Best of our wild blogs: 27 Jun 08

Nemo no more?
the threat of the aquarium trade on the wildfilms blog

File Clam and Phyllid Nudibranch at St John's
on the tidechaser blog

Anatomy of a nest: Yellow-vented Bulbul
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

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Leatherback turtles return to Rantau Abang, Terengganu after two years

Bernama New Straits Times 26 Jun 08;

After a two-year absence, the leatherback turtles finally returned to Rantau Abang, Dungun twice recently and this has renewed the hope of saving the reptiles from extinction. Terengganu Fisheries Department director Munir Mohd Nawi said the endangered species landed at the beach on June 12 and 23 after their last appearance almost two years ago.

“It is a positive sign as it can help us rehabilitate the species. We are expecting between five to seven more landings of the species beginning early next month,” he told reporters at the Media with the Fisheries Department programme at the Ma`Daerah Turtle Sanctuary here today.

He said 167 turtle eggs retrieved from the landings were being kept in the incubator for hatching at the Rantau Abang Turtle Sanctuary.

It will take almost two months for the eggs to hatch depending on the weather and temperature, he said, adding that, the landing of the species dropped sharply in the last 16 years.

Munir said the results of the cloning of leatherback turtles at the Turtle and Marine Ecosystem Centre (Tumec) in Dungun - as part of efforts to prevent extinction of the species - would materialise soon.

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Keeping it fresh Water will flow from Marina Barrage to Upper Peirce Reservoir – and vice versa

Lin Yanqin, Today Online 27 Jun 08;

TO MAKE the Marina Reservoir created by the Marina Barrage more than just a stagnant body of water, underground drains are going to be built so that water can circulate throughout Singapore’s water channels, keeping the lake fresh.

This project — called the Marina Reservoir Recirculation Scheme :— was one of several tender announcements made by PUB yesterday, at the Singapore International Water Week Water Expo.

When completed in 2010, water from Upper Peirce Reservoir will be released into the new drainage channels leading to various tributaries, which then lead to Marina Reservoir. This will complement the pipe that will pump water from Marina Reservoir, already under construction, into Upper Peirce Reservoir, allowing water to circulate between the two reservoirs.

“It will create flowing water, which will help to improve water quality,” saidMr Devaray Sanmuganathan, PUB’s deputy director of best sourcing. Four tenders for various phases of the scheme will be called later this year.

Also announced yesterday were tenders for PUB’s Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters programme to develop Jurong Lake in the Western catchment area, and Bishan Park, Sungei Kallang and Alexandra Park in the Central catchment area.

Bishan Park, for instance, will see a stream created within the park, with water from the Kallang River drawn and filtered through an existing canal. This will result in a clean body of water for recreation activities.

Other ideas PUB have in mind to transform these water channels and bodies include additional landscaping, fishing platforms and a geyser in the middle of Jurong Lake.

A tender will also be called for the Eastern catchment this year, though details are still unavailable.

PUB will also call for bids to build additional membrane bioreactor plants to meet additional demand at two of its water reclamation plants, Jurong and Ulu Pandan, to meet increasing demand, said Mr Devaray.

Since making such advance tender announcements before the actual calling of tenders, PUB has been able to reach out to a bigger pool of partners, contractors and suppliers for its various projects. “Anecdotally, we have seen more price competitive rates,” said Mr Devaray.

Altogether, PUB will be announcing 120 tenders over the next 12 months, with the projects estimated to cost about$1.1 billion in all.

Last year, about $995 million worth of projects were tendered.

PUB plans to award tenders worth $1.1b
Projects include Marina scheme, Seletar waterworks, two membrane bioreactor plants
Emilyn Yap, Business Times 27 Jun 08;

(SINGAPORE) Singapore's national water agency PUB plans to award about 120 tenders worth $1.1 billion from July this year to June 2009.

Major projects include the Marina Reservoir Recirculation Scheme (MRRS), ABC Waters Programme, Lower Seletar Waterworks and two membrane bioreactor plants.

PUB announced the plans yesterday on the sidelines of the Singapore International Water Week. The agency has awarded contracts worth about $995 million since last July.

The MRRS aims to create a water recirculation system through Marina reservoir and six major rivers and canals to help improve water quality.

The construction of pipelines and other infrastructure will take place around areas such as Geylang river, Whampoa Canal, and MacRitchie Reservoir.

The scheme is in the detailed design stage and PUB expects to call four separate tenders from July to October.

Under the ABC Waters Programme, landscaping, drain improvement and other works will help enhance waterways for recreational uses.

The programme will yield four projects around Jurong Lake, Alexandra Canal, Sungei Kallang and Bishan Park, with tenders coming up in Q4 this year.

PUB also has plans for two membrane bioreactor plants at the Ulu Pandan and Jurong water reclamation plants. Both projects are still under study and tenders are scheduled for July and late Q3 respectively.

And for works at Lower Seletar Waterworks, PUB has already called a tender on June 13, which will close on September 11.

PUB hopes that the briefing will help contractors, suppliers and other industry partners plan ahead for the bids.

'At the same time, PUB will benefit from getting competitive bids,' said the agency's deputy director of best sourcing, Devaraj Sanmuganathan.

'As a whole, this will help Singapore develop our infrastructure in the most optimal way.'

Businesses in the water sector have responded positively to the news.

'United Engineers Limited has previously worked with PUB on numerous water-related projects and will look forward to participating in the bidding for these upcoming tenders,' said a spokesperson for the firm.

'The bumper crop of water project tenders will not only be a welcome boost to the economy, but also a catalytic force to further develop the water industry of Singapore,' he said.

'Keppel is interested in evaluating all opportunities that are presented on their own merits,' said CEO of Keppel Integrated Engineering Chua Chee Wui.

Regional sales manager for GE Water and Process Technologies, Wilson Tan, also said that the company will offer its ultra-filtration membrane technology to local contractors participating in the bids.

PUB to award tenders worth S$1.1b to transform Spore's water bodies
By Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia 26 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE : Singapore's national water agency PUB plans to award some 120 tenders worth about S$$1.1 billion between July this year and June 2009.

One of the bigger projects to be rolled out over the next 12 months is the Marina Reservoir Recirculation Scheme.

It will bring flowing water from surrounding tributaries such as the Alexandra and Rochor canals, and Kallang River into the Marina Reservoir - which will be created once the Marina Barrage is ready early next year.

The Marina Reservoir Recirculation Scheme, to be completed by 2011, is expected to improve water quality at reservoir and open up the area for recreational purposes.

"The Marina Reservoir (serves) three (purposes) - flood control, water supply and of course, recreational use," said Devaraj Sanmuganathan, Deputy Director of Best Sourcing Department at PUB.

Tenders for the Marina Reservoir Recirculation Scheme will be carried out in 4 phases, from July to October this year.

