Horseshoe crab rescue from a ghost net in Mandai mangrove
on the Habitatnews blog with video clip.
Sand stars on cyrene
lots of video clips of sand stars moving, with regenerating arm and with an unidentified hole on the sgbeachbum blog
Oriental Magpie Robin taking cockroach
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Study considers how to make cents of the Sound
Robert McClure seattlepi.com 24 Jul 08;
Lower doctor bills. Drinking water. Protection from floods. Food.
Those are just a few items on a newly compiled list of goods and services provided to people living around Puget Sound by the "natural capital" of the region's forests, mountains and waterways, says a report being released Friday by a team of economists.
After examining how wetlands, the Sound and other natural features benefit people living here, the economists behind the report pegged the value of those goods and services at between $7.4 billion and $61.7 billion a year. And they admit upfront that's a big underestimate -- it's just the best they could do for now.
If the ecosystems that surround the region's cities had a price tag, what would it be? At least $243 billion -- and perhaps as much as $2.1 trillion, the economic team says. Again, that's a "rough cut, first step" at putting a value on the nature that surrounds us.
Why do this?
"It gets us beyond the confrontational debate. It's not the environment versus the economy," said co-author Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute of Environmental Economics at the University of Vermont. "We live in a complex, interconnected system, and the environment is one of our huge assets."
Costanza, who helped pioneer the field of attaching economic values to natural areas in the 1990s, said the Puget Sound study is only the second time this kind of analysis has been performed for a regional ecosystem. The first was completed last year in New Jersey -- the state's Pine Barrens were given an environmental value of $1,476 an acre.
The concept has faced criticism from environmentalists who resent anyone attaching a dollar value to rivers and mountains and salt marshes and eelgrass beds, said the study's lead author, economist David Batker, director of Earth Economics, a Tacoma-based think tank.
But by putting price tags on natural assets, Costanza and other researchers say polluters can be fined more accurately for the damage they cause and governments can get a firmer grip on the importance of preserving forests and limiting sprawl.
The study, "A New View of the Puget Sound Economy," notes that the plusses that nature provides around here include clean drinking water, recreation, fish, flood protection, buffering from storms and erosion control.
"If lost, these valuable economic goods and services have a price tag," the report argues. "While ecosystems like the Puget Sound Basin are priceless, Puget Sound also does work. Just as a person's life is priceless, and that person gets paid for work performed, Puget Sound ecosystems provide valuable economic goods and services."
The report examines the value of ecosystems from the mountains to the Sound. First it details nature's local contributions, including:
# Lower doctor bills. It cites a 1998 study by the pro-tree American Forests that found urban forests surrounding Puget Sound remove 78 million pounds of pollutants annually, letting residents avoid health care and other costs of $166 million a year.
# Drinking water. It's stored underground, in wetlands and even in the snows that coat the Cascades and Olympics in the winter and the melt in the summer.
# Reducing property damage. Floodwaters are soaked up by wetlands; coastal wetlands and shores buffer the land from storm-whipped waves.
# Food. Besides the obvious ones -- crops, fish and shellfish -- there are wild berries, mushrooms, seaweed and wild game.
The study also catalogues some of the known contributions to the local economy: Nearly 80 percent of Washington tourism revenues come from the Puget Sound region; statewide, wildlife-watching brought in $980 million in 2001 (more than double expenditures for hunting and fishing), with a half-million visitors annually coming to see orcas, for example.
The second part of the report attempts to put dollar values on these -- but doesn't succeed in many cases. In fact, some of the more obvious benefits -- including food from local farms and the Sound, as well as drinking water from snowpack in the mountains -- just haven't been translated into dollar values that mesh with the methods used in the report, said Batker, the lead author.
"Even though this is a gross underestimate of the true value of ecosystem services, it's far better than counting them as zero, which is what we've done in many policies," he said.
The authors said they are working on better methods that would more fully capture nature's economic benefits and also allow them to measure values as they change over time.
Paid for by the Russell Family and Harder foundations, environmentally oriented philanthropies in the Tacoma area, the study took about 1 1/2 years. Its release comes as a unique state agency called the Puget Sound Partnership is trying to put together a multiyear Sound restoration "action agenda."
The person spearheading that effort, Bill Ruckelshaus, chairman of the partnership's leadership council, said he welcomed this kind of analysis, calling it "a major contribution to our understanding."
"We're diminishing the value of our natural capital," said Ruckelshaus, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. "We need to figure out how to put it back."
Puget Sound is plagued by pollution dumped into it, overfishing, destruction of shorelines and more. But the new state agency is focused on the idea that fixing the Sound's problems means adjusting how residents treat the land all the way to the mountaintops.
That's because way up there and everywhere in between, water falls as rain or snow. Then, because of the way cities and suburbs traditionally have been built and forests have been cut, that water is polluted and funneled downstream in fast-moving surges.
Those bursts of water scour out stream bottoms and dump into the Sound its biggest slugs of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, zinc, mercury, the banned pesticide DDT and phthalates.
On the eve of the report's release, Gov. Chris Gregoire, who convinced the Legislature to launch the Puget Sound Partnership, was on a boat tour of the estuary.
She emphasized the ecological and economic value of the Sound at a stop at Seattle's Golden Gardens.
"Think about the recreational fisheries, the tourism, the commercial fisheries, the clams and the oysters we send around the globe," Gregoire said. And when it comes to recruiting companies to the state, "they talk about the quality of life. ... Puget Sound is one of the biggest selling points to get businesses here."
Her opponent in the governor's race, Republican Dino Rossi, said through a spokeswoman that he has fought for funding for state parks and "supports a cleaner Puget Sound."
"However, state efforts need to do more than just provide rhetoric and set unattainable goals," Rossi's spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "The incumbent has made big promises, but has provided less than 2 percent of the funding that experts say is needed clean up Puget Sound."
Premium fish used in yusheng now farmed here as part of AVA's project to cut reliance on imports
Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 25 Jul 08;
FRESH from last year's success with locally bred sea bass, Singapore's growers are ready to harvest another variety of farmed fish from Singapore waters.
The cobia, also known as the black kingfish, ling, or lemon fish, is among the six species of fish identified as suitable for local farming by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA).
About eight tonnes of the fish are ready for harvest. This means that Singapore can significantly cut back on imports, a key aim of the programme to farm fish here. Forty tonnes of cobia were brought in from Taiwan and Vietnam last year.
The cobia is the sixth species of fish researched, reared and found suitable by the AVA to be introduced to local farmers since the 1970s.
The others are the sea bass, the four-finger threadfin, two species of grouper and mangrove red snapper.
The sea bass was the most recently harvested, having had its turn last October. The others were harvested earlier.
The AVA, meanwhile, is looking into introducing new species to fish farms here.
The crimson red snapper, a popular fish in Singapore, is next on its list.
Singapore consumes about 89,000 tonnes of fresh fish a year.
More than 90 per cent of this comes from farms mainly in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, as well as from fishing vessels from around the world.
The rest comes from farms in Singapore and local fishermen.
The AVA had said in the past that it hoped offshore farms would increase their contribution to 40 per cent, but The Straits Times understands that this target is currently being reviewed.
The cobia is eaten raw in Japanese restaurants and has been offered in hotels as part of the tossed fish salad, or yusheng, during Chinese New Year.
Ms Wee Joo Yong, the head of research at the AVA's Marine Aquaculture Centre, said: 'The demand is still from a niche market but, with increased availability, we expect its popularity will grow to reach the mass market.'
The AVA has been trying to breed cobia, a premium fish much in demand in many parts of the world, since 2005.
The first batch of the locally bred fish will be harvested from the Changi Fishery, a 10-minute boat ride from the mainland.
Its general manager, Ms Rosemary Lau, 45, one of the few women in the aquaculture industry, runs the kelong for her surgeon husband.
Ms Lau said that consumers could expect the price of her 'farm-fresh' fish to be about the same as the current listed price of $45 a kilo for imported chilled cobia.
But she added a sweetener: 'Our initial price to restaurants will be about half that, to promote it.'
Singapore-bred Black Kingfish or cobia goes on sale this weekend
Liang Cheong/Dominique Loh, Channel NewsAsia 24 Jul 08;
SINGAPORE: For the first time, fish farmers in Singapore have successfully bred the cobia or Black Kingfish for commercial sale.
Starting this weekend, the first batch of cobias will be sold in the open market.
Already, six Japanese restaurants have snapped up the first 500 cobias.
The batch is not only fresh, but cheaper by some 50 per cent than imported frozen ones from Thailand and Vietnam.
From February next year, some 5,500 cobias will be ready for market.
Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) has been trying out a new way of breeding cobias since 2005.
The cobia, with its high levels of vitamin E and protein, is said to be an excellent fish for sashimi.
- CNA/ir
Every day, a million Britons tuck into salmon, and demand is rising fast. Marine farming is the supermarkets' answer – but can it ever be eco-friendly? Martin Hickman reports
The Independent 24 Jul 08;
Salmon is an easy fish to love. Simple and tasty, its pink flesh is pulled from supermarket shelves and transformed into an array of increasingly exotic dishes.
