Kent News: Fishermen facing ruin after filling EU quotas
KENT NEWS: Financial ruin faces commercial fishermen who say their annual quota of skate and Dover sole has already run out.
The European Union imposes strict limits on how much fish can be caught by member states every year, but small businesses are accusing the UK Government of not distributing its allocation fairly.
Whitstable fisherman Phil Edwards told KOS Media that although 95 per cent of the country’s fleet was made up of under 10-metre boats, they only have access to about four per cent of the quota.
“The rest goes to large producer organisations,” he said. “So the big boys get the bulk of the quota while we’re all left out in the cold.
Most small boats in Kent rely on Dover sole and skate, but our allocation of skate ran out in June and Dover sole ran out about two weeks ago.
“The bulk of Kent’s fleet is now tied up with nothing to catch, so it’s a pretty dire situation all round. If this goes on much longer people will be going out of business.”
In previous years central government has successfully topped up the UK’s allocation of skate and Dover sole through quota swaps with other EU members that do not rely so heavily on those species.
However, no such swaps have taken place this year.
Mr Edwards said although small boats could still go out fishing for bass, it was hit and miss whether they would land enough to make the trips worthwhile.
“What we would like to see is the scrapping of quotas for boats our size,” he added.
“The effort limitation system would suit us better because it would allow us to go out for a certain number of hours a week and keep everything we catch.
“If I did go out bass fishing then I would also catch skate for sure, but at the moment I have to throw it back or I’ll be fined.
“With effort limitation there’s no waste but everyone earns a little bit more money because they can keep everything they catch and don’t have to throw anything back dead.”
This week, Mr Edwards and fellow Whitstable fisherman John Nicholls met with fisheries minister Richard Benyon to discuss their concerns.
Mr Edwards said after the meeting – which was organised by Canterbury MP Julian Brazier – he was “reasonably optimistic” of securing a new allocation for Dover sole, albeit not enough to make a living.
He added: “In the medium to long term he wants to completely change the way inshore fisheries are managed, but realistically that’s not going to happen for at least another two years.”
Last week Kent’s oyster industry took a hit when a shellfish farm in Whitstable tested positive for the deadly herpes virus.
Containment areas restricting movement of the delicacy have now been declared in the Swale, Thames and north Kent coast.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Despite Rule, BP Used Dispersant, Panel Finds
NY Times: Despite Rule, BP Used Dispersant, Panel Finds
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: July 31, 2010
The Coast Guard approved dozens of requests by BP to spread hundreds of thousands of gallons of surface oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s directive on May 26 that they should be used only rarely, according to documents and correspondence analyzed by a Congressional subcommittee.
Go to Blog In some cases, the Coast Guard approved BP’s requests even though the company did not set an upper limit on the amount of dispersant it planned to use.
The dispersants contributed to “a toxic stew of chemicals, oil and gas, with impacts that are not well understood,” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, wrote in a letter sent late Friday to Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is leading the federal response to the oil spill.
In a conference call on Saturday morning, Admiral Allen and Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, said they had worked together closely and had come very near to achieving the agency’s goal of reducing dispersant amounts by 75 percent.
On May 26, the E.P.A. directed BP to stop using dispersants on the ocean surface, except in “rare cases when there may have to be an exemption,” and to limit use of the chemicals underwater.
But Mr. Markey’s letter pointed to more than 74 exemption requests in 48 days, of which all but 10 were fully approved by the Coast Guard. In some cases, BP asked for permission after it had already applied the chemicals, the letter said. And in one case, the Coast Guard approved the use of a larger volume of dispersants than the company had applied for.
As an example of the conflicting numbers, Mr. Markey said that in a request filed on June 16, BP told the Coast Guard that in the previous several days it had used a maximum of 3,365 gallons of dispersant in a single day. But in e-mails to members of Congress giving updates on the spill response, the company said it had used 14,305 gallons of dispersant on June 12 and 36,000 gallons on June 13.
Admiral Allen and Ms. Jackson said they had reduced dispersant use by 72 percent. “In any government program I’ve worked in, that’s pretty significant progress,” Admiral Allen said.
Admiral Allen said his agency would try to reconcile the conflicting numbers that were issued during what he called “the equivalent of an environmental war.”
The two officials said the government would conduct a postmortem evaluation of the effectiveness of skimming, burning and spreading dispersants to determine what had worked best.
But Ms. Jackson said, “There’s absolutely no doubt that use of dispersants was one of several essential tools to mitigate this spill’s impact.”
A spokesman for BP, Scott Dean, also said he could not respond in detail because the company had not seen Mr. Markey’s letter. But he said, “From the outset we’ve operated in a unified command that has included E.P.A. and the Coast Guard.”
Mr. Dean said BP had worked “hand in glove” with the two agencies on dispersant decisions. Under the “joint command” structure set up in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the federal government and the oil company mount a response to a spill.
While it was known that BP continued the use of surface dispersant after the May 26 directive, it was not clear how much was being used. According to the documents analyzed by the committee, the company did cut back substantially on the use of underwater dispersants after the directive was issued.
The E.P.A. and the Coast Guard have both described the use of the dispersants as a trade-off. The chemicals break down blobs of oil into smaller droplets that are easier for naturally occurring bacteria to digest. But they can also have harmful effects on marine animals. And if the dispersants are too successful and allow a proliferation of bacteria, the bacteria can use up all the oxygen in the water and kill the fish and other organisms.
In testimony before Congress on July 15, Ms. Jackson said her agency had been looking for signs of unusually low oxygen levels and had not found them.
In his letter, Mr. Markey said the May 26 directive had “become more of a meaningless paperwork exercise than an attempt to abide by the directive and eliminate surface applications of chemical dispersants.”
In fact, other government correspondence disclosed by Mr. Markey indicates a dispute within the E.P.A. about the proper use of dispersants. At one point, the Dallas regional office of the agency agreed that the incident command center, run by the Coast Guard and BP, should get blanket approval to use 5,000 gallons of dispersant a day, to “improve operational efficiency.”
But the next day, the Dallas office rescinded that policy, saying that the center should make a request each evening about the amount it wanted to use the next day and that the agency would make a decision overnight.
