Australia’s Giant Cuttlefish in Trouble as Weak Spawning Season Continues

Australian giant cuttlefish may be in trouble, as evidenced by low summer spawning numbers (flickr| richard ling)

This summer, numbers are way down.

Australia’s ABC Radio recently interviewed a local commercial fisherman who reported that he has only seen four this year—rather than the usual “hundreds of thousands.” Other news outlets have been picking it up too.

Researchers say the low numbers are cause for concern, and they don’t yet know what’s causing the trend (though “BHP Billiton’s proposed desalination plant” nearby probably won’t help. It would reportedly pour “huge quantities of hypersaline wastewater” into Spencer Gulf and make the area unpalatable for a variety of species). A new study finds that the cuttlefish breeding colony had decreased by 78% in the past decade, and last year marked a record low.

Plan to Exonerate Hawaiian Monk Seals Relies on Reality-TV-style Cameras

Hawaiian Monk Seal photo by: U. S. Fish and WIldlife Service

The image rehabilitation plan comes as local fishermen ramp up  claims that the seals have been depleting area fish stocks. Recent cases of people pestering—and in some cases killing—the seals have come partly as a reaction to these rumors, and spurred scientists to “glue submersible cameras onto the seals’ backs, using the footage to prove to fishermen the animals are not harming their way of life.”

You can find out more about habitat threats to monk seals or read Les Welsh’s blog post from April about people intentionally killing the seals in the waters around Kaua’i (and how you can help).

Video: Blue Shark Chomps Giant Squid

Giant squid are mysterious, awesome and locked in an eternal arms race with sperm whales. Live sightings are so rare that even footage of a recently dead Architeuthis is a pretty big deal. Recently, Australian angler and journalist Al McGlashan came across a largely-intact carcass whose bright red coloration indicated it had died recently. While he filmed, a blue shark tore into the squid, thus launching  the best cephalopod viral phenomenon of 2012 (so far…I eagerly await your videos of octopuses singing ‘Call Me, Maybe’). Take a look at Field & Stream’s exclusive full-length video and photos right this second.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Canadian Lobster is Blue, Yet in Decent Spirits

Canadian lobster boat captain Bobby Stoddard caught a lobster in early May that resembled a giant Avatar cat person. That’s the way we say ‘it was blue’ in America now.

Blue lobsters do occur, but they’re uncommon. According to The University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, “only an estimated one in two million lobsters is blue” (which makes them rare, but not quite as rare as live, naturally red or yellow lobsters, which are estimated at one in ten million and one in 30 million, respectively). Blue lobsters come about due to “a genetic defect that causes the lobster to produce an excessive amount of a particular protein.”

You can learn more about invertebrates in our Wildlife Library.

Manta Ray Ultrasound Sheds Light on Liquid Oxygen Intake

A study recently published in Biology Letters is the first to show how manta ray embryos get oxygen, based on video from an ultrasound performed on a pregnant ray in 2008.

Though manta rays, like many other cartilaginous fish, give birth to live young, they lack an oxygen-giving umbilical cord or placenta. According to researchers, “the baby ray was raising and lowering its jaw, pumping uterine fluid in through its mouth and spiracle.” The continuous regulated flow of the fluid over the ray’s gills allowed the embryo to extract oxygen (the baby was “a healthy female, 2 meters from wingtip to wingtip and weighing 50 kilograms” at birth). According to Taketeru Tomita, a fish biologist at Hokkaido University Museum, this is the first time that scientists have observed fetal viviparious vertebrates pumping liquid to extract oxygen.

Great Whites Summering in Cape Cod

Researchers tag a shark near Chatham, MA, in 2009. Tagged great whites recently returned to Cape Cod to feed on seals. (flickr | Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs)

Researchers say the sharks were drawn to the area by “a growing seal population on Monomoy Island,” redoubt of migrating birds and other non-humans for hundreds of years. They haven’t come close enough to tourist beaches to warrant any official warning, though mayhem will presumably occur if the star-crossed Brody family gets too close.

For more on ocean creatures, see Kevin Coyle’s post from last year about animals’ various methods of swimming or my post about the Top 5 Real Sea Serpents (including the giant squid). You can also check out an article about sperm whales and the threat posed to them after the oil spill in the Gulf  of Mexico.