Fried with wasabi, baked with sea-salt, or served Thai-style on a bed of noodles, the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is an everyday stalwart of the nation's cookery shows, recipe books and domestic kitchens.
So common, in fact, that a species once an aristocratic delicacy has become the fish most commonly eaten in the UK – more popular than tuna, cod or haddock. One million people eat salmon every day.
Until now, though, little attention has been paid to its provenance. People know about the threat to cod posed by overfishing, or how tuna trawlers also scoop up dolphins. But salmon? Is it farmed or wild; kind or cruel; sustainable or environmentally damaging?
Salmon is actually one of the hidden problems in the meat and fish business, according to environmentalists and animal welfare campaigners.
Salmon are naturally programmed to swim hundreds of miles, moving downstream from their birthplaces in British rivers to the open ocean, and then back – leaping upstream in the rivers – to spawn.
In fish farms, their complex life cycle is artificially managed by man. Despite their extraordinary journey in the open sea, the fish are kept in 100-ft wide pens. Some escape and infect their wild cousins with lice.
To answer the critics, some British supermarkets have begun to insist on their salmon being produced to higher standards. This summer Marks & Spencer became the first retailer to switch its entire range of farmed salmon to the Freedom Food scheme run by the RSPCA. Sainsbury's has also introduced Freedom Food salmon as part of its pitch to middle-market gourmands.
Both companies are vaunting their newly accredited salmon as evidence that they take animal welfare seriously; that their fish is virtuous. Five million fish a year will have their lives improved as a result of the conversion to RSPCA standards.
But just how much better is fish with the Freedom Food label than ordinary salmon – and, in any case, should we be eating farmed salmon at all?
To start with, we need to look at the reality of Britain's most popular fish. The overwhelming likelihood is that unless your salmon was sold as "wild", it has been farmed, perhaps in Scotland, but quite possibly in Norway or Chile, both big players in the industry.
According to the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming, fish farmers have traditionally paid little attention to the welfare of their silvery charges.
Environmentalists have complained that salmon farming is denuding the sea of the smaller wild fish fed to the carnivorous salmon. By the time it is harvested from a Scottish loch or Norwegian fjord, a salmon will have consumed many times its final weight in sand eels or whiting.
Whatever the concerns, there is little prospect of a large-scale return to wild salmon. Fish farming is likely to be with us for the long-term, prospering from the failure of political leaders to stop over-fishing, which, according to one recent study, is likely to destroy wild populations as soon as 2048.
With the world's seven billion people demanding protein, aquaculture is filling the gap. In the past 35 years, the proportion of farmed fish has risen from 5 per cent to 40 per cent in 2005 of all fish consumed.
Aquaculture is scheduled to go on rising, eventually soaring way above the diminished annual wild harvest.
According to the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation, the UK salmon industry is now worth £1bn a year. Conventional fish is stocked in densities of 20kg per cubic metre of seawater. The most cramped fish can be identified by their withered dorsal fins; their flesh is flabbier, the white fat thicker. They don't taste as nice as salmon given more space and care.
So three years ago Marks & Spencer decided to look afresh at its salmon and devise a new system that would be better for the animals and kinder to the environment. It came up with the Lochmuir brand, now used in all its products from ready meals to smoked slices. The fish are farmed in the west of Scotland, where the jagged coastline shelters the sea coves and lochs.
Instead of being hauled to shore in nets, the salmon are slowly gathered by a £10m well-boat, which lowers their temperature to make them less sensible to their slaughter. As they swim gently round the large well around which the boat is constructed, John Rea, Scottish Sea Farm's production manager, says: "I'm impressed by those dorsal fins. They're not very typical on farmed fish. They're an expression of what M&S are trying to do. If you had these in an intensive farming situation you would find the fins were quite eroded. But the fin condition here is pretty good – they are pretty close to wild dorsal fins."
The creatures certainly look calm. "If there was a lot of thrashing around here, the fish would be very stressed," says Jim Gallagher, Scottish Sea Farms' managing director.
Andrew Mallison, M&S's fish buyer, specified that the wild fish used to feed the salmon should come from sustainable species and that the salmon should have 20 per cent more space. They grow 10 to 15 per cent slower than the industry standard. Fat levels are 15 per cent, rather than 22 per cent.
"Aquaculture can be done right, but there will always be horses for courses," says Mallison. "There will be people who don't want to pay a fair price for their salmon: they will always want it as cheap as possible. And you can make it cheaper than we do here. We have incurred costs by saying that we want better feed and we don't want to push so many fish into a cage, but all those things we believe are worth it because we think that's what our customer wants: they want fish grown well with a good eating quality.
"You can go to another farming operation and you will have two boys in boiler suits sitting in a Portakabin on the shore of a loch somewhere," Mallison adds, "and they will go out and look at a couple of cages and will throw a bit of feed in. And they will harvest when they are required to, but they won't really know how good that fish was. They will never hear anything more about it unless it was really bad."
Gallagher suggests the perception of the industry is now "historic" – that salmon farming has improved, with better sea-lice treatment and stronger cages. He points out this is an industry which has only been around for 30 years – 10 life cycles of a salmon.
"Remember, our livelihood is based on not having escapes. We want to grow the fish on the farm to harvest size and then we want to sell it someone who appreciates what we have done. The industry has invested heavily in the infrastructure."
So what does Compassion in World Farming think of Freedom Food salmon?
"On an ideal level, we just don't like the idea of fish being farmed, particularly salmon," says Peter Stevenson, the organisation's chief policy adviser.
"In natural conditions, they travel and swim very long distances. They roam the oceans and therefore to farm them in cages, even to an organic or better standards is something we are unhappy with.
"But if you are going to buy farmed salmon then please go for organic fish or the Freedom Food brand. The RSPCA scheme shows that it is commercially feasible to have higher standards for farmed salmon."
Dish of the day: salmon facts
* Like trout, salmon is unusual in being both a freshwater and seawater fish. Salmon swim out to the ocean and back to lay their eggs.
* There are six stages in the salmon life cycle, which takes several years to complete, from spawn to adult: eggs/spawn; alevin (babies feeding from a yolk sac); fry (small fish that adapt to freshwater); parr (quickly growing fish that turn silvery-blue); smolts (young salmon ready to migrate); adult fish.
* UK shop sales of salmon are worth £1bn a year.
* Salmon generates £400m a year for Scottish fish farms
* Every day, one million Britons eat salmon.
Today Online 25 Jul 08;
TRAILS and treks, cycling and tranquil nature — in 15 years’ time, these may not be the only things you would associate with parks in Singapore.
Try dining outlets, spas, adventure and sports activity centres, for example. These are some of the wide range of amenities being planned for the island’s parks.
Improving the quality of green spaces will be a key part of the next phase of Singapore’s greening, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said yesterday.
The plans to enhance the island’s greenery in a big way include increasing the amount of land set aside for parks by another 25 per cent in the next 15 years.
This means nearly 60 per cent of the island would be covered by greenery, compared to 47 per cent last year.
Mr Mah promised: “To meet the diverse recreational needs of an increasingly sophisticated population, NParks has set for itself the aim that whatever your interests, you will be able to find a favourite green spot to spend your leisure time within our parks.”
Besides developing new parks and rejuvenating existing ones, NParks will think vertically by undertaking research to identify plants and planting methods suitable for skyrise greenery. NParks will work with the industry to help guide developers to implement sky gardens and green roofs.
Enhancing urban biodiversity and environmental sustainability will be another area of focus, Mr Mah said at the awards gala of the Singapore Garden Festival.
One plans to sterilise 400 industrial dogs this year, but it may not save them from being culled
Esther Ng Today Online 25 Jul 08;
THE volunteers get stray dogs sterilised, shelter them for a few days while they recuperate, then release them back where they came from, whether factories, industrial estates or the neighbourhood.
This year alone, one animal welfare group, Noah’s Ark Cares, hopes to get400 industrial dogs sterilised, in an effort to curb Singapore’s growing stray population.
All this adds up in terms of personal time and costs — some $250 a dog :— but for all their efforts, the dogs still risk being caught and culled by the authorities.
Responding to Today’s queries, the Agri-food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said it does not condone the release of sterilised dogs into the environment, and it would round them up if they are found in public places.
“The sterilised dogs should be re-homed and licensed but not released into the environment,” said Mr Madhavan Kannan, head of AVA’s Centre for Animal Welfare and Control. Last September, the AVA had introduced tougher penalties for dog-owners to discourage abandonment, including a fine of up to $5,000 for not leashing one’s dog in public.
The problem? There are more dogs than there are people willing to take them in, and animal shelters such as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Doggie Rescue Shelter are already overwhelmed.
“Every year, the SPCA receives around 9,000 animals; only a tenth find homes,” said its executive officer Deirdre Moss. “Not only are we competing with the many pet shops and pet farms to find homes for these animals, there are also limited avenues to re-home dogs because of restrictive housing board rules and no restriction to commercial breeding.”
