Tiger shark - Credit: Richard Ling

Hunters taking advantage of a Japanese delicacy are thought to be the reason that shark stocks have drastically declined off the Gold Coast beaches.

Some astounding numbers revealed yesterday that shark nets had reeled in forty less sharks in the past year, compared to the same time frame in 2001/02.

Trevor Long, director of marine sciences for Sea World, revealed last night that over fishing by thriteen commercial shark hunters in the area had led to the steep decline in the shark population.

It is common knowledge that hunters have been reeling in sharks to harvest their valuable shark fins, which are part of the “shark fin soup” craze sweeping Japan.

In the 2001-02 fiscal year, seventy-eight sharks were reeled in in nets off the Coast, however by 2009-10 that number had dropped to thirty-seven.

This year, between the months of January and September, twenty-five sharks have been reeled in in shark nets and drumlines.

The largest shark reeled in was an impressive three-point-nine meter male greater hammerhead and ten were over two meters long.

Mr Long has commented that the shark populations declining was not the world’s best thing for the health of the world’s oceans.

“If we didn’t have sharks the whole marine ecosystem would become unbalanced – they are the top of the food chain and ensure the survival of the fittest,” Mr Long explained.
“It’s a worrying trend that shark numbers all over the world are dropping.”

The big question is, is it worth making an entire species extinct to get a bowl full of an exotic soup? Some say yes, others say no, however the general consensus is that we should take the poor shark off our dinner menus, before it’s too late.

Sealion

Some dogs chase cars, some chase bikes, others chase… sea lions? Yes, it appears that some dogs don’t limit the things they chase to just things on land apparently.

It seems a dog needed to be rescued after chasing a sea lion for over four kilometers out to sea in Southern Australia.

The dog, a crossbreed named Westie, was out taking a walk with his master along the beach when he suddenly took off into the water after a sea lion and simply refused to come back, the Portside Messenger reported.

Soon the sea lion and Westie were out of sight, somewhere over the horizon as the sea lion led Westie farther and farther from the shore, leaving his owner feeling helpless.

Craig Van Tenac, a Semaphore Surf Life Saving Club captain, was part of the efforts to rescue Westie.

“I’d say it was four kilometers offshore – that dog swam forever,” he commented when asked about what happened.

Westie apparently was having a good time, frolicking around and rubbing his nose against the sea lion, who was busy rolling about playfully in the water, he continued.

Despite Westie’s amazing stamina, Van Tenac commented that he had his doubts that Westie, who had been chasing after the sea lion for more than an hour, could have possibly made it back to shore.

He continued to say that Westie’s owner was very much relieved that he came back to the shore safe and sound, and no worse for wear.

Cane Toad

Cane toads are killing off the freshwater crocodiles which make their home in the Victoria River District in Australia. The toads have been credited for the demise of hundreds of these crocs, and don’t show any sign of letting up any time soon.

A group of scientists have been studying the happenings of the Victoria River since 2005, to take a gander at how the toad is effecting the local wildlife.

The leader of the group, Dr. Mike Letnic, has recently returned from a scouting trip to the area.

“I haven’t put all of the figures together yet but when we look at the data from Victoria River Downs, where the cane toads came through in 2006, the crocodile populations are down as much as 80 per cent.

“We did test some crocodiles a few years ago, some of the survivors, but we found no evidence that they had any immunity.

“The other idea we had was that the crocodiles might learn to avoid toads and we found a little bit of evidence in the laboratory, that crocs will learn.

“But in the wild it seems to be a different story, we keep seeing crocodiles chomping on toads.”

Yes, you would think the crocs would learn, however, seems that when a croc goes to chomp a cane toad, none of the other crocs are watching… Seems to me the crocs need to come up with a defensive plan, and soon, before they are all wiped out.

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.

Ospray reef

St. Lucia, Queensland – Some researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute have been utilizing high-tech gadgets to document creatures at depths which would seem impossible.

