The Mediterranean fishing nations of Europe have rejected the proposed measures to help keep the endangered bluefin tuna safe. These measures were proposed just last month by Maria Damanaki, the EU fishing chief.

This “Nay”, which was given this past Wednesday, means that the 27-nation EU will join in the international quota discussions in Paris this week. This discussion will center around harsher methods to help save the fish, whose numbers have been declining exponentially over the past four decades.

The EU is seen as one of the best in the world when it comes to Atlantic bluefin. These bluefin can grow as big as a horse, swim faster than a sports car, and can be hawked at markets in Japan for a whopping $100,000.

The bluefin quota for this past year was 13,500 tonnes and Damaki has commented that in order to help the bluefin get back on their feet, that the quota should be reduced to 6,000 tonnes for 2011. This was suggested last month at the ICCAT – International Commission for Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. The ICCAT discussions, due to last ten days, began this past Wednesday.

Ms. Damanaki granted that in order for fishermen to maintain their livelihoods that the quota would need to be more than 6,000 tonnes. However, in a meeting this past Wednesday, the EU ambassadors to Brussels, which were led by France, squawked at the notion and submitted one of their own, which doesn’t even take into consideration any quota reductions.

“Nevertheless, the Commission will respect its obligations as the negotiator on behalf of the European Union,” Ms. Damanaki responded somewhat tersely.

Conservationists have accused France of not being green enough – see the fact that they parked a giant tuna in front of their commission offices.
“It’s a bad start,” commented an adviser to the U.S.-based Pew Environment Group, Remi Parmentier. “Here we have a real test-case of the EU putting words into action for reforming fisheries.”

Danube

The very first dead fish have been discovered in the Danube, the second largest river in Europe, after an environmental mishap left toxic mud flowing from Hungary. A regional chief for the disaster relief services made the following comment to the AFP this past Thursday:

“I can confirm that we have seen sporadic losses of fish in the main branch of the Danube,” Tibor Dobson commented.

“The fish have been sighted at the confluence of the Raba with the Danube,” where water samples had shown a pH value of 9.1, he continued..

“Fish cannot survive at pH 9.1,” he added.

The alkalinity of the water is a measure of just how contaminated a body of water is. The values go from one to fourteen, pH levels of between one and six are considered acid, a reading of six to eight is neutral, and anything from eight to fourteen are alkaline.
“In order to save the river’s ecosystem, the pH level must be brought down to below 8,” Dobson explained.

When the toxic spill first happened this past Monday afternoon, the reading taken in the Torna river nearby were thirteen point five, in other words catastrophic.

The small Torna stream flows to the Marcal, which is a tributary of the Raba, and this then flows to the Danube.

The pH levels ascertained from the Torna this past Thursday showed about 10, so while it is not good yet, it appears that, given the time, mother nature will straighten itself out. However, in the mean time, the local ecosystem will take a huge hit.

The smallest fish in Europe, the Guillet’s goby, was recently discovered in the waters of Scotland for the very first time.

Curious divers happened to snap photos of the tiny bloke while they were conducting surveys of the aquatic life to be found around the Shetland Islands.

Before this, Guillet’s goby has onl been spotted in the waters of Britain three times, but it was never spotted in Scotland before now.

This discovery, which was published in the journal Marine Biodiversity Records, us the furthest north that the fish has been found, and has extended it’s known range by a good 140 miles.

The reason this discovery is so momentous is that the Shetland Islands are famous for their larger fish, tourists flock there to whale and dolphin watch.

However, Dr Richard Shucksmith and Rachel Hope, independent marine biologists were in the midst of making a documentary on the smaller species that make their home in the islands, when they stumbled upon this tiny specimen.

They snapped many pictures of the Guillet’s gobies, known in scientific circles as Lebetus guilleti, at Lunna Kirk during their different dives this past summer.

“It never crossed our minds that we would find such a rare fish or that it would be Europe’s smallest marine fish,” Dr Shucksmith explained.

“When Rachel spotted the goby she knew it was something different so made sure she got some pictures so we could identify it when we got home,” he continued.

There was a lot of mystery surrounding a disease which was rampaging through European Salmon farms, a disease which was wasting their hearts and muscles. Finally, through the use of Genome sleuthing, the mystery has been solved.

The disease is caused by a previously unknown virus. This identification does not mean that there is now also a cure for the disease, however it is a great step forward into solving the problem. Now that scientists have pinned down the disease and the genome, it is only a matter of time before a cure will be found.

“It’s a new virus. And with this information now in hand, we can make vaccines,” explained director of Columbia Univerity’s Center for Infection and Immunity, Ian Lipkin.

