Around 55 percent of coral reefs in South Sulawesi waters have been damaged by destructive fishing practices, the South Sulawesi marine and fishery service announced on Wednesday. Due to the destructive practise of throwing explosives into the water to catch fish, only 45 percent of the coral reefs in the national marine park of Takabonerate are in good condition.

The Indonesian Naval personal have arrested fishermen in South Sulawesi for using explosives to catch fish, but the practise continues.

Takabonerate is considered the world`s third most beautiful marine park and has received an award from the World Ocean Conference (WOC) which was held in Manado, North Sulawesi, this month. This marine park is located within the famous Coral Triangle; a Pacific region home to over 75 percent of the world’s known coral species. This figure becomes even more remarkable if you take into account that the triangle only comprises two percent of the world’s ocean.

Hopefully, the situation in the region will improve as six heads of state/government participating in the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) Summit organized as part of the WOC signed a declaration on May 15, approving the Coral Triangle Initiative Program. Within this program, the six countries who share this amazingly coral rich region will coordinate their protection of marine resources.

Over 120 million people depend on the Coral Triangle ecosystem for their survival and would suffer greatly if the diversity of fish, shellfish and other marine creatures were to become depleted due to unsustainable fishing practises.

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.

While conducting magnetic experiments in 2006, the company SharkDefense Technologies discovered how certain metal alloys would keep sharks away by affecting the shark’s electric sense.

After extensive testing on several different shark species, SharkDefense Technologies and HEFA Rare Earth Canada, Co. Ltd are now finally ready to put their product on the market: metal alloy thingamajigs that keep sharks away from fishing gear by generating a small voltage as soon as the product is placed in saltwater.

Unlike popular food fishes like tuna and swordfish, sharks are equipped with an electric sense organ and will therefore stay clear of this type of voltage generating alloys. By placing a small piece of metal alloy near the bait at each hook, you cause sharks to shun your fishing equipment like the plague. This is a win-win situation for fishermen and sharks, since the fishermen will able to focus on more expensive target species and the sharks will avoid getting entangled in fishing gear and die.

Continuously submerged in seawater, the metal alloys continue to emit electricity for up to 48 hours.

Alabama fishermen and scuba divers will receive a welcome present from the state of Alabama in a few years: the coordinates to a series of man-made coral reefs teaming with fish and other reef creatures.

In order to promote coral growth, the state has placed 100 federally funded concrete pyramids at depths ranging from 150 to 250 feet (45 to 75 metres). Each pyramid is 9 feet (3 metres) tall and weighs about 7,500 lbs (3,400 kg).

The pyramids have now been resting off the coast of Alabama for three years and will continue to be studied by scientists and regulators for a few years more before their exact location is made public.

In order to find out differences when it comes to fish-attracting power, some pyramids have been placed alone while others stand in groups of up to six pyramids. Some reefs have also been fitted with so called FADs – Fish Attracting Devices. These FADs are essentially chains rising up from the reef to buoys suspended underwater. Scientists hope to determine if the use of FADs has any effect on the number of snapper and grouper; both highly priced food fishes that are becoming increasingly rare along the Atlantic coast of the Americas.

Early settlers and late followers

Some species of fish arrived to check out the pyramids in no time, such as grunt and spadefish. Other species, like sculpins and blennies, didn’t like the habitat until corals and barnacles began to spread over the concrete.

“The red snapper and the red porgies are the two initial species that you see,” says Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama. After that, you see vermilion snapper and triggerfish as the next order of abundance. Groupers are the last fish to set in.”

Both the University of South Alabama and the Alabama state Marine Resources division are using tiny unmanned submarines fitted with underwater video cameras to keep an eye on the reefs and their videos show dense congregations of spadefish, porgies, snapper, soap fish, queen angelfish and grouper.

“My gut feeling is that fish populations on the reefs are a reflection of relative local abundance in the adjacent habitat,” says Shipp. “Red snapper and red porgy are the most abundant fish in that depth. They forage away from their home reefs and find new areas. That’s why they are first and the most abundant.”

What if anyone finds out?

