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!

There is something fishy going on in Derbyshire – but it’s the good kind of fishy.

After two centuries and 80 kilometers inland, an amazing thing has happened on one of the largest rivers in Britain – a salmon was seen leaping its way upstream to spawn.

This amazing thing – which is more common in Scotland and Canada – was seen in Derbyshire on the Rover Derwent.

The salmon – which would have swum to the ends of the earth just to spawn and perish – had an easier time making its way up the river due to the higher water levels because of recent rainfall.

Experts are keeping their fingers crossed, and by building “fish passes” around the weirs, hope to encourage a more permanent presence of the salmon.

Salmon need to be able to make their way upstream to breed, and Jim Finnegan – an Environment Agency expert – has commented that everything should be done to try and make this process easier.

He said: ‘We have been down there and seen salmon trying to leap over the weir.
‘But the ultimate objective is to see them spawning or breeding in the Derwent, and there’s no evidence of that yet.
‘We will need to build these fish passes.’

Well, the good news is that the salmon are making their way back up to Derwent. This means, that with a little bit of work and care, that we as humans can help mother nature return to its natural course.

Many people are happy, and patting themselves on the back after finding the first baby sea horse at one of the leading breeding colonies in Dorset.

The tiny fry, what you call a tiny baby seahorse, discovered at Studland Bay is 4 centimeters in length.

Displayed sea horse is not from the dorset population.

The Seahorse Trust has claimed that the seahorses are an endangered animal, as many boats and mooring chains are taking big hunks and tearing up the seabed.

The Marine Management Organization, a government entity, has said that although research has been ongoing into the subject, there was no conclusive evidence that mooring chains are a threat to seahorses.

The Seahorse Trust is pushing for the protection of these amazing animals under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which came into existence in 2008.

“The trust and its volunteer divers have seen adults, pregnant males and juveniles on the site before but never a baby (fry),” a representative of the Seahorse Trust has commented.
“It does not mean they are thriving, quite the reverse, they appear to be hanging on in there against the odds of hundreds of boats dropping anchors and mooring chains ripping up the seabed, destroying their fragile home.”

The main goal of the Seahorse Trust is to get those nasty moorings replaced with more environmentally sound ones which do not damage seagrass, and for boat users to switch to these new devices.

Hopefully the discovery of this new baby seahorse will prompt some more interest in the issue, and something will be done to help protect these magnificent sea creatures.

Leatherback Turtle

Well, they say turtles are slow, but this particular beauty made a surprise comeback to a Malaysian beach after an astonishing 32 years. A report issued Friday hailed this return as a “miracle” by conservationists and rekindling hope that the endangered species is not quite gone yet.

The leatherbacks, the biggest of all the sea turtle species, were at one time the stars of the show at Rantau Abang beach in the northern state of Terengganu. However, overfishing, poaching, and pollution have caused the population of these turtles to take a nose dive over the years, to the point of being critically endangered.

This turtle, aptly named “Puteri Rantau Abang” or Rantau Abang Princess, and identified by some special markings, had returned last month to finally end the long period of time that turtle sightings were rare, which began in Terengganu in the 1980’s.

“It is a miracle that leatherback turtles are making a comeback to this area,” commented, Ahamad Sabki Mahmood, the Malaysian Fisheries Department director-general.

He went on to explain that the return of this turtle proves that Rantau Abang is once again being made a nesting ground for turtles, he is hoping that the next possible nesting period between the 15th of August and 20th of August that more turtles will make an appearance.

This just goes to show you that old habits die hard, and that mother nature triumphs over all. Hopefully the future turtles which land at the beach will receive as warm a welcome.

Right Whales

The measures meant to put a stop to the extinction of one of the world’s most endangered marine animals appear to be having an effect, as the population of the North Atlantic right whales rises slightly as the deaths linked to ship strikes decline just a tad.

A research scientist, who has been studying these large, yet graceful animals has said that the numbers they are seeing suggest that the initiatives in both the United States and Canada that make ships steer clear of areas where the animals have been spotted could be helping them to bounce back.

“I think the ship-strike problem has been reduced,” explained a research scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Amy Knowlton.

“Certainly they’re much better protected from ship strikes than they ever have been, so we’re hopeful that the number of mortalities from that sort of thing will reduce.”

