Gulf fishermen find increasing number of sick fish

From 9WAFB: Gulf fishermen find increasing number of sick fish
BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - Commercial fishermen in the Gulf are worried that their livelihood could be coming to a screeching halt.

It's been more than a year since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and fishermen are still finding sick fish.

Gulf fishermen are seeing increased numbers of fish with sores, fin rot and infections. Professors at LSU have analyzed many of the diseased fish and think they may know the cause.

"We think from chronic exposure to some environmental stresser and I think the likely assumption that it has something to do with the spill is there," said Dr. Jim Cowan, a professor of oceanography at LSU.

Scientists are working on a comprehensive study of the fish. They'll catch and examine thousands of fish and try to pinpoint hot spots for the infections.

Meanwhile, fishermen continue to worry whether there will be enough healthy fish left to sell.

Fish, coral from off-limits Hawaii come to Waikiki

From Seattle PI: Fish, coral from off-limits Hawaii come to Waikiki

HONOLULU (AP) — Hundreds of rare fish and coral pieces from one of the most remote parts of the planet have arrived in bustling Waikiki.

The Waikiki Aquarium's newest permanent exhibit, opening on Thursday, showcases specimens gathered from the pristine atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — an area so well-protected it's generally off-limits to everyone but researchers and Native Hawaiians performing cultural rites.

It promises to be a special treat for scuba divers and fish enthusiasts only rarely able to see species like the white-and-black-colored masked angelfish or table corals — corals that spread out like tabletops around a central stem.

It should also appeal to those curious about the 1,200-mile long string of atolls so highly valued the United Nations named them a World Heritage Site last year and then-President George W. Bush designated them a marine national monument in 2006.

"Given the challenges in getting to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands for the vast, vast majority of people, this will be their only chance to see a taste of some of the wonders that exist up there," said Andrew Rossiter, the aquarium's director.

The islands are all so small they're inhospitable to human settlement. But this has also meant people have mostly left them alone and in their natural condition.

The limited signs of human presence include ancient Hawaiian heiau, or shrines, lining the top of a ridge running along the spine of Mokumanamana island.

The Navy once had a base at Midway Atoll — the site of the famous 1942 battle between the U.S. and Japan that turned the tide of World War II — but turned the island over to the Fish and Wildlife Service for a wildlife refuge in 1993.

Today, the atolls have thriving coral reefs accounting for nearly 70 percent of all coral under U.S. jurisdiction. Experts say the robust reefs are what the rest of Hawaii's reefs looked like before they were damaged by coral mining, runoff from land, overfishing, and other human activity over the years.

Sharks — which have been overfished in many other parts of the world — are richly abundant there. Life also comes in unusual forms: 25 percent of the 7,000 marine species in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are found nowhere else in the world.

"This is a really, really unique place — nothing else like it in the world. And it's exactly how a coral reef should look, and this is how it was once around here," Rossiter said during an interview in his Honolulu office.

Fish and coral from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands have been on display before, in limited circumstances. The Waikiki Aquarium has a small, existing exhibit, as does the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's discovery center in Hilo on the Big Island.

But the aquarium's new display sets a new standard. The tank occupies about 10 percent of the aquarium's exhibit space, and will boast some 30 different fish species and 20 coral varieties. Altogether, the exhibit will feature 225 fish and 200 coral fragments.

The masked angelfish will allow researchers to observe how the unusual sex-changing fish behave and interact. Around the main Hawaiian islands the fish lives in deep water that's impractical for extended human observation. But scientists watching the aquarium tank may watch the fish for hours or days at a time.

The species is notable in part because they're all female when they're a certain size. Then one member of the group gets a little more aggressive, dominates the others, and changes its sex to male. The newly male fish uses the remaining females as his harem.

Scientists will not only be able to observe this process, but perhaps begin to understand why some of the fish change sex and others not, Rossiter said. The exhibit will have five to start with, and the aquarium will add four more by mid-September for a total of nine.

Aulani Wilhelm, superintendent of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, said the aquarium is offering people a way to connect to a place that by necessity must be appreciated from afar.

"These are atolls, these are fragile places," Wilhelm said, noting even well-intentioned or well-regulated travel would inflict harm on the islands. "There's only so much visitation a place like that can handle before it's changed."

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If You Go...

Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Exhibit: Stars Aug. 18 at the Waikiki Aquarium, 2777 Kalakaua Ave., Honolulu; www.waquarium.org or 808-923-9741. Adults, $9; children ages 13-17 and people with disabilities, $4; children ages 5-12, $2. Special rates for military and Hawaii residents. Open daily, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. except Christmas Day and Honolulu Marathon Sunday.

Seaweed suspected in French death (From 2009)

"'We want to know if in future we should take precautions to safeguard workers who collect or transport seaweed."

