Shark fins

Seafood traders have had enough of all the cruel practices used when hunting sharks and have made an agreement amongst each other to help bring it to an end. The plan is to create a task force, one which would make sure hat sharks are not finned and thrown back into the water.

The Marine Products Association in Hong Kong commented yesterday that a conservation and management committee will be ready to do some actual good about half a year from now. It will include marine experts, nongovernmental organizations and of course the seafood traders who started the whole ball of wax rolling.

Charlie Lim Tin-que, the general secretary of the Marine Products Association, announced the creation of this task force, slash conservation and management committee, at the International Marine Conference yesterday. This conference is widely attended by international marine experts, seafood traders, officers from Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department and the Customs and Excise Department.

Lim took the podium and had a very attentive audience as he explained: “Due to the raised public concern on international finning incidents, in which fishermen are said to be cutting whale sharks’ fins while still alive and then releasing them back into the sea to die a slow and painful death, we decided to set up an advisory committee on banning the trade in endangered species and illegal food importation,”

There you have it, in six months we will have an anti shark-finning task force, and they sound like they mean business. One can only hope this doesn’t escalate into some form of heavily armed vigilantism…

whale meat

If you have your tongue set on eating some whale meat tonight, you may consider heading off to Ulsan. There has been a sharp increase in the number of local restaurants in this major city over the past year, they now tally over 100, the city government reported this past Sunday.

The number of restaurants has climbed nearly four hundred percent since last year, and the it is the city with the most since the International Whaling commission placed a worldwide halt on commercial whaling back in 1986.

The officials of the city have said that minke whale is the hottest item on the menu. However, hunting whales for commercial purposes is outlawed around the globe, that is of course unless they are caught “accidentally” in fishermens’ nets.

Korea specifically is one of the countries in the world which is the most strict when it comes to the enforcement of the laws which protect endangered species.

Nonetheless, a lot of “accidents” occur, and whale meat continues to be a traditional local delicacy in the city. These whales will sell for anywhere from 25 million won ($21,000) and up, when the supplies are low and the demand is high. On the black market, an illegally caught whale will go for somewhere in the 16 million won ($14,000) range.

The illegal trading of these endangered species is the main reason these restaurants can give you those delectable whale dishes on their menus. Many environmental groups are crying foul, and are pushing for more monitoring and higher penalties for illegal hunting of whales.

That being the case, you can expect to see many more “accidental” catches, and many more dishes to come.

In order to survive until it becomes a skilled hunter, a shark pups is born with an enlarged “super liver” that functions as a food source for several months.

This new finding have surprised marine scientists, because shark pups were believed to suffer from a high mortality rate because they had to find food immediately after being born.

“They’re much more likely to survive when they’re born than we previously thought,” says Australian Institute of Marine Science researcher Aaron MacNeil.

Unlike live-bearing sea mammals like dolphins and whales, live-bearing shark mothers do not produce milk for their offspring. Until know, researchers assumed that the shark mothers didn’t invest much energy into keeping the offspring alive once it was born, but the new finding changes this perception radically. The shark mother is effectively sending her young off with a liver so packed with energy and nutrients that it keeps the baby fed for several months.

“It is likely that the liver reserves enable the newborn sharks to acclimatize themselves to their environment and to develop their foraging skills,” says lead researcher Nigel Hussey, “We know that large sharks use their livers as an energy store, but we had no idea that the mother provisions her young with additional liver reserves to enhance their survival.”

The research that led to the discovery was carried out by an international team of researchers headed by the Bangor University in Wales.

Dr Parker, from James Cook University’s School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, and collaborator Professor Rocky de Nys, from JCU’s School of Marine and Tropical Biology, have just received a $7,000 Collaboration Across Boundaries grant to prove their theory that feeding seaweed to cow will improve their digestion and make them produce less methane.

Just like carbon dioxide, methane is a so called green-house gas and the world’s cattle population accounts for up to 20% of methane emissions from human-related activities. Global warming is suspected to be one of several factors harming our tropical reefs worldwide and finding ways of reducing the amount of methane released into the air is therefore highly interesting.

Dr Parker and Professor Rocky de Nys will now test their theory on herd of cattle living at the University’s Townsville campus.

“Orkney sheep are ruminants that live off seaweed and they do very well on such a diet; so the obvious question is, why can’t cows?” said Dr Parker.

