Daniel Cressey

COML MAPPING & VISUALIZATION/DONNELLY

It took just an hour and a half to get the ball rolling, says Jesse Ausubel, thinking back to the day in July 1996 when Frederick Grassle came to his office at the Marine Policy Center of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Grassle, a marine scientist at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick, had come armed with a year-old report from the US National Research Council highlighting just how little scientists understood about marine biodiversity. Even well-explored ecosystems such as coral reefs, temperate bays and estuaries contained vast numbers of undiscovered species, to say nothing of the unknown organisms lurking in remote, under-sampled areas such as the polar seas and hydrothermal vents. The report, which Grassle had helped to write, argued that there was an “urgent need” to expand such research, not least because it is so important for fish management and marine conservation.

Ausubel, who is vice-president of programmes for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York and an adjunct scientist at Woods Hole, was astounded. “I knew that the measurements of life, especially at the species level, were not very good or plentiful,” he recalls. “But I learned from him that just the most basic things hadn’t been done.”

None of the usual government agencies seemed willing or able to tackle the problem, said Grassle, who had been doing his best to talk them into it. But the Sloan Foundation had a mandate to back ambitious projects that had trouble securing funding from traditional sources — which was why Grassle had come to see Ausubel.

“At the end of the conversation, we agreed that we should try to do something big,” says Ausubel.

That ‘something big’ — originally a fairly straightforward survey of marine fish — evolved into perhaps the largest and most expensive programme of marine-biology research ever (see ‘An oceanic inventory’). The decade-long Census of Marine Life, which will officially conclude with the announcement of the full census on 4 October, ended up involving scientists from more than 80 countries, in studies not only of fish, but also of organisms such as sea birds, marine mammals, invertebrates and plankton. The scientific goals of the census are as simple as they are ambitious: diversity, distribution and abundance. What lives in the sea? Where does it live? And how much of it is there?

Granted, the project is still a long way from fully answering those questions; a multitude of gaps remains to be filled by future research. And there are doubts about how much of a future there will be: in many countries, marine census projects are still seeking continuing funding.

Nonetheless, the idea that Grassle and Ausubel concocted on that July day in 1996 “has exceeded our wildest dreams”, says Ronald O’Dor, a biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, echoing a sentiment widely expressed by census participants. Discoveries include a tubeworm that drills for oil in seeps at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and then eats it; the finding that despite the 11,000 kilometres between the polar seas, at least 235 species are found in both; and the existence of a ‘brittlestar city’, in which tens of millions of starfish-like creatures live arm-tip to arm-tip atop a seamount south of New Zealand.

“The programme has produced, to date, more than 2,500 publications and has made accessible more than 30 million distributional records that are available to everyone,” says Ian Poiner, chief executive of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, Queensland, and chair of the census’s scientific steering committee. “I would doubt we could be criticized for our contribution to science.”

With Ausubel’s support, the Sloan Foundation eventually put some US$75 million into the census, which formally began in 2000. But that was only a down payment to cover the project’s organizational infrastructure — the committees, meetings and interactions between the thousands of scientists worldwide. To fund the research itself, these scientists had to seek out further funding from their respective governments and other sources. The global, ten-year total comes to roughly $650 million.

All the fish in the sea

The various national efforts were coordinated under 14 census field projects. One example was the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Ecosystem Project, which mapped the organisms living over and around the ridge using everything from manned submersibles and robotic gliders to more traditional fishing equipment such as trawl nets. Another was the Census of Marine Zooplankton, which used techniques ranging from DNA bar-coding to specially developed upwards-scanning sonar to monitor the roughly 6,800 species of plankton.

The census also included projects to understand the history of marine animals, and to model how they would be affected in the future by ecological forces such as fishing and climate change. Most importantly, according to many participants, the census created an Ocean Biogeographic Information System database to hold the millions of records generated by the surveys.    Read full article

Source: Nature.com

Catherine de Lange, reporter

Let’s face it, we can never see too many stories about male animals that gestate their young and give birth. And when the babies are as insanely supercute as this, so much the better. But – there’s always a but – seahorses in the wild aren’t doing so well.

A record-breaking 918 baby short-snouted seahorses were born at London Zoo’s aquarium on Monday and caught on camera.

Famed for their unusual gestation process – whereby the male is equipped with a ‘brood pouch’ and goes through pregnancy and birth – seahorses are notoriously hard to breed:

“Last year we managed to breed a batch of fry, but sadly none of them made it through to adulthood. This year marks the very first time we’ve managed to rear short-snouted seahorses to a stage where they’re eating live food,” said Sam Guillaume who led the breeding team.

