Right Whales

Scientists from NOAA and its state and nonprofit partners have applied at-sea chemical sedation to successfully free a young North Atlantic Right Whale off the coast of Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA.

This is only the second time a free-swimming whale has been successfully sedated to enable disentanglement. The first case also concerned a whale spotted off the coast of Florida and occurred in March 2009.

In the most recent case, a female Right Whale born during the 2008-2009 calving season had roughly 200 feet (60 meters) of rope wrapped through her mouth and around the flippers when an aerial survey team spotted her on December 25. Five days later a disentanglement team from Georgia Department of Natural Resources and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was able to remove about 150 feet (45 meters) of rope from her. Unfortunately, they couldn’t safely get the rest of the rope off her and this is why NOAA decided to sedate her, after having tracked her via satellite tag for half a month to see if the remaining rope would come off on its own.

“Our recent progress with chemical sedation is important because it’s less stressful for the animal, and minimizes the amount of time spent working on these animals while maximizing the effectiveness of disentanglement operations,” says Jamison Smith, Atlantic Large Whale Disentanglement Coordinator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “This disentanglement was especially complex, but proved successful due to the detailed planning and collective expertise of the many response partners involved.”

On January 15, researchers deemed that the Right Whale wouldn’t be able to free herself from the remaining 50 feet (15 meters) of rope without assistance. The weather was favorable for a rescue mission and a disentanglement team comprised of scientists from NOAA, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, University of Florida, EcoHealth Alliance , and Coastwise Consulting (was dispatched into the Atlantic. Back on shore, the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies and the New England Aquarium got ready to provide off-site assistance.

The entangled Right Whale was fitted with a temporary satellite tag that would record her behavior before, during and after sedation. She was then sedated and had ropes as well as mesh material removed from her. The mesh resembled mesh used to catch fish, crabs and lobsters along the Atlantic coast and NOAA’s Fisheries Service is currently examining it in an effort to determine its geographic origin.

Once the whale had been freed from the garbage, the researchers administered a drug that reversed the sedation. The whale also received some antibiotics to threat the wounds caused by the debris. She will now be tracked for up to 30-days through the temporary satellite tag.

If you see an entangled or otherwise injured whale you are encouraged to report it to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (1-888-404-FWCC or 1-888-404-3922) or the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (1-800-2-SAVE-ME or 1-800-272-8366).

Red snapper

A large amount of New Zealand’s seagrass have been killed by sediments released from land development. The seagrass bed at Whangarei Harbour has for instance been reduced from 14 sq km in the 1960s to virtually non-existant today. And sedimentation this is not a new problem – between 1959 and 1966 Tauranga Harbour lost 90 per cent of its seagrass.

Researchers at New Zealands’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research are now fitting the floor of the Whangapoua Estuary with plastic seagrass in an attempt to show how New Zealand’s fish stocks could be boosted by restoring the seagrass habitats. The “seagrass” consists of plastic fronds attached to wire frames, and the length of the fronds varies from 5 cm to 30 cm.

“We made them with tantalising long blades of artificial grass, the things fish really go for,” says NIWA fisheries ecologist Dr Mark Morrison. “What we found, initially, is that fish are really looking for shelter and seagrasses provide good protection to fish.”

The largest density of fish could be found where the density of seagrass was also at its largest.

Fish is now being tagged to make it possible for the researchers to track both growth rate and survival rate.

When salmon is farmed in large-scale monocultures, the fish tend to become susceptible to disease and parasites. Researchers working for the organization Nofima have now found a way of combating the parasite salmon lice in fish farms without using any dangerous toxins. Wrasse loves to eat lice, so the researchers simply added wrasse to the salmon populations and the result was astonishing.

During the trials, the most efficient lice eater turned out to be the Ballan wrasse (Labrus bergylta). In addition to being highly efficient, it also gathered lice at lower temperatures than the other Wrasse species that took part in the experiment.

When Ballan wrasse was used, roughly 2-5% wrasse was needed for salmon living in sea cages. This means that a population of 100 000 salmon will need somewhere between 2 000 and 5 000 wrasse to stay deloused. A new larger project will now be prepared to make sure there is an adequate supply of the lice eaters in Norway. The project will go on for three years and has received funding from The Fishery and Aquaculture Industry Research Fund (FHF).

