. Every month the team measured environmental parameters that could affect seagrass growth, such as water temperature, salinity, acidity, turbulence, sedimentation and dissolved oxygen levels.

By the fifth month, the team began to see signs of success – it seemed the island’s seagrass was growing back. The quadrats had given the sprigs the extra stability they needed to take root. “We could visibly see an increase in biodiversity in these areas,” says Bupathy. “We saw a great variety of fin fish, molluscs, horse fish, sea turtles.”  The seagrass meadows that had acted as donors had replenished the lost stock too and were as dense as ever.

But, as fish and other marine life began to return, so too did the fishermen. Nets from bottom-trawlers began to pull up the newly transplanted seagrass.

The team kept diving, reaffixing the shoots when they were pulled up. Rough weather between April and September often impeded their work, but in the eight months when the seas were calm, the restoration project made steady progress.

The race against the trawlers often meant long hours underwater, with quick meals on boats. Bupathy remembers one occassion when her nose started to bleed after she had dived despite having a cold. Ashok recalls the small scratches and bruises from corals he brushed past. Seeing the seagrass beds grow and thrive, however, made up for any discomfort. “Watching the ecosystem take shape and grow diverse was very rewarding,” Bupathy says.

The restoration of seagrass meadows along the Indian coast can help in saving the ecosystem – Roxy Mathew Koll

When the seagrass is restored, it is hoped that species such as the dugong will thrive again in the Gulf of Mannar, where it is currently under threat (Credit: Getty Images)

There was another reason besides preventing the erosion of Vaan Island that encouraged the researchers’ dogged persistence. Losing seagrass meadows is akin to mass deforestation on land, and it can have a domino effect because seagrass is sensitive to changes in temperature. “Rapid ocean warming in the recent decades have shrunk carbon-storing seagrass meadows, which in turn accelerates global warming,” says Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate change scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune. 

All of which makes the efforts of Bupathy, Ashok and their colleagues more timely. “The restoration of seagrass meadows along the Indian coast can help in saving the ecosystem,” says Koll. “India has a large coastline, so if this is successful, it can be replicated for other similar environments along the coast – this will contribute to national effort to mitigate emissions and as much as possible, to reverse climate change.”

This is the first attempt in India to fight to save a sinking island - Edward J.K. Patterson

So far, nine acres of degraded seagrass have been rehabilitated in the Gulf of Mannar. As well as at Vaan Island, other fast-eroding spots such as Koswari Island, Kariyachalli island and Vilanguchali have had successful transplants. Two further acres have been restored around islands in Palk Bay. The researchers are hoping that in time the restored seagrass will woo back endangered mammals like the dugong.

In the long run, enforcing India’s laws against disturbing seagrass will have to be part of the solution. In 2019, a marine fisheries regulation management bill was proposed. If it is passed into law, larger fishing vessels and mechanised trawlers would need to be registered and licensed under state departments. They would need a permit to fish, which could lead to better monitoring and ultimately less destruction of the region’s seagrass and corals.

To date, the joint efforts to restore the coral and seagrass around Vaan Island and its neighbours has strengthened the degraded shoreline, making it less vulnerable to threats, says Patterson. “This is the first attempt in India to fight to save a sinking island,” he says. And it appears to be working – for now, Vaan island is stable.

(Source: BBC)

Cities from the sea: The true cost of reclaimed land

Asia is growing. Literally. From Malaysia to Dubai, luxury developments are rising on artificial islands and coastlines. Everybody wins – except the local sea life and the fishermen who depend on it, writes Wade Shepard in the Guardian. Read on: 

“Before, there were many fish,” says fisherman Mohd-Ishak Bin Abdul Rahman as he pulls a dried up crab from his net. A few years ago he could just walk out into the surf and pick up crustaceans with his bare hands, he tells me. “Now, nothing.”

He blames the palisade of new luxury condominiums that rise on the coastline behind him. Built on 240-acres of land artificially reclaimed from the sea, they are part of the Seri Tanjung Pinang 1 (STP1) project. Started in 2006, it brought a taste of new Asian modernity to what was then a rural area beyond the fringes of George Town, Penang’s only city. It also took away the fish, says Mohd-Ishak.

