Climate Change in the Deep

Climate Change in the Deep

Source: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/04/climate-change-deep

What happens at the surface doesn't stay at the surface. It seems that changes in Earth's climate can cause unexpectedly large changes in deep-sea ecosystems. Based on 18 years of studies, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's Ken Smith and coauthors show that such ecosystem changes occur over short time scales of weeks to months, as well as over longer periods of years to decades. The paper, Climate, carbon cycling, and deep-ocean ecosystems, is in PNAS. From the From the abstract:

"The dependence of deep-sea communities on surface water production has raised important questions about how climate change will affect carbon cycling and deep-ocean ecosystem function. Recently, unprecedented time-series studies conducted over the past two decades in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic at >4,000-m depth have revealed unexpectedly large changes in deep-ocean ecosystems significantly correlated to climate-driven changes in the surface ocean that can impact the global carbon cycle. Climate-driven variation affects oceanic communities from surface waters to the much-overlooked deep sea and will have impacts on the global carbon cycle. Data from these two widely separated areas of the deep ocean provide compelling evidence that changes in climate can readily influence deep-sea processes."

The MBARI video illuminates some of the changes underway in the permanent darkness of the deep sea floor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qblwORXwrg&feature=player_embedded


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Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger

Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
October 8, 2009

Beware of the blob—this time, it's for real.

Please read this article:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs.html

Modest fisheries reduction could protect vast coastal ecosystems

Modest fisheries reduction could protect vast coastal ecosystems
Science Centric 22 July 2009 Link to full article below

A reduction of as little as five per cent in fisheries catch could result in as much as 30 per cent of the British Columbia coastal ecosystems being protected from overfishing, according to a new study from the UBC Fisheries Centre.

The study, by Natalie Ban and Amanda Vincent of Project Seahorse, proposes modest reductions in areas where fisheries take place, rather than the current system of marine protected areas which only safeguard several commercially significant species, such as rockfish, shrimp, crab, or sea cucumber. The article is published today in PLoS ONE, an online journal of the Public Library of Science,

Using B.C.'s coastal waters as a test case, the study affirms that small cuts in fishing - if they happen in the right places - could result in very large unfished areas. For example, a two per cent cut could result in unfished areas covering 20 per cent of the B.C. coast, offered real conservation gains.

To read the full article: http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=09072233-modest-fisheries-reduction-could-protect-vast-coastal-ecosystems

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Hawaii: Isles of Extinction

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Increasing dead zones in oceans could be avoided with a vegetarian diet

Increasing dead zones in oceans could be avoided with a vegetarian diet
by Jessica Prussia July 3, 2009 Link to full article below

The term ‘dead zone’ often brings to mind one of those some-what humorous Verizon Wireless commercials. However, there is a very real and very serious dead zone affecting our oceans right this minute that few people discuss but everyone should be concerned about.

Ocean dead zones are areas of ocean that are, in essence, dying. These areas are defined as regions of aquatic ecosystems that become congested with nitrogen, causing an extreme amount of algae growth. As this growth dies off, it is decomposed by oxygen-eating bacteria that also consume the oxygen in the surrounding water, thus killing off nearby organisms. The numbers of dead zones in the earth’s oceans are multiplying rapidly, and currently there are over 150 identified throughout the world. This is causing several aquatic species to flee from these areas or simply die off.

The largest dead zone is located in the Gulf of Mexico and is currently about the size of New Jersey. The cause of this massive-sized dead zone is due mainly to watershed contamination from fertilizers and animal manure. According to the United States Geological Survey, the contaminated water drains to the Mississippi River basin which flows to the Gulf of Mexico thus polluting the water and continuing this vicious cycle that is killing off our oceans.

Another cause of these dead zones is global warming... A vegetarian diet drastically decreases the amount of land used for livestock farming, cutting down on gas emissions that contribute to global warming by up to 80%. This would also decrease the amount of contaminated water draining in to the oceans, cutting down on the spread of dead zones and hopefully reversing some of the damage that has already been done.