Knowlton, who is planning on continuing the study of the right whale over the course of the next few months in the Bay of Fundy, has explained that they could be witnessing signs that the regulations on speed and ship routing have been having a beneficial effect on the right whale populations.

It’s good to know that someone is finally standing up for the “right” thing.

Now some happy news from the ocean: blue whales have been spotted in migratory routes and feeding grounds in the Pacific that has been void of blue-whales for over half a century. Sightings are also increasing in the Atlantic, and recent research suggests that the Antarctic blue whale population is growing at a heartening 6% a year. About 440 blue whales have been spotted in the western Atlantic and about 200 in the eastern, including large numbers off Iceland. These are likely to be just a fraction of the total amount of blue whales present in these waters.

“The overall numbers are still tiny compared with the original populations before whaling started, but the trend is at last in the right direction,” said John Calambokidis, a marine scientist whose research on whale movements and populations has just been published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. “This may represent a return to a migration pattern that existed in earlier periods for the eastern north Pacific blue whale population,” he said.

Richard Sears, founder of the Mingan Island Cetacean Study in Canada, has noticed a similar trend with blue whale sightings increasing in the north Atlantic during the past few years. Sears is cautiously optimistic, but warns that the increase in sightings may be partly due to more people looking for whales. “There is still no room for complacency,” he said.

Until the 20^th century, blue whales were normally avoided by whalers since these oceanic giants were too large and too fast for traditional ships to handle. With a maximal reported length of over 30 meters and the capacity of exceeding 170 metric tons in weight, the blue whale is the largest animal even known to have existed on our planet and capturing it using an old fashioned sailing vessel is certainly no picnic.

Before the invention of the steam-powered whaling ship and the exploding harpoon, the estimated global population of the blue whale was somewhere between 350,000 and 400,000. By the 1960s, no more than 5,000 blue whales were left.

Unlike whales such as the humpback which has undergone a remarkable recovery since the international ban on whaling was imposed, the blue whale populations have not shown any clear signs of recovery during the last few decades and scientists have worried about them being too shattered and fragmented to be viable populations in the long run. Illicit harvesting has also been a problem – files handed to the International Whaling Commission by Alexey Yablokov, environmental adviser to Boris Yeltsin, showed that the Soviet Union killed over 9,000 blue whales from the time of the ban until 1972.

“These revelations go some way towards explaining why blue whale populations stayed low for so long,” says Dan Bortolotti, author of the book Wild Blue. “It also suggests that they may now have a chance to recover — but only if the ban on hunting all large whales stays in place.”

Four Pacific Angel sharks have been born at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco, USA. The pups weighed between 115 and 120 grams at birth and measured 21-24 cm.

“We’re thrilled to have these rare births at Aquarium of the Bay,” said Christina Slager, Director of Husbandry at the Aquarium. “Very little is known about the reproductive behavior of these beautiful sharks, so the information we gather from these pups will be really valuable.”

The Pacific Angel shark (Squatina californica) is found from South Eastern Alaska to the Gulf of California and the San Francisco birth coincides with the pupping season for many local shark species.

The newborns have been moved from the exhibition to more secluded nursery tanks where they will be able to enjoy some peace and quite while being monitored by the husbandry team.

The Aquarium of the Bay is the only nature centre to consistently exhibit, study and care for Pacific Angel Sharks. The Aquarium of the Bay Foundation is currently funding a research project related to Angel sharks, where the collected data on breeding patterns and migration will be made available to government agencies, with the hope of protecting the animals’ habitat.

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.

Thanks to a system of underwater hydrophones, scientists have been able to document the presence of North Atlantic Right whales in an area where they were believed to have gone extinct.

The North Atlantic Right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), where even the name is a reference to it being the “right” whale to hunt, was heavily targeted by whalers during the 19^th and 20^th century and the entire species was on the brink of extinction when the moratorium on whaling was implemented in the 1960s.

Being an important whaling area throughout the 19^th century, Cape Farewell Ground off the southern tip of Greenland was believed to have no surviving population of Right whales, but when scientists from Oregon State University (OSU) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) begun investigating the area using hydrophones, they recorded a total of 2,012 Right whale “calls” from July through December 2007.

“We don’t know how many right whales there were in the area,” says David Mellinger, assistant professor at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport and chief scientist of the project. “They aren’t individually distinctive in their vocalizations. But we did hear right whales at three widely space sites on the same day, so the absolute minimum is three. Even that number is significant because the entire population is estimated to be only 300 to 400 whales.”