Such large numbers of offspring are a survival adaptation in the wild, according to Brian Zimmerman, the aquarium’s Assistant Curator. In the wild, only one or two would make it to adulthood, he says, and they are especially susceptible to fishing practices and pollution.

A clear example is in the Gulf of Mexico, where the dwarf seahorse – the smallest seahorse in the world – is facing extinction following the BP oil spill. Amanda Vincent, director of the Project Seahorse conservation group told CBC News this week that the animals were in the height of their breeding season when the rig blew up in April. Read full article

Source: NewScientist

The root of the problem, 23 June (Image: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features)

So is the oil gone or not?

At the surface, the oil does appear to be almost gone. But the big question is whether oil droplets are still around below the surface, and if so how long they will linger. Researchers are divided on this.

For months, the government and BP burned and skimmed oil off the surface. What’s more, hot temperatures boosted evaporation and microbial communities that consume surface oil. Estimating what’s going on further down the water column and in sediments along the sea floor – is much more challenging.

Of particular interest is the fate of enormous plumes of oil droplets that were seen near the broken wellhead when it was still gushing oil. Richard Camilli and colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts show in a study out this week that at one point the plume was 2 kilometres wide and 200 metres high. But their measurements were made from 19 to 22 June, before the leak was plugged early this month (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1195223).

In another study published this week, Robert Hallberg of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, used models to estimate how long it would take the Gulf’s prevailing currents and oil-eating microbes to disperse and degrade the oil. He found that oil near the surface can abate within weeks, whereas oil trapped in the colder waters below about 1100 metres can take up to two months to disappear (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010gl044689, in press).

Contrary to other reports, Camilli also found evidence that oil-munching bacteria were only slowly working through the suspended oil. Together, his and Hallberg’s studies suggest that oil will probably remain deep in the water column for at least another month.

But Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, says that he has studied the same plume as the Woods Hole group. His results, which have yet to be published, show that microbes are rapidly eating up the plumes – so much so, he says, that the oil should already have vanished. Hazen is adamant: “The plume is no longer there. It’s gone.”  Read full article

Source: NewScientist

Cap Bon, TunisiaFourat / Creative Commons

Human activities, climate change and the invasion of alien species are threatening the rich marine life of the Mediterranean Sea more so than any other sea or ocean, according to a new study published in the Public Library of Science (PLOS).

The decade-long Census of Marine Life study, conducted by 360 researchers from 80 countries, is the largest global study of marine life ever undertaken. The researchers organized into 13 committees studying the world’s oceans and seas and the final results will be announced in London this October.

Habitat loss and degradation, compounded by overfishing, pollution, climate change, eutrophication, and invasion by alien species, pose the biggest threats to life in the Mediterranean.

Human activity in and around the sea threatens marine life in the Mediterranean more than any other of the oceans and seas surveyed. The land encompassing the Mediterranean has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. More than 200 million tourists flock to its sunny beaches each year, increasing population density in the coastal areas.

Many factories and industrial plants on the banks of the the nearly enclosed sea dispose of their waste directly into its waters, causing destruction of many fragile coral habitats. Overfishing of certain species, such as the critically endangered bluefin tuna, further damages the ecosystem. Read more…

Source: Nature.com

The study, a collaboration between scientists from NOAA, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was published Aug. 17 in PLoS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication.

photo: Creative Commons / Charles and Anne Sheppard

“Previous studies examined the relationship between warm conditions throughout the year and the likelihood of disease,” said Scott Heron, Ph.D., physical scientist with NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch. “We considered the influence of summer and winter separately, taking into account both cold and warm stress, to find that winter temperatures are just as important as summer stress in determining the susceptibility of corals to disease outbreaks.”

The decline and loss of coral reefs has significant social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts on people and communities in Australia, the United States and throughout the world. As the “rainforests of the sea,” coral reefs provide services estimated to be worth as much as $375 billion each year.

“Satellite monitoring of sea surface temperature has been useful in predicting coral bleaching,” said C. Mark Eakin, Ph.D., coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch. “Now we’ve used satellite measurements to find links between disease and temperature stress. Our new product should allow us to predict the risk of potential disease outbreaks in Australia, providing reef managers with vital information and enabling rapid management response. We look forward to expanding it to other areas as well.”

Advanced warning will not stop coral disease or bleaching, but will give managers time to reduce human-use stressors like diving, swimming, fishing and boating. The paper also describes the analysis that underpins a new experimental Coral Disease Outbreak Risk Map product, available online. This regional product provides a seasonal outlook based on winter metrics and an outbreak risk assessment updated in near-real-time during summer for the Great Barrier Reef. Ongoing work will soon expand it to the Hawaiian archipelago.