If you’ve seen a story that you think should be covered in the next Ocean Wildlife Roundup, please let me know in the comments below, email me at greenbergm@nwf.org, or tell me on Twitter @MaxTGreenberg.

Flickr's Tina Neale

The hearing, Impacts of Rising Sea Levels on Domestic Infrastructures, was one of the only hearings on climate change that Congress has held this year. In that sense, it’s an important chance to talk about global warming, America’s biggest threat that Congress refuses to address. As National Wildlife Federation Climate Scientist Dr. Amanda Staudt blogged in advance of the hearing, “The climate-related threats to our nation’s energy systems compound the vulnerability associated with our aging & crumbling energy infrastructure, which is already causing environmental damage.” However, the committee made clear that this “is an oversight hearing, not intended to lead to legislation.”

I headed down to Dirksen Senate Office Building this morning to watch the hearing and kept a running diary …

9:27am - The hearing is set to begin at 9:30am. The committee includes some of Congress’ biggest champions of climate action (Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Maria Cantwell) and some of its staunchest polluter allies (Sen. Joe Manchin, Sen. John Barrasso) so we could see some fireworks. The witness panel:

What do the following have in common: driving to the beach, dogs, lightning, pigs, and falling coconuts? All of these kill more people per year than sharks. Each year there are less than 100 unprovoked shark bites on humans worldwide, with an average of 4.3 fatalities each year. This has been decreasing over the years despite continued population growth and beach attendance. Clearly, we have very little to fear from sharks.

Sharks however cannot say the same about their risk from mankind. Every day, roughly 200,000 sharks are killed through targeted fisheries and as bycatch. Many sharks are slow to mature and have very few young compared to other fish. Some species, such as the sandbar shark, can take between to 10-14 years to mature and only have 6-10 young every other year after a 10-11 month gestation. To top it off, many of the habitats these sharks are using as nursery areas are becoming overdeveloped, leading to habitat loss and polluted waters.

So why the high pressure on sharks? Well, their fins are extremely valuable and are harvested for a delicacy known as shark fin soup. Because their fins are so much more valuable than their meat, fisherman have been known to cut off their fins and dump their still living bodies overboard to suffocate or starve, in a process known as “finning.”

A White Tip Reef Shark from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve. Photo courtesy NOAA.

Luckily there is still time to save sharks, but they will need our help. Consider symbolically adopting a shark and support efforts to conserve and protect wildlife. You can also learn more about sharks biology and behavior in NWF’s Wildlife Library.

Learn more about how you can protect EXTRA-ordinary species like sharks during this year’s National Wildlife Week, March 19-25.

Giant squid eyes are huge, farsighted, and well-adapted to detecting predators (flickr | Jonathan Lampron)

Now, though, we know a little more.

According to a study published in Current Biology, the giant squid (and ‘colossal squid‘)’s huge eyes—which, aside from being the largest eyes of any known animal, are proportionally larger than those of other squid—have evolved for a special purpose:

…such giant eyes are unlikely to evolve for detecting mates or prey at long distance but are instead uniquely suited for detecting very large predators, such as sperm whales. [...] we predict that, below 600 m depth, (the eye) would allow detection of sperm whales at distances exceeding 120 m [...] we hypothesize that a well-prepared and powerful evasive response to hunting sperm whales may have driven the evolution of huge dimensions in both eyes and bodies of giant and colossal squid.

Lead author Dan-Eric Nilsson, a marine vision expert at the University of Lund in Sweden, and his team determined that giant squid are lousy at seeing things up close—they’re farsighted—and good at seeing big things off in the distance. This offers a unique and much-needed advantage when your primary day-to-day threat to life and limb (and limb, and limb, and limb…ha!) is a 60-ton predator with nature’s most powerful sonar system.

Duke Today:

But the boost in being able to sense contrast, which large eyes provide, is critical for detecting the low light differences of large, distant objects, the most important one being the bioluminescence stimulated by large animals such as approaching sperm whales, [report contributor and Duke biologist Sonke Johnsen] said.

