Florida will soon have the strictest conservation law for the harvest of imperilled freshwater turtles in the U.S. The new legislation pertains to all freshwater turtles on Florida’s imperilled species list plus species that look similar to the imperilled species, which include common snapping turtles and cooters.

• Commercial harvesting of these freshwater turtles will be prohibited.
• Individuals will still be allowed to take these freshwater turtles for non-commercial use, but no more than one turtle per day per person.
• Transporting more than one of these turtles per day will be prohibited.
• Collecting freshwater turtle eggs will be prohibited.

Turtle farms that depend on turtles collected from the wild will still be allowed to collect turtles, but only if adhering to a strict set of rules and only in order to establish reproduction in captivity to make the farm self-sustaining.

“I believe this industry should be moved to aquaculture, said Rodney Barreto, chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). “That’s the logical place for it to be.”

The closed season for the take of softshell turtles, May 1 to July 31, will not change under the new rule.

Criminal gangs are becoming a growing problem in Adelaide, Australia, but unlike most other gangs, these criminals are not fighting over drugs, precious stones or illegal firearms – they’re in it for the fish.

Despite this, the war on gangs launched by Adelaide authorities includes all the usual features; moonlight raids, fencing criminals, confiscation of secret stashes, and officials being seriously assaulted by criminals trying to evade the long arm of the law.

Thanks to a growing black market in restricted fish and shellfish, poachers can earn thousands of dollar per week along the windswept beaches and mangrove forests of South Australia. The 100 km piece of coastline running from Garden Island in the Port River Estuary to Bald Hills Beach, just south of Port Wakefield, seems to be especially popular among pilferers, with 108 reports of illegal fishing this year.

“This coastline is a reasonably inaccessible area, there are few roads and lots of thick mangrove scrub”, says PIRSA* Fisheries director Will Zacharin.

Often working in gangs of three, poachers build fishing platforms inside the thick mangrove forest and stash their nets and other equipment there.

Special joint operations are now carried out by police and PIRSA Fisheries to crack down on gangs taking undersized fish and selling fish of commercial quantities without a license. Fisheries are also working with interstate counterparts to investigate gangs trafficking abalone, crayfish and Murray cod. Sometimes, officers find more than just frutti di mare – one current prosecution for crayfish trafficking does for instance include the sale of and distribution of drugs.s

The officers, who work in pairs, are armed with capsicum spray for personal protection, but this isn’t always enough when facing poachers in possession of illegal firearms.

“There are incidents where we have seized illegally caught seafood and the offenders have also been in possession of illegal firearms, cash and drugs,” says Mr Zacharin. “They [the officers] are regularly threatened, sometimes verbally and some physically, and we have had incidents where officers have been manhandled which we report to police and resulted in
people charged with assault.”

According to Wildcatch Fisheries SA, the state’s commercial fishing body, black-market trade in fish and other marine creatures is a growing problem in the region.

”There’s a view among the industry that poaching is a growing issue – it’s definitely something over the last couple of years which is becoming more apparent,” says General manager Neil MacDonald.

In the Adelaide region, 11 poachers have been fined $315 each this year and 10 illegal nets have been confiscated, each being about 1 km long. Statewide, poaching investigations have resulted in 135 cautions and 57 fines.

* The Department of Primary Industries and Resources SA

Filtered cigarette butts should have new requirements for disposal, says Public Health Professor Tom Novotny after a San Diego State University (SDSU) study revealed filter-tipped cigarette butts to be toxic to marine and fresh-water fish.

According to Novotny and other members of the Cigarette Butt Advisory Group, used cigarette filters ought to be classified as hazardous waste since toxins present in them harm wildlife.

“It is toxic at rather low concentrations,” Novotny explains. “Even one butt in a liter of water can kill the fish in a period of 96 hours.”

Novotny says one way of reducing the amount of cigarette filters in our environment is stronger enforcement of anti-litter laws and non-smoking areas. Fines, waste fees or special taxes are other options, if the money is used to pay for cigarette butt recycling. A third alternative is to force manufacturers to pick up the bill for clean-up costs incurred by their products.

A thrown away cigarette butt is a combination of the original plastic filter and the compounds caught by the filter while the cigarette was being smoked. The plastic makes the filter non-biodegradable and the trapped compounds are toxic until they eventually biodegrades into the environment.

According to Novotny, cigarette butts are the number one littered substance in the world and have been the number one single item picked up on beach cleanup days in San Diego for several years.

“When they unconsciously throw their butts onto the ground, it’s not just litter, it’s a toxic hazardous waste product,” Novotny says. “And that’s what we’re trying to say. So that may be regulated at the local or state level. And we hope people will be more conscious about what they do with these cigarette butts.”

The study was carried out by SDSU Public Health Professor Rick Gersberg.

Picture by: Chris Sanderson, in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.

Nearly 40 miles (60 km) of beaches along the Australian east coast has been declared a disaster zone due to the massive amounts of oil and chemicals that leaked out from a Hong-Kong registered cargo ship on Wednesday.

According to Queensland state official, the beaches along the Moreton Island[1], Bribie Island[2], and the southern area of the Sunshine Coast[3] have taken the hardest hit and the oil spill is the worst to affect Queensland in decades. You can see an animation showing the sequence of events here: http://www.msq.qld.gov.au/resources/file/eb697a008fb8b4f/Pacific_animation.wmv

The Hong-Kong registered ship, a 185 metre container ship named Pacific Adventurer, was enroute from Newcastle to Indonesia via Brisbane when it got caught in Cyclone Hamish and lost over 30 shipping containers in the heavy seas about seven nautical miles east of Cape Moreton. The falling containers damaged the ship which resulted in heavy fuel oil getting into the water.

