Live fish, turtle key rings cruel, but legal

Global Times: Live fish, turtle key rings cruel, but legal

China -- As live fish and turtles sealed in small key rings have become an increasingly popular trinkets sold at subway entrances and train stations, animal protection groups are advocating an immediate ban, calling the item an example of "pure animal abuse."

However, there is no existing animal protection law that would prevent their sales, explain animal rights groups.

At the Sihui subway station C entrance, one vendor hawked such rings.
Filled with colored water, each 7centimeterlong key ring encapsulated either one Brazil turtle or two small kingfish.

"The water in the key ring has 'nutrients'," claimed the vendor. "They can live for months inside there."

Business was looking good Tuesday afternoon as one fish and nine turtle rings sold within five minutes.

"I'll hang it in my office, it looks nice and brings good luck, " a man in his 30s said after buying a turtle key ring.

"I bought one to free it. It looks so miserable," a woman told the Global Times.
According to Mary Peng, cofounder of the International Center for Veterinary Services, fish and turtles wouldn't survive very long in a sealed plastic bag. "They would run out of oxygen," Peng said.

Animal protection groups are voicing strong opposition to the key ring sales.
"To put a living thing inside a sealed and confined space for profit is immoral and pure animal abuse," said Qin Xiaona, director of the NGO Capital Animal Welfare Association.

However, "China only has a Wild Animal Protection Law," Qin explained. "If the animals are not wild animals they fall outside the law's scope."

"If an animal protection law is too much to hope for, we urgently need an antianimal abuse law," Qin said, appealing to citizens not to buy such key rings. "If nobody buys it, the market will die," she added.

Scientists use tags to follow lemon sharks

TampaBay.com: Scientists use tags to follow lemon sharks

JUPITER — Shark scientist Steve Kessel was looking for the piscatorial equivalent of a needle in a haystack or a four-leaf clover in a meadow during a fishing expedition off Jupiter on March 6.

Kessel, a researcher from Cardiff University in Wales, and his assistants were fishing for a pregnant lemon shark into which they could insert a satellite tag. Under the direction of commercial fisherman Mike Newman, captain of the Dykoke, the crew deployed four large buoys holding stout fishing lines baited with bonito slabs on circle hooks.

They waited anxiously, hoping one of their study subjects would come along to help answer a question that has bugged shark scientists for decades: Where do lemons go to give birth to their young?

"We think they're pupping up in Georgia and South Carolina because we've shown through telemetry data the sharks move north in the summer months," Kessel said. "But we have yet to prove this."

Sometime around 8 p.m., one of the buoys began moving erratically. Newman motored the Dykoke closer so that research assistants could pull in the line and ease whatever was attached to it onto the deck.

After a brief struggle, a female lemon a little more than 8 feet long with a distended belly was lying quietly on board with a wooden paddle inserted between her jaws like a baby pacifier. A wet rag was thrown over her eyes to help calm her, and a hose pumped seawater into her mouth to avoid respiratory distress.

The scientists drew blood, recorded the animal's length and girth, took a tiny piece of fin for a DNA sample and inserted a small tag beneath the skin that can be read by a handheld electronic scanner. Then they added an external acoustic transmitter tag and produced a battery-operated drill to secure the SPOT tag to the dorsal fin. Every time the fin breaks the surface, the tag will beam its location to a satellite, with the data downloaded onto Kessel's computer.

The SPOT tag is different from a popup satellite tag in that it records only the shark's location — not depth or water quality or temperature. The acoustic transmitter tag pings to an array of 300 underwater listening posts installed by a host of research groups stretching from Florida to the Carolinas.

The female was one of more than 40 lemon sharks tagged this winter off Jupiter by Kessel's group. They also inserted tags in three bull sharks, one Caribbean reef shark, four nurse sharks and two hammerheads. Nearly 250 sharks of various species have been caught by the researchers since 2006. Only two lemons have the SPOT tags; the scientists are hoping for one more pregnant female to tag before the sharks leave the area this spring.

The lemon sharks that flock to Jupiter each winter are important study subjects because they are scientists' best hope of learning about the species.