Giant squid washed ashore in Norway, 1954 (flickr | NTNU-Vitenskapsmuseet)

The team realized that sperm whales dive and swim continuously while emitting sonar to ping the squid. The cephalopods are deaf to the sonar, but the whale’s wake triggers small organisms like plankton to produce light. Based on the design of the squid’s eye, the animal could see this light, though contrast is low, over “freakishly long distances,” about 120 meters — the length of an American football field, Johnsen said.

We all know that Duke basketball is evil and lame, but Duke biology is evidently quite useful.

The giant squid’s massive eyes are (presumably) the latest stage in an epic arms race against sperm whales—a specific, complex adaptation that justifies their tremendous metabolic expenditure. The big eyes allow squid to spot sperm whales by their glowing wake from about 390 feet away, through murky expanses of deep ocean water, and escape—despite the predator’s sonar and speed.

For more on ocean creatures, see Kevin Coyle’s post from last year about animals’ various methods of swimming or my post about the Top 5 Real Sea Serpents (including the giant squid). You can also check out an article about sperm whales and the threat posed to them after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Atlantic lion fish populations emerged after a handful of specimens were released from aquariums in the 1990s. (Photo: Tinou Bao/Flickr)

Asian carp are stealing valuable resources from native Great Lakes fish while Burmese pythons are destroying small mammal populations throughout the Florida Everglades. Similarly, lion fish are invading Atlantic reefs and  disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems.

First spotted in the early 1990s, the now established lion fish populations are commonly thought to originate from only six specimens which escaped into the Atlantic after Hurricane Andrew broke aquariums in Florida in 1992. Now, the fish are widespread along the Eastern coast of the United States, from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, down to the Bahamas, and even all the way north in Massachusetts.

Sneaking to the Top of the Food Chain

Once aquarium fish, lion fish have adapted very well to their new environments. They are quickly replacing top predators like sharks by eating large quantities of prey, such as small fish, invertebrates, and mollusks. In turn, the lion fish has very few natural predators, thanks to its venomous spines, leaving it free to wreak ecological havoc on the coral reefs. In fact, lion fish can devour up to three-quarters of a reef’s fish population in just five weeks.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Eradication Efforts Abroad

Lion fish are continuing to spread, but there are organized eradication efforts underway. Diving competitions encourage divers to spear as many lion fish as possible and chefs have been introducing lion fish to their menus.

As with any invasive species, lion fish eradication should be aggressive and persistent. With major problems plaguing the world’s waters, like ocean acidification, overfishing, and increased trash and pollution, we need to take drastic steps towards restoring our once beautiful oceans.

Support NWF’s efforts to fight invasive species and to restore and protect our fragile reef ecosystems.

Black tip shark in Australia's Great Barrier Reef (Flickr's Paul Benjamin)

Scientists said on Tuesday that they had discovered the world’s first hybrid sharks in Australian waters, a potential sign the predators were adapting to cope with climate change.

The mating of the local Australian black-tip shark with its global counterpart, the common black-tip, was an unprecedented discovery with implications for the entire shark world, said lead researcher Jess Morgan. [...]

The Australian black-tip is slightly smaller than its common cousin and can only live in tropical waters, but its hybrid offspring have been found 2,000 kilometres down the coast, in cooler seas.

It means the Australian black-tip could be adapting to ensure its survival as sea temperatures change because of global warming.

Unfortunately, not every species is fortunate enough to have easy adaptation options:

• Polar bears can only hunt on seals on sea ice and some polar bear populations are already becoming noticeably thinner thanks to global warming
• The American pika lives on mountaintops and has nowhere to go as its high-altitude habitat shrinks
• Warmer water temperatures are causing population declines for trout, salmon and many other species that require cold water to survive

Tell your members of Congress you support limits on climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

But for a truly unique maritime experience, join me on a Sea Serpent Day (August 6th or 7th; there is some dispute) excursion to LISTVILLE (population: five).

The first mention of sea serpents in letters is generally accepted as coming from Virgil’s Aeneid, around 30 BCE. Laocoön, priest of Neptune, was preparing a bull sacrifice with his sons when “a pair of sea serpents with huge coils” and “blood-red crests” made way for the shore and enveloped the statue-ready trio in their “scaly folds.” There were “burning eyes” and “hissing jaws,” and I’m told younger and more sensitive altar viewers needed to leave the room.

