Antarctic Marine Explorers Reveal First Hints Of Biological Change After Collapse Of Polar Ice Shelves

Once roofed by ice for millennia, a 10,000 square km portion of the Antarctic seabed represents a true frontier, one of Earth’s most pristine marine ecosystems, made suddenly accessible to exploration by the collapse of the Larsen A and B ice shelves, 12 and five years ago respectively. Now it has yielded secrets to some 52 marine explorers who accomplished the seabed’s first comprehensive biological survey during a 10-week expedition aboard the German research vessel Polarstern.

While their families at home in 14 countries were enjoying New Year’s dinners, experts on the powerful icebreaking research ship were logging finds from icy waters as deep as 850 meters off the Antarctic Peninsula – an area rapidly changing in fundamental ways. The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows nowhere on Earth warming more quickly than this corner of Antarctica, a continent 1.5 times the size of continental USA.

The expedition forms part of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (http://www.caml.aq), which has 13 upcoming voyages scheduled during International Polar Year, to be launched in Paris March 1. A project of the global Census of Marine Life (http://www.coml.org) collaboration, CAML is responsible for the synthesis of taxonomic data and supports the efforts of national programs the world over.

Says CAML leader Michael Stoddart of Australia: “What we learned from the Polarstern expedition is the tip of an iceberg, so to speak. Insights from this and CAML’s upcoming International Polar Year voyages will shed light on how climate variations affect ice-affiliated species living in this region.”

Leaving South Africa Nov 23, the research icebreaker Polarstern operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research criss-crossed the northwest Weddell Sea. The cruise included the Larsen A and B zones, an area about the size of Jamaica (or half the size of New Jersey, a third the size of Belgium. The voyage ended Jan. 30.

With sophisticated sampling and observation gear, including a camera-equipped, remotely-operated vehicle, experts on the Polarstern have returned with revealing photography of life on a seabed uncapped by the disintegration of Larsen A and B. The expedition uncovered a wealth of new insights and brilliant images of unfamiliar creatures among an estimated 1,000 species collected, several of which may prove new to science.

The Polarstern’s mission included charting the environmental impact of history’s largest known ice shelf collapses. Polarstern’s team set out to find what indigenous forms of marine life existed under Larsen A and B, and what new organisms now are opportunistically moving in, redefining the ecosystem.

“The breakup of these ice shelves opened up huge, near pristine portions of the ocean floor, sealed off from above for at least 5,000 years, and possibly up to 12,000 years in the case of Larsen B,” says Julian Gutt, a marine ecologist at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and chief scientist on the Polarstern expedition.

“The collapse of the Larsen shelves may tell us about impacts of climate-induced changes on marine biodiversity and the functioning of the ecosystem. Until now, scientists have glimpsed life under Antarctica’s ice shelves only through drill holes. We were in the unique position to sample wherever we wanted in a marine ecosystem considered one of the least disturbed by humankind anywhere on the planet.”

“This knowledge of biodiversity is fundamental to understanding ecosystem functioning,” he adds. “The results of our efforts will advance our ability to predict the future of our biosphere in a changing environment.”

When Antarctic glaciers reach the coast of the continent, they begin to float and become ice shelves, from which icebergs calve. Since 1974, a total of 13,500 square km of ice shelves have disintegrated in the Antarctic Peninsula, a phenomenon linked to regional temperature increases in the past 50 years. Growing numbers of scientists worry that similar break-ups in other areas could lead to increases in ice flow and cause sea levels to rise.

Polarstern Discoveries and Insights

Larsen zone seafloor sediments were extremely varied, ranging from bedrock to pure mud. As a result, animals living on the sediment (epifauna) were highly varied as well, though far less abundant in the Larsen A and B areas – perhaps only 1% animal abundance compared to sea beds in the eastern part of the Weddell Sea.

In the relatively shallow waters of the Larsen zone, scientists were intrigued to find abundant deep sea lilies (members of a group called crinoids) and their relatives, sea cucumbers and sea urchins.

These species are more commonly found around 2,000 meters or so, able to adapt to life where resources far more scarce – conditions similar to those under an ice shelf.

Apparent newcomers found colonizing the Larsen zone include fast-growing, gelatinous sea squirts. The scientists found dense patches of sea squirts and say they were likely able to colonize the Larsen B area only after ice shelf broke in 2002.

Very slow-growing animals called glass sponges were discovered, with greatest densities in the Larsen A area, where life forms have had seven more years to re-colonize than Larsen B. The high number of juvenile forms of glass sponges observed probably indicates shifting species composition and abundance in the past 12 years.

Biodiversity in the Antarctic Peninsula

Among many hundreds of animal specimens collected on the voyage:

15 potential new amphipod (shrimp-like) species from 400 specimens. The star attraction is one of Antarctica’s biggest-ever amphipod crustaceans – nearly 10 cm long, larger than many similar species found in temperate climates; and
Four presumed new species of cnidarians (organisms related to coral, jelly fish and sea anemones). One is a potentially new sea anemone, co-existing on the back of a snail – their symbiotic relationship providing locomotion for one and protection for the other.

Extensive analyses will be conducted to prove whether or not candidate specimens are in fact new species. Confirmed new species will be logged in the Census of Marine Life OBIS (Ocean Biogeographic Information System) database and its Antarctic component SCAR-MarBIN (the Marine Biodiversity Information Network), which to date has recorded some 5,957 marine life forms, with an estimated 5,000 to 11,000 species yet to be discovered.

The remotely operated vehicle (ROV) used on Polarstern revealed less scouring damage than anticipated from icebergs that broke away from the Larsen shelves. In shallower depths to about 220 metres, the scientists found considerable richness of species variety.

“Iceberg disturbance was much more obvious north of the Larsen A and B areas where icebergs more typically run aground,” says Dr. Gutt. “In those outer areas, at depths of roughly 100 meters, we observed fresh ice scour marks everywhere and early stages of marine life re-colonization but no mature community. At around 200 meters depth we discovered a mosaic of life in different stages of re-colonization.”

Extreme clamdigging

A potentially far-reaching find by the Polarstern ROV: small clusters of dead clamshells littering an area on the dark ocean floor and pointing to the presence of a very rare “cold seep” – essentially a sea floor vent spewing methane and sulphide. Seeps can create a temporary habitat for animal life in otherwise barren, inhospitable terrain for many years before extinguishing, abruptly starving off the community.

The first-ever cold vent on Antarctica’s continental shelf was discovered at roughly 830 metres depth two years ago by a U.S. research team. The ROV located it and sampled the soil sediments, the first analysis of which revealed concentrated methane and sulphide. Clamshells found will be studied to determine their age and the life span of the colony.

In all, some 700 and 8,000 nautical miles were dedicated by the Polarstern and its helicopter crews respectively to recording the presence and behavious of marine mammals, which included Minke whales close to the pack ice edge and very rare beaked whale species near Elephant Island.

“It was surprising how fast such a new habitat was used and colonized by Minke whales in considerable densities,” says specialist Dr. Meike Scheidat of Germany. “They indicate that the ecosystem in the water column changed considerably.”

Fisheries investigations were carried out at islands west and north of the Antarctic Peninsula. The results of 85 hauls over 19 days show the biomass of two Antarctic cod species has increased since a survey in 2003 while stocks of Blackfin and Mackerel Icefish has decreased. The results will contribute to fish stock monitoring and assessment ongoing under the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (http://www.ccamlr.org).

Preliminary findings from the voyage will be confirmed by detailed analysis at the scientists’ home institutes over the next few years.

According to Dr. Stoddart, a significant consequence in the Antarctic Peninsula of rising temperatures is the slow decrease of sea ice and of the planktonic algae that grows underneath. These algae feeds krill, small shrimp-like creatures, and therefore represents the bottom rung on a marine food chain that eventually sustains the iconic large Antarctic species: penguins, whales and seals. An adult blue whale alone eats about 4 million individual krill per day.

“Algae is a source of abundant, high-quality winter food and is utterly central to the health of the whole ecosystem,” says Dr. Stoddart, adding that recent research by colleagues from the U.K. shows krill stocks decreasing significantly around the Antarctic Peninsula.

However, cautions Dr. Gutt: “Predicting the future of higher levels in the food chain, e.g. animals living at the sea-floor or fish, is very difficult. It is for example clear that in the Larsen zone a major biodiversity shift will happen and the unique under-ice shelf system will disappear in this limited area, but we have to analyze carefully our raw data to provide, as a first step, a basis for such predictions. Besides modeling, further observations and ecological field studies are necessary.”

