Coral bleaching. Picture: Bruno de Giusti

The Wildlife Conservation Society has recently released an initial report stating that there was a drastic rise in the surface temperatures in the waters of Indonesia, and has caused a massive bleaching event which has really sent coral populations into a tail spin.

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s “Rapid Response Unit”, a group of highly trained marine biologists, was sent out to take a look into the coral bleaching reported in May. This bleaching event occurred in Aceh, located on the northern side of the island of Sumatra, and the team discovered that over 60% of the coral population was bleached.

This “Bleaching” – coral turning white when algae which has previously made its home there gets booted out – is indicative of stress on the coral by any number of environmental factors. It could be the temperature of the ocean’s surface, or any other number of things. Depending on what exactly is the root cause of the issue, bleached coral may renew itself overtime or just die off.

The sad state of affairs, is it appears that this batch of coral is following the latter… A second monitoring by the marine ecologists at the WCS, James Cook University, and Syiah Kuala University have been completed since early August and the results are very grim indeed.

The group discovered that 80 percent of some of the species of coral have died off since their initial assessment and even more of the coral colonies are expected to die off within the next couple of months..

Someone really needs to get to the bottom of this, and soon.. Or we may find ourselves with no coral in our oceans.

Leatherback Turtle

Well, they say turtles are slow, but this particular beauty made a surprise comeback to a Malaysian beach after an astonishing 32 years. A report issued Friday hailed this return as a “miracle” by conservationists and rekindling hope that the endangered species is not quite gone yet.

The leatherbacks, the biggest of all the sea turtle species, were at one time the stars of the show at Rantau Abang beach in the northern state of Terengganu. However, overfishing, poaching, and pollution have caused the population of these turtles to take a nose dive over the years, to the point of being critically endangered.

This turtle, aptly named “Puteri Rantau Abang” or Rantau Abang Princess, and identified by some special markings, had returned last month to finally end the long period of time that turtle sightings were rare, which began in Terengganu in the 1980’s.

“It is a miracle that leatherback turtles are making a comeback to this area,” commented, Ahamad Sabki Mahmood, the Malaysian Fisheries Department director-general.

He went on to explain that the return of this turtle proves that Rantau Abang is once again being made a nesting ground for turtles, he is hoping that the next possible nesting period between the 15th of August and 20th of August that more turtles will make an appearance.

This just goes to show you that old habits die hard, and that mother nature triumphs over all. Hopefully the future turtles which land at the beach will receive as warm a welcome.

Photographers are shooting photos of marsh grass and brushes of mangrove tree which are already showing a marked improvement, in a bay where just mere months ago, the same photographers were shooting images of dying pelicans smothered in the oppressie black oil from the Gulf Of Mexico oil spill.

Over a dozen researchers who were interviewed by The Associated Press have said that the marsh in the bay, as well as all along the coast of Louisiana, has begun to heal itself. This gives rise to the hope that the delicate wetlands might just pull through what is said to be the worst offshore oil spill in the history of the United States. Some marshland might just need to be written off, however the losses from the spill will seem laughable when compared to the large losses on the coast every year attributed to normal human development.

This past Tuesday, a small voyage through the Barataria Bay marsh revealed that there were thin shoots growing up through the mass of oily grasses. In other areas, there were still dead mangrove shrubs, no doubt killed by the oil, however even they showed signs of growth.

“These are areas that were black with oil,” explained, a temporary worker with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Matt Boasso.

It’s nice to know that when push comes to shove, mother nature still has a lot of shove left in her, and she won’t be letting a little thing like an oil spill get in the way of our planet’s ecology.

Inuit

A Canadian judge in the northern province of Nunavut has curtailed the plans of several joint German-Canadian Arctic experiments after Inuit residents commented that the testing could harm marine life, sources from within the government revealed on Monday.

A judge for the territory, granted a last minute injunction this past Sunday, putting a hold on a major seismic program that was set to begin Monday in Lancaster Sound, north of Baffin Island.