“Predictive satellite tools for forecasting disease outbreaks are an important step forward because they enable us to focus our research efforts on vulnerable reefs and thereby continue increasing our understanding of environmental factors that lead to disease outbreaks,” said Bette Willis, a chief investigator in the ARC CoE for Coral Reef Studies.

Some outbreaks of coral disease have been observed following bleaching events when the resistance of corals is reduced. Severe coral bleaching has been reported throughout Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific since May.

NOAA Coral Reef Watch is currently predicting a high potential for bleaching throughout the Caribbean this year. NOAA also recently reported that the combined global land and ocean surface temperature made this past July the second warmest on record and the warmest averaged January-July on record. This warming is expected to increase the incidents of coral bleaching worldwide.

Provided by NOAA

Source:   Physorg

Adam Mann

The cold stretch of the thermal oscillation in the Pacific could make its presence felt this winter. NOAA

La Niña, the climatic event in which swathes of the equatorial east-central Pacific cool, strengthened through August, according to reports from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Across all latitudes monitored by the NOAA, the ocean surface cooled by 1.3–1.8 ºC. Models predict that La Niña will persist until at least early 2011, and could, according to the NOAA, cool further during the coming winter. Nature explores its potential effects on the global environment.

What is the scientific definition of La Niña?

La Niña is a natural 3–6-year cycle, and the cold stretch of a periodic thermal oscillation in ocean surface temperatures that occurs throughout the tropical Pacific. Along with the better-known warming event, El Niño, it involves a difference from average water temperatures of more than 0.5 ºC. La Niña can persist for 1-3 years, as seen, for example, in 1998–2000.

What are its key global impacts?

Ocean cooling affects tropical Pacific rainfall from Indonesia to South America, says Gerry Bell, a NOAA climate scientist at the Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Maryland. Some places, such as northern Australia, experience wetter than average seasons. “The changes are so large that it affects wind, too,” adds Bell, “and right downstream of this area is the Atlantic.”

Does this have implications for the Atlantic hurricane season?

La Niña reduces variations in wind speed and direction throughout the atmosphere, which makes Atlantic hurricanes likelier, Bell says. This year may be particularly active, he adds. On top of La Niña, Atlantic water temperatures have remained unusually high over the past 15 years, and wind patterns that have been in place since 1995 — such as weak easterly trade winds and high pressure in the upper atmosphere — are particularly conducive to a strong hurricane season. NOAA expects 8–12 Atlantic hurricanes this season, of which it predicts 4–6 will be major hurricanes (that is, with sustained wind speeds of more than 178 km h^–1).

Will La Niña help to lower global temperatures after recent record highs?

Average temperature over land outside the tropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere reached a new high in July 2010, according to a report by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. In addition, the global average over land during the previous 12 months ranks as the second highest on record. La Niña conditions have offset these highs, but have mainly affected tropical Pacific waters. Global temperatures have been rising since the turn of the twentieth century, most notably during the past 30 years, but La Niña is part of a regular cycle that is simply overlaid onto that pattern.

Source:  Nature.com

Anna Petherick

The San Julián fish farm in the Santa Cruz department of Bolivia lost 15 tonnes of pacú fish in the extreme cold. Never Tejerina

With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But the unusually low winter temperatures experienced by the country’s tropical region in July and August hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.

Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known. They are now scrambling to coordinate research into how it happened, and how quickly the ecosystem may recover.

“There’s just a huge number of dead fish,” says Michel Jégu, a researcher from the Institute for Developmental Research in Marseilles, France, who is currently working at the Noel Kempff Mercado Natural History Museum in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. “In the rivers near Santa Cruz there’s about 1,000 dead fish for every 100 metres of river.”

Decomposing fish have polluted the waters of the Grande, Pirai and Ichilo rivers so badly that local authorities have had to provide alternative sources of drinking water for towns along the rivers’ banks.

The blame lies with a mass of Antarctic air that settled over the Southern Cone of South America for most of July. Water temperatures in Bolivian rivers that normally register about 15 °C during the day fell as low as 4 °C.

“It is not unlikely that the extreme weather conditions in July might have been related to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation [ENSO],” says Fons Smolders, a fisheries scientist at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. “Although it is still debated whether ENSO is affected by climate change, it is generally accepted that climate change has the potential to increase the prevalence and severity of extremes such as heat waves, cold waves, storms, floods and droughts.” Read more…

Source: Nature.com

Galapagos - Isla Bartolomé (© Michaël Lejeune, CC-BY-SA-2.5, Wikimedia Commons)

The World Heritage Committee decided to remove the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador) from the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger, despite IUCN´s recommendation to the contrary.