“This is virgin geography. If we don’t find out what this area is like now following the collapse of the ice shelf, and what species are there, we won’t have any basis to know in 20 years’ time what has changed, and how global warming has altered the marine ecosystem,” says Gauthier Chapelle, outreach officer for the expedition and biologist at the Brussels-based International Polar Foundation.

Says Tarik Chekchak, Program Manager of the Cousteau Society: “The Southern Ocean spans 35 million square km – 10% of Earth’s ocean surface, and ice shelves cover 1.5 million square km of it. When Captain Cousteau explored Antarctica aboard the Calypso in 1972-73, the Larsen B ice shelf was 3,250 square km bigger and krill abundance in the Peninsula was much higher than today. The annual local temperature has risen 2.5 °C since the 1940’s.

“Impacts of these changes on the Southern Ocean ecosystem are substantial. Interplay between ocean circulation, sea ice extent, ice shelf cover and the iceberg’s mechanical action on the sea bed seem to determine the characteristics of some key planktonic and benthic communities. In a changing environment, the results of the CAML efforts are key to advancing our ability to understand our biosphere, inform public debate and allow decision-makers to lead us into a more sustainable future.”

`Killer algae' back, scientists discover

The "killer" is back.

Caulerpa brachypus, an exotic, highly invasive underwater vine known as "killer algae," has spread north to take over many deep Martin County coral reefs, scientists studying the algae said Wednesday.

The algae, which have been missing from Palm Beach County reefs since the 2004 hurricanes, have a reputation for smothering coral and forcing sea life to avoid normally thriving ecosystems.

Now scientists at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution have documented a resurgence -- this time covering local reefs more than ever.

"It's coming back with a vengeance," said Brian LaPointe, a Harbor Branch scientist. "This is the first time we've seen those reefs in Martin County covered with that much Caulerpa brachypus."

LaPointe and other scientists found the algae growing in the Indian River Lagoon in 2003, and at that time he feared the fast-spreading plants would take over that diverse environment like it did deep-sea corals.

But scientists discovered the pollution-loving algae could not tolerate bright conditions, so it thrived only in shady, deep coral reefs.

Plus, the lagoon algae and the blooms on Palm Beach and Martin county reefs were blown away with the winds from Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne in 2004 and Wilma in 2005.

But monitoring last summer, LaPointe and research assistant Chip Baumberger found the algae blooming in about 65 to 80 feet of water about halfway between the Jupiter and St. Lucie inlets, on a natural reef known locally as the "Loran Tower Ledge."

The algae also were spotted in small patches in the Indian River Lagoon and in 45 to 55 feet of water on other Martin County reefs.

It was also seen as far south as Deerfield Beach, LaPointe said. "We felt strongly it would come back," he said. "It was only a matter of time."

Scientists hope an artificial reef proposed near the San Onofre power plant will restore once-thriving kelp forests

The thinning kelp beds damaged by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station may flourish again when one of the country's biggest artificial kelp reefs is completed off the San Clemente coast near the power plant.
The 150-acre reef will be about one-half mile off San Clemente Beach, bounded by San Clemente Pier to the north and San Mateo Point to the south.
Marine biologists hope the $20 million man-made reef will spawn dense kelp forests, like those that once thrived near the power plant and were home to an abundance of sea life.
If it receives approval from the California Coastal Commission, the power plant's majority owner, Southern California Edison, could begin construction of the artificial reefs as early as next summer, said David Kay, the utility's environmental project manager.
“In Southern California, kelp forests are not all that abundant,” said Steve Schroeter, a University of California Santa Barbara marine biologist. “But they are valuable habitats, extremely diverse habitats. They have a high density of plants, algae, fish and invertebrates.”
The artificial kelp reef is part of a compensation package that Southern California Edison agreed to after a 1989 Coastal Commission report concluded that the power plant's operations degraded the ocean because they killed fish and thinned the kelp beds, which provide shelter for marine life.

Courtesy of Southern California Edison
Biologists found that pisasters flourished at the test reef, as did crabs, starfish, tunicate, surf perch, blacksmith, kelp bass, sand bass, lobsters and sheephead.The utility company always has disputed the findings but agreed to corrective measures.
“We maintain the impact was insignificant,” Kay said. “In 1990, the power plant set operating records, but the kelp forest was as large as had been recorded since the 1960s.”
Southern California Edison agreed to:
Build a 150-acre artificial kelp reef near the power plant. The project began with an experimental reef in 1999 and will finish with the proposed main reef. The total cost of the project is estimated at $22 million.
Restore wetlands, which are fish nurseries, at the San Dieguito Lagoon at a cost of $86 million. The lagoon is 33 miles south of the power plant. Work began in September.
Graphic:
Proposed kelp reef Build a white sea bass hatchery adjacent to the Encina Power Plant in Carlsbad with a goal of producing 300,000 fish to release into the ocean. White bass is popular among commercial and recreational anglers. The $5 million hatchery was built seven years ago.
San Onofre opened its first reactor in 1968, a second one in 1983 and a third in 1984. The first reactor was retired in 1992 and is being dismantled. The second and third reactors are in use.
The reactors cool down by sucking in ocean water. They then return it to the ocean in a continuous cycle.
The Coastal Commission report, using data collected between 1975 and 1988, found that the water that is sucked in is laced with fish, larvae and eggs, some of which are killed.

Courtesy of Southern California Edison
Blacksmiths made themselves at home at the $2 million, 22.4-acre experimental reef where the main reef would be built. In 1999, Southern California Edison built the test reef, which was studied from 2000 to 2004.When discharged, the water rushes out in huge volumes. When all three reactors were operating, that volume measured one square mile by 14 feet deep each day, the report said.
The discharge stirs up sand from the ocean floor, creating a cloudy plume that drifts southward to the San Onofre kelp reef. The plume, which is thick and wide enough to be seen on satellite images, blocks sunlight vital to kelp growth.
As a result, the kelp beds outside of San Onofre were reduced by about 180 acres, or 60 percent, the Coastal Commission study said.
“Part of the San Onofre kelp bed is bald,” said Schroeter, one of three UC Santa Barbara marine biologists tapped by the Coastal Commission to study the effectiveness of the experimental kelp reef.
“Kelp doesn't live to be that old. If there is no (production of young kelp) for three to six years, there will be nothing there,” Schroeter said.
The power plant also sucked in 45 tons of fish each year, killing at least 21 tons while releasing the rest, the study said.

Courtesy of Southern California Edison
A kelp crab rested on fronds at the test reef, which was made of 56 blocks of concrete or quarry. The test reef will count toward the 150 acres.Consequently, the population of fish and invertebrates that depend on kelp was significantly reduced. For instance, sheephead, barred sand bass and black surf perch were reduced by 200,000, or 70 percent.
Invertebrates such as snails and sea urchins were reduced 30 percent to 90 percent.
In 1991, the Coastal Commission required Southern California Edison to rectify the damage. The next eight years or so were filled with disputes over the extent of damage, proposals of remedies and environmental reviews.
In 1999, Southern California Edison built a $2 million, 22.4-acre experimental reef where the main reef would be built. The test reef, made of 56 blocks of concrete or quarry placed apart, will count toward the 150 acres.
The experimental reef was studied from 2000 to 2004 by Schroeter and two other UC Santa Barbara marine biologists, who were under contract with the Coastal Commission but whose work was funded by Southern California Edison.
The biologists found that kelp flourished there, as did crabs, starfish, tunicate, surf perch, blacksmith, kelp bass, sand bass, lobsters, pisasters and sheephead.
In 2005, Southern California Edison proposed the last phase of the artificial reef.
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It would be made of blocks of quarry rock from nearby Santa Catalina Island and would vary in shape and size. The rocks would be inserted into the gaps between the test reefs to form a massive reef.
Unlike the test reefs, which grew from spores that naturally drifted over from other kelp beds and from young lab-grown plants, the main reef will only use drifters because researchers found that they grew better, Kay said.
He expects a kelp canopy to appear in about two years and marine life to begin migrating from the surrounding test reefs within a year after that.
To compensate for the additional 30 acres of kelp beds damaged by the power plant and for the fish killed, Southern California Edison began restoring San Dieguito Lagoon in September and hopes to complete the work in three years. The $86 million project includes keeping the lagoon's inlet open, building earthen berms to control flooding along the San Dieguito River, constructing five nesting sites for the endangered California least tern and the Western snowy plover, and planting new salt marsh.