Oarfish engraving, c. 1889 (Florida Center for Instructional Technology)

In the centuries since, ‘sea serpents’ and their sundry variations have been reported everywhere from Nova Scotia to the Portuguese coast and described variously as “turtle-like,” cow-faced and possessed of “brilliant flaming eyes” (these and other details come mostly from Richard Ellis’s 1994 book ‘Monsters of the Sea,’ which contains many period eyewitness accounts full of taxonomic and linguistic weirdness).

While we’ve yet to get reliable word of the existence of sea serpents, scientists have come up with a number of likely—and in some cases verified—explanations for sea serpent sightings, including these five based on actual, factual wildlife.

1) Oarfish

Long-dead and therefore significantly less serpent-ish oarfish (flickr | muzina_shanghai)

This is one of the simplest imaginable explanations, and the first thing I thought of when I read about the “blood-red crests” of the Laocoön-eating serpents (Scientists too. See incredible photos on this blog and the engraving above; sea-serpent-ish, no?).

Now, Oarfish are an unassuming family of bony saltwater fish, only slightly more likely to fatally maul a hirsute Trojan priest than a clump of kelp. Still, the largest of them, the King of Herrings, may reach somewhere between 40 and 50 feet in length, and could easily set the imagination racing as it breaks the surface of the water crest-first, its big eyes glistening.

The oarfish is scarce, apparently tastes bad and is still largely a mysterious animal. Here’s Kurt Ove Eriksson, who spotted a smaller specimen off of Sweden’s western coast last year: “At first we thought it was a big piece of plastic. But then we saw an eye [...] I went down to check and saw that it was this extremely strange fish.” Nice work, Kurt.

2) Basking Shark

A non-decomposing basking shark. (flickr | Green Massachusetts)

In one of the most famous sea serpent incidents of recent times, a Japanese fishing boat near New Zealand hauled in a vaguely monsterish corpse in 1977. It appeared to be a long-necked, small-headed, four-flippered creature—a surviving plesiosaur, perhaps, long the single most popular sea serpent theory. Crewmembers discarded the corpse, but not before numerous intensely-scrutinized photos and samples were collected.

The corpse remains popular in cryptozoological lore despite the near-unanimous informed conclusion  that it was, in fact, a partially-decayed basking shark. The placid filter-feeder is well known for rotting into a what appears to be a serpentine form. From the link above, originally printed in Reports of the National Center for Science Education: “When the basking shark decays, the jaws and loosely attached gill arches often fall away first, leaving the appearance of a long neck and small head [...] All or part of the tail (especially the lower half which lacks vertebral support) and/or the dorsal fin may also slough away before the better supported pectoral and pelvic fins, creating a form that superficially resembles a plesiosaur.” More:

Interestingly, basking sharks seem to have a propensity to mimic sea serpents while alive as well as dead. Often they feed in groups at or near the surface (hence their name), sometimes lining up two or more in a row. When they do this, the dorsal and tail fins protruding from the water can be, and sometimes have been, mistaken for multiple “humps” and head of a long-bodied sea-monster (Sweeney 1972; Bright 1989; Ellis 1989; Perrine 1995).

3) Basilosaurus/Zeuglodon (prehistoric whale)

I’m cheating here, but the badly-named basilosaurus (originally thought to be a type of dinosaur) WAS a real, live animal at one point.

You have to admit, it was a nice try. (Wikimedia commons)

In 1845, a German entrepreneur/collector/flim-flammist named Albert Koch unveiled a crazy looking skeleton—a modern-day sea serpent, he said—and toured with it in New York and other American cities. For a little while, it was the talk of zoology, taken by casual observers as proof that sea monsters existed (Koch claimed to have unearthed the skeleton in Clarksville, Alabama, and went so far as to describe its behavior and other details on the basis of the bones).

Despite the unending credulity of contemporary audiences—this kind of hoax was perpetrated often and successfully in 19th-century science, which was sometimes closer to circus exhibitionism than anything else—it became clear pretty quickly that the 114-foot thing had been cobbled together from a variety of bones taken from five or so specimens of the the long-extinct basilosaurus, a prehistoric cetacean (certainly not a reptile, as Koch claimed).