"Flowing water creates an ideal environment for aquatic life, and the Marina Reservoir Recirculation Scheme does that. So with this flow, water will be clean and pristine, and anyone can enjoy sailing and canoeing activities there," said Sanmuganathan.

Other projects announced include the development of the Lower Seletar potable water treatment plant.

There is also the Active Beautiful Clean (ABC) Waters Programme, which seeks to transform concrete drains and canals into flowing streams and rivers. This project is divided into three catchment areas - in the western, central and eastern parts of Singapore. Tenders will be called in the last quarter of the year. - CNA /ls

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Safety lapses found in MOM checks on Singapore shipyards

One ordered to stop work as inspection blitz continues on 89 shipyards
Jermyn Chow, Jason Hau, Daryl Tan, Straits Times 27 Jun 08;

OFFICERS from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) have uncovered a litany of shortfalls in safety standards in an ongoing inspection of the 89 shipyards here.

Exposed electrical boards, live wires in wet areas and scaffolds with missing toeboards and handrails were among the lapses.

Since the blitz started on Monday, 40 shipyards have been spot-checked by the team of about 50 officers.

So far, one shipyard, found lacking in proper safety procedures, has had to 'down tools', an MOM spokesman told The Straits Times. She declined to name it.

The safety checks come in the wake of a string of shipyard accidents that have left five people dead and 18 others hurt in a space of three weeks.

The 23rd person injured or killed this month was a 54-year-old New Zealander, believed to be a ship's engineer. He suffered second-degree burns on Wednesday, when a flash fire broke out in the engine room of a ship berthed in Drydocks World Singapore. The mishap was the second in that shipyard in nine days.

The tragedies have cast a pall over the boom in the ship- repair and offshore sectors.

Last year, the marine and offshore industry rang in $13.05 billion in total output, a 33 per cent jump over the previous year.

Besides clamping down on errant shipyards, the industry-led Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) Council and the Association of Singapore Marine Industries (Asmi) will launch a safety education drive here. It will focus in particular on raising safety standards in small and medium-sized shipyards.

A safety seminar has already been lined up next month, with a focus on safety while working in confined spaces.

A 400-page guide for shipyard managers and safety professionals will also be disseminated during the seminar.

Asmi president Michael Chia hopes those attending the event will not just 'pay lip service', but will get the safety message out 'to the last man on the ground'.

That would include reaching the estimated 300 workers hired by the shipyards' sub-contractors.

Most of these are Bangladeshi or Myanmar nationals who have left their homelands to come here for jobs paying between $300 and $1,500.

An ST check with shipyard workers in Tuas seemed to indicate that the 'safety first' message had sunk in. Most said their safety supervisors were starting off every morning with safety briefings.

Mr Murugean Ramesh, 39, an electrician with Damen Shipyards Singapore, said: 'As long as we don't take shortcuts, we follow the rules, we will be safe.'

But safety analysts warn that this mentality may breed complacency.

Mr Andrew H. S. Tan, vice-president of the Singapore Institution of Safety Officers, said: 'As time passes, safe work procedures have to be constantly reviewed and tightened to stay relevant to the fast-paced shipbuilding and repair industry.'

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Why Singaporeans say 'yuck' to babies but not to Newater

Chee Hean: Considering people's attitudes and behaviours is key to good policymaking
Sue-Ann Chia, Straits Times 27 Jun 08;

GETTING people to drink reclaimed water - Newater - worked. But getting people to marry and have babies is still stuck in infancy.

The tale of two government policies - one that took off, and the other, still unproductive - is reason for the Government to pay greater attention to how attitudes affect decisions when forming policies.

Minister-in-charge of the Civil Service Teo Chee Hean said this yesterday when addressing an inaugural global behavioural economics forum organised by Gallup, the international polling organisation.

About 250 people, half of whom were civil servants, turned up to listen to speakers, including Nobel laureate and psychology professor Daniel Kahneman, speak on how behavioural economics impacts society.

Mr Teo, who is also Defence Minister, launched the forum by noting that behavioural economics applies insights from psychology to the study of economics.

'It is a field that holds promise for advancing policymakers' understanding of the likely impact and result of their policies,' he said.

The Civil Service College has begun to introduce these ideas to the public sector. The college, he noted, aims to make behavioural economics a key part of the skills set for policymakers here.

Explaining behavioural economics, he noted it differs from conventional economic theory, which starts with the assumption that people aim to maximise individual self-interest.

'Blindly applying this assumption to policy problems can sometimes lead to unrealistic analysis or even inappropriate solutions,' he said.

Behavioural economics, on the other hand, believes that people do not always act in completely rational ways. They can be influenced by social norms and by people around them.

This means that policymakers should consider how they can shape social norms to achieve intended outcomes, he noted.

He cited the way Singaporeans were persuaded that Newater is acceptable for drinking as an example.

'At one level, gaining acceptance was about appealing to the rational mind of Singaporeans by quoting the facts and the figures, and the science,' he said.

'But the key to overcoming the 'yuck' factor was building trust and social acceptability.'

But he conceded that urging Singaporeans to marry and procreate has 'not yet been successful', in spite of various financial incentives and campaigns since 1987.

Clearly, this is an area where behavioural economics can help, he said, adding that he hopes to report progress in the coming years.

Mr Teo also pointed out that policymakers here have already been using the concepts of behavioural economics in policies such as the national annuity programme CPF Life.

One insight of behavioural economics is that people are strongly influenced by the 'default' options they face. Applying it to voluntary pension schemes, this means they have a higher chance of success when the default is for people to be included unless they opt out.

Hence, for CPF Life, policymakers decided that the 'default' would be a standard plan which would be appropriate for most Singaporeans. But they also get a choice of other plans.

Speaking at the same forum, Mr Lim Siong Guan, the former head of the civil service, also emphasised the importance of understanding people's psychology and behaviour when formulating government policies.

'It does not matter what the policy intent is in the memorandum to the Cabinet: what the public sees and feels and experiences is...what the policy is about,' he noted.

Policymakers changing the way they deliver messages, says Minister Teo
Channel NewsAsia 26 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE: Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean said policymakers are changing the way they deliver their messages - instead of the usual carrot-and-stick approach, they are favouring a softer method to help shape public attitudes.

Mr Teo, who is also minister-in-charge of the civil service, was speaking at the Global Behavioral Economics Forum, organised by polling company Gallup on Thursday.

He used NEWater as an example to explain how policymakers persuaded Singaporeans that recycled waste water was safe to drink.

"At one level, gaining acceptance was about appealing to the rational mind of Singaporeans by quoting the facts and the figures, and the science. But the key to overcoming the 'yuk' factor was building trust and social acceptability."

Another example is CPF Life, where Singaporeans were offered options - which made it easier for them to accept the annuity scheme.