Four Antarctic Glaciers Key to Future Sea Levels, 'Vunerable to Small Changes in Ocean Temps'

Edinburgh, Scotland (Mar 15, 2007 19:00 EST) Scientists have identified four Antarctic glaciers that pose a threat to future sea levels using satellite observations, according to a study published in the journal Science.
Experts from the University of Edinburgh and University College London determined the effect that Antarctica and Greenland were having on global sea level in a comprehensive evaluation of the Earth’s ice sheets. They found that together these two ice-sheets were responsible for a sea level rise of 0.35 millimetres per year over the past decade – representing about 12 per cent of the current global trend.
However, despite recent attention that has focused on the importance of the Greenland ice sheet, the research shows that its glaciers are changing too erratically to establish a trend with confidence. In contrast, four major glaciers in East and West Antarctica were shown to be retreating in unison, raising concerns that global sea level could rapidly rise if the oceans continue to warm.

Dr. Andrew Shepherd, at the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, said: "Our assessment confirms that just one type of glacier in Antarctica is retreating today – those that are seated in deep submarine basins and flow directly into the oceans. These glaciers are vulnerable to small changes in ocean temperature, such as those that have occurred over the 20th century, and those predicted for the 21st century. A rise of less than 0.5 ºC could have triggered the present imbalance."
Professor Duncan Wingham, at University College London, insists that the success of the research lies in the satellite instrumentation from which it is derived: "The extreme precision with which we can now make measurements of the Earth’s surface allows us to see the increasingly subtle changes within the ice sheets that will govern their future sea level contribution."

Discovery age continues

MARINE creatures are thriving by a hot volcanic vent in the Atlantic and in dark waters under thick Antarctic ice, boosting theories that planets other than Earth are suitable for life, scientists said yesterday.About 150 new types of fish were among 500 new marine species, including furry crabs and a lobster off Madagascar, found this year, according to researchers in the 70-nation Census of Marine Life.
Many species were found in places long thought too hostile for life – including by a vent spewing liquids at 407C and other habitats that were dark, cold or deep. Some places seemed as inhospitable as planets such as Mars or Venus.
"The age of discovery is not over," said Jesse Ausubel, a program manager at the US Sloan Foundation, which is a sponsor of the 10-year census. Finds "are provocative for NASA and for people who are interested in life in places other than Earth".
Among discoveries this year were shrimps, clams and bacteria living by the searing 407-degree vent on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean north of Ascension Island, the hottest sea vent documented and more than hot enough to melt lead.
"This is the most extreme environment and there is plenty of life around it," said Chris German, of Britain's Southampton Oceanography Centre and a leader of the Atlantic survey.
He said one big puzzle was how creatures coped with shifts in temperatures – water on the sea bed at 3000m was only 2C, yet many creatures withstood near-boiling temperatures of up to 80C from the thermal vent.
German said it was a bit like a person agreeing to live in a blistering sauna and be hosed at random with freezing water.
Scientists had not yet probed how hardy the microbes nearest the hottest part of the vent were – a type of bacteria called "Strain 121" found in the Pacific in 2003 holds the record by being able to withstand temperatures of 121C.
And another expedition found crustaceans, jellyfish and single-celled animals living in darkness in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica under ice 700m thick and 200km from open water. Most of those creatures were new to science.
"You can think of it as a cave, one of the remotest caves on Earth," Mr Ausubel said of findings by a robot camera.
"Wherever we've gone on Earth we've continued to find life," German said.
He said recent discoveries could be encouraging for the search for life elsewhere in the universe.
Some experts speculate that Jupiter's moon, Europa, could hide an ocean beneath its frozen surface and Mr Ausubel noted life has been found on Earth beside sub-sea methane seeps – Saturn's moon, Titan, also has methane. And NASA said last week it had found signs of liquid water on Mars.
Among other finds this year by the census, due for completion in 2010, was a Jurassic shrimp in the Coral Sea east of Australia and previously thought to have become extinct 50 million years ago.
The biggest new species was probably a 1.8kg rock lobster found off Madagascar. And a furry crab, also dubbed a yeti crab, was found in the waters off Easter Island.

U.N.: Number of Ocean 'Dead Zones' Rise

Scientists have found 200 "dead zones" in the world's oceans — places where pollution threatens fish, other marine life and the people who depend on them. The United Nations report Thursday showed a 34 percent jump in the number of such zones from just two years ago.
Pollution-fed algae, which deprives other living marine life of oxygen, is the cause of most of the world's dead zones that cover tens of thousands of square miles of waterways. Scientists chiefly blame fertilizer and other farm run-off, sewage and fossil-fuel burning.
Those contain an excess of nutrients, particularly phosphorous and nitrogen, that cause explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton. When they die, they sink to the bottom, where they are eaten by bacteria that use up the oxygen in the water.
"The low levels of oxygen in the water make it difficult for fish, oysters and other marine creatures to survive as well as important habitats such as sea grass beds," U.N. officials said. "These areas are fast becoming major threats to fish stocks and thus to the people who depend upon fisheries for food and livelihoods."
By 2030, the world's rivers will pump 14 percent more nitrogen into seas and oceans than that found in the mid-1990s, according to new U.N. research released at a meeting in Beijing.
Researchers led by Robert Diaz, a marine scientist at Virginia's College of William and Mary, said they found new dead zones at the Archipelago Sea in Finland; Fosu Lagoon in Ghana; Pearl River estuary and Changjiang River in China; and Mersey River estuary in Britain.
Other new zones found were at the Elefsis Bay and Aegean Sea in Greece; Paracas Bay in Peru; Mondego River in Portugal; Montevideo Bay in Uruguay; and in the western Indian Ocean.
The United Nations marine experts said the number and size of oxygen-deprived zones has grown each decade since the 1970s.
Not all the dead zones persist year-round; some return seasonally, depending on winds that bring nutrient-rich water to the surface.
"It seems like a big jump in two years," said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, who was not part of the U.N. research. She said an important factor has been the huge increase in pollution from fast-developing countries.
Rabalais, who has studied the Gulf of Mexico's massive dead zone that is now the size of New Jersey, said marine creatures that swim fast enough can usually escape.
"The things that are left behind are the ones that usually can't survive," she said. When you consider the size of some of these areas, it's removing what's considered the essential habitat for fishes and crustaceans."
Other U.N. scientific findings released Thursday, however, raised hopes for the recovery of damaged coral reefs, which serve as the ocean's nurseries. It found that reefs bleached in the late 1990s by high surface sea temperatures are affected by how polluted the waters are.
"Coral reefs recovering faster are generally those living in marine protected areas and coastal waters where the levels of pollution, dredging and other kinds of human-induced disturbance are considered low," the U.N. said.

Scientists Discover Bacteria That Use Radiated Water as Food; 'A Completely Different World'

Researchers from Indiana University Bloomington and eight collaborating institutions report in this week's Science a self-sustaining community of bacteria that live in rocks 2.8 kilometers below Earth's surface. Think that's weird? The bacteria rely on radioactive uranium to convert water molecules to useable energy.
The discovery is a confirmed expansion of Earth's biosphere, the three-dimensional shell that encompasses all planetary life.
The research has less Earthly implications, however. It will likely fuel optimism that life exists in other deep subsurface environments, such as in groundwater beneath the permafrost on Mars.

