ICCS Workshop for Organisers 2009
from News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore and updates from the ICCS team
Smooth Otters: Born Free & Wild
from Life's Indulgences
Chek Jawa again!
from Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs
Tanah Merah
We would shout and swim about, the corals that lies beneath the waves, from You run, we GEOG
Cream-vented Bulbul eating salam fruits
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Crabby verse
from The annotated budak
Relive memories of Singapore's first museum at this exhibition which tells stories of the collectors too CURATOR'S TOURS COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: FEELING & FIELDWORK BY DR NIGEL BARLEY AN ORIENTALIST'S TREASURE TROVE
deepika shetty, Straits Times Life 30 Jul 09;
A leopard with a steely gaze, all set to pounce. An angry sun bear commanding attention with his frozen growl. Human skulls dating back to the 19th century.
When you walk into the Asian Civilisations Museum's (ACM) Special Exhibitions Gallery, you might think you have stepped into a natural history museum.
These exhibits are some of the highlights of Hunters And Collectors, an exhibition which traces the origins of the museum's South-east Asian collection. The show, which runs till Sept 21, clearly goes beyond art.
On display are natural history specimens ranging from rare butterflies to a pair of Christmas Island birds, armour and textiles made out of parachutes.
One of the rooms recreates Singapore's first museum - the Raffles Library & Museum - along with its packed cabinets of curiosities, rich ethnography materials, birds and insects.
This exhibit was a familiar sight for writer OiLeng Chua-Gumpert.
The 64-year-old, tells Life! this recreation brings back memories of her childhood days.
Pointing to the display of birds, she says: 'This is why I did not like the museum when I was a little girl.
'Seeing these poor little birds pinned to a shelf in a hot and humid room was not a pleasant sight. I remember being terrified of the insects and these life-like animals.'
Now, however, she is reliving her childhood years at the exhibit.
'This shows how much our museums have evolved. We are used to seeing everything in perfect settings, in a temperature controlled environment. This exhibition is a timely reminder of the way things were,' she says.
That is precisely the idea behind it.
Museum director Kenson Kwok, 59, says the exhibition is a way of sharing the rich history and colourful personalities behind the collection.
Curator Clement Onn, 29, spent over a year trawling through archives and studying the contributions made by 30 major donors. He was on the lookout for collectors who 'hunted' down objects that found their way into the collection of the Raffles Library & Museum, founded in 1849, which eventually became the National Museum in 1969.
When the Singapore national collection was dissolved to start new national museums in the early 1990s, many of the objects and artefacts found their way to the ACM, the National Museum and the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research at the National University of Singapore.
Dr Kwok says: 'There were actual personalities behind these collections. We have tried to recreate not just a slice of the museum of the past but also attempted to look into the motivations of pioneer collectors.'
So the exhibition focuses on six independent collectors, ranging from explorers and naturalists to businessmen and missionaries, their adventures, passions and how their collections made their way to the museum.
One of the collectors was American naturalist William Louis Abbott (1860-1936) who travelled around the world before arriving in South-east Asia in 1896. He collected animal specimens and ethnographic objects. He gave most of these to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, while the Raffles Library & Museum received part of it.
Other collectors whose works are featured include sea captain Giovanni Battista Cerruti (1850-1914), British civil servant Gerald Brousseau Gardner (1884-1964), missionary Arthur Frederick Sharp (1866-1960), businessman Edward Richard Jacobsen (1870-1944) and soldier, explorer, writer and film-maker Tom Harrisson (1911-1976).
Curator Onn says: 'Their collections are as eclectic as their personalities. Gardner, for instance, was interested in weaponry and he collected keris or the asymmetrical dagger, which are on show here. Jacobsen settled in the highlands of Sumatra in 1917 and started collecting widely from local communities. He sold many items of the Minangkabau people to the Raffles Museum.'
For Onn, the challenge was not just searching through the records but finding interesting stories to make the objects on show relevant.
'I knew the animals would be a huge draw for families but we wanted to go beyond that. In the course of the research, I found some colourful letters exchanged between collectors and museums,' he says.
These have made their way to the exhibition's wall text. While children will enjoy seeing the stuffed animals, the rich personal histories behind the artefacts will keep the adults entertained too.
Harrisson, the most colourful of the collectors, is described as an 'enigmatic man, a romantic polymath and a drunken bully'. He assimilated with ease into the Kelabit community in Borneo and was given a wife by the chieftain.
However, when he realised his bride was not of a high social rank, he rejected her and insisted on getting a new wife. He had his way.
The visitorship target is a modest 30,000 but given the recent debate over the need for a natural history museum, it may well exceed that.
Dr Kwok says: 'We are expecting a lot of interest not only from those who are interested in natural history, but also those who have known the National Museum in the old days and would like to take a walk through memory lane or would like to give the younger members of their family a glimpse of what it was like.'
Indeed, Mr Dieter Gumpert, 67, president of the German Association here, recalls early dates with his then fiancee OiLeng here. 'We remember the stuffed tiger and the grumpy grouper watching us closely,' he says with a laugh.
'The elephant and the whale are missing, but this is good enough. We will be back again with our grand-daughter and remember the good old times at the museum,' he says.
Ever wondered how objects in museums made their way there? Some of these exhibition highlights unravel the story.
TIGER (South-east Asia)
On loan from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, National University of Singapore (NUS)
What: During the early 20th century, Raffles Museum curators built up the zoological collection by organising expeditions around South-east Asia, often jointly with Selangor and Perak Museums. In 1972, this collection was transferred to NUS which set up the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research. This museum has around 300,000 zoological specimens, such as this tiger.
The last record of a tiger in Singapore dates back to 1930. In 1999, there were reports of a tiger sighting on Pulau Ubin but these were not substantiated.
LEATHERY TURTLE (19th century, South-east Asia)
On loan from Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research
What: This turtle was found on the beach in Siglap on Dec 14, 1883. The largest of the living turtles, this is the only one recorded in Singapore waters. Leathery turtles live in open seas and are said to feed on jellyfish. There is a nesting colony of leathery turtles in Terengganu, on the north-east coast of Peninsular Malaysia.
CLOTH (Woven by the Kelabit, Sarawak)
Collection of ACM
What: This was donated to the museum by Tom Harrisson (1911-1976), an explorer, writer, film-maker and curator. From 1947 to 1966, he worked as a government ethnologist and curator of Sarawak Museum in Borneo. During World War II, he parachuted into the interiors of Borneo's jungle to gather information on Japanese troops for the British and American military. In his notes, he indicated that this piece of cloth was woven by the Kelabit people of Sarawak using parachutes. As cotton and other natural materials were in short supply during the war, parachutes ended up being woven into textiles.
ARMOUR (Iban Dayak, Borneo)
Acquired from collector Archdeacon Arthur Frederick Sharp, 1903, Collection of ACM
What: By the mid-19th century, collectors from Europe and the Americas were coming to South-east Asia in search of exotic plants and for a deeper understanding of cultures. They collected things such as spears, shields and baskets. This war-coat made of bark and fish scales was a war trophy captured from a rival tribe in 1903. The Ibans were natives of Borneo who formed free but competitive societies where head-hunting was once regarded the highest manly activity.
MODEL OF A MALAY HOUSE (20th century, Rhio)
Collection of ACM
What: The first acquisition of silver objects for the Raffles Museum was documented in 1898. Dr Richard Hanitsch, the then curator of the museum, helped build up the silver collection. Unfortunately, the silver objects also proved tempting and the Raffles Museum was burgled many times. This model of a two-storey Malay house, with engravings, serves as a reminder of silverware in the past.
BUTTERFLIES (South-east Asia)
On loan from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, NUS
What: A room of the old Raffles Library & Museum is recreated here and it features some of the exotic flora and fauna of the region as well as the old museum's natural history collection.
Specimens such as a tiger, a crocodile and a giant grouper, and a showcase featuring butterflies and birds are a reminder of the region's natural history.
HUNTERS & COLLECTORS: THE ORIGINS OF THE SOUTH-EAST ASIAN COLLECTION
Where: Special Exhibitions Gallery, Level 2, Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place
When: Till Sept 21, 9am-7pm (Tue-Sun), 1-7pm (Mon), open till 9pm on Fri
Admission: $5 (adults), $2.50 (concession). Price includes entry to the permanent collection. Free for children aged six and below and senior citizens aged 60 and above.
Info: Call 6332-7798/6332-2982 or go to www.acm.org.sg
What: Exhibition curator Clement Onn takes you on the collector's trail. Hear the stories behind the artefacts and the origins of the Asian Civilisations Museum's South-east Asia collection.