However, sociologist Dr Paulin Straughan pointed out the danger of this approach is that in the long-term, it could lead to over-reliance on the government and loss of creativity.

She said: "On one hand, there'll be your usual complaints about too much regulation... On the other hand, when something goes wrong they'll say, 'Fine, raise the fine! Have some more rules! Where are the policemen when you need them?'"

To encourage people to get married and have children is one area where the government has yet to be successful.

Dr Straughan said society is at a point where expectations of women's roles and parenthood are constantly changing, so the type of message and the way it is sent out are important. - CNA/ac

It’s normal to be irrational
Policies should make room for such behaviour,say psychologist
Neo Chai Chin, Today Online 27 Jun 08;

HUMANS do not always behave rationally, but much as their irrationality complicates policies, governments and decision makers must sit up and pay attention, said psychologists — including a Nobel laureate — at the first-ever Global Behavioural Economics Forum yesterday.

Behavioural economics (BE) is the discipline that merges Psychology and Economics, and it could help explain some uniquely Singaporean case studies, such as the success of Newater and the structure of the upcoming CPF Life annuity scheme.

That is because the authorities here already practise BE, for example, by favouring soft approaches instead of just a carrot-and-stick policy, Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean said in the forum’s opening address yesterday.

“Policymakers in Singapore may not have used the termsbehavioural economics or cognitive biases, but they were certainly putting these concepts to good use,” said Mr Teo.

To get more people recycling and fewer people to litter, jaywalk or drink-drive, “policy makers cannot only look at incentives or disincentives, but must also look at shifting preferences and norms over the longer term”, he said at the forum held at Meritus Mandarin hotel.

Another example: People are often unable to make complex cost-benefit calculations that conventional economics thinks us capable of. So, even though the CPF Life Scheme offers a dozen plans for people to choose from, the Government decided that “the default would be a standard plan which we think would be appropriate for most Singaporeans”, said Mr Teo, who is also Minister-in-charge of the Civil Service.

Moving forward, BE could help in the Government’s push to promote marriage and parenthood, he said. In spite of financial incentives and campaigns, our fertility rate remains below 1.3 — a sign that the campaign “has not yet been successful”.

Offering some reasons for people’s irrational behaviour, Nobel laureate Dr Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University said humans tend to take a narrow view, failing to consider all factors before making our decisions.

We also tend to practise “loss aversion”, where the pain of giving something up is greater than the pleasure of gaining something; it could explain why Singapore successfully reduced its birth rate in the ’70s (through penalties), but has less success now in getting people to have more babies (through campaigns and incentives).

Gallup’s chairman and chief executive Jim Clifton also asked Mr Peter Ong — Gallup’s managing partner in Singapore, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia — why Singapore seemed to be one of the few nations currently practising BE.

One reason could be “political longevity”, said Mr Ong. Political stability allows the Government to plan “20 to 30 years ahead” and to be more willing to “experiment in a small way” — in areas like car ownership and road usage, for instance — before implementing policy on a larger scale.

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Singapore International Water Week: Solid gains made at water summit

Opportunity to meet clients, network with govt and industry elite cited as plus points
Tania Tan, Straits Times 27 Jun 08;

THE talk may all have been about the precious liquid that is water, but the inaugural Singapore International Water Week was full of solid outcomes.

Beyond trying to find solutions for a world where over one billion people lack access to safe drinking water, business deals worth millions were also struck.

The four-day event came to a close yesterday with a dinner reception at Keppel Bay.

Over 5,000 delegates and 390 companies from more than 70 countries 'flooded' the Suntec City, many looking for answers to pressing issues such as managing water resources and dealing with waste water.

Most were the industry's elite - including environment ministers, chief executive officers and research stalwarts.

The international nature of the event meant that those from developing countries had contact with and gained insights into practical and cost-effective solutions to problems their countries had.

Delegates at Singapore's first Water Week event also gave it the thumbs up as proceedings mostly went on without a hitch.

'This has to be one of my favourites,' said Dow Water Solutions general manager Ian Barbour, who has been to six water shows this year.

The Singapore show also impressed with its stellar turnout.

The presence of government and industry elite was a 'big compliment' to Singapore, said Mr William Dee, president and chief executive of New York-based engineering company Malcolm Pirnie.

With parallel summits - including the World Cities Summit and East Asia Summit Conference on Liveable Cities - government officials and industry bigwigs spent nearly 100 hours tackling water issues, with some progress made in tie-ups and deals.

'It's the perfect opportunity to meet clients, both old and new,' said Mr Thomas Searle, president of international business at CH2MHill.

'This is our 'night job',' he said. 'Our day job continues - we're still replying to clients around the world and making sure projects are ongoing.'

Industry experts acknowledged the tide may not yet be turning on global water woes, but said it would be unrealistic to expect one meeting to solve all problems.

'There's not going to be a tidal wave of change,' said Mr Dee. 'These take time.'

Added Dow's Ian Barbour: 'Let's not kid ourselves; this ship isn't going to turn.'

Only with concerted cooperation between public and private sectors can water challenges be tackled, he said.

'We can't give up.'

US giant to build $24m plant here
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 26 Jun 08;

UNITED States giant Marmon Water is building a $24 million water filter manufacturing plant here - a first by a foreign firm.

Marmon's 3,500 sq m leased facility in Serangoon is expected to be fully operational by the first quarter of next year and will employ 100 workers.

The announcement of the plant was made yesterday - the last day of the four-day inaugural Singapore International Water Week at the Suntec convention centre.

Mr Angelo Pantaleo, president of Marmon Water Drinking Water Group, said the facility will focus on manufacturing residential water treatment products for export to the United States, China and South-east Asia.

The potential of this segment of the global water business is huge.

'The growth rate in Asia is north of 15 per cent annually, compared to about 5 to 8 per cent in the US,' said Mr Pantaleo.

The decision to locate here was due to Singapore's strong industry focus on water, 'the presence of a high talent pool and its connectivity to other markets within Asia', he said.

The Economic Development Board's assistant managing director, Mr Kenneth Tan, said yesterday that Marmon's plant 'marks another key milestone' for Singapore's water industry.

This is not Marmon's first foray into Singapore. In January last year, the company, which has an annual revenue of about US$7 billion (S$9.6 billion), joined local firm Hyflux to set up a $50 million joint water research and development centre.

Marmon and Hyflux said some projects incubated from the centre will soon be brought to the market, including one on a carbon-fibre membrane for residential water treatment.

The two companies will also develop products to be manufactured by the new plant and exported to the region, said Hyflux group deputy chief executive Sam Ong.

This partnership will help Hyflux, which has made headway in the industrial water treatment business, to develop its consumer segment.

'This will help us become an integrated water solutions provider. Consumer products can give us an added value and we want to give it the best shot,' said Mr Ong.