"We know surprisingly little about the origin, evolution and limits for life on Earth," said IUB biogeochemist Lisa Pratt, who led IU Bloomington's contribution to the project. "Scientists are just beginning to study the diverse organisms living in the deepest parts of the ocean. The rocky crust on Earth is virtually unexplored at depths more than half a kilometer below the surface. The organisms we describe in this paper live in a completely different world than the one we know at the surface."
Bacteria living in groundwater or in other subsurface environments is not news. Until now, however, it was not known whether subterranean microorganisms were recent arrivals bound for extinction or whether they were permanent fixtures of an unlikely habitat. Also, many scientists have been skeptical of subsurface bacterial communities being completely disconnected from surface ecologies fed by the sun's light.
Pratt, Princeton University geomicrobiologist Tullis Onstatt and former graduate student Li-Hung Lin (the paper's lead author, now at National Taiwan University) and colleagues present evidence the bacterial communities are indeed permanent -- apparently millions of years old -- and depend not on sunlight but on radiation from uranium ores for their existence.
Coauthors of the present paper learned of a new water-filled fracture inside a South African gold mine near the Johannesburg metropolitan area and viewed it as an opportunity to study subsurface rock uncontaminated by human activities. Lin and others in the research team traveled to the mine and descended the hot, gas-choked shafts to study water slowly seeping from the crack.
The scientists sampled the flowing fracture water many times over 54 days to determine whether the community of microbes, if present, changed in composition and character, and to determine whether contamination had occurred. The researchers also examined the age of the fracture water and its chemical composition.
This fracture water contained hydrocarbons and hydrogen not likely to have been created through biological processes, but rather from decomposition of water exposed to radiation from uranium-bearing rocks.
High density DNA microarray analysis revealed a vast number of bacterial species present, but the samples were dominated by a single new species related to hydrothermal vent bacteria from the division Firmicutes. The ancient age of the fracture water and comparative DNA analysis of the bacterial genes suggests subsurface Firmicutes were removed from contact with their surface cousins anywhere from 3 million to 25 million years ago. The bacteria's rocky living space is a metamorphosed basalt that is about 2.7 billion years old. How surface-related Firmicutes and other species managed to colonize an area so deep within Earth's crust is a mystery.
Some surface Firmicutes species are known to consume sulfate and hydrogen as a way to get energy for growth. Other bacteria can then use the by-products of the Firmicutes as a source of food. The scientists found that the fracture Firmicutes are also able to consume sulfate. Firmicutes do not use radiation directly as a source of energy, however.
Radiation emanating from uranium minerals in or near the fracture allows for the formation of hydrogen gas from decomposition of water and formation of sulfate from decomposition of sulfur minerals. Hydrogen gas is highly energetic if it reacts with oxygen or other oxidants like sulfate, as the Hindenburg disaster demonstrated. Firmicutes are able to harvest energy from the reaction of hydrogen and sulfate, allowing other microbes in the fracture community to use the chemical waste from the Firmicutes as food.
In a way, Firmicutes serve the same function as photosynthetic organisms, such as plankton and trees at Earth's surface, that capture sunlight energy ultimately to the benefit of everything and everyone else. In the deep subsurface case, Firmicutes species are the producers, capturing the energy of radiation-borne hydrogen gas to support microbial communities.

Blue Jellyfish Invade Australia Beaches

It's summer down under, and at many Australian beaches the sands have turned as blue as the water.
Huge armadas of toxic bluebottle jellyfish are swamping Australia's east coast in record numbers, putting the sting on peak beach season.
More than 30,000 people were stung by the translucent blue jellies on this coast last year—more than twice the number of incidents in 2005—according to Australia's lifeguard group, Surf Life Saving (SLS).
And in a single weekend earlier this month, beachgoers reported more than 1,200 stings, several requiring hospitalization.
The recent influx is the result of a wind shift that has pushed flotillas of the invertebrates ashore, scientists say. But the overall trend suggests that the 6-inch-long (15-centimeter-long) jellyfish are growing in number due to warming ocean waters.
"[Their] numbers are closely tied with environmental changes, and last year was obviously a very aggressive year for them," Lisa-Ann Gershwin, a jellyfish expert with SLS, told Reuters news service.
The bluebottle surge coincides with growing droves of other jellyfish worldwide, including a recent spike in giant Nomura's jellyfish in Japan and rafts of jellies that swamped Mediterranean shores last summer.
Those infestations have also been linked to warmer waters, suggesting that this will not be the last beach season to be ruined by marine stingers.
"Jellyfish have been around for 600 million years," Gershwin told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"They have perfected the art of survival and are very good at taking advantage of changing conditions."

WWF Releases List of World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk; 'Freshwater Ecosystems are Under Seige'

Washington, D.C. (Mar 20, 2007 15:21 EST) The Rio Grande is among the world's top ten rivers at risk, according to a report by the same name released today by World Wildlife Fund. The WWF report, World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, names the world's rivers that are facing widespread degradation while millions of people depend on them for survival.
The Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico), along the U.S.-Mexico border, made the Top 10 list because the river is severely threatened by water diversions, widespread alteration of the floodplain, dams and pollution.
"The world's freshwater ecosystems are under siege, and the rivers in this report are the front lines," says Carter Roberts, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund. "We don't have to look far to find examples of the freshwater crisis. The Rio Grande basin is in our own backyard and over-extraction and drought are draining it dry, endangering a unique desert river ecosystem and potentially undermining the economic growth of communities along the U.S./Mexico border."

Five of the ten rivers listed in the report are in Asia: Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges and Indus. Europe's Danube, South Americas' La Plata, Africa's Nile-Lake Victoria and Australia's Murray-Darling also make the list.
Although the Rio Grande and its tributaries run through the arid Chihuahuan Desert it is home to a spectacular array of freshwater species. The river is also the lifeblood of the region's economy, providing water to some of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country and thousands of farms and ranches. Irrigation accounts for more than 80 percent of all water diversions from the river.
In response, WWF is working to improve irrigation in the Rio Grande valley so that water can remain in the river for the benefit of fish and other wildlife, and farmers and ranchers can secure a reliable supply of water. WWF is also working to establish more parks and protected areas along the most important stretches of the river for wildlife.
"The Rio Grande is a treasure for all Americans and Mexicans as well as an economic resource of incalculable value," said Jennifer Montoya, U.S. director of WWF's Chihuahuan Desert Program. "This report shows how the U.S. is as vulnerable as anywhere else to the freshwater crisis that is affecting the entire world."

Volcanic Plumbing Dictates Development of Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents

Eugene, Oregon (Mar 21, 2007 13:13 EST) After years of results that repeatedly dogged him, University of Oregon geologist Douglas R. Toomey decided to follow the trail of data surfacing from the Pacific Ocean. In doing so, he and his collaborators may have altered long-held assumptions involving plate tectonics on the ocean floor.
Reporting in the March 22 issue of Nature, Toomey and co-authors from four other institutions propose that, one, the flow in the Earth's mantle is rotated beneath the East Pacific Rise, causing the plate boundary to change orientation with time. Secondly, they argue that deep-sea hydrothermal vents frequently form above volcanoes where upwelling of the mantle and spreading of the plates are aligned.
Surprisingly, Toomey added, the amount of magma produced by volcanoes under both aligned and non-aligned mantle-plate regions is relatively equal, but that magma only in aligned sections regularly breaches the crust. When the volcanic plumbing between the mantle and crust is not aligned, magma cools and volatiles are lost as the magma moves laterally, he said. Most of the magma then remains under the sea floor.

For years, geologic theory has predicted that magma production alone is vital to fuel hydrothermal vents, or the “hot smokers” where microorganisms such as the Archaea thrive. These new findings indicate that the volcanic-plumbing system better explains why one volcano hosts hot smokers, while another does not, Toomey said.
“We've had the data since 1997 and the germ of our results for the last six years,” said Toomey, whose funding came through the Ridge 2000 initiative of the National Science Foundation. “We've really solidified our findings in the last 18 months. The mantle is moving or flowing in one direction, and the plate boundary is trying to catch up. We've talked for years about passive flow models for ocean ridges - the mantle upwells as a passive response to plate motion. Now we see the mantle flow is not entirely passive or controlled by the overlapping plates. The mantle flow provides a driving force for plate motion. This discovery is remarkably surprising.”
The area studied is along the “fast-spreading” East Pacific Rise between the Siqueiros and Clipperton transforms, at 9 degrees north latitude. It contains numerous axis discontinuities, including two large-offset transform faults, large long- and short-lived overlapping spreading systems and smaller morphological, petrologic and seismic rock boundaries.
The researchers performed a first-of-its-kind imaging of the upper-most mantle. They dropped numerous ocean-bottom measuring devices to capture seismic data that are used to make tomographic images - similar to those obtained in medicine with computerized axial tomography, or CAT scans - of the patterns of magma delivery to the crust, in this case the ocean floor. This allowed researchers to explore both the isotropic and anisotropic structure of material in the mantle. “Our results allow conclusions to be drawn about the driving and controlling processes for segmentation of fast-spreading ridges,” the researchers wrote in their study.
“A big question in the ridge community has been: What is the connection between mantle processes that are generating magma and the overlying sea-floor hydrothermal systems?” Toomey said. “This study at 9 North gives us a unique picture of mantle-crust segmentation at a level never before seen.”
Hydrothermal vents occur most often where plate spreading and mantle upwelling are aligned. More heat from volcanic activity reaches the sea floor, and both sides of the ridge are flat and wide, with an abundance of lava being erupted. The non-aligned zones, where magma upwelling is not directly beneath the rise, are deeper, with less frequent eruptions on the surface, and they lack hot smokers.
However, Toomey said, the deeper ridge is magmatically active, actually producing the same or more magma but not as surface eruptions. Instead, the magma is cooled at depth or intruded. “At both places, the plates are spreading apart at the same rate,” Toomey said. “The deeper areas look older on the surface, like they are being stretched. Yet these areas are still accumulating magma beneath the sea floor.”
The data his team compiled and analyzed, Toomey said, show that the segmentation of the ridge system is related to the skew of the mantle upwelling. “The mantle is moving differently from the plates, so it is having a strong influence on the reorganization of the plate boundary.
“When people have looked at these systems in the past, and they saw an area that is volcanically active and hydrothermally active, they assumed the magma supply is high and a lot is coming to the surface,” he said. “What our study shows is that the plumbing system, rather than the amount of available magma, is an important factor that controls eruptions. In other words, how magma evolves as it moves through the plumbing system controls whether or not it surfaces.”