One more way to reduce the spread of ocean dead zones is by “curbing the world’s addiction to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides”, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

To read the full article: http://www.examiner.com/x-13282-Cincinnati-Vegetarian-Examiner~y2009m7d3-Increasing-dead-zones-in-oceans-could-be-avoided-with-a-vegetarian-diet



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World Oceans Day, June 8, can be a saving grace

World Oceans Day, June 8, can be a saving grace
May 19, 2009

There’s no accurate accounting of the damage that man has inflicted on food supplies or the ocean itself over the past 16 years through industrial pollution, waste dumping, over-fishing and reckless fishing that imperil untargeted species.

It’s increasingly clear, however, that man’s compromise of the ocean may soon reach a tipping point, and that nations need to agree on, establish and enforce more sustainable practices.

It has been 16 years since the idea of a World Oceans Day—to raise public support to reverse the declining health of marine eco-systems—was first floated before the United Nations. Since then, hundreds of museums, conservation organizations, agencies, along with the ocean protection and restoration group Oceana (www.oceana.org), have pushed for the UN recognition.

Three-quarters of the world’s fisheries are now over-exploited, fully exploited, significantly depleted or recovering from over-exploitation, reports the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “The good news, says Andrew Sharpless, the chief executive of Oceana, “is that restoring abundant oceans is the most solvable global ecological challenge that we face today.”

To read the full article: http://www.supermarketguru.com/index.cfm/go/sg.viewArticle/articleId/491

Could we be the generation that runs out of fish? The process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction

Could we be the generation that runs out of fish?
The process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction
Johann Hari
j.hari@independent.co.uk
Friday, 5 June 2009


In the babbling Babel of 24/7 news – where elections, bailouts and beheadings blur into one long shriek – the slow-motion stories that will define our age are often lost. An extraordinary documentary released next week, The End of the Line, forces us to stop, and see. Its story is stark. In my parents' lifetime, we have killed 90 per cent of the world's fish. In my lifetime, we will finish off the rest – unless we change our ways, fast. We are on course to be the people who wiped fish from the earth.

The story begins in the sleepy Canadian resort of Newfoundland. It was the global capital of cod, a fishing town where the scaly creatures of the sea were so abundant they could be caught with your hands. But in the 1980s, something strange happened. The catches started to wane. The fish grew smaller. And then, in 1991, they disappeared.

It turned out the cod had been hoovered out of the sea at such a rapid rate that they couldn't reproduce themselves. But the postscript is spookier still. The Canadian government banned any attempts at fishing there, on the assumption that the few remaining fish would slowly repopulate the waters. But 15 years on, they haven't. The population was so destroyed that it could never recover.


Please read the full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-could-we-be-the-generation-that-runs-out-of-fish-1697247.html

‘The End of the Line’ is a compelling indictment of industrial fishing

‘The End of the Line’ is a compelling indictment of industrial fishing
by Sara Barz
8 Jun 2009

If scientists are correct, 2048 will be a terrible year for sushi restaurants. And diners selling tuna melts, too.

End of the Line movieThe End of the Line isn’t going to make you feel so good about hitting the neighborhood sushi bar.In fact, if I had any money to invest in a seafood venture, Carl Safina’s suggestion to “consider the jellyfishburger” may be the best advice. By mid-century, jellyfish may be the only “fish” left to catch.

Though it lacks the starpower of a certain former vice president, The End of the Line does for the fish what Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth did for the climate: scare the pants off the viewer. The documentary deftly makes the case that industrial exploitation of the world’s fish stocks will result in the end of seafood by 2048, if not sooner, and that some species may already be in collapse.

Accompanied by many graphs, interviews with prominent marine scientists, and scenes of gruesome fishing practices, Charles Clover, a British journalist and narrator of this film, says that he first became aware of the dangers of overfishing when he mistakenly stepped into a meeting at The Hague in the early 1990s. “They said that trawling is like plowing a field seven times a year,” he said. “As a farmer’s son, I know that you can’t possibly plow a field that often and expect it to produce.”