The 72-year-old is the undisputed chief of Tanjung Tokong, a fishing village of 100 houses built by the community a few decades ago. He is also the leader of a movement of fishermen protesting against development projects they claim are destroying the island’s fisheries, and with them their livelihoods.

 Land being reclaimed in Penang for the STP2 project

Fishing boats at Tanjung Tokong

Mohd-Ishak, the chief of the village 

Mohd-Ishak says his family has been fishing the area for at least five generations. As we talk, shirtless fishermen watch cautiously from handmade hammocks, half-broken plastic chairs and pieces of junk that washed up on the shore.

The contrast between the village with its shacks built from planks, beams and drift wood and the condos, swimming pools, luxury mall and Irish-themed pub is extreme.

Now the second phase of the STP project is in full swing. Dredgers, barges, bulldozers and diggers operated by a local subsidiary of the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) are busy creating 1,000 more acres of land for luxury development. Slated for completion in 15 years, the STP2 development is expected to have an eventual value of $4.4bn.

Asia is growing. Literally

Land reclamation is nothing new in Asia – China, Hong Kong and Japan have been at it since the 19th century – but it has recently reached epidemic proportions. Maritime ecosystems are abruptly transformed as natural islands are artificially conjoined with coastlines, natural shorelines are extended and artificial islands are built from scratch.

Cities on China’s coast reclaimed an average of 700 square kilometres of land – that’s about the size of Singapore – from the sea every year from 2006 to 2010 for new houses, industrial zones and ports. The 130 sq km of land that was reclaimed to build the new city of Nanhui was significant enough to reconfigure China’s national map, and the reclaimed land for the Caofeidian economic zone was twice the size of Los Angeles.

Reclaimed sand is sprayed at the construction site for Colombo International Financial City, Sri Lanka

A general view of the construction site

A sign at the site

Concerned these megaprojects were getting out of control and doing irreparable harm to the environment, Beijing stepped in earlier this year and put an end to land reclamation projects that were not spearheaded by central government.

Meanwhile, many Asian cities are picking up where China left off. Besides the STP projects on Penang, Malaysia has massive reclamation works under way for the 700,000-person Forest City in Johor; the Philippines is reclaiming 1,010 acres from the sea for its New Manila Bay – City of Pearl; Cambodia is building a slew of Chinese-financed properties on reclaimed land; Dubai has turned reclamation into an art form; and Sri Lanka is building a new financial district on the dredged and deposited land of Colombo International Financial City. Around a quarter of modern-day Singapore was open sea when the nation state came into existence in 1955.

Fishing boats off the coast of George Town, Malaysia

Chinese dredging vessels in the waters around Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands

Trucks carry sand at the Forest City development in Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Apart from acting as geopolitical flash points – reclamation in the South China Sea is repeatedly bringing the region to the brink of conflict – sourcing the sand is a major problem. Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam have already banned the export of sand, with reports of a multibillion dollar black market run by organised crime syndicates. Some of Indonesia’s Riau Islands have mysteriously disappeared – loaded on to barges and shipped to nearby Singapore, reports suggest.

‘Incredible profits’

The verdant, hilly island of Penang has been gripped by a development boom since the historic centre of George Town was declared a Unesco world heritage site in 2008. As tourists poured in from all over the world, so too did prospective property buyers looking to take advantage of the Malaysia My Second Home programme, and floods of east Asian real estate speculators.

“Penang has this obsession with wanting to become like Hong Kong and Singapore,” explains Andrew Ng Yew Han, a local film-maker who has documented Penang’s development.

But while 70% of the island is a forested blank slate for development, much of that is too hilly to build on safely – as proven by a recent landslide that wiped out a high-rise construction project and killed 11 workers.

Rescue workers search for victims of a landslide at a construction site in Tanjung Bungah, Penang

 Ariza terraces in Seri Tanjung, Penang

 Land reclamation next to a newly built hotel in the Forest City development

The state government’s crosshairs soon fell upon the other natural feature hemming in their ambitions: the sea. Taking a trick from the playbooks of their model cities, Hong Kong and Singapore, Penang launched several large-scale reclamation initiatives – many strategically placed in prime locations.