The effort which is now commencing is unique in both a Norwegian and global context. Norway is the only salmon-producing country that is using wrasse on a large scale to combat salmon lice,” says Arne Karlsen, managing director of FHF.

Removing large amounts of Ballan wrasse from the wild to keep in salmon farms could cause serious damage to the wild populations and the goal of the Norwegian project is therefore to cover at least 25% of the demand with farmed wrasse by 2013.

In addition to Nofima and FHF, the project will also involve SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture, the Institute of Marine Research and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Several Norwegian projects are already taking a closer look at the Ballan wrasse, including a research venture concerning Ballan wrasse farming that started last year with funding totaling NOK 12 million from the Research Council of Norway, FHF and industry partners.

” It is estimated that the total Norwegian effort on Ballan wrasse farming is in the vicinity of NOK 100 million,” says Kjell Maroni, research and development director at FHF

The researchers will now have to find out how to carry out large-scale wrasse farming without being plagued by the same problems with disease and parasites as the salmon farms.



The government, no doubt panicking over the effects of recent shark attacks on tourism, is destroying the delicate ecological balance in the coastal regions of South Sinai, as well as hurting tourism, Sharm experts and divers have charged.

Some leading figures in the Sharm El-Sheikh’s diving community are now pointing the finger at the government, accusing them of going on a witch hunt, albeit for sharks, which is indiscriminate and involves more shark massacre than was ever publicly announced.

The divers have gone so far as to even launch their own Facebook group, complete with online petition, calling on the support of everyone in stopping authorities from engaging in shark genocide.

“They killed eight sharks in an area of 10 square kilometers,” director of the Aquamarine Diving And Water Sports Club, Dr. Amr Aboulfat’h, commented to Ahram Online. “Four were killed by the National Park Authorities, and four were killed by the National Institute for Oceanography and Fisheries (NIOF).”

Another source, who has requested to remain anonymous, has shed some additional light on the subject, saying that four of the sharks have been seen on Travco Jetty, and were later given over to Alexandria’s NIOF this past Monday.

The government doesn’t have much to say on the subject, except to deny any and all allegations about the shark massacre. The killing has to stop, but no one is taking responsibility.
“Who decided that it was one shark initially, and then two? And now more? And how come an authority that is responsible for protecting marine life assume the responsibility of such slaughter,” exclaimed a disdained Dr. Aboulfat’h.

Only time will tell what will become of the poor sharks.

A researcher has commented that this past Wednesday his team has discovered that a local freshwater salmon species classified as extinct by the government about seven decades ago, still lives on in Lake Saiko.

Tetsuji Nakabo, Kyoto University professor, commented that he took a look at nine fish from the lake and discovered that they were strikingly similar – in fact the same as – the “kunimasu” or “black kokanee” species of salmon.

If this find is confirmed, it will be the very first time a fish species in Japan which has been classified as extinct has been found living still, the Environment Ministry explained. The ministry has commented it is going to do its best to verify the claims of Nakabo and review its classification of the salmon.

The salmon, a landlocked sockeye, had been seen earlier on only in Lake Tazwa, and was believed to have died off due to an inflow of toxic water sometime in the 1940’s.

However, Nakabo explained there are records which show the salmon’s eggs were taken to other lakes, including Lake Saiko and Lake Biwa, to help improve stocks about half a decade earlier than when they supposedly went extinct.

The species “likely propagated from the eggs from that time,” Nakabo explained.

This discovery came in February, after Nakabo asked fish expert Sakana-kun to show a likeness of the extinct fish.

Sakana-kun requested samples of “himemasu” – a fish similar to that of the “kunimasu” – and discovered they were very similar, and just possibly the same!

Bowhead whales - No connection to the incident.

Foreign Minister McCully has raised the alarm to anti-whaling protesters that ships of Japanese origin will be armed to the teeth, and cautions activists to keep an eye out.

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Minister for Natural Environment Fisheries, Richard Benyon, has cautioned that the sustainability of mackerel in the future is at risk.

This calamity is already being called “Cod Wars II”.

The EU and Britain are on the brink of a serious trade battle with Iceland and the Faroe Islands after discussions about changing fishing quotas failed miserably.

Faroes and Iceland have both increased their fishing quotas substantially, and have basically up and walked out of discussions with the EU, which were supposed to find a middle ground agreeable to all concerned.

The other nations of the EU – including Britain, much to everyone’s surprise – are looking to take some extreme actions which might just force Iceland and the Faroes to limit the amount of mackerel they reel in.

