GLOBAL WARMING IS CAUSING FISH IN THE OCEAN TO SHRINK in body size, say two scientists at the University of British Columbia. If the rise in ocean temperatures continues at the present rate, many fish are likely to decline in size by 20 to 30 percent, they say. Warmer ocean temperatures cause fishes’ bodies to warm up as well, accelerating their metabolisms and oxygen requirements, explains William Cheung, director of science at the Nippon Foundation-UBC
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A BILL BANNING THE SHARK FIN TRADE IN THE UNITED STATES appears likely to be passed by Congress, based on a hearing earlier this month by a House subcommittee. BIPARTISAN SUPPORT With 200 co-sponsors, HR1456, the “Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act,” has strong bipartisan support in the House and a similar bill under consideration in the Senate has 19 co-sponsors. The hearing by a subgroup of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was described
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HERE’S A GLIMMER OF OPTIMISM FOR A WORLD BESET by seemingly constant pessimistic news about oceans, reefs and marine animal: A TED talk by a coral reef specialist about “Why I Still Have Hope for Coral Reefs.” “We can be incredibly pessimistic on the short term, and mourn what we lost and what we really took for granted,” suggested marine biologist Kristin Marhaver, “but we can still be optimistic on the long term, and we can still
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MANGROVES ARE VITAL to our coastlines, reef and planetary health generally. Naturally, they’re endangered by human activities, among the most threatened habitats in the world, according to the non-profit Mangrove Action Project (MAP). Villains in the picture include shrimp farming, logging, unregulated development and perhaps the fact that many governments have regarded mangrove forests as wastelands and useless swamps. MAP cites shrimp farms as the most significant destroyer of mangrove forest at present. SIGNIFICANT LOSSES
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SEAGRASSES ARE THE GRASSY EQUIVALENTS OF MANGROVES, essential to the health of the reefs, the oceans, Mother Earth and humankind. And, again, found in shallow coastal waters worldwide. And, again, threatened. They provide many of the same benefits as mangroves – offering food and shelter to juvenile fishes, small finfishes and to crustaceans, mollusks and other invertebrates. They stabilize coastal areas and sequester carbon carbon dioxide. AND CLEAN, TOO! A recently published study has identified another way
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IT SEEMED A GOOD IDEA: Develop a website about life under the sea and include environmental news, research findings and other developments relevant to the web of life under the sea. It turns out that environmental news about the Reef is overwhelmingly depressing. Most news, studies, predictions and trends seem to suggest losses in corals, changing ocean conditions and sharks and other fishes pushed farther into endangered categories. A GLIMMER OF OPTIMISM So here’s a
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ANTHROPOCENE (æn’ thrō pō seen) A new, if informal, term for the current epoch of geohistory, describing the past 250 years in which mankind’s actions have begun having a significant impact on the earth and its environment. MAKING THE CENE The epochs of the Tertiary and Quatenary Periods combine the root word “cenes” (from the Greek for “recent”) with other terms. Thus we have the Tertiary Period’s Paleocene (“old-recent”), Miocene (“less-recent”) and Pliocene Epochs
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FRANCESCA VIRDIS WIELDS HER PRUNING SHEARS LIKE ANY EXPERT NURSERYMAN, patiently snipping out dead and damaged stock and separating specimens to bump up for new growth – all 20 feet under water. Ms. Virdis, based at Bonaire’s Buddy Dive Resort, was working in a nursery of “coral trees,” structures of PVC pipe with half-foot sections of staghorn and elkhorn coral suspended in the current. They stand in a restricted area on the sandy ocean bottom
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