“I like to call it the reef and beef project because it has far reaching implications that come full circle:starting with seaweed, taking in the beef and aquaculture industries, and extending back out to the sea to help conserve the Great Barrier Reef.”

The invasive kelp Undaria pinnatifida is has now spread from Los Angeles to San Francisco Bay, despite eradication efforts.

Earlier, the northward spread of this sea weed – which can grow an inch a day and forms dense underwater forests – was believed to have been stopped at Monterey Bay, but this assumption turned out to be wrong when a biologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center happened to notice a six-foot long piece of kelp attached to a boat in a yacht harbor in San Francisco Bay.

“I was walking in San Francisco Marina, and that’s when I saw the kelp attached to a boat,” said Chela Zabin, biologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Tiburon, California. “It was six-foot long, and there is nothing here in the bay that gets to that size. I didn’t want to believe what it was, it’s depressing.”

Further investigation showed U. pinnatifida clinging not only to boat hulls in the marina but to docks and pier pilings as well.

U. pinnatifida was discovered in Los Angeles Harbour in 2000 and within a year reports of its presence had arrived from Catalina Island and Monterey Bay. A federal eradication program was put in place, but the funding dried up last year. Since then, volunteer divers have been the only ones combating the kelp.

Five quick facts about Undaria pinnatifida

• Undaria pinnatifida is a fast growing kelp native to the waters of Japan, China and South and North Korea.

• Within its native range it is an appreciate source of food and if you’ve ever tasted miso soup, this is what you were eating. The Japanese name for this species is wakame.

• U. pinnatifida has managed to establish itself in many different regions outside its native range, such as the Atlantic coast of Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Argentinean coast. By attaching itself to vessel hulls it can hitchhike across the globe in search of new suitable habitats. This kelp can also enter ecosystems via imported oysters, and some people deliberately or accidently introduce U. pinnatifida to local ecosystems by cultivating it for cooking purposes.

• When U. pinnatifida spread to ecosystems not used to its presence, it can grow uncontrolled and prevent native kelp species from getting any sunlight. This can disturb the entire ecosystem.

• U. pinnatifida has been nominated to the list “100 worst invasive species in the world”.

“Small fish may have small brains but they still have some surprising cognitive abilities”, says Dr Jeremy Kendal* from Durham University’s Anthropology Department.

Dr Kendal is the lead author of a new study showing that Nine-spined stickleback fish (Pungitius pungitius) can compare the behaviour of other sticklebacks with their own experience and make choices that lead to better food supplies.

“‘Hill-climbing’ strategies are widely seen in human society whereby advances in technology are down to people choosing the best technique through social learning and improving on it, resulting in cumulative culture”, says Dr Kendal. “But our results suggest brain size isn’t everything when it comes to the capacity for social learning.”

Around 270 Nine-spined sticklebacks were caught from Melton Brook in Leicester using dip nets. After being divided into three experimental groups and one control group, the fish were housed in different aquariums and the fish in the experimental groups were subjected to two different learning experiences and two preference tests in a tank with a feeder placed at each end.

1.) The fish were free to investigate both feeders during a number of training trials. One feeder (dubbed “rich feeder”) always handed out more worms than the other one (dubbed “poor feeder”). The fish were then tested to see which feeder they preferred.
2.) In the second training trail, those fish that come to prefer the rich feeder could see other fish feeding. During this stage, the rich and poor feeders were swapped around and the rich feeder either gave even more worms than before or roughly the same or less. During the second test, the fish were once again free to explore the tank and both feeders. Around 75 per cent of the Nine-spined sticklebacks had learned from watching the other fish that the rich feeder, previously experienced first hand themselves as the poor feeder, gave them more worms. In comparison, significantly fewer sticklebacks favoured the feeder that appeared to be rich from watching other sticklebacks if they themselves had experience that the alternative feeder would hand out roughly the same or more worms.

Further testing showed that the sticklebacks were more likely to copy the behaviour of fast feeding fish.

“Lots of animals observe more experienced peers and that way gain foraging skills, develop
food preferences, and learn how to evade predators”, Dr Kendal explained. “But it is not always a recipe for success to simply copy someone. Animals are often better off being selective about when and who they copy. These fish are obviously not at all closely related to humans, yet they have this human ability to only copy when the pay off is better than their own.”

The study, which has been published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, was carried out by scientists from St Andrews and Durham universities and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The lead author of the study, Dr Kendal, is a Research Council UK Fellow.