By using some new deep-sea cameras and other instrumentation which is new to Australia, a myriad of creatures were recorded on film at a depth of 1,400m below sea level 350km northeast of Carins, in the Osprey Reef. Some of the creatures documented were giant oil fish, six-gilled sharks, hordes of crustaceans and even some unidentified species, making the find rather incredible. These creatures closely resemble some prehistoric species, and have been dubbed “living fossils” and it is hoped they will provide some new insights into life in the deep sea.

Professor Justin Marshall, who was leading the team of researchers, used special high sensitivity cameras, which were placed on the ocean floor, and remote controlled, to snap some amazing photographs of these creatures. The equipment was funded by the Australian Research Council, and was built at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Instituted in Florida.

Professor Marshal commented, “Osprey Reef is one of the many reefs in the Coral Sea Conservation Zone, which has been identified as an area of high conservation importance by the Federal Government. Therefore, it is paramount that we identify the ecosystems and species inhabiting the area. As well as understanding life at the surface, we need to plunge off the walls of Osprey to describe the deep-sea life that lives down to 2000m, beyond the reach of sunlight. We simply do not know what life is down there and our cameras can now record the behavior and life in Australia’s largest biosphere, the deep-sea.”

Exciting times lay ahead for the researchers, as more research is being funded, and these “living fossils” could lead to new discoveries, and explain just how they survive down there, when it seems impossible.

Fish raining down on you from the sky is rare, but fish raining down on you two nights in a row is just plain eldritch. The unlikely two-night fish rain occurred last week in a small Australian town called Lajamanu in the Northern Territory.

On Thursday around 6 pm hundreds of small white fish started falling from the sky, to the shock and surprise of the local inhabitants who live on the edge of the Tanami Desert, hundreds of kilometers from Lake Argyle and Lake Elliot and even further away from the ocean. To make things even more bewildering, the same thing happened around 6 pm on Friday as well.

Christine Balmer, an aged care co-ordinator working at the Lajamanu Aged Care Centre, said her family interstate thought she had lost the plot when she told them about the event.

“I haven’t lost my marbles,” she said to local media. “Thank god it didn’t rain crocodiles.”
Balmer also managed to snap some photos of the fish littering the ground.

“They fell from the sky everywhere”, she explained. “Locals were picking them up off the footy oval and on the ground everywhere. These fish were alive when they hit the ground.”

Lajamanu has a population of less than 700 people, of which a significant amount are of Aboriginal origin. Its only accessible by air or dirt road and governed by a combination of community government council and local tribal council.

The town is no stranger to fish rains. Back in 2004 Lajamanu experienced a similar downpour and there are also reports of fish falling from the sky in 1974. This is however the first recorded incident of fish raining down on Lajamanu two evenings in a row.

Fish rains are normally caused by tornadoes that sweep up fish, and fish captured in this fashion can travel far distances and still be alive when they land.

According to Ashley Patterson, senior forecaster at the weather bureau, conditions were perfect on Friday for a tornado in the Douglas Daly region. However, no tornadoes has been reported to the authority.

“It’s a very unusual event,” he said. “With an updraft, (fish and water picked up) could get up high – up to 60,000 or 70,000 feet. Or possibly from a tornado over a large water body – but we haven’t had any reports.”

The small white fish has been tentatively identified as spangled perch (Leiopotherapon unicolor ), one of the most widely distributed Australian native freshwater fishes.

A marine park will be formed at Camden Sound, Australia, in an effort to protect the Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). Once hunted to the brink of extinction, the humpbacks have already bounced back considerably thanks to conservation efforts and they are now much sought after by whale-watchers, particularly off parts of Australia, Canada, and the United States.

