Fish and aquatic news

A recent study has unveiled that the King demoiselle (Chrysiptera rex) is actually three different species that recently diverged from each other.  (picture)

“This work, along with others, is starting to show that there is a lot more biodiversity in the oceans then we previously thought,” said Joshua Drew, a marine conservation biologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and a member of the demoiselle study. “We really are in a situation where we are losing things before we even know they exist.”

The King demoiselle comes in a wide range of colours and patterns, but this alone is not enough to consider it several species. There are plenty of examples of fish that look very dissimilar from each other while still belonging to the same species.

However, what Dews’ colleagues discovered while doing field research in Southeast Asia was that the differences in appearance seemed to be linked to distinct geographical regions. In order to find out more, they decided to ship about a dozen King demoiselle samples to Drew, collected from three separate populations in Indonesia, the Philippines and the South China Sea.

In his laboratory, Drew analyzed the genetic composition of the samples, focusing on three different genes – one that has evolved slowly and two that have changed quickly over the years. What Drew found out was highly interesting: the two fast changing genes differed in the three geographical groups, but not the one slow changing one. This indicates that from an evolutionary perspective, the three groups diverged from each other quite recently.

“That means that this little fish we thought was broadly distributed has a mosaic of individual populations and each one is genetically distinct,” Drew explained. “That highlights how little we really know about how biodiversity on Earth is distributed.”

Earlier, scientists assumed that it was difficult for distinct populations of reef fish to form if they had small larvae easily caught by currents. It seemed reasonable to presume that larvae from many different geographical locations would intermingle with each other throughout the sea. New data, obtained from studies like the King demoiselle one, do however suggest that larvae often settle close to its point of origin.

The King demoiselle study will be published in the journal Coral Reefs.

http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/100407/?p=32f929fa7f60452da6d63226ec8898a6&pi=0

A Swedish woman vacationing with her family in Langkawi, Malaysia was killed by a jellyfish while bathing off the coast of Pantai Cenang.

Carina Löfgren was on her way back to the beach when she encountered the dangerous jellyfish just a few meters from the shore.

“Carina was walking roughly one meter in front of me,” her husband Ronny Löfgren told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. “It wasn’t deep; the water barely reached my trunks. Suddenly she started screaming violently and grasp at her legs. It made us realise that it was some kind of stinging jellyfish. We tried to remove the tentacles from her. It took four to five seconds, then she collapsed.”

Carina was dragged out of the water and her brother, who used to work as an emergency first responder, administered first aid with heart compressions and mouth-to-mouth.

“He administered CPR for four or five minutes”, Ronny Löfgren explained. “Then I replaced him. But I instantly felt that she was lifeless. She died in my arms.”

The ambulance reached the beach after 15 minutes. According to Ronny Löfgren they immediately understood that they could do nothing to help Carina at this point.

“One of them said ‘ah, jellyfish’ and shook his head. They tried to revive her for half a minute. Then they shook their heads again.”

Box Jellyfish

Box jellyfish are a group of invertebrates belonging to the class Cubozoa. One of the most dangerous members of this group is Chironex fleckeri, also known as the Sea wasp. Chironex fleckeri is found in the oceans of Australia and southeastern Asia and an average specimen contains enough venom to kill 60 adult humans.

“They can be very small and transparent which makes them difficult to spot”, says Swedish marine biologist Lars Hernroth. “Heart failure is the most common cause of death when stung by a sea wasp. In most cases, it happens extremely fast. The overall health condition of the victim will in part determine the victims’ resilience towards the venom.”

Hernroth believes it is important to ask local tourist information agencies about the jellyfish situation in the area. Some popular holiday destinations places nets in the water to catch jellyfish, but it will only work against the big ones – the small ones will slip through.

Swimmers stung by Chironex fleckeri often fail to make it back to the shore; they die from drowning or cardiac arrest within minutes. If a person does make it back he or she will be in need of immediate treatment, and even with proper treatment, fatalities are common. While administering first aid, make sure that some calls an ambulance. Chironex fleckeri antivenom does exist, but must be administered quickly. In areas where Chironex fleckeri is common, ambulances often carry antivenom – at least in developed parts of the world.

If you’re into interior design, you have probably encountered the online tools that allow you to try different types of interior designs online without breaking a sweat. With a simple drag and click you can move around heavy sofas, rearrange book shelves and try out 54 different types of rug.