To read the full article: http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-08-end-of-the-line-movie-fishing/

Please protect oceans from open ocean farming

http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27023

Imagine a World Without Seafood for Supper -- It's Nearer Than You Think

Imagine a World Without Seafood for Supper -- It's Nearer Than You Think
By Andrew Purvis, The Observer UK
April 29, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/environment/138874/imagine_a_world_without_seafood_for_supper_--_it%27s_nearer_than_you_think/
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/138874
http://www.alternet.org/story/138874/

As I step off the train at Heysel, the vast art deco structure of the Palais du Centenaire rises like a cathedral. With its four soaring buttresses topped by statues, the Palais forms the centrepiece of the Parc des Expositions in Brussels, Belgium - a trade-fair complex built in the 1930s to commemorate a century of independence from the Netherlands. This is the temporary home of thousands of fish products from around the world as 23,000 delegates descend from 80 countries for the annual European Seafood Exposition - the world's largest seafood trade show and a grim reminder of man's dominion over the oceans.

"If I wanted people to understand the global fishing crisis, I would bring them here," says Sally Bailey, a marine program officer with the World Wide Fund for Nature, one of the more moderate NGOs combating the exploitation of the seas. Last year, one of the more militant groups - Greenpeace - managed to "close down" five exhibitors trading in critically endangered bluefin tuna, by deploying 80 activists to drape their stands in fishing nets, chain themselves to fixtures and put up banners that read: "Time and tuna are running out".

To read the full article: http://www.alternet.org/story/138874/

Saving the Sea Turtles

Saving the Sea Turtles
by Roddy Scheer
March 23, 2009

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4622&printview&imagesoff

A trio of environmental groups last week filed notices of intent to sue the federal government over violations of the Endangered Species Act related to turtle protection. The groups—the Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network—maintain that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to meet a 12-month deadline for responding to three separate petitions that focused on loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles in U.S. coastal waters.

“The U.S. government has knowingly failed to respond to our petitions,” said Oceana’s senior campaign director David Allison. “Sea turtles in all U.S. waters are at risk of extinction, and the agency responsible for their protection is failing to do its job.”

“The threats to the loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles’ existence, ranging from being captured and killed by indiscriminate commercial fishing gear to nesting beach destruction and climate change, continue to grow even as the species’ numbers dwindle,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s Andrea Treece. “If these magnificent animals are to survive, the federal agencies entrusted to protect them cannot be allowed to ignore the law.”

To read the full article:
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4622&printview&imagesoff

Government Plan Would Protect Ocean Floor From Florida To N.C.

Government plan would protect ocean floor from Florida to North Carolina
o US group to vote in June on destructive fishing gear ban
o 23,000 square miles of coral reefs would be affected
McClatchy newspapers
guardian.co.uk
Thursday 5 March 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/05/florida-reef-ecosystem-government-protection/print
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/05/florida-reef-ecosystem-government-protection

A few miles from the south-east Florida coast, at a depth of crushing pressure and frigid temperatures, lies an eerie world of snowy coral, undiscovered forms of life and rock towers thrusting through ink-dark water.

Although the deep ocean reefs of the south-eastern United States rose before the pyramids, their existence had only been hinted at by geological evidence until ruggedly built submersibles reached them in the late 1990s. Now, before commercial fishing damages a still-pristine ecosystem, the federal government is considering protecting a stretch of ocean floor from the Florida Keys to North Carolina, an area six times the size of Yellowstone National Park.

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council plans to vote in June on banning bottom trawls, bottom longlines and other destructive fishing gear across 23,000 square miles, an area thought to encompass the largest deepwater reef system in the world. Although elsewhere such reefs have been mown down by commercial fishing gear, the reefs being considered for protection have sustained little impact from human activities, and the council wants to act before any damage takes place.

"We want to protect these very fragile, vulnerable ecosystems that we know very little about," said Myra Brouwer, a biologist with the Fishery Management Council. "They grow very slowly, and they're thousands of years old."

More remote than the polar ice caps or the Himalayan peaks, the deep ocean has surrendered its secrets slowly. It took the use of submarine-hunting sonar, for example, for scientists in the 1950s to map out the oceans' submerged mountain ranges. And while they suspected the existence of reefs in the ocean depths, they only acquired the tools to study them with the development of deep-diving submersibles, multibeam sonar and remotely operated vehicles.