Mr. Markey said that while the agency said on May 26 that applications for surface dispersant use should be rare, the Coast Guard, in approving the applications, cited routine factors like there being too much oil to skim.
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: July 31, 2010
The Coast Guard approved dozens of requests by BP to spread hundreds of thousands of gallons of surface oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s directive on May 26 that they should be used only rarely, according to documents and correspondence analyzed by a Congressional subcommittee.
Go to Blog In some cases, the Coast Guard approved BP’s requests even though the company did not set an upper limit on the amount of dispersant it planned to use.
The dispersants contributed to “a toxic stew of chemicals, oil and gas, with impacts that are not well understood,” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, wrote in a letter sent late Friday to Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is leading the federal response to the oil spill.
In a conference call on Saturday morning, Admiral Allen and Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, said they had worked together closely and had come very near to achieving the agency’s goal of reducing dispersant amounts by 75 percent.
On May 26, the E.P.A. directed BP to stop using dispersants on the ocean surface, except in “rare cases when there may have to be an exemption,” and to limit use of the chemicals underwater.
But Mr. Markey’s letter pointed to more than 74 exemption requests in 48 days, of which all but 10 were fully approved by the Coast Guard. In some cases, BP asked for permission after it had already applied the chemicals, the letter said. And in one case, the Coast Guard approved the use of a larger volume of dispersants than the company had applied for.
As an example of the conflicting numbers, Mr. Markey said that in a request filed on June 16, BP told the Coast Guard that in the previous several days it had used a maximum of 3,365 gallons of dispersant in a single day. But in e-mails to members of Congress giving updates on the spill response, the company said it had used 14,305 gallons of dispersant on June 12 and 36,000 gallons on June 13.
Admiral Allen and Ms. Jackson said they had reduced dispersant use by 72 percent. “In any government program I’ve worked in, that’s pretty significant progress,” Admiral Allen said.
Admiral Allen said his agency would try to reconcile the conflicting numbers that were issued during what he called “the equivalent of an environmental war.”
The two officials said the government would conduct a postmortem evaluation of the effectiveness of skimming, burning and spreading dispersants to determine what had worked best.
But Ms. Jackson said, “There’s absolutely no doubt that use of dispersants was one of several essential tools to mitigate this spill’s impact.”
A spokesman for BP, Scott Dean, also said he could not respond in detail because the company had not seen Mr. Markey’s letter. But he said, “From the outset we’ve operated in a unified command that has included E.P.A. and the Coast Guard.”
Mr. Dean said BP had worked “hand in glove” with the two agencies on dispersant decisions. Under the “joint command” structure set up in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the federal government and the oil company mount a response to a spill.
While it was known that BP continued the use of surface dispersant after the May 26 directive, it was not clear how much was being used. According to the documents analyzed by the committee, the company did cut back substantially on the use of underwater dispersants after the directive was issued.
The E.P.A. and the Coast Guard have both described the use of the dispersants as a trade-off. The chemicals break down blobs of oil into smaller droplets that are easier for naturally occurring bacteria to digest. But they can also have harmful effects on marine animals. And if the dispersants are too successful and allow a proliferation of bacteria, the bacteria can use up all the oxygen in the water and kill the fish and other organisms.
In testimony before Congress on July 15, Ms. Jackson said her agency had been looking for signs of unusually low oxygen levels and had not found them.
In his letter, Mr. Markey said the May 26 directive had “become more of a meaningless paperwork exercise than an attempt to abide by the directive and eliminate surface applications of chemical dispersants.”
In fact, other government correspondence disclosed by Mr. Markey indicates a dispute within the E.P.A. about the proper use of dispersants. At one point, the Dallas regional office of the agency agreed that the incident command center, run by the Coast Guard and BP, should get blanket approval to use 5,000 gallons of dispersant a day, to “improve operational efficiency.”
But the next day, the Dallas office rescinded that policy, saying that the center should make a request each evening about the amount it wanted to use the next day and that the agency would make a decision overnight.
Mr. Markey said that while the agency said on May 26 that applications for surface dispersant use should be rare, the Coast Guard, in approving the applications, cited routine factors like there being too much oil to skim.
Friday, July 30, 2010
The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated?
Time: The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated?
President Obama has called the BP oil spill "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," and so has just about everyone else. Green groups are sounding alarms about the "catastrophe along the Gulf Coast," while CBS, Fox and MSNBC are all slapping "Disaster in the Gulf" chyrons on their spill-related news. Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted that the spill was an "environmental catastrophe." The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill — he calls it "the leak" — is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.
Well, Limbaugh has a point. The Deepwater Horizon explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it's no leak; it's the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It's also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it's important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. "The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared," says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana.
(See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)
Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the number killed by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska 21 years ago. Yes, we've heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but so far, wildlife-response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but so far, assessment teams have found only about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.
The disappearance of more than 2,000 sq. mi. of coastal Louisiana over the past century has been a true national tragedy, ravaging a unique wilderness, threatening the bayou way of life and leaving communities like New Orleans extremely vulnerable to hurricanes from the Gulf. And while much of the erosion has been caused by the re-engineering of the Mississippi River — which no longer deposits much sediment at the bottom of its Delta — quite a bit has been caused by the oil and gas industry, which gouged 8,000 miles of canals and pipelines through coastal wetlands. But the spill isn't making that problem much worse. Coastal scientist Paul Kemp, a former Louisiana State University professor who is now a National Audubon Society vice president, compares the impact of the spill on the vanishing marshes to "a sunburn on a cancer patient."
Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, another former LSU prof, who's working for a spill-response contractor, says, "There's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts." Van Heerden, like just about everyone else working in the Gulf these days, is being paid from BP's spill-response funds. "There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."
The scientists I spoke with cite four basic reasons the initial eco-fears seem overblown. First, the Deepwater oil, unlike the black glop from the Valdez, is unusually light and degradable, which is why the slick in the Gulf is dissolving surprisingly rapidly now that the gusher has been capped. Second, the Gulf of Mexico, unlike Alaska's Prince William Sound, is very warm, which has helped bacteria break down the oil. Third, heavy flows of Mississippi River water have helped keep the oil away from the coast, where it can do much more damage. And finally, Mother Nature can be incredibly resilient. Van Heerden's assessment team showed me around Casse-tete Island in Timbalier Bay, where new shoots of Spartina grasses were sprouting in oiled marshes and new leaves were growing on the first black mangroves I've ever seen that were actually black. "It comes back fast, doesn't it?" van Heerden said.