Koch’s scientific name for the creature–-hydrarchos sillimani—was derived from the naturalist Dr. Benjamin Silliman, whose presence was thought to lend scientific legitimacy to the affair. Once Harvard anatomist Jeffries Wyman and others pointed out that it was an obvious fraud, Silliman requested his name be removed (Though, hey, it’s the main reason people remember him. There’s a lesson there).

4) Giant Squid

Giant squids are already among the coolest, monsteriest creatures of the deep, but they may account for some of the earliest serpent sightings as well.

(Wikimedia commons)

In the mid-18^th century, Bishop Pontoppidan reported a “Sea-monster” that “looks at first like a number of small islands, surrounded with something that floats and fluctuates like sea weeds” (see image at right, also featured in Ellis’s book). The Pontoppidan sighting was widely agreed to be a giant squid later on.

Later, in 1849, Prof. Japetus Steenstrup determined that a carcass discovered in 1639 (“a peculiar creature or sea monster” with “7 tails” covered in “buttons” and a soft body without bone or cartilage), presumed to be a serpent of some kind, was actually Architeuthis (with a few body parts missing). Many other sightings and discovered bodies from the 16^th-18^th centuries seem to fit this description as well.

Luckily, once people started figuring out that these multi-tailed (or headed) serpents were actually cephalopods, they were able to shift pretty seamlessly to freaking out about impossibly huge tentacled ‘krakens.’

5) Elephant Seal

This is cute, but admit it--it's also really weird-looking. (flickr | Jim Bahn)

Sir Richard Owen (somewhat controversial himself as a contemporary and opponent of Charles Darwin, but an important scientist of the day nonetheless) famously suggested that the Daedalus sea serpent off the Cape of Good Hope in 1848 had in fact been a semiaquatic mammal.

According to Owen: “It is very probable that no one on board the Daedalus ever before beheld a gigantic seal swimming freely in the open ocean.”

It’s not hard to see how a large elephant seal, with its formidable length and swollen ‘trunk,’ could easily have accounted for a crypto-animal sighting when beheld by weary sailors. In fact, the ninth volume of the Museum of Foreign Literature and Science, published in 1826, mentions reports of a “sea-monster in the neighborhood of Behring’s Straits (sic)” with a “head resembling a sea-lion” dating to 1808.

More useful: modern paleozoologist Darren Naish and his colleagues Michael Woodley and Hugh Shanahan have suggested that many historical sea monster sightings might be explained by unknown or little-seen pinnipeds (see posts on this and related topics at the sadly defunct Tetrapod Zoology blog here and here).

Last week BP decided to stop playing nice.  Ken Feinberg, who the oil giant chose to run its compensation fund for spill victims, recently released a report estimating fishermen’s losses.  The report predicted that Gulf wildlife would mostly be back to normal within a year or two, and it was widely criticized for ignoring the spill’s long-term effects (not to mention that it was based on some pretty shady research).  So BP crunched the numbers again and concluded that there would be even fewer long-term problems than Mr. Feinberg thought, meaning they shouldn’t have to pay as much to fix things.

Then, to add insult to injury, BP backed out of its promise to help Louisiana restore wetlands, oyster beds, and fish hatcheries.  In a report in yesterday’s New Orleans Times-Picayune, officials say that BP “has clearly changed their approach” to the restoration efforts.

Oiled wetlands in Louisiana's Bay Baptiste (photo: Rainforest Action Network)

Robert Barham, the state’s Wildlife & Fisheries Director, said, “All we’ve asked is for them to do what they said they would do in their commercials: be here for the long haul and make it right.”  But now the oil giant has decided to fight it out in court, forcing Louisiana to scramble to find money for these vital projects.

Call me a cynic but is anyone surprised at this turn of events?  BP said all the right things when the cameras were rolling and now we’re seeing their true colors.

Nobody would be happier than fishermen and wildlife lovers if BP turned out to be right—but the sad fact is that we have very little idea of what to expect in the Gulf, and the evidence we do  have points to a difficult recovery ahead for oysters, dolphins, fish and other wildlife.

Consider this—Dr. Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia has spent the last 8 months examining the sea bed around the blown-out well.  The samples and photographs her team collected painted a depressing picture: dead sea creatures, suffocated and poisoned by the oil that has accumulated on the ocean floor.

