More Plastic People

I mentioned the Plastiki Expedition the other day, but Scripps is conducting its own voyage to examine the plastic waste problem in the Pacific, too.

It's called SEAPLEX (Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition).

Great Insights Into Fish Farming

While I was on the TED website ("Ideas worth spreading" and highly recommended), I came across this, a truly thought-provoking and entertaining meditation on sustainable practices in fish farming and the dilemma of a fish-lover...er, -eater.

Chef Dan Barber on "How I Fell In Love With A Fish," and how Spaniards could revolutionize fish farming. It seems so good, one wonders what the catch is.

The farm he's talking about, on wetlands at Veta La Palma, is an amazing endeavor.

'60 Minutes' Features Ocean Adventurer

Fans of geophysicist/adventurer and National Geographic "explorer in residence" Robert Ballard (of "Titanic" fame) will want to tune in to CBS on March 14. Says "National Geographic":

Best known for the discovery of RMS Titanic, Ballard has led more than 120 oceanographic expeditions. He located the wrecks of the battleship Bismarck, the aircraft carrier Yorktown, John F. Kennedy’s PT-109, the nuclear attack submarines USS Scorpion and USS Thresher, and numerous ancient ships in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. He also discovered and documented the extraordinary marine communities surrounding deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Ballard is certainly an entertaining guy, as this TED mini-lecture demonstrates. And a staunch advocate of ocean awareness and exploration.

'The Cove' Making Headway

There's a great collateral benefit to the Oscar for best feature documentary going to "The Cove."

Turns out the Oscar telecast is just about the only way (OK, OK, there's that Internet thing) that the Japanese public was going to hear about this project, which lifts the grisly shroud of secrecy on Japanese dolphin and porpoise slaughters.

I hope it boosts their "DOLPHIN" to 44144 text-messaging awareness campaign.

This is what director Louie Psihoyos would have liked to tell the global audience.

And here's a red-carpet interview with director Louie Psihoyos and star Ric O'Barry ahead of the ceremony:

'Kon-Tiki' For The 21st Century

Three cheers for banking family scion David de Rothschild and the crew and sponsors of the Plastiki Expedition. They embark this month on a San Francisco-to-Sydney sail aboard a vessel constructed of recycled plastic to draw attention to the catastrophic dumping of plastic and other junk. CNN:

The Plastiki's journey will spotlight current environmental issues. En route to Australia, Plastiki will sail through the infamous North Pacific Gyre, now home to "The Great Garbage Patch," named due to the high levels of waste that have been drawn there by ocean currents. Estimated to be around the size of Texas, this contaminated area of ocean has by some estimates more plastic than food for marine life.

"I was astounded to hear that that there are places in our oceans where the ratio between plastic and plankton is 6-to-1," de Rothschild told CNN, referring to the area.

CNN says two of "Kon-Tiki" skipper Thor Heyerdahl's grandchildren are taking part, which is appropriate given the similar audacity of this venture to the Norwegian adventurer's 1947 exploit.

Greenpeace has an amazing graphic called "The Trash Vortex" that shows the drift of that garbage that's clogging up our seas.

Egypt Does The Mediterranean A Favor

It's long been clear which side Egypt's bread is buttered on. The Red Sea side, with first-rate marine reserves like the legendary Ras Mohamed (pictured is an Arabian Picasso Triggerfish near the lighthouse at Ras um Sid).

But now Egypt's looking to spread the wealth in the form of a nearly 400-square-km marine park on its Mediterranean coast, at a place called the Gulf of el-Salloum. Says Reuters:

"Declaring this protectorate is a way to confront a host of environmental problems, such as soil degradation and coastal inundation, climate change and loss of biological diversity," [Egyptian Environment Minister Maged] George said in a statement, adding that the area was rich in natural resources.

The protectorate contains more than 160 migratory and local bird species, about 30 reptile and amphibian species and 10,000 to 12,000 marine species. Its creation should encourage scientific research on biological diversity in Egypt, he said.