During the last 50 years no more than two Right whales have been sighted at Cape Farewell Ground, so even a figure as low as three during the same day is good news.

The project has been using five hydrophones engineered by Haru Matsumoto at OSU, configured to continuously record ambient sounds below 1,000 Hz over a large region of the North Atlantic. These underwater hydrophones are sensitive enough to record sounds from hundreds of miles away. The scientists used previous recordings of Atlantic and North Pacific Right whales to identify the species’ distinct sounds, including a type of vocalization known as “up” calls.

“The technology has enabled us to identify an important unstudied habitat for endangered right whales and raises the possibility that – contrary to general belief – a remnant of a central or eastern Atlantic stock of right whales still exists and might be viable,” says Mellinger.

Results of the 2007 study were presented this week at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

In addition to Mellinger and Clapham, scientists involved in the project include Sharon Nieukirk, Karolin Klinck, Holger Klinck and Bob Dziak of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies – a joint venture between OSU and NOAA; Phillip Clapham, a right whale expert with NOAA’s National Marine Mammal Laboratory, and Bryndís Brandsdóttir of the University of Iceland.

A Hawaiian company wants to build the world’s first commercial Bigeye tuna farm, in hope of creating a sustainable alternative to wild-caught big eye.

Bigeye tuna, Thunnus obesus, is the second most coveted tuna after the famous Bluefin tuna and the wild populations have been seriously depleted by commercial fishing fleets. As Bluefin is becoming increasingly rare due to over-fishing, consumers are turning their eyes towards Thunnus obesus – which naturally puts even more stress on this species that before.

In 2007, fishermen caught nearly 225,000 tons of wild Bigeye in the Pacific. Juvenile bigeye tuna like to stay close to floating objects in the ocean, such as logs and buoys, which make them highly susceptible to purse seine fishing in conjunction with man-made FADs (Fish Aggregation Devices). The removal of juvenile specimens from the sea before they have a chance to reach sexual maturity and reproduce is seriously threatening the survival of this tuna species.

“All indications are we’re on a rapid race to deplete the ocean of our food resources,” said Bill Spencer, chief executive of Hawaii Oceanic Technology Inc. “It’s sort of obvious _ well, jeez we’ve got to do something about this.”

Techniques to spawn and raise tuna fry are still being tentatively explored by scientists in several different countries, including Australia and Japan. As of today, most tuna farms rely on fishermen catching juvenile fish for them, but Hawaii Oceanic Technology plans to artificially hatch Bigeye tuna at a University of Hawaii lab in Hilo.

Once the young tunas from the lab have grown large enough, they will be placed in the 12-pen tuna farm that Hawaii Oceanic is planning to build roughly 3 miles off Big Island’s west coast. Each pen will have a diameter of 50 metres (168 feet) and the entire farm will be spread out over one square kilometre (250 acres). If everything goes according to plan, this project will yield 6,000 tons of Bigeye per annum. The fish will not be harvested until it reaches a weight of at least 45 kg (100 lbs).

In an effort to avoid many of the common problems associated with large scale commerical fish farmning, Hawaii Oceanic Technology will place their pens at a depth of 1,300 feet (400 metres) where currents are strong. The company also plans to keep their pens lightly stocked, since dense living conditions are known to increase the risk of disease in fish farms.

Farming pens can cause problems for the environment if fish waste and left-over food is allowed to collect under the pens, suffocating marine life living beneath. Other problems associated with fish farming are the release of antibiotics into the water and the escape of invasive species.

Fish farms can also put pressure on fish further down in the food chain since vast amounts of food is necessary to feed densely packed fish pens, and Peter Bridson, aquaculture manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, is concerned about how much fish meal the Hawaiian farm will use need to feed its tuna.

“You kind of have to come back to the whole debate on whether these fish are the right thing for us humans to be eating,” said Bridson. “There are lots of other things which have a lower impact in terms of how they are farmed.”

Spencer shares this concern and says Hawaii Oceanic wish to eventually develop other ways of feeding their fish, e.g. by creating food from soybeans or algae. It might also be possible to decrease the need for fish meal by recycling fish oil from the farm itself.

“We’re concerned about the environmental impact of what we’re doing,” Spencer said. “Our whole goal is to do this in an environmentally responsible manner.”