“I’ve been to the bottom.  I’ve seen what it looks like with my own eyes.  It’s not going to be fine by 2012,” Joye told The Associated Press. “You see what the bottom looks like, you have a different opinion.”

Dolphins playing off the coast of Gulf Shores, AL (photo: Christy Sheffield)

And another tragedy is being linked to the spill: dead infant and stillborn dolphins are washing up on shore at an alarming rate.

Adult dolphin deaths tripled during the spill, but this is the first calving season since then and our first look at the long-term impact on marine mammals.  Scientists in Mississippi and Alabama have seen a spike in mortality since and, according to Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, it’s “more than just a coincidence.”

We’ve known all along that it would be a struggle to recover from this catastrophe and now more than ever we need to keep the spotlight on what’s happening in the Gulf.  You can find out more about NWF’s efforts to protect wildlife habitat (including volunteer opportunities) at www.nwf.org/Oil-Spill.

Dr. Sylvia Earle interviewed by NWF's Bob Serata at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Prk, Key Largo, Fla. Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

Movie and TV stars don’t do it for us. But when my wife Belinda and I met Dr. Sylvia Earle as she came ashore from a dive boat, walking the narrow deck in her wet suit, still dripping, still smiling, we both felt the power of one person’s life’s work. I think we were a bit star-struck.

Sylvia Earl, NWF Conservation Achievement Award Honoree, has been an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society since 1998, the year Time magazine named her the first “hero for the planet.” She has spent most of her professional life under water, leading more than 70 expeditions. She was nicknamed “Her Deepness” after setting the solo diving depth record of 3,300 feet. She calls the oceans the “blue heart” of all humans.

As the first female chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Sylvia was a central figure in establishing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument (aka Papahānaumokuākea), the largest single fully protected area in the United States and the world’s largest fully protected marine area — 140,000 square miles of protected ocean (larger than all of the nation’s national parks combined) that is home to more than 7,000 kinds of marine life. The monument was created by President George W. Bush via presidential proclamation in 2006.

Sylvia came up to us, hand outstretched in greeting, a 75-year-old version of the pioneering marine botanist who broke with tradition by studying marine plants in the plants’ environment, instead of breaking off pieces and carrying them back to the lab.

In town to give the keynote speech at the 50th anniversary celebration of John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo, Fla., Sylvia took some time to talk to NWF about conservation, caring and science.

Bob Serata snorkels above a young whale shark (about 12 feet long). Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

NWF / BS [interviewer’s initials, by the way]: You were in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2010 studying whale sharks. Tell us about that.

Dr. Earle: The expedition in June 2010 was in part a response to the oil spill. What scientists were really concerned about was what the oil spill might be doing to the whale sharks because among other things they eat right at the surface. They open their big mouths and whatever’s there comes in.

We’d spent a day looking at patches of sargassum and hoping to see whale sharks but we didn’t sign of a whale shark. We did see some big mats of floating sargassum. We stopped at an oil rig and swam with some of the great collections of fish that tend to gather around the rigs.

We went to sleep that night 70 or 100 miles offshore and when we woke up in the morning, the crew of the ship we were on was yelling, “You gotta get up, whale sharks, whale sharks.” So we all tumbled out of our bunks and we were surrounded by whale sharks. An airplane that Dr. Eric Hoffmayer had engaged counted 91 whale sharks in just one frame.

We went in the water and there weren’t just whale sharks up at the surface, there were layers of whale sharks.

NWF / BS: How could the Gulf oil disaster affect whale sharks?

Dr. Earle: In a single gulp, a whale shark might get a cross section of 12 to 15 different animals. From polychaete worms to jellyfish, arrow worms, flat worms, copepods, anthropods, larvae of shrimp and crabs. And whale sharks feed at the surface where there was a lot of oil.

NWF / BS: It’s also thought that a lot of sargassum was destroyed by the oil and dispersants. Why should we care about seaweed?

Dr. Earle: Sargassum is like a rain forest. It’s a little wetter than a rain forest. But it’s a golden floating forest. It floats in the ocean, it’s like a floating island of life out there; it doesn’t stay anchored.