But did you know that there is a very similar tool has been created for all the aquarium aficionados out there: the AquaSketcher. You start out by picking out an item, e.g. a plant, piece of wood or nice rock from a list, and then proceed to choose its colour, dimensions etc. Last but not least, you start placing your objects in the aquarium to see how well they go together. You can naturally go back and change things, gradually building towards the perfect setup.

Naturally, a tool like this has its limitations. Just as the tools developed for interior design it will only give you a hint about the final results, and it will naturally be impossible to find a plant, root or rock that looks exactly as in the picture. Also, you have to keep in mind that factors such as light play no small part in how we perceive a room or an aquarium. In an aquarium, water movements will also be of importance. Perhaps a later version of the AquaSketcher will allow you turn on your imaginary filter system to see the plants move with the current?

If you want to give the AquaSketcher a try you can find it here:

For the first time, a viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV or VHSv) has been identified in fish from Lake Superior, the largest of the five Great Lakes of North America.

The virus was identified by researchers at the Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and the finding has also been confirmed by the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle.

The virus causes viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) in fish and can result in significant losses in wild and captive raised fish populations.

“VHS is one of the most important diseases of finfish,” says James Winton, a VHSV expert working at the Western Fisheries Research Center. “It not only affects the health and well-being of populations of several important native fish species, but it can also impact trade, and, should it spread into the U.S. aquaculture industry, could do substantial damage as happened in Europe and parts of Japan.”

The infection is one of only nine fish diseases that must be reported to the World Organization for Animal Health. Until 2005 it was not known to exist in the Great Lake system but that year it caused several massive die-offs. Since then the virus has been detected in all of the Great Lakes except Lake Superior, and was for instance the culprit when 40,000 freshwater drums died in Lake Ontario over the course of just four days. In addition to the Great Lakes, the virus is also present in the rivers of Niagara and St. Lawrence and in inland lakes in New York, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Previous genetic research carried out by scientists in Canada and the United States show that the VHS virus was probably introduced to the Great Lakes during the last 5-10 years.

Experts now fear that current federal and state restrictions placed upon the movement of fish and fish products won’t be enough to prevent the virus from reaching native fish in the 31 states of the Mississippi River basin.

Viral hemorrhagic septicaemia (VHS) is a disease caused by a negative-sense single-stranded RNA virus of the genus Novirhabdovirus. Infected fish suffer from haemorrhaging of their internal organs, skin and muscles. Symptoms that can be observed from the outside includes reddened eyes, gills, skins and fin, opens sores, a bloated abdomen, and bulging eyes, but some fish show no outward signs at all.

The virus can spread through water transfer and through the consumption of infected eggs or fish, which means that baitfish can introduce the fish to new localities. A fish that manages to survive the disease can become a lifelong carrier of the virus, excreting it through its urine and sperm or ovarian fluids. In Europe, the gray heron is known to spread the virus without being infected; the virus appears to remain inactive as long as it resides in the digestive tract of the bird.

Different strains with different properties

Historically, VHS was associated with Western Europe where it was documented as a pathogenic disease among cultured salmonids as early as the 1950s. In 1963, the viral cause of the disease was discovered by M. H. Jenson. Until late 1988, VHSv Type I was the only known strain of the disease and it appeared to be contained within freshwater fish farms in continental Europe, affecting primarily rainbow trout and only occasionally brown trout and pike.

In 1988 the first case of VHS was reported from the United States and the culprit turned out to be a distinct, more marine-stable strain of VHSv than the European variant. The virus was present in salmon returning to Washington State from the Pacific Ocean. Today, we know of four different main strains and except for type IV, all of them are endemic to Europe.

The type IV virus can be divided into two subtypes: IV-a and IV-b. IV-a has been reported from marine fish living in the Northwest Pacific, along the North American north Atlantic coast, and along the shores of Japan and Korea. IV-b is the type causing problems for freshwater fish in the North American Great Lakes region.

The IV-b strain was first isolated from fish living off Canada’s Atlantic coast where it did not cause any high mortality rates. This strain is capable of infecting not only salmonids but a long row of warm-water freshwater species previously assumed to be resistant to VHS. The European strains are particularly deadly do rainbow trout, but the IV-b strain only have a mild affect on this species. It is on the other hand capable of killing fish such as chinook salmon, lake trout, steelhead trout, gobies, emerald shiners, yellow perch, walleye, muskies and whitefish.