First observed in 2001, large males and females gather by the score near wrecks and reefs, lying quietly on the bottom by day and foraging for food by night. Tagging data revealed the animals that showed up in Jupiter "blasted out of there" in April and headed to the Carolinas.

Sea lions' appetite for salmon has lawmakers out for blood

McLatchyHydr.com: Sea lions' appetite for salmon has lawmakers out for blood

WASHINGTON — The California sea lions were unwelcome visitors from the very beginning, greeted with yells, rubber bullets and firecrackers when they swam up the Columbia River to gobble up thousands of endangered salmon at the Bonneville Dam.

When the harassment wouldn't scare them away, fishery managers turned to deadly force. They used traps and euthanasia, giving lethal injections to 30 sea lions from 2008 to 2010.

This spring, the sea lions have found safe harbor at the dam, about 50 miles east of Portland, Ore., after an appellate court in San Francisco ruled that states and the National Marine Fisheries Service had to stop the killings.

But the reprieve could be short-lived: The issue now has found its way to Capitol Hill, where Congress is being urged to intervene.

Seeking to put an end to the invaders' free lunch once and for all, four members of the House of Representatives — Democrat Norm Dicks and Republicans Doc Hastings and Jaime Herrera Beutler, all of Washington state, and Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden — have teamed up on a bill that would give both states and Indian tribes a quicker way to get federal permission to kill the sea lions.

"With all other methods exhausted, lethal removal of the most aggressive sea lions is often the only option left," Hastings said.

The issue is an example of the delicate work involved in trying to manage animal populations. In this case, both the salmon and sea lions are protected by the federal government — the salmon by the Endangered Species Act, and the sea lions by the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

As a result, the federal government goes to great lengths to try to protect both. Under normal conditions, killing a sea lion is a serious crime, punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.

Guy Norman, regional administrator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Vancouver, said the number of California sea lions has surged from about 30,000 to more than 300,000 in the past 35 years. He said the sea lions have learned that they have "a tremendous opportunity" to prey on the salmon while they're delayed before passing over the dam.


Norman said the number of sea lions, usually 100 or so, peaks at the dam from April through mid-May.

"It's been a management dilemma from Day One in terms of trying to balance the situation with endangered salmon versus a natural predator that's accessing these endangered fish in an unnatural setting," he said.


Last spring alone, the sea lions killed an estimated 5,000 salmon at Bonneville Dam, situated where the Columbia River passes through the Cascade Mountains and separates Washington and Oregon.

"That's a significant number of salmon — and they're endangered," Dicks said. "You've got an endangered species, and with these sea lions coming up from California, they're just hitting them pretty hard," Dicks said.

If the bill is passed, roughly 85 sea lions could get killed this year, under a complicated formula that would change the number each year based on population estimates.

The issue is pitting fishermen in the Pacific Northwest against animal rights advocates.

"Commercial fishermen are not excited about having to kill sea lions," said Bruce Buckmaster of Astoria, Ore., a board member of the group Salmon For All, comprised of commercial fishing interests. "There's no blood thirst here, but we just have way too many. ... Like everything to do with salmon in the Pacific Northwest, it's complicated. And it's hard to grasp how one thing makes a difference in the system."

Under federal law, sea lions can only be killed if the National Marine Fisheries Service can prove that they're having a significant negative impact on salmon.

In November, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco sided with The Humane Society of the United States and the Wild Fish Conservancy in stopping the killing, ruling that the standard hadn't been met. The court noted that fishermen were taking many more salmon than the sea lions.

"The government's plan to kill sea lions for eating fish, while at the same time authorizing fishermen to take four times as many fish as sea lions, is irrational, and the court has rightly put a stop to it," said Jonathan Lovvorn, the vice president and chief counsel for animal protection litigation for the Humane Society.


Kurt Beardslee, the executive director of Wild Fish Conservancy, said that blaming sea lions for the decline in the salmon population "is nothing but a distraction" and that there could be many other factors, including dams, fisheries and habitat degradation.

In January, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that it wouldn't appeal the court decision. That disappointed Hastings, who introduced the legislation on March 9.

Hastings said it would be unacceptable to expect residents of Northwest states to "sit by while a few sea lions gorge themselves on thousands of endangered fish."