So why do volunteer groups such as Noah’s Ark and Action for Singapore Dogs (ASD) persist with sterilisation, if their efforts are undone when the dogs are caught and put down? Their response: It is better to have sterilised strays roaming the streets than unsterilised ones that could add to the stray population.
A tough sell to the public
Noah’s Ark launched its Project Industrial Dogs scheme in June 2005 providing low-cost sterilisation, while ASD started its scheme in 2002. Noah’s Ark president,Ms Chew Gek Hiang, said the group often tries to get factory owners to take ownership of the dogs in their compounds.
“We encourage them to sterilise the dogs, have them micro-chipped and licensed.”
At Alexandra Village, where stray dogs have been a fixture for years, workshop owners that Today spoke to supported a mass sterilisation programme, although most were reluctant to share the costs.
Pointing to a dog nearby, Mr Tay Tai Hua, 58, of Champion Auto Air-conditioner Company said: “This dog is very pitiful. She gives birth three times a year. It would be good if she was sterilised, but I don’t know if I want to pay for it.”
Sterilised dogs are identified by a clipped left ear, and according to ASD’s president Ricky Teo, the group used to sterilise 10 to 20 dogs a month — but they kept getting culled by AVA, so they now only sterilise pregnant industrial dogs, which number two to five a month.
He added: “We just had to pay$500 to bail a sterilised dog out of AVA’s pound this week. The dog was outside the factory’s premises when it was trapped. All this is extra cost.”
For the strays’ sterilisation procedure, vets charge the groups a subsidised rate but even so, to achieve its target this year, Noah’s Ark needs to raise $50,000.
While animal activists maintain that sterilisation is a more effective way of reducing the stray population :— since new strays will simply enter the area where dogs have been culled, and multiply :— have they managed to convince the public of the merits of their case?
Said Mr YK Chan, 50, a security guard who patronises the Alexandra Village hawker centre: “I’m afraid of dogs. Some are more aggressive than others; I was bitten when I was a child.”
But sales executive Kelvin Yong, 27, said: “So long as the dogs are not near populated areas, I think we should give the sterilisation project a go.”
Dog trainer Patrick Wong said sterilised dogs are generally less aggressive and are not likely to roam, especially if caregivers provide food.
“Unless cornered or perceived as a threat, most dogs will leave humans alone,” he said. And if faced with a strange dog? “Remain calm and walk steadily. Do not run, scream or appear frightened.”
Heather Tan, Channel NewsAsia 24 Jul 08;
SINGAPORE : Schools across Singapore have been invited to take part in the National Weather Study Project 2009.
While teams may propose projects on any topic related to climate change and the environment, organisers hope to receive more proposals for water-themed projects from participating schools.
For the first time, international schools in the country are being invited to participate in this annual inter-school competition, now in its third year.
Singapore's largest power generation company, Senoko Power Limited, said the rules were relaxed to enable international school students to gain first-hand exposure to climate change issues.
The previous two competitions were only open to local primary and secondary schools, as well as junior colleges.
Participants are encouraged to undertake projects which extend beyond their geography curriculum and embark on multi-disciplinary studies, comprising the various sciences, mathematics, economics and social studies.
Students will work on their projects from January 1 to March 31, 2009. Assessments will end by May and the winners will be announced in June.
Winners stand to win a sponsored overseas trip to showcase their project work.
More information on the competition is available at this website. - CNA /ls
Business Times 25 Jul 08;
The event's organisers and designers of the showcases have displayed a heightened environmental consciousness, reports AMANDA DE GUZMAN
THE 2008 Singapore Garden Festival is much greener than its predecessors.
The shift is not due to some genetically modified chlorophyll, but to the heightened environmental consciousness displayed by both the individual designers of the showcased gardens and the organisers of the event.
To drive home the importance of environmental issues, the Clarins Learning Garden is designed to simultaneously entertain and educate children from ages four to seven about the notion of carbon footprinting.
'Its not an easy concept,' says this year's festival director, Wong Wei-Har. 'How do you make it fun?'
The answer comes in the form of Sara, the beloved botanicosaurus, a cartoon dinosaur that has been beguiling younger visitors to the Botanical Gardens for years. She appears in a colourful booklet made for the Learning Garden, along with other polychromatic animal friends, to teach kids about issues like global warming and fossil fuels, as well as how to lessen their carbon footprints through methods such as recycling or taking public transport.
While Dr Wong says that she is 'not running a childcare centre', she adds that the main part of the festival is geared towards adults, but she 'wanted the kids to have just as good of a time'. Hence, while the primary purpose of the garden is to introduce urgent environmental issues to the youth, it also contributes to making the overall event much more kid-friendly.
Educating others
Many of the designers of the gardens on display have also chosen to exhibit environmentally conscious messages in their work.
'I think people in the horticultural industry have an inbred passion for plants and the environment,' says Jim Fogarty, a designer from Australia. 'Doing a show like this gives you a chance to educate other people to look after the planet we live on.'
Mr Fogarty's design, which is in the fantasy category of the festival's competition and was awarded a gold ranking yesterday, was inspired by an place in Australia called Jervis Bay, an area located 200 km south of Sydney that is rich in both beach and bush. Protected from development, it has been classified as both a national park and marine park. Replete with marine and animal life as well as local flora, Mr Fogarty believes it to be a 'great story' that could provide the template for the future of eco-tourism.
'If you protect the natural environment, you can create a wonderful attraction,' he says. 'Maybe in the long term, governments could make a lot more money through conservation, rather than just selling to developers.'
Mr Fogarty's garden is designed to capture the natural wealth of Jervis Bay by displaying plants from the area in his exhibition as well as using other materials to symbolise other aspects of the bay's beauty. Jervis Bay's pristine white sand - ostensibly the whitest in the world - is represented by white aggregate paving, while the garden's Waterfall Wall is meant to recall the aesthetics and the importance of its blue waters.
Charlie Evans, also a designer from Australia, did not base his garden, Message in a Bottle, on a particular place. Actually, it is unclear what or where he based his work on but that is the point, he says.
'It is open to interpretation,' he says. Besides a sign in the front that reads 'tread lightly on our blue planet', the environmental concerns of the piece are all in the details. For example, his use of steel pieces, discarded as waste by factories and rescued by his team, to create exquisite screens could be seen as an ode to the beautiful results of recycling.
'I have had a lot of people describe the garden differently, and that is fine,' he says. 'The Message in a Bottle is whatever you want it to be.'
Effects of global warming
In contrast to the oblique nature of Mr Evans' work is Best in Show winner Peter Cheok's piece, Seeking Shangri-La, which leaves only one interpretation to its viewer: the devastating possibilities of global warming. Situating the mythical paradise of Shangri-la in a cavernous underwater prison, the design is a terrifying meditation on the effects of global warming.
'Shangri-La was an ideal subject because it is so high up in the mountains,' Mr Cheok says. This ups the ante on the urgency in which the issue displayed in his work, given that global warming has purportedly caused glaciers to melt faster than ever before. However, there still is hope in Mr Cheok's piece.
'If it was really bad, there wouldn't be any beautiful plants anymore,' he says. 'The main focus of the work is to bring people's minds to Shangri-la, even if it is underwater.'
Whether abstract or obvious, reality or mythology, these three works have all evinced an artistic rendering of an intensified eco-consciousness. Teamed with the Clarins Learning Garden, they provide insight and education about the environment for everyone both young and old.
The Singapore Garden Festival is on at Suntec Singapore from today until Aug 1
Brighter blooms, daring arrangements at Singapore Garden Festival 2008
Chio Su-Mei, Channel NewsAsia 24 Jul 08;
SINGAPORE : An explosion of blooms and imaginative arrangements will greet visitors at this year's Singapore Garden Festival, which opens on Friday.
Over 200,000 temperate and tropical plants have been modelled into 32 masterpieces by award-winning designers.
Winner of the "Best of Show" in the Landscape Design category was a creation by Kazuyuki Ishihara. Called 'The Green Breeze' (Ryokufu Tei), it is made with moss and native Japanese plants that are reminiscent of the designer's childhood hideaways in his rural village.
"Best of Show" winner in the Floral Windows of the World category was "Four Seasons" by Canadian Hitomi Gilliam. Gilliam's arrangement offers a sensory experience of the changing seasons along Canada's Northern Frontier.
The judges were impressed by this year's entries. They said standards were higher than the inaugural competition two years ago.
"It certainly compares favourably to our show in the UK, and... also to the shows in Europe. I think it has come a long way, and I'm really amazed at what has been achieved," said Michael Balston, head judge of the Singapore Garden Festival.
For the second time running, Singaporean Peter Cheok clinched "Best of Show" in the Fantasy Design category. His creation, which is an ode to global warming, took five months to create. Called "Seeking Shangri-La", it features the Himalayan peaks submerged in rising oceans.
"I really didn't expect it because this year the level of competition has increased. And I do see a lot of better works," said Cheok.