This ability to home in on high-value sections of cities to reclaim land for new development often produces incredible profits. Research from Ocean University of China professor Liu Hongbin found that land reclamation in China can produce a 10- to 100-fold profit.

The plans for land reclamation in the south of Penang

“If you are confident that you can sell the properties at a high price, which is likely the case at the fringe of large coastal cities or in popular coastal tourism destinations, reclaiming the land from scratch could potentially be more profitable than building on extremely expensive existing land,” explains Matthias Bauer, an urban designer who has worked on reclamation projects in China.

However, there is a lot more at stake with these projects than the money that is invested in them.

Habitat destruction

Not only are the fishermen of Tanjung Tokong banned from entering what was once an extremely productive fishing ground but there are now fewer fish in the waters near their village. Mohd-Ishak claims his catches have halved since development began.

Walking with him down the beach, another fisherman calls me over to his small house. His name is Haron Din, and his torso and legs are covered in the traditional tattoos that many fishermen in south-east Asia once wore.

At his feet lie piles of torn up old nets. He pulls out a dried up crab and explains it was dead long before it got tangled in his net. “The mud from the project suffocates them,” he says.

Haron Din says the mud from the reclamation area is killing local marine life

Fishermen inspect their nets in Kuala Muda, near the border between Penang and Kedah, Malaysia

 A long-dead crab in Din’s nets

Holding a shiny new white net next to one of the 40 or so damaged ones littering the beach, Din complains that mud from the nearby reclamation area is killing the local marine life and doing irreparable damage to their fishing equipment.

The fishermen must travel further out to sea to find fish, which drastically increases both the cost of petrol and the dangers of the job. Unable to make a living in their sheltered bay, they now have to cross a busy shipping lane and contend with higher waves. There have already been a few deaths, Mohd-Ishak says.

Film-maker Andrew Han with village chief Mohd-Ishak

Mageswari Sangaralingam, a research officer for Friends of the Earth Malaysia, says the thousands of sq km of land reclaimed across coastal Asia has meant the annihilation of mangroves, wetlands and reefs – destroying the habitats and breeding grounds for fish, sea turtles, crustaceans, plants and other marine life. In addition, the new cities, transport hubs and industrial zones built on the new land inevitably create added pollution and waste, he says.

“The multimillion-ringgit fisheries sector here on which thousands depend is being traded off for development,” says Sangaralingam. “Fish are being wiped out, and the fishermen will soon be too as they lose fishing grounds.”

Ghost town … Straits Quay, George Town, Penang

“You have this development and yet people are losing their jobs,” adds film-maker Han. “You have reclamation which promised development, but you have fishermen who are losing their livelihoods, looking for second jobs … You build so many buildings here but in the end it doesn’t belong to us, it will be bought up by other people and foreigners.”

I visit Straits Quay – the high-end shopping mall surrounded by luxury condos overlooking the fishing village. On three trips here I’ve never seen anyone actually shopping in its luxury boutiques. The hallways are bare wind tunnels and even the giant atrium that acts as an opulent entranceway to the mall appears desolate, echoing the caws of resident crows and little else. If it wasn’t for a few stragglers slipping in and out to pick up groceries at the small supermarket – and the yacht owners drinking on the patio of the Irish-themed pub – the place could be called a ghost mall.

Wet wipes 'to be eliminated in UK' in effort to save marine life

Government vows to get rid of wipes within 25 years

Household wet wipes will be banished in the UK as part of Michael Gove’s crackdown on plastic being thrown away and damaging ecosystems, the government has said.

If they are outlawed, shoppers will no longer be able to buy the wipes, which are mostly made of polyester and contain millions of microfibres impregnated with chemicals.

Tens of thousands of wet wipes are sold in Britain each year, and despite public awareness campaigns, many are still flushed into lavatories, where they end up clogging mains sewers, and go on to kill fish in rivers and other marine life as the fibres are released.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: “As part of our 25-year environment plan, we have pledged to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste, and that includes single-use products like wet wipes.