Where: Level 2, ACM
When: Tomorrow and Sept 4, 7.30-8.30pm
Admission: $12 each. Limited to 15 people a tour
Info: Register at www.acm.org.sg
What: Dr Barley was a curator at the British Museum in London. In this talk, he looks at some of the odd relationships between collectors and their collections.
Where: Ngee Ann Auditorium, ACM
When: Aug 15, 2-3.30pm
Admission: Free
What: This talk looks at the legacy of Carl Alexander Gibson-Hill, who was the last expatriate director of the Raffles Library & Museum.
Where: Ngee Ann Auditorium, ACM
When: Aug 20, 7.30-9pm
Admission: Free
What: Enjoy tribal performances, food and activities before going on a discovery tour with your family. Children can listen to folk tales or try out finger-painting and sand art.
Where: ACM
When: Aug 29-30 from noon-5pm
Admission: Free from 9am-7pm
Info: www.acm.org.sg
More about this event on the wildsingapore happenings blog.
Brenda Goh, Reuters 29 Jul 09;
SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) - They came, they hunted and they collected.
About a century after their travels in Southeast Asia, an exhibition at Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum traces the exciting journeys and adventures of six mostly European explorers through a treasure chest of cultural relics.
The "Hunters and Collectors" show pulls together an exotic range of 300 artefacts from carved bullet holders and a Dayak war-coat of bark and fish scales to natural history specimens such as an over 2-metre leatherback turtle and a rare summit rat.
"The interesting thing about collecting then and collecting today is that people, not just museums, even private collectors today, they collect a lot of old paintings, old art sculptures," the exhibition's curator, Clement Onn, told Reuters.
"But if you look back, people then were collecting contemporary items."
Onn said the motivation for such collectors varied from the "sake of science" to "a form of escapism" during the early boom years of the industrial collection.
Italian explorer Captain Giovanni Battista Cerruti came to Southeast Asia in the 19th century to discover gold, but ended up spending 15 years with a remote tribe and becoming one of the region's key collectors of cultural relics.
Cerruti never found his gold, but instead became a protector of the rights of indigenous people who put together a stunning collection of wooden ancestral carvings from Indonesia's Nias islands.
The exhibition also has a section on American naturalist and adventurer William Louis Abbott which is decorated to mimic a night illuminated by the glow of fireflies, reflecting his preference for roughing it out in jungles.
The exhibit takes visitors back to Singapore's first museum, the Raffles Museum & Library, re-created using old archival photos, an ethnographic collection and natural history specimens.
Onn said he hoped the exhibition would not only conjure up nostalgic feelings of visiting the old museum for visitors, but that they would also learn about how museums were formed.
"I hope that people can find some affinity with some of these personalities," he said.
"Hunters and Collectors: The Origins of the Southeast Asian Collection" runs until Sept. 24.
Asian Civilisations Museum (www.acm.org.sg)
More about this event on the wildsingapore happenings blog.
Nicholas Fang, Channel NewsAsia 29 Jul 09;
SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Health (MOH) is currently investigating a third malaria cluster involving four cases of suspected local transmission of vivax malaria near a row of shophouses located at the junction of Sembawang Road and Admiralty Road East.
In a statement, MOH said the first case is a 24-year-old Singaporean female who works in a vicinity of the shophouses.
Her illness onset was on June 30 and she was admitted to hospital on July 20.
She does not have any recent travel history or past history of malaria.
The second and third cases involve a 49-year-old Singaporean male and a 40-year-old Singaporean female who are colleagues and had frequented a coffeeshop at the row of shophouses.
The male patient had onset of illness on July 11 and was admitted to hospital on July 15.
The female patient had onset of illness on July 12 and was admitted to hospital on July 17.
The fourth case is a 24-year-old male foreign worker who was picked up during the Ministry of Health's active case finding in the vicinity.
He stayed at a nursery beside the row of shophouses and first had symptoms on June 12
He was admitted to hospital on July 28.
The first three cases have since recovered while the fourth case is currently warded in CDC.
This latest cluster is not related to the two earlier clusters as none of the four cases had visited Jurong Island or Mandai/Sungei Kadut prior to their onset of illness.
Upon notification of the cases by MOH on July 28, the National Environmental Agency (NEA) has initiated vector control operations at the site of the outbreak.
Larviciding of potential mosquito breeding habitats has been carried out and adult mosquito trapping operations were conducted on the night of July 28.
13 adult Anopheles mosquitoes were found but all tested by the Environmental Health Institute to be negative for malaria parasites.
Mass fogging in the area was carried out on Wednesday.
Stakeholders in the area have been alerted to step up mosquito prevention measures in the premises under their charge.
The NEA is monitoring the situation closely and will continue with intensive vector control operations.
MOH is monitoring the situation closely and will update the public on any new developments.
The symptoms of malaria include fever, chills, muscle pains, joint pains and headache.
MOH advises the public that anyone experiencing these symptoms and had visited the affected area in the past four weeks should seek immediate medical attention.
The ministry said the best way to prevent malaria is to avoid frequenting places where the mosquito vector is known to be active.
This mosquito vector bites mostly at dusk and at night.
If you cannot avoid going to these places, then wear clothes that completely cover the arms, legs and put on insect repellent.
As a precautionary measure, residents living in the vicinity are advised to use mosquito coils and repellents, and sleep under mosquito netting. - CNA/vm
Four cases found there, bringing total number of victims since May to 28
Salma Khalik, Straits Times 30 Jul 09;
New malaria cluster in Sembawang area
A NEW malaria cluster has emerged, dashing hopes that the malaria outbreak which started in early May has finally been contained.
Four people in Sembawang have been found to be infected locally so the fight to prevent malaria from becoming entrenched here is still on.
Three of the victims are Singaporeans while the fourth is a foreign worker living in a nursery there.
All are likely to have been bitten by the Anopheles mosquito in the vicinity of a row of shophouses at the junction of Sembawang Road and Admiralty Road East.
The first victim was the 24-year-old foreign worker, who fell ill on June 12. But he did not seek treatment so his illness did not come to light until the second victim, a 24-year-old woman working in the area, became sick on June 30.
The Ministry of Health said she had no recent travel history nor a history of malaria.
She was admitted to hospital on July 20 and the worker on Tuesday, after he was diagnosed.
A joint statement from the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the National Environment Agency (NEA) said the worker was identified through MOH's 'active case finding in the vicinity'.
The other two victims are colleagues who frequently ate at a coffee shop in the area. The man, 49, fell ill on July 11 and his female friend, 40, the following day. They were hospitalised on July 15 and 17 respectively.
All the Singaporeans have since been discharged.
The MOH informed NEA of the local infections on Tuesday. The agency swung into action that night and caught 13 adult Anopheles mosquitoes. But none carried the malaria parasite.
Yesterday evening, it fogged extensively in the area. The Anopheles mosquito, which spreads malaria, is most active at dawn and dusk.
The authorities said the latest cluster is not linked to the one on Jurong Island where eight foreign workers were infected, nor to the one at Mandai/Sungei Kadut, where 16 people have caught the disease.
The last case in those clusters fell ill at the end of last month. For an outbreak to be considered over, 30 days must pass without new cases cropping up.
The latest cases bring the number of people who have caught malaria here since May to 28 - the biggest outbreak Singapore has seen in years.
The MOH advises people who have been in the area in the past month, and who have fever, chills, muscle pains, joint pains and headache, to see a doctor immediately as malaria is a serious illness.
Singapore needs to wipe out the new cluster fast to retain its status as a malaria-free country - something it had achieved at much cost in 1982.
But Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan told The Straits Times that it is not an easy job to keep Singapore malaria-free as it is endemic in the region.
'But we have not done too badly. Some local clusters will emerge now and then and together with NEA, we will root them out as we did in the past,' he said.
Straits Times Forum 30 Jul 09;
I REFER to the Forum Online letter by Jeanne Nicole Chan, "Trapping and dumping strays and pets unbecoming in gracious Singapore", on Saturday, in which she asked, "Is there really no way to strive for a 'no kill' shelter?"
The reasons the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) would perform euthanasia include terminal illness or injury where there is no possibility of recovery, behavioural problems that pose a threat to other animals or humans, stray overpopulation, disease transmission, and old age where the quality of life is impaired by major loss of functions.
Sadly, this includes the lack of shelter space which results in shelter overcrowding. Overcrowding threatens the lives of all the animals in our care due to stress, weakened immune systems and increased risk of disease transmission. This requires the SPCA to make difficult decisions about euthanasia based on health, physical, emotional and psychological suffering, and the best interests of the animals receiving care at the shelter.
While some individuals argue that a shelter can easily achieve "no-kill" by refusing to accept surplus animals once it is full, one needs to understand that the consequence of such a move could result in an increase in the number of animals being abandoned on the street or being given up to another shelter or organisation if they have room to take on more. This begs the question: Does the SPCA refuse to accept animals and refer them elsewhere so it can achieve a "no-kill" label?