John Reed, senior scientist at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University, discovered many of the deepwater reefs off Florida riding the submersible Johnson-Sea-Link 2,500 feet below the surface, where no sunlight penetrates and the water temperature drops into the 30s. During undersea trips from Jacksonville to Miami, he counted about 400 coral mounds, one reaching a height of 400 feet, mostly composed of a delicately branched, snow-white coral called Lophelia pertusa. He saw eels, scorpion fish and several examples of the huge sixgill shark, a primitive species that hunts near the surface at night and spends the day in the depths.

During a dive off south-east Florida, he peered through the submersible's acrylic bubble as the craft inched toward the coast. Searchlights swept the black water, revealing only small fish and sandy bottom. But as the craft came within 15 miles of the hotels and condominium towers of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton, the ocean floor sloped sharply upward, in a rugged, rubble-strewn ascent of more than 1,000 feet.

At the top, about 900 feet below the surface, a lush undersea landscape of sea fans, black corals, sponges and other creatures covered the reef called the Miami Terrace. New species of fish, crab and coral have been found in these reefs, and scientists expect to find many more.

"We really don't understand a lot about the ecology of these deepwater reefs," Reed said. "We're still learning what lives there - what animals, what fish."

Despite encompassing a vast stretch of ocean floor, the plan is not particularly controversial. A small amount of commercial fishing takes place along the periphery of the reef systems, mostly for shrimp and golden crab. The new rule would allow the fishing to continue, although it would freeze the footprint of the golden crab fishery in place.

But a group of recreational fishermen called deep-droppers, who catch fish at depths of 400 feet to 3,000 feet, are worried that the protected zone could be a prelude to restrictions on their activities. Mark Sagerholm, president of the 100 Fathom Fishing Club, said he supports protecting the coral, so long as it doesn't lead to restrictions on deep-dropping.

"Our real concern is any time someone says, 'Hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help,'" he said. "Even though right now there's no restrictive language against deep-dropping, we're concerned that later restrictive language will be put in."

Unlike famous landscapes such as the South Dakota badlands, Florida Everglades or Amazon rain forest, the reefs of the deep ocean can't be experienced except through photographs and videos. Pressed for an explanation of why we should care about protecting them, scientists talked of the pharmaceuticals that could be developed from deep reef species and spoke of our duty to prevent harm to ecosystems with their own integrity and beauty, whether or not we can see them directly.

"This is a unique ecosystem that occurs right in our backyard, and we should act as stewards," Reed said. "They're very similar to ancient redwood forests. Once they're clear-cut, they're not going to grow back in our lifetimes."

Why Leading Scientists Underestimated How Quickly We're Scorching the Atmosphere

Why Leading Scientists Underestimated How Quickly We're Scorching the Atmosphere
By Elizabeth Grossman, Earth Island Journal
March 9, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/environment/130855/why_leading_scientists_underestimated_how_quickly_we%27re_scorching_the_atmosphere/
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/130855
http://www.alternet.org/story/130855/

In its most recent official report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) significantly underestimated the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would occur during the last seven years, a miscalculation that has put the planet beyond the "range of possibilities" considered by some of the world's top climatologists. The overly optimistic predictions in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment, released in 2007, appear to have been driven, in part, by the political dynamics involved in the international effort. The underestimation means that government negotiators meeting in Copenhagen later this year to write a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol will have a tougher task than previously imagined.

"We're looking at future climate beyond anything we've considered," Chris Field, director of the global ecology department at the Carnegie Institution for Science, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago last month. "Actual emissions are at or above the total range of possibilities considered in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment."

The underestimation of greenhouse emissions occurred, Field said, because the IPCC failed to include in its scenarios the rapid increase in carbon dioxide from Asia's coal-reliant industrial expansion between 2000 and 2007.

"We were too optimistic," Field said. "There was no decrease in emissions from developed countries and the sharpest increases and overall intensity came from China and India that rely heavily on coal."