Ranging from the whimsical to the philosophical, the Singapore Garden Festival packs a visual feast into 24,000 square metres at the Suntec City Exhibition Centre.
The festival runs from July 25 to August 1, and is open to the public from 10am to 10pm daily.
More information is available at this website.
Come to my Shangri-La
A garden inspired by Lost Horizon novel wins Best of Show award
Tan Yi Hui, Straits Times 25 Jul 08;
A FANTASY garden inspired by the James Hilton novel Lost Horizon has won Singaporean Peter Cheok a Best Of Show award at this year's Singapore Garden Festival.
It is his second win in a row: he picked up a similar award in the same Fantasy Gardens category two years ago, at the inaugural festival.
The 28-year-old sales and marketing director of Far East Flora received his award last night from President S R Nathan at the Awards Gala, at Suntec Convention Centre. Also present was National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan.
The awards dinner kicked off the festival, which opens today at the convention centre.
Visitors to the biennial event, held over eight days this year, will be able to check out garden and floral displays by 32 award-winning designers from 17 countries. Some 200,000 people are expected to attend the show.
Mr Cheok said: 'This year the competition was intense. I wasn't expecting us to win, so it was a surprise.'
His garden, called Seeking Shangri-La, is a lavish depiction of an underwater mythical paradise. The garden consists of plants from Malaysia such as sedums, cacti and sarracenias, which were planted to resemble corals.
Two others won Best Of Show awards.
Japanese designer Kazuyuki Ishihara topped the Landscape Design category with Ryokufu Tei (The Green Breeze), a serene garden sanctuary built like a secret hideaway.
In the Floral Display category, Canada's Hitomi Gilliam took the top spot with Galerie Aux Saisons (Seasons Gallery Canada), which takes the visitor through the seasons of the Canadian Northern Frontier.
Aside from viewing these award-winning gardens, visitors to the festival will also be able to check out award-winning orchids, buy exotic flowers, plants and botanical artworks.
The Singapore Garden Festival 2008 is on from today to Aug 1 at Suntec Convention Centre, 10am to 10pm daily. Tickets cost $6 (weekday) and $12 (weekend) for adults, and $3 (weekday) and $6 (weekend) for children, students and senior citizens. Family tickets for two adults and three children cost $18 (weekday) and $36 (weekend) and are available at level one of the Suntec Convention Centre. For more information, log on to www.singaporegardenfestival.com
Letter from Tan Kiam Heong, Straits Times Forum 25 Jul 08;
I WISH to highlight the implications of buying a vehicle using compressed natural gas (CNG).
Before booking a CNG-fitted car, I checked and was told there was a special tax exemption on such cars until December next year.
Since then, I have been told the special tax is six times more than the road tax of a petrol-driven car.
I bought the CNG vehicle because I wished to be environment friendly and cut the cost of owning a car.
But that is not the case.
A CNG car may be environment-friendly, but it is costlier.
That is not all.
The recent steep hikes in CNG prices, which stand at $1.80 per kilo currently, are also a significant dampener.
When December next year arrives, owners will either have to pay or un-install or deregister the CNG car.
To me, neither option makes sense.
But I will have to choose one when the time comes.
I hope the authorities can explain why there is such a heavy tax on vehicles that are environment-friendly, as well as the ridiculous hikes in CNG prices in recent weeks, if not months.
Cheryl-Samantha Owen, The Independent 24 Jul 08;
A new species of manta ray has been identified for the first time.
After five years of study a marine biologist has confirmed that a larger and more elusive manta is in fact a distinct species. Until now it was thought that there was only one manta ray species.
The newly-discovered species leads a different lifestyle to its smaller cousin and is migratory rather than residential.
Andrea Marshall is a PhD marine biologist sponsored by the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) to advance scientific knowledge of the ray whose large triangular pectoral fins can span almost 8m in width and can weigh more than 2,000 kg.
She suspected the existence of a separate species and was able to confirm her theory through genetic and morphological analysis. There may even be a third manta species that exists across temperate, tropical and subtropical waters worldwide.
Marshall revealed her findings at the American Elasmobranch Symposium in Canada.
In 2003 she moved to a small coastal village in southern Mozambique, to become the first marine biologist to study manta rays off the African coast.
Her observations of the unique spot patterns on the ventral surface of each ray enabled the identification of more than 900 individuals on a single reef, and she believes that southern Mozambique may boast the largest known population of manta rays in the world.
The discovery of a new species is likely to affect conservation ideas and policies about rays.
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The two species of manta have overlapping distributions and prior to Marshall's research they were thought to be one and the same kind.
The manta now confirmed as a distinct species is the larger of the two and shys away from divers rather than seeking interaction.
Little is known about its lifestyle or migration patterns and Marshall has only ever witnessed it arriving at sea-mounts or at particularly productive areas along a coastline to feed on plankton before disappearing back into the deep ocean.
Unlike the more resident species the ray is defenceless and does not possess a sting in its tail.
Other differences between the two species lie in colour, skin texture and reproductive biology. The smaller of the two species is not migratory and is often encountered at coral reefs where they congregate to be cleaned by parasite-eating fish in locations such as Hawaii, the Maldives, Mozambique, Australia, Japan and the Island of Yap.
The more commonly known ray resides in the same areas year round making it particularly susceptible to fishing pressure. If resident rays continue to be fished unsustainably they face localised extinction.
The larger rays, migrants and ocean wanderers which makes conservation management difficult, are fished heavily particularly in southeast Asia, and thousands are killed each year.
Many fall victim to ghost nets and are killed alongside other marine creatures as by-catch. Rays are also threatened by habitat degradation, boat traffic and disturbance by divers.
Marshall has also uncovered some of the reproductive behaviour of these mysterious giants which are the largest of the ocean's 500 different species of rays and skates. Manta rays are now known to give birth to a single large offspring about 1.4m in size after a year of gestation and, once reaching maturity at about 4m across, typically produce a pup every other year.
They perform elaborate and sophisticated courtship displays, are highly social and inquisitive, and may communicate with one another using specific body posturing and possibly sound.
SOSF aims to learn more about the role of marine species, particularly sharks and rays, and through this knowledge it hopes to raise awareness and conserve the marine realm.
For more information visit www.saveourseas.com.
New Manta Ray Species Discovered, Expert Says
Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News 31 Jul 08;
What scientists call the manta ray is actually at least two distinct species with unique behaviors and lifestyles, a scientist announced recently.
The more commonly known manta ray is smaller and more easily seen, usually staying near coasts.
Little is known about a second, larger species that avoids contact with humans and seems to have wider migration patterns. It also has evolutionary remnants of a spine and a harmless, nonstinging barb on its tail.
The two types—which are not yet named—also appear visually distinct, exhibiting unique colors and textures.
Andrea Marshall, a Ph.D candidate at Australia's University of Queensland, presented the findings last week in Montreal at a first-ever symposium of ray experts.
Graceful Giants
Manta rays are graceful giants in the ray family that can weigh over 4,400 pounds (2,000 kilograms).
Mantas may have wingspans of almost 25 feet (8 meters). The fish are also harmless and do not possess the poisonous barb found in some of their cousins, including some stingray species.
Australian environmentalist Steve Irwin was killed by such a barb.
While both manta species roam all the oceans, they appear to have a different lifestyle.
The smaller rays—familiar to divers in Hawaii, the Maldives, Mozambique, Australia, and Japan—are year-round residents of certain marine spots, such as coral reefs.
Scientists suspect the larger, more mysterious, rays are highly migratory animals that wander the world's seas.
Lucky Site
The species discovery was the unexpected result of five years of hard work and a bit of good fortune, Marshall said.
"As luck would have it, it looks like here in Mozambique is the only [known] location where we see both species interacting on the same reef," said Marshall, whose effort was funded by the Switzerland-based Save Our Seas Foundation.
Though much of Marshall's time was spent underwater, she also logged long hours collecting data around the world in a search for proof that the species were distinct.
To build her case she pursued evidence from DNA labs and Indonesian fishing villages, where the migrating species is still commonly caught.
Rachel Graham of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Punta Gorda, Belize, was impressed by Marshall's work, one of the longest-running manta studies ever conducted.
"We were just incredibly excited about this," she said. "The work was very in-depth and I think [for the most part] the group was convinced."
Conservation Challenges
The new species discovery will add to challenges for those seeking to protect the vulnerable, slow-to-reproduce rays.
The smaller manta species is at risk because of their limited range.
"If someone comes into a coastline or island group and starts up a fishery, you could wipe out that population in a year or two," University of Queensland's Marshall said.
"That would [threaten] regional extinction like what may [be happening] in the Gulf of California."
The migratory mantas provide their own challenges, she added. They respect no borders, so protection efforts must involve a complicated cooperation between many nations and groups.
"Both species face independent issues in terms of conservation management," Marshall said. "We have to understand the threats to each."
Reuters 24 Jul 08;
GENEVA (Reuters) - Seagrass meadows, which are vital for the survival of much marine life and a source of household materials in Europe and Africa, face a mounting threat from global warming, a report said on Friday.