Van Heerden is controversial in Louisiana, so I should mention that this isn't the first time he and Kemp have helped convince me that the conventional wisdom about a big story was wrong. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, when the Army Corps of Engineers was still insisting that a gigantic surge had overwhelmed its levees, they gave me a tour that debunked the prevailing narrative, demonstrating that most of the breached flood walls in New Orleans showed no signs of overtopping.
Eventually, the Corps admitted that van Heerden and Kemp were right, that the surge in New Orleans was not so gigantic and that engineering failures had indeed drowned the city. But there was still a lot of resentment down here of van Heerden and his big mouth, especially after he wrote an I-told-you-so book about Katrina. He made powerful enemies at LSU, lost his faculty job, and is now suing the university. Meanwhile, he's been trashed locally as a BP shill ever since he downplayed the spill in a video on BP's website.
But van Heerden and Kemp were right about Katrina, and when it comes to BP, they're sticking to the evidence gathered by the spill-response teams — which all include a state and federal representative as well as a BP contractor. So far, the teams have collected nearly 3,000 dead birds, but fewer than half of them were visibly oiled; some may have died from eating oil-contaminated food, but others may have simply died naturally at a time when the Gulf happened to be crawling with carcass seekers. In any case, the Valdez may have killed as many as 435,000 birds. The teams have found 492 dead sea turtles, which is unfortunate, but only 17 were visibly oiled; otherwise, they have found only one other dead reptile in the entire Gulf. "We can't speak to the long-term impacts, but Ivor is just saying what all of us are seeing," says Amy Holman, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) director for Alaska who is working on van Heerden's assessment team in the Gulf.
The shoreline teams have documented more than 600 miles of oiled beaches and marshes, but the beaches are fairly easy to clean, and the beleaguered marshes don't seem to be suffering much additional damage. Oil has blackened the fringes of the marshes, but most of it stayed within a few feet of the edge; waves from a recent tropical storm did carry more oil a few meters inland, but very little of it infiltrated the wetland soils that determine the health of the marsh.
LSU coastal scientist Eugene Turner has dedicated much of his career to documenting how the oil industry has ravaged Louisiana's coast with canals and pipelines, but he says the BP spill will be a comparative blip and predicts that the oil will destroy fewer marshes than the airboats deployed to clean up the oil. "We don't want to deny that there's some damage, but nothing like the damage we've seen for years," he says.
It's true that oil spills can create long-term problems; in Alaska, for example, shorebirds that ate Exxon-tainted mussels have had diminished reproductive success, and herring fisheries have yet to fully recover. The potential long-term damage that underwater oil plumes and an unprecedented amount of chemical dispersants that BP has spread in the area could have on the region's deep-water ecosystems and food chains might not be known for years. Some scientists worry that the swarms of oil-eating bacteria will lower dissolved oxygen levels; there has been early evidence of modest reductions, though nothing approaching the dead zone that was already proliferating in the Gulf because of agricultural runoff in the Mississippi River basin. "People always fear the worst in a spill, and this one was especially scary because we didn't know when it would stop," says Michel, an environmental consultant who has worked spills for NOAA for more than 30 years. "But the public always overestimates the danger — and this time, those of us in the spill business did too."
It's easy to overstate the policy implications of this optimistic news. BP still needs to clean up its mess; federal regulation of deep-water drilling still needs to be strengthened; we still need to use fewer fossil fuels that warm the planet; we still don't need to use more corn ethanol (which is actually dirtier than gasoline). The push to exploit the spill to gain a comprehensive energy and climate bill in Congress has already stalled anyway — even though the planet still needs one.
The good news does suggest the folly of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's $350 million plan to build sand berms and rock jetties to protect marshes and barrier islands from oil. Some of the berms are already washing into the Gulf, and scientists agree that oil is the least of the problems facing Louisiana's coast, which had already lost more than 2,000 sq. mi. of wetlands before the spill. "Imagine how much real restoration we could do with all that money," van Heerden says.
Anti-oil politicians, anti-Obama politicians and underfunded green groups all have obvious incentives to accentuate the negative in the Gulf. So do the media, because disasters drive ratings and sell magazines; those oil-soaked pelicans you saw on TV (and the cover of TIME) were a lot more compelling than the healthy ones I saw roosting on a protective boom in Bay Jimmy. Even Limbaugh, when he wasn't downplaying the spill, outrageously hyped it as "Obama's Katrina." But honest scientists don't do that, even when they work for Audubon.
"There are a lot of alarmists in the bird world," Kemp says. "People see oiled pelicans and they go crazy. But this has been a disaster for people, not biota."
President Obama has called the BP oil spill "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," and so has just about everyone else. Green groups are sounding alarms about the "catastrophe along the Gulf Coast," while CBS, Fox and MSNBC are all slapping "Disaster in the Gulf" chyrons on their spill-related news. Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted that the spill was an "environmental catastrophe." The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill — he calls it "the leak" — is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.
Well, Limbaugh has a point. The Deepwater Horizon explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it's no leak; it's the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It's also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it's important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. "The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared," says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana.
(See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)
Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the number killed by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska 21 years ago. Yes, we've heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but so far, wildlife-response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but so far, assessment teams have found only about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.
The disappearance of more than 2,000 sq. mi. of coastal Louisiana over the past century has been a true national tragedy, ravaging a unique wilderness, threatening the bayou way of life and leaving communities like New Orleans extremely vulnerable to hurricanes from the Gulf. And while much of the erosion has been caused by the re-engineering of the Mississippi River — which no longer deposits much sediment at the bottom of its Delta — quite a bit has been caused by the oil and gas industry, which gouged 8,000 miles of canals and pipelines through coastal wetlands. But the spill isn't making that problem much worse. Coastal scientist Paul Kemp, a former Louisiana State University professor who is now a National Audubon Society vice president, compares the impact of the spill on the vanishing marshes to "a sunburn on a cancer patient."
Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, another former LSU prof, who's working for a spill-response contractor, says, "There's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts." Van Heerden, like just about everyone else working in the Gulf these days, is being paid from BP's spill-response funds. "There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."
The scientists I spoke with cite four basic reasons the initial eco-fears seem overblown. First, the Deepwater oil, unlike the black glop from the Valdez, is unusually light and degradable, which is why the slick in the Gulf is dissolving surprisingly rapidly now that the gusher has been capped. Second, the Gulf of Mexico, unlike Alaska's Prince William Sound, is very warm, which has helped bacteria break down the oil. Third, heavy flows of Mississippi River water have helped keep the oil away from the coast, where it can do much more damage. And finally, Mother Nature can be incredibly resilient. Van Heerden's assessment team showed me around Casse-tete Island in Timbalier Bay, where new shoots of Spartina grasses were sprouting in oiled marshes and new leaves were growing on the first black mangroves I've ever seen that were actually black. "It comes back fast, doesn't it?" van Heerden said.
Van Heerden is controversial in Louisiana, so I should mention that this isn't the first time he and Kemp have helped convince me that the conventional wisdom about a big story was wrong. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, when the Army Corps of Engineers was still insisting that a gigantic surge had overwhelmed its levees, they gave me a tour that debunked the prevailing narrative, demonstrating that most of the breached flood walls in New Orleans showed no signs of overtopping.
Eventually, the Corps admitted that van Heerden and Kemp were right, that the surge in New Orleans was not so gigantic and that engineering failures had indeed drowned the city. But there was still a lot of resentment down here of van Heerden and his big mouth, especially after he wrote an I-told-you-so book about Katrina. He made powerful enemies at LSU, lost his faculty job, and is now suing the university. Meanwhile, he's been trashed locally as a BP shill ever since he downplayed the spill in a video on BP's website.
But van Heerden and Kemp were right about Katrina, and when it comes to BP, they're sticking to the evidence gathered by the spill-response teams — which all include a state and federal representative as well as a BP contractor. So far, the teams have collected nearly 3,000 dead birds, but fewer than half of them were visibly oiled; some may have died from eating oil-contaminated food, but others may have simply died naturally at a time when the Gulf happened to be crawling with carcass seekers. In any case, the Valdez may have killed as many as 435,000 birds. The teams have found 492 dead sea turtles, which is unfortunate, but only 17 were visibly oiled; otherwise, they have found only one other dead reptile in the entire Gulf. "We can't speak to the long-term impacts, but Ivor is just saying what all of us are seeing," says Amy Holman, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) director for Alaska who is working on van Heerden's assessment team in the Gulf.
The shoreline teams have documented more than 600 miles of oiled beaches and marshes, but the beaches are fairly easy to clean, and the beleaguered marshes don't seem to be suffering much additional damage. Oil has blackened the fringes of the marshes, but most of it stayed within a few feet of the edge; waves from a recent tropical storm did carry more oil a few meters inland, but very little of it infiltrated the wetland soils that determine the health of the marsh.
LSU coastal scientist Eugene Turner has dedicated much of his career to documenting how the oil industry has ravaged Louisiana's coast with canals and pipelines, but he says the BP spill will be a comparative blip and predicts that the oil will destroy fewer marshes than the airboats deployed to clean up the oil. "We don't want to deny that there's some damage, but nothing like the damage we've seen for years," he says.
It's true that oil spills can create long-term problems; in Alaska, for example, shorebirds that ate Exxon-tainted mussels have had diminished reproductive success, and herring fisheries have yet to fully recover. The potential long-term damage that underwater oil plumes and an unprecedented amount of chemical dispersants that BP has spread in the area could have on the region's deep-water ecosystems and food chains might not be known for years. Some scientists worry that the swarms of oil-eating bacteria will lower dissolved oxygen levels; there has been early evidence of modest reductions, though nothing approaching the dead zone that was already proliferating in the Gulf because of agricultural runoff in the Mississippi River basin. "People always fear the worst in a spill, and this one was especially scary because we didn't know when it would stop," says Michel, an environmental consultant who has worked spills for NOAA for more than 30 years. "But the public always overestimates the danger — and this time, those of us in the spill business did too."
It's easy to overstate the policy implications of this optimistic news. BP still needs to clean up its mess; federal regulation of deep-water drilling still needs to be strengthened; we still need to use fewer fossil fuels that warm the planet; we still don't need to use more corn ethanol (which is actually dirtier than gasoline). The push to exploit the spill to gain a comprehensive energy and climate bill in Congress has already stalled anyway — even though the planet still needs one.
The good news does suggest the folly of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's $350 million plan to build sand berms and rock jetties to protect marshes and barrier islands from oil. Some of the berms are already washing into the Gulf, and scientists agree that oil is the least of the problems facing Louisiana's coast, which had already lost more than 2,000 sq. mi. of wetlands before the spill. "Imagine how much real restoration we could do with all that money," van Heerden says.
Anti-oil politicians, anti-Obama politicians and underfunded green groups all have obvious incentives to accentuate the negative in the Gulf. So do the media, because disasters drive ratings and sell magazines; those oil-soaked pelicans you saw on TV (and the cover of TIME) were a lot more compelling than the healthy ones I saw roosting on a protective boom in Bay Jimmy. Even Limbaugh, when he wasn't downplaying the spill, outrageously hyped it as "Obama's Katrina." But honest scientists don't do that, even when they work for Audubon.
"There are a lot of alarmists in the bird world," Kemp says. "People see oiled pelicans and they go crazy. But this has been a disaster for people, not biota."
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Warming of Oceans Will Reduce and Rearrange Marine Life
Warming of Oceans Will Reduce and Rearrange Marine Life
The warmth of the ocean is the critical factor that determines how much productivity and biodiversity there is in the ocean, and where.
In two separate studies, researchers found that warming oceans have led to a massive decline in the amount of plant life in the sea over the last century, and that temperature is tightly linked to global patterns of marine biodiversity.
“We are just now understanding how deeply temperature affects ocean life,” said biologist Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, a co-author on both papers appearing July 28 in Nature. “It is not necessarily that increased temperature is destroying biodiversity, but we do know that a warmer ocean will look very different.”