“We are continuing to work with manufacturers and retailers of wet wipes to make sure labelling on packaging is clear and people know how to dispose of them properly – and we support the industry’s efforts to make their customers aware of this important issue.”

She declined to say whether this meant it would become illegal to buy or sell wet wipes or when the measure would begin.

Defra said it is still considering new taxes to reduce the amount of single-use plastics wasted.

Wet wipes, which contain plastic, slowly break down into microplastics that are then ingested by marine life, with deadly consequences.

Mr Gove, the environment secretary, has decided to clamp down after a group that cleans up rivers last week revealed that wet wipes were changing the shapes of river beds.

Thames21 found more than 5,000 of them alongside the Thames in an area half the size of a tennis court.

Members retrieved 5,453 wet wipes last month in an area in west London – an increase of nearly 1,000 on last year’s total. They said similar accumulations were happening in rivers nationwide.

Flushing a wet wipe isn’t disposing of it. It’s environmental littering.

Read this blog post from last year by Helen Wakeham, our Deputy Director of Water Quality: https://t.co/DnHjmYFbOL#binit4beaches #water #pollution #environment pic.twitter.com/myCE1gOX5w

— Environment Agency (@EnvAgency) May 7, 2018

It also follows complaints from water and sewage companies and the Environment Agency. In December, Water UK, which represents water and sewerage companies, announced that the biggest ever in-depth investigation of sewer blockages found wet wipes being flushed down toilets were the greatest culprit.

It said sewer blockages added £100m to water bills each year.

Wet wipes also contribute to giant “fatbergs”, giant congealed lumps of fat and rubbish in sewer systems – of which there are believed to be at least 12 under just London now.

In an attempt to stem the tide of damage caused by plastic, the UK has already:

• banned microbeads, which kill marine life 
• introduced a 5p plastic bag charge 
• signalled a ban on the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds
• and announced a new deposit-return scheme for plastic bottles. 

(Source: Independent)

Dr Doolittle of the ocean

Dr Sharon Doake from County Down has anything but your regular nine to five job. She gets paid to listen to whales, writes Amy Stewart in BBC. Read on: 

The 33-year old from Gilford is, what some might say, the Doctor Dolittle of the ocean.

When ships look for oil, the equipment used can affect mammals' hearing and it's her job to prevent that.

While others may slog over a computer, she spends her time offshore, looking and listening for the sights and sounds of dolphins and whales.

Dr Doake is what is known as a marine mammal observer, or more dramatically, she's the Whale Listener.

And, as far as she knows she's the only person from Northern Ireland who does that job.

An Orca whale that Dr Doake photographed while at work

When large, survey ships search the seabed for oil, the equipment used creates sound.

This is necessary for finding oil but it can be noisy and can affect marine life that travels through or comes to feed in the area.

"Sound to them is like eyesight to us and if it's damaged it can be disastrous for them," Dr Doake says.

"It can physically damage them or it can just scare them off coming to the area which, if it's a feeding ground, is a problem.

Sharon Doake with the PAMS system she uses to hear whales
and other marine mammals

"Animals, like whales and dolphins are most affected but there's evidence and research that it may be worse for whales as the sounds they make are low pitched, like the sound created by the equipment.

"It's not bad to use this equipment but it's just that we need to mitigate any effect it can have," she adds.

Dr Doake finds the animals in two ways - by scanning the surface, usually for dolphins - and as whales spend less time at the surface, by using a water-based microphone known as Passive Acoustic Monitoring Systems (PAMS) which visualises the sound of their calls.

One of Dr Doake's favourite memories is the first time she spotted
a rarely seen blue whale, the largest animal on earth

Depending on where Dr Doake is working, she may have to shut down operations if she locates the large mammals.

"Asking a company to shut down operations is such a big judgement call, as every time you do it, it costs them a lot of money, so it's quite a big decision to make," she says.

Dr Doake comes across all species of whale and dolphins in her work although she says her first time seeing a blue whale in Australia is her favourite memory "because of the sheer size".

"With whales, in a way you don't want to see them, we want to be interfering as little as possible," she adds.

Sharon Doake pictured at work

Offshore sexism
Meanwhile, there are other challenges to a life at sea.