This no doubt would cause people to question why the SPCA is then abandoning its responsibility to provide shelter (even if it is temporary due to our adoption selection process) to unwanted strays and pets.
To put things into perspective, the SPCA receives 22 or more animals daily (which include those that may be chronically old, sick or injured). This means an average of 600 animals taken in a month, and over 7,000 animals in a year. With only 1,100 being adopted on a yearly basis, the SPCA cannot possibly find homes fast enough for all the animals that come through its doors.
Over the years, the SPCA has moved from blind acceptance to counselling. This includes education on responsible ownership to understanding reasons for giving up the animal to encouraging people to take their pets home again. In most cases though, despite our efforts, we end up taking in the animal and bearing the burden of having to decide the animal's fate.
We dream of the ideal where we do not have to put animals down because they are part of a surplus; and while the SPCA hopes to put into effect this policy some day, it will be able to realise this vision only with the help of a society that respects animals and treats them humanely.
Deirdre Moss (Ms)
Executive Officer
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Trapping and dumping strays and pets unbecoming in gracious Singapore
Straits Times Forum 25 Jul 09;
I REFER to the special report on animal welfare, 'Suffer the little critters' (June 21).
I read with disgust that bizarre behaviour like cat trapping and dog dumping (literally) is happening in our supposedly gracious society.
What can be done to stop such acts, including those of Mr Tony Tan Tuan Khoon ('I help stray cats end their suffering', June 21)? Did the cats suffer? I am sure they did, after, and not before, they were trapped.
I love cats, and have come to know that almost every estate in Singapore has dedicated cat lovers who feed, clear up and sterilise cats. So I cannot concur that Mr Tan is helping the cats in any way. Can such people be penalised under the law?
Microchipping should be compulsory for all dogs to enforce a stronger sense of pet responsibility. The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) puts down many animals because of space constraints, as is often pointed out. As a former volunteer, I find it ironic that only a thin wall separates those awaiting homes from those awaiting death. And the number on the 'condemned' side of the wall is sometimes double or even triple that on the 'adoptable' side. Is there really no way to strive for a 'no kill' shelter?
As there are advertisements to 'Save Gaia', perhaps the authorities should consider ads to 'Save animals'. After all, children should be taught to be kind to animals, as well as the planet.
Jeanne Nicole Chan (Ms)
WWF Malaysia 29 Jul 09;
Turtle car to round Peninsular for two weeks
27th July 2009, Petaling Jaya – If you see a car that looks like a turtle in your state, spare a moment to lend some support to the “Telur Rangers” – three young ladies on a mission to save turtles. From 26th July to 8th August, they will be stopping at venues all over Peninsular Malaysia, collecting signatures from the public in support of WWF-Malaysia’s “Egg=Life” turtle conservation petition. Their aim is to achieve 100,000 signatures calling for stricter laws on the protection of this endangered species.
“After pledging our support for the “Egg=Life” campaign, we came up with this idea of a road trip to help collect signatures to help the cause. Other colleagues chipped in some marvellous ideas, we approached WWF-Malaysia with it, they loved it, said they'd give us support and contacts and voila – here we are“, said Telur Ranger Nelleisa Omar at the launch hosted by Carrefour, Tropicana City Mall today.
“When we heard of the campaign, we immediately knew we have a role to play. One culprit in endangering turtle’s lives is the entanglement, suffocation and ingestion of plastic bags. So, Carrefour is taking a bold step – will declare Monday as “No Plastic Bags Day”. Our awareness program will begin today and to allow enough getting used to, we will still set aside plastic bags but only on loan. 10 sen each bag and if the bag is returned we will refund and reward. Money not refunded will be directed to turtles – saving efforts. This will already reduce a good number of plastic bags and hopefully in the few months to come, customers will be accustomed to bringing their own bags to shop”, said Carrefour Marketing Director, Low Ngai Yuen.
“We've named ourselves the “Telur Rangers” for obvious reasons. We want to be little heroes and chip in to save our turtle friends from ending up somebody's snack,” added Telur Ranger Huey Meim.
The girls were elated when WWF-Malaysia staffer Grace Duraisingham – who is directly involved in turtle conservation activities, bought into their wild idea and decided to be part of the team. With the support of Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide Managing Director Tan Kien Eng, Creative Director Iska Hashim and the help of wonderful colleagues, they managed to put their wild and bizarre idea on the road.
Stay updated on their journey at:
Blog: telurrangers.blogspot.com
Facebook fan page: Telur Rangers
Twitter: twitter.com/telurrangers
About the “Egg=Life” Campaign
WWF-Malaysia’s “Egg=Life” campaign, launched on Earth Day 22nd April 2009 and to run until 30th September 2009, targets to gain pledges from 40,000 members of the public. People who sign up in support of the campaign either at ground events or at wwf.org.my will pledge to:
Each signature in support of WWF-Malaysia’s “Egg=Life” campaign will lend weight to efforts aimed at improving turtle protection legislation in Malaysia. We need to take action to save our endangered turtles today because turtles play a critical role in keeping marine ecosystems healthy; the same ecosystems which sustain our fisheries and tourism industries that provide food and livelihoods for millions of people.
Janjira Pongrai, The Nation 29 Jul 09;
A vast mangrove area will soon be part of the first carbon credit project in Thailand - expected to generate large revenues, the Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organisation (TGO) said yesterday.
Under the clean development mechanism, carbon credit agreements in association with mangrove and forestry areas are currently accepted only in China and Brazil. Thailand will be the third country to follow suit under a United Nations framework convention on climate change protocol, TGO director Sirithan Phairojborriboon said yesterday.
The 10,000-rai mangrove area is in the Welu River basin in Chanthaburi province. Mangroves can reduce carbon dioxide at the highest rate compared with other types of forest - meaning a large amount of revenue generated within the five-year agreement period.
Sirithan said carbon credit deals involving forest areas would expand in the next three years, when a new agreement would be settled at international level. He said TGO had been queried by owners of private forests over the carbon credit agreement, indicating their interest in joining local schemes under TGO supervision.
The Agriculture Ministry and Kasetsart University are conducting a study to implement similar carbon credit management involving rubber plantations across the country, Deputy Minister Supachai Phosu said yesterday.
A 25-year-old rubber plantation can absorb carbon dioxide and produce biomass (forest waste) in high amounts sufficient to generate good revenue, he said, adding the ministry was also pushing for other types of plantations to be part of a national carbon credit management.
A total 34,000 rai of state-owned rubber plantations would be used for a pilot project, Supachai said, adding that a proposal would be officially submitted to the ministry next month.
Twitter updates, Facebook pages, iPod-guided walks and YouTube are being used in a new campaign to encourage more young people to visit the countryside.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 29 Jul 09;
The Campaign for National Parks is launching a three year project using the latest technology to target younger people and ethnic minorities.
This year is the 60th anniversary of the 1949 Act of Parliament which enabled the creation of the National Parks for "the public benefit and the enjoyment of all".
However, there are concerns that the original purpose has been lost, with few young people or ethnic minorities even aware that they can visit some of the most beautiful areas of the country for free.
The £1.7 million Government-funded "Mosaic Project" will create "community champions" from religious organisations, youth or women's groups to promote national parks, of which there are 14, including the Lake District, Exmoor and the Cairngorms.
Park authorities and youth hostels will be asked to promote their services in urban and cultural centres and cater more for particular ethnic minority needs. Twitter updates on the activities available, Facebook pages for each National Park, and audio walks that can be downloaded onto an iPod will also be developed.
Ben Fogle, President of the Campaign for National Parks, said 10 per cent of the population are from ethnic minority groups but only one per cent of people visiting National Parks come from this group.
He also said few children from inner city areas have visited the countryside – yet every major city has a National Park nearby, including London following the creation of the South Downs earlier this year.
"If you think about the National Parks the majority of people who visit tend to be older and white middle class," he said. " I do not know why or how this has happened – I suspect it is down to transport infrastructure making it difficult to get to these places – but it is also about knowledge and access to knowledge about the National Parks.
"So I feel that the use of Twitter and Facebook and modern forms of communication that appeal to younger generations are the way forward."
Huw Irranca-Davies, Minister for the Natural Environment Minister, agreed it was important to try to "break down barriers".
"Everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors and to get close to nature. Green spaces are good for our health and wellbeing," he said.
Yahoo News 30 Jul 09;
HANOI (AFP) – A "bald" bird discovered in Laos is Asia's first new species of bulbul, or songbird, in more than 100 years, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said Thursday.
Scientists from the Society, as well as the University of Melbourne, identified the bird, which has "a bald head", WCS said in a news release.