In one study that looks at historical records of algae abundance over the last hundred years, Worm and his co-authors found that warming ocean temperatures are correlated to a massive decline in the amount of marine algae, or phytoplankton. Marine algae are the base of the entire ocean food chain, and were also responsible for originally creating oxygen on the planet.
The study estimates the decline in marine algae has been approximately 40 percent since 1950.
“I think that if this study holds up, it will be one of the biggest biological changes in recent times simply because of its scale,” said Worm. “The ocean is two-thirds of the earth’s surface area, and because of the depth dimension it is probably 80 to 90 percent of the biosphere. Even the deep sea depends on phytoplankton production that rains down. On land, by contrast, there is only a very thin layer of production.”
The study on marine phytoplankton is the first to look at changes over the last century at a global scale with data from as far back as 1899. Similar models have been made using satellite data, but that data only extends back to 1979.
“One of the most important aspects of the new paper is that they’ve come up with the same answer but from a different approach than we saw from space,” said marine botanist Michael Behrenfeld of Oregon State University. “I think that we should be concerned that this convergence of multiple approaches sees a reduction in the phytoplankton pigments as the ocean warms. If we continue to warm the climate we will probably see further reductions.”
In a study of general marine biodiversity, scientists have made the first global map of the biodiversity of the oceans for more than 11,000 marine species, from tiny shrimp-like creatures to whales, building on 6.5 million records from the Census for Marine Life and other databases. Of all the factors they looked at to explain why some regions had more or fewer types of creatures, the only factor that consistently explained the patterns for the 13 groups of marine life they studied was temperature.
“It was surprising that we found such a strong correlation to marine biodiversity and temperature,” said biologist Derek Tittensor of the University of Dalhousie, lead author of the marine biodiversity map study. “You might expect a different response to temperature from cold and warm-blooded animals, for example.”
Ocean temperature had different effects on the number of different creatures in coastal habitats versus open-ocean habitats. The biodiversity hotspots for coastal marine ecosystems were mostly near the equator where ocean temperatures are warmest, much like on land.
But for open ocean ecosystems, which included many deep-sea creatures, whales and big fish like tuna, the hotspots for diversity were at the mid-latitudes, where temperatures were slightly cooler.
“What we can draw from this study is that it is very likely that we will see a reorganization of biodiversity in the ocean from a warming ocean, but right now it’s very hard to predict exactly what that reorganization will be,” said Tittensor.
The hotspots in biodiversity are also the areas that have attracted the most human impacts, such as fishing and habitat destruction, meaning that we are harming the areas that we should be trying to conserve.
By mapping where the biodiversity of marine life is today, scientists now have a baseline for comparing species distributions in the future. Understanding these changes will help them understand how marine biodiversity is being affected by changes in the amount of marine algae, for example.
“In order to understand life in the ocean, we need to understand where it is,” said Worm. “It’s a basis for understanding and also managing ocean life.”
“The ocean is something that we’re not very good at thinking about,” Worm added. “It is one of those things that is so big to see that it has been hard to see it until now.”
The warmth of the ocean is the critical factor that determines how much productivity and biodiversity there is in the ocean, and where.
In two separate studies, researchers found that warming oceans have led to a massive decline in the amount of plant life in the sea over the last century, and that temperature is tightly linked to global patterns of marine biodiversity.
“We are just now understanding how deeply temperature affects ocean life,” said biologist Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, a co-author on both papers appearing July 28 in Nature. “It is not necessarily that increased temperature is destroying biodiversity, but we do know that a warmer ocean will look very different.”
In one study that looks at historical records of algae abundance over the last hundred years, Worm and his co-authors found that warming ocean temperatures are correlated to a massive decline in the amount of marine algae, or phytoplankton. Marine algae are the base of the entire ocean food chain, and were also responsible for originally creating oxygen on the planet.
The study estimates the decline in marine algae has been approximately 40 percent since 1950.
“I think that if this study holds up, it will be one of the biggest biological changes in recent times simply because of its scale,” said Worm. “The ocean is two-thirds of the earth’s surface area, and because of the depth dimension it is probably 80 to 90 percent of the biosphere. Even the deep sea depends on phytoplankton production that rains down. On land, by contrast, there is only a very thin layer of production.”
The study on marine phytoplankton is the first to look at changes over the last century at a global scale with data from as far back as 1899. Similar models have been made using satellite data, but that data only extends back to 1979.
“One of the most important aspects of the new paper is that they’ve come up with the same answer but from a different approach than we saw from space,” said marine botanist Michael Behrenfeld of Oregon State University. “I think that we should be concerned that this convergence of multiple approaches sees a reduction in the phytoplankton pigments as the ocean warms. If we continue to warm the climate we will probably see further reductions.”
In a study of general marine biodiversity, scientists have made the first global map of the biodiversity of the oceans for more than 11,000 marine species, from tiny shrimp-like creatures to whales, building on 6.5 million records from the Census for Marine Life and other databases. Of all the factors they looked at to explain why some regions had more or fewer types of creatures, the only factor that consistently explained the patterns for the 13 groups of marine life they studied was temperature.
“It was surprising that we found such a strong correlation to marine biodiversity and temperature,” said biologist Derek Tittensor of the University of Dalhousie, lead author of the marine biodiversity map study. “You might expect a different response to temperature from cold and warm-blooded animals, for example.”
Ocean temperature had different effects on the number of different creatures in coastal habitats versus open-ocean habitats. The biodiversity hotspots for coastal marine ecosystems were mostly near the equator where ocean temperatures are warmest, much like on land.
But for open ocean ecosystems, which included many deep-sea creatures, whales and big fish like tuna, the hotspots for diversity were at the mid-latitudes, where temperatures were slightly cooler.
“What we can draw from this study is that it is very likely that we will see a reorganization of biodiversity in the ocean from a warming ocean, but right now it’s very hard to predict exactly what that reorganization will be,” said Tittensor.
The hotspots in biodiversity are also the areas that have attracted the most human impacts, such as fishing and habitat destruction, meaning that we are harming the areas that we should be trying to conserve.
By mapping where the biodiversity of marine life is today, scientists now have a baseline for comparing species distributions in the future. Understanding these changes will help them understand how marine biodiversity is being affected by changes in the amount of marine algae, for example.