Well...gee....a horse dies, a man dies...I would think it would be easy to come to that conclusion immediately!


This story is a couple of years old but it was so interesting that I thought I'd share it.

From BBC News: Seaweed suspected in French death
French investigators are examining whether a lorry driver has become the first victim of a toxic seaweed that is clogging parts of the Brittany coast.

The driver died in July after carrying three truckloads of sea lettuce away from the beaches where it has been decaying, releasing poisonous gas.

His death was originally recorded as a heart attack but prosecutors want to know if it was linked to the seaweed.

France's PM warned of the health risk while visiting the beaches last month.

Francois Fillon announced that the government would pay for cleaning up the beaches polluted by the sea lettuce, Ulva lactuca.

Locals had raised the alarm after a horse, being ridden over the sands, collapsed and died. Its rider fell unconscious and had to be dragged off the algae-coated beach.

By then, the lorry driver had already died.

The 48-year-old driver had been working without a mask or gloves and died at the wheel of his vehicle when it crashed into a wall, reports Tim Finan in Brittany for the BBC.

The man had been part of the annual operation to remove 2,000 tonnes of rotting sea lettuce from the beaches at Binic.

His family have so far refused to allow an autopsy to establish the exact cause of his death, but on Monday the local prosecutor ordered a preliminary investigation.

Farming blamed

Christian Urvoy, the mayor of Binic, said: "'We want to know if in future we should take precautions to safeguard workers who collect or transport seaweed."

A spokesman for the local authorities has strongly denied they were aware of the death when Mr Fillon visited St-Michel-en-Greve in August.

Researchers from France's National Institute for Environmental Technology and Hazards (Ineris) have visited the same beach and found hydrogen sulphide in such concentration that it could be "deadly in few minutes".

Sea lettuce is harmless in the sea, but as it decomposes on the beach it releases the deadly gas.

Environmentalists say decades of misuse of Brittany's agricultural land is to blame for the explosion of algae, due to the high levels of nitrates used in fertilisers and excreted by the region's high concentration of livestock.

They have called for tighter controls on farming.

Seaweed survey finds rare sponge off coast of Norfolk

From BBC News England: Seaweed survey finds rare sponge off coast of Norfolk
A survey of seaweed on the coast of England has found a purple sponge off the Norfolk coast which has never been discovered in Britain before.

The Wildlife Trusts survey looked at the coasts of Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland.

The survey also found seaweed species new to the east coast of England, including the red seaweed.

The unknown purple sponge was found during dives off East Runton.

An unidentified sea-slug which is new to Norfolk was also found.

'Important finds'

Surveying the North Sea at a number of locations over a period of 10 days earlier this month, experts found in total some 131 types of seaweed, including four non-native species.

While starlet sea anemones, which are listed as a conservation priority in the UK, were seen along the Suffolk and Norfolk coast.

The survey focused on seaweed but the team of surveyors, which included marine biologists, volunteer divers, a botanist and a wild food expert, used the opportunity to look at other species in the relatively unexplored waters.

The information gathered from the research, along with a wildlife trusts scheme to analyse nature on the shoreline, could be used in the future to help identify areas of special importance for marine life above and below the sea surface.

Joan Edwards, head of living seas for the wildlife trusts, said: "This survey has thrown up some important finds.

"Although the main objective was to survey seaweed, the team took advantage of being in a relatively unexplored environment to survey other species, resulting in the sponge discovery off Norfolk.

"The samples and results are still awaiting full analysis. We have no doubt that once this is done they'll form a crucial part of our knowledge base around what's living in the North Sea off the east coast of England."

Alaskan fisheries advisor guilty of $100,000 in illegal fishing

From the Los Angeles Times: Alaskan fisheries advisor guilty of $100,000 in illegal fishing

In Alaska, fishing stories don't get much bigger than this one: Arne Fuglvog, who was U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's top fisheries advisor and not long ago a top candidate to become head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, has pleaded guilty to illegal fishing -- $100,000 worth.

Fuglvog, a longtime commercial fisherman with years of service on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, will probably land in prison for 10 months and have to pay $150,000 in fines and restitution, if U.S. District Judge Russel Holland goes with the plea deal during sentencing set for Nov. 18.

He had been Murkowski's top fisheries advisor since 2006, and one of the nation's most powerful players on fishing policy.

According to the federal charges, Fuglvog in 2005 took 63,000 pounds of sablefish --nearly twice what he was allowed to catch from the Western Yakutat area of the Gulf of Alaska -- and then falsified the records to suggest that half the fish had been caught in the central gulf.

Though Fuglvog and his crew might have caught the same amount of fish legally on a different day, cooking the books is a big deal in Alaska, which exports $1.6 billion of seafood a year and where access to fishing grounds is a matter of intense competition and debate.