"It was assumed that coal would become less important," says Ken Caldeira, also of the Carnegie Institution. What happened, however, is that China and India developed rapidly while rising oil prices pushed wealthy nations to use more coal, which is more CO2 intensive in its emissions. Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Science Institute concur that the past five years' sharp increase in atmospheric CO2 is attributable to the steep rise in global coal use, pushed upward by accelerated Asian economic and industrial development.

"IPCC scenarios assume an increase in energy efficiency during this period," Caldeira says. But that didn't happen. "Efficiency flattened out," he says.

Scientists involved in the IPCC process say that IPCC reports are designed to capture the long-term rather than short-term trends, and cannot incorporate data after a certain point, so the 2007 report relied on pre-2002 data. Nevertheless, widely available pre-2002 data would have suggested an upward trend in Asian emissions.

According to research by Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of the Energy Technology Innovation Project at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, China has been a net importer of oil since 1993. During the 1990s, writes Gallagher, Chinese car sales grew about 27 percent a year, doubling the number of cars on the road every 2.5 years. The US Energy Information Agency data shows coal consumption by China and India approximately tripling between 1980 and 2005.

Given the fact that the breakneck economic growth in India and China were well known phenomena, how could the Nobel prize-winning IPCC have omitted an increase in Asian carbon emissions from its scenarios? The short answer appears to be politics.

"Social and political dynamics are at work," in producing final IPCC reports, Fields said at the AAAS meeting.

Stanford University biology professor and climate scientist Stephen Schneider agrees. "The lead authors are constrained by government reviewers," Schneider says. "The political process cuts the edges and doesn't do a good job at the tails of the bell curve, which is where we are now.

"These reports are consensus documents and when it comes to politics, the interests of small island nations are different than those of the U.S., China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait."

There is a political and diplomatic incentive to low-ball emissions predictions becaue lower numbers make the task ahead appear less onerous.

"Overtly or covertly, if you have an optimistic baseline of what happens in the absence of policy, it makes what you need to do appear relatively modest," Caldeira says. "People who want to make the problem look more tractable have an incentive to make the baseline ore optimistic. If you have a more depressing picture, it's more difficult to make the transition."

For example, Caldeira says that if we're to stabilize atmospheric carbon at what's now considered tenable levels for the climate -- about 350 parts per million (we're now at about 385 ppm) -- the world's energy systems must be carbon neutral by mid-century. That's a daunting task that many governments appear hesitant to grapple with.

Not only has atmospheric carbon increased beyond the range of possibilities, but so too has effects of that increase on Earth's ecosystems. The retreat of Arctic Sea ice, the collapse of permafrost, ice sheet melt and that melting's contribution to sea level rise are occurring faster and with more intensity than expected. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, Field said, rose 3.5 percent annually between 2000 and 2007, compared with annual increases of 0.9 percent in the 1990s. Between 1993 and 2003, melting ice sheets accounted for 40 percent of sea level rise. That contribution is now estimated at 80 percent.

"The more we learn about the process [of climate change], the more severe the risk becomes," says Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. Oppenheimer and Schneider are among the co-authors of a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that the impacts of a 1-2°C rise in global mean temperature are much greater and pose greater environmental risks than previously anticipated.

Whether or not the Asian carbon surge continues, its impacts will be with us for decades -- even centuries -- because of the length of time carbon lingers in the atmosphere. "Nothing we could do now to stabilize carbon could be too fast or fast enough," says Tom Athanasiou, director of the organization Eco-Equity, an Earth Island Insitute-sponsored project. "The storyline was wrong."

The underestimation of recent greenhouse emissions threatens to complicate the work of government officials who will meet in Copenhagen in December to hammer out an international climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. With climate change occurring faster than scientists have the ability to predict -- and the impacts greater than anticipated -- an international deadlock is unacceptable, Anthanasiou says.

"Maybe the most important thing is to communicate the severity of the situation in a way that gets through people's defenses," he says.

Elizabeth Grossman, the author of High Tech Trash, is a frequent contributor to Earth Island Journal.