“In order to understand life in the ocean, we need to understand where it is,” said Worm. “It’s a basis for understanding and also managing ocean life.”
“The ocean is something that we’re not very good at thinking about,” Worm added. “It is one of those things that is so big to see that it has been hard to see it until now.”
Sunday, July 25, 2010
First marine ‘red list’ published in Japan
The Independent (UK Newspaper) First marine ‘red list’ published in Japan
Greenpeace Japan published its ‘red list' on July 21: the booklet contains information about endangered or under-threat species being stocked in supermarkets or served at restaurants.
Greenpeace Japan launched its first seafood ranking guide ‘red listing' in a bid to force Japanese supermarkets to remove stocks of endangered fish species from their shelves.
The Japanese version of the ‘red listing' names 15 different species of fish, including five different types of tuna, which Greenpeace believes should not be sold or consumed. On average the Japanese consume around 25 percent of the world's tuna and 45 percent of the endangered Blue Fin Tuna. Greenpeace hopes that the publication of the ‘red list' will encourage consumers and retailers to remove stocks of these fish from their plates and shelves.
The fish included on the list are those that Greenpeace believes are vulnerable to overfishing, sourced from depleted stocks or caught using methods which are damaging to ocean habitats or other species. The list includes Atlantic salmon, Bluefin tuna, Greenland halibut, monkfish, red snapper and shark amongst others. Country specific lists can be found on regional Greenpeace websites.
Red lists have previously been launched in 13 countries, the UK, USA, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Spain, Portugal, New Zealand and Poland. Four other countries - the UK, Italy, Australia and New Zealand - also do additional specific work with tuna varieties.
In an attempt to encourage consumers to boycott certain stores, annual rankings of retailers in several countries including the USA, Canada and Spain are published. Each supermarket is scored on its commitment to selling sustainable fish products; according to the latest results, supermarket chain LIDL scored the highest in Spain, in Canada Loblaws came first and in the USA Target and Wegmans came out tops jointly.
Other campaigns to promote the use of sustainable seafood such as ‘Seafood See Life' have gathered momentum in the UK and are supported by celebrity chefs such as Raymond Blanc and Tom Aikens.
The Japanese argue that Bluefin Tuna, one of the most endangered marine species, is an integral part of sushi, the fish is highly prized and a single adult fish can sell for upwards of $160,000,(€124,902), and several restaurants, including celebrity sushi restaurant Nobu, continue to serve the fish.
Greenpeace Japan published its ‘red list' on July 21: the booklet contains information about endangered or under-threat species being stocked in supermarkets or served at restaurants.
Greenpeace Japan launched its first seafood ranking guide ‘red listing' in a bid to force Japanese supermarkets to remove stocks of endangered fish species from their shelves.
The Japanese version of the ‘red listing' names 15 different species of fish, including five different types of tuna, which Greenpeace believes should not be sold or consumed. On average the Japanese consume around 25 percent of the world's tuna and 45 percent of the endangered Blue Fin Tuna. Greenpeace hopes that the publication of the ‘red list' will encourage consumers and retailers to remove stocks of these fish from their plates and shelves.
The fish included on the list are those that Greenpeace believes are vulnerable to overfishing, sourced from depleted stocks or caught using methods which are damaging to ocean habitats or other species. The list includes Atlantic salmon, Bluefin tuna, Greenland halibut, monkfish, red snapper and shark amongst others. Country specific lists can be found on regional Greenpeace websites.
Red lists have previously been launched in 13 countries, the UK, USA, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Spain, Portugal, New Zealand and Poland. Four other countries - the UK, Italy, Australia and New Zealand - also do additional specific work with tuna varieties.
In an attempt to encourage consumers to boycott certain stores, annual rankings of retailers in several countries including the USA, Canada and Spain are published. Each supermarket is scored on its commitment to selling sustainable fish products; according to the latest results, supermarket chain LIDL scored the highest in Spain, in Canada Loblaws came first and in the USA Target and Wegmans came out tops jointly.
Other campaigns to promote the use of sustainable seafood such as ‘Seafood See Life' have gathered momentum in the UK and are supported by celebrity chefs such as Raymond Blanc and Tom Aikens.
The Japanese argue that Bluefin Tuna, one of the most endangered marine species, is an integral part of sushi, the fish is highly prized and a single adult fish can sell for upwards of $160,000,(€124,902), and several restaurants, including celebrity sushi restaurant Nobu, continue to serve the fish.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Over 30 turtles found dead in Guatemala
The Times of India: Over 30 turtles found dead in Guatemala
GUATEMALA CITY: Over 30 dead sea turtles have been found mutilated and with signs of suffocation on Guatemala's southern coast, authorities said.
The turtles were found on the beaches of Monterrico and Sipacate, the National Council of Protected Areas said.
The animals died of suffocation after being trapped in fishing nets, the organisation said, adding that fishermen were allegedly using fish hooks in prohibited areas.
According to the country's laws, fishing nets must be equipped with turtle excluder devices (TED), which allow trapped turtles to escape easily.
The appearance of dead turtles was worrying because the nesting season has just begun and efforts to protect sea turtles are already under threat, said Jose Martinez, head of the organisation's hydro-biological resources department.
Six sea turtle species nest in Guatemala and all are in danger of extinction due to poaching, over-harvesting of their eggs and pollution.
GUATEMALA CITY: Over 30 dead sea turtles have been found mutilated and with signs of suffocation on Guatemala's southern coast, authorities said.
The turtles were found on the beaches of Monterrico and Sipacate, the National Council of Protected Areas said.
The animals died of suffocation after being trapped in fishing nets, the organisation said, adding that fishermen were allegedly using fish hooks in prohibited areas.
According to the country's laws, fishing nets must be equipped with turtle excluder devices (TED), which allow trapped turtles to escape easily.
The appearance of dead turtles was worrying because the nesting season has just begun and efforts to protect sea turtles are already under threat, said Jose Martinez, head of the organisation's hydro-biological resources department.