The low temperatures that’s been holding the state of Florida in a firm grip this winter is causing troubles for tropical fish raised in outdoor ponds. Aquarium fish farmers report losing up to 50% of popular tropical species to the cold, and a severe guppy shortage has already emerged – boosted by the fact that Americans are more inclined to purchase guppies and other aquarium inhabitants during the winter season.

Roughly half of the tropical fish sold in the United States is raised in Florida, a state heavily dependant on its warm climate. The fist fish farmers showed up here as early as the 1930s when it was still possible to purchase cheap land around Miami, but nowadays a majority of the fish Florida farms is found in the lake-rich part of Florida located between Tampa and Orlando. Up until a few years ago, the number one cargo shipment out of Tampa International Airport was tropical fish.

Fish native to tropical parts of the world normally find it difficult to stay alive if the water temperature drops below 60 degrees F (15 degrees C) and even temperatures around 70 degrees F (20 degrees C) may have a detrimental effect on their immune system. It is therefore easy to imagine what happens if the air temperature suddenly drops below the freezing point - as it has done in Florida this winter.

And even in situations where the cold isn’t severe enough to instantly kill the fish it can send them into a sedentary state where they fail to hide from predators like hungry birds, especially if living in unplanted ponds offering few places to hide. Many fish eating birds have been forced to see their normal hunting grounds being sealed off by ice and fish farms struggling to keep the water temperature up constitute a highly appealing alternative when the hunger sets in.

In desperate attempts to save their fish from freezing to death or being eaten by predators, Florida farmers have been covering their ponds with plastic sheets and pumped in warm water. When the cold turned out to be more than just a short dip, those who could scrambled to get as many fish as possible indoors. Many farmers have been forced to prioritize older fish close to the size needed for shipping, leaving younger fry behind to die.

Farmers that have lost more than 50 percent of their fish are entitled to financial relief from the Department of Agriculture if they file a crop insurance claim.

The shipworm Teredo navalis is spreading to the Baltic Sea, threatening to destroy archaeological artefacts. Researchers* at Gothenburg University suspect that climate change is what’s making it possible for this species to spread and are now joining the EU project WreckProtect, a cooperative effort to assess which archaeological treasures are at risk. The project includes researchers from Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, as well as experts from France and Germany.

Not really a worm
Shipworms are not actually worms but saltwater clams with much reduced shells. They are notorious for borrowing into and gradually destroying wooden structures in saltwater; earning the nickname “termites of the sea”.

There are 65 different know species of shipworm but Teredo navalis is the only one currently known to spread into the Baltic Sea via the Great Belt. Teredo navalis forms up to 30 cm deep tunnels in submerged wood and is difficult to detect since it remains hidden inside the tunnel. It has a life expectancy of 3-4 years.

Teredo navalis can survive in a salinity of 4-6 practical salinity unit (PSU) for short periods of time but can not reproduce unless the salinity is at least 8 PSU. The salinity of the Baltic Sea decrease the further north you get with the Stockholm Archipelago sporting an average salinity of roughly 5 PSU.

The shipworm is capable of completely destroying large maritime archaeological finds in only 10 years, and while it has avoided the Baltic Sea in the past, since it does not do well in low salinity water, it can now be spotted along both the Danish and German Baltic Sea coasts.

14th century shipwrecks under attack

“Wrecks that have been resting unharmed since the 14th century have now been attacked off the coast of Rügen in Germany, and we are also noticing attacks along the Swedish coast, including destruction of the Ribersborg cold bath house in Malmö,” says Christin Appelqvist, doctoral student at the Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg.

Appelqvist and her colleagues suspect that increased water temperatures may be helping the shipworm to tolerate a lower salinity.

One of the objectives of project WreckProtect is to develop methods for the preservation and protection of shipwrecks. It might for instance be possible to cover the wrecks with geotextile and bottom sediment.

100,000 wrecks may be at risk
Thanks to the absence of Teredo navalis there is currently around 100,000 well preserved shipwrecks resting in the Baltic Sea, a true treasure for historians and archaeologists. If the shipworm continues to spread these ships may vanish before anyone has a chance to explore them.

“Around 100 wrecks are already infested in the Southern Baltic, but yet it hasn’t even spread past Falsterbo. We know it can survive the salinity of the Stockholm archipelago, although it needs water with higher salinity than that to be able to reproduce,” says Appelqvist.

