Endangered
Marine life
Surfing Sub-Antartic style By Chadden Hunter For a king penguin, living in a tightly packed colony can get pretty smelly so what better way to clean up than to do a spot of surfing. King penguins are the second largest penguin in the world after the emperor penguin. Unlike emperors, kings rarely venture as far south as the sea ice but instead prefer to breed on sub-Antarctic islands and fish in warmer waters north of
the polar front. One of the largest king penguin breeding colonies in the world (around a quarter of a million birds) is found at St Andrew’s Bay on the island of South Georgia. Chicks take over 12 months to rear and both parents need to alternate incubating, fishing and guarding duties. The year-round presence of hundreds of thousand of penguins means the colony grounds become filthy. Birds are forced to sleep, feed chicks, and waddle through stagnant pools of mud, excrement and dead penguin carcasses. Its no surprise that king penguins, like
most penguin species, like to go for a wash in the surf after spending time ashore. Every morning thousands of adults can be seen rolling and splashing around in the breaking waves, preening the muck from their feathers. In the past king penguins were harvested in massive numbers for their oil and some colonies were completely wiped out. Since the end of the major whaling industry however, their numbers have recovered and most populations appear to be growing at an annual rate of 5-15%.
Bahamas Set to Ban Catch and Sale of Sea Turtles Did you know?
By Christopher Kemp SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Soups, stews and pies flavored with chunks of sea turtle meat will soon be illegal across the 700 islands of the Bahamas, environmental activists and scientists said Sunday. Despite opposition from many fishermen, the Bahamas has amended fisheries laws to give full protection to all sea turtles found in the Atlantic archipelago’s waters by banning the harvest, possession, purchase and sale of the endangered reptiles, including their eggs. The new rules take effect this month. ‘’Young people here have never tasted turtle, but it had continued to be eaten by the older population in some of the outer islands,’’ said Kim Aranha, a member of a Bahamian conservation group that led the campaign to protect sea turtles. ‘’So we’re really happy our work has paid off with this ban; the turtles couldn’t do it themselves.’’ Previously, the Bahamian government permitted
harvesting of all species of sea turtles except the hawksbill. Flesh had been used by restaurants and shells for tourist keepsakes despite turtles’ status as endangered species. It’s impossible to gauge how many green turtles, loggerheads and other types were slaughtered each year in the Bahamas, but activists say counts of shells found in marina markets and information from fishermen indicate the haul was hefty. ‘’It has been an unrelenting catch,’’ Karen Bjorndal, who has long studied marine turtle populations at the University of Florida’s Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research, said in a phone interview. Bjorndal said the Bahamas’ shallow seagrass beds and reefs are prime foraging grounds for the big, slow turtles, so the fishing ban will help spur the regional recovery of the creatures, which are also threatened by pollution and development on beaches where they lay eggs. The Bahamas Sea Turtle Conservation Group has been pressuring the government for about
two years to protect all sea turtle species, including distributing bumper stickers reading ‘’Stop the Killing.’’ Not everybody is happy with the new rules. Opponents say eating turtle meat is a local tradition. Some local fishermen – a handful of whom would regularly demand money from conservationists to free captured turtles on display at marinas – argue they should be able to catch the migrating animals without any penalty. Jane Mather, co-chairwoman of the conservation group who has received anonymous threats in recent weeks over the ban, said penalties are still being negotiated with the goverment but she hopes they will be ‘’quite serious.’’ ‘’Ninety percent of the Bahamian public don’t want turtles killed,’’ Mather said.
Sea turtles, airbreathing reptiles with streamlined bodies and large flippers, are well adapted to life in the marine environment. They inhabit tropical and subtropical ocean waters throughout the world. Although sea turtles live most of their lives in the ocean, adult females must return to beaches on land to lay their eggs. They often migrate long distances between foraging grounds and nesting beaches. All 7 species of marine turtles are listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Coral reefs – going the way of the dodo Destroyed by rising carbon levels, acidity, pollution, algae, bleaching and El Nino, keeping coral reefs alive would require a dramatic change to the world’s carbon policy and farming methods. The situation is not good.
By David Adam Animal, vegetable and mineral, a pristine tropical coral reef is one of the natural wonders of the world. Bathed in clear, warm, water and thick with a psychedelic display of
fish, sharks, crustaceans and other sea life, the colorful coral ramparts that rise from the sand are known as the rainforests of the oceans. And with good reason. Reefs and rainforests have more in common than their beauty and bewildering biodiversity. Both have existed for millions of years, and yet, now, both are poised to disappear.