The experiments, which were designed to help unearth the early history of our planet, were being carried out by Natural Resources Canada in conjunction with the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.

Susan Cooper, a fellow Justice, was in complete agreement with the fears that the Inuit communities were expressing, that the experiments, including the firing of an air gun under the water to collect data, could have a negative effect on the walruses, seals and whales in the area.

While the devices would not prove fatal to the sea creatures, it could possible make them deaf, and scare them away from the area for an extended period of time, explains an attorney for the Inuit, David Crocker.

“If the Inuit are right, they could lose their livelihood, their food source, their way of life,” Crocker commented to the AFP.

The Canadian government has not commented if it will appeal the decision or not.

So it looks like, for the time being at least, that the plans for gaining knowledge of the area have been put on ice, and if an appeal isn’t made soon, the tests will need to be conducted next year instead.

Hawksbill turtle

Two years after their detainment, 13 poachers, from Vietnam, who were caught with the dead bodies of 101 endangered Hawksbill turtles (known in scientific circles as Eretmochelys imbricata) near El Nido, northern Palawan, in the Philippines, have finally been convicted and sentenced to hefty fines along with some jail time.

On the 22nd of June, The Regional Trial Court of Puerto Princesa, Branch 50, after much deliberation, decided that the Vietnamese poachers should face jail time for their heinous acts, and will receive anywhere from 6 to 18 months, plus have some hefty fines to pay.

Since the poachers have been sitting in jail since the 2nd of September 2008, the court also decided that they will only have to cough up the money for the fines.

Two Filipino gunboats apprehended the Vietnamese boat transporting the poachers five miles east of Cabaluan Island near El Nido on August the 29th 2008. In a sheer act of desperation, the 13 crew members aboard the boat tried to sink her by flooding the holds, however were preented from doing so by law enforcement officers.

When the cargo holds were explored, they discovered the corpses of 101 Hawksbill Turtles, classified as being critically endangered, which is the highest risk rating for any living animal. This rating was handed down by the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, some time ago.

So, they did the crime, they served the time, now all that remains is for them to pay the fine… Although, is it really enough? Did the poachers learn their lesson? Or were they simply sorry they were caught?

The warm, white sand beach stretches as far as the eye can see, and is as clean and flat as freshly laundered towels.

The light blue-green sea is so clear, you can see the sun gleam off the silver colored fish frolicking around..

Sounds nice doesn’t it? This is the scene at the Pensacola Beach, on the Gulf Coast of Florida.. But there is one thing missing… Where are all the tourists?

Normally, at this time of year, you would be hard pressed to get even standing room on the beach, but now the beach is almost like one of those private oasis’ you hear about on TV.

So, why are the tourists staying away? It all boils down to one chaotic day last June.. This was the day the Obama administration made the announcement that the BP oil spill was “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.” Well you know what happens next. News Networks from all over raced on down to the Pensacola Beach and quickly found what they were seeking – atrocious images of the famous white sandy beaches, smothered with gruesome black ooze, and apparently in dire straights.

This apocalyptic message was strengthened when interviews were conducted with locals of the area. “It’s damn near biblical. This place is done for!” commented Kevin Reed, a 36 year old man, whose family has had the pleasure of swimming and sunbathing in the area for years and years.

His sadness was entirely understandable.

Yet, as has been witnessed this past week, not only is the beach not “done for”, the exact opposite seems to be the truth. Not only that, but had the news crews bothered to go back just three short days after they originally raced down to the beach in the first place, they would have noticed that the black goo had already been removed by a group of the large team BP had put together to clean up the mess.

Now, the BP workers are still on site – however, they are using small instruments to sift out the tiniest particles of oil.

However, a nice clean beach after a “catastrophic” oil spill, doesn’t make for good news does it? I mean who wants to listen to that?