The report, from the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said the submerged meadows -- many around the Mediterranean -- could be saved through concerted action by governments and scientists.
"Seagrass habitats are already declining due to increasing water temperatures, algae (seaweed) growth and light reduction, which are all effects of global change," said IUCN specialist Mats Bjork, one of the authors of the report.
The report said the grass -- flowering plants found in shallow waters around the globe -- provides food and shelter for prawn and fish populations and is used traditionally as mattress filling, roof covering and for medicines.
If much of it were to disappear, a wide range of species -- including dugongs, sea turtles, sea urchins and seabirds who feed on it -- would also come under increased threat, according to the report.
The report said some of the healthiest seagrass areas known to exist today were off the North African coast of Libya and Tunisia in areas where there had been little industrial or tourism development.
Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of IUCN's Global Marine Program, said the meadows could be saved by making seagrass more resilient to climbing temperatures through mixing genetically more diverse populations.
The report, issued at a conference in Barcelona, said the introduction of protected areas and linking the underwater meadows to nearby mangrove plantations or coral reefs would also give a huge boost to their chances of survival.
Lundin said it was also vital to extend research into how seagrass can be protected -- a effort already promoted by IUCN that would require governments and scientific institutions to devote resources and time.
Jacques Cousteau was a pioneer in the study of marine biology, but new research shows the ocean life he explored could be dead within a few years
Tim Radford, guardian.co.uk 24 Jul 08;
A climatologist who is trying to explain why even the most immediate and drastic steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions may not save the coral reefs, has embarked on a metaphor for climate change.
"The climate is like this big ship, right? We are all on this big ship and the problem is once you hit the brakes it takes a long time for the ship to actually slow down and stop," says Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia.
"In our case the ship is the Titanic and we are going to hit the iceberg. It is going to be almost impossible for us not to hit the iceberg at this point. What we need to do is everything we can to put the brakes on, to slow the ship down and – to hope for the corals to help us – move the iceberg a little bit. The time for emission reductions isn't so much now, it was 20 years ago."
Modern marine biology is roughly 50 years old and comfortable with the language of the media, perhaps because it flowered from a happy mix of adventure and show business. Before about 1950, marine biology was prosecuted by men in laboratories who studied the damaged and incomplete contents of deepwater trawls or made guesses about the migrations of pelagic fish or paddled around rock pools between the tides. Then a French naval officer called Jacques Yves-Cousteau designed the aqualung, hired a ship called the Calypso and recruited a young cinematographer called Louis Malle to help him make a 1956 documentary called The Silent World, and marine biology began looking up, in the metaphorical sense.
For the first time, ichthyologists could swim with the fishes; they could go with the flow, they could mingle with the millions of other creatures that colonise the huge high-rise submarine apartment blocks of coral reef, they could follow the tides and go with the turtles and sharks into tropical estuaries and mangrove forests, they could stay put with the crustaceans or spout with the cetaceans. The world was their oyster, and they could have a whale of a time.
Because of Cousteau and his contemporaries – among them the best-selling US writer Rachel Carson, for instance, and the television film-maker Hans Hass – ocean science underwent (to exploit another yet irresistible cliché) a sea change. For the first time ever, researchers could take a sustained look at a fraction of the intricate ecology of the blue planet.
More than 70 per cent of the surface area of the Earth is covered by saltwater. Terrestrial animals occupy only the first few metres above and below the topsoil. They may colonise forest canopies, soar in thermal currents, or burrow deep into the mud, but most, like the biologists that study them, are essentially flatlanders. Sea creatures conversely have the run of one huge open-plan living space, from the sunlit surface of the Sargasso Sea to the abyssal plains of the Atlantic or the 11,000 metre depths of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific, spanning the planet from the North Pole to the Antarctic coastline. Marine biologists had a new world to explore, new stories to tell.
Earlier this month, about 3,000 of them gathered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for the 11th international coral reef symposium. They included Australians at ease in Perpignan, Germans at home in Queensland, Americans who knocked around eastern coasts of Africa. They were all ages, but more than half were young and many of them were women. They spoke matter-of-factly of faraway places – of Pago Pago and Palau and the Flower Garden, of the Marianas and Chagos and Key Biscayne, of the Great Barrier and Okinawa and Mozambique. They were at home in the world's oldest environment, but theirs was in effect the youngest science. And many of them understood two things very clearly: that there was no point amassing their knowledge unless they could share it, and that there was no point in having something important to say unless they said it in words that everybody could understand.
One of the great messages of the conference was that as sea temperatures warm, corals bleach. That is, the little polyps eject the algae with which they live in an intricate and mutually helpful partnership. It isn't the same as death – bleaching is a survival mechanism – but it weakens the corals. The fear is that such events will happen more and more often in future. Douglas Fenner, a biologist working at the department of marine and wildlife resources in American Samoa told the conference that the future had already arrived. For the past five years, he had been watching corals bleach every summer in the fringing reefs off Pago Pago.
"There is a little bit of a caveat: this is happening in restricted pools where the water gets hotter than the open ocean. It is not happening on the open ocean reefs. But it is happening, and it is a window into the future. And it is not a particularly good view that I see. There are corals – not all, but some of them – that every summer are very close to death. There is essentially no step between where they are at, and dying. In one section of the pool, they spend almost the entire year bleaching. There is a very short period when they recover, just before the next summer's bleaching," he says. "A very slight increase in temperature, and death will start overwhelming the growth."
One of the other great messages of the conference was that as carbon dioxide levels rose, the seas would become increasingly acidic, and under such circumstances, corals would find it harder and harder to make the skeletons that become, quite literally, the backbone of all reefs. All marine biologists can do is warn everybody, and try to persuade governments to protect reefs from other human exploitation, to give them a better chance of survival. Reefs are the habitat for around one quarter of all marine species. One third of all reef building corals could be at some risk of extinction already. Five studies had already reported a slowing in the growth rate of massive corals, said Joan Kleypas of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. She faces a prospect that Cousteau and Hans Hass could never have imagined: a day when the corals have died, and the fish that depend on them have gone.
She calls it a "there-goes-the-neighbourhood situation," and "osteoporosis of the reef". She is addressing her fellow scientists, but they understand the peculiar irony of this kind of research, that you can discover something astounding, fashioned over millions of years only a few metres below the enigmatic surface of the ocean, and discover at the same time that in a few decades it could all be gone; that Cousteau's silent world may indeed soon become silent forever. It's a moment for straight talking, in terse, uncompromising language, to as many people as possible.
Mediterranean on alert as hundreds suffer from stings
Matthew Kay in Paris, Elizabeth Nash in Madrid and Peter Popham in Rome
The Independent 24 Jul 08;
As thousands of tourists head to the Mediterranean, the spectre of jellyfish ruining holidays looms large after French emergency services received more than 500 calls for help in a single day along a 10-mile stretch of coast from Nice to Cannes.
Paddlers suffered painful stings and wanted something to treat the pain while swimmers reported that they had found themselves totally surrounded by a species commonly known as the mauve stinger.
It is a pattern being repeated along the shores of Mediterranean. As well as the Côte d'Azur, the coast of Liguria on the west coast of Italy, the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia, parts of the Adriatic on Italy's east coast, and much of the southern – and even northern – coastlines of Spain have been hit.
Jellyfish have no autonomy of movement and are swept around the oceans by wind and tide. In the past they came billowing into the beaches once every 10 or 12 years. They stayed for three or four years then disappeared as mysteriously as they arrived. But not any more. This is the eighth year straight that they have stormed the smartest resorts in the Mediterranean.
Spaniards hoping to avoid the invasion by heading north have had to think again. The Portuguese Man o' War (Physalia physalis), whose sting can be fatal, is marauding the coasts of Cantabria and Asturias, which until now have managed to escape the seasonal plague. Winds have blown the creatures ashore in recent days, prompting warning flags to be flown.
At Nice and Cannes, the jellyfish menace vanished as quickly as it arrived, but scientists are in no doubt that they will be back, perhaps before the end of the season. The species haunting this 10-mile stretch of coast is the Pelagia noctiluca, the mauve stinger. Its sting can cause severe burns, in some cases scarring their victims. Despite warnings to keep out of the water, many swimmers were caught out last week, prompting the flood of calls to the French emergency services.
Fearful of the effect on the tourist trade, Cannes and Monaco have installed booms and nets on several beaches. But hundreds slipped through and many more invaded unprotected beaches.
In Antibes a 30ft catamaran which has been described as a "jellyfish hoover" now patrols the coastline, ready to suck up any returning jellyfish.
"I can't say that the jellyfish will definitely return," said Jacqueline Goy, the leading jellyfish expert at the Institut d'Oceanographie in Paris. "At the moment the mistral has blown them offshore but a change in wind direction could well bring them back later this year."
