“Every single spot of the ocean along the West Coast is affected by 10 to 15 different human activities annually”, says Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

In a two-year long study, Halpern and his colleagues have documented the way humans are affecting the ocean off the West Coast of the United States. The research team has overlaid data on the location and intensity of 25 human derived sources of ecological stress, including commercial and recreational fishing, land-based sources of pollution, and climate change. The information has been used to construct a composite map of the status of West Coast marine ecosystems.

“We found two remarkable and unexpected results in this research,” says Halpern. “Ocean management needs to move beyond single-sector management and towards comprehensive

ecosystem-based management if it is to be effective at protecting and sustaining ocean health. Also, the global** results for this region were highly correlated with the regional results, suggesting that the global results can provide valuable guidance for regional efforts around the world.”

The study results show that hotspots of cumulative impact are located in coastal areas close to urban centres and heavily polluted watersheds.

“This important analysis of the geography and magnitude of land-based stressors should help focus attention on the hot-spots where coordinated management of land and ocean activities is needed,” said Phillip Taylor, section head in NSF’s* Division of Ocean Sciences.

You can find more information in the article from the research team published in the journal Conservation Letters on May 11. The project was conducted at NCEAS, which is primarily funded by NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology.

* National Science Foundation (NSF)

** The lead scientists on the U.S. study have already carried out a similar analysis on a global scale; the results were published last year in Science.

I usually don’t like to write about rumours and speculations but sometimes they are interesting enough to warrant a few rows here in the news section. There is a growing speculation and fear among tuna fisherman that tuna fishing will be strictly regulated or banned before the end of the year.

The speculations state that a complete ban on Tune fishing in the entire Atlantic Ocean will be announced in November during the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna meeting in Morocco. This would be a result of plummeting tuna populations and increased pressure from environmental organisations. American fishermen are believed to be among those supporting a complete ban which might be true as the US have a very small tuna fishing industry. The only exception from the ban would be sport fishing.

There is also a rumour that the tuna fishing ban won’t be limited to the Atlantic but that a global tuna fishing ban might be close to being announced. It is unclear whether the ban would include all tuna species or only the blue fin tuna but the later seems more likely.

Personally I find the announcement of a global or even an Atlantic tuna fishing ban very doubtful even if I would appreciate the imitative. (Despite the fact that I love grilled tuna) A tuna fishing ban in the Mediterranean seems more likely but might also meet more resistance due to large fishing operations present there. It is also doubtful if such a ban would be respected in the Mediterranean as the fishermen there have a history of breaking the rules such as in this incident I reported about earlier this year.

What do you guys think? Will we see a Tuna ban before the end of the year? Is one needed?

Tagged Seals are helping Australian scientists learn a great deal more about places, in the deep oceans of Antarctica, where they themselves can not travel. This summer 7 female Weddell Seals were tagged to help researchers gather information on the changes global warming is having on the oceans. The Weddell Seal is a constant inhabitant of the Antarctic, and they are now being used by an international program monitoring deep diving mammals on both the North and South Pole.

The Seals are fitted with a satellite  transmitter that relays data daily back to the researchers.  The data provides depths of the seals dives, the time they spend under water, and where they are going to eat. But, more importantly, the transmitter also relays vital information about the surrounding oceans; such as water temperatures and salinity of the oceans. So far the salinity of the oceans in the arctic have begun to decline, leaving scientists guessing that melting ice due to global warming is to blame.

However, research is done only in winter, and come spring, the seals molt and the tracking devices fall off. Scientist are planning on several more years of this fascinating seal tagging to help better understand the oceans around us.

You can read the entire article on the Weddell Seal Tagging studies here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/29/2229776.htm

picture provided by Creative Commons at:  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

 (disclaimer: Creative Commons has no affiliation to the AC or the views or thoughts published in this article.)