Somalia: Pirates Rule the World's Most Dangerous Waters

The hijacking of MV Rozen by pirates off the coast of Somalia is the latest in a series of hijackings that have been going on for years since Somalia became stateless in 1991.
The ship was on its way to Kenya after offloading 1,800 tonnes of maize, rice and vegetables, when pirates stuck at Ras Shuful off the Somali coast.

The crew of six Kenyans and six Sri Lankans had delivered cargo to different ports on behalf of the World Food Programme.
Though the Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is struggling to restore civil authority in Somalia, pirates continue to operate off the Somalia coast with impunity. Cases of piracy on the coast increased sharply in 2005, when a total of 48 vessels were attacked and 35 detained with crew and cargo.
Indeed, Somali waters are currently the most dangerous in the world, forcing some shippers to withdraw their operations from the region, while the few that continue plying the route do so at a high risk.
Yet, the route remains important for the region and the global sea trade. Piracy in the area is also encouraged by illegal fishing, which is extremely lucrative given that there is no government in place to monitor deep-sea fishing.
In March last year, a suspected pirate was killed when a group tried to attack a US navy ship off the coast of Somalia.
Various attempts by countries in the region to come up with anti-piracy measures have done little to stamp out the menace in Somali waters.
For example, 10 Somali pirates were last November jailed for seven years each after a trial in Kenya.
In February last year, various countries from the region and observers from the UK, the US, Australia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India, converged on Mombasa to brainstorm on how to curb piracy and armed raids on ships in the Somali waters.
However, a full-fledged monitoring programme was found to be too costly for the struggling economies of the region.
Again, an attempt by the TFG to contract a private security firm to combat persistent insecurity along Somalia's 2,000 km coastline was met with controversy when critics argued that Top Cat marine Security of the US, did not have the capacity to carry out such an operation. TFG had signed a $55 million agreement with Top Cat to tackle piracy in the Horn of Africa

Reef may benefit from global warming

ON Friday in Paris the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will launch a new report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, with an up-to-date assessment of likely temperature rises because of global warming. Three related reports will be released later in the year, including a report on the likely effects of the rise in temperature. The report on impacts is likely to include a chapter on Australia and a warning that corals on the Great Barrier Reef could die as a consequence of global warming.
The idea that the Great Barrier Reef may be destroyed by global warming is not new, but it is a myth. The expected rise in sea level associated with global warming may benefit coral reefs and the Great Barrier Reef is likely to extend its range further south. Global threats to the coral reefs of the world include damaging fish practices and pollution, and the UN should work harder to address these issues.
Most of the world's great reefs are tropical because corals like warm water. Many of the species found on the Great Barrier Reef can also be found in regions with much warmer water, for example around Papua New Guinea. Corals predate dinosaurs and over the past couple of hundred million years have shown themselves to be remarkably resistant to climate change, surviving both hotter and colder periods.
Interestingly, scientific studies show that over the past 100 years, a period of modest global warming, there has been a statistically significant increase in growth rates of coral species on the Great Barrier Reef. There have also been periods of coral bleaching, but no conclusive evidence to suggest that either the frequency or severity has increased.
Coral bleaching is a breakdown in the symbiotic relationship between corals and the algae that provide them with food. When coral becomes stressed from extreme heat or cold, the algae are expelled. Some corals are more susceptible to bleaching than others. Most corals can adapt to higher water temperatures.
There was damaging coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998 and then again in 2002, but at different hot spots. The Great Barrier Reef comprises more than 3000 individual reefs extending for 2700km. The bleaching was associated with extended periods of calm weather and less wave action, with the hot spots rising in temperature by as much as 2C. Extended periods of calm weather are not predicted with global warming; when Cyclone Larry hit Innisfail last year, some claim it reduced the threat of bleaching at that time.
About 17 per cent of the world's reefs can be found around Australia and PNG. According to the last global assessment of the coral reefs of the world, Australian reefs are among the best protected in the world. And as a consequence of environmental campaigning there has been a significant commitment from the Queensland and commonwealth governments to further reduce fishing and the potential for pollution from land-based activities, including farming.
In other parts of the world many reefs are under increasing pressure from blast fishing, illegal capture of live fish for the restaurant trade in places such as Hong Kong, coral mining, industrial pollution, mine waste and land reclamation. In PNG, high sediment loads from uncontrolled forestry, with some of this wood probably ending up as furniture bought by Australians, has also affected coral reefs. There clearly are global threats to coral reefs, but reef ecosystems have historically been resilient to climate change, and global warming may bring more opportunities than threats.
Corals grow up. Interestingly, north of Cairns there are large areas of reef with dead coral because of localised falls in sea level. A significant rise in sea level as a consequence of global warming could make these reef flats come alive again. It will be the next ice age that will leave many of the world's coral reefs high and dry.
Global warming may be the big environmental issue of our times and the UN may feel compelled to include the world's main environmental symbols in its climate models and assessments. But there are higher priorities for the world's coral reefs.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef may actually benefit from some global warming. But other coral reefs are unlikely to benefit enough to survive the real and immediate threat from destructive and often illegal fishing practices and pollution.

Barrier Reef could face extinction in less than 20 years - report

SYDNEY - The Great Barrier Reef will become functionally extinct in less than 20 years if global warming continues at its current pace, a draft international report warns.
A confidential draft of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), obtained by The Age, says that global warming will cause billions of dollars of damage to coastal areas, key ecosystems and the farming sector without massive greenhouse gas emission cuts.
In a chapter on Australia, the draft IPCC climate impacts report warns that coral bleaching in the Barrier Reef is likely to occur annually by 2030 because of warmer, more acidic seas.
The reef is one of several iconic areas of Australia identified in the report as key hot spots for climate vulnerability. Others include the Kakadu National Park's wetlands, the Murray-Darling Basin and alpine zones in southern Australia.
Australian Conservation Foundation executive director Don Henry said the report was a big wake-up call.

"They are saying our beloved Barrier Reef is at grave risk," Mr Henry told Sky News.
"We've got a major economic and environmental problem unless we heed the call of these scientists.
"I think the science is getting clearer about how just how serious and urgent it is."

Taiwan discovers frozen natural gas

Taiwan has found off its coast huge deposits of frozen natural gas, known as the 'ice that burns' and billed as the energy source of the future, a newspaper said Saturday.A team of Taiwanese and Japanese researchers have succeeded in extracting samples of methane hydrate from the ocean floor off Taiwan's southwest coast and will publish their report in May, the Liberty Times reported.The team began its exploration two years ago, after US and Japanese scientists suspected methane hydrate deposits in the region through monitoring by satellite and scientific equipments.Relying on a deep-sea remote-controlled research ship, the team recently extracted crystallized methane hydrate from a depth of 1,100 metres and recorded how it began to melt at 500-metre depth and vaporize at 400-metre depth.Methane hydrate, in its original form, looks like whitish-yellow ice or ice cream. But at room temperature, it vaporizes and can be ignited, thus the name 'the ice that burns'.'One unit of methane hydrate contains 170 units of natural gas. So the ocean floor is like a gas cylinder holding compressed methane hydrate in crystal form,' Professor Yang Tsan-yao from the National Taiwan University and one of the team members was quoted as saying. The team estimates that Taiwan's southwest coast holds about 600 billion cubic metres of methane hydrate, enough to meet Taiwan's energy needs for 60 years.Several countries, including Japan, the US and Canada, have begun to explore methane hydrate - also called the 'greenhouse energy' - with Japan hoping to start commercial exploration in 2010.