Shell and High Water - Acid Oceans Transform Marine Life

Shell and High Water
Climate change: Acid oceans transform marine life, says study
09 Mar 2009

http://www.grist.org/cgi-bin/printthis.pl?uri=/news/2009/03/09/oceans/index.html
http://www.grist.org/news/2009/03/09/oceans/index.html?source=daily

PARIS -- Ocean acidification driven by climate change is stripping away the protective shell of tiny yet vital organisms that absorb huge amounts of carbon pollution from the atmosphere, a new study has revealed.

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the calcium carapace of microscopic animals called foraminifera living in the Southern Ocean have fallen in weight by a third, the study found.

The amoeba-like organisms, about the size of a grain of sand, live in the surface waters of oceans around the world.

They are an important part of the ecological chain and also provide a bulwark against global warming. They transform carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air into calcium-based shells.

When they die, their carbon-rich shells sink to the ocean floor, effectively storing the atmospheric CO2 forever.

Previous studies have shown that other marine animals, notably corals, are losing their ability to form exoskeletons from calcium.

However, the potential causes for this are tangled, and include rising temperatures and nutrient runoff from coastal agriculture as well as acidification.

This is the first study to look specifically at acidification and pin it to greenhouse-gas pollution, which is driven especially by the invisible product of burning oil, gas and coal.

"It is the invasion of anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 that is causing this particular source of acidification," said co-author William Howard of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center in Hobart, Tasmania.

Howard's team collected shells of one foraminifera species, Globigerina bulloides, as they drifted toward the sea floor, and compared them to older specimens that had sunk several hundred years earlier.

The newer shells had 30-to-35 percent less mass, they reported in the online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

"If forams and other shell makers are not making shells, that might change the transfer of carbon from the surface ocean into the deep ocean," said Howard.

"It changes the efficiency of the biological pump, and would tend to lessen the degree to which the ocean takes up carbon. That's a feedback that we have to be concerned about," he said in a phone interview.

Only in the last five years have scientists become aware of the extent of ocean acidification and its potential to disrupt Earth's carbon cycle, which balances the absorption and release of CO2 into the atmosphere.

"The problem with this impact is that it is so persistent and so long-lived, unlike other pollution carbons. We will have a harder time turning this impact around," Howard said.

The geo-chemical mechanisms that buffer acidification work very slowly, he explained.

"It is like taking an antacid tablet for an upset stomach and then having to wait hundreds -- or thousands -- of years for it to work."

If the loss of shell mass threatens the survival of the amoeba-like creatures, it could also disrupt a food chain reaching from the plankton they eat, all the way up to large sea mammal such as whales.

"We don't know yet what those impacts might be," Howard said.

Carbon Emissions Creating Acidic Oceans Not Seen Since Dinosaurs

Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs
Chemical change placing 'unprecedented' pressure on marine life and could cause widespread extinctions, warn scientists
by David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 10 March 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/10/carbon-emissions-oceans-copenhagen/print
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/10/carbon-emissions-oceans-copenhagen

Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.

The rapid acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The chemical change is placing "unprecedented" pressure on marine life such as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.

The study, by scientists at Bristol University, will be presented at a special three-day summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen, which opens today. The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and to shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.

The Bristol scientists cannot talk about their unpublished results until they are announced later today. But a summary of the findings seen by the Guardian predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells.

It says: "We find the future rate of surface ocean acidification and environmental pressure on marine calcifiers very likely unprecedented in the past 65 million years." The scientists add that the situation in the deep sea is of even "greater concern".

The scientists compared the current acidification rate with a giant prehistoric release of greenhouse gas, which geologists know caused widespread extinction of deep water species.

The summary reads: "Because the rates of acidification between past and future are comparable, and [because] there was widespread extinction of benthic organisms [lowest living], one must conclude that a similar level of extinction is more likely than not in the future."

Concern about ocean acidification from carbon pollution has grown in recent years, but the issue receives much less attention than global warming — also caused by human carbon emissions.

The Bristol study is one of the first to predict the consequences of acid waters by looking at past events. It says future deep sea acidification must be limited to 0.2 pH units to avoid the worst effects. The pH of surface waters, where the CO2 is absorbed from the atmosphere, has fallen by about 0.1 units since the industrial revolution, though it will take longer for the acid to reach deeper water.

Ocean acidification is one of the key topics at the Copenhagen summit, with a series of presentations scheduled to examine the impacts.