One of the more frustrating aspects, she says, is what she sees as the gender imbalance on rigs.

"I'm often the only woman or one of three women on a ship of, maybe, 50 men.

"You can get treated differently. It can be a very sexist environment and you do come across sexist attitudes.

Dr Doake sees dolphins regularly as they spend much more time
at the surface than whales

"I've been told not to help in the deployment of equipment and been told: 'You can't do that, you're a woman.'"

Dr Doake studied Zoology at Queen's University Belfast (QUB) and then undertook a PHD, which led her to a life off land.

It's not all whales and dolphins - she sees the odd turtle too

"I had originally wanted to be a vet but didn't get into the course," she recalled.

"It was a blessing in disguise because my job now is so unusual, varied and provides opportunities for me to travel.

"I've worked in all over the world including New Zealand, South America, and Australia."

She listens for creatures but also spends time on deck looking for them

She returned to the ocean last week for another six-week stint, closer to home this time, in the North Sea.

The dolphins and whales are in good hands.

How big are the biggest squid, whales, sharks, jellyfish?

A few years ago, Carl Zimmer and I ran a workshop on science writing, where we talked, among other things, about explaining science without talking down to your audience. It apparently left an impression on Craig McClain, a marine biologist and blogger who was in the audience. “I made a comment about how I always wanted to write a post on how giant squid sizes are bullsh*t,” he recalls,” but that those always come off as an arrogant scientist telling the world that it’s wrong. And you said: You should write it, but you just need to find the right tone. That kicked me off.”

Rather than an angry blog post, McClain decided to put together a scientific paper that would accurately answer a simple yet slippery question: How big do the biggest animals in the ocean get?

The oceans are home to giants: blue whales and great white sharks; giant squids and giant clams; elephant seals and Japanese spider crabs. These creatures have no trouble capturing the public imagination, but scientists often have trouble capturing them. Many are rare, elusive, or live in inaccessible parts of the sea. Some are only measured when they wash ashore, after dry land distends or deflates their bodies. Some are so big that they are just plain hard to measure. And so, oceans are also home to exaggeration.

Take the giant squid. Umpteen media report claim that this nigh-mythic animal can grow up to 60 feet (18 metres) in length. That’s absurd, McClain thought. The vast majority are less than half that length. Many individuals are measured when they wash ashore, after decomposition loosens their muscles and eager humans stretch their tentacles. One size estimate even came from someone counting his paces next to a beached squid! Shoddy data had been unleashed upon the kraken.

McClain, together with Meghan Balk from the University of New Mexico, went after better sources. They recruited five keen undergraduate students and large team of colleagues, who divided a list of target species between them. They trawled the scientific literature for measurements. They combed through books, newsletters, and newspapers. They asked colleagues at museums to measure specimens in their collections. They contacted networks that rescue stranded turtles. They reeled in eBay records to find the measurements of giant clams and snail shells. And together, they found the best possible estimates for the maximum sizes of 25 ocean giants.

For some species, widely quoted figures were outrageously wrong. The largest verifiable giant squid was 12 metres long—giant, sure, but a damn sight smaller than 18 metres. The biggest known walrus weighed 1,883 kilograms, a far cry from the 2,500 kilogram titan that a hunter supposedly shot, and clearly embellished.

For some species, estimates were outdated—giant clam sizes all date to the 60s and 70s. For others, like the lion’s mane jellyfish and Japanese spider crab, the team found that accurate data just doesn’t exist.

And “some animals may just not be getting as big as they used to get,” says McClain. In 1885, fishermen in the Aleutian Islands caught a Giant Pacific octopus that was 9.8 metres from one arm tip to the next. “The two octopus experts who were with me on this paper say that they just don’t get that big any more,” says McClain. “It could be pollution or climate change.”

Hype and decline aside, the stats from the paper still tell of oceans that are full of impressive leviathans. There are giant barrel sponges, whose bodies are just two layers of cells sandwiching a jelly filling, but can nonetheless grow to 2.5 metres wide. There are 2-metre-wide Nomura’s jellyfish that can weigh 200 kilograms. In the depths, 3-metre-long giant tube worms thrive near hot, belching, volcanically heated vents, and giant isopods—a kind of undersea woodlouse on steroids—can reach 50 centimetres. Seven treacherous metres exist between the tip of a great white shark’s toothy snout and the end of its powerful tail.