So, how can you keep one hundred 7,500 pound concrete structures a secret for years and years in the extremely busy Mexican Gulf? Shipp says he believes at least one of the reefs has been discovered, since they got only a few fish when they sampled that reef using rod and reel. Compared to other nearby pyramid reefs, that yield was miniscule which may indicate that fishermen are on to the secret. As Shipp and his crew approached the reef, a commercial fishing boat could be seen motoring away from the spot.

A NOAA* expedition by has discovered seven new species of Bamboo corals (family Isididae) in the deep waters off Hawaii Six of them may belong to en entirely new genus.

The findings were made within the Papah Naumoku Kea Marine National Monument, one of the biggest marine conservation areas in the world.

“These discoveries are important, because deep-sea corals support diverse seafloor ecosystems and also because these corals may be among the first marine organisms to be affected by ocean acidification,” said Dr Richard Spinrad, NOAA’s assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.

The NOAA expedition made a lot of other interesting findings in addition to the new species, including a five foot (roughly 150 cm) tall Yellow bamboo coral tree and a 600 meter deep coral graveyard comprising an area of more 1 square kilometre. It is difficult to determine when the corals in the graveyard died; it could have happened a few thousand years back as well as more than one million years ago – or anytime in between.

Old corals can provide us with a lot of information about Earth’s history and how the oceans have changed over time since corals produce growth rings in a fashion similar to that of trees.

“Studying these corals can help us understand how they survive for such long periods of time, as well as how they may respond to climate change in the future,” said Rob Dunbar, a Stanford University scientist.

* The US Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

A research boat used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency charged with protecting the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, collided with one of the whales off the Massachusetts coast this Sunday.

The NOAA vessel Auk was on its way back from a research journey when a Right Whale surfaced just 10 feet in front of the boat. The boat collided with the whale and the propeller cut into the animal’s left tail fluke. According to NOAA spokesman David Miller, the lacerations on the left tail fluke did not appear to be life-threatening. Researchers followed the whale for about 45 minutes after the accident and it appeared to be OK.

The accident highlights how difficult it is to avoid whale collisions and how we must work even harder to learn new ways of keeping these animals safe from boats. Even with the special precautions taken by NOAA vessels, the calamity still happened.

“To me, if it can happen to NOAA, it can happen to anybody,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, a Plymouth-based biologist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. “Therefore, everybody needs to up the ante and up their vigilance and take the issue much more seriously.“

Ship strikes are currently the major threat to the North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis). This year, a record number of calves were born in U.S. waters, but the population still comprises no more than roughly 400 animals.

The hydrothermal vents that line the mid-ocean ridges are a major source of iron for the creatures living in the sea. Humans are not the only ones who suffer when iron becomes scarce; creatures such as phytoplankton are known to grow listless in waters low in iron, even if they are drifting around in an environment rich in many other types of nutrients.

Earlier, scientists assumed that the iron exuded from hydrothermal vents immediately formed mineralized particles as soon as it came in contact with the salty water – a form of iron that is hard to utilize for living creatures.

New research has however unveiled that some of the iron spewed out from these vents actually remain in a form that is easy to absorb for oceanic beings. According to researcher Brandy Toner, a surprising interaction between iron and carbon in hydrothermal vents serves to stop the corrosion.

“Iron doesn’t behave as we had expected in hydrothermal plumes. Part of the iron from the hydrothermal fluid sticks to particulate organic matter and seems to be protected from oxidation processes,” Toner explains.

The research was carried out on hydrothermal vent particles collected by the team from the Tica vent in the Eastern Pacific Rise. With the help of the Advanced Light Source synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Toner was able to analyze the particles using focused X-ray beams.

Iron is a key player in this newly discovered process in the ocean, but the exact mechanisms remains unknown.

“So the question becomes, what are those organic compounds? Are they organic compounds like in oils and tars or is it actually the stuff of life?”, says Chris German, co-author of the paper. “Brandy’s work doesn’t mean that these [carbon-iron] complexes are definitely alive. But, this is a possible smoking gun. This paper opens up a whole new line of research and asks a new set of questions that people didn’t know they should be worrying about until now. A bit of work on a tiny nanometer scale can force you to ask questions of global significance.

Perhaps hydrothermal venting, a process traditionally believed to be a completely inorganic process, actually is a part of the organic carbon cycle on our planet.