Take A Deep Breath

Dead Zones On The March

When the tragic effects of global warming arrive, they're unlikely to present themselves in the spectacular form of a 1,000-meter wall of water or the demise of the dinosaurs.

They'll probably look more like creeping dead zones of hypoxia -- oxygen-starved pockets (the circus-clown variety, not Dittos Jeans) that suffocate most anything too slow to escape.

Given mainstream media's taste for the dramatic, it's gratifying to see big news outlets actually covering issues like this, so hats off to Les Blumenthal and McClatchy for this story. (Although illustrating the story with a dolphin is an odd choice, seeing as his oxygen isn't at issue.)

I read stories like McClatchy's and it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Now, I live in a city that suffers frequent inversions, when cold air acts as a lid to trap warmer air that just hovers over us all like one of those dark clouds above an angry cartoon character. But it's not instantly fatal. What's more, I can escape in the short term -- to higher ground, or to the 'burbs, if not the countryside. Slow-moving sea creatures -- worms, mussels, starfish, urchins -- don't have that luxury. And even the faster movers' luck will run out if these blots of blight keep spreading.

This story is all about causality, of course, since we've known for a long time about a great many oceanic dead zones around the world (the McClatchy story says there are 400, and reliable sources put the number of "coastal dead zones" at around 50 a decade ago). For instance, the massive Gulf of Mexico dead zone, which at around 22,000 square kilometers is now bigger than the state of Israel, is largely a result of leaching and runoff from the Mississippi River.

So how do we know global warming's at fault in cases like those off the coast of the western U.S., where this story was focused? (It refers more broadly, however, to a growing problem in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans.)

Commendably, the McClatchy piece tries to explain. It quotes oceanographers Gregory Johnson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle and Jack Barth of Oregon State University suggesting that the oxygen depletion has been growing quickly in recent decades, presumably correlative to rising global temperatures:

In some spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Elsewhere, scientists say, oxygen levels might have declined by one-third over 50 years.

"The real surprise is how this has become the new norm," said Jack Barth , an oceanography professor at Oregon State University . "We are seeing it year after year."

Barth and others say the changes are consistent with current climate-change models. Previous studies have found that the oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The other indicator of global warming's role in all this, the article goes on to suggest, is the havoc that it plays with upwelling and downwelling, preventing the essential exchange of nutrient-rich, oxygen-poor water for oxygen-rich surface water that's nutrient-poor.

That pretty much sums up the two most compelling arguments in Blumenthal's piece pointing to rising temperatures -- and thus man, unless you're the Czech president or in the fossil-fuels business -- as a major factor in these expanding oceanic dead zones.

We All Shine On...But Some Are Brighter Than Others

Just stumbled across this nice homage to bioluminescence, "8 Marine Creatures That Light Up The Sea."

Despite my love of night diving, I've logged far fewer hours than I'd like underwater between sunset and sunrise. There just doesn't seem to be enough interest at the dive resorts I'm frequenting to ensure many nighttime adventures away from the mini-discos. (I've got a toddler.)

But like many other divers, I never tire of the thrill of seeing it ("them," in actuality, since it's dinoflagellates generating all that oversized light) erupt of my arms and fins like white light off a welder's blast.

The most striking instance of bioluminescence I've been treated to was near Dahab, in the Red Sea, as a pair of 7-10cm fish bobbed and spun around me in a game of hide-and-seek -- or "She's mine! No mine!" Even as I swam reluctantly off I could see their blacklight theater from a full 15 meters away. It was a pair of so-called common flashlightfish, the Steinitz' Flashlightfish (Photoblepharon steinitzi).

But aside from the benefits that all this organic glowing yields its owners, there are some folks thinking up interesting applications for bioluminescence. One is its use as an imaging technique to monitor turbulence such as breaking waves. And make no mistake, it's a science; these folks at the Innovative Marine Technology Lab are pinning down "different species of dinoflagellates [to] offer a range of size, flow thresholds, flash brightness, and flash duration."

Deal In The Works On A Bluefin Tuna Ban?