“The Government recognises the Kimberley as one of Australia’s special places,” said Premier Colin Barnett as he unveiled the plans for the park. “That is why we are protecting Camden Sound, making it a marine park, and developing and implementing our Kimberley Science and Conservation Strategy. This strategy will balance the need to develop industry and create wealth with the expectation that the environment and special places will be protected. This remarkable area warrants protection as a first step in the broader conservation of the Kimberley.”

Environment Minister Donna Faragher added that Camden Sound is the largest calving area for humpbacks in the southern hemisphere.

“More than 1000 humpback whales can be found in the Camden Sound ‘maternity ward’ during the calving season,” Faragher said. “They are part of the biggest population of humpback whales in the world – numbering about 22,000 – that migrate from Antarctica every year to give birth in the waters off the north of our State.”

Faragher said the park will be created in consultation with the local indigenous community and all stakeholders with an interest in the area.

Allowing for consultation, including a public comment period of three months, a marine park could be established as early as mid-2010.

Camden Sound

Camden Sound is a bay in the Indian Ocean situated in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The sound is a highly bio-diverse region; home to animals such as dugongs, crocodiles, sea-snakes, sharks, rays, and three species of sea turtle. Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphins, Bottle-nosed dolphins, and the newly recognized Snub-fin dolphin can all be found within the borders of the proposed marine park. The sound is also visited by several species of whale, including False Killer whale, Bryde’s whale, Minke whale, and Dwarf Sperm whale. The corals reefs in the region are still fairly unharmed and varied the extensive mangrove forests found along the shores acts as nursery areas for fish and invertebrates.

Humpback whales born in Camden Sound stay there for several months after birth to grow big and strong enough to survive the long journey to the chilly Arctic waters where the humpbacks feed during the summer.

According to Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Association chief executive Brian Jeffriess, industry experts expect the tuna stocks to have recovered by 2013.

The statement was made during a Korean tuna meeting involving industry representatives from Australia, Japan and New Zeeland.

To make sure that over-catching does not restart, Jeffriess said the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna has focussed heavily on new enforcement measures.

“For example, from January 2010, every fish has to be tagged at harvest with each fish having its own individual number,” he said. “This tag would also be backed up by documents for each fish showing the date of harvest, weight and length.”

In 1998, the gobies vanished from a section of the Great Barrier Reef as the corals became bleached. The corals have now re-colonized the bleached areas, which are located just of Orpheus Island, but the gobies haven’t returned. This lack of goby fish is puzzling Australian researchers, who had assumed that the gobies would return as soon as the corals bounced back.

Professor David Bellwood from James Cook University says the goby’s failure to repopulate the coral is disturbing, and that it may be an indicator that fish will not return to damaged reefs as fast as first thought.

“What’s happening is they’re not bouncing back, they’re not coming back as fast as we’d expect”, says Bellwood. “These gobies only live for a few weeks – you’d expect them to be turning over very, very fast and they become like an indicator of how the future might be. The reef may never be the same ever again – it’s going to be different, we may have a reef but it’s not going to be like the one we remember and it’s more variable and more unpredictable than we thought.”

An Australian frigate will be sunk off Terrigal on the New South Wales Central Coast to form an artificial reef.

Yesterday, the commonwealth handed over its decommissioned frigate HMAS Adelaide to the New South Wales government. HMAS Adelaide served the Royal Australian Navy for 27 years, participating in operations such as the Gulf War of 1991 and the East Timor peace-keeping mission of 1999. It has picked up capsized yachtsmen in the Southern Sea as well as rescued asylum seekers from a sinking ship.

“I think this is a great project, I’m very confident we’ll see HMAS Adelaide become a great national, and I suspect international, attraction for recreational divers […],” said Defence Minister John Faulkner.

NSW Premier Nathan Rees agrees with Faulkner.

“Coral will grow on the metal you see before you, fish will swim through the corridors that once rang with the sound of action stations,” he said. “And divers will find a place of contemplation and beauty as nature slowly reclaims her broken frame.”

The federal government will contribute up to 5.8 million AUS to make the ship is safe before it’s sunk.