Shark fin soup has traditionally been a must-have among well-to-do Asians and an essential part of the menu at commemorative dinners, such as wedding banquets and New Years celebrations in countries like China, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

However, as awareness grows about the precarious situation many species of shark are facing in the wild due to over-harvesting; many Asians – especially young ones –are substituting the shark fin soup with alternative dishes at their celebratory events.

Singaporean groom Han Songguang and his scuba diving bride are just one example of this trend; when they tied the knot in December last year they served their guests lobster soup and placed explanatory postcards depicting a dead shark on each seat.

“If we can do our part to save ‘X’ number of sharks … why not?” said Han, a geography teacher.

A symbol of wealth and status in several Asian cultures, shark fin soup consumption has traditionally been a delight available for a comparatively low number of Asian upper-class families only. Hand-in-hand with rising affluence in East Asia and the development of a prosperous middle class segment of society, demand has however soared rapidly in the late 20^th and early 21^st century and about 20 percent of all shark species are now endangered, partly due to them being over-fished to satisfy the Asian markets.

“They live a long time. They have a low reproductive rate. In other words they produce just a few young every year or every few years. So you just can’t take a lot,” says Yvonne Sadovy, a biology professor at the University of Hong Kong.

As more and more young Asians opt for lobsters and other alternatives to shark fins, market demands have dropped noticeably in recent years. After peaking at 897,000 metric tonnes in 2003, the world wide shark consumption has sunk to 758,000 in 2006, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation. British wildlife group TRAFFIC says shark fins now make up an increasingly small percentage of the total consumption.

“Students and people in their 20s wouldn’t go to a shark eatery, and $15 for a dish is no cheap price,” says Joyce Wu, programme officer with TRAFFIC.

Shang-kuan Liang-chi, a National Taiwan University student agrees. “University students never go in there,” he says, referring to a shark fin restaurant near campus.

The decline is not only due to shark fins becoming increasingly out of vogue among environmentally concerned youngsters; the global financial crisis and its effects in Asia has caused many Asian to cut down on restaurant visits or order less expensive dishes.

Another sure sign of the declining popularity of shark fin soup in Asian is the menu for Singapore’s Annual Chefs’ Association dinner – it is now completely void of shark fin dishes.

“It is much harder to stop serving shark’s fin in our restaurants as the consumers still demand it. However, in our personal capacity, we can make a stand,” said Otto Weibel, a food manager at one of Singapore’s top hotels.

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.

Since the first specimens were spotted in the year 2000, the number of lionfish living off the coast of North Carolina is now so high that scientists fear it is too late to eliminate them. Instead, marine researchers are joining forces with sport divers and cooks to keep the fish population in check the old fashion way – with rice, spicy sauce and a slice of lemon.

The lionfish has a sweet meat that tastes similar to that of the appreciated food fishes like the snapper and the grouper. If you want to help save the native North Carolinian fauna by putting lionfish on as many dinner plates as possible, there are several things you can do.

For all you scuba divers, Discovery Diving Co. in Beaufort and Olympus Dive Center in Morehead City are recruiting sport divers for a series of “lionfish rodeos” that will take place during the summer dive season. The first event is planned to May 18 and 19, and new events will then be held regularly throughout the summer.

During the first lionfish rodeo, participating divers will be thought how to collect lionfish in a safe way using protective gloves. In addition to getting some lionfish off the reefs and provide all participants with a tasty meal, the rodeo will also give marine researchers a chance to study how rapidly lionfish repopulate an area after being vanquished.

In addition to divers and marine researchers, representatives of the Carteret Community College culinary school will be involved in the rodeo project. One of their main goals is to persuade restaurants in the area to start serving lionfish, so those of you that don’t dive can still help out by asking for lionfish when dining out.

“They taste good, and if we can create a food market for them maybe that will not only help keep them in control but maybe take the pressure off some other species,” sais Debby Boyce, owner of Discovery Dive Shop.

The lionfish is not a welcomed guest in North Carolina since it competes with native species for space and food and puts even more stress on already threatened fish like snappers and groupers. The lionfish seem to lack natural predators in western Atlantic waters because the lionfish population has increased at a pace unlike anything scientists have ever seen from an invasive fish species in this part of the world.

“In places off North Carolina the population density appears to be several times the norm in their native waters”, said NOAA researcher James Morris.

North Carolina is not the only state with an exploding lionfish problem on their hands; the species can now be found in large quantities all the way down into the Caribbean.