* Christin Appelqvist, Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg
http://www.marecol.gu.se/Personal/Christin_Appelqvist/

* Jon Havenhand, Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg
http://www.tmbl.gu.se/staff/JonHavenhand.html

Picture credit: http://www.science.gu.se

Yesterday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its Hawaiian partners announced the first marine debris action plan to be implemented in the United States. The goal of the plan is to actively assess and remove man-made debris such as plastics and lost fishing gear from Hawaii’s coastal waters. Each year, thousands of pounds of marine debris wash ashore on this delicate island chain.

“We’ve all been working to address marine debris in Hawai‘i in our own way for years. It’s great to have a plan that we can all contribute to and work together on to tackle marine debris in Hawaii,” said Marvin Heskett, member of the Surfrider Foundation’s Oahu Chapter.

The plan establishes a cooperative framework for marine debris activities and aims to reduce

• the current backlog of marine debris
• fishing gear and solid waste disposal at sea
• land-based debris in waterways
• the number of abandoned and derelict vessels

“For too long marine debris has marred the natural beauty of our ocean and threatened our marine ecosystem,” said Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii. “I have long championed a coordinated effort to mitigate the many tons of debris that suffocate our coral, kill our fish and aquatic mammals and blanket our coastlines. This is a critical issue for our state and I am proud that Hawaii is taking the lead in finding a solution to this global problem.”

The Marine Debris Program has been developed by NOOA in cooperation with Hawaiian governmental agencies, NGO’s, academia, and private business partners. The plan builds on ongoing and past marine debris community efforts.

You can find the plan here. The site also has a video for download.

“Perhaps part of the reason the males are so likely to cheat is that females never punish males”, marine scientist says.

Male Labroides dimidiatus cleaner fish punish females that bite instead of clean (thus driving off the bigger fish) but females never punish males for doing exactly the same thing.

The Bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) lives on coral reefs where it feeds by removing parasites and dead tissue from the skin of larger fish. Most of the time the wrasse provides bigger fish with a valuable service, but sometimes the tasty mucus in front of the cleaner turns into an irresistible temptation, prompting the wrasse to bite off a mouthful. This is naturally not appreciated by the bigger fish and a cleaner wrasse who can’t control his or her urges will have to watch the big fish take off in a jiffy, taking all the nutritious parasites with it.

When a male fish notice a female fish scaring off the big fish they are cleaning together he will promptly punish her for her injudiciousness. This might seem altruistic, but the male fish is actually pissed off at her for making his dinner swim away.

“The male’s dinner leaves if the female cheats,” says Nichola Raihani from the The Zoological Society of London who has been studying Labroides dimidiatus together with research partner Redouan Bshary.

“By punishing cheating females, the males are not really sticking up for the clients but are making sure that they get a decent meal,” Raihani explains.

Raihani believes true altruism is rare.

“When you see something that looks like it’s altruistic, if you look hard enough, there’s normally going to be a benefit somewhere down the line for the person that’s doing that supposedly altruistic act,” she says.
Interestingly enough, a female fish that has to watch her dinner swim away because a male wrasse couldn’t leave the mucus alone never punishes the culprit.

“The males are less well behaved than the females a lot of the time but perhaps part of the reason the males are so likely to cheat is that females never punish males,” Dr Raihani told the Science podcast.

Males tend to be larger than females and this might be why the female finds it safer not to discipline him. All Bluestreak cleaner wrasses start out as females and in a group of 6-8 wrasses you will never find more than one male. If the male dies or is removed from the group, the strongest female will change into a male and take his place.

The wrasse study has been published in the journal Science.
You can download the podcast here: http://podcasts.aaas.org/science_podcast/SciencePodcast_100108.mp3

Out of the estimated 5.5 gigatonnes of carbon emitted each year by human activities, about 1.8 percent are removed from the air and stored by echinoderms such as starfish, sea urchins, brittle stars and sea lilies. This makes them less important “carbon sinkers” than plankton, but the finding is still significant since no one expected them to catch such a large chunk of our wayward carbon.

The new discovery is the result of a study* led by Mario Lebrato**, PhD student at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science. The work was done when he was at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and affiliated with the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES).

“I was definitely surprised by the magnitude of the values reported in this study, but [the study’s] approach seems sound, so the reported numbers are probably fairly accurate,” says palaeoceanographer Justin Ries of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ries also points out that these important creatures might be affected by ocean acidification.

