The area of the census ranges from Japanese to Australian waters.

Japan along with Australia have some of the world’s most diverse oceans, however thousands of the marvelous creatures in their deeps, remain unknown to man, and global warming is a major concern, suggests a newly performed census.

Both Japan and Australia are the proud owners of 33,000 some odd known species, according to a decade long scientific survey of the life in the sea, aptly dubbed “What lives in the Sea”.

However, there could be more than 200,000 species in the vast waters of Australia, which are surrounded by three oceans and four seas, which extend from the icy southern pole, to the coral-rich tropics.

“This constitutes a vast array of highly diverse habitats and ocean features, but many have received limited if any exploration,” wrote Alan Butler, from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, who is the lead author of the work.

The majority of the 33,000 species which were noted for Australia were animals, including fish, seabirds and of course marine mammals, with an astonishing rate of new fish and shark species being found on a continuing basis. Butler has guessed that only about 20 percent of Australia’s total marine species have been discovered to date.

Life was most densely populated in the northeast, which is where the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef makes its home, and is cock full of turtles, colorful corals, dolphins and dugongs.

“Australia is of tremendous ecological interest,” explained Jessie Ausubel, a representative for the marine census. “It is advanced in creating protected marine areas, around coral reefs but also around its deep-sea areas.”

A representative of Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Katsunori Fujikura, has commented that somewhere in the vicinity of 155,000 species have been spotted in the waters surrounding Japan, which only accounts for a mere 30 percent of all estimated life, and only 33,000 have been officially recorded on the books.

“The reason why such high diversity occurs is undoubtedly the varied environments existing in Japanese waters,” explained Fujikura.

Japan’s waters are just about 11 times larger than the land area, and they feature coral reefs, ince bound seas and trenches (which can be up to 10 kilometers deep). The strong ocean currents in the area, mean that roughly 5 percent of the species found there are actually unique to Japanese waters.

By contrast, 19 percent of New Zealand’s 17,000 marine species are found only around the isolated island state, and Antarctica’s Southern Ocean also hosts many species not found anywhere else.

“Most species in the Southern Ocean are rare, with over half of the known benthic (sea-bed) species having only been found once or twice,” explainedHuw Griffiths, a report author, from the British Antarctic Survey.

The extremely remote, and even hostile, Antarctic region is the home to 8,000 some odd recorded species, with sponges, small crustaceans, and moss animals richly represented.

However, over 90 percent of the marine environment is over one kilometer below the waves, and less thn 10 percent of the total deep-sea area has been explored, “implying there are still a great many species yet to be described” Griffiths explained.

The world’s first shark sanctuary will be created by Palau, a small island nation in the Pacific Ocean. The sanctuary will measure 240,000 square miles and be a haven for vulnerable shark species like Leopard shark, Hammerhead, and Oceanic Whitetip. Over 135 different species of shark and ray is known to live in this biological hotspot.

“Palau will declare its territorial waters and extended economic zone to be the first officially recognized sanctuary for sharks,” said Palauan President Johnson Toribiong.

Unfortunately, this tiny nation with a population of 20,000 people has only one patrol boat to protect the immense sanctuary from fishermen.

While acknowledging the difficulties, the president still hopes that others will respect Palauan territorial waters – and that the shark haven will inspire more such conservation efforts globally.

“We’ll do the very best we can, given our resources,” he said. “The purpose of this is to call attention to the world to the killing of sharks for commercial purposes, including to get the fins to make shark fin soups, and then they throw the bodies in the water.”

Toribiong said a recent flyover by Australian aircraft showed more than 70 vessels fishing in Palau waters, many of them illegally.

A group of conservationists and scientists are planning a research trip to the world’s largest rubbish pile; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Also known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, the Pacific Trash Vortex, or simply the Great Plastic Vortex; this gyre of marine litter has been gradually building over the last 60 years but we still know very little of this man-made monstrosity.

The expedition, headed by Hong Kong based entrepreneur and conservationist Doug Woodring, hopes to learn more about the nature of the vortex and investigate if it is possible to fish out the debris without causing even more harm.

“It will take many years to understand and fix the problem,” says Jim Dufour, a senior engineer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, who is advising the trip.

According to Dufour, research expeditions like this one are of imperative importance since establishing the extent of the problem is vital for the future health of the oceans.

“It [the expedition] will be the first scientific endeavour studying sea surface pollutants, impact to organisms at intermediate depths, bottom sediments, and the impacts to organisms caused by the leaching of chemical constituents in discarded plastic,” he says.

The research crew, which will pass through the gyre twice on their 50-day journey from San Francisco to Hawaii and back, are using a 150-foot-tall (45-metre-tall) ship – the Kaisei, which is Japanese for Ocean Planet. They will also be accompanied by a fishing trawler responsible for testing various methods of catching the garbage without causing too much harm to marine life.