Similar legislation was introduced in Congress in 2006, but it went nowhere. This year, prospects could be letter. The legislation has been referred to the House Natural Resources Committee, which is headed by Hastings.

Backers of the legislation are more optimistic this time around.

Calling the legislation "well overdue," Buckmaster, the fishermen's representative, said the sea lions are eating an estimated 20 percent of the total salmon that are available for commercial fishermen in any given year, costing the industry "a huge amount of money."

"It's very clear that we have a healthy population of California sea lions and they simply need to be managed," Buckmaster said. "That's what we've been calling for. ... Why can't we manage? It's because a few people — the Humane Society of the United States — say those sea lions are more important than our communities and endangered salmon."


In the past three years, said Norman, the Washington state fish administrator, 10 sea lions were moved to zoos in Chicago and Texas or to other alternative sites, but he said they're in low demand. The 30 that were killed were given a lethal injection by a qualified veterinarian, he said.

"It's a humane euthanization," Norman said.

Seaweed cultivation to take off soon in Orissa

SiFyFInance: Seaweed cultivation to take off soon in Orissa

Seaweed cultivation in the state is set to be taken up for the first time in coastal villages of Ganjam.

This is being done under the 'Green Micro Finance Project', implemented jointly by National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Nabard) and Orissa Rural Reconstruction Association (ORRA).

ORRA is a non-governmental organization (NGO) which was launched recently at Langaleswar under Khallikote block in Ganjam district, for taking up seaweed cultivation, particularly the red algae, on commercial basis.

"As the red algae is in much demand in agar-agar, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries in the country, we hope that the lower income groups (LIG) of the coastal villages, particularly the fishermen in the coastal villages, will get an opportunity to earn additional income,” said Smita Sucharita Nayak, executive director of ORRA.

The demand for seaweeds is increasing worldwide as its extracts are widely used in tooth-paste, ice-cream, textile printing, teeth filling, cosmetics, tissue culture, plywood, packaging and several other industries. Besides, bio-fuels are manufactured from sea weeds.

“Despite low investment, seaweed cultivation is very profitable. It also helps to combat global warming,” said Nayak.“We would start cultivation of seaweed on commercial basis by involving around 150 womenfolk of 16 SHGs in three villages. The harvest will be made after 45 days of the cultivation. We would also explore the possibilities of taking up this operation at Bhitarakania in Kendrapara district,” she added.

ORRA has entered into an agreement with the MS Swaminathan Foundation to buy all the dry red algae harvested by the womenfolk in the area.“It will provide an alternative livelihood for the fishermen families when the fish landing at the Chilika is dwindling,” said MLA (Khallikote) PC Sethi.

He launched the project in the presence of several other dignitaries including the Chief General Manager of Nabard, CR Patnaik and the State Information Commission, Jagadananda.

The cultivation of red algae was started on a pilot basis about two years back as a part of the research project of Berhampur University on 'Development and Demonstration of Appropriate Strategies for Marine Algae Cultivation and Processing for Livelihood Generation in Coastal Areas of Orissa'. Sailabala Padhy, former professor of Botany, Berhampur University, was the principal investigator of the project.

Wave goodbye! Britain's £3.2million artificial surf reef closed after only two years as it's unsafe

Daily Mail Online: Wave goodbye! Britain's £3.2million artificial surf reef closed after only two years as it's unsafe

Britain's artificial surf reef has sunk to new depths after it was declared unsafe and closed to the public.

The controversial £3.2million reef, the first of its kind in Europe, has been plagued by controversy since it opened off Bournemouth beach in Dorset, in 2009.
The underwater structure that was meant to have transformed the resort into a surfers' paradise has hardly been used because it produces the wrong sort of wave.

Now it has been declared a no-go zone after a routine inspection found 'substantial changes' to the reef's shape has started to produce dangerous under-currents.

It is thought the concern is that surfers could risk drowning by being sucked down into gaps that have appeared in the structure as a result of the changes.

The local council is now 'erring on the side of caution' and has closed the reef, which is 750ft out to sea off the Boscombe area of the resort.

It consists of 55 giant submerged sand-filled bags, which are believed to have been displaced and require repositioning.