Not the compensation claimants and their sharks, not the politicians, and not even the green lobby tub-thumpers.
So, the going theory is that they made the whole thing up, to help bolster Obama’s image, and get the attention off things that were mainstream news not too long ago.. Remember the story that Obama was using a Fake Social Security Number? How about the other dirt that was brought into the light? True or not, those stories were very damaging to not only Obama, but to the administration as well..

So what better way than to have a “catastrophe” and then have Obama come out the hero?

You will of course need to draw your own conclusions.. But there are a lot of people who finds this scenario a bit fishy… We here at AC are happy just to conclude that it has been a disaster in its own right and see no need to quantify it.

The area of the census ranges from Japanese to Australian waters.

Japan along with Australia have some of the world’s most diverse oceans, however thousands of the marvelous creatures in their deeps, remain unknown to man, and global warming is a major concern, suggests a newly performed census.

Both Japan and Australia are the proud owners of 33,000 some odd known species, according to a decade long scientific survey of the life in the sea, aptly dubbed “What lives in the Sea”.

However, there could be more than 200,000 species in the vast waters of Australia, which are surrounded by three oceans and four seas, which extend from the icy southern pole, to the coral-rich tropics.

“This constitutes a vast array of highly diverse habitats and ocean features, but many have received limited if any exploration,” wrote Alan Butler, from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, who is the lead author of the work.

The majority of the 33,000 species which were noted for Australia were animals, including fish, seabirds and of course marine mammals, with an astonishing rate of new fish and shark species being found on a continuing basis. Butler has guessed that only about 20 percent of Australia’s total marine species have been discovered to date.

Life was most densely populated in the northeast, which is where the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef makes its home, and is cock full of turtles, colorful corals, dolphins and dugongs.

“Australia is of tremendous ecological interest,” explained Jessie Ausubel, a representative for the marine census. “It is advanced in creating protected marine areas, around coral reefs but also around its deep-sea areas.”

A representative of Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Katsunori Fujikura, has commented that somewhere in the vicinity of 155,000 species have been spotted in the waters surrounding Japan, which only accounts for a mere 30 percent of all estimated life, and only 33,000 have been officially recorded on the books.

“The reason why such high diversity occurs is undoubtedly the varied environments existing in Japanese waters,” explained Fujikura.

Japan’s waters are just about 11 times larger than the land area, and they feature coral reefs, ince bound seas and trenches (which can be up to 10 kilometers deep). The strong ocean currents in the area, mean that roughly 5 percent of the species found there are actually unique to Japanese waters.

By contrast, 19 percent of New Zealand’s 17,000 marine species are found only around the isolated island state, and Antarctica’s Southern Ocean also hosts many species not found anywhere else.

“Most species in the Southern Ocean are rare, with over half of the known benthic (sea-bed) species having only been found once or twice,” explainedHuw Griffiths, a report author, from the British Antarctic Survey.

The extremely remote, and even hostile, Antarctic region is the home to 8,000 some odd recorded species, with sponges, small crustaceans, and moss animals richly represented.

However, over 90 percent of the marine environment is over one kilometer below the waves, and less thn 10 percent of the total deep-sea area has been explored, “implying there are still a great many species yet to be described” Griffiths explained.

BP

It has been over 3 weeks since BP has capped its spewing oil well. The skimming operations to help clean up the mess have all but ground to a halt, and researchers are saying that less than a third of the oil remains in the Gulf of Mexico.

That being the case, wildlife officials are finding more birds covered in the black sticky substance than ever. Fledgling birds are getting stuck in the viscous goo that is left behind after the cleanup efforts have passed on. Rescue workers are making initial visits to the rookeries they had initially avoided, lest they disturb the precious creatures during their nesting time.

What is really disturbing, is that before BP capped off their well on the 15th of July, an average of 37 birds were being pulled in dead or alive each day. Now, after the fact, that figure has doubled up to 71 per day. This information comes to us courtesy of a Times-Picayune review of the daily wildlife rescue reports.

The number of sea turtles discovered is even higher, with more of the poor things covered in the sticky black stuff being found in the last 10 days, than during the disaster’s first three months.