“You have to have netting that is small enough to catch a lot but big enough to let plankton go through it,” Woodring explains.

Last year, building contractor and scuba dive instructor Richard Owen formed the Environmental Cleanup Coalition (ECC) to address the issue of the pollution of the North Pacific. A plan designed by the coalition suggests modifying a fleet of ships to clear the area of debris and form a restoration and recycling laboratory called Gyre Island.

Hopefully, the garbage can not only be fished up but also recycled or used to create fuel, but a long term solution must naturally involve preventing the garbage from ending up there in the first place.

”The real fix is back on land. We need to provide the means, globally, to care for our disposable waste,” says Dufour.

Despite being sponsored by the water company Brita and backed by the United Nations Environment Programme, the expedition is still looking for more funding to meet its two million US dollar budget. Since the enormous trash pile is located in international waters, no single government feels responsible for cleaning it up or funding research. Another problem is lack of awareness; since very few people ever even come close to this remote part of the ocean it is difficult to make the problem a high priority issue. A documentary will be filmed during the expedition in hope of making the public more aware of where the world’s largest garbage dump is actually located.

What is the Eastern Garbage Patch?

According to data from the United Nations Environment Programme, our oceans contain roughly 13,000 pieces of plastic litter per square kilometre of sea. However, this trash is not evenly spread throughout the marine environment – spiralling ocean currents located in five different parts of the world are continuously sucking in vast amounts of litter and trapping it there. Of these five different gyres, the most littered one is located in the North Pacific – the Eastern Garbage Patch.

The five major oceanic gyres.

The existence of the Eastern Garbage Patch was first predicted in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States. NOAA based their prediction on data obtained from Alaskan research carried out in the mid 1980s; research which unveiled high concentrations of marine debris accumulating in regions governed by particular patterns of ocean currents. Using information from the Sea of Japan, the researchers postulated that trash accumulations would occur in other similar parts of the Pacific Ocean where prevailing currents were favourable to the formation of comparatively stable bodies of water. They specifically indicated the North Pacific Gyre.

California-based sea captain and ocean researcher Charles Moore confirmed the existence of a garbage patch in the North Pacific after returning home through the North Pacific Gyre after competing in the Transpac sailing race. Moore contacted oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer who dubbed the region “the Eastern Garbage Patch” (EGP).

Twice the size of Texas

The Eastern Garbage Patch is located roughly 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N between Hawaii and mainland USA and is estimated to have grown to twice the size of Texas, even though no one knows for sure exactly how large the littered area really is. The garbage patch consists mainly of suspended plastic products that, after spending a long time in the ocean being broken down by the sun’s rays, have disintegrated into fragments so miniscule that most of the patch cannot be detected using satellite imaging.

Impact on wild-life and humans

The plastic soup resembles a congregation of zooplankton and is therefore devoured by animals that feed on zooplankton, such as jellyfish. The plastics will then commence their journey through the food chain until they end up in the stomachs of larger animals, such as sea turtles and marine birds. When ingested, plastic fragments can choke the unfortunate animal or block its digestive tract.

Plastics are not only dangerous in themselves, they are also known to absorb pollutants from the water, including DDT, PCB and PAHs, which can lead to acute poisoning or disrupt the hormonal system of animals that ingest them. This is naturally bad news for anyone who likes to eat marine fish and other types of sea food.

Indonesia will create Southeast Asia’s largest marine park in the Savu Sea, Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries Freddy Numberi said on Wednesday at the World Ocean Conference in Manado, Sulawesi.

The Savu Marine National Park will cover 3.5 million hectares in an incredibly diverse area where you can find no less than 500 coral species, over 300 recognized species of fish and a lot of charismatic wildlife like sea turtles, sharks, dolphins and whales. Out of 27 known species of whale, no less than 14 migrate through the Savu Sea to get from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. The Savu Sea is also an important spawning ground for many marine species, including the world’s dwindling tuna population.

Indonesia is famous for its prosperous marine environment, but this marine flora and fauna are today facing serious treats, including pollution, over fishing and the use of unsustainable fishing methods. Lax enforcement of Indonesian law has made it possible for fishermen to continue using illegal fishing methods such as dynamite and cyanide fishing.

Within the Savu Marine National Park, efforts will be made to eradicate illegal fishing practises while keeping certain areas open for local fishermen to continue traditional subsistence fishing. Tourism activities will also be allowed in certain designated areas within the park. Environmental groups, including WWF and The Nature Conservancy, will help set up the reserve together with the Indonesian government.

“Enforcement is one of the key questions we need to work out, said Rili Djohani”, marine expert at The Nature Conservancy. “It could be a combination of community-based and government patrols.”

The Savu Marine National Park is located within the so called Coral Triangle, a coral reef network bounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

U.S. and Canadian scientists have documented the first known migration of blue whales from the coast of California to areas off British Columbia and the Gulf of Alaska since the 1965 ban of commercial whaling.