‘Largest’ fossilised coral reef found near Dadu

DADU, Jan 26: A number of fossils of fish, plants and other organisms have been found in a place said to be the largest fossilised coral reef in the world. The place, called Bunjo after a spring, is in the Khirthar mountain range near Gaji Shah, some 50 kilometres away from Dadu city.The reef contains several identified fossils, including fish, sponges, snails and flower plants.It may be mentioned that coral reefs, also called sea gardens, are generally located in the ocean bed.Local people use the spring’s water for drinking.Experts say there is a treasure of fossils on the slopes of the Bunjo mountain.Shafqat Wadho, an irrigation engineer with keen interest in geology, discovered the mountain formed of fossils during a visit to the Khirthar range.Speaking at a press conference at his residence in Dadu on Friday, Mr Wadho said that the living organism had been fossilised millions of years ago.He claimed that the site was actually fossilised coral reef and once it was a part of an ocean bed.He said that the area was spread over 2.5 square kilometres and added that fossils in such large numbers might not be found at any other place in the world.Mr Wadho said it was an open natural geological museum of an era dating back to 50 million years.He appealed to geologists of the country to visit the Bunjo mountain for more research and called upon the federal and Sindh governments and the National Geographic channel to visit the area which was a treasure trove of geological wonders.

Gore's flying visit questioned

A group of scientists is questioning the worth of Al Gore's flying visit to New Zealand.The former US vice-president will arrive for half a day next month to promote his film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. During the 80 minute movie, Gore argues for the need to take immediate action to combat climate change.The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition does not accept arguments about man-made global warming. Spokesman Owen McShane claims Gore has been liberal with the truth in his film, when he says Pacific Islanders have been evacuated because their islands are drowning."There are no such refugees and what's more, the Pacific Islands are not sinking below the waves. It's a very active area. In some islands the sea level is falling and in others it's rising."Mr McShane says Gore's film is simply an opening shot in a campaign to revive his presidential ambitions.Since opening in May, An Inconvenient Truth has grossed more than $US23.7 million in America, making it the third highest grossing documentary behind Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins. However its foreign box office takings have been considerably less, at $US4.1 million.

Great Barrier Reef to be 'hosed down'

Scientists are considering a plan to make the water of the Great Barrier Reef cooler for vulnerable corals, as part of a solution to climate change.
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) executive director Andrew Skeat said the proposal would involve watering the surface of the ocean at peak times of heat stress to avoid coral bleaching.
"It's a proposal ... which would simply pump a fine spray of seawater onto the surface which would just break up the water surface and reduces the amount of (UV) radiation," Mr Skeat said.
"It's not an ecological scale solution to climate change, but it could be one response to keeping particular areas with high coral cover."
Little detail was available of how spraying would be implemented, but it would most likely involve relatively small, localised areas of particular high tourism value, with vulnerable coral.
Coral bleaching is caused by higher than average water temperatures linked with global climate change.
Mr Skeat, who participated in the Ecotourism Australia Conference in Townsville this week, said climate change would eventually affect the way tourism operated on the Great Barrier Reef.
He said a marine tourism working group, established to prepare for climate change on the reef, was considering other options such as permanently placing shade cloth over some areas.
Mr Skeat said studies had found the measure, first trialled in 2004, was effective in reducing radiation and coral bleaching.
"Whether it becomes practicable and cost effective is another question," he said.
Mr Skeat said the group also was looking at whether site-based operations could become "more flexible" and move to different parts of the reef during a significant coral bleaching event.
"There might have to be adjustments in people's operations if, for example, areas of the reef are damaged ... Those areas might have to be given a rest," he said.
"I have to say that the industry is positive about that, they're not fighting that."
Mr Skeat said while marine ecosystems around the world were at risk from climate change, Australia had "the best shot" of preserving its own because of stringent federal government management.

U.S. Gets a 'C-' on Protecting Oceans

The United States made modest progress on protecting its oceans last year, but still needs to boost funding for desperately needed reforms, a commission on ocean policy said Tuesday.
Overall, the U.S. earned a "C-" grade from the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, a collaboration between the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the privately funded Pew Oceans Commission. That was a slight improvement over a "D+" grade on the commission's report card for 2005.
President Bush last week proposed an 8 percent increase in the $1.75 billion federal budget for coastal and marine conservation programs including $8 million in for management of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would get most of the additional $143 million budget request.
"Certainly the president has been, and is still, committed to ocean conservation," said Kristen Hellmer, spokeswoman for the White House Council for Environmental Quality. "He's got new funding for ocean initiatives."
Panel leaders praised the states as "important champions" for oceans in 2006, citing initiatives in New York and Washington as well as regional pacts on ocean management for the West Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
"In the race to preserve our oceans, the states are outdistancing the federal government," said Leon Panetta, a former Clinton White House chief of staff who heads the Pew Oceans Commission and is co-chair of the Joint Initiative.
The joint commission praised Congress and the Bush administration for winning passage of "long-overdue" federal fisheries reform, but warned that more needs to be done. Bush's designation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument will help protect nearly 140,000 square miles of islands, atolls and oceans, the panel added.
But strides made last year to safeguard the nation's imperiled oceans were undercut by a lack of funding at all levels of government, the panel warned. Education, research and international leadership also need to be substantially improved, the commission said.
"Our expert commissions have told Congress and the administration what they can do to pick up the pace and immediately begin to reverse ocean decline," Panetta said. "To bring this grade up in 2007, the bottom line is that more needs to be done if we are to protect our ocean resources."
Oceans should also play a central role in the national debate over climate change, the panel noted.
"Addressing climate change is a high priority for most Americans, and although the climate and oceans are inexorably intertwined, the critical role oceans play in climate change is seldom addressed," said James Watkins, a retired Navy admiral who heads the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and co-chairs the Joint Initiative.

Galapagos Marine Patrols Gain Speed on Seafaring Outlaws; WWF Overhauls Boat to Protect Marine Life

Washington, D.C. (Oct 30, 2006 18:16 EST) A former U.S. Coast Guard cutter, overhauled and refitted by World Wildlife Fund, began patrolling the waters of the Galapagos today as the first National Park Service vessel fast enough to outrun and catch poachers at sea.
With the arrival of the 95-foot-long Yoshka, national park officials, "finally have the means to catch poachers and combat the illegal fishing that threatens the outstanding marine life of the Galapagos Islands," said Lauren Spurrier, managing director of WWF's Galapagos program. "This boat is faster than anything else out there."
Park patrols protect wildlife within the marine park from illegal activities like shark-finning or industrial fishing for highly-valued fish, and destructive fishing practices like longlines that kill non-target wildlife. Previously, outlaws eluded park patrols by outrunning them at sea. "That's about to change," Spurrier said.

"Illegal fishing is a serious threat in the archipelago, so we're really grateful for WWF's support in rebuilding the Yoshka," said Raquel Molina, director of the Galapagos National Park. "With the Yoshka patrolling the park, we'll be better able to monitor activities and enforce laws within the reserve. We know that laws are not being followed; in the past two years, we've seized more than 23,586 shark fins and 668,892 sea cucumbers illegally fished inside the Galapagos Marine Reserve."
A vessel with a colorful history -- as the USS Cape Knox it saw action during the Cuban missile crisis and played a key role in transporting refugees to Miami during the Cuban refugee exodus of 1965 -- the Yoshka was owned by the Sea Shepherd Society and on loan to the park in 2004, but it badly needed extensive repairs. WWF secured funding for the needed repairs and improvements and brokered an agreement under which the society subsequently donated the cutter to the Galapagos National Park Service.
Overhauled in dry dock at Guayaquil, Ecuador, the Yoshka can now reach a top speed of 22 knots and navigate for seven to 12 days without having to return to refuel, enabling law enforcement officials to extend their patrols to the park's outer areas.
As a protector of the archipelago where unique species inspired Darwin's theory of natural evolution, the boat was christened the Yoshka in honor of a donor's Russian family member who loved nature.
The Galapagos Marine Reserve is the third largest reserve in the world, encompassing an area roughly the size of New York State. A stunning number of animals live on and around the Galapagos, and many of these are found nowhere else on Earth. In the waters of the Galapagos, some 300 species of fish swim with seven species of sharks, rays, turtles, penguins and marine iguanas above a vast array of urchins, sea cucumbers, crabs, anemones, sponges and corals. The archipelago is home to some of the largest colonies of seabirds anywhere in the world.