The Galapagos Islands, which have been called a unique “living museum and showcase of evolution” were inscribed on the Danger List in 2007 because of threats posed by invasive species, unbridled tourism and overfishing.

The Committee found that significant progress had been made by Ecuador in addressing these problems.

“The removal of this unique site of global importance to humanity is somewhat premature,” says IUCN Director General, Julia Marton-Lefevre. “IUCN stands ready to continue its work with the Ecuadorian government to fully implement the recommendations of the World Heritage Committee.”

“IUCN´s recommendation for the Galapagos was that it should not be removed from the Danger List as there is still work to be done,” saysTim Badman, Head of IUCN´s World Heritage Programme. “But we recognize the major efforts of the Ecuadorian government to rectify the situation there.”

“Threats from tourism, invasive species and overfishing are still factors and the situation in the Galapagos remains critical,” adds Badman. “We will need continued strong commitment from the Ecuadorian government over the coming years to resolve these issues.”

Source: IUCN

Kate Larkin

Sockeye salmon have been in decline for the past 20 years in the Fraser River.Stuart Westmorland/CORBIS

It’s the biggest run of sockeye salmon in British Columbia since 1913. Some 34 million fish are thronging the Fraser River as they return from the sea to spawn, federal regulators announced on 31 August. The event, following two decades of decline in salmon-run numbers, is taking fisheries scientists by surprise — and causing frustration across the fishing industry, which is largely unable to access the windfall.

One reason is that fisheries have been slow to open, unable to balance environmental and economic demands in the face of sheer fish numbers. And with about 80% of the salmon concentrated in one lake system, the Shuswap, the riches are poorly distributed. Because fishing quotas tend to be allocated geographically, a fisherman in a different part of the river system might be unable to benefit from the influx.

Over a century's worth of data shows immense variety in total abundance, including the recent decline and sudden peak. Pacific Salmon Commission

The cost of all this could be high — a loss of between 5 million and 10 million fish in potential catch, according to Carl Walters at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre in Vancouver.

This year’s unexpected boom has led to even more intense speculation about the state of the sockeye population. The 2009 salmon run reportedly saw only around 1.5 million fish returning to the river. The Canadian government’s Cohen Commission, established in 2009, is now looking at the current state of the sockeye population and potential causes of the decline. The commission aims to make recommendations for the future sustainability of salmon stocks by mid-2011.

Given the existence of models that predict fluctuations in salmon populations, why has this year’s glut come as such a shock? Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the government agency in Ottawa, Ontario, that runs the models and regulates the salmon fishing industry, has been criticized for failing to predict it. Read more…

Source: Nature.com

For three years, Rodolfo del Valle and his team will be probing the ice and seabed in the Erebus and Terror Gulf.

Ana Belluscio

Persistent bubbling is stirring the water’s surface in the Erebus and Terror Gulf, a remote spot off the Antarctic Peninsula. When he saw the commotion in 2000, Argentinian geologist Rodolfo del Valle was intrigued — despite 38 years’ experience in the region. There was a chance the gas contained methane, and when del Valle’s team investigated the leak they discovered it to be 99% methane.

This is bad news. The gas is not only 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at heating the atmosphere; methane hydrates locked up in the Antarctic seabed and ice also contain vast amounts of carbon — overall, methane deposits contain about half of global carbon. With a recorded decline in Antarctic ice shelves, the long-term effect of deteriorating and melting ice could range from boosting global warming to helping trigger mass extinctions. Nature caught up with del Valle on the eve of his departure for the first on-the-ground study to quantify methane leakage in shallow waters and ice in the Gulf.

What’s the overall rationale for your upcoming three-year focus on methane hydrate deposits?

Statistics and figures aside, I have been participating in Antarctic expeditions for so long that I’ve seen entire ice shelves crumble into pieces small enough to prepare a Scotch on the rocks. We have had to redraw maps. Global warming is a fact, and once we quantify methane emissions we will have scientific proof that the substrate on the seabed is melting and leaking methane. If these methane deposits reach the atmosphere, they will deepen the greenhouse effect, which, in turn, will promote further methane release, thus closing the circle and ramping up warming.

A number of studies have pointed to methane as a factor in mass extinctions. Are we looking at the start of a similar scenario now?

By quantifying the emissions and establishing their magnitude, we will be able to begin to determine how they will affect global warming. We believe there is a huge amount of destabilized methane deposits that may leak into the atmosphere and ramp up warming. This is not a new fact in geological history. Of seven major mass extinctions that erased 90% of the species at the time, five are attributable to climate change, and one in particular — at the Permo-Triassic boundary — could be directly attributable to mass methane release in the Upper Palaeozoic. Read more…

Source: Nature.com