This undated handout picture received from the Wildlife Conservation Society shows a "bald" bird newly discovered in Laos' Savannakhet province. The "bald" bird discovered in Laos is Asia's first new species of bulbul, or songbird, in more than 100 years, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said. (AFP/University of Melbourne/Iain Woxvold)
They reported their findings in the July issue of Forktail, the scientific journal of the Oriental Bird Club, a United Kingdom charity.
"This paper describes for the first time in over 100 years a new Asian species of bulbul," the scientists wrote of their discovery late last year in an area of limestone karsts in Laos's Savannakhet province.
The bird, named the Bare-faced Bulbul, is not completely bald but has a narrow line of hair-like feathers down the centre of its crown. It also has a distinctive featherless, pink face with bluish skin around the eye extending to the bill, said the Society, which manages urban wildlife parks including the Bronx Zoo in New York.
"Its apparent restriction to rather inhospitable habitat helps to explain why such an extraordinary bird with conspicuous habits and a distinctive call has remained unnoticed for so long," said Iain Woxvold, the University of Melbourne scientist who was part of the team that made the discovery.
Limestone karsts remain among the least studied ecosystems in Southeast Asia, he and the other scientists wrote in their journal article.
Bald songbird discovered in Laos
Griet Scheldeman, BBC News 30 Jul 09;
Scientists have discovered a striking new species of bald songbird in a limestone region of South East Asia.
Its inhospitable habitat, far from any human activity or settlement, may explain why this unusual creature has evaded researchers until now.
The bald-headed bird was spotted by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the University of Melbourne.
This is the first new bulbul to have been discovered in 100 years.
The newly discovered bulbul is also the first bald songbird to be spotted in mainland Asia.
Exciting discovery
The researchers reported their discovery of the new species, which they aptly named the bare-faced bulbul, in Forktail, the journal of the Oriental Bird Club.
They described the new tree-dwelling bird as olive-green with a light-coloured breast and an exceptional featherless orange-pink and pale blue face.
The thrush-sized bird makes short flights from tree to tree and has a short distinctive call, the researchers said.
"The bird was neither skulking nor shy", they wrote, "but rather conspicuous in its habits".
Dr Peter Clyne, assistant director for Asia at the WCS, told BBC News that the discovery of a new species of animal was always an exciting event, and that it turned the spotlight on conservation issues.
The scientists reported that the new bulbul, who inhabits a protected area in central Laos, is safe for now. But more work is needed to ensure it is not put in danger by future human activities.
A bird in the net
After initially spotting and recording sounds from the new bird on 3 December 2008 in Pha Lom, a limestone outcrop in central Laos, researchers Iain Woxvold and Will Duckworth managed to "mist net" two birds a couple of days later, by playing back the initial bird's song.
"Mist netting is a standard technique used in ornithology studies to capture small, typically forest-type birds," said Dr Clyne.
"You put up a fine net that is very hard to see because it is black. Usually, the birds do not detect it in time, so they fly into the net."
He added: "They're perfectly safe. You collect the bird out of the net, then you can take measurements of its weight and wing length for example."
The discovery was made during a scheme funded by the Minerals and Metals Group mining company that operates a copper and gold project in the region.
Dr Clyne, who was involved in negotiations with the company, said: "This is an example of how a conservation organisation can work with a natural resource extraction industry co-operatively for the benefit of both.
"There's a lot of research to be done on this animal, we just discovered it. The first step is to continue to do some basic research on its distribution, its dietary needs, and its habitat requirements."
The scientists reported that they collected one bird to deposit in the Natural History Museum at Tring, UK, and photographed and blood-sampled the other one before it escaped.
In February 2009, they compared their findings with material in the Museum of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, which confirmed that they had indeed discovered a new species.
So far, the researchers believe they may have spotted a maximum of seven birds in total.
The researchers explained that future research was needed, not only for the bare-faced bulbul, but for all the limestone areas in South East Asia, as many new plant and animal species remained to be discovered.
In 2002, for example, in the same area, co-author and researcher Rob Timmins of WCS, described the kha-nyou, a newly discovered species of rodent. Three years before, he had discovered a unique striped rabbit.
Dr Clyne commented: "There are still quite a lot of places in Laos that have not yet been explored."
New Songbird Sports Wispy "Mohawk"
National Geographic News 29 Jul 09;
July 29, 2009—Sporting a mostly bald head, this new songbird species, dubbed the bare-faced bulbul, has been discovered on rugged limestone peaks in Laos.
The thrush-size creature is the first bald songbird yet discovered in mainland Asia and one of only 40 or so known bald songbirds in the world, say experts with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Australia's University of Melbourne, who found the species.
The bulbul, described in the current issue of the journal Forktail, is covered with greenish-olive feathers. The bird mostly lacks plumage on its face and head, with the exception of a mohawk-like line of wispy feathers down the center of its crown.
Researchers found the new species in forests growing on the sides of tower-like limestone structures called karsts.
Most of Laos's forested karsts lie within legally protected areas. Still, there's a chance that quarrying limestone for road construction in similar but unprotected areas could endanger the songbird and other wildlife, experts say.
Any exact risks to the bird are still unknown, as the team spotted only a handful of the birds living on a single rocky outcropping, so the species' total population size and range have yet to be determined.
Scientists are also not sure why the Laotian bulbul—or any of its songbird relatives, for that matter—is bald.
In famously bald-headed vultures, a lack of head feathers is thought to help the scavengers keep clean.
"Vultures bury their heads in carrion, and cleaning all that would be difficult," said WCS conservationist Peter Clyne, who was not involved in the discovery.
The reason for baldness in songbirds is less clear, but it may have something to do with mating displays, Clyne said.
—Ker Than
National Geographic 28 Jul 09;
July 28, 2009--Captured by a camera trap on January 16, 2009, a Bengal tiger prowls western Nepal's Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve.
The rare cat is one of at least 121 breeding tigers that may roam the country's preserved wilderness, according to results from the first ever nationwide survey of the rare cat, released yesterday.
A 1995-to-1996 tiger census had measured three known isolated tiger populations in Nepal and had found about 95 breeding animals, according to Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.
To get a more reliable estimate, in November 2008 surveyors set up camera traps in the mountainous South Asian country's four major protected areas. (See a Nepal map.)
The discovery is heartening for conservationists struggling to save the Bengal tiger, according to WWF-Nepal. Tiger numbers have plummeted to fewer than about 2,500 animals in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which lists the cats as endangered. Tigers have lost 93 percent of their historic range in Asia due to poaching, illegal trade, and human development, the IUCN says.
"The present numbers [are] a positive sign, but we can't remain unworried," Anil Manandhar, WWF-Nepal's country representative, said in a statement.
— Photograph courtesy WWF Nepal
Yahoo News 29 Jul 09;
HANOI (AFP) – Vietnamese customs officials have uncovered 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of elephant ivory tusks illegally imported from Kenya, official media reported Wednesday.
The tusks were found hidden in timber inside a container at the northern Hai Phong port, said Cong An Nhan Dan (People's Police) newspaper.
Authorities are seeking the owner of the container, who did not turn up to receive the goods when they arrived in April, the newspaper said. It did not say who was listed as the receiver, or give a street value for the ivory.
Officials from Hai Phong Customs Bureau refused to comment to AFP on the case.
Communist Vietnam banned the ivory trade in 1992 but shops can still sell old stocks dating from before then, and ivory-based products sell well to buyers from both Vietnam and from elsewhere in Asia.
Last week in Tanzania six businessmen were charged with smuggling 11 tonnes of elephant ivory, worth around 600,000 dollars, to the Philippines and Vietnam over the previous six months.
Marilynn Marchione, Associated Press Yahoo News 29 Jul 09;
In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.
The study was only a small proof-of-principle test, and its approach is not practical on a large scale. However, it shows that scientists may finally be on the right track to developing an effective vaccine against one of mankind's top killers. A vaccine that uses modified live parasites just entered human testing.
"Malaria vaccines are moving from the laboratory into the real world," Dr. Carlos Campbell wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. He works for PATH, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based global health foundation.
The new study "reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing" agent, even though it is harder to develop a vaccine this way and other leading candidates take a different approach, he wrote.
Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mostly children under 5 and especially in Africa. Infected mosquitoes inject immature malaria parasites into the skin when they bite; these travel to the liver where they mature and multiply. From there, they enter the bloodstream and attack red blood cells — the phase that makes people sick.
People can develop immunity to malaria if exposed to it many times. The drug chloroquine can kill parasites in the final bloodstream phase, when they are most dangerous.
Scientists tried to take advantage of these two factors, by using chloroquine to protect people while gradually exposing them to malaria parasites and letting immunity develop.