Shadecloth may cover Barrier Reef

VAST areas of shadecloth could soon cover parts the Great Barrier Reef to prevent the future bleaching of coral.
The shadecloth is one option being developing by marine researchers in Queensland, who say the cloth would be held in place by floating pontoons.
Another option to protect important areas of coral is to spray the water's surface, breaking the surface tension of the water thus increasing the protection of the coral beneath from the sun.
Tourism Minister Fran Bailey has welcomed the shadecloth idea today, saying it would help protect some of the most vulnerable areas of the reef.
"We're very concerned because this is a $5.8 billion tourist industry on the reef employing 33,000 people," Ms Bailey told ABC radio today.
"So, obviously, we're tackling this issue from both ends - the cause of the problem and also trying to find very practical ways where we can mitigate the problem."
Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese said the idea was absurd.
"There are 2900 reefs altogether. They go for 2300 km down the Queensland coast and cover an area larger than the UK and Ireland combined, so that's a lot of shadecloth," he told ABC radio.
Mr Albanese said the Federal Government needs to employ a climate change strategy, and stop looking at quick fixes.

Tsunami sparks Solomons emergency

A state of emergency has been declared in the Solomon Islands after a tsunami struck, killing at least 12 people.
Whole villages are said to have been wiped out around the main town of Gizo in the western Solomons.
The scale of devastation should become clearer once results of an assessment are known, but officials warn the number of dead could rise further.
They have called for emergency supplies to help hundreds of people who are spending the night in the open.
Huge waves several metres high followed the 8-magnitude undersea earthquake which hit at 0740 local time on Monday (2040 GMT Sunday).
We ran for our lives, away from the waves
Arnold PidakereTeacher, Gizo

A tsunami alert was raised around the Pacific. Beaches on Australia's east coast closed and people fled, fearing a repeat of the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004 that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The alert was called off several hours later as it became clear the devastation was concentrated in the area around the Solomon Islands.
Running residents
Gizo, a small fishing town and diving centre on Ghizo island, was only 45km (25 miles) from the epicentre.
Many people were washed people out to sea, officials said.
"We ran for our lives, away from the waves," Gizo primary school teacher Arnold Pidakere told the BBC News website.
"When we looked back, we saw our house being destroyed.
"There are buildings on the hills that were damaged by the earthquake."
Mr Pidakere said children were missing and the residents badly needed food, and even more urgently, water, as all the area's water tanks had collapsed.
"We have no medical assistance. We haven't received any help at all," he said.

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare warned more bodies could be found as assessment teams try to gauge the true extent of the damage.
"My heart goes out to all of you in this very trying time," Mr Sogavare said in an address to the nation on Monday evening.
Government officials and the Red Cross were setting up a base in the Western Province, of which Gizo is the capital, to co-ordinate assistance.
The Solomon Islands deputy police commissioner said he was "satisfied that we are working in a co-ordinated manner".
"We have every intention of assessing the situation fully as fast as we can," Peter Marshall told the Associated Press news agency.
Mr Marshall said tents, drinking water and other supplies had begun to be dropped on the hill behind Gizo - with more expected after daybreak on Tuesday.
The Australian government has already pledged A$2m ($1.6m) in emergency aid, and has made helicopters available for rescue and relief work.
The Solomon Islands has a population of about 500,000 people - many of them living on remote and widely scattered islands.
Many people live in houses made of palm and bamboo on the islands' beaches.

New Biodegradable Plastic that Dissolves in Seawater Seen as Boon for Open Seas Trash Disposal

Washington, D.C. (Apr 3, 2007 13:54 EST) Large volumes of plastic waste generated aboard military, merchant and cruise ships must be stored onboard, often for prolonged periods, until they make port. In the future, a new type of environmentally friendly plastic that degrades in seawater may make it safe and practical to toss plastic waste overboard, freeing-up valuable storage space, according to scientists at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM).
The biodegradable plastics could replace conventional plastics that are used to make stretch wrap for large cargo items, food containers, eating utensils and other plastics used at sea, the researchers say. The biodegradable plastic has not yet been tested in freshwater. The development was described today at the 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society.
"There are many groups working on biodegradable plastics, but we're one of a few working on plastics that degrade in seawater," says study leader Robson F. Storey, Ph.D., a professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at USM, located in Hattiesburg, Miss. "We're moving toward making plastics more sustainable, especially those that are used at sea."


Conventional plastics can take years to break down and may result in byproducts that are harmful to the environment and toxic to marine organisms, conditions that make their disposal at sea hazardous. The new plastics are capable of degrading in as few as 20 days and result in natural byproducts that are nontoxic, Storey and his associates say. Their study is funded by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), which is supporting a number of ongoing research projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact of marine waste.
The new plastics are made of polyurethane that has been modified by the incorporation of PLGA [poly (D,L-lactide-co-glycolide)], a known degradable polymer used in surgical sutures and controlled drug-delivery applications. Through variations in the chemical composition of the plastic, the researchers have achieved a wide range of mechanical properties ranging from soft, rubber-like plastics to hard, rigid structures, depending on their intended use.
When exposed to seawater, the plastics degrade via hydrolysis into nontoxic products, according to the scientists. Depending on the composition of the plastics, these compounds may include water, carbon dioxide, lactic acid, glycolic acid, succinic acid, caproic acid and L-lysine, all of which can be found in nature, they add.
Because the new plastics are denser than saltwater, they have a tendency to sink instead of float, Storey says. That feature also could prevent them from washing up on shore and polluting beaches, he notes.
The plastics are undergoing degradation testing at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center in Natick, Mass., and in the Gulf of Mexico at the USM Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, Miss. Initial results have been favorable, Storey says.
The plastics are not quite ready for commercialization. More studies are needed to optimize the plastics for various environmental conditions they might encounter, including changes in temperature, humidity and seawater composition, Storey says. There also are legal hurdles to overcome, since international maritime law currently forbids disposal of plastics at sea.

Barrier Reef could have blocked tsunami: scientist

A Queensland marine scientist says the Great Barrier Reef may have delayed the impact of the tsunami that was generated in the Solomon Islands on Monday.
Dr Rob Beaman filmed three waves which caused the sea level off Cairns to rise by around 20 centimetres on Monday morning.
He believes the waves were a delayed and small-scale impact from the earthquake and ensuing three-metre tidal wave in the Solomons.
Dr Beaman says the waves arrived nearly 30 minutes later than predicted and he believes the Barrier Reef could be the reason.
"It would need some modellers with some very fancy computers to be able to work it out exactly," he warned.
"The arrival time is based on modelling that is done at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre and they may have to fine-tune that somewhat for future tsunami predictions."
Dr Beaman says the first impact he filmed at Yorkeys Knob marina was followed by two other waves which churned up the bottom of the marina and turned the water a murky brown.
"When that second pulse came through it was amazing. I almost had to pinch myself to believe it because I could really easily see this big line of brown water moving into the marina," he said.
"This is an ebbing tide, the water should be moving out, but it was coming in."