Ken Caldeira, an expert on ocean acidification at the Carnegie Institution in California, will tell the conference that the next few decades could produce "profound" changes in the oceans. He will say: "The choice to continue emitting carbon dioxide means that we will be an agent of biological change of a force and magnitude exceeded only by the causes of the great mass extinction events. If we do not cut carbon dioxide emissions deeply and soon, the consequences of ocean acidification will stand out against the broad reaches of geologic time. Those consequences will remain embedded in the geologic record as testimony from a civilisation that had the wisdom to develop high technology, but did not develop the wisdom to use it wisely."

Other experts will report that acidification is already affecting marine life in the Arctic and Antarctic. They will also discuss a bizarre finding that acid waters carry sound more efficiently, so the ocean will be a much noisier place in future.

The conference comes ahead of a year of high-level political discussions on climate change, which culminate in international negotiations in Copenhagen in December, where officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who organised this week's event, has described it as "a deliberate attempt to influence policy". She said many scientists were concerned that politicians have not grasped the seriousness of the situation, despite increasingly gloomy predictions.

This week's meeting will publish an update to the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A number of studies published since the IPCC report was prepared show that carbon emissions are rising faster than expected and that existing greenhouse gas targets may not be enough to prevent catastrophic temperature rise.

It will also assess whether projected sea level rises have been underestimated, and if there is still a realistic chance that average global temperature rise can be limited to 2C.

EU: Sharks now need protection from overfishing

EU: sharks now need protection from overfishing
February 6, 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5670588.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5670588.ece?print=yes&r\
andnum=1233915046786

It could spell the end of rock salmon or huss being sold at the chip shop.

The European Commission, presenting its first plan to limit all types of shark
fishing, said yesterday that it had to act to stop several types of shark being
pushed towards extinction. The rock salmon often available in British chip
shops, and sometimes sold as huss, is normally spiny dogfish, an increasingly
rare type of shark.

Joe Borg, the EU Fisheries Commissioner, said: “The latest information we have
confirms that human beings are now a far bigger threat to sharks than sharks
ever were to us.”

He said that a surge in demand from Asia for shark fins for soup, and from the
cosmetics industry for shark liver oil, had led to at least a third of shark
species being overfished.

The proposals are likely to lead to a tightening of the six-year EU ban on the
practice of “finning”, in which fins are cut from a shark and the carcass
thrown back into the sea. In future, vessels may be forced to land sharks with
their fins attached and only remove them once ashore to enable tighter controls
on the numbers caught.

The plan, which must be approved by EU governments and the European Parliament,
would extend many of the features of the common fisheries policy to sharks,
skates and rays, which have been largely unregulated. It follows moves by
European governments last December to limit catches of two types of shark —
spurdog and porbeagle — for the first time.

In the past two decades global catches of sharks have increased from 600,000
tonnes a year to more than 800,000. The EU fleet takes about 100,000 tonnes a
year.

The reductions may also lead to far-reaching changes for Britain’s fishing
fleet. Britain catches more deep-sea shark than any other European country,
harvesting liver oil for cosmetics.

Spain is the largest exporter of shark fins to the seemingly insatiable Hong
Kong market, while Italy is the main consumer of shark meat in Europe and its
second biggest importer, according to a report by the international marine
conservation organisation Oceana.

Powdered shark cartilage, which the species has instead of bones, has surged in
popularity as a health supplement and shark skin has become a prestige leather
product.

“Proper measures to protect the most vulnerable species of sharks must be put
in place and must be properly controlled and enforced,” Mr Borg said. These
include creating temporary exclusion zones to protect young or reproducing
sharks and clearer rules on fishing equipment to be used to reduce unwanted
catches. Emphasis will also be placed on better catch reporting, more investment
in data collection and greater use of observers to monitor fishing activities.

While welcoming the initiative, environmental groups were critical of the lack
of detail and specific measures in the plan. Rebecca Greenberg, of Oceana
Europe, said: “At the very least, we were hoping for measures that accurately
regulated the amounts of shark bodies and fins that could be landed, in order to
weed out illegal finning practices.” Oceana’s founder, the American actor
Ted Danson, has previously criticised the British appetite for rock salmon,
which he believes has nearly wiped out once plentiful spiny dogfish stocks from
our waters.