A couple of years ago, some Norwegion fisheries got into touch with Lipkin and asked for his aid in discovering what was going on in their Norwegion Salmon farms. They wanted to know what was causing the HSMI (Heart and Skeletal Muscle inflammation), the scientific name for an affliction which was identified in 1999 on one of their farms.

The fish which are infected are physically stunted, and have muscles so weak that they often have trouble swimming about, or even circulating blood around their bodies. This disease often results in death, so there is a great cause or concern. The reason there is so much concern is that the original outbreak was followed by 417 other in Norway and the United Kingdom, and every year there are more reports of the disease.. What is even more disturbing is that there have been reports of wild salmon being infected, which means that salmon which escape the farm are infecting the already low numbers of wild stocks. If something is not done to fix this problem, it could quite possibly spiral out of control, and have a devastating effect on not only local ecosystems but on the entire salmon market as we know it. “If the potential hosts are in close proximity, it goes through them like wildfire,” said Lipkin.

Lipkin and his team, which have already had great success in identifying mystery viruses, rigorously examined samples taken from infected salmon pens. They were looking for the DNA sequences which resemble sequences found in other viruses, and hopefully finding the HSMI-causing sequence. Lipkin compared the grueling process akin to solving a Sunday paper crossword. The researchers eventually found what they were looking for, and dubbed the virus piscine reovirus, or PRV. The virus was unveiled and explained in the issue of Public Library of Science one, published on the 9th of July.

Some viruses which are rather similar have been discovered on poultry farms, and cause muscle and heart disease in chickens. “Analogies between commercial poultry production and Atlantic salmon aquaculture may be informative,” The researchers wrote in the article. “Both poultry production and aquaculture confine animals at high density in conditions that are conducive to transmission of infectious agents.”

The results from these investigations might just be useful when the Obama administration comes up with its national policy for regulating aquaculture.

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:

Yesterday, French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced that France backs Monaco’s call for an international trade ban for Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna.

“Ours is the last generation with the ability to take action before it’s too late – we must protect marine resources now, in order to fish better in future. We owe this to fishermen, and we owe it to future generations,” said president Sarkozy at the close of a national stakeholder consultation on France’s future sustainable fisheries and maritime policy, the ‘Grenelle de la Mer’.

This means that France joins the growing list of countries and marine experts that wish to place Bluefin tuna under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to give the populations a chance to recuperate.

“WWF welcomes the Monaco initiative and the position of France, whose fleets have traditionally caught more bluefin tuna than any other country,” said Dr Sergi Tudela, Head of Fisheries at WWF Mediterranean.

The Principality of Monaco was the first state to announce its willingness to sponsor a proposal to ban international trade in Bluefin tuna and the country is now seeking the support of other states in whose waters this species lives.

“In terms of eligibility for a listing on CITES Appendix I, Atlantic bluefin tuna ticks every box – and then some,” said Dr Susan Lieberman, Director of WWF’s Global Species Programme.

The next CITES conference will be held next year in Qatar, but proposals have to be submitted by 17 October to be eligible for consideration.

The Netherlands now join Norway in the effort to save the European eel Anguilla anguilla from extinction.

Yesterday, the Dutch government announced a two-month long ban on eel fishing that will commence on October 1 this year, followed from 2010 with a yearly three-month prohibition from September. In 2012, the new regulation will be reviewed and its effectiveness assessed.

“I realise this is a very big sacrifice for eel fishers, but ultimately it is also in the interests of the industry that eel numbers are allowed to recover,” Agriculture and Environment Minister Gerda Verburg said in a statement.

Before the regulation can be put into action it will however require the approval of the European Commission. The commission has already rejected a Dutch proposal to enlist the aid of eel fishermen to help boost the eel population by releasing 157 tons of mature, caught eel close to the species spawning waters in the Sargasso Sea.

“The (initial) plan would have offered guarantees for the recovery of the eel population,” the professional fishers’ federation Combinatie van Beroepsvissers said in a statement, describing the new measure as “incomprehensible, unreasonable and unacceptable”.

Eel is a delicacy in the Netherlands and roughly one thousand tons of eel are caught in Dutch waters every year. The Dutch government have designated 700,000 Euros (989,800 USD) to aid the estimated 240 small fishing businesses affected by the eel ban.

After acknowledging the failure of current fishery policies within the union, EU officials are now considering banning the practice of discarding fish at sea.

“What’s the point of setting a quota if fishermen aren’t accountable for the fish they actually catch?” says Mogens Schou, a Danish fishery official.