As of now, the Environmental Protection Agency, Emergency Services, and local government are working together in an effort to limit the consequences of the spill. Massive cleaning up efforts has been launched and affected animals are being treated by trained wildlife carers. According to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the clean-up effort could end up costing millions of dollars.

Queensland State Premier Anna Bligh says that Swire Shipping, the company owning the ship, could end up paying for the clean-up. “We are investigating the entire incident and if there is any basis for a prosecution, we will not hesitate to take that action – the total cost of the clean-up will rest with this company.” If found guilty of environmental breaches, Swire Shipping may also be facing fines of up to AUS $1,500,000 (US$ 977,000).

Initially, reports of the accident contained the number 20-30 tonnes of leaked oil, but the true number has now turned out be ten times this figure – a shocking 230 tonnes of oil. Oil is not only dangerous to wildlife in the short run; it is carcinogenic and can cause long-term effects.

The oil is however not the only problem; the shipping containers from the Pacific Adventurer where filled with ammonium nitrate fertiliser and environmental experts now fear that the nutrients will cause algal blooms and oxygen scarcity in the region. Radar-equipped aircrafts are therefore currently searching for the missing 620 tonnes of chemical fertilizer, in hope of finding as many containers as possible intact.

In a statement from Swire Shipping the company ensures that it and its insurers will meet all their responsibilities.

“The company very much regrets the environmental impact caused as a consequence of the vessel being caught in Cyclone Hamish. The company and its insurers will meet all their responsibilities. It has chartered a helicopter to survey the extent of the oil slick and to try to locate the containers. The company is in contact with Queensland government officials and has offered to provide any information that will help the clean up campaign to be targeted efficiently to minimise beach pollution and environmental impact. The companys oil pollution expert is arriving from the Middle East tonight to assist local authorities and technical experts with the clean up.”

You can find more information about the disaster on Maritime Safety Queensland, a government agency of Queensland Transport:
http://www.msq.qld.gov.au/Home/About_us/Msq_headlines/Headlines_pacific_adventurer

For information about volunteering or reporting sick or injured wildlife, contact the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.qld.gov.au

Statements and information from Swire Shipping can be found here:
http://www.swireshipping.com/web/news.jsp?fid=368

A UK-Japan team equipped with remote-operated landers has now managed to film a shoal of Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis fish at a depth of 7.7 km (4.8 mi) in the Japan Trench, where the oceanic Pacific plate subducts beneath the continental Eurasian plate.

The deepest record for any fish – over 8 km / 5 mi – is held by the species Abyssobrotula galatheae, but this fish was never filmed or observed while it was alive; it was dredged from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench and already dead when it reached the surface.

The Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis film shows the fish darting around in the dark, scooping up shrimps. The shoal consists of no less than 17 specimens, with the largest ones being around 30 cm (12 in) in length.

“It was an honour to see these fish“, says Dr Alan Jamieson, Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. “No-one has ever seen fish alive at these depths before – you just never know what you are going to see when you get down there.

The filming took place as a part of the Hadeep project; a collaboration between the Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen and the Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo. The aim of the project, which is funded by the Nippon Foundation and the Natural Environment Research Council, is to find out more about life in the very deepest parts of the world’s oceans.

Just like the unfortunate Abyssobrotula galatheae, deep sea fishes tend to be in a sad state when researchers examine them at the surface and this is one of the reasons why a film is such great news for anyone interested in learning more about what’s going on at these vast depts.

According to Professor Monty Priede, also from the University of Aberdeen, the team was surprised by the fish’s behaviour. “We certainly thought, deep down, fish would be relatively inactive, saving energy as much as possible, and so on,” says Priede. “But when you see the video, the fish are rushing around, feeding accurately, snapping at prey coming past.“

Oceanographers normally divide the deep sea into three different depth zones:

• The Bathyal, which is located between 1,000 and 3,000 m (3,000 and 10,000 ft)
• The Abyss, which is located between 3,000 and 6,000 m (10,000 and 20,000 ft)
• The Hadal, which is located between 6,000 and 11,000 m (20,000 and 36,000 ft)

The Hadeep project has been looking at the creatures inhabiting the Hadal zone, which consists of comparatively narrow trenches in the wide abyss. In this environment there is no light and the pressure is immense. The food supply is also very limited, since photosynthesising organisms can not survive and most other creatures stay away as well. The animals living in the Hadal zone must therefore rely on food sinking down to them from more fruitful waters above.

In order to cope with pressure, Hadal dwellers display numerous physiological modifications, primarily at the molecular level. They have also developed various ways of dealing with the constant night and Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis is for instance equipped with vibration receptors on its snout which comes in handy when the fish navigates through the darkness and searches for food.

Dr Alan Jamieson now hopes that the Japan-UK team will find more fish during their next expedition down into the Haldal zone, which is planned to take place in March 2009 and aims to venture as far down as 9,000 m (30,000 ft).”Nobody has really been able to look at these depths before – I think we will see some fish living much deeper,” says Jamieson, whose deep-sea blog from the expedition can be found at Planet Earth Online.

You can also read more about this story over at deep sea news, a great blog if you want to keep up to date on deep sea discoveries.