The question on everyone's mind now is, what did Murkowski know, and when did she know it?

Though Fuglvog quietly signed a plea agreement with federal prosecutors April 8, Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News her advisor didn't tell her about it until June 29; she didn't learn Fuglvog had already signed it, she said, until the plea deal was revealed publicly at the end of July -- when she accepted his resignation.

"Arne served Alaskans for the past five years on my staff and for over a decade before that in his public service work in fisheries," Murkowski said in a statement. "I thank him for his years of service, but he knows the importance and value of our fisheries, and he also knows what all fishermen understand: Fishing laws and regulations must be followed."

The Daily News, for its part, is skeptical. "Why didn't she know more?" the paper asked in an editorial.

"A United States senator has a fisheries aide about whom there are federal allegations of fisheries violations. At the least, Murkowski should have had Fuglvog tell her exactly what the allegations were and ask him flat out what he had done," it said. "You'd think a senator would make it crystal clear to every staff member that she would have to know about any criminal investigation of any of them."

An industry newsletter, Seafoodnews.com, points out that the critics of Fuglvog who apparently reported the purported violations initially to congressional critics of the National Marine Fisheries Service, rather than the authorities themselves, are undermining the controversial system of fishing quotas that have helped stabilize the industry.

"The larger question, and why Fuglvog matters, is that the case is being used to weaken the entire structure of U.S. fishing regulation. The fact that the detractors went immediately to the East Coast, rather than federal authorities, says volumes about what they thought was at stake," the newsletter said in an editorial.

"Fuglvog's guilty plea has given these critics a win: a live example that what they have alleged all along about the corruption ... the way in which people who benefit from the management system are in themselves cheaters, has one proven example where they are correct."

Fuglvog pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the Lacey Act, which combats trafficking in illegally taken wildlife, fish and plants.

Dreaded carp: Can they be stopped?

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune: Dreaded carp: Can they be stopped?
DNA from the invasive silver carp has been found at 22 sites in the St. Croix River, a development that has deepened despair about the imminent arrival of the notorious leaping fish and doubts that state and federal officials can do anything to stop it.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced Thursday that 22 of 50 water samples taken between St. Croix Falls and Franconia tested positive for silver carp DNA. The samples did not test positive for the other three species of Asian carp that are believed to moving upriver from Illinois, and another 50 samples from the Mississippi River were negative.

The results are not conclusive evidence that the fish are living and breeding in the St. Croix -- none has been found in the river -- or that they are absent from the Mississippi, DNR officials said. The DNA could have come from dead carp, live carp someone dumped in the river or fish pellets used in hatcheries.

Still, it ratchets up the fear considerably, they said.

"This is disappointing news," said DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr.

The four species of Asian carp have caused enormous ecological damage in the Illinois and Missouri Rivers, where they are well established. The carp eat 40 percent of their body weight every day in plankton and bugs, squeezing out every other creature up the food chain, from sunnies to fish-eating birds.

"They become the most dominant organism in the system," said Byron Karns, a biologist with the National Park Service. "They topple the food chain."

Much national attention has focused on stopping the carp from moving into the Great Lakes through a shipping channel in Chicago, and five states -- Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- have filed a federal lawsuit demanding the closure of the shipping channel.

The threat to Minnesota and Wisconsin waters has not attracted similar concern from federal agencies or Congress. That's partly because the Mississippi is a long river running through multiple states, managed by many federal agencies but with no one in charge, said Paul Labovitz, superintendent of the National Park Service's Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.

"It's like the invader of the body snatchers are at the door and we have no generals to fight back," said Mark Peterson, executive director of Audubon Minnesota.

Taken alone, the new DNA results are not likely to change that, officials said.

"We need a fish," Landwehr said Thursday.

So far, no silver carp have been caught in the St. Croix. Two bighead carp -- a cousin of the silver carp -- have been caught in the river, one in 1996 and another on April 18 of this year.

This month the DNR will contract with commercial fishermen to look for the carp up and down the St. Croix. As early as next week, DNR staff will be on the river with nets and boats outfitted with electric shocking capabilities to search for fish.

An Asian Carp Task Force brought together in January by National Park Service officials will also conduct more DNA testing in both rivers.

Meanwhile, the DNR will issue notices to anglers and boaters to keep an eye out for the silver carp, which can be hard to miss. The fish is known for its astonishing ability to leap 10 feet out of the water and even knock people out of their boats.

The far more difficult question is what to do if -- or when -- they find live carp. There is no surefire way to stop the fish.

In the short term, Landwehr said, the state will seek emergency authority to close the lock and dam at the Ford Bridge in Minneapolis.

Long-term, state and federal officials also said they will pursue a tool used elsewhere, an acoustic bubble barrier. The fish don't like the bubbles, and the acoustics can be changed to deter carp but not desirable fish.