The phenomenon is by no means a new one said Mme Goy, known to colleagues as la Dame aux Méduses ("Jellyfish Lady"). The earliest report of a "jellyfish soup" in the region dates back to 1802. In recent years, however, the frequency and persistence of the swarms has increased.
Marine biologists believe that overfishing has killed off both the fish that hunt jellyfish, and their young which compete with jellyfish for plankton.
Fabrizio Bulgarini, biodiversity expert with WWF Italy, said there was also another theory. "The rate of reproductivity of the jellyfish appears to be related to the heat of the water," he explained, and thanks to global warming the sea is getting hotter.
Alister Doyle, Reuters 24 Jul 08;
OSLO (Reuters) - People who eat whale meat in the remote Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic have high levels of an industrial toxin in their blood in a worrying sign that the pollutant has spread worldwide, scientists said on Thursday.
"This pollution is a new health concern for the Faroese and many populations worldwide," said Philippe Grandjean, an environmental health expert at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Southern Denmark.
"We know very little on the toxicity in humans so far, even less in regard to whales," he told Reuters of polyfluoroalkyl compounds (PFCs), used in products such as water or grease repellents for textiles, fire-fighting foams, or some papers.
A study with scientists in the Faroe Islands, Denmark and the United States showed higher traces of PFCs in the blood of people who ate whales in the Faroes -- between Norway and Iceland -- comparable to those in people in industrial nations closer to the sources of the chemicals.
Pilot whales, a small species caught in the Faroe islands, are at the top of the marine food chain. PFCs apparently build up in their muscles and liver because they consume smaller fish which have in turn absorbed PFCs washed into the seas.
The children and mothers surveyed in the Faroes who did not eat much whale meat did not have such high concentrations.
For one of the nine types of PFCs known as PFOS, "a single dinner with whale meat every two weeks is associated with an increase of 25 percent in the blood concentration," he said.
Initially, widening PFC contamination was thought to come from everyday exposure to items such as textiles or furniture containing PFCs. "Now we are seeing evidence that they are widespread in the environment and building up," Grandjean said.
The study, issued online, would be in August edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology. A separate study had also shown high levels of PFOS in polar bear livers.
A report by the European Food Safety Authority this week said that some PFCs have produced tumors in rats but do not seem to cause cancers in humans. It said more data was needed. One study has linked PFCs to lower human birth weights.
Grandjean said that a couple of the people in the Faroes survey had blood levels of PFOS that exceeded the safe limit implied by the Food Safety Authority report.
Worries about the dispersal of the chemicals in the environment led 3M Co to change the formula of its stain repellant Scotchgard in 2002 to eliminate use of PFOS.
(Editing by Mariam Karouny)
Conor Humphries, Yahoo News 24 Jul 08;
A young whale pokes its melon-shaped head into the cool morning air near this remote island, a sign its herd is thriving despite mounting threats in Russia's melting Arctic.
Cameras and microphones capture the whale's every move as scientists use the species' only shore-side breeding ground to see how they are coping as fleets of oil tankers replace melting ice in their traditional feeding grounds.
"Belugas are a bellwether species... what happens to them reflects the effects of pollution and global warming on the whole ecosystem," said Vsevolod Belkovich, a professor at the Russian Academy of Science who is leading the study.
Scientists have recorded a small drop in the whale population that they attribute in part to human activity in Arctic regions. "As global warming continues, the threats are going to grow dramatically," Belkovich said.
Since monitoring began scores of whales have traveled hundreds of miles (kilometres) each year to this White Sea sandbank to mate, frolic and train their young.
Distinctive markings on the whales' backs allow the researchers to track the population from year to year, monitoring their health, longevity and interactions with rival herds.
"It's the only place in the world they come so close to the shore," said Vladimir Baranov, a senior researcher with Moscow's Institute of Oceanology, who films the Belugas close up underwater in their natural setting.
-- The whales can play here because there is no danger --
"They can play here because there is no danger," said Olga Kirilova, a fellow researcher. "But in the winter they go north and face intensive shipping, the tankers and their pollution."
With the melting of ice sheets in the Arctic, the Russian government has set the development of rich oil and gas reserves in the region as a priority, including fields in the Barents Sea where many of the Belugas spend the winter.
The volume of oil transported through the Barents Sea -- part of the Arctic Ocean -- has soared in less than decade from almost zero to 10 million tonnes, according to a study by the Norwegian funded Barents Secretariat.
Within a decade it could hit 150 million tonnes, the study said.
While the noise of the tankers is recognized as a major problem for the whales, who use sound to navigate, the biggest danger is the threat of a spill that could take years to clear.
It took the White Sea ecosystem over five years to overcome the effects of a small spill in 2003, Belkovich said.
A five percent fall in the Beluga's White Sea population registered in recent years suggests the development is beginning to have an effect. But researchers fear much worse is to come.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which is financing the research, cites the example of the Harp seal, which like the Beluga migrates between the White Sea and the Barents Sea.
Global warming and increased ship traffic in the White Sea have together robbed the Harp seal of the ice sheets where pups are born, causing a collapse in its population from 300,000 in 2003 to just over 100,000 in 2008, IFAW said.
While the Belugas are less dependent on ice, they are very sensitive to any pollution that the oil industry brings, said researcher Vera Krasnova.
"In the Saint Lawrence River in Canada, pollution has been catastrophic for the Belugas," she said. "The same could happen here."
The Independent 25 Jul 08;
New geological surveys show as much as a fifth of the world's undiscovered but exploitable gas and oil reserves lie under the Arctic ice. As the ice melts, the pristine wilderness could become 'the new Houston'. By Michael McCarthy
The future of the Arctic will be less white wilderness, more black gold, a new report on oil reserves in the High North has signalled this week. The first-comprehensive assessment of oil and gas resources north of the Arctic Circle, carried out by American geologists, reveals that underneath the ice, the region may contain as much as a fifth of the world's undiscovered yet recoverable oil and natural gas reserves.
This includes 90 billion barrels of oil, enough to supply the world for three years at current consumption rates, or to supply America for 12, and 1,670 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas, which is equal to about a third of the world's known gas reserves.
The significance of the report is that it puts firm figures for the first time on the hydrocarbon riches which the five countries surrounding the Arctic – the US, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark (through its dependency, Greenland) – have been eyeing up for several years.
It is the increasingly rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice, which last September hit a new record summer low, and of land-based ice on Greenland, which is opening up the possibility of the once frozen wasteland providing a natural resources and minerals bonanza, not to mention a major new transport route – last year the fabled North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific along the top of Canada was navigable for the first time.
Scientists consider that global warming is responsible for the melting, with the high latitudes of the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.
Environmentalists see this as a massive danger, with the melting of Greenland's land-based ice adding to sea-level rise, while the melting of the sea ice uncovers a dark ocean surface that absorbs far more of the sun's heat than the ice did, and thus acts as a "positive feedback" reinforcing warming. The melting of Greenland's ice sheet has accelerated so dramatically that it is triggering earthquakes for the first time, with movements of gigantic pieces of ice creating shockwaves with a magnitude of up to three.
Conservationists are also concerned about the threat to the Arctic's unique ecosystems and wildlife.
The Arctic countries' governments, on the other hand, see it as a massive opportunity, and are already positioning themselves to claim stakes in the seabed of the Arctic Ocean, if – as many climate scientists now believe will happen – it becomes ice-free in summer within a couple of decades.
Just a year ago, to much media fanfare, the Russians planted a flag on the seabed some 2.5 miles beneath the ice at the North Pole, and dispatched a nuclear-powered icebreaker to map a subsea link between the Pole and Siberia, as part of an effort to circumvent a UN convention limiting resource claims beyond 200 miles offshore.
Canada said earlier this month that it plans to counter the Russian overture with "a very strong claim" to Arctic exploration rights.
This week's oil and gas study, carried out by the US Geological Survey, does not raise the national competitive stakes appreciably as it reveals that most of the reserves are lying close to the shore, within the territorial jurisdiction of the countries concerned. Much of the oil is off Alaska; much of the natural gas off the Russian coastline. There appear to be only small reserves under the unclaimed heart of the Arctic.
However, what the report does do is to indicate a very different future for one of the world's last remaining pristine and utterly unspoilt regions. If the oil is there, countries which own it will be very likely to seek to extract it, whatever the environmental cost.
"Before we can make decisions about our future use of oil and gas and related decisions about protecting endangered species, native communities and the health of our planet, we need to know what's out there," said the US Geological Survey's (USGS) director, Mark Myers, in releasing the report. "With this assessment, we're providing the same information to everyone in the world so the global community can make those difficult decisions," he said.
"Most of the Arctic, especially offshore, is essentially unexplored with respect to petroleum," said Donald Gautier, the project chief for the assessment. "The extensive Arctic continental shelves may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth."
The geologists studied maps of subterranean rock formations across the 8.2 million square miles above the Arctic Circle to find areas with characteristics similar to oil and gas finds in other parts of the world. The study also took into account the age, depth and shape of rock formations in judging whether they are likely to contain oil.