When you see a big mat of sargassum instead of saying “oh yuk,” say “oh fantastic,” because if you get a mass and look closely at it, you’ll see little eyes looking back. Or if you gently scoop a little bit and put it in a bucket of water or a dish pan and you just watch you’ll see little filefish, you’ll see baby sargassum fish, baby flying fish all the color of the sargassum, and little snails because that’s their only home.

Baby turtles find a home there. And with the loss of sargassum it’s a loss of habitat, it’s bad news for the baby fish that seek haven there, for young turtles for a whole suite of organisms that absolutely require this as a nursery a safe haven in the open sea.

Green Sea Turtle. Photo Credit: Philippe Guillaume

NWF / BS: The ocean seems such a huge concept, what can an individual do to help conserve it as a resource?

Dr. Earle: The best answer about solutions is exactly what you’re [NWF is] doing. You’re communicating what the issues are, encouraging people to think and to understand why it matters to us, why taking care of the ocean relates to our everyday lives. With every breath we take, every drop of water we drink we’re connected to the ocean, not everybody knows that.

Everyone can consume fewer wild animals from the sea. We’re taking far too much ocean wildlife and it has an impact. It’s hard to find a shark or to find a big grouper, so let’s just stop killing them. Or if you do, make sure that you treat it with great respect and don’t do it every day or every week or every month, just make it a special treat. A special treat for me today is seeing one alive out there. I only saw one grouper in a dive of about an hour out at Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. There should be dozens of them everywhere.

Everyone can lend their support to ocean protection. Part of it means supporting those efforts to have places like Pennekamp Park or to really expand the fully protected areas as safe havens for fish.

If you really want fish to eat in the future you’ve got to save them now. Only about 10 percent of the large species we like to consume – tunas, swordfish, marlin, sharks, grouper, snapper – are still there from where they were 50 years ago.

A fraction, less than one percent, of the ocean is protected and all the rest is open for fishing and not just casual fishing, I mean large-scale fishing that is taking the heart out of the ocean. We just need to think differently. We don’t go out and make a meal out of songbirds, we don’t find them in our supermarkets. We think nothing of seeing wild fish, wild shrimp, wild lobster, wildlife from the sea in large quantities pouring into us and out of the ocean. It doesn’t mean we should stop eating wildlife from the sea, we’ve just overdone it, it’s not sustainable.

The message is the same wherever a person lives – you’re dependent on the ocean. The ocean generates 70 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere; 97 percent of earth’s water is out there in the ocean. Yes, it’s salt water and we don’t drink salt water but where does rain come from? It comes from water that goes up in the atmosphere forming clouds and sending fresh water back to the land, restoring rivers, lakes and streams. Without the ocean, earth would be a lot like Mars.

We are all sea creatures in a way. We’re all dependent on the ocean, even if you’ve never seen the ocean or thought about the ocean, the ocean keeps you alive and the ocean needs your help at this point in history. It needs your vote. Fish don’t vote.  It needs you.

If you’re a kid if you’re grownup it doesn’t matter. You have power and part of it comes of making your voice heard. When I served as the chief scientist at NOAA, the letters that people would send really counted and it counts now on the local level and the state level and the national level, and even international. Write to the United Nations if you have an issue about the atmosphere or the high seas or about policies that affect the whole world, whatever it is. Your voice counts. It counts when you’re silent every bit as much. Lack of expressing yourself suggests that you don’t care. So inaction is a vote. Inaction is a decision just like action is a conscious decision.

I think the biggest problem today is complacency. People who just don’t do what they could do to make a difference when we really need as much help as we can get to give voice to the voiceless — all those in the future who aren’t here to express themselves or vote, and all of the wild creature who can’t vote and can’t express themselves.

Jeff Barnard for Associated Press vis The World reports:

“The ocean dead zone that formed this summer off Oregon was less severe than in years past, but it looks like the phenomenon apparently linked to global warming is here to stay. Oregon State University scientists said Thursday that winds that are a factor in the severity of the phenomenon abated in July, allowing the low-oxygen waters to dissipate before they got too deadly to marine life.

‘It really feels like this is the new normal,’ said OSU research scientist Francis Chan. ‘We have shifted into a set of conditions where the likelihood of seeing this is high every year.’

While most dead zones around the world are formed by pollutants washing down rivers, the one off Oregon appears to be linked to global warming. It has shown up for eight straight years.”

See full article.