A Bournemouth council spokesman said: 'A routine inspection carried out on March 23 shows that substantial changes have altered the profile of the reef structure

'Preliminary inspections suggested that this may alter current flows over the reef.' Tony Williams, the council's executive director, said: 'We are aware that significant changes have altered the structure of the reef.

'It is really a health and safety issue. Until we know further information we are erring on the side of caution and advising people not to use the reef.

'Given that surfing is an extreme sport and always includes an element of risk, health and safety surrounding the surf reef project has been paramount from the start.' Some surfers say the reef has become a laughing stock and have dubbed it the 'beached whale' especially after recent low-tides left it and high and dry out of the water.

Local surfer Chris Skone-Roberts, 41, claims he and colleague had snorkelled on the reef and found gaps of up to two feet wide between the sand-bags.

He said: 'Just from standing on the beach looking at it you can tell it's got a dangerous current around it.

'It is just a question of time before someone dies on it - that's not being melodramatic or sensational.

'We have gone out of snorkelled on it and found some holes about two feet wide and others big enough to fit your hand in.

'Surfers don't really use it but body boarders do the worry is that they will fall into one of the holes and get pinned down.' Workers from ASR Ltd, the New Zealand-based company that built the reef, will carry out the remedial works in the next few weeks.

They had already been summoned back to Bournemouth to conduct improvement work on the reef and tweak it so it will produce better waves for surfing.

Bournemouth Borough Council has withheld its final instalment of £150,000 to ASR after the reef failed to work.

Nick Behunin, managing director of ASR, said: 'We have only recently received the information from the preliminary inspection and we are currently evaluating it.' 'Now that the winter surf season is coming to an end work can begin.'

Biologists Discover New Nudibranch In Florida Fisherman's Catch

Underwater Times: Biologists Discover New Nudibranch In Florida Fisherman's Catch
TALLAHASSEE, Florida -- Biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), along with scientists from California State Polytechnic University, have identified a new marine species found in the Gulf of Mexico. A scientific publication released Thursday officially announced the discovery of Chromodoris fentoni, a type of shell-less snail known as a nudibranch.

FWC biologists first observed this nudibranch when commercial aquarium-trade fisherman Daniel Fenton of Brandon donated sponges and other specimens to the FWC's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) in St. Petersburg in 2009. Fenton collected the specimens from the Gulf of Mexico, off Tarpon Springs. While sorting through the donation, FWRI biologists Nancy Sheridan and Joan Herrera observed the unusual creature.

"We were not able to identify one of the nudibranchs and realized that it was possible we were seeing something entirely new," said Sheridan. "The discovery was especially rewarding because it resulted from a cooperative effort between industry and science."

Herrera and Sheridan sent samples to Dr. Angel Valdes of California State Polytechnic University, and he verified that this species had never been documented.

"The opportunity to work with Dr. Valdes, a world-class nudibranch expert, has been really exciting for us," said FWRI Curator of Collections, Dr. Joan Herrera. "At FWRI, we receive thousands of specimens each year, yet it is rare to find a species that is new to science."

The article about C. fentoni appeared in the 2011 volume of the "American Malacological Bulletin," published Thursday, March 31. The article also notes that FWRI biologists found another species of nudibranch called Glossodoris punctilucens. This species had not been documented since 1890, except once in a photograph.

A member of the phylum Mollusca, adult nudibranchs have external gills and no shell. They typically feed on sponges, corals, anemones and other sea life. Nudibranchs come in various shapes and sizes, ranging from 1/8-inch to 2 feet in length. C. fentoni is a colorful creature with bright red markings on an off-white background. Its oblong body reaches an approximate length of 1 inch.

For more information on nudibranchs, visit MyFWC.com/Research, and search "Nudibranchs of Florida."

Sea turtle deaths up along Gulf, joining dolphin trend

Today.MSNBC.com News: Sea turtle deaths up along Gulf, joining dolphin trend
Federal scientists trying to figure out why dolphin deaths along the Gulf of Mexico are up this year now have a second challenge: a sharp jump in sea turtle deaths in some Gulf areas.

"In the past couple of weeks, we've seen an increase" in turtle deaths in the northern Gulf, Connie Barclay, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told msnbc.com.