There has already been talk of trade sanctions which would effectively ban the import of mackerel.

This is very much like the Cod Wars of the 50’s and 70’s, when Britain and Iceland were fighting over the rights to fish in the North Atlantic.

It got so serious that even the Royal navy was called in to put a stop to boats from Iceland who were getting in the way of the British trawlers.

But something needs to be done.. Both Iceland and the Faroes have given themselves quotas which are way larger than five years ago. So… There may be sanctions, or there may be interference with boats and fishing operations, whatever is going to happen, “Cod War II” promises to be very interesting indeed.

The deep sediment cores brought up from the sea floor of the Bering Sea have shown that the area was devoid of ice the entire year, and the amount of biological activity was high during the last warm period in the history of the Earth.

Professor of ocean sciences at the University of California , Christina Ravelo, is going to share these incredible findings during a presentation this December 13th at the fall reunion of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Ravelo and her right hand man Kozo Takahashi of Kyushu University in Japan went on a two month journey aboard their research boat dubbed “JOIDES Resolution”. The crack team of scientists bore down seven hundred meters through the rock and mud to get sediments which fell there during the Pliocene Warm Period, which took place some three and a half to four and a half million years ago.
“Evidence from the Pliocene Warm Period is relevant to studies of current climate change because it was the last time in our Earth’s history when global temperatures were higher than today,” Ravelo explained.

The levels of carbon dioxide during the Pliocene Warm Period were pretty similar to today, and the temperatures on the whole were a few degrees more, she went on. The researchers of climate have an interest in what this warm period might be able to tell us about global warming, especially when it comes to the poles.

Ravelo and her team found evidence that the poles were also getting warmer in the Pliocene Warm Period. By taking a look at the sediment samples they can calculate the average temperatures of the sea, and the Bering Sea was at least five degrees warmer than it is today, while the average temperatures were only three degrees warmer than today.

Maybe we will finally get some insight into the whole polar ice melting question, as it didn’t happen then, so maybe we have evidence that it won’t happen now…

The cold spells experienced earlier on in the year have resulted in the record for killed manatees in 2010. Since the beginning of the year, up until the 5th of December, researchers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute has counted a staggering 699 dead manatees floating about in state waters.

This number of deaths is double the average of killed manatees over the past half decade.

It was quite a shock to see so many cold related manatee deaths this year. What’s more astonishing that the number, is how far it was spread out. It spread throughout much of the State of Florida to as far south as the Everglades and even the Florida Keys – which aren’t normally known for cold related deaths of manatees.

Even though this cold spell was natural, the number of manatee deaths has drawn attention to the fact that warmer waters are needed for the species to pull through.

“We are very concerned about the unusually high number of manatee deaths this year. Data from our monitoring programs over the next few years will tell us if there are long-term implications for the population,” explains Gil McRae, the director of FWRI.”The cold-related deaths this past winter emphasize the importance of warm-water habitat to Florida’s manatees. Maximizing access for manatees to natural warm-water sites will continue to be a focus for the FWC and our partners moving forward.”

While there hasn’t been any forthcoming suggestions, there will be more research done into the matter and a solution proposed, hopefully sooner rather than later.

NOAA’s Fisheries Service has proposed that four subspecies of ringed seals – which generally are found in the Arctic Basin and the North Atlantic – and two distinct populations of bearded seals – who make their home in the Pacific Ocean – be placed on the threatened list under the Endangered Species Act.

The reasoning behind putting these animals on the threatened list is due to disappearing sea ice, and diminishing snow cover. The models used to predict the amount of sea ice and snow in the future were from NOAA.

It’s not such a strange request. You see, one of the subspecies of ringed seals is already on the ESA endangered list. Under the new rules proposed by the Federal Register, the other four subspecies of the ringed seals would also be listed as being threatened.

The pups of the ringed seals are generally born in snow caves in the early spring, and are susceptible to low temperatures and being eaten by predators if they don’t have the snow caves for shelter. The changing climate can reduce the amount of snow cover, and rising temperatures can change when the ice breaks up every spring. However, the biggest reason that the ringed seals are being put on the list is that they only give birth to one pup every year, and this can make it hard for them to bounce back from harsh challenges imposed by the rapidly changing climate.

Much for the same reasons, the bearded seal has also been proposed to fall into the same category.