They assigned 10 volunteers to a "vaccine" group and five others to a comparison group. All were given chloroquine for three months, and exposed once a month to about a dozen mosquitoes — malaria-infected ones in the vaccine group and non-infected mosquitoes in the comparison group.
That was to allow the "vaccine" effect to develop. Next came a test to see if it was working.
All 15 stopped taking chloroquine. Two months later, all were bitten by malaria-infected mosquitoes. None of the 10 in the vaccine group developed parasites in their bloodstreams; all five in the comparison group did.
The study was done in a lab at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and was funded by two foundations and a French government grant.
"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product, but a way to show how whole parasites can be used like a vaccine to protect against disease, said one of the Dutch researchers, Dr. Robert Sauerwein.
"It's more of an in-depth study of the immune factors that might be able to generate a very protective type of response," said Dr. John Treanor, a vaccine specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., who had no role in the study.
The concept already is in commercial development. A company in Rockville, Md. — Sanaria Inc. — is testing a vaccine using whole parasites that have been irradiated to weaken them, hopefully keeping them in an immature stage in the liver to generate immunity but not cause illness.
Two other reports in the New England Journal show that resistance is growing to artemisinin, the main drug used against malaria in the many areas where chloroquine is no longer effective. Studies in Thailand and Cambodia found the malaria parasite is less susceptible to artemisinin, underscoring the urgent need to develop a vaccine.
___
On the Net:
New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
WHO report: http://apps.who.int/malaria/wmr2008/malaria2008.pdf
ScienceDaily 28 Jul 09;
Mammals and many species of birds and fish are among evolution's "winners," while crocodiles, alligators and a reptile cousin of snakes known as the tuatara are among the losers, according to new research by UCLA scientists and colleagues.
"Our results indicate that mammals are special," said Michael Alfaro, a UCLA assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and lead author of the research.
The study, published July 24 in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also shows that new species emerge nearly as often as they die off.
Alfaro and his colleagues analyzed DNA sequences and fossils from 47 major vertebrate groups and used a computational approach to calculate whether the "species richness" of each group was exceptionally high or low. The research allows scientists to calculate for the first time which animal lineages have exceptional rates of success.
Among the evolutionary winners are most modern birds, including the songbirds, parrots, doves, eagles, hummingbirds and pigeons; a group that includes most mammals; and a group of fish that includes most of the fish that live on coral reefs, said Alfaro, an evolutionary biologist.
A group with the scientific name Boreoeutheria, which consists of many mammals, has diversified about seven times faster than scientists would have expected, beginning about 110 million years ago, Alfaro and his colleagues calculated. The group includes primates and carnivores, as well as bats and rodents. Pouched mammals, such as kangaroos, are not as richly varied as other mammals, Alfaro said.
Modern birds have diversified about nine times faster than expected, starting about 103 million years ago, and the group of fish that live on coral reefs has diversified about eight times faster than expected, he said.
Who are the evolutionary losers?
Crocodiles and alligators are nearly 250 million years old yet have diversified into only 23 species, Alfaro said. They are diversifying a staggering 1,000 times slower than would have been expected. "Their species richness is so low, given how old they are," he said.
The tuatara, which lives in New Zealand and resembles lizards — although it is actually a distant cousin — has only two species. "In the same period of time that produced more than 8,000 species of snakes and lizards, there were only two species of tuatara," Alfaro said.
Why are there not thousands of species of tuataras?
"That is one of the big mysteries about biodiversity," Alfaro said. "Why these evolutionary losers are still around is a very hard thing to explain. They have been drawing inside straights for hundreds of millions of years. It's a real mystery to biologists how there can be any tuataras, given their low rate of speciation. They must have something working for them that has allowed them to persist. In species richness, these are losers, but in another sense, this highlights how unique they are. There are incredibly disparate patterns of species richness."
Tuataras were a bit more diverse in their heyday; there may have been a few dozen species of them, most of which have become extinct, Alfaro said.
In contrast, there are more than 9,000 bird species, more than 5,400 mammal species, approximately 5,500 frog species, some 3,000 snake species and 5,200 lizard species, Alfaro said.
The number of frog species, although it sounds high, is about what Alfaro would expect, given how old they are — approximately 250 million years old.
"Our analysis suggests we should not be surprised to see a group with that many species in that amount of time," Alfaro said.
There are almost 60,000 species of jawed vertebrates. Alfaro and his colleagues report evidence for exceptional diversification rates in nine taxonomic groups of jawed vertebrates. Interestingly, their findings do not coincide with traditional scientific explanations for why there are so many mammals, birds and fish.
"The timing of the rate increases does not correspond to the appearance of key characteristics that have been invoked to explain the evolutionary success of these groups, such as hair on mammals or mammals' well-coordinated chewing ability or feathers on birds," Alfaro said.
"Our results suggest that something more recent is the cause of the biodiversity. It may be that something more subtle explains the evolutionary success of mammals, birds and fish. We need to look for new explanations."
Co-authors on the PNAS paper are Luke Harmon, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Idaho; Francesco Santini, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in Alfaro's laboratory; Chad Brock, a graduate student of biology at Washington State University; Hugo Alamillo, a graduate student of biology at Washington State University; Alex Dornburg, a former undergraduate in Alfaro's laboratory, now a graduate student at Yale University; Daniel Rabosky, a graduate student of biology at Cornell University; and Giorgio Carnevale, a postdoctoral scholar at Italy's University of Pisa.
The research is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Alfaro's laboratory also studies why some groups of animals have great diversity in their shapes and others do not, even if there are many species. He and his colleagues use DNA sequencing to tease apart evolutionary relationships, analyze the fossil record and conduct sophisticated statistical analysis.
"We are interested in understanding the causes of biodiversity," Alfaro said. "We are trying to understand what explains the staggering diversity of reef fishes and other vertebrates."
"Our analysis can highlight how much higher extinction rates are in the present, compared with the historical rates," he said.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Los Angeles.
Jeanna Bryner, livescience.com 29 Jul 09;
Pulsating jellyfish and their swim pals stir up the oceans with as much vigor as tides and winds, scientists have found. Their study also found that the shape of the aquatic blobs affects their mixing abilities.
Until now, oceanographers had dismissed the idea that such tiny ocean creatures could play a role in mixing various layers of ocean water on a large scale. The argument was based on evidence that any swishing from fish tails, say, would get dampened by the ocean's viscosity (a measure of a fluid's resistance to flow - honey has a high viscosity compared with water).
But the new study, which is published in the July 30 issue of the journal Nature, reveals a mixing mechanism first described by Charles Darwin's grandson that is actually enhanced by the ocean's viscosity, making these tiny sea critters major players in ocean mixing.
"We've been studying swimming animals for quite some time," said John Dabiri, a Caltech assistant professor of aeronautics and bioengineering. "The perspective we usually take is that of how the ocean - by its currents, temperature, and chemistry - is affecting the animals. But there have been increasing suggestions that the inverse is also important - how the animals themselves, via swimming, might impact the ocean environment."
After all, each day, billions of tiny krill and some jellyfish migrate hundreds of meters from the depths of the ocean toward the surface where they feed. And with swarms of the gelatinous organisms popping up across the world's oceans, if the swimmers do indeed mix the water their impact could be major.
"There are enough of these animals in the ocean," Dabiri said, "that, on the whole, the global power input from this process is as much as a trillion watts of energy - comparable to that of wind forcing and tidal forcing."
Biologic blender
Dabiri and Caltech graduate student Kakani Katija discovered the jellyfish mixing with computer simulations and field measurements of jellyfish swimming in a lake in Palau in the Pacific Ocean.
In their field experiments, the researchers squirt fluorescent dye into the water in front of the Mastigias jellyfish and watched what happened as the animals swam through the dyed water. Rather than being left behind as the jellyfish swam by, the dyed water travelled along with the swimming creatures.
Here's how the researchers think it works: As a jellyfish swims, it pushes water aside and creates a high-pressure area ahead of the animal. The region behind the jellyfish becomes a low-pressure zone. Then, the ocean water rushes in behind the animal to fill in this lower pressure gap. The result: Jellyfish drag water with them as they swim.
"What's really cool about these jellies [is] they have huge variation in their body shapes," Katija told LiveScience.
And they found such differences can impact the amount of water that hitches a ride with the jellies. For instance, moon jellyfish (the kind typically seen at aquariums) have saucer-shaped bodies and can carry a lot of water with them. But other bullet-shaped jellyfish would drag smaller volumes of water.
Global impact
The ocean churning has broader implications.
Without any mixing, the surface of the ocean would lack nutrients, as any food gets gobbled up immediately, while the ocean bottom would remain deplete of oxygen. "With this mechanism, through mixing the animals can pull nutrient-rich fluid up to nutrient-poor areas and pull oxygen-rich fluid down to oxygen-poor regions," Katija said.