More than half of the undiscovered oil resources are estimated to occur in just three geologic provinces: Arctic Alaska (30 billion barrels), the Amerasia Basin (9.7 billion barrels) and the East Greenland Rift Basins (8.9 billion barrels). More than 70 per cent of the undiscovered natural gas is likely to be in three provinces: the West Siberian Basin (651 tcf), the East Barents Basins (318 tcf) and Arctic Alaska (221 tcf), the USGS said. The study took in all areas north of latitude 66.56 degrees north, and included only reserves that could be tapped using existing techniques. Experimental or unconventional prospects such as oil shale, gas hydrates and coal-bed methane were not included in the assessment.
The 90 billion barrels of oil expected to be in the Arctic in total are more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Mexico combined, and could meet current world oil demand of 86.4 million barrels a day for almost three years. But the Arctic's oil is not intended to replace all the supplies in the rest of world. It would last much longer by boosting available supplies and possibly reducing US reliance on imported crude, if America developed the resources.
The report did not include an estimate for how long it might take to bring the reserves to markets, but it would clearly be a substantial period. Offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico and west Africa can take a decade or longer to begin pumping oil. But clearly, the massive amount of industrial infrastructure necessary to find the oil, extract it, and transport it to where it is wanted will come with a very considerable environmental cost. Senior US oil executives are urging the relaxation of prohibitions against offshore drilling, including much of Alaska, although Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress rejected President George Bush's effort on 14 July to end a 25-year moratorium on drilling in most coastal waters. But change may well be coming now.
Frank O'Donnell, president of the US environmental group Clean Air Watch, said not only do polar bears and other wildlife within the Arctic Circle face losing their habitat due to global warming, they would be hurt by companies searching for oil. "On the one hand you may see this region more accessible [for getting energy supplies], but we're definitely going to pay a different kind of price... you may lose species," Mr O'Donnell said. "The oil industry goes up there and industrialises what has been a pristine area... suddenly it becomes the new Houston."
Staking a claim
United States
The last country to formally stake its claim will be the first to start large-scale drilling. Thanks to its vast Alaskan territory the US will be confident of a huge oil bonanza. The White House resisted giving endangered status to the polar bear as long as it could to keep freedom to drill.
Russia
Dramatically upped the stakes in the race for the Arctic last year by planting its flag on the seabed at the magnetic pole with the help of an experimental submarine. The country least likely to baulk at the environmental cost of drilling in the wilderness.
Greenland (Denmark)
The island is financially dependent on its mother country, Denmark. Oil could change all that. Its tiny population of 50,000 fears being over-run by outsiders in a future oil rush. Denmark was the first to stake its claim to the North Pole.
Canada
Canada was affronted by Danish claims to the North Pole and has conducted military exercises over its vast northern territories to strengthen its claim to the Arctic. Ottawa has sent naval vessels and specialist troops to the far north.
Norway
The country does not want to be left out of an Arctic carve-up. But it backs a UN treaty to demilitarise the region and protect its pristine environment.
Arctic's Oil Could Meet World Demand for 3 Years
Tom Doggett, PlanetArk 25 Jul 08;
WASHINGTON - The Arctic Circle holds an estimated 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil, enough supply to meet current world demand for almost three years, the US Geological Survey forecast on Wednesday.
The forecast comes as Russia is competing with Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States to grab a chunk of the huge energy resources in the Arctic, an area growing more accessible due to global warming melting the ice.
The government agency also said the area could contain 1,670 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas.
"Before we can make decisions about our future use of oil and gas and related decisions about protecting endangered species, native communities and the health of our planet, we need to know what's out there," said USGS Director Mark Myers.
"With this assessment, we're providing the same information to everyone in the world so that the global community can make those difficult decisions," he said.
Frank O'Donnell, president of the nonprofit group Clean Air Watch, said not only do polar bears and other wildlife within the Arctic Circle face losing their habitat due to global warming, they would be hurt by companies searching for oil.
"On the one hand you may see this region more accessible (for getting energy supplies), but we're definitely going to pay a different kind of price...you may loose species," O'Donnell said. "The oil industry goes up there and industrializes what has been a pristine area...suddenly it becomes the new Houston."
The 90 billion barrels of oil expected to be in the Arctic could meet current world oil demand of 86.4 million barrels a day for almost three years.
But the Arctic's oil is not intended to replace all the supplies in the rest of world. It would last much longer by boosting available supplies and possibly reducing US reliance on imported crude in the future, if America developed the resources.
The Arctic accounts for about 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil, 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas and 20 percent of the undiscovered natural gas liquids, the agency said in the first publicly available petroleum resource estimate of the entire area north of the Arctic Circle.
More than half of the undiscovered oil resources are estimated to occur in just three geologic provinces: Arctic Alaska (30 billion barrels), the Amerasia Basin (9.7 billion barrels) and the East Greenland Rift Basins (8.9 billion barrels).
More than 70 percent of the undiscovered natural gas is likely to be in three provinces: the West Siberian Basin (651 Tcf), the East Barents Basins (318 Tcf) and Arctic Alaska (221 Tcf), the USGS said.
Technically recoverable resources are those energy supplies that can be put into the market using currently available technology and industry practices.
The USGS said it did not consider economic factors, such as the effects of permanent sea ice or water depths, in its assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources.
Energy companies have already found more than 400 oil and gas fields north of the Arctic Circle.
The discovered fields account for approximately 40 billion barrels of oil, more than 1,100 Tcf of gas and 8.5 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.
"Nevertheless, the Arctic, especially offshore, is essentially unexplored with respect to petroleum," the USGS said. (Editing by David Gregorio)
EarthTimes 23 Jul 08;
Taipei - Taiwan's most exclusive restaurant on Wednesday gave in to protests from US and Taiwanese conservation groups and agreed to remove serving shark's fin from its banquet menus. "We plan to replace the shark's fin dish in our State Treasure Banquet and serve artificially-raised abalone and sea cucumber," Chang Yun, a spokeswoman of Silk Palace restaurant, said.
However, the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) demands the restaurant remove shark's fin completely, not just from a special menu.
"What they are doing is to remove shark's fin from the State Treasure Banquet, but it will still be served to individual diners. We demand a total ban on shark's fin," EAST director Chen Yu-min said.
The Silk Palace, the most luxurious restaurant in Taiwan, agreed to the compromise after EAST and the US-based Humane Society International (HSI) urged government authorities to stop the banquet hall from serving shark's fin.
The newly opened luxury restaurant is affiliated with Taiwan's National Palace Museum.
In their petition to cabinet, the Council of Agriculture and the museum, HSI and EAST argued that Silk Palace was the venue for state banquets and drew many foreign tourists as well.
Out of the restaurant's four State Treasure banquet courses and five individual diner's set courses, eight include shark fin soup or shark fin dishes.
"Taiwan catches and imports a total of 600 tons of shark's fin each year. Shark's fin is a luxury food. Serving shark's fin at the Silk Palace damages Taiwan's international image," EAST said in a statement.
"Taiwan residents should boycott eating shark's fin and the government should launch a campaign to raise public awareness," EAST added.
EAST said harvesting shark's fin was very cruel because after cutting off shark's fin, fishermen throw sharks back into the sea, letting them bleed to death.
Killing sharks for their fin depletes the population and the disappearance of the predators has serious consequences for the marine environment, the statement said.
The Silk Palace banquet hall, outside the National Palace Museum on the outskirts of Taipei, was built for 400 million Taiwan dollars (13 million US dollars). It opened to the public in late June.
A 12-course State Treasure Banquet for 10 people costs about 20,000 Taiwan dollars, while an eight- or nine-course menu for one person costs from 1,000-3,000 Taiwan dollars.
Andrew Beatty, PlanetArk 25 Jul 08;
PANAMA CITY - Panama's gourmet coffees fetch record prices for their prized flavors but the strong demand is convincing some growers to clear land illegally and plant in one of the country's few protected highland forests.
Last month, Panama's Environmental Protection Agency discovered 40 acres (16 hectares) of clandestine coffee trees nestled deep in the Volcan Baru National Park, sparking fears that more forest could be cleared as prices rise.
The nature preserve is ringed with coffee farms growing the country's "geisha" beans, often described as the champagne of coffee for their subtle jasmine-like taste highly sought after by boutique roasters from North America, Europe and Japan.
Now, sky-high prices for geisha beans have lured some growers well inside the park's boundaries.
"There is a grave threat to the park. People do not respect laws and the (government) has not done its part to ensure compliance," said Ezequiel Miranda, head of an environmental group in the western Boquete region near Costa Rica.
Last year a batch of the famed coffee fetched a world record price of US$130 a pound in an international online auction.
While the coffee planted now only takes up a tiny fraction of Volcan Baru's thousands of acres, the invasion could disrupt the wildlife living around Panama's only volcano, including pumas, quetzal birds and rare orchids, environmentalists say.
"It was designated a national park to retain the biodiversity of the area. People know perfectly well where the limits of the park are," said Harmodio Santamaria, an official from the government environment agency.