While the increase of oily turtles being found is still stumping researchers, the wildlife officials have said there are several things that could be contributing to the increase in the number of oiled birds being found since the leak was stopped.

Whatever the reasons, something has to be done about the situation, however, no efforts are being focused on that at this point in time.

Bighead Carp

This past June a bighead carp was reeled in near Lake Michigan, and it seems highly likely that it spent just about its entire life in the Great Lakes.

This whopper of a fish, weighing in at 9 kilograms, was reeled in in Lake Calumet on the 22nd of June this year. This was the first Asian carp which was reeled in on the wrong side of the electric barriers placed underwater strategically near Chicago to help prevent this invasive species from moving up the Mississippi River system and make its way into the Great Lakes.

Scientists at the Illinois Aquaculture Center, in conjunction with researchers at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Fisheries, were analyzing the chemical markers in the inner ear bones of the carp and just released their results this past Thursday.

As fish mature, their bones take in the chemicals from their ambient surroundings, and will contain the unique chemical footprint of where the fish had made its home.

“It is very plausible that this fish originated in the Illinois River and then moved or was transported to Lake Calumet or Lake Michigan during the early portion of its life,” the Illinois Aquaculture center’s director, Jim Garvey commented during a session..

The assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, John Rogner, has said that the results from the tests indicate that the fish may have been put into the Lake by humans.

It has been known that East Asian Buddhists sometimes let fish go as a practice of their religion.

For this reason, the sale of Asian carp has been banned in Ontario and many U.S. States, and their transporting them live across state lines is also prohibited.

Oyster bed

There’s no need to worry – oyster herpes is not transferable to humans by eating “the food of love”.

This incurable, not to mention deadly, virus is a grave concern to the fishing communities in Europe. Oyster herpes is on the rise in Europe, and could go on spreading itself out even further, should the seas continue to get warmer, experts warn.

This past July farmed oysters were tested and the first known United Kingdom cases of herpes was detected in shellfish. This virus has already made its mark, killing somewhere between 20 and 100 percent of the breeding pacific oysters in some French beds from 2008 until 2010, according to, Ifemer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea.

The reason that oyster herpes has been emerging more in Pacific oysters off of England still has scientists stumped, however many are speculating that Global Warming has something to do with it.

A new strain of Oyster herpes (Ostreid herpesvirus), remains dormant until the temperature of the water exceeds 16 degrees Celsius. UK waters reach this temperature in the height of summer, according to a member of the British government’s Fish Health Inspectorate, Kevin Denham.

Keeping that fact in mind, the director of Ifemer’s genetic and pathology lab, Tristan Renault, has commented that global warming “could be an explanation of the appearance of this particular type of virus.”

Though all of the herpes strains are DNA-based viruses, herpes, which infects everything from elephants to chickens to monkeys, comes in an astonishing number of species, each with their own distinct set of symptoms.

In humans, the best known forms of herpes are the Herpes simplex viruses, which spread through close contact and can produce symptoms such as oral and genital blisters.

Ostreid herpes viruses have been shown to affect not only oysters, but also scallops, clams and other scallops, explains Renault.

New Oyster Herpes

Shellfish who are infected with herpes are not new to the scientific world, however, in 2008 – the first year where there was a marked increase in the mortality rates detected in France – Ifremer stumbled upon a new strain of the virus.

Much like the other strains of the oyster herpes virus which infect mollusks, this new strain singles out younger oysters during the breeding season when the bodies of the mollusks’ are focusing all their energy on producing sperm and eggs, leaving them without enough energy to maintain their immune system Renault explains.

However, this new strain of oyster herpes is “more virulent than strains we have identified before,” Renault continued, adding that the virus is extremely efficient when it comes to killing its hosts, and can eradicate 80 percent of the oysters in a bed inside a week.

The most starting thing about this new strain of oyster herpes, is that the only visible sign there is something amiss, is the mortality rate, because oyster herpes does not have any visible symptoms, and can only be diagnosed through a lab test.