PUB in tie-ups with India, Japan partners
Sembcorp signs accord with Qinzhou municipal govt
Emilyn Yap, Business Times 27 Jun 08;

THE deals keep rolling in at the Singapore International Water Week, as more tie-ups involving PUB, Sembcorp and other international organisations were unveiled yesterday.

Singapore's national water agency PUB signed two memorandums of understanding (MOU) yesterday. The one with the Maharashtra Water Supply and Sanitation Board (MJP) calls for both parties to team up on projects that minimise water wastage and improve infrastructure in Indian cities and towns.

The collaboration will also promote participation by Singapore-based companies in urban water management in Maharashtra, the second most populous state in India.

Pipeline rehabilitation specialist Teacly (S) Pte Ltd, for instance, will work with MJP and Indian partner companies on projects under the MOU.

One project will have PUB helping to introduce a round-the-clock water supply in Ambernath, a town near Mumbai. The town's population currently has water for only three to four hours a day.

'I am confident Ambernath will be the 'beachhead' project that will pave the way for similar collaborations between Singaporean companies and the various Indian states,' said PUB's chief executive Khoo Teng Chye.

PUB inked another MOU with Japanese firm Teijin Ltd to conduct joint research and development in used water treatment.

Teijin will be able to carry out test-bedding of the ozone disinfection treatment process at the final stage of Newater purification. It will also work with a local university on a joint research programme in material technology for used water purification.

Sembcorp also announced a tie-up for its centralised utilities business in Guangxi, China.

The company signed a heads of agreement with the Qinzhou municipal government to jointly develop wastewater treatment, water recycling, and other projects to serve industrial customers in the Qinzhou Port Economic Development Zone (QEDZ).

QEDZ will become Sembcorp's first beachhead in southern China.

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Mega-challenges for megacities

Andrew Tan, Straits Times 27 Jun 08;
The writer is the director of the Centre for Liveable Cities

THROUGHOUT the developing world, cities are growing bigger and larger, but not necessarily more liveable.

For the first time in history, more than half of the world's population, some 3.3 billion people, now live in urban areas. In 1950, there was only one megacity with more than 10 million people - New York. Asia had none.

Today, Asia has more than half of the world's largest cities, including 10 megacities: Bangkok, Beijing, Kolkata, Jakarta, Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo, Mumbai, Osaka and Karachi. By 2015, Asia is expected to have 12 megacities. The UN estimates that Asian cities will double in size by 2030.

Underpinning this rapid urbanisation is the region's unprecedented economic growth over the last few decades. Economic growth and urbanisation go hand in hand. The building frenzy in Asia is a concrete manifestation of this trend. Outstanding architects from Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas to Fumihiko Maki and Zaha Hadid are in high demand as Asian cities seek to create their own 'Guggenheim effect' that put Bilbao on the world map.

The rising living standards in Asia will spur new patterns of consumption, trade and commerce as well as interlinkages between cities. If the 20th century was an era of new nation states, the 21st century could see the emergence of cities as significant players in the global economy, along with their transboundary networks of capital, knowledge and talent. But none of these is a given.

According to the UN, close to one billion people live in slums across the world and this figure is expected to double by 2030. Half of them are in Asia, where income disparities are widening. Many of Asia's cities are also becoming overcrowded and congested. Yet they continue to attract more people.

The challenges facing Asia's cities will therefore grow in scale and complexity. There is under-investment in public infrastructure and utilities. Lack of good sanitation, proper housing, accessible transport, clean air and water continues to plague many Asian cities.

There has also been over-exploitation of existing resources. Rivers have been polluted, entire eco-systems damaged and forests depleted. With the growing concern over climate change, managing these issues has become of compelling importance.

Four areas require urgent attention.

First, dealing with the region's water scarcity: According to the Asian Development Bank, Asia already has one of the lowest per capita availability of fresh water among the world's continents. One out of five people in the region does not have access to safe drinking water. Furthermore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that Central, South, East and South-east Asia will face freshwater shortages due to climate change. Competition for scarce water resources could lead to friction among states.

Second, keeping pollution within limits: A study led by the Stockholm Environment Institute in 2006 showed that the air quality in the majority of Asian cities still exceeded international guidelines for human health for certain pollutants.

Third, promoting greater energy efficiency: With oil prices at record highs, it makes sense for Asia's cities to pay attention to making their buildings, power plants, transport systems and industries energy-efficient. When coupled with investments in renewable energy, the cost- savings of energy efficiency - not to mention the ensuing reduction in carbon emissions - can be significant. Japan is able to grow its economy over the three decades since the oil shocks of the 1970s by being more energy-efficient in nearly everything it does.

Fourth, making cities more liveable: While there is no one definition of 'liveability', there is growing recognition that cities have to balance the imperatives of economic growth, social harmony and environmental protection. The solution is not to curb economic growth, for there can be no development without growth. The challenge is to ensure that growth is sustainable in the long run.

Dealing with these four challenges will require political will, a whole-of-government approach and pragmatic deployment of scarce resources. But unfortunately, there is no single formula that can be applied across the board. Urban management is a highly contextualised affair. No two cities are alike. Each country should adopt its own solutions based on the best practices of other cities.

In the United States and Europe, many cities are trying out innovative approaches to urbanisation, energy security and climate change. Likewise, Asian cities can play a similar role as catalysts for change in their countries.

Ultimately, Asia will need to chart its own sustainable growth path, one that balances the need for economic growth with the need to preserve the environment for future generations.

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I can't find Nemo! Pet trade threatens clownfish

Hannah Strange, The Times 26 Jun 08;

Five years after the hit film that endeared the clownfish to audiences the world over, Nemo is becoming increasingly difficult to find.

The lovable tropical species, immortalised in the smash Pixar movie Finding Nemo, is facing extinction in many parts of the world because of soaring demand from the pet trade, according to marine biologists.

Parents whose children who fell in love with Nemo at the cinema are seeking out the clownfish in ever greater numbers, leading to over-harvesting of wild specimens because captive breeding programmes cannot cope with demand.

Dr Billy Sinclair, of the University of Cumbria, who has been studying clownfish populations for five years, says the species should now be listed as endangered.

Studies of clownfish on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have revealed a dramatic population decline since the release of the movie in 2003. Shoals that used to number dozens of clownfish have dwindled to just a few specimens, leaving them with difficulty breeding, Dr Sinclair says.

“In one coral reef we looked at in Keppel Bay, clownfish populations have dropped from 25 to just six in two years,” he says. The number of clownfish caught accidentally by commercial fishing operations had also seen a large drop since the movie’s release.

Over-harvesting for the pet trade at a time when many reefs are starting to die back from bleaching - caused by rising sea temperatures - is thought to be the main culprit.