Six sea turtle species nest in Guatemala and all are in danger of extinction due to poaching, over-harvesting of their eggs and pollution.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Experts back law banning shark fishing
Bermuda Sun: Experts back law banning shark fishing
Researchers and conservationists hit out after 11ft fish was killed in BDA waters this week
Wanted — dead or alive: The capture of an 11ft tiger shark on Challenger Banks this weekend attracted attention but researchers who have been tagging live tigers say the fish are more valuable alive. *Photo supplied
Catch of the day: Raymond Raynor poses with the 11ft tiger shark he reeled in on Sunday. *Photo by Henry Thomas
James Whittaker
Senior Reporter
A dangerous man-eater, a great source of shark hash or a symbol of human cruelty and the exploitation of the ocean?
The sight of an 11ft tiger shark being chopped up on a Somerset dock this week evoked powerful emotions.
While neighbourhood children jostled to have their pictures taken with the shark, others voiced concerns that an endangered animal had apparently been slaughtered for sport.
Michael Burke, who runs SCUBA firm Blue Water Diving, believes Bermuda should follow in the footsteps of Palau and the Maldives and protect sharks through legislation.
Hunters
He said: “I really don’t see the need to catch a tiger shark. There’s very little use for them. It is not a good eating fish.
“We don’t need to do that anymore. It is a different world we live in.
“Those images of hunters standing with their feet on a lion’s head as some sort of trophy, it is an anachronism.
“Palau has banned shark fishing, we could do the same. We did it for turtles in the 1800s, why not sharks?”
The only current restriction on shark fishing in Bermuda is a ban on removing the fins from live sharks at sea.
The Marine Resources Board has discussed the possibility of a more extensive ban but is awaiting the results of research before making a recommendation to Government.
The shark was caught on Challenger Banks, roughly 14 miles offshore on Sunday.
It was reeled in as part of the Robinson’s Marina Fishing tournament. Raymond Raynor, whose crew landed the 550lb fish, said he planned to use it for lobster bait and did not understand the fuss about his catch.
He added: “I don’t see a problem with it, the good Lord put them there for us to catch. I’m not worried about what people say.
“I would understand it if we were going out hunting for sharks every day.
“We weren’t doing it for glory. It just happened to take our line.
“People like to make a big deal over nothing sometimes.
“If a shark was to turn around and eat you, what would you say then?”
Mr. Raynor said most people on the dock were thrilled to see the shark.
He added: “People don’t see it every day. They might see it on television but not up close like that.”
Scores of pictures were posted on Facebook and a video of the shark being chopped up on the dock was published on website BerNews.
Mr. Burke, who is also a member of the Marine Resources Board, believes a “first step” for Bermuda could be to discourage such public displays on marinas.
Valuable
The Shark-Free Marina Initiative, an international pressure group, aims to reduce shark mortality worldwide by asking marinas to stop allowing the display and butchering of sharks on-site.
Choy Aming, a researcher and filmmaker with the Bermuda Shark Project, said sharks are more valuable alive than dead.
He added: “We don’t have a lot of them left. They are an apex predator and are integral to the ecosystem.
“We should have more sharks here than we do.
“I spend 60 hours each week out on the water and the only time I have ever seen a shark is when we have been chumming for them out on Challenger Banks.”
Mr. Aming believes killing sharks for “glory shots” is pointless. He said: “It is one thing if you are depending on it for a living but it is not really a commercially viable fish.
“I’m not against fishing — tuna and wahoo are marketable fish.
“Even marlin fishing has some value because of the tourism it attracts.
“Tiger sharks are fairly easy to catch but there is not much you can use them for except lobster bait.”
Mr. Aming said fishermen often catch tigers by accident but most put them back.
He and the Bermuda Shark Project team have caught and tagged 10 tiger sharks in the last 12 months.
The researchers have uncovered new data about the migratory patterns of Bermuda’s sharks.
They hope their findings will fuel future marine conservation policy.
The U.S.-based Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation is backing the research.
Mr. Harvey, a renowned angler and artist, will be on the island next week to see the Shark Project’s work first-hand.
In the U.S., Mr. Harvey has found a unique way of bringing conservationists and fishermen together.
His Ultimate Shark Challenge in Florida is a fishing competition with a twist.
The tournament, profiled in the Washington Post earlier this year, challenges anglers to catch, measure, tag and release sharks.
The tournament’s organizer, Shaun Paxton, said they had taken the “spectacle of dead sharks” out of the sport and replaced it with live video.
The competition allows anglers the thrill of fishing for sharks without killing them and has the added advantage that scientists can track the movements of the fish afterwards.
Local project tracks the migration of tigers to and from the island
The size of the tiger shark pulled out of Bermuda’s waters this week came as no surprise to a team of island researchers who have been tracking them for years.
The 11ft fish, caught as part of the Robinson’s Marina Fishing tournament on Sunday, caused onlookers to stop and stare.
But sharks in Bermuda, though increasingly rare, are not uncommon.
Tiger sharks are seasonal visitors to the island, with the largest numbers found on Challenger and Argus Banks between July and October.
They rarely come inshore and you are unlikely to encounter one unless you are out on the banks deep-sea fishing.
Their habits, migratory patterns and even their numbers remain something of a mystery.
But scientists say they are crucial to marine ecosystems.
The Bermuda Shark Project has been tagging and tracking sharks in the island’s waters in a bid to answer key questions about the fish, which has existed since the days of the dinosaurs.
Ten sharks were tagged last year.
With funding from the Guy Harvey Research Institute and the support of Rhode Island University, 10 more will be tagged this year. Filmmaker Choy Aming made a movie about the project, A Tiger’s Tale, that premiered at the Bermuda Film Festival.
He said the latest tracking data showed the sharks are heading back in the general direction of Bermuda, having spent the winter in the Caribbean.
He added: “It looks like we may have stumbled across the first evidence of a tiger shark migration in the Atlantic.”
Mr. Aming said it is not a “Bermuda migration” as many of the sharks, tagged here last year, are still hundreds of miles away from the island.
But while some travelled as far afield as Puerto Rico, all are now heading north. The Bermuda Shark Project monitors their progress with satellite tags that send an electronic signal every time the shark breaks the surface.
The team, which includes vet and fisherman Neil Burnie, has secured funding to tag 10 more sharks this summer.
The aim of the project is to “de-monster” sharks and foster knowledge and understanding. The team hopes their research will get support for protecting tiger sharks and sharks in general.