Unraveling the secret of Crater Lake's ... Deep Moss

It's huge, it's deep in the waters of Crater Lake, it's older than Methuselah — and it's alive.
The good news is: It won't bite you. It's a huge colony of moss that has lived quietly in the depths of the clearest lake in the United States since somewhere between 4,000 and 7,700 years ago after Mount Mazama blew its top and created the hole that Crater Lake would fill.
Since the oldest redwood is 2,200 years old and the oldest bristlecone pine is 4,770 years old, is this moss bed the oldest living thing? "That myth is out there and I can't stop it, but there's no way of saying that, because it's not one organism," said oceanographer Bob Collier of Oregon State University. He's a member of the scientific team that studied the organism with a submersible ROV (remotely operated vehicle) last summer and plans extensive exploration with scuba gear this summer. "At the bottom (the oldest part) of the mat, I believe it's thousands of years old — five, six, seven thousand, we don't know, but I do not encourage the single organism view any more than you'd say a forest is a single organism," he said. Biologist Steve Jessup of Southern Oregon University, also on the scientific team, said, "the whole system is very mysterious and we're just starting to get into it, but no, you can't count it as one living thing. It's a complex ecosystem up to 4,000 years old, maybe more." Scientists are fascinated with the behemoth of the plant kingdom, called "Deep Moss," because it seems to be growing very slowly over a very long period in a very nutrient-poor environment, but doing very well at it.
The community of moss, mostly of one species — Drepanocladus, is "live, verdant stuff," 3 to 6 feet thick (sometimes up to 20 feet), living chiefly between 100 and 420 feet deep, says Mark Buktenica, aquatic ecologist and resource manager at Crater Lake. Most of it thrives on the shelf around Wizard Island and some on the more vertical walls of the caldera. To help determine its age, as well as the biological history of Crater Lake and its region, scientists will dive this summer, taking core samples of the moss, which is laid down in layers, with the oldest on the bottom, like soil sediment, said Jessup. "It's important because the sediment profile has information. Organisms settle out. There will be ash layers. Different pollen (in the various layers) will tell us what was growing at every age in Crater Lake's history. We'll learn a lot about the climate and geology," said Jessup. The pollen will be carbon-dated, making the moss serve the function, after a fashion, of tree rings for Crater Lake. The layers at the bottom of Deep Moss, examined by the unmanned ROV, appear brown and dead, but Jessup brought some back to SOU and, after cultivating them in aquariums, saw them green up and jump to life.
Deep Moss could also be called Big Moss. Jessup cautions against calling it the biggest living thing but does say its mass is 10 grams to the 11th power. How big is that? A lot, he jokes. Enough to crush your house and more. Another big mystery of Deep Moss is that it's full of holes.
"I've never seen anything like it," says Jessup. It could be hot springs that have bubbled up through it in the past, avalanches or hunks of ice that fell on it or anaerobic (without oxygen) decomposition, that takes place very slowly, he adds. Deep Moss was discovered in 1988 during exploration of Crater Lake's 1,996-foot depths, with funding from National Geographic — and is only now being intensely investigated. Scientists have created several models of how the moss works in the lake ecology, Jessup says, including that it may act as a kind of stomach for Crater Lake, slurping up a "lake snow" of dead diatoms, phytoplankton, tiny shellfish and worms that drift to the bottom. The moss beds help monitor the planet's health and the effects of global warming, says Collier. If the pristine water, the clearest in the U.S., became compromised, scientists believe the moss would begin growing at shallower levels, to get at light.
After comparing growth levels with 20 years ago, they've found the moss has stayed where it was — and the lake is as clear as ever.

4 million gallons of sewage spill into lagoon

CARLSBAD, Calif. - More than 4 million gallons of raw sewage belched into a seaside ecological reserve, threatening aquatic life and forcing the closure of a beach in one of the worst spills in San Diego County's recent history. Sewage started gushing into the Buena Vista Lagoon after a main broke Sunday night. Crews battled to truck effluent-ridden water in 5,500-gallon tankers around the break. Workers also were installing pipe to bypass the break. Experts said it was too soon to assess the environmental impact, but the spill compares with a 5 million gallon overflow that killed thousands of fish in the lagoon in 1994. The freshwater lagoon, which feeds into the ocean, is sandwiched between Carlsbad and Oceanside in the northern part of the county.
The Department of Environmental Health closed more than a mile of beach in Carlsbad and Oceanside and posted signs warning of the contamination. Carlsbad Public Works Director Glenn Pruim said he did not know what caused the break. the section of metal pipe that failed is 25 years old and was not replaced when other pipe in the area was upgraded, he said.

The Future of the Great Barrier Reef: Bleached or Bright?

Climate report: World's poorest will suffer most

• Report: Poor countries will see increased hunger and water shortages• Scientists: Climate change will affect billions of people• North America will see more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires• Africa will be hardest hit, Europe will see its Alpine glaciers disappear !


BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The world faces increased hunger and water shortages in the poorest countries, massive floods and avalanches in Asia, and species extinction unless nations adapt to climate change and halt its progress, according to a report approved Friday by an international conference on global warming. Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings. "It has been a complex exercise," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but, in the end, agreed to compromises. However, some scientists vowed never to take part in the process again.
Five days of negotiations reached a climax when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of 1.8 degrees, and in a tussle over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements.
There was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the last five years. "For the first time we are not just arm-waving with models," Martin Perry, who conducted the grueling negotiations, told reporters.
The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections. The final IPCC report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution. "The poorest of the poor in the world -- and this includes poor people in prosperous societies -- are going to be the worst hit," Pachauri said. "People who are poor are least able to adapt to climate change."
The report said up to 30 percent of species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 3.6 degrees above the average in the 1980s and 1990s.

Areas in drought will become even more dry, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, it said. The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.
"This is a glimpse into an apocalyptic future," the Greenpeace environmental group said of the final report. Without action to curb carbon emissions, man's livable habitat will shrink starkly, said Stephen Schneider, a Stanford scientist who was one of the authors. "Don't be poor in a hot country, don't live in hurricane alley, watch out about being on the coasts or in the Arctic, and it's a bad idea to be on high mountains with glaciers melting."
"We can fix this," by investing a small part of the world's economic growth rate, said Schneider. "It's trillions of dollars, but it's a very trivial thing."

Negotiators pored over the 21-page draft meant to be a policy guide for governments. The summary pares down the full 1,572-page scientific assessment of the evidence of climate change so far, and the impact it will have on the Earth's most vulnerable people and ecosystems.
More than 120 nations attended the meeting. Each word was approved by consensus, and any change had to be approved by the scientists who drew up that section of the report.
Parry denied the hard-fought editing process resulted in a watered-down version, but acknowledged that "certain messages were lost."
At one point early Friday, it looked like the report "was not going to be accepted. It was very, very close to that point," said David Karoly, one of the scientific authors from the University of Oklahoma.
Though weakened by the deletion of some elements, the final report "will send a very, very clear signal" to governments, said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official.
The summary will be presented to the G8 summit of the world's richest nations in June, when the European Union is expected to renew appeals to President Bush to join in international efforts to control emissions of fossil fuels.
This year's series of reports by the IPCC were the first in six years from the prestigious body of 2,500 scientists, formed in 1988. Public awareness of climate change gave the IPCC's work unaccustomed importance and fueled the intensity of the closed-door negotiations during the five-day meeting.
"The urgency of this report prepared by the world's top scientists should be matched by an equally urgent response from governments," said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change program of the World Wide Fund for Nature.At the final session, the conference snagged over a sentence that said the impact of climate change already were being observed on every continent and in most oceans."There is very high confidence that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases," said the statement on the first page of text.But China insisted on striking the word "very," injecting doubt into what the scientists argued were indisputable observations. The report's three authors refused to go along with the change, resulting in an hours-long deadlock that was broken by a U.S. compromise to delete any reference to confidence levels.It is the second of four reports from the IPCC this year; the first report in February laid out the scientific case for how global warming is happening. This second report is the "so what" report, explaining what the effects of global warming will be.For the first time, the scientists broke down their predictions into regions, and forecast that climate change will affect billions of people.
North America will experience more severe storms with human and economic loss, and cultural and social disruptions. It can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, it said. Coasts will be swamped by rising sea levels. In the short term, crop yields may increase by 5 percent to 20 percent from a longer growing season, but will plummet if temperatures rise by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Africa will be hardest hit. By 2020, up to 250 million people are likely to be exposed to water shortages. In some countries, food production could fall by half, it said.
Parts of Asia are threatened with massive flooding and avalanches from melting Himalayan glaciers. Europe also will see its Alpine glaciers disappear. Australia's Great Barrier Reef will lose much of its coral to bleaching from even moderate increases in sea temperatures, the report said.Separately, an independent organization that keeps tabs on glacial melting in Austria's Alps said its latest survey confirms that the ice sheets continue to shrink significantly and predicted most will vanish by the end of the century.The Austrian Alpine Association said experts measured 105 of Austria's 925 glaciers last year and found they had receded by an average of 52 1/2 feet, with one of the sheets shrinking a dramatic 262 feet during 2006

Information from CNN