Dr Sinclair said the film – the best-selling DVD of all time at over 40 million copies – had done much to educate children about marine life. But as the tiny, brightly-coloured creature had since become a “must-have” pet, captive breeding programmes could now only meet about 50 per cent of demand. The rest are captured from the wild.

In Australia, small salt-water aquariums with an anemone and two tiny clownfish are sold for as little as AUS$50 (£24) and marketed as the essential marine gift for children. The timid fish, ranging from orange to black in colour with white bands and averaging three inches in size, have a symbiotic relationship with sea anemones, from which they will rarely venture far.

“I am not saying it is solely down to over-harvesting as climate change is clearly having an impact on the coral reefs and anemones on which the clownfish live,” Dr Sinclair says.

“But existing harvesting programmes will have to be reviewed in the light of what is happening to the reefs or we could see local extinctions in the near future.”

Finding Nemo, an Oscar-winning Disney/Pixar animation which took over $864 million at the box office, tells the story of a boy clownfish who is captured on his way to school by a scuba diver. His father Marlin then embarks on a mission to rescue him from a tank in a Sydney dentist’s office.

With a central message against keeping marine life in captivity, the film featured a host of Hollywood stars such as Ellen DeGeneres, Willem Defoe and Geoffrey Rush.

Following its release, it became a favourite screening at snorkelling and diving hotspots around the world. But within months, the scuba diving industry was reporting a steep decline in sightings of the diminutive creature, while some pet suppliers saw an eight-fold increase in sales.

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No-fishing zones studied for ecosystem protection

Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Yahoo News 26 Jun 08;

Reeling in a 45-pound grouper used to be just an average day on the water in the Florida Keys. The abundance of behemoth fish attracted anglers from around the world in the early 1900s, including adventurers such as Ernest Hemingway and Zane Grey, who pulled in monsters from the clear, warm depths off Key West.

But as Florida's population boomed, the attraction that drew them began to vanish. Anglers were snapping up the larger fish by the thousands. An average grouper caught in the Keys now is about eight pounds.

"We were starting to look like a Third World nation in regards to having blitzed our resources," said University of Miami marine biologist Jerald Ault.

Ault and others are studying whether putting large tracts of ocean off-limits to fishing in the Keys can help species rebound — and prove a way to help reverse the effects of overfishing worldwide.

Federal and state scientists, along with University of Miami researchers, wrapped up a 20-day study on June 9, after 1,710 dives in the region, surveying fish sizes and abundance, in an effort to determine whether it's working.

Critics assert that it isn't. They say limiting size and catch quantities, not fencing off the seas, will help restore ocean life.

The fierce debate has raged between scientists and anglers for years. Some studies suggest the outcome could mean life or death for not only commercial and sport fishing, but for mass seafood consumption as it exists today.

Florida has the largest contiguous "no-take" zone in the continental U.S. — about 140 square miles are off limits to fishing in and around Dry Tortugas National Park, a cluster of seven sandy islands about 70 miles west off Key West amid the sparkling blue-green waters that teem with tropical marine life. Nearby, another 60 square miles are also off limits.

The region is home to some 300 fish species and lies within a crucial coral reef habitat at the convergence of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

Fish larvae produced here can be swept on ocean currents as far north as the Carolinas.

Ault fondly calls the area "Florida's Yellowstone," loaded with tropical fish, endangered sea turtles and sharks.

It's been about seven years since the first portion of this no-fishing zone was created in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

While Ault and others say there are clear signs of a resurgence — that grouper, snapper and other reef fish are now being found in greater numbers and are growing larger — they acknowledge definitive answers may be years away.

"It's way too early to make those kinds of pronouncements," said James Bohnsack, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who also is working on the study. "The only way we're going to confirm this is to follow it through time." Bohnsack said it could be 15 years before scientific data fully verifies the theory.

But he said the premise is based on simple logic.

Coral reefs serve as crucial breeding grounds for some of the world's most popular fished species. Keeping anglers away, scientists believe, will create havens where fish can feed, grow and spawn, then migrate to areas that have been overfished.

The larger a fish grows, the more eggs it can produce. If anglers continue to snap up all the big ones, eventually, Bohnsack warned, the entire system could collapse.

Overfishing has cut deeply into the world's fish populations.

A 2006 report in the journal Science warned that nearly a third of the world's seafood species have declined by 90 percent or more and all populations of fished species could collapse by 2048 if current fishing and pollution trends continue.

Bohnsack and Ault hope to prove that by closing critical breeding grounds, such a catastrophe can be averted. But others aren't convinced.

Ted Forsgren, executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association Florida — a nonprofit group that represents anglers — said he has seen no indication that fish from the protected areas are replenishing the seas where fishing is allowed.

Forsgren vigorously opposes no-take zones, and says limiting catch size and quantity is a better approach.

"There's evidence that shows that if you create a no-take zone you'll end up with more fish in there, and that's true," Forsgren said. "But we haven't seen any of these no-fishing zones that have provided replenishment to adjacent waters."

A state and federal study released in February on a network of no-fishing zones around California's Channel Islands found that since those preserves were created five years ago, the population and size of spiny lobsters and other species have increased.

Still, the study's findings only "suggest" that since lobsters in the protected areas are growing bigger, it is "likely" they could "spill over" into unprotected areas.

Even so, many in the scientific community insist the concept will pay off.

No-take zones around the world operate under just that theory, although many allow limited fishing for research and indigenous groups.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has the world's largest network of no-take areas, with more than 44,000 square miles off limits to fishing.

The United States' largest no-take marine reserve is a 1,547-square-mile network within Hawaii's remote Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, according to NOAA.

Limited sustenance and research fishing and a few small commercial operations are currently allowed within much of the remainder of the monument's 140,000 square miles, but all commercial fishing there will be phased out by 2011.

Mike Hirshfield, chief scientist at Oceana, a sea life advocacy group, said that if current fishing trends continue without added protections, anglers could fish themselves out of business. He compared reef habitat breeding grounds to investment banks.

"Once you liquidate the capital, you can't live off the interest anymore," he said.

___

On The Net:

Dry Tortugas National Park: http://www.nps.gov/drto/

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Scientists rewrite history of avian evolution

Yahoo News 26 Jun 08;

A five-year project has revolutionized scientific thought on the evolution of birds and the results are so surprising that now even the textbooks will have to be rewritten, a study said Thursday.

"With this study, we learned two major things," said Sushma Reddy, lead author and a fellow at The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.

"First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong."

The results of the largest ever study of bird genetics are so widespread that the names of dozens of birds will now have to be changed, says the study to be published in Science magazine.

The Early Bird Assembling the Tree-of-Life Research Project has been researching the evolution of all major living groups of birds and has already examined 32 kilobases of DNA data in 19 places of some 169 bird species.

A kilobase in molecular biology is a unit of length for DNA fragments representing 1,000 base pairs of DNA.