The maximum verifiable sizes of various ocean giants. CREDIT: EMILY M. ENG, NG STAFF. SOURCE: C. R. MCCLAIN, ET AL. PEERJ

The largest mammal, the blue whale, grows up to 33 metres long, and can swallow half a million calories in one mouthful. The longest fish—the star-backed whale shark—gets to 18.8 metres. The longest bony fish—the bizarre, serpentine oarfish—can reach 8 metres. The heaviest bony fish—the ocean sunfish, which looks like the decapitated head of a much larger fish—grows to just 3.3 metres long but weighs up to 2,300 kilograms. That’s much heavier than the biggest turtle (leatherback, 650 kg), a little heavier than the biggest walrus (1,883 kg), and not a patch on the heaviest seal (Southern elephant seal, 5,000 kg).

These measurements are all as accurate as possible; finding them often involved a labyrinth of references and phone calls. For the Australian trumpet—a beachball-sized monster of a snail—McClain found an issue of Hawaiian Shell News, in which a collector named Don Pisor holds up an enormous and supposedly 90-cm shell. But McClain also found a copy of the Registry of World Record Size Shells, which said that the record-holder was just 72 centimetres long. It was also attributed to Don Pisor. Were these the same specimens? Was this guy a charlatan? Or just phenomenally good at catching escargods? There was only one thing to do: McClain tracked down Pisor and asked him. It was just one specimen, he said, and he donated it to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. McClain called the museum. 72 centimetres, they said. Another data point for the list.

In a few cases, the team discovered new things about the giants. Andrew Thaler, who collected the data on giant isopods suddenly realised that males were, on average, much bigger than females. “That’s not something either of us knew before and both of us know everything there is to know about giant isopods,” says McClain.

And for several animals, the team managed to plot out the distribution of their sizes, rather than just the maximum. Scientifically, that’s more useful. People love to know how big animals can get, but that tells us very little about their typical lives. The biggest known giant squid was 12 metres long, but their average length is 7.3 metres, and most individuals are shorter than 9.2. Its archenemy, the sperm whale, has a recorded maximum size of 24 metres, but 95 percent of these whales are shorter than 15 metres.

As McClain—himself a bear of a man at 6’ 2”—points out, “individuals may reach these extraordinary large sizes through developmental or genetic defects.” The tallest human ever, Robert Wadlow, was 8 feet and 11 inches in height; he also needed leg braces to walk and died at 21 from an infection aggravated by an autoimmune disease. The tallest woman, Zeng Jillian, reached her lofty 8 feet and 1 inch because of a tumour in her pituitary gland; she died at 17. We are fascinated by extremes, but life mostly plays out in the middle.

Reference: McClain, Balk, Benfield, Branch, Chen, Cosgrove, Dove, Helm, Hochberg, Gaskins, Lee, Marshall, McMurray, Schanche, Stone & Thaler. 2015. Sizing ocean giants: patterns of intraspecific size variation in marine megafauna. PeerJ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.715

More: The students created a website—Story of Size—where they wrote about their work.

(Source: National Geographic)

Meat industry blamed for largest-ever 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico

A new report shows toxins from suppliers to companies like Tyson Foods are pouring into waterways, causing marine life to leave or die

The global meat industry, already implicated in driving global warming and deforestation, has now been blamed for fueling what is expected to be the worst “dead zone” on record in the Gulf of Mexico.

Toxins from manure and fertiliser pouring into waterways are exacerbating huge, harmful algal blooms that create oxygen-deprived stretches of the gulf, the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay, according to a new report by Mighty, an environmental group chaired by former congressman Henry Waxman.

It is expected that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) will this week announce the largest ever recorded dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It is expected to be larger than the nearly 8,200 square-mile area that was forecast for July – an expanse of water roughly the size of New Jersey.

Nutrients flowing into streams, rivers and the ocean from agriculture and wastewater stimulate an overgrowth of algae, which then decomposes. This results in hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, in the water, causing marine life either to flee or to die.