And on larger scales, the biologic blender could impact the ocean circulation, which affects the Earth's climate.
Dabiri and Katija say such mixing effects should be incorporated into computer models of the global ocean circulation.
Fauna play key role in circulating seas, says study
Yahoo News 29 Jul 09;
PARIS (AFP) – Creatures large and small may play an unsuspectedly important role in the stirring of ocean waters, according to a study released Wednesday.
So-called ocean mixing entails the transfer of cold and warm waters between the equator and poles, as well as between the icy, nutrient-rich depths and the sun-soaked top layer.
It plays a crucial part in marine biodiversity and, scientists now suspect, in maintaining Earth's climate.
The notion that fish and other sea swimmers might somehow contribute significantly to currents as they moved forward was first proposed in the mid-1950s by Charles Darwin, grandson of the the legendary evolutionary biologist of the same name.
But this was dismissed by modern scientists as a fishy story.
In 1960s, experiments compared the wake turbulence created by sea creatures with overall ocean turbulence. They showed that the whirls kicked up by microscopic plankton or even fish quickly dissipated in dense, viscous water.
On this evidence, sea creatures seemed to contribute nothing to ocean mixing. The clear conclusion was that the only drivers of note were shifting winds and tides, tied to the gravitational tug-of-war within our Solar System.
But the new study, published in the British science journal Nature, goes a long way toward rehabilitating the 20th century Darwin, and uses the quiet pulse of the jellyfish to prove the case.
Authors Kakani Katija and Joan Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology devised a laser-based system for measuring the movement of liquid.
They donned scuba gear and then released dye in the path of swarm of jellyfish in a saltwater lake on the Pacific island of Palau.
The video images they captured showed a remarkable amount of cold water followed the jellyfish as they moved vertically, from deeper chillier waters toward the warmer layers of the surface.
Katija and Dabiri say the 1960s investigators had simply been looking in the wrong place.
They had been on the alert for waves or eddies -- signs that the sea was being stirred up in the creatures' wake -- rather than vertical displacement of water.
What determines the amount of water that is mixed is the size and shape of the animal, its population and migratory patterns.
Churning of the seas is a factor in the carbon cycle.
At the surface, plankton gobble up carbon dioxide (CO2) through photosynthesis. When they die, their carbon-rich remains may fall gently to the ocean floor, effectively storing the CO2 for millennia -- or, alternatively, may be brought back to upper layers by sea currents.
William Dewar of Florida State University in a commentary, also published in Nature, said the new paper challenged conventional thinking.
"Should the overall idea of significant biogenic mixing survive detailed scrutiny, climate science will have experienced a paradigm shift," he said.
Shrimpy Sea Life May Mix Oceans as Much as Tides and Winds Do
Researchers are applying observations made by Charles Darwin's grandson to find that small organisms carry water with them as they go--which means they might play a big role in mixing vast tracts of ocean water
Katherine Harmon, Scientific American 29 Jul 09;
Here's a puzzle: A child pees in the shallow end of a pool and then swims to the deep end. Which end should you avoid? Conventional wisdom holds that the deep end would be safe (until the pool's normal circulation mixed the contaminated water throughout). But according to new research—and old observations by Charles Darwin, the grandson of the more famous Charles Darwin—it would be wise to avoid most of the child's path through the water.
The force at work, called induced drift, happens in the sea, too. In centuries past, people thought that the movement of ocean water was the result of the sun's and moon's tidal forces, Earth's rotation and weather, along with fishes' fluttering tails, notes William Dewar, a professor of physical oceanography at Florida State University in Tallahassee. As it turns out, those earlier thinkers might not have been as off base as many contemporary scientists have assumed.
According to a paper that will be published tomorrow in Nature, the induced drift caused by billions of swimming creatures, especially small crustaceans, could be a force on par with the tides and wind in mixing ocean water. (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.)
In a swimming pool the mixing might not be so necessary—or even desirable—but in the open ocean, mixing is an important way to move nutrients among layers and to maintain temperature balances that keep currents flowing.
The idea isn't new: Dewar, who wrote an accompanying views piece, co-authored a 2006 paper in the Journal of Marine Research, which observed increased water turbulence in large schools of krill and proposed that the creatures' tiny flutters could be churning waters on a large scale. "Zooplankton on the whole are pretty small," Dewar concedes. "Because of that, there are some legitimate concerns about how effectively they can mix [layers of] water."
Wouldn't the water's viscosity—its resistance—quickly overcome tiny amounts of turbulence caused by small zooplankton?
Actually, the new study's authors, Kakani Katija and John Dabiri from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, have shown that far from hindering the movement, water's viscosity actually enhances it. The principle observed by Darwin was that a solid body, whether it is a car or krill, moving through a fluid (air or water, respectively) will tend to take some of that fluid's particles along with it—hence the concept of induced drift. And as that fluid becomes thicker and more inclined to stick to the object, the amount of drift increases.
To put it simply, Dewar explains: "These animals go swimming, and they take the water along with them. It looks like they're pretty good at this."
For their research, Katija and Dabiri trained their sites not on krill but on small jellyfish, which can also swarm in large schools. They tracked how individual jellyfish carried water as they swam upward in the water column by observing the track of glowing dye injected into the water [see video below] as well as by measuring the kinetic energy the jellies generated in their wakes.
But why settle for such small sea dwellers? Although one might expect massive animals, such as whales, to have more impact on mixing individually, Dabiri, an assistant professor of aeronautics and bioengineering, explains that smaller organisms that travel in large schools—crustaceans and zooplankton for example—would have more of a global impact because they're so widespread and numerous.
Per Darwin's theory, however, it is not just critical mass that matters, but body shape. Dabiri explains that the quickest and most efficient swimmers—those that are smooth and bullet-shaped—are the least effective mixers, whereas slower and more saucer-shaped creatures will drag along proportionately more water.
How much water is moving? For it to have much importance for mixing purposes, water needs to be carried about a meter. From the observations and numerical simulations, Dabiri notes, "We expect that fluid is being carried at least on the magnitude of meters—if not tens of meters."
Extrapolating from their work, Katija and Dabiri suggest that in large schools these organisms likely have an even greater mixing power. In a massive krill migration for example, "it will be much more difficult for water to slip through the cracks" and not be carried along, Dabiri says.
But no one is quite sure how—and whether—the dynamic is actually playing out across the world's oceans. "It's not clear how you will go from that to a global model," Dewar says. Other considerations include how organisms' swimming style would affect water transport and how the combined force of these animals' drift might add up to a worldwide impact on ocean circulation. If it turns out to be as large a component as some are beginning to think, it will need to be incorporated into computer climate models. And that would be no small task because today's models are not nuanced enough to include data at the level of a school, much less an individual animal—to say nothing of complexities involving possible feedback loops down the road.
"Our paper raises more questions than it answers," Dabiri acknowledges. But, he says, it is casting light on what might be an important dynamic of oceans that has been right under our noses—or at least our hulls.
Jellyfish And Other Small Sea Creatures Linked To Large-scale Ocean Mixing
ScienceDaily 29 Jul 09;
Using a combination of theoretical modeling, energy calculations, and field observations, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have for the first time described a mechanism that explains how some of the ocean's tiniest swimming animals can have a huge impact on large-scale ocean mixing.
Their findings are being published in the July 30 issue of the journal Nature.
"We've been studying swimming animals for quite some time," says John Dabiri, a Caltech assistant professor of aeronautics and bioengineering who, along with Caltech graduate student Kakani Katija, discovered the new mechanism. "The perspective we usually take is that of how the ocean—by its currents, temperature, and chemistry—is affecting the animals. But there have been increasing suggestions that the inverse is also important—how the animals themselves, via swimming, might impact the ocean environment."
Specifically, Dabiri says, scientists have increasingly been thinking about how and whether the animals in the ocean might play a role in larger-scale ocean mixing, the process by which various layers of water interact with one another to distribute heat, nutrients, and gasses throughout the oceans.
Dabiri notes that oceanographers have previously dismissed the idea that animals might have a significant effect on ocean mixing, saying that the viscosity of water would damp out any turbulence created, especially by small planktonic animals. "They said that there was no mechanism by which these animals could impact large-scale ocean mixing," he notes.
But Dabiri and Katija thought there might be a mechanism that had been overlooked—a mechanism they call Darwinian mixing, because it was first discovered and described by Charles Darwin. (No, not that Darwin; his grandson.)
"Darwin's grandson discovered a mechanism for mixing similar in principle to the idea of drafting in aerodynamics," Dabiri explains. "In this mechanism, an individual organism literally drags the surrounding water with it as it goes."
