Ocean Forum

 

 

 

  
Warning on Tuna Cans Is Rejected

 

In a decision that state officials called "devastating" for public health, a Superior Court judge has ruled that tuna companies don't have to warn consumers about the mercury in canned fish under Proposition 65, California's law requiring companies to warn consumers of products containing hazardous ingredients.

 

The tuna case — involving a product that is consumed in large quantities by millions of people — is considered one of the most important in the 20 years since California voters overwhelmingly adopted the environmental initiative. The law requires companies to warn consumers about products that contain chemicals that cause reproductive harm or cancer… More…

 

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Experts say the Chesapeake's plant life couldn't stand another summer of temperatures near record highs

From the deck of a motorboat, Mike Naylor plunged a rake into shallow water and came up with nothing but a sliver of dead seaweed the size and color of a burnt match.

 

A year earlier, a lush forest of green eelgrass swayed beneath the waves of Tangier Sound here in the southern Chesapeake Bay. The plants were a vibrant breeding ground for blue crabs, terrapin, sea horses and pipefish, said Naylor, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

 

But now as Naylor hunted from cove to cove with his rake, he found much of the underwater vegetation dead or gone. "The record heat last summer just cooked the eelgrass," he said, eyeing the desiccated stem drooping between the tines of his rake… More…

 

 

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Australia accused Japan and other pro-whaling nations Thursday of recruiting poor countries to back their push for a resumption of commercial whaling at an international conference next month.

Environment Minister Ian Campbell said he fears pro-whaling nations could get the numbers to push through their commercial goal at the next meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the Caribbean starting June 16… More…

 

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About 500 treasures retrieved by divers from ancient Egyptian cities that disappeared under the Mediterranean Sea centuries ago will go on display in Berlin on Saturday.

 

The exhibition titled "Egypt's Sunken Treasures" marks the first time the artefacts from the legendary lost cities of Herakleion and Canopus, and a submerged part of the port of Alexandria, will have been seen outside Egypt.

They are between 1 200 and 2 700 years old and disappeared in the eighth century AD when the cities were submerged by an earthquake or other natural disaster, sinking to the seabed near Alexandria… More…

 

 

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An infestation of zebra mussels in a Virginia quarry has been eradicated, marking what biologists and environmental experts believe is the first successful extermination of the notoriously invasive species in open waters.

 

"I'm not aware of any other successful eradication," said zebra mussel expert Hugh MacIsaac, invasive species research chair at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research in Ontario, Canada. "That's quite impressive."

 

The small black-and-white striped mussels, native to eastern Europe, were first discovered in Virginia in a quarry in August 2002, surprising and concerning state wildlife officials… More…

 

 

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On his first cast of the season, Jim Walker pitched a lure resembling a baby salmon into the dark green waters of the Columbia River and -- BAM! -- hooked a 24-inch fish with a $4 bounty on its head.

 

But alas, "we didn't hook another one all day," the 73-year-old retiree said.

 

It may not always be easy, but fishermen who can fill their coolers can also fill their pockets -- some getting nearly $40,000 -- for helping to control the most voracious predator of baby salmon in the Columbia Basin, the northern pikeminnow… More…

 

 

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If Jordan and Syria execute their plan to construct one more dam on the Jordan River they will reduce the water flow to little more than a trickle, fear environmentalists and politicians familiar with the region.

The Jordan River, which runs for 62 miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, is one of the most historically and culturally rich places in the world. Christ was baptized in its waters and companions of the Prophet Mohammed were buried along its banks. Remnants of the first settlers, from 10,000 years ago, still decorate the landscape… More…

 

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Thousands of wells along Sri Lanka's coast remain unusable because of contamination caused by the 2004 Asian tsunami, a government official said, as international monitors urged new measures to tackle the problem.

 

S.R.J.R. Senanayake, an official at the state-run Water Supply Management Board, acknowledged Tuesday that a project to restore wells affected by the 10-meter (33-foot) high waves has so far failed.