Maintaining a ban on the ivory trade in exchange for throwing a lifeline to the Bluefin Tuna? Sounds like a win-win situation to me. Reuters has more:

Support protection of our elephants and we'll help you protect your bluefin tuna, 23 African countries told the European Union on Friday.

I'm not sure what motivates European opposition to the ivory ban. Is the EU currying favor with ivory lover China? Debt-strapped Tanzania and Zambia -- the two countries reportedly trying to chip away at the ivory ban -- don't exactly have a lot of heft on this or many other topics.

"Please do not force our collective hand to cast our 23 votes against the EU on any of the issues it is supporting such as, for example, the high profile proposed ban on bluefin tuna," said the letter seen by Reuters.

Let's hope Europe's priorities are sorted out by the time the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meets on March 13.

'F*ck You, Oceans!'

As if Carl Safina and South Park hadn't made it abundantly clear that Japanese unilateralism and disregard for the seas are injurious to more than just conservationists, whales and bluefin tuna.

Now AP reports this:

ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) - Australian police conducted searches Saturday [March 6] on two anti-whaling vessels that recently clashed with Japanese ships in the Antarctic Ocean in an attempt to obstruct their annual catch, police and activists said.

Federal police with search warrants boarded the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker, ships belonging to the activist group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, as the result of a "formal referral from Japanese authorities," a spokesman said on condition of anonymity in accordance with police policy. He gave no further details, including on what basis the warrant was issued.

Are Japanese authorities really intent on acting like cartoon villains?

Learning The Hard Way

A Romanian colleague once told me that his three years of studies pursuing a degree in oceanography made his head hurt. It was that tough.

So kudos to those who stick it out.

It can be a difficult and probably thankless job. Well, not probably.

Rachel Carson, Right Again!

Naturalist Rachel Carson wrote in her 1955 book "The Edge of the Sea" that "Today a little more land may belong to the sea, tomorrow a little less."

In deference to Carson and her historical perspective, I propose a new label for one of global warming's expected effects on our seas and coastlines: the Great Ocean Reclamation Project (GORP).

Branson's Virgin Takes The Plunge

Billionaire action superhero Richard Branson is following up on his fledgling space-tourism ventures with a wild scheme to lure wealthy adrenalin junkies underwater.

The folks at Virgin Limited Edition are billing their "Necker Nymph" as an "underwater plane" that dives to a depth of 40 meters, or about as deep as lots of casual recreational divers ever get. Here's some of what CNN says:

The $631,000 flying sub, the first of its kind, uses fighter jet technology and was designed by Hawkes Ocean Technologies. It is transparent enough to allow divers a 360-degree view of marine life and Virgin is marketing it as a way to view dolphins and whales close up.

I can't help wondering how a submersible with "fighter jet technology" that can do "dolphin-like flips" sneaks up on "dolphins and whales" without either ramming them or frightening their flukes off.

Now check out the claim that follows:

The new sub also appears to be environmentally friendly. It is buoyant, which stops it from mistakenly landing on reefs, and it is relatively quiet -- allowing it to pass through fragile ecosystems without causing too much upheaval, Virgin says.

It's unclear to whom it "appears to be environmentally friendly." But there is a clue tacked onto the end of the paragraph. Virgin says. If they're going to make that claim, let's hope there's stronger evidence for skeptics than "because it floats," is "relatively quiet," and won't cause "too much upheaval." After all, just a little upheaval and there goes the neighborhood.

The story in Britain's "The Sun" is a lot more fun to read, of course, because of its take-no-prisoners editorial style. Crucially, it adds that Sir Richard is "building a stronger version to go deeper than any sub has ever been."

"A pressurized submarine is nearly completed. But the real challenge is to explore what's going on at the bottom of the oceans," "The Sun" quotes him as saying.

Bathysphere deep divers Otis Barton and William Beebe would no doubt appreciate Branson's bravado.

But even a thrillseeker like Beebe recognized the futility of "record-breaking dives which really have no scientific value." Let's hope Branson does too.