Among new discoveries the team found that birds repeatedly adapted to new environments. For example, flamingos and grebes did not evolve from other waterbirds, while birds that now live on land such as cuckoos did not evolve from other landbirds.

Other findings were that, contrary to current thought, daytime hummingbirds evolved from nocturnal nightjars, falcons are not related to hawks and eagles and fast flying ocean birds are not related to pelicans and other waterbirds.

"We now have a robust evolutionary tree from which to study the evolution of birds and all their interesting features that have fascinated so many scientists and amateurs for centuries," Reddy said.

"Birds exhibit substantial diversity and using this 'family tree' we can begin to understand how this diversity originated as well as how different bird groups are interrelated."

Bird Study Reveals 10 Things You Didn't Know
Robin Lloyd, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 26 Jun 08;

Birds are among the most studied and openly stalked animals (by binocular-clad humans), but scientists have just discovered a flock of unexpected new avian facts, based on an analysis of genetic data that yielded an evolutionary tree full of surprises.

The results of this five-year study are so broad that the scientific names of dozens of birds will have to be changed in biology textbooks and birdwatchers' field guides.

"With this study, we learned two major things," said researcher Sushma Reddy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Field Museum in Chicago. "First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong."

Thanks to the study, here are 10 new things about birds you probably never knew:

1. Hummingbirds, colorful daytime birds, evolved from drab nocturnal birds called nightjars.

2. Perching birds (the largest order of living birds, including cardinals, orioles, crows, ravens, jays, swallows, sparrows, kinglets, weavers, chickadees, nuthatches and wrens) are closely related to parrots and falcons.

3. Flamingos and some other aquatic birds, such as grebes (freshwater diving birds) and tropicbirds (white, swift-flying ocean birds), did not evolve from waterbirds. This suggests that birds have adapted to life on water multiple times.

4. Woodpeckers, hawks, owls and hornbills look very different, but they are all closely related to perching birds.

5. Vultures, previously thought to be closely related to storks, are actually members of a group called land birds.

6. Falcons are not closely related to hawks and eagles, as was previously thought.

7. Shorebirds are not the most primitive birds (or most basal, or at base of evolutionary tree, as biologists prefer to say), which refutes the widely held view that they gave rise to all modern birds.

8. Owls, parrots and doves have few, if any, living intermediate forms linking them to other well-defined groups of birds, making it difficult to determine their evolutionary relationships.

9. Tropicbirds are not closely related to pelicans and waterbirds. In fact, bird lifestyles, such as being noctural or raptorial or ocean-going, have evolved several times, not just in one family group.

10. Birds have had a complex evolutionary history after an early and rapid explosion of species that occurred sometime between 65 million and 100 million years ago.

A total of 18 scientists, from the Field Museum, University of Florida, Gainesville, University of California, Berkeley, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa, among others, participated in the research. The results are detailed in the June 27 issue of the journal Science.

There are an estimated 82 million birdwatchers in the United States, making it the country's second most popular hobby. Gardening comes in first.

New bird family tree reveals some odd ducks
Julie Steenhuysen, Yahoo News 27 Jun 08;

The largest study ever of bird genetics has uncovered some surprising facts about the avian evolutionary tree, U.S. researchers said on Thursday, including many that are bound to ruffle some feathers.

Falcons, for example, are not closely related to hawks and eagles, despite many similarities, while colorful hummingbirds, which flit around in the day, evolved from a drab-looking nocturnal bird called a nightjar.

And parrots and songbirds are closer cousins than once thought.

The findings challenge many assumptions about bird family relationships and suggest many biology textbooks and bird-watchers' field guides may need to be changed.

"One of the lessons we've learned is appearances seem to be very deceiving," said Sushma Reddy of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, whose study appears in the journal Science.

"Things that are quite different-looking sometimes end up being related," she said.

For the study, Reddy and colleagues studied the genetic sequences of 169 bird species in an effort to sort out family relationships in the bird family tree.

Scientists believe birds, which first appeared roughly 150 million years ago, evolved from small feathered carnivorous dinosaurs.

"Modern birds as we know them evolved really rapidly, probably within a few million years, into all of the forms we see. That happened 65 to 100 million years ago," Reddy said in a telephone interview.

Reddy said these quick changes have made bird evolution hard to pin down, and several smaller prior studies have led to conflicting results.

"We didn't have a good sense of how any of these major bird groups were related to each other," said Reddy, who worked with researchers at several other labs.

"We've tried to represent all of the major groups of birds and all of the major lineages," Reddy said.

Their findings suggest birds can be grouped broadly into land birds, like the sparrow; water birds, like the penguin; and shore birds, like the seagull.

But there are many paradoxes within these groupings.

For example, water-loving flamingos and some other aquatic birds did not evolve from water birds. Instead, they adapted to life on water.

And some flightless birds are grouped with birds that fly.

Reddy acknowledges the results are likely to stir debate in many circles, but she said she is confident in the findings.

"I think a good study brings up as many questions as it answers," she said.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

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Foreigners threaten endangered Afghan snow leopards

Jonathon Burch, Yahoo News 26 Jun 08;

Afghanistan's snow leopards have barely survived three decades of war. But now the few remaining mountain leopards left in Afghanistan face another threat -- foreigners involved in rebuilding the war-torn country.

Despite a complete hunting ban across Afghanistan since 2002, snow leopard furs regularly end up for sale on international military bases and at tourist bazaars in the capital. Foreigners have ready cash to buy the pelts as souvenirs and impoverished Afghans break poaching laws to supply them.

Tucked between souvenir stores on Chicken Street, Kabul's main tourist trap, several shops sell fur coats and pelts taken from many of Afghanistan's threatened and endangered animals.

"This one is only $300," one shopkeeper told Reuters, producing a snow leopard pelt from the back of his shop.

"It was shot several times," he said pointing to the patches of fur sewn together. "The better ones are only shot once. The skin remains intact," he says as his assistant brings out a larger pelt, this time with no patches. "This one is

$900."

All the shopkeepers said they had more pelts at home and that they had sold furs to foreigners over the past few weeks.

Asked if it was easy to send the furs back home, one shopkeeper who did not want to be named said: "No problem! We hide the fur inside blankets and send it back to your country."

Snow leopards along with several other animals in Afghanistan are listed as endangered or threatened under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Anyone caught knowingly transporting a fur across an international border is liable to a large fine. In the United States, it could result in a $100,000 fine and one year jail term.

It is hard to know the exact numbers of snow leopards left in Afghanistan due to the creatures' elusive nature and the lack of any case studies during the last three decades of conflict, said Dr. Peter Smallwood, Afghanistan country director for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society

(WCS).

But what is known is that the snow leopard is endangered.

"If you look historically at Afghanistan, Afghanistan actually had more big cat species than the entire continent of Africa," said Clayton Miller, Environmental Advisor to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

"Now the only cat species that is not on the threatened and endangered species list is the domestic cat.