Since March 15, she noted, 39 deaths were confirmed in Mississippi, 4 in Alabama and 3 in Louisiana.

"The spring time is the typical time when turtle strandings in this region begin to increase," Barclay added, "but the sharp increases in recent days are of concern."

"Tests will be done for biotoxins, such as those from harmful algae blooms, which are common in the Gulf," she said, and NOAA is contacting states to see if fishermen are accidentally hooking sea turtles.

"All causes of death, including petroleum, will be investigated when possible, based on decomposition," she added, and "all turtles are being carefully examined for signs of external oiling."

Some 400 sea turtle deaths were reported in the five months after the BP oil spill last April, but the number dropped off sharply starting in October. All seven species of sea turtles are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The news comes as the mystery behind the dolphin deaths grew to include a sense of intrigue: NOAA is keeping a tight lid on its ongoing probe into the deaths, which are possibly connected to the BP spill, causing tension with some independent scientists.

In the case of dolphins, biologists hired by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of NOAA, to collect specimens and tissue samples were quietly told late last month to keep their findings confidential.

The order was in a Fisheries Service letter informing outside scientists that its review of the dolphin die-off, classified as an "unusual mortality event (UME)," had been folded into a federal criminal investigation of the oil spill.

"Because of the seriousness of the legal case, no data or findings may be released, presented or discussed outside the UME investigative team without prior approval," said the letter, obtained by Reuters.

The Fisheries Service "did not issue a gag order," Blair Mase, the agency's stranding coordinator for the Southeast, told msnbc.com in response to the disclosure. "We did ask partners" to refrain from releasing data so as "to ensure confidentiality."

Still, a number of partner scientists said they have been personally rebuked by federal officials for "speaking out of turn" to the media about efforts to determine the cause of some 136 dolphin deaths this year in the Gulf, and 115 others last year after the April spill.

Moreover, they said collected samples and specimens are being turned over to the government for analysis under a protocol that will leave independent scientists in the dark about the efficacy and outcome of any lab tests.

Some partner researchers in the agency's Marine Mammal Stranding Network complained such constraints undermine the transparency of a process normally open to review by the scientific community.

"It throws accountability right out the window," one biologist involved in tracking dolphin deaths for more than 20 years told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "We are confused and ... we are angry because they claim they want teamwork, but at the same time they are leaving the marine experts out of the loop completely."

Some question why the Fisheries Service has taken so long to get samples into laboratories.

"It is surprising that it has been almost a full year since the spill, and they still haven't selected labs for this kind of work," said Ruth Carmichael, who studies marine mammals at the independent Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama.

"I can only hope that this process is a good thing. I just don't know. This is an unfortunate situation."

Mase, a marine mammal scientist, said lab results would go directly back to the Fisheries Service, and hopefully in about two to three months.

"We have to be very methodical," Mase said. "The criminal investigation does play a role in the delay of findings, but it has to be done this way."

For Mase and others, this is the first time their work on marine mammals has become part of a potential crime scene.

"This is all new to pretty much all of us," she said, adding that "we're not sure how that's going to work" when asked if the results would be released to the public before any criminal action.

As of Monday night, scientists counted 136 bottlenose dolphin carcasses found since mid-January along the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, almost half of them newly born or stillborn infants.

And Mase noted that "we're still in the response phase" since carcasses are washing up daily, including at least two on Tuesday in Louisiana.

The tally so far this year, which compares to 31 deaths on average during the same time of year between 2002 and 2009, coincides with the first dolphin calving season in the northern Gulf since BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded last April.

The blast killed 11 workers and ruptured a wellhead on the sea floor, dumping an estimated 206 million gallons of oil into the Gulf over more than three months.

Last year, 115 dead dolphins, most of them adults, washed up along the Gulf Coast in the weeks and months following the blowout.

But Mase pointed out that even before the spill started in late April, a jump in dolphin deaths was seen in February and March of 2010.

The latest spike in deaths, and high concentration of premature infants among them, has led some experts to speculate that oil ingested or inhaled by dolphins during the spill has taken a belated toll on the animals, possibly leading to a wave of dolphin miscarriages.