If you thought you had heard enough bad news concerning the environment and considered that the situation could not get any worse, then steel yourself. Coral reefs are doomed. The situation is virtually hopeless. Forget ice caps and rising sea levels: the tropical coral reef looks as if it will enter the history books as the first large-scale ecosystem wiped out by our love
of cheap energy. A report from the Australian government agency that looks after the nation’s emblematic Great Barrier Reef reported on Sept. 2 that “the overall outlook for the reef is poor, and catastrophic damage to the ecosystem may not be averted.” The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble, and it is not the only one. Within just a few decades,
experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jeweled corset will reduce to rubble. “The future is horrific,” said Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world’s foremost expert on coral reefs. “There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognize. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world’s marine biodiversity.” “Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct,” Veron said. Alex Rogers, a coral expert with the Zoological Society of London, talks of an
“absolute guarantee of their annihilation.” And David Obura, another coral heavyweight and head of CORDIO East Africa, a research group in Kenya, is equally pessimistic. “I don’t think reefs have much of a chance. And what’s happening to reefs is a parable of what is going to happen to everything else,” he said. These are desperate words, stripped of the usual scientific caveats and expressions of uncertainty, and they are a measure of the enormity of what’s happening to our reefs. The problem is a new take on a familiar evil. Of the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide spewed from cars, power stations, aircraft and factories each year, about half hangs in the thin layer of atmosphere where it traps heat at the Earth’s surface and so drives global warming. What happens to the rest of this steady flood of carbon pollution? Some is absorbed by the world’s soils and
forests, offering vital respite to our overcooked climate. The remainder dissolves into the world’s oceans. And there, it stores up a whole heap of trouble for coral reefs. Often mistaken for plants, individual corals are animals closely related to sea anemones and jellyfish. They have tiny tentacles and can sting and eat fish and other small animals. Corals are found throughout the world’s oceans, and holidaymakers taking a swim off the Cornish coast may brush their hands through clouds of the tiny creatures without ever realizing they have encountered coral. It is when corals form communities on the seabed that things get interesting. Especially in the tropics. Britain has its own coral reefs, but these deepwater natural constructions are remote, cold and dark, and frequently fail to fire the imagination. It is in shallow, brightly light waters, that coral
reefs really come to life. In the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific, the coral come together with tiny algae to make magic. The algae do something that the coral cannot. They photosynthesise, and so use the sun’s energy to churn out food for the coral. In return, the coral provide the algae with the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis, and so complete the circle of symbiotic life. Freed of the need to wave their tentacles around to hunt for food, the coral can devote more energy to secreting the mineral calcium carbonate, from which they form a stony exoskeleton. A second type of algae, which also produces calcium carbonate, provides the cement. Together, the marine menage-atrois make a very effective building site, with dead corals leaving their calcium skeletons behind as limestone.
Bonneville Dam sea lions face cages or sharpshooters By Tim Holiday Wildlife officials will resume trapping of salmon-eating California sea lions at Bonneville Dam as soon as Monday. But this year, unlike last, they have a license to kill. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife has a hit list of 73 sea lions that habitually prey on endangered fish below the Columbia River dam and aren’t dissuaded from dining by hazing tactics. So far, officials only have enough homes lined up to relocate eight sea lions. If the Bonneville banquet resumes in the coming weeks as spring chinook begin to return from the ocean, many could be killed. During the past two decades, increasing numbers of male California sea lions have arrived below the dam to feed on salmon making their way upriver. Fishers curse
them for stealing salmon off their hooks, while animal welfare activists deplore the sanctioned killing of one species to aid another. Government agencies invested in the region’s multibillion dollar salmon recovery program are caught in the middle. A federal appeals court raised the stakes Thursday when it denied a request from the Humane Society of the United States to block Washington, Oregon and Idaho from killing as many as 85 sea lions a year. “As of this point they have permission to go out there and start killing,” said Sharon Young, marine issues field director for the Humane Society of the United States. Under authority granted to the three states by NOAA Fisheries Service, the protected pinnipeds can only be killed if they eat endangered
fish, don’t respond to hazing and can’t be relocated, said Robin Brown, marine mammal program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Officials on Monday can start to trap such sea lions and take them
to an unnamed location to be euthanized by lethal injection. But if a problem sea lion won’t go into one of the floating cages, it can be shot so long as it is on shore or within 50 feet of it, Brown said. A sharpshooter from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife would use a shotgun or high-powered rifle, depending on the range, and the bodies would be “recovered immediately,” said Richard Hargrave, Oregon Fish and Wildlife spokesman. Brown said they anticipate relocating or killing about 30 animals this year.
The number of sea lions at Bonneville has risen from a handful in the early 1990s to more than 100 last year, and they are arriving at the dam earlier and earlier, some as soon as September, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which runs the dam. The corps estimates the sea lions eat 0.4 to 4.2 percent of the run, which will soon be under way and is forecast to be relatively strong this year. Commercial and sport
fishing on the river, by contrast, can pull about 13 percent of the run from the river. The difference, officials say, is that fishers mostly kill salmon reared in hatcheries, while sea lions don’t discriminate between hatchery fish and their wild cousins. On Friday, federal, state and tribal officials were at the dam to explain how they planned to contend with sea lions this spring. They started hazing operations last month, using firecrackers or rubber pellets to shoo away sea lions, but those have proven to be only temporarily effective. There are already six or seven sea lions on site, and occasionally they could be seen surfacing with a fish in their mouth
as birds circled and picked at the detritus. Brown explained how two traps moored near Cascade Island below the dam are fitted with magnetic locks this year. Last spring, six sea lions, including two endangered Steller sea lions, died inside traps after the doors mysteriously locked them inside. These traps will be locked open when not in use and monitored hourly when they are, officials said. Then it was time to show off the magnetic doors. Brown counted down. “Three, two, one,” he said, clicking a transmitter around his neck. Nothing happened. “That’s typical,” he said later, explaining the transmitter was faulty and another one wasn’t readily available. “We tested it about 10 times yesterday and it always worked.”