Destruction of infrastructure, movements of refugees, modern weaponry, extreme poverty and a lack of law enforcement together with drought and deforestation are just some of the factors that have devastated Afghanistan's flora and fauna.

There are now only between 100 to 200 snow leopards estimated to be left in Afghanistan. In comparison, Bhutan has the same number but has three times less the area of habitat.

The estimated number of snow leopards in the wild worldwide is between 3,500 and 7000, according to the International Snow Leopard Trust (ISLT).

CRACKING DOWN ON FOREIGNERS

Snow leopards in Afghanistan mainly inhabit the extreme northeast of the country in particular the remote sliver of land called the Wakhan Corridor which separates Tajikistan from Pakistan and extends all the way to China.

The mountainous Wakhan is sparsely populated by humans but is a vital link for the snow leopard.

"The Wakhan is a critical area because ... you're going to get snow leopards going between Tajikistan, Pakistan and China through the Wakhan valley, so it's a key, key area. Its importance far outweighs its physical size," Smallwood said.

When the U.S. embassy's Miller first moved to Afghanistan he discovered a widespread practice of selling endangered animal parts to foreigners.

"There were threatened and endangered species being marketed to international personnel, not only military but aid mission folks and anybody visiting the bazaar," said Miller.

In a bid to stop poaching of snow leopards, the U.S. embassy and the WCS targeted the buyers.

"We decided that one of the quickest ways of trying to address this issue was to go after the demand. The only individuals that are actually able to purchase these things were internationals," Miller told Reuters.

Snow leopard pelts can sell for up to $1500, well beyond the means of most Afghans.

Since August last year, Miller and the WCS have been educating military and civilian staff, in particular those in charge of mail services, on how to recognize endangered and threatened animal furs as well as conducting "raids" on U.S. military bases.

The raids have yielded products from endangered species including snow leopards, said Miller, but he stressed the U.S. military was very "cooperative" in trying to combat the trade.

Within two weeks of their first training session on a U.S. base just outside Kabul, the military had managed to "virtually eliminate" any trade of these products on the base, he said.

Local traders who offer their wares on military bases are issued with a warning if they are caught selling the furs and are barred from returning if caught again.

Because of the structured nature of the military, said Smallwood, it is easier to get the message delivered.

"The harder part is trying to deliver the message to the rest of the international community, which we're working on," he said.

But the threats to the snow leopard still remain.

"With numbers this low I wouldn't want to say ...if we just fix this problem the rest is fine. All of these problems need to be dealt with. Losing 10 animals could be as much as 10 percent of the population," Smallwood said.

(Editing by Megan Goldin)

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The 'value' of protecting whales

BBC News 26 Jun 08;

As opponents of whaling agree to seek an arrangement with countries who still hunt, Richard Black at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Chile reflects on our relationship with whales and with nature in general.

A couple of years ago, reports of an imaginary conversation between President George Bush and a top adviser were doing the rounds on e-mail between people who, like me, love a bit of satire in their daily life.

In it, the president asks, "Who's the president of China?"

The adviser replies, "Yes, Hu's the president of China", which Hu Jintao indeed is.

The president comes back with, "That's what I'm asking you, who's the president of China?"

And the conversation goes round and round like this until the adviser suggests sending for Kofi, as in Kofi Annan, then the UN secretary general.

"Yes, let's have some coffee," the president replies.

The 'right' whale

As I was preparing for the whaling commission meeting, I found something similar on the website of a pro-whaling campaign group - yes, such organisations do exist - which imagined Mr Bush and Condoleezza Rice discussing the right whale.

These huge beasts originally got their name because they swam slowly and floated after being killed, making them the right whales to hunt.

Right whales have not been hunted for years now, but the North Atlantic species is probably heading for extinction because ships - notably US ones - keep colliding with them.

So the campaign group, the High North Alliance from northern Norway, imagines Ms Rice taking the right whale's plight to her boss:

"How can we save these critters?" asks the president.

Ms Rice replies: "Well, sir, we'll have to shut down lots of US shipping, dramatically reduce speed limits, restrict vessels to areas that are really inconvenient and spend millions of dollars in research to see how we can build up the population of these whales."

At which Mr Bush concludes: "The right whale? Sounds like the wrong whale to me, Condi. Go criticise those Japanese some more."

The 'forgotten' whale

To the High North Alliance, the US is guilty of hypocrisy. It wants to save some whales at the right price. But, once the price becomes too high, once shipping or climate change enter as threats, the right whale quickly becomes the wrong whale.

A similar charge is laid by some at Australia, which in recent years has gone humpback-whale-crazy.

As whale-watching has grown, this charmingly ugly acrobat of the oceans has apparently become a national totem equal in rank to Kylie Minogue, Shane Warne and ice-cold beer.

Nothing aroused Aussie anger so much as Japan's plan to add humpbacks to their annual Antarctic hunt.

"They're our humpbacks," was the cry.

Politicians raged, newspapers thundered, activists campaigned.

What was lost in the mix was that Japan had also started targeting fin whales, which are more threatened than humpbacks. But, because the fins carried no value in Australia, they were forgotten.

Question of value

I was not the only one to find this disturbing. Some conservation groups felt it too.

What was the campaign for? For whales or for whales' value to humans?

And what form does that value take?

Over the past few years, environment groups have been pushing the argument that whale-watching is much more profitable than whale hunting, and that the two are incompatible.

Now, I understand the logic of trying to make the anti-whaling argument in economic terms but where does that leave species that do not perform for tourists, like the poor fins?

Do whales become just a resource to be preserved if they are of use to us?

The question of how we value nature is going to become much bigger politically over the next few years.

Nature's balance sheet

There is a major research project under way aiming to quantify the costs and benefits of nature in human economic terms.

It is modelled on the Stern Review that finally made economic ministries wake up to the issue of climate change.

The natural world processes our waste, provides our water and gives us the root material for our farming.

If governments can see how much this is worth, perhaps they will put money into protecting these resources.

But here is a thought. What happens to a hypothetical piece of marshland that supports rare birds but also disease-carrying insects?

If we conclude that the insects' costs to society are higher than the birds' benefits, does it become legitimate to drain the marsh and send the birds to extinction?

I do not have answers to any of this. Certainly, across the world, nature is crumbling under human hands and, if expressing that in dollars and euros and pounds and yen can halt the slide, then by all means give it a try.

But, as I look out from my window at the snow-capped hills surrounding Santiago, I cannot help feeling that we risk losing what nature is if we couch its value in human terms.

Whales are about more than profits from eco-tourism or the costs of slowing down ships.

They are part of nature's balance sheet, not ours.

Valuing nature in dollar terms might result in the right whale being saved. It's unlikely to do anything for the wrong whale.