 

"Initially, we thought that by flushing those wells, salinity could be pumped out," he told The Associated Press. "But it was not successful and salinity continues to prevail and people can't drink that water."… More…

 

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The figures read like a real estate agent's lettings list; a hectare of marsh in Canada, $6,000 per year; a tropical forest in Cameroon, $3,500; a Caribbean coral reef, $10,000.

The estimates from United Nations-backed studies are part of a fledgling bid to put a price on nature's bounties, from the production of crops, fish or timber to clean water supplies or the prevention of erosion.

Skeptics say the estimates are little better than guesswork but proponents argue that "Eco-nomics" shows natural systems, such as rainforests or mangroves, are usually worth more intact than if chopped down and harvested… More…

 

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It sounds funny indeed. After half year of crippling power crisis in Tanzania, nobody had thought about potential electricity generation options other than natural gas, coal, solar, thermal, and probably wind farms.

 

Now, investors from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have come with a seemingly curious idea: They want to risk USD168million of seed capital for investing in a power generation facility using Tanzania’s Indian Ocean’s territorial waters.

 

The investors are said to have found local partners to the venture and are now working out on business aspects related to investment guarantees… More…

 

 

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Concentrations of the natural pigment chlorophyll in coastal waters have been shown to rise prior to earthquakes.
These chlorophyll increases are due to blooms of plankton, which use the pigment to convert solar energy to chemical energy via photosynthesis.

A joint US-Indian team of researchers analysed satellite data on ocean coastal areas lying near the epicentres of four recent quakes… More…

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A former cruise liner with hundreds of tons of asbestos and other toxic material on board is heading for an Indian scrapyard, Greenpeace said on Tuesday, threatening a repeat of a controversy over a French warship.

In February, the French government decided to recall the Clemenceau, a mothballed aircraft carrier containing tons of asbestos, after the environmental group said that scrapping it in India would pose a risk to the health of workers… More…

 

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Humpback whales swimming in the waters off Hawaii are increasingly in danger of being hit by boats.

So far, seven confirmed collisions have been recorded in the current breeding season, compared with 33 over the last 30 years.

Environmentalists say they are alarmed by the growing trend, but researchers believe the increase is due to a jump in population numbers… More…

 

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Europe has missed the last chance to tackle the threat of commercial activities to North Sea ecosystems, conservationists have said.

 

Conference failed to take any decisive action to protect marine life from the impacts of offshore development, shipping and over-fishing, said the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

 

The group called for protected areas and "refuges" that it says are necessary to stop the extinction of species like cod and skate from the North Sea and wider repercussions on the marine eco-system… More…
 
(May 9, 2006.  Source:  EDIE Website.  Story by:  Goska Romanowicz.  http://www.edie.net/)

 

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Fifty years ago, fishermen shot at Northwest killer whales they felt were eating too many salmon. Now, thousands of visitors pay an average of $75 a trip to see the orcas in their summer habitat around the San Juan Islands.

 

The love sightseers feel for the orcas, however, may be getting overwhelming for the bus-sized mammals. As many as 100 tour boats can be on the water at once, all jockeying for a good look at the animals, and researchers are concerned that the in-your-face attention is harassing orcas and keeping them from their prey… More…

 

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Cuba Plans Offshore Wells Banned in U.S. Waters

In 1977, the United States and Cuba signed a treaty that evenly divided the Florida Straits to preserve each country's economic rights. They included access to vast underwater oil and gas fields on both sides of the line.

Now, with energy costs soaring, plans are under way to drill this year — but all on the Cuban side.

With only modest energy needs and no ability of its own to drill, Cuba has negotiated lease agreements with China and other energy-hungry countries to extract resources for themselves and for Cuba...  More…

 

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Bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle, making them the only animals besides humans known to recognize such identity information, scientists reported on Monday.

Scientists have long known that dolphins' whistling calls include repeated information thought to be their names, but a new study indicates dolphins recognize these names even when voice cues are removed from the sound… More…

 

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More accessible and better oriented literacy and education programmes for fishing communities will improve their livelihoods while diversifying their income-generating activities, according to a new report prepared by FAO.