Aaron McLoughlin, the head of the WWF European marine programme, said: “Sharks
are slow-growing and produce relatively small numbers of young. Many of these
species are already threatened with extinction.”

Mr Borg admitted yesterday that it would be years before the protective measures
were fully in place, as new legislation has to be approved. “The objective is
to have the actions in place around 2012-13,” he said.

The initiative has won some early support in the European Parliament. Struan
Stevenson, the Conservatives’ fisheries spokesman, welcomed it as a first
step. He said: “Unfortunately, films like Jaws have created a stigma
surrounding sharks that often prevents them gaining the attention and sympathy
they deserve. They are a vital component of maintaining a balanced ecosystem in
our oceans.”

Fall Fish Count in Delta is Dismal

Fall fish count in Delta is dismal
By Matt Weiser
mweiser@sacbee.com
(916) 321-1264
Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 | Page 6B

http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1567091.html

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Delta fish continue to hover at the brink of extinction, and conditions could worsen for the estuary and the economy unless winter gets a lot wetter, according to a new state survey.

Native Delta smelt, a threatened fish, is at its lowest point in 42 years of record-keeping. Two nonnative fish, the American shad and threadfin shad, also set record lows.

The findings were in the state Department of Fish and Game's latest fall population survey of Delta fish species, which concluded in December.

Three other species showed slight gains over 2007, but remain well below historical averages: the native longfin smelt and Sacramento splittail, and the nonnative striped bass. Even though the survey found no splittails last fall, and just one in 2007, officials say the fish isn't often found in the areas netted and that some previous counts likewise have not detected them.

"When the uncommon ones like Delta smelt and the common ones like threadfin shad both take a nosedive, there's something really wrong," said Bruce Herbold, a biologist who monitors the Delta for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "We're really seeing a massive change."

The health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is of concern because it is a freshwater source for two-thirds of California's population and millions of acres of farmland.

Last year, Delta water diversions were slashed about 30 percent to protect fish, bringing a hit of at least $300 million to the economy, according to an estimate by the state Department of Water Resources.

It could get worse this year.

In December, DWR warned water contractors they might get only 15 percent of average Delta water deliveries due to the ongoing drought.

On Wednesday, a DWR planning committee reported the delivery forecast may shrink further, perhaps as low as 5 percent to 9 percent of average.

It is rare to see that forecast shrink mid-winter. It usually grows as storms deepen the Sierra Nevada snowpack.

But as DWR Deputy Director Ralph Torres noted, California has seen little precipitation since December, and needs a deluge to refill reservoirs.

The report was obtained by The Bee prior to its official release. Torres said a new delivery forecast has not been made, but he confirmed it will likely be less than 15 percent.

"Originally we had planned on doing that (new forecast) by Feb. 15," Torres said. "But we may move that date up, because we don't think any precipitation between now and then is going to change anything."

The water content of the statewide snowpack stood at 57 percent of normal on Thursday. Oroville Reservoir, the main supply for the State Water Project, has nearly reached a record low level.

The report suggests California's water supply is on a path to match the two worst droughts in state history: 1923-24 and 1976-77.

Could things get that bad?

"It's probably a scenario we have to consider," Torres said.

This could worsen conditions for struggling Delta fish species, and for water quality.

Biologists warn that the Delta is in the midst of a human-caused shift – to a different kind of aquatic habitat, one that holds risks for human and environmental health.

The estuary is changing, they say, into a warmer and more stagnant water body where toxic algae blooms are common. Seasonal shifts in temperature and salinity that once defined and cleansed the estuary are disappearing.

Causes are many, experts say, including urban and agricultural pollution and the introduction of thousands of foreign wildlife species. The Delta has also been managed for decades as a freshwater delivery tool serving the world's eighth-largest economy, ahead of the needs of wildlife and water quality.

"You put them together and you get what I'm calling a train wreck," said Bill Bennett, a UC Davis fisheries ecologist and and Delta smelt expert.