BAD NAME
Many specialty coffee producers decry the practice of encroaching on park land, saying a few rogue growers are giving the geisha business a bad name.
Established growers in the region have built up reputations for running environmentally and socially responsible farms.
"This is certainly not what our organization or members are about. We really take care of the environment," said Ricardo Koyner, president of the Panamanian Specialty Coffee Association.
"Production is growing, but it is growing very cautiously to ensure that quality is retained," he said.
The Esmeralda Estate, run by Daniel Peterson, has coffee that consistently wins the highest auction prices, while being certified by the conservation group Rainforest Alliance as environmentally friendly.
Peterson says high-altitude land is becoming scarcer in traditional centers of geisha production, but expansion does not have to affect the national park.
"Around Boquete you might have difficulty expanding because of real estate developments (which have pushed up prices), but there is still a lot of suitable land between Volcan and the border," he said. (Editing by David Gregorio)
Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 24 Jul 08;
Some days on her morning commute, Rani Cardona feels like the stars are aligned. With the green lights timed just right, and a slight tail wind at her back, her Honda Civic Hybrid can really fly. On fumes.
"When you see the gauge springing up toward 100 miles per gallon and you've got your foot just perfectly situated and you hold it there, you know, it's just a great feeling," she said. "It's an indescribable feeling, like your car is almost defying the laws of physics and you're just kind of floating on air."
Cardona, an engineer in the Los Angeles area, is a hypermiler. She is part of a community of drivers who devote themselves to squeezing every last mile out of a gallon of gas.
With gasoline prices sky high, and global warming fears on everyone's minds, fuel efficiency is an increasingly popular notion. But few drivers know what a difference their driving habits can make, and few take the challenge as seriously as hypermilers.
Trigger points
The term "hypermiling" was coined in 2004 by Wayne Gerdes, who started the Web site CleanMPG.com, which has become a hub for fuel efficiency enthusiasts.
"The day after 9/11, I began changing my habits for the better and ever since then I've looked for methods to improve fuel economy," Gerdes told LiveScience. "We all have our trigger points - mine was global security. It doesn't matter if you're concerned with global warming, or smog, or government debt, or if you're worried about putting money in your pocketbook. All those reasons are good reasons to become a hypermiler."
In recent years the movement has been growing at breakneck pace, though enthusiasts may call themselves by different names and congregate in various online and real-world communities. CleanMPG is certainly booming.
"We have well over 6,000 registered members worldwide," said the site's Canadian representative Manuel Santos. "From what we see in terms of response and activity on the Web, we suspect there may be many hundreds of thousands out there. The movement's been growing, gathering a lot of momentum, and there is a large pool of folks out there who use some of these techniques."
The basics
So how does one achieve these feats of mileage?
The core of the hypermiler's philosophy is to use both the gas pedal and the brakes as little as possible. Since every time you hit the gas, you're using fuel, and every time you brake, you're basically throwing that fuel away, the less either comes into play, the more gas you save.
"It sounds paradoxical because the accelerator and the brake are the two main features of your car," Cardona said. "But not speeding up to those red lights and not taking off like a jackrabbit at a green light can really add up at the gas pump."
So when hypermilers see a red light ahead, they'll take their foot off the gas and coast toward it. And they constantly scan far ahead for possible impediments so they don't waste gas getting to them, just to have to brake when they get close.
Hypermilers also pride themselves on driving at or below the speed limit, since the faster you drive, the more gasoline it takes to maintain momentum and get back up to speed every time you slow down. And wind resistance becomes a bigger problem the faster you go.
Some of their habits - such as driving around 50 to 55 mph on the highway and drifting up to red lights at a crawl - have earned hypermilers a few enemies on the road. Gerdes is used to the abuse.
"If there are five or six cars behind me coming into a red light and I can save all six of those from speeding to it, I have no problem taking a finger or a horn for that action," he said. "I'm going to save everybody fuel and make them safer."
Gerdes also recommends filling tires to the maximum safe pressure listed on them by their manufacturer, and using the lowest weight oil appropriate to a certain vehicle. And all hypermilers rave about using fuel consumption display devices. While these gauges come with hybrid vehicles, similar gadgets (a ScanGauge, for example) can be installed on most other cars, and allow a driver to see instantaneous changes in miles per gallon.
"This is the single most important step that the average driver can take," Santos said. "When they press the gas pedal they will see instantaneously what fuel they're requiring at the time. That little device pays for itself in no time. It's like weight loss. If you don't have a scale and are involved in a diet program you really don't have the means of gauging your progress."
Reckless driving
And then there are the more extreme techniques, such as turning off the car's engine during particularly long stoplights or while coasting down hills. This method has been criticized by many, including the American Automobile Association (AAA), as unsafe.
"These practices can put motorists in a treacherous situation where they could lose power steering and brakes or be unable to react to quickly changing traffic conditions," said Marshall L. Doney, AAA Automotive vice president.
But hypermilers insist it isn't dangerous when done by drivers who know what they're doing.
"Turning the engine off while the vehicle is moving is an advanced technique, it's not something for the average person to use," Santos said. "The hybrid vehicles that we currently have on the road today do that already. We do say to check with your dealership to make sure it's safe in your vehicle, and check to see if it's legal in your region."
Hypermilers have also been accused of rolling through stoplights and riding closely behind big trucks to take advantage of the wind buffer (called "drafting").
While these techniques can save gas, they are not officially condoned by CleanMPG or mainstream hypermilers.
"Drafting is not worth the risk," Santos said. "We certainly do not endorse that. We are appalled that that is associated with hypermiling."
Unearned reputation
Hypermilers resent being pinned with accusations of reckless driving. By obeying speed limits and maintaining vigilant awareness of their surroundings, they say they're actually the safest drivers around.
"You're driving with all your senses fully alert - you're hearing, you're seeing, you're watching, your radar is constantly twirling 360 degrees to see what situation is going to come up that I need to anticipate," Cardona said. "You'll never see one of us gabbing or putting on makeup."
Some hypermilers have come up with a name for the bad eggs: "renegade hypermilers."
"There are a lot of folks who call themselves hypermilers, but unfortunately they give mainstream hypermilers a very bad name," Santos said. "We try to tell them to cease promoting unsafe techniques. A good hypermiler will always be a safe driver."
Making a difference
A similar movement to hypermiling, but with somewhat of a different focus, is a practice called ecodriving.
"At one time, 'ecodriver' and 'hypermiler' were interchangeable terms," said Hilary Evans, who writes for the Web site EcoFriendlyDriver.com. "I still think most hypermilers are concerned with the environment, but not all eco-friendly drivers focus on getting the most miles per gallon."
Since these drivers prioritize limiting the environmental impact of their driving, they take a slightly different approach. Ecodriving involves driving at steady speeds in the highest gear possible, decelerating smoothly and anticipating traffic flow, all with the goals of reducing fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Ecodriving is popular in Europe, and several European countries have even funded programs to get regular people to change their habits to save gas and cut down on carbon dioxide emissions.
"European governments have been very active in promoting fuel economy," said Santos. "They have smaller vehicles on their streets. In terms of average efficiency they are definitely way ahead of us."
Hypermilers say the U.S. government could do a lot of good by teaching the public some of the tricks they've figured out.
"It would be good to have governments focusing more on promoting safe and fuel-efficient driving techniques for the public to follow," Santos said. "Even having the DMV include ecodriving and hypermiling as part of driver's-ed may make people more aware of ways to minimize the pain at the pump."
In the meantime, hypermilers aren't waiting for governments or the auto industry to take a stand. Every time they get behind the wheel they're making a choice to change what they see as irresponsible habits.
"I want to make this small effort of my own," Cardona said. "It may not mean much in the whole macro scheme of things, but it's having an effect where I live and in my life. I see it as a positive thing and it does rub off on others."
Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph 24 Jul 08;
Forcing customers to pay for plastic carrier bags has seen a drop of 80 per cent in the number handed out at Marks & Spencer.
The store chain made a landmark decision at the beginning of May to start charging 5p for the bags, to encourage a switch to green reusable alternatives.
Over the past ten weeks, 70million fewer have been handed out at its tills compared with the same period a year ago.
Profits from the M&S charges, which have topped £200,000, are going to the charity Groundwork - which runs projects to create new parks and play areas.
The Government has given the rest of the High Street, specifically the "big four" supermarkets, until next April to adopt the M&S regime voluntarily.
If they fail to do so, the Government will force stores to adopt charges under proposals included in the Climate Change Bill, now going through Parliament.
Shops in Britain hand out almost 13billion plastic bags every year. They are used for an average of just 20 minutes before being dumped in the bin.
Most end up in landfill sites where they can take up to 1,000 years to rot away, while others blight the landscape, harming wildlife and causing an eyesore.
Sir Stuart Rose, the M&S chairman, said: "It is fair to say that the M&S carrier bag charging policy has provoked a lot of debate.
"These figures show that the overwhelming majority of our customers support charging and are already helping us to make a huge difference by bringing their own bags in with them."
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