Using this idea as their basis, Dabiri and Katija did some mathematical simulations of what might happen if you had many small animals all moving at more or less the same time, in the same direction. After all, each day, billions of tiny krill and copepods migrate hundreds of meters from the depths of the ocean toward the surface. Darwin's mechanism would suggest that they drag some of the colder, heavier bottom water up with them toward the warmer, lighter water at the top. This would create instability, and eventually, the water would flip, mixing itself as it went.
What the Caltech researchers also found was that the water's viscosity enhances Darwin's mechanism and that the effects are magnified when you're dealing with such minuscule creatures as krill and copepods. "It's like a human swimming through honey," Dabiri explains. "What happens is that even more fluid ends up being carried up with a copepod, relatively speaking, than would be carried up by a whale."
"This research is truly reflective of the type of exciting, without-boundaries research at which Caltech engineering professors excel—in this case a deep analysis of the movement of fluid surrounding tiny ocean creatures leading to completely revelatory insights on possible mechanisms of global ocean mixing," says Ares Rosakis, chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech.
To verify the findings from their simulations, Katija and collaborators Monty Graham (from the Dauphin Island Sea Laboratory), Jack Costello (from Providence College), and Mike Dawson (from the University of California, Merced) traveled to the island of Palau, where they studied this animal-led transport of water--otherwise known as induced drift--among jellyfish, which are the focus of much of Dabiri's work.
"From a fluid mechanics perspective, this study had less to do with the fact that they're jellyfish, and more to do with the fact that they're solid objects moving through water," Dabiri explains.
Katija's jellyfish experiments involved putting fluorescent dye in the water in front of the sea creatures, and then watching what happened to that dye—or, to be more specific, to the water that took up the dye—as the jellyfish swam. And, indeed, rather than being left behind the jellyfish—or being dissipated in turbulent eddies—the dye travelled right along with the swimming creatures, following them for long distances.
These findings verified that, yes, swimming animals are capable of carrying bottom water with them as they migrate upward, and that movement indeed creates an inversion that results in ocean mixing. But what the findings didn't address was just how much of an impact this type of ocean mixing—performed by impossibly tiny sea creatures—could have on a large scale.
After a series of calculations, Dabiri and Katija were able to estimate the impact of this so-called biogenic ocean mixing. And, Dabiri says, it's quite a significant impact.
"There are enough of these animals in the ocean," he notes, "that, on the whole, the global power input from this process is as much as a trillion watts of energy—comparable to that of wind forcing and tidal forcing."
In other words, the amount of power that copepods and krill put into ocean mixing is on the same scale as that of winds and tides, and thus their impact is expected to be on a similar scale as well.
And while these numbers are just estimates, Dabiri says, they are likely to be conservative estimates, having been "based on the fluid transport induced by individual animals swimming in isolation." In the ocean, these individual contributions to fluid transport may actually interact with one another, and amplify how far the ocean waters can be pulled upward.
In addition, says Dabiri, they have yet to consider the effects of such things as fecal pellets and marine snow (falling organic debris), which no doubt pull surface water with them as they drift downward. "This may have an impact on carbon sequestration on the ocean floor," says Dabiri. "It's something we need to look at in the future."
Dabiri says the next major question to answer is how these effects can be incorporated into computer models of the global ocean circulation. Such models are important for simulations of global climate-change scenarios.
The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation's Biological Oceanography, Ocean Technology, Fluid Dynamics, and Energy for Sustainability programs, and by the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Defense's National Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and the Charles Lee Powell Foundation.
Journal reference:
1. Dabiri et al. A viscosity-enhanced mechanism for biogenic ocean mixing. Nature, July 30, 2009
Adapted from materials provided by California Institute of Technology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Julian Ryall, National Geographic News 29 Jul 09;
Giant jellyfish seem poised to invade Japan, and experts are warning local fishers to brace themselves for an inundation that could wreak havoc on their industry.
Nomura's jellyfish is one of the largest jellyfish species in the world, growing up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) wide and weighing as much as 440 pounds (200 kilograms). (See giant jellyfish pictures.)
The giant jellyfish last swarmed western Japan in vast numbers in 2005. Their huge bodies damaged fishing nets, and their toxic stings poisoned the catch and even injured some fishers.
Now the jellyfish could be gearing up for a similar assault, say experts who recently conducted some of the first surveys of the giants' spawning grounds.
"We have reports of massive bloomings of young jellyfish near the Chinese coast, where the ecosystems of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea are favorable for breeding," said Shin-ichi Uye, a biological oceanographer at Hiroshima University. (See a map of the region.)
Efficient Jellyfish
Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, so Uye and colleagues across Japan have been studying the jellyfish in the lab to learn more about its habits and reproductive strategies.
Based on captive breeding, Uye's team has found that the jellyfish are extremely efficient at filtering tiny creatures called zooplankton out of the water.
As long as a jellyfish is healthy, it devotes all its energy to eating. Even during the spawning season, its reproductive system remains immature.
But if the jellyfish is injured or weakened, it quickly switches to producing offspring, Uye said.
Giant Jellyfish "Typhoons"
The scientists are still not sure why thousands of the creatures float across the Sea of Japan in some years but not others.
"It is possible that they have a 'rest stage' or hibernation period in their development over several years, but then their numbers shoot up given certain environmental stimuli," Uye said.
Researchers also don't know why the giant jellyfish are becoming more regular visitors to Japan's shores.
In the early 1900s large numbers of the giants were reported only every 40 years or so.
But in recent years the jellyfish have been appearing with alarming frequency: Japan experienced unusually large outbreaks almost every year between 2002 and 2007.
One contributing factor may be a decline in the number of jellyfish predators, including sea turtles and certain species of fish known to eat young jellyfish.
According to Uye, right now giant jellyfish outbreaks are like typhoons—they can't be controlled, but they can be predicted.
He and his colleagues are currently working on a system for creating accurate jellyfish forecasts, so fishers will hopefully be able to better prepare themselves.
James Joseph, New Scientist 29 Jul 09;
IS IT OK to eat tuna without feeling guilty? The media is full of reports claiming the demise of tuna stocks. Monaco, France and the UK are calling for the trade in bluefin tuna to be banned. There is no doubt that some tuna stocks are heavily overfished, but they are not the source of the fish you eat in a tuna sandwich or salad. In fact, it's OK to continue eating tuna - at least for now.
Tuna are widely but sparsely distributed throughout the world's oceans. They grow rapidly to very large size and can support major fisheries. They also migrate long distances, and their travels carry them through the fishing zones of many nations and also international waters.
This wanderlust makes tuna more complicated to manage than less nomadic fish. Because the level of fishing in one area can affect their abundance in others, cooperation among the nations through whose waters tuna migrate and those whose fleets catch them is essential. Accordingly, tuna stocks are managed by five regional fisheries management organisations, whose duties are to conduct scientific studies and implement conservation measures to ensure the tuna harvest is sustainable.
Taken together, tuna account for about 5 per cent, or 4.2 million tonnes, of the world's annual harvest of marine fish. The catch is made up of seven principal species. Skipjack, used mostly for canning, accounts for 59.1 per cent. Yellowfin is next with 24.0 per cent, bigeye 10.0 per cent, albacore 5.4 per cent, and the three species of bluefin (southern, northern [Atlantic] and Pacific) make up the remaining 1.5 per cent. Bluefin are the giants of the tuna family and the most highly prized.
These seven species are divided into 23 stocks. Scientific studies have shown that, of these, six are overfished, six are fully utilised (which means they can't sustain any increase in the catch), and nine are not yet fully utilised. Two have not been adequately assessed.
The three most seriously overfished stocks are eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin, western Atlantic bluefin, and southern bluefin. Unless measures are implemented to reduce catches they might not recover. For the fourth bluefin stock, in the Pacific, a full assessment is currently underway.
Of the remaining three overfished stocks, North Atlantic albacore is recovering and is nearly back to its optimum level; the eastern Pacific bigeye stock is slightly overfished, but management measures due to be implemented this year may allow it to rebuild; and yellowfin in the Indian Ocean may recover thanks to recent pirate activity, which has led many vessels to leave the area.
The other tuna stocks are reasonably healthy. Three of the six fully utilised stocks are at risk of becoming overfished, but conservation measures are being put in place. Overall, about 90 per cent of tuna catches come from stocks that are not overfished.
So contrary to what you might have been led to believe, tuna stocks are largely in good shape. The challenge is to ensure that the healthy stocks stay healthy and the overfished stocks recover.
There are many obstacles to overcome. Each of the management organisations comprises between 6 and 48 member states; most of them require consensus of all the members in order to enact conservation measures, and this is difficult to achieve.