But bubblers are not guaranteed to work, either. And just the material to construct one would cost $7 million, officials said. The only likely place on the Mississippi narrow enough for such a barrier would be at mouth of the St. Croix at Prescott, they said.

Another option is reconstruction of the Coon Rapids dam. The Legislature appropriated $16 million to carp-proof it this year. That could preserve the state's $4 billion recreational fishing industry north of the Twin Cities but would mean sacrificing the lower length of the Mississippi, including Lake Pepin, and the Minnesota River to carp invaders. And it could be only temporary. Some who have studied it say it would work for only 10 or 15 years and might not be adequate at times of high water.

The most effective solution is also the most politically difficult -- permanently closing the locks at the Ford Bridge or the St. Anthony Falls in downtown Minneapolis.

But that would require an act of Congress, and by the time that happens it might be too late.

"I don't think we need to wait to find the fish," said Peterson of the Audubon Society. "The fish are going to find us. It's just a matter of time."

Computer Simulation Says Arctic Ice Melt Could Pause For Several Years, Then Resume Again

From the Underwater Times: Computer Simulation Says Arctic Ice Melt Could Pause For Several Years, Then Resume Again

BOULDER, Colorado -- Although Arctic sea ice appears fated to melt as the climate continues to warm, the ice may temporarily stabilize or somewhat expand at times over the next few decades, new research indicates.

The computer modeling study, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, reinforces previous findings by other research teams that the level of Arctic sea ice loss observed in recent decades cannot be explained by natural causes alone, and that the ice will eventually disappear during summer if climate change continues.

But in an unexpected new result, the NCAR research team found that Arctic ice under current climate conditions is as likely to expand as it is to contract for periods of up to about a decade.

"One of the results that surprised us all was the number of computer simulations that indicated a temporary halt to the loss of the ice," says NCAR scientist Jennifer Kay, the lead author. "The computer simulations suggest that we could see a 10-year period of stable ice or even an increase in the extent of the ice. Even though the observed ice loss has accelerated over the last decade, the fate of sea ice over the next decade depends not only on human activity but also on climate variability that cannot be predicted."

Kay explains that variations in atmospheric conditions such as wind patterns could, for example, temporarily halt the sea ice loss. Still, the ultimate fate of the ice in a warming world is clear.

"When you start looking at longer-term trends, 50 or 60 years, there's no escaping the loss of ice in the summer," Kay says.

Kay and her colleagues also ran computer simulations to answer a fundamental question: why did Arctic sea ice melt far more rapidly in the late 20th century than projected by computer models? By analyzing multiple realizations of the 20th century from a single climate model, they attribute approximately half the observed decline to human emissions of greenhouse gases, and the other half to climate variability.

These findings point to climate change and variability working together equally to accelerate the observed sea ice loss during the late 20th century.

The study appears this week in Geophysical Research Letters. It was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor.

Rapid melt

Since accurate satellite measurements became available in 1979, the extent of summertime Arctic sea ice has shrunk by about one third. The ice returns each winter, but the extent shrank to a record low in September 2007 and is again extremely low this year, already setting a monthly record low for July. Whereas scientists warned just a few years ago that the Arctic could lose its summertime ice cover by the end of the century, some research has indicated that Arctic summers could be largely ice-free within the next several decades.

To simulate what is happening with the ice, the NCAR team used a newly updated version of one of the world's most powerful computer climate models. The software, known as the Community Climate System Model, was developed at NCAR in collaboration with scientists at multiple organizations and with funding by NSF and the Department of Energy.

The research team first evaluated whether the model was a credible tool for the study. By comparing the computer results with Arctic observations, they verified that, though the model has certain biases, it can capture observed late 20th century sea ice trends and the observed thickness and seasonal variations in the extent of the ice.

Kay and her colleagues then conducted a series of future simulations that looked at how Arctic sea ice was affected both by natural conditions and by the increased level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The computer studies indicated that the year-to-year and decade-to-decade trends in the extent of sea ice are likely to fluctuate increasingly as temperatures warm and the ice thins.

"Over periods up to a decade, both positive and negative trends become more pronounced in a warming world," says NCAR scientist Marika Holland, a co-author of the study.

The simulations also indicated that Arctic sea ice is equally likely to expand or contract over short time periods under the climate conditions of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Although the Community Climate System Model simulations provide new insights, the paper cautions that more modeling studies and longer-term observations are needed to better understand the impacts of climate change and weather variability on Arctic ice.

The authors note that it is also difficult to disentangle the variability of weather systems and sea ice patterns from the ongoing impacts of human emissions of greenhouse gases.

"The changing Arctic climate is complicating matters," Kay says. "We can't measure natural variability now because, when temperatures warm and the ice thins, the ice variability changes and is not entirely natural."

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.