Researchers and conservationists hit out after 11ft fish was killed in BDA waters this week
Wanted — dead or alive: The capture of an 11ft tiger shark on Challenger Banks this weekend attracted attention but researchers who have been tagging live tigers say the fish are more valuable alive. *Photo supplied
Catch of the day: Raymond Raynor poses with the 11ft tiger shark he reeled in on Sunday. *Photo by Henry Thomas
James Whittaker
Senior Reporter
A dangerous man-eater, a great source of shark hash or a symbol of human cruelty and the exploitation of the ocean?
The sight of an 11ft tiger shark being chopped up on a Somerset dock this week evoked powerful emotions.
While neighbourhood children jostled to have their pictures taken with the shark, others voiced concerns that an endangered animal had apparently been slaughtered for sport.
Michael Burke, who runs SCUBA firm Blue Water Diving, believes Bermuda should follow in the footsteps of Palau and the Maldives and protect sharks through legislation.
Hunters
He said: “I really don’t see the need to catch a tiger shark. There’s very little use for them. It is not a good eating fish.
“We don’t need to do that anymore. It is a different world we live in.
“Those images of hunters standing with their feet on a lion’s head as some sort of trophy, it is an anachronism.
“Palau has banned shark fishing, we could do the same. We did it for turtles in the 1800s, why not sharks?”
The only current restriction on shark fishing in Bermuda is a ban on removing the fins from live sharks at sea.
The Marine Resources Board has discussed the possibility of a more extensive ban but is awaiting the results of research before making a recommendation to Government.
The shark was caught on Challenger Banks, roughly 14 miles offshore on Sunday.
It was reeled in as part of the Robinson’s Marina Fishing tournament. Raymond Raynor, whose crew landed the 550lb fish, said he planned to use it for lobster bait and did not understand the fuss about his catch.
He added: “I don’t see a problem with it, the good Lord put them there for us to catch. I’m not worried about what people say.
“I would understand it if we were going out hunting for sharks every day.
“We weren’t doing it for glory. It just happened to take our line.
“People like to make a big deal over nothing sometimes.
“If a shark was to turn around and eat you, what would you say then?”
Mr. Raynor said most people on the dock were thrilled to see the shark.
He added: “People don’t see it every day. They might see it on television but not up close like that.”
Scores of pictures were posted on Facebook and a video of the shark being chopped up on the dock was published on website BerNews.
Mr. Burke, who is also a member of the Marine Resources Board, believes a “first step” for Bermuda could be to discourage such public displays on marinas.
Valuable
The Shark-Free Marina Initiative, an international pressure group, aims to reduce shark mortality worldwide by asking marinas to stop allowing the display and butchering of sharks on-site.
Choy Aming, a researcher and filmmaker with the Bermuda Shark Project, said sharks are more valuable alive than dead.
He added: “We don’t have a lot of them left. They are an apex predator and are integral to the ecosystem.
“We should have more sharks here than we do.
“I spend 60 hours each week out on the water and the only time I have ever seen a shark is when we have been chumming for them out on Challenger Banks.”
Mr. Aming believes killing sharks for “glory shots” is pointless. He said: “It is one thing if you are depending on it for a living but it is not really a commercially viable fish.
“I’m not against fishing — tuna and wahoo are marketable fish.
“Even marlin fishing has some value because of the tourism it attracts.
“Tiger sharks are fairly easy to catch but there is not much you can use them for except lobster bait.”
Mr. Aming said fishermen often catch tigers by accident but most put them back.
He and the Bermuda Shark Project team have caught and tagged 10 tiger sharks in the last 12 months.
The researchers have uncovered new data about the migratory patterns of Bermuda’s sharks.
They hope their findings will fuel future marine conservation policy.
The U.S.-based Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation is backing the research.
Mr. Harvey, a renowned angler and artist, will be on the island next week to see the Shark Project’s work first-hand.
In the U.S., Mr. Harvey has found a unique way of bringing conservationists and fishermen together.
His Ultimate Shark Challenge in Florida is a fishing competition with a twist.
The tournament, profiled in the Washington Post earlier this year, challenges anglers to catch, measure, tag and release sharks.
The tournament’s organizer, Shaun Paxton, said they had taken the “spectacle of dead sharks” out of the sport and replaced it with live video.
The competition allows anglers the thrill of fishing for sharks without killing them and has the added advantage that scientists can track the movements of the fish afterwards.
Local project tracks the migration of tigers to and from the island
The size of the tiger shark pulled out of Bermuda’s waters this week came as no surprise to a team of island researchers who have been tracking them for years.
The 11ft fish, caught as part of the Robinson’s Marina Fishing tournament on Sunday, caused onlookers to stop and stare.
But sharks in Bermuda, though increasingly rare, are not uncommon.
Tiger sharks are seasonal visitors to the island, with the largest numbers found on Challenger and Argus Banks between July and October.
They rarely come inshore and you are unlikely to encounter one unless you are out on the banks deep-sea fishing.
Their habits, migratory patterns and even their numbers remain something of a mystery.
But scientists say they are crucial to marine ecosystems.
The Bermuda Shark Project has been tagging and tracking sharks in the island’s waters in a bid to answer key questions about the fish, which has existed since the days of the dinosaurs.
Ten sharks were tagged last year.
With funding from the Guy Harvey Research Institute and the support of Rhode Island University, 10 more will be tagged this year. Filmmaker Choy Aming made a movie about the project, A Tiger’s Tale, that premiered at the Bermuda Film Festival.
He said the latest tracking data showed the sharks are heading back in the general direction of Bermuda, having spent the winter in the Caribbean.
He added: “It looks like we may have stumbled across the first evidence of a tiger shark migration in the Atlantic.”
Mr. Aming said it is not a “Bermuda migration” as many of the sharks, tagged here last year, are still hundreds of miles away from the island.
But while some travelled as far afield as Puerto Rico, all are now heading north. The Bermuda Shark Project monitors their progress with satellite tags that send an electronic signal every time the shark breaks the surface.
The team, which includes vet and fisherman Neil Burnie, has secured funding to tag 10 more sharks this summer.
The aim of the project is to “de-monster” sharks and foster knowledge and understanding. The team hopes their research will get support for protecting tiger sharks and sharks in general.
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