“If the echinoderms end up being disproportionately susceptible to ocean acidification then it’s conceivable that the dissolving of echinoderm-derived sediments will be one of the earliest effects of ocean acidification on the global carbon cycle,” he explains. “In fact, maybe it already is.”
The body of an echinoderm consists of up to 80% calcium carbonate and according to the Lebrato study these hard-shelled animals collectively capture 100 billion tons of carbon each year.

“The realisation that these creatures represent such a significant part of the ocean carbon sink needs to be taken into account in computer models of the biological pump and its effect on global climate“, says Lebrato. “Our research highlights the poor understanding of large-scale carbon processes associated with calcifying animals such as echinoderms and tackles some of the uncertainties in the oceanic calcium carbonate budget. The scientific community needs to reconsider the role of benthic processes in the marine calcium carbonate cycle. This is a crucial but understudied compartment of the global marine carbon cycle, which has been of key importance throughout Earth history and it is still at present.”

The study has been published in the journal ESA Ecological Monographs.

* Mario Lebrato, Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, Richard Feely, Dana Greeley, Daniel Jones, Nadia Suarez-Bosche, Richard Lampitt, Joan Cartes, Darryl Green, Belinda Alker (2009) Global contribution of echinoderms to the marine carbon cycle: a re-assessment of the oceanic CaCO3 budget and the benthic compartments. Ecological Monographs. doi: 10.1890/09-0553.

** mlebrato13 [at]googlemail.com

Below you will find my review of the Reef One  60L/16 gallon BiOrb. The orb was provided to me by the company, but this is not paid advertising space. If I’ll end up hating the orb, you’ll know about it. Other companies that are interested in having their product reviewed here are welcomed to contact me, provided that they understand that giving me something for free doesn’t guarantee a positive review.

BiOrb 60 Classic Collection review – setting it up
I am going to start by saying a few words about Reef One. Reef One develops aquarium products sold in more than 20 countries. Their goal is to be innovative and offer new exiting products, and as a part of this quest they have developed a line of small aquariums and BiOrbs of which I will review the BiOrb 60.

This is an initial review based on my experiences of setting up the BiOrb. It will be followed by a second review when I have had the aquarium up and running for a few weeks and know how it works over time.

The BiOrb arrived as a big package in the mail; 60 cm x 60 cm (24 cm x 24 in). The parcel contains everything you need to setup a simple, basic beginner aquarium. You get a 5 stage internal filter, ceramic media, air pump, plug top 12 volt transformer, halogen light unit, water treatment, plastic plants and even some fish food. The equipment is plastic but does not feel cheap or tacky and can be used in most settings without looking out of place.

Included in the package is a manual on how to setup the tank, and I personally find the manual easy to understand and follow. It should allow even a beginner aquarist to set up his or her first aquarium without much ado. If you are an experienced fish keeper, you are probably already familiar with the steps of the manual that doesn’t specifically pertain to the orb itself.

As mentioned above, the BiOrb comes with its own filtration system. It is designed to promote biological filtration and is surprisingly quiet. Unlike many other filter systems, this one won’t be a problem in the bedroom or office. Since I haven’t had the BiOrb running for very long I don’t know if the filter system works well or not; I will get back to it in my follow up review.

The filter is designed to allow you to setup the BiOrb as a marine tank if you get the marine tank conversion kit, but I decided to set it up as a freshwater tank for this review because I believe that more people will use it for freshwater. After all, the quantity of freshwater aquarists vastly outnumbers that of marine fish keepers. If you decide to set it up as a marine tank it will give you the option to keep marine creatures that aren’t suitable for normally rectangular aquariums. Jellyfish are for instance prone to get stuck in corners, something that won’t be a problem in a sphere shaped tank like the BiOrb.

The BiOrb can be put to together in a short amount of time, but you should nevertheless wait at least a week or two before you add the fish since you need to cycle the aquarium first. This is true even if you use the included water treatment from Reef One or any other type of starter kit – regardless of what the bottles or the staff of your local fish store might say.

The tank looks good at once after it has been setup and I have at this point not found any problems with it. It seems like a good product at this point. The only thing I might complain about is that the advanced LED light that simulates real daylight isn’t included in the standard package, but that would on the other hand make the package more expensive and for most beginner aquarists the included halogen lights will suffice.