The EU’s quotas limit the size of the annual catch that countries and their fleets can sell on their return to harbour, but instead of protecting remaining fishing populations from depletion, the system is making fishermen dump lower-value fish at sea to maximize profit. According to officials in the European Commission’s fisheries office, most of these fishes do not survive.

“To stay under their quotas, and make more money, fishermen discard half of what they catch,” says Schou, “They ‘high-grade’ – in other words, only keep the most profitable fish.”

Last month, an EU report was released highlighting the failure of current EU fishing regulations by showing that 88% of fish species in EU waters are being fished out faster than they can reproduce. In response to the report, fishery ministers from the 27 EU nations are currently discussing how to protect the remaining fish stocks from complete eradication.

As a part of these talks, Denmark has proposed an amended quota system where fishermen and their countries are held accountable for the amount of fish caught rather than the amount returned to port. To make it harder for fishing fleets to cheat, Denmark is also proposing that fishermen voluntarily equip their boats with on-board cameras. In exchange, the fishermen would get bigger quotas.

Denmark has already designed a surveillance kit consisting of four cameras, a GPS (Global Positioning System) device, and sensors that notice when fish is being hauled or dumped. The Danish kits are currently being used on six fishing boats with Danish officials monitoring the footage.

Danish fisherman Per Nielsen installed the kit on his trawler Kingfisher in September and believes it to be a good investment. The kit cost roughly 10,000 USD, but Nielsen was compensated by being allowed to catch several extra tens of thousands of dollars worth of cod.

As of now, EU fishermen throw overboard an estimated 50% of the fish they catch and did for instance dump 38% of the 24,000 tons of cod they caught last year, according to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea.

The first-ever comprehensive global report on the state of shellfish has been released by The Nature Conservancy at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Washington, DC.

This one of its kind report is a collaborative work carried out by scientists from five different continents employed by academic and research institutions as well as by conservation organizations.

The report, which focuses primarily on the distribution and condition of native oyster reefs, show that 85 percent of oyster reefs have been completely destroyed worldwide and that this type of environment is the most severely impacted of all marine habitats.

In a majority of individual bays around the globe, the loss exceeds 90 percent and in some areas the loss of oyster reef habitat is over 99 percent. The situation is especially dire in Europe, North America and Australia where oyster reefs are functionally extinct in many areas.

“We’re seeing an unprecedented and alarming

decline in the condition of oyster reefs, a critically

important habitat in the world’s bays and estuaries,”

says Mike Beck, senior marine scientist at The Nature

Conservancy and lead author of the report.

Many of us see oysters as a culinary delight only, but oyster reefs provide us humans with a long row of valuable favours that we rarely think about. Did you for instance known that oyster reefs function as buffers that protect shorelines and prevent coastal marshes from disappearing, which in turn guard people from the consequences of hurricanes and other severe storm surges? Being filter feeders, oysters also help keep the water quality up in the ocean and they also provide food and habitat for many different types of birds, fish and shellfish.

Even though the situation is dismal, there is still time to save the remaining populations and aid the recuperation of damaged oyster reefs. In the United States, millions of young Olympia oysters have been reintroduced to the mudflats surrounding Netarts Bay in Oregon, in an effort to re-create a self-sustaining population of this native species. The project is a joint effort by government and university scientists, conservation groups, industry representatives, and local volunteers.

“With support from the local community and other partners, we’re demonstrating that shellfish restoration really works”, says Dick Vander Schaaf, Oregon director of coast and marine conservation for the Conservancy. “Expanding the effort to other bays and estuaries will help to ensure that the ecological benefits of oyster reefs are there for future generations.”

If wish to learn more about the global oyster reef situation, you can find the report here.

Scientists are unaware of the state of nearly two-thirds of Europe’s fish stocks and do not have enough information to assess the exact scale of the crisis the European fishing industry is facing, says the European Commission.

This is naturally alarming, since the commission last month admitted that nothing short of a completely new fisheries management system based on scientific evidence could stop the downward spiral of years of dangerously depleted fish stocks and get the struggling European fishing industry back on its feet.

Europe

The European Commission is now proposing smaller annual EU fish catch quotas and have given governments and industry representatives until the end of July to submit their views.

“The contribution of EU fisheries to the European economy and food supply is far smaller today than it was in the past. Even more worryingly, the status of some 59 per cent of stocks is unknown to scientists, largely due to inaccurate catch reporting,” the European Commission says in an official statement.

The policy has not been reformed since 2002 and the European Commission admits there has been “slow progress” in stock recovery, since quotas consistently have been set at unsustainably high levels.