“They’re eating everything,” said Lisa A. Mitchell, executive director of Reef Environmental Education Foundation, a Florida non-profit group that is helping several Caribbean governments deal with invasive lionfish. “They could wipe out entire reefs.

The lionfish is not only a problem for native flora and fauna; it is also disliked among snorkelers and scuba divers since it is equipped with long spines capable of delivering a painful venomous sting. The venom itself it usually not lethal, but it can cause paralysis and excruciating pain – two things you definitely don’t want to suffer from while trying to get up from the deep.

In North Carolina ordinary swimmers and snorkelers rarely have to worry about lionfish since this tropical species prefer to stay in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, i.e. miles offshore and mostly at depths of at least 100 feet. In the warmer places like the Caribbean you can on the other hand encounter lionfish in the shallows right next to the beach.

In North Carolina it is usually the scuba divers who see this fish and they are alarmed by the situation. Divers off the North Carolina coast now routinely find up to 100 lionfish during a single wreck dive.

“If you go deeper than 100 feet, they’re ubiquitous now,” said Paula Whitfield, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Beaufort. “They’re absolutely everywhere.”

Catching lionfish is labour intensive but not very difficult; all you need is a net or a spear and some protective clothing to keep yourself from being stung. The divers organized by Discovery Diving Co. in Beaufort and Olympus Dive Center in Morehead City will be fitted with the kind of puncture-proof gloves worn by workers who handle used hypodermic needles and other medical waste. Before the lionfish is cleaned and cooked it will be held down using pliers and have its venomous spines snipped off by a wire cutter.

Lionfish is not very hard to net or spear-fish since they are virtually fearless and will hold their ground even when approached by divers. Since they have so few enemies in the wild, they probably don’t see any point in fleeing. However, if we are to really eat our way out of the lionfish problem a less labour intensive method than sending down divers armed with spears and nets must naturally be developed and NOAA researchers are therefore currently working on a trap system that uses live bait.

Hopefully, we will soon see the invasive lionfish on dinner tables all the way along the western Atlantic.

War on clams has been declared at Lake Tahoe, a large freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of the United States. Scuba divers have been enrolled in a 400,000 USD project aiming to completely rid the lake of all Asian clams. The anti-clam endeavour is scheduled to begin in mid-March and is a combined effort by the governments of Nevada and California.

The Asian clam (Corbicula fluminea) is native to Asia and parts of Africa where it inhabits streams, canals and lakes. In this part of the world it is a natural part of the ecosystems and is even known as the prosperity clam or good luck clam. The Asian clam was introduced to North America in the 1920s by Asian immigrants for whom it was an appreciated source of food. It would however take until 2001 before the first specimens were encountered in Lake Tahoe. Since the first finding, the clam has been collected from numerous locations Tahoe’s southeast shore and authorities now fear that it will pave the way for even more dangerous invasive species such as the Ukrainian Quagga mussel (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) and the Russian Zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha).

”We’re concerned they could create a positive settlement situation for the quagga mussels,” says Steve Chilton, aquatic invasive species coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ”We’re basically looking at all avenues through which the quagga mussel could get into the lake and eliminate that risk factor as much as possible.”

Steps so far have primarily focused on mandatory boat inspections to ensure no mussels are attached to them when they launch into the lake, but scuba divers participating in the new anti-clam project will actually be removing Asian clams from Lake Tahoe’s southeast shore. Starting in mid-March, divers will place plastic sheets, so called bottom barriers, over selected clam beds in order to deprive the clams of oxygen and nutrients. Divers will also carry out ”diver-assisted suction”, e.g. manually vacuum clams off the bottom of Tahoe.

”This needs to be done. We have to get our hands around the Asian clam problem,” Tahoe Regional Planning Agency spokesman Dennis Oliver told the Reno Gazette-Journal. ”We need to find out what works and what works best. Once we know that, we can develop a program.”

Invasive mussel species are known to form huge populations in environments where they lack natural predators and can for instance clog water intakes, attach themselves to boats and docks, and litter sandy beaches.

North America is not the only continent with an Asian mussel problem; Corbicula fluminea has begun to spread throughout Europe as well. It was found in the Rhine as early in the 1980s and then gradually found its way into the Danube through the Rhine-Maine-Danube Canal. In 1998 the first specimens were found in the Elbe and the species is now also present in the rivers of Portugal.