The paper “Preservation of iron (II) by carbon-rich matrices in a hydrothermal plume” by Brandy Toner and her colleagues[1] has been published in Nature Geoscience[2].

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Rare coral species may be saving themselves from extinction by hybridising with other coral species, says Australian scientist Zoe Richards. Richards and his colleagues have studied 14 rare[1] and eight common coral species of the genus Acropora in the Indo-Pacific.

In order to find out more about hybridisation among corals, the team did a phylogenetic analysis using the highly polymorphic single-copy nuclear Pax-C 46/47 intron and the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region as markers.

The analysis showed that many of the rare species are polyphyletic for both Pax-C and mitochondrial phylogenies, and this is seen as a clear sign of interspecific hybridisation.

The results of the study “Some rare Indo-Pacific coral species are probable hybrids” by Richards, Oppen, Wallace, Willis and Miller were published in a recent issue of the journal PLoS ONE[2].

In their paper, the authors explain how “[t]he results presented here imply that a number of rare Indo-Pacific Acropora species are the products of recent hybridisation events, and highlight the significance of hybridisation in coral diversification. Whether these species have hybrid origins or have evolved and then hybridised in the absence of conspecific gametes remains to be elucidated.”

“In summary, although it has often been assumed that small populations have a decreased potential for adaptation, our analyses imply that some rare acroporid corals may actually have increased adaptive potential as a consequence of introgressive hybridisation, and therefore may be less vulnerable to extinction than has been assumed.”

Vast amounts of creatures looking like jelly balls have begun to appear off the eastern coast of Australia, and researchers now suspect that these animals may help slow down global warming by moving carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean floor.

The proper English name for this “jelly ball” being is salp. A salp is a barrel-shaped free-floating tunicate that moves around in the ocean by contracting and relaxing its gelatinous body. Just like the other tunicates, the salp is a filter feeder that loves to eat phytoplankton and this is why it has caught the attention of scientists researching global warming.

Phytoplankton are famous for their ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the top level of the sea, and a salp feasting on phytoplankton will excrete that carbon dioxide in the form of faeces. The faeces will drop to the ocean floor; thus lowering the amount of carbon dioxide present in the upper part of the ocean. Since the carbon dioxide found in this level of the sea chiefly hails from the atmosphere, phytoplankton and salps are a great aid when it comes to removing carbon dioxide from the air. Salps will also bring carbon down to the ocean floor when they die, which happens fairly often since the life cycle of this organism is no more than a few weeks.

Salp species can be found in marine environments all over the world, but they are most abundant and concentrated in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica where it is possible to encounter enormous swarms of salp. Over the last 100 years, krill populations in the Southern Ocean have declined and salp populations seem to be replacing them in this cold ecosystem. According to researcher Mark Baird of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO), the amount of salps in the waters off Australia are also on the increase, at least according to a survey carried out last month by CSIRO and the University of New South Wales.

While salp may help slow down global warming, their increase may also cause problems. Salp has a fairly low nutrient content and salps replacing nutrient rich krill in the Southern Sea may therefore prove detrimental for oceanic animals higher up in the food chain.

A six-month long investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) has led to the arrest of seven adults and one juvenile in Tampa. The arrested persons are believed to have been involved in various illegal activates concerning marine life, including catching protected sharks, sea horses, peppermint shrimp and bay scallops in Floridian waters, and exporting illegally obtained marine life to Europe. They are also suspected of having sold bait fish and bait shrimp as food for human consumption.

According to the FWC, the ring is believed to have operated for at least five years before attracting the attention of FWC. The ring lost a lot of animals due to poor maintenance, but the FWC still believes the group managed to sell $600,000 worth of peppermint shrimp alone.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission came into existence on July 1, 1999. The Investigations Section of the commission conducts both overt (uniform) and covert (plainclothes) investigations, and one of their tasks is to target hard-core commercial violators by conducting long-term undercover investigations. In 2003, the Investigations Section made 554 arrests/warnings and seized 130 illegally possessed specimens of fish and wildlife including a cougar, tigers, leopards, primates, exotic deer, venomous reptiles, protected birds and exotic aquatic species.