Some creatures, such as shrimp, suffer stunted growth. Algal blooms themselves can cause problems, as in Florida last summer when several beaches were closed after they became coated in foul-smelling green slime.

America’s vast appetite for meat is driving much of this harmful pollution, according to Mighty, which blamed a small number of businesses for practices that are “contaminating our water and destroying our landscape” in the heart of the country.

“This problem is worsening and worsening and regulation isn’t reducing the scope of this pollution,” said Lucia von Reusner, campaign director at Mighty. “These companies’ practices need to be far more sustainable. And a reduction in meat consumption is absolutely necessary to reduce the environmental burden.”

The Mighty report analyzed supply chains of agribusiness and pollution trends and found that a “highly industrialized and centralized factory farm system” was resulting in vast tracts of native grassland in the midwest being converted into soy and corn to feed livestock. Stripped soils can wash away in the rain, bringing fertilisers into waterways.

Arkansas-based Tyson Foods is identified by the report as a “dominant” influence in the pollution, due to its market strength in chicken, beef and pork. Tyson, which supplies the likes of McDonald’s and Walmart, slaughters 35m chickens and 125,000 head of cattle every week, requiring five million acres of corn a year for feed, according to the report.

This consumption resulted in Tyson generating 55m tons of manure last year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with 104m tons of pollutants dumped into waterways over the past decade. The Mighty research found that the highest levels of nitrate contamination correlate with clusters of facilities operated by Tyson and Smithfield, another meat supplier.

 Toxins from manure and fertiliser pouring into waterways in and around the Gulf of Mexico are causing harmful algal blooms, leading to widespread ‘dead zones’. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

This pollution has also been linked to drinking water contamination. Last week, a report by Environmental Working Group found that in 2015 water systems serving seven million Americans in 48 states contained high levels of nitrates. Consuming nitrates has been linked to an increased risk of contracting certain cancers.

“Large parts of America are being plowed up for corn and soy to raise meat,” said von Reusner. “There is very little regulation so we can’t wait for that.

“The corporate agriculture sector has shown it is responsive to consumer concerns about meat production so we hope that the largest meat companies will meet expectations on this.”

The report urges Tyson and other firms to use their clout in the supply chain to ensure that grain producers such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland employ practices that reduce pollution flowing into waterways. These practices include not leaving soil uncovered by crops and being more efficient with fertilizers so plants are not doused in too many chemicals.

The US is an enormous consumer of meat, with the average American chewing through 211lbs in 2015. A study released earlier this year found that US beef consumption fell by nearly one fifth from 2005 to 2014, possibly due to concerns over health or the environment. A new increase is now expected.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, beef and pork production is forecast to grow significantly over the next decade, driven by lower feed costs and healthy demand. By 2025, the average American is expected to eat 219lbs of meat a year. Just 3% of Americans follow a vegetarian or vegan diet.

This voracious appetite for meat has driven the loss of native forests and grasslands in the US and abroad, releasing heat-trapping gases through deforestation and agricultural practices. Agriculture produced 9% of US greenhouse gas emissions in 2015, according to the EPA.

A spokesman for Cargill said the company was an “industry leader” for sustainable practices, pointing to its efforts with environment groups to address air, water and soil quality in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska.

“Protein consumption is growing globally and we are working to meet increased consumer demand with sustainably and responsibly produced foods and supply chains,” said the spokesman. “We are dedicated to protecting animal welfare, reducing environmental impact, increasing transparency and keeping workers and consumers safe.

“We also continue to improve livestock feed efficiency. Over the last 15 years we have seen an overall trend in reducing the volume of feed for each pound of beef produced.”

A Tyson spokeswoman said “we don’t agree with the group’s characterization of our company but share its interest in protecting the environment.”
“It’s true the livestock and poultry industry is a major buyer of grain for feed, however, the report fails to note that a large percentage of corn raised in the US is used for biofuel and that a significant portion is used for human consumption,” she added.

“Tyson Foods is focused on continuous improvement. We are constantly looking to improve and lead the industry, so that we can deliver sustainable food to people every day at a scale that matters to the world.”

(Source: The Guardian)