Researchers identified 15 separate cases where Blue Whales were spotted in the waters off British Columbia and the Gulf of Alaska. Four of the observed animals were identified as Blue Whales previously seen swimming in Californian waters, which suggests that Blue Whales are re-establishing their old migration pattern.

The identifications were made by comparing pictures of Blue Whales photographed in the northern parts of the Pacific Ocean since 1997 with photographs of Blue Whales taken off the southern U.S. West Coast. The identity of individual Blue Whales was determined based on dorsal fin shape and pigmentation patterns in skin colour.

The Blue Whale was almost hunted to extinction during the 20^th century and even though commercial whaling has been prohibited (albeit not strictly enforced) since 1965 the populations are having a hard time recovering. Blue Whales are still listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and no more than roughly 5,000 to 12,000 Blue Whales are believed to remain in our oceans, with 2,000 of them living of the U.S. West Coast.

The migration research was conducted by scientists from Cascadia Research Collective in Washington State, NOAA’s* Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California, and Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans. You can read the full article in the most recent issue of the journal Marine Mammal Science.

* The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

This week, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet signed into law a measure that outlaws all whale hunting in the Chilean part of the Pacific Ocean. The law prohibits all types of whale hunting; both commercial and scientific.

Whales have not been hunted off the Chilean coast for over three decades, but the government decided that a law was needed to emphasise the Chilean commitment to protect whales in Chilean territorial waters. President Bachelet says the law is “a big step ahead in the protection of nature and a major legacy to future generations.”

Several South- and Central American countries has already banned whale hunting, including Chile’s neighbour Argentina (Green on the map). Chile has a 6,435 km long coast line along the Pacific side of South America’s southernmost part, while Argentina has a 4,665 km long coastline along the corresponding Atlantic side of the continent. As you can see on the map, the new Chilean law has led to the creation of a whale sanctuary around the entire southern tip of South America. (Chile is red on the map)

Chile = Red, Argentine = Green

In addition to the recently proposed areas in the Pacific Ocean, (See this and this) president Bush now says he wants to find even more regions of the Pacific Ocean to protect.

This Friday, Bush made public that he has asked the secretaries of the Interior, Commerce and Defense to identify additional areas of the Pacific Ocean that could be eligible for conservation. He also revealed that the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary will be expanded by 585 square nautical miles and come to include the Davidson Seamount. Davidson Seamount is a 42 km long underwater mountain located roughly 120 km southwest of Monterey, California. The seamount rises 2400 meters off the ocean floor, but its highest point is still more than a kilometre below the surface.

In an earlier post, we wrote about President Bush’s proposal to create the largest protected marine area in the world in the Pacific Ocean.

A group of scientists, environmental groups, and former members of Australia’s navy are now calling for the creation of another reserve that would ban fishing in a whopping 400,000 square mile area off Australia’s northeast coast.

Coral at the Great barrier reef, Australia

It will sure be interesting to see if these two suggestions will become a reality, and if so, which of the protected areas that will ultimately become the largest protected marine area in the world. When discussing protected areas it is also important to keep in mind that the term “protected” can mean very different things.

The proposed protected area off of Australia’s northeast coast is known as the Coral Sea. It is a so called marginal sea, which means that it is a part of an ocean partially enclosed by land, e.g. by archipelagos and peninsulas. The Coral Sea is bordered by the east coast of Queensland to the west, by the Vanuatu archipelago and New Caledonia to the east, and by the Solomon Islands to the north.

The Coral Sea Basin is believed to have been formed between 58 and 48 million years ago when the Queensland continental shelf was lifted up by tectonic forces. The sea is not only famous for its rich biodiversity; it is of cultural significance as well and was for instance the location of a famous battle during World War II.

The effort to create a no-take marine park in the Coral Sea is headed by the Pew Environment Group. You can find more information about the initiative on their site.

Regular salmon

Biologists keeping track of the sockeye salmon populations in central Idaho (Sawtooth Mountains) have good news to report. More sockeye than in any other year in the last two decades have made their way pass the eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers and returned to idaho. 507 fish have been counted so far. That might not sound much but considering that the number has been in the single digits each of the last five years and that only 16 wild sockeye returned between 1991 and 1998 it is a large improvement. It might however be too early to start celebrating as 257 sockeye returned in 2000 followed by a number of bad years.

The improvement is believed to be due to the fact that 180,000 smolts were released in Idaho lakes in 2006. Some of the returning fish are likely artificially spawned at the Eagle Fish Hatchery in Southwestern Idaho as part of a program to help boost the sockeye populations around the Sawtooth Mountains.

The 507 returning fish might be a better number than in many years but it is still no where near the historical levels of Sockeye salmon that once wandered the 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean to Idaho lakes like Redfish, Pettit and Alturas. As many as 35,000 sockeye used to return each year. The population decline is believed to be primarily due to four dams along the lower Snake River in Eastern Washington.