Counting whales: A fluky business
Richard Black, BBC News 26 Jun 08;

In an era when we can track the lineage of humanity using DNA and monitor deforestation from space, you might think scientists would have come up with a more sophisticated way of counting whales than standing on the bridge of a ship with a pair of binoculars.

If so, you would be wrong - mostly.

Many decades after they were first used, sighting surveys are still the standard way of estimimating how many whales there are in the oceans.

"There are many variables that can affect your ability to see whales - that can include obvious things like weather, ice conditions, depending on where you are," says Greg Donovan, the genial Irishman who heads up the scientific programme of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the global body charged with regulating whale hunting and conserving the giant cetaceans.

"But essentially, you look hard until you see either a blow or a body; and then you record it, plus the distance and the angle to where you see it."

Counting whales should matter, wherever you stand on the rights and wrongs of hunting.

Good estimates would be needed for setting quotas if commercial whaling should ever be revived - as appears to some degree possible, now that the IWC has decided at this year's annual meeting to embark on a process of reform, perhaps leading to compromise.

They are needed to set quotas for the subsistence hunts performed by indigenous peoples in Greenland, Russia, the US and the Caribbean; and they are definitely needed for conservation.

So if this is the case - and the IWC is just one body putting resources into gathering numbers - why is it that estimates for some populations are so imprecise?

Gray areas

Some species can be counted easily.

Gray whales and bowheads follow set migration routes and can be counted from shore; the individual patterns of tails help identify humpbacks, producing better estimates.

But for the species most hunted today, the minke, sightings from ships - sometimes augmented by aerial surveys - are just about the only option.

The IWC puts the Southern Ocean minke population as anywhere between 510,000 and 1,140,000.

But that estimate dates from the 1980s; and despite reams of data gathered since and hints of a decline, the scientists have yet to agree a more up-to-date figure.

For minkes off the west coast of Greenland, the estimates run from 3,600 to 32,000 - a huge margin of error. A factor of five separates the lowest and highest possible estimates of the fin whale population in the same area.

"If you think about what we're trying to do, we're trying to estimate numbers of animals that spend very large parts of their time completely out of sight," says Mr Donovan.

"So I don't think people should be surprised (that we don't have more exact numbers). The important thing if we want to use this for conservation is that we don't over-estimate; in a sense, under-estimating is a better mistake to make."

Starting line

Apart from the weather, which can get in the way of any observations, there are other limitations to how accurate surveys can be.

"One of the potential error sources is that because we're humans, there are of course individual differences between skills or capabilities to observe," says Yoshihiro Fujise, director of Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), whose ships the IWC uses for its annual Antarctic sighting expeditions.

"So to minimise that error we rotate the observers. On the research vessel, we place five to six observers on the upper bridge; and then we place more still higher up in the vessel, and all the observers use binoculars so they can see the whales."

Before a survey starts, a course is plotted which is designed to give representative coverage through the area being studied, often in a zig-zag path.

"The whales are in the survey area, wherever they want to be; and what we do is we cover the area as specified by the course line so we will encounter the whales in a manner which is fairly random," says Dr Fujise.

But there are limitations. The vessels usually used in the Antarctic are not ice-strengthened, so they cannot go close to the ice edge, which may be a productive feeding ground for species like the minke that eat krill.

Vassili Papastavrou, a whale biologist with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), has issues with the basic methodology.

"Some of the whales in your path will be underwater when you go past, so you won't see them," he says.

"Whales that are further away from the boat are less likely to be seen than ones that are close to the boat; and in the case of some species, we think they might react to the boat."

His main concern is that observers have to estimate the distance between the boat and the whale they spot - a vital component of the data, but something, he says, that humans are just not very good at.

"And many years ago, at a scientific committee meeting of the IWC, one of the committee members said he knew of no other scientific endeavour where the main data item was guessed."

To groups such as Ifaw, the population uncertainties represent one more reason why commercial whaling should stay banned.

Managing uncertainty

Over the years, researchers have developed computer models designed to turn these uncertainties and the raw numbers of whales sighted into a reasonably truthful picture of what is known and what is not.

In essence, the models gauge the likely scale of the uncertainties, generating what Donald Rumsfeld might have called "a half-known unknown".

"The most important component, particularly if you're not looking for an abundance estimate for a coffee-table book but for management, is that you capture all the uncertainty there is," says Greg Donovan.

"I can't tell you how many whales there are in a particular area. What I can say is the likelihood is that it lies between this number and that number; and anyone who tells you there are exactly 4,623 whales somewhere is lying."

Taking precautions

Faced with these uncertainties, how safe is it to set catch levels at all?

The IWC believes in principle it is possible, and does set them for subsistence whaling.

On the commercial whaling side, quotas higher than zero would imply lifting the 1986 global moratorium; so even though a mechanism exists for setting them, none have been.

Norway, Iceland and Japan - the three active hunting nations - set their own quotas, to a greater or lesser extent using the IWC's methodology.

"We set all quotas on the basis of the precautionary approach, and all uncertainties are taken into account," says Iceland's whaling commissioner Stefan Asmundsson.

"And if you look at, for example, where you have a stock size which counts tens of thousands and we're taking 40 animals, you don't have to have a PhD in biology to realise that taking 40 animals from such a large population is not going to have any measurable impact."

In fact, he says, Iceland's politicians have tended to set quotas below the limits suggested by its scientists - a very different picture from many commercial fisheries, such as the North Sea, where governments routinely force quotas above and beyond what scientists say is wise.

Sudden surprise

But Iceland also provides an example of the limitations of trying to measure population sizes.

Over a five year period between 2001 and 2006, its minke whale population apparently declined by 25% - a huge fall in such a short space of time.

Probably the minkes just went somewhere else in search of food.

But that is not certain. Proving it would need more data, more sightings, and more expeditions than anyone is prepared to pay for.

As Greg Donovan emphasises, it is an expensive business.

"I'm in the process of working with other colleagues to design a full survey of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

"That's going to require something like 14 boats, three aeroplanes, and well over 150 researchers; but it's important, because fundamental conservation science requires good information on numbers."

Can other methods come in and fill in the gaps in the sighting record?

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For some species, acoustic methods are definitely an option. The sharp clicks generated by sperm whales can be tracked, counted and archived using simple sonar arrays.

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It is much more difficult for species such as humpbacks and blue whales, with their meandering songs.

Satellite imagery does not yet have sufficient resolution, though Ifaw has been trying to interest at least one major IT company in looking at the possibilities.

So the chances are that if you head down to the Southern Ocean in 10 years' time, you will still find old-fashioned human observers out on deck scanning the seas for whales.

You will still find estimates for some whale populations that are full of uncertainties.

And you will still find people arguing about whether that means it is safe from an ecological point of view to hunt whales.

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