One of the main problems is that there are too many tuna boats - capacity is 10 to 40 per cent more than is needed to harvest the stocks at sustainable levels. There are no strict controls to stop new vessels entering most tuna fisheries, so they continue to be built. This overcapacity results in excessive competition for limited supplies and diminishing economic returns, and makes it difficult for nations to agree conservation measures.
This sort of short-sighted race to exploit a resource without regard for the long-term consequences is what has led to overfishing in many of the world's fisheries. It stems from the tradition of open access to high-seas fisheries, a concept enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
It is time to change the convention and introduce new management systems. The first step would be to limit entry into the fishery. Next, assigning fishing quotas to individual boats, rather than allowing them to compete for as large a share of an overall quota as possible, would motivate fishers themselves to support conservation measures in order to protect their share.
However, achieving consensus for such systems will be difficult because of tension between the haves and have-nots. Most of the have-nots are developing states that aspire to establish tuna-fishing fleets. Tuna pass through waters under their control and many are members of regional management organisations, but in many cases they lack the capital and infrastructure to run fleets. Because they want a piece of the action, they are unlikely to agree to limits on new vessels unless they are guaranteed a right to acquire vessels.
Excluding bluefin, tuna fisheries are close to peak productivity. Unless effective conservation measures are implemented, they will slide down the slippery slope of overfishing. The situation is serious enough that scientists and environmental organisations have joined together with the major canned tuna processors to form the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation. Its purpose is to support the five fisheries management organisations in their duties to implement science-based conservation.
The time for states to negotiate meaningful conservation measures is now, before the healthy stocks become overfished and the overfished stocks are further depleted.
James Joseph serves on the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation's board of directors and is chair of its science advisory committee
Expensive organic food is no better for you than conventionally-grown farm produce, according to the Government's food watchdog.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 29 Jul 09;
In the most comprehensive study ever to be carried out into the nutritional content of organic food compared to ordinary fare, scientists found no significant difference in vitamins and minerals.
A separate study found there are no extra health benefits to eating organic food rather than meat, fruits or vegetables grown on intensive farms.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA), which commissioned the research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, concluded there was no reason to buy expensive organic food for nutritional reasons.
The study is likely to come as a blow to the billion-pound industry which is already struggling in the economic downturn as shoppers turn away from more expensive goods. For example, an organic chicken costs three times the price of a more conventionally-reared bird.
But celebrity chefs and organic farmers said the studies failed to take into account the health impact of the "cocktail of chemicals" left on conventional food and the environmental benefits of growing organic food on wildlife-friendly farms. Advocates claim the produce is better for you, with some claiming it can help cure skin conditions, asthma and even cancers.
However previous studies have proved confusing, with some claiming organic foods can provide more vitamins, while others find no difference to ordinary foods.
The new research looked for the first time at the best evidence over the last 50 years. After looking at 160 studies on the nutritional content of organic foods versus non organic it concluded there was no significant difference in vitamins and minerals that are important to human health. A further study of more than 50 studies on the health implications found no good evidence that organic food is better for you than non-organic.
Dr Alan Dangour, of the LSHTM, who carried out the studies, said the report was the most comprehensive review of the health benefits of organic food ever carried out.
"Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority," he said.
Gill Fine, FSA Director of Consumer Choice and Dietary Health, said there is no need for people to buy highly-priced organic food for the health benefits.
"The study does not mean that people should not eat organic food. What it shows is there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally produced food and that there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food."
The study did not look at pesticide residue or the environmental implications of organic food because this would be beyond the specialism of the scientists involved.
Lord Melchett, Policy Director of The Soil Association, argued that the small differences in minerals and vitamins found in the study do benefit health.
"The FSA study does show generally that there are beneficial nutrients in organic than non-organic, but the researchers have concluded these are not important - for example, flavonoids and beta carotene. We think they are and more recent studies back these up. "
Anthony Worrall Thompson, the celebrity chef, said an organic diet has made him healthier over the past 14 years, and the study failed to look at the health benefits of no pesticide residue and the environmental benefits of organic farms.
"There probably are as many nutrients in non-organic food as organic but there are a lot of other things going on – no one has done a study on the cocktail of chemicals on non-organic food."
Organic 'has no health benefits'
BBC News 29 Jul 09;
Organic food is no healthier than ordinary food, a large independent review has concluded.
There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found.
The Food Standards Agency who commissioned the report said the findings would help people make an "informed choice".
But the Soil Association criticised the study and called for better research.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at all the evidence on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years.
Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance, said study leader Dr Alan Dangour.
Overall the report, which is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no differences in most nutrients in organically or conventionally grown crops, including in vitamin C, calcium, and iron.
The same was true for studies looking at meat, dairy and eggs.
Differences that were detected, for example in levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use and ripeness at harvest and are unlikely to provide any health benefit, the report concluded.
Gill Fine, FSA director of consumer choice and dietary health, said: "Ensuring people have accurate information is absolutely essential in allowing us all to make informed choices about the food we eat.
"This study does not mean that people should not eat organic food.
"What it shows is that there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally produced food and that there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food."
She added that the FSA was neither pro nor anti organic food and recognised there were many reasons why people choose to eat organic, including animal welfare or environmental concerns.
Dr Dangour, said: "Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority."
He added that better quality studies were needed.
Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association said they were disappointed with the conclusions.
"The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences.
"Although the researchers say that the differences between organic and non-organic food are not 'important', due to the relatively few studies, they report in their analysis that there are higher levels of beneficial nutrients in organic compared to non-organic foods.
"Without large-scale, longitudinal research it is difficult to come to far-reaching clear conclusions on this, which was acknowledged by the authors of the FSA review.
"Also, there is not sufficient research on the long-term effects of pesticides on human health," he added.
Organic food not healthier, says FSA
Report finds organic food provides no significant nutritional benefit compared with conventionally produced food
Karen McVeigh, guardian.co.uk 29 Jul 09;
Organic food is no healthier and provides no significant nutritional benefit compared with conventionally produced food, according to a new, independent study funded by the Food Standards Agency. But its conclusions have been called into question by experts and organic food campaigners.
The report looked at evidence published over the past 50 years of the different nutrient levels found in crops and livestock from both types of farming and also at the health benefits of eating organic food. The findings, partly published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, contradict previous work that has found organically grown food to be nutritionally superior.
Dr Alan Dangour, who led the review by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "Most studies were based on the hypothesis that eating organic food is beneficial to health. Looking at all of the studies published in the last 50 years, we have concluded that there's no good evidence that consumption of organic food is beneficial to health based on the nutrient content."
He said that while small differences in nutrient content were found between organic and conventionally produced food, they were "unlikely to be of any public health relevance".
Organic food campaigners criticised the study for failing to consider fertiliser and pesticide residues in food. They expressed disappointment at its "limited" nature, saying that without long-term studies it did not provide a clear answer on whether eating organic food has health benefits. A leading food academic went further, saying he found the conclusions "selective in the extreme".
Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, said: "We are disappointed in the conclusions the researchers have reached. It doesn't say organic food is not healthier, just that, according to the criteria they have adopted, there's no proof that it is."
He criticised the methodology used by the team, which he said meant they rejected as "not important" some nutritional benefits they found in organic food, and led them to different conclusions from those reached by previous studies.
Melchett said: "The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences."
Carlo Leifert, a professor of ecological agriculture at Newcastle University and the co-ordinator of a major EU-funded study which recently found nutrient levels were higher in organic foods, said the conclusions of the study were selective.
He said: "I'm worried about the conclusions. The ballpark figures they have come up with are similar to ours. I don't understand why the FSA are not going away and saying, 'Right, there's something you can do on a farm to improve food.' But they are so blocked by not wanting to say positive things about organic farming."
The appendix of the FSA report shows that some nutrients, such as beta-carotene, are as much as 53% higher in organic food, but such differences are not reflected in its conclusions.
The farming of organic food, which is now worth £2bn in the UK alone, is governed by strict regulations that set it apart from conventional farming. Crops are not treated with artificial chemical fertilisers or pesticides, while antibiotics and drugs are not used routinely on livestock.
Gill Fine, the FSA director of consumer choice, defended the scope of the study. She said: "We are neither anti or pro organic food. We recognise there are many reasons why people choose to eat organic, such as animal welfare or environmental concerns. We specifically checked claims that organic food is better for you.
"This study does not mean people should not eat organic food. What it shows is that there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally produced food and there is not evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food."
When asked whether consumers had been misled over the benefits of organic food, she said: "If they are buying organic on the basis that it is healthier, then that is not the case."
The EU study co-ordinated by Leifert, which ended in May this year, involved 31 research and university institutes. It found that levels of nutritionally desirable compounds, such as antioxidants and vitamins, were higher in organic crops, while levels of nutritionally undesirable compounds such as toxic chemicals, mycotoxins and metals such as cadmium and nickel, were lower in organic crops.
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