The report will be presented on May 10 by Professor Bryan Maddox from the University of East Anglia. It is based on field work carried out mainly by the Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme, a partnership between FAO, the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID) and 25 countries in West and Central Africa (http://www.sflp.org/).

"Fishing communities often face educational disadvantage due to geographical and social marginalisation. Education providers are often unable or unwilling to provide services tailored to mobile and migratory populations which include many fisherfolk," the report says… More…

 

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Earth's wetlands are vital to the water cycle and havens for wildlife, but they are under threat. GlobWetland, an ESA-led initiative in collaboration with the Ramsar Convention Secretariat, has been addressing this issue by using satellite imagery to provide detailed wide-area views of individual wetlands to aid national and local conservation efforts.

Because the success of wetland conservation ultimately comes down to individual wetland managers, the GlobWetland products and services are user-oriented and based on specific requests of users across 50 sites in 21 countries worldwide. Based on user requirements, GlobWetland products include base maps, land use-land cover (LULC) maps and change detection maps – with historical Earth Observation (EO) satellite images being compared with current acquisitions to see what changes have occurred during the last ten years or more… More…

 

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Endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles emerge here every spring from the Gulf of Mexico, leaving smeary trails of flipper prints from surf through sand to nests where they lay their eggs.

 

But a planned beach-restoration project could mean vehicles intruding on the nesting grounds, sand dumped over eggs or new sand obscuring the paths to turtles' nests… More…

 

 

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Biotechnology companies are profiting from living resources found in the deep ocean without laws to ensure their actions are sustainable and fair, an Australian environmental lawyer says.

Dr David Leary, of Macquarie University in Sydney, says his research has revealed there are six companies selling products derived from the deep ocean and another eight developing them.

"They are the main players in the biotech industry [and] they're North American and European companies," he said.

Dr Leary says while international laws cover mining in the deep sea, no-one is mining there yet… More…

 

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Sea Change

 

A new design that eliminates the losses that arise from energy conversion may successfully couple the two abundant natural resources to produce potable water at an attractive cost.

The idea of using wind power to desalinate seawater has tempted engineers previously. Both elements are plentiful, they often coincide and are free. But the costs kick in when they are harnessed. A wind-turbine on the German island of Rögen has been used since 1995 to take the salt out of the Baltic Sea, but now a leading renewable energy consultant believes there is a better way to do it.

The WindDeSalter from Aerodyn Energiesysteme of Rendsburg, Germany, does the job mechanically. instead of generating electricity to power desalination equipment, the rotational energy from the rotor is transmitted to pumps that draw salt water up to the top of the column where a mechanical compressor pressurises it… More…

 

 

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Although 4.5 billion creatures died, the whole thing might have gone unnoticed, except for a couple of Brown University ecologists who dived to the bottom of Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay in the summer of 2001. There they found acres of blue mussels, suffocated by pollution-related oxygen loss in the bay waters.

The grim discovery triggered a study that has given experts new insights into the crucial role that shellfish play in maintaining the health of estuaries worldwide, documenting that reefs of mussels and other shellfish serve as powerful water filters, food sources and habitat for other species… More…

 

 

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Two coral species in Florida and the Caribbean now have a spot on the federal threatened list because of dangers posed by human activity, hurricanes and higher water temperatures.

 

The elkhorn and staghorn coral species have suffered a 97 percent decline in areas off the Florida Keys and in the Caribbean since 1985 and must be protected, National Marine Fisheries Service biologist Stephania Bolden said Friday… More…

 

 

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More than half of US streams are polluted, with the worst conditions found in the eastern third of the country, according to a study by the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

In its first-ever study of shallow or "wadeable" streams, the agency found 42 percent were in poor condition, and another 25 percent were considered fair. Only 28 percent were in good condition, EPA said. Another 5 percent were not analyzed because of sampling problems in New England.

Streams running in the East, from the Atlantic coast through the Appalachian Mountains, fared the worst, with 52 percent listed as poor… More…

 

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