I must however admit that I might be a bit hesitant to buy this product myself for one reason and one reason alone: the price. Sure, it is a nice product, but you could get a larger tank for the same price – or the same size for a lower price – if you went for a regular rectangular or square tank. In other words; the BiOrb is a fine tank but at £164.99* it is a pricy choice. Is it worth the money? Well, that’s up to you and will depend on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a low-cost beginner tank, than no, I wouldn’t recommend the BiOrb. If you on the other hand have some extra cash to spend and are in the market for a sleek orb that fits your interior design in a highly visible space like your living room or corporate office, than yes, this might be the right one for you.

You can read more about Reef One and their product line on their webpage, where you can also order their products.

*£164.99 is 264 USD or 183 Euros.

If you’re an environmentally conscious golf enthusiast you probably cringe at the shear notion of playing golf near the shoreline or practise your swing onboard a yacht or cruise ship where the risk of your balls ending up in the ocean is high.

To remedy the problem with awol golf balls polluting our oceans, Barcelona based golf ball manufacturer Albus Golf has created a 100% biodegradable and non-toxic golf ball filled with fish food. According to the company, the outer part of the ball will biodegrade within 48 hours after ending up in the water, giving the oceanic fauna free access to the tasty fish food inside.

Around the globe, more and more costal regions outlaw the use of ordinary golf balls near the shore since they have a tendency to end up in the ocean where their durable plastic materials live on “forever”. Our ever increasing production of plastic and other materials that are difficult to break down have caused the formation of five enormous trash vortexes in the ocean; areas to where sea currents bring the floating debris we throw into our oceans and waterways each day. The largest of them, the Great Pacific Trash Vortex, currently covers an area twice the size of the continental U.S.

Throughout December, hundreds of sea lions vanished from the San Francisco bay area only to show up later in the Oregon Sea Lion Caves. The Oregon Sea Lion Caves are a connected system of sea caves and caverns located along the Pacific coast of Oregon and a popular hangout for sea birds such as the tufted puffin, pigeon guillemot, Brandt’s cormorant, and various types of gulls. The caves are also an important wintering home for the Stellar Sea Lion and – to a lesser extent –the California Sea Lion.

“We’re seeing the sea lions coming up this way from California because of the feeding. If the cold water fish move north to find colder waters, the sea lions have to eat and they follow the fish wherever they go,” says Sea Lion Caves General Manager Dan Harkins.

So, how can the cave staff know for sure who’s a visitor from California and who isn’t? Apparently, sea lions have dialects; just like us humans.

“We can identify them by the sound of their voice. They have a barking noise rather than a grumbling or a growling that Stellers do,” says Harkins.

The Sea Lion Caves were first explored in 1880 by local resident Captain William Cox. On a calm day, the captain entered the grotto through the western channel in his small boat. During a later expedition he was reportedly marooned due to stormy weather and had to survive by shooting a sea lion and eating its flippers. In 1887 Captain Cox purchased the land from the State of Oregon and the cave system has been privately owned and managed ever since.

Thousands of dead octopuses have washed up on a beach in northern Portugal. So far, no one has been able to explain what’s happened to them.

According to BBC News the incident is being called “an environmental disaster”, but the truth is that at this stage, we do not know if this is an environmental disaster or not. What we do know is that the dead animals cover a 5-mile stretch of Portugal beach near the city of Vila Nova de Gaia in the Porto District; a district chiefly know for storing and aging the celebrated Port wine.

Portuguese authorities have issued a statement warning the public not to eat the carcasses.

BBC News has posted a video from the scene:

The red snapper population living in the Gulf of Mexico is showing signs of recovery, according to new information obtained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States (NOAA).

“The update showed harvest levels were still a bit too high in 2008; however, scientific projections are promising for 2009, indicating that the stock may improve enough to support higher harvest levels,” said Dr. Bonnie Ponwith, Southeast Fisheries Science Center director for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “This is very exciting news and is evidence of how science and management can work together to protect our natural resources.”

In response to a rapidly dwindling red snapper population, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council began restricting red snapper fishing in the mid-1980s and in 2007 a catch share program was implemented for commercial fishermen.

“This has been our most challenging fishery issue in the Gulf of Mexico to date,” said Dr. Roy Crabtree, southeast regional administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “The Gulf Council deserves a lot of credit for making some very difficult decisions and commercial and recreational fishermen deserve equal credit for complying with the regulations to help this species recover.”

The red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico is managed separately from the population living along the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and eastern Florida. In December 2009, NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced a temporary rule to protect the red snapper along this coastline as the population is in poor condition, much like the Gulf of Mexico population used to be. The temporary rule will become effective today, January 4th.

For more information please see the NOAA News Release.