Tiny whale shark in the Philippines

Tiny whale shark rescued from hawker
ninemsn.com.au 9 Mar 09;

The smallest whale shark ever found has been rescued from a hawker in the Philippines, shedding new light on the breeding habits of the biggest fish in the sea.

Scientists are celebrating the discovery of the 38cm baby whale shark - the tiniest living example of a species that typically grows to 9-14 metres and weighs 12 to 15 tonnes.

It was found at the weekend with a rope tied around its tail, secured to a stick poked in the sand in a coastal town near Donsol in Sorsogon province.

Environment group WWF said a hawker was allegedly trying to sell the fish in an area that sees the world's largest known annual gathering of whale sharks.

After checking to see the baby whale shark was unhurt, WWF, police and government officials measured and photographed it before releasing it in deeper water.

The find is very significant for scientists, who know little about where the biggest fish in the ocean goes to give birth to its live young.

Until now it was thought the Philippines was simply a stop-off point for the rare species.

But WWF-Philippines chief executive Jose Ma Lorenzo Tan says the tiny size of the whale shark caught on Friday strongly suggests it was born there.

"In spite of all the research that is being done worldwide on whale shark, to this date no one knows where they breed or give birth," Tan says.

"For many years, scientists thought that Donsol was merely a 'gas station' along the global network of marine highways where whale sharks cruised.

"This new discovery is the first ever indication that this coastline may actually be a birthing site."

Tan said the find showed how critical it was to protect marine environments in the Philippines, and other countries that make up the Coral Triangle.

"This is no surprise. After all this has happened in the Coral Triangle - the nursery of the seas - where life begins, and many things remain possible," he said.

WWF promotes conservation programs across Coral Triangle countries, which also include Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor.

It is aiming to establish a network of marine protected areas that will help ensure whale sharks continue to migrate safely to the waters off Ningaloo Reef off Western Australia's northwest coast.

Papua New Guinea is hosting a high-level meeting this week on a plan to protect marine ecosystems and food security in the Coral Triangle. Details will be announced at the Coral Triangle Initiative Summit at the World Ocean Conference on May 15.

The biggest whale shark ever recorded was caught on November 11, 1997, near the island of Baba, not far from Karachi, Pakistan.

While only 12.65 metres in length, it weighed more than 21.5 tonnes and had a girth of seven metres.

But very few have been found between birth size and four metres. One found in a study by WWF/TRAFFIC measured two metres.

History's smallest whale shark rescued in Sorsogon
Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan, WWF-Philippines vice-chairman and CEO
mb.com.ph 9 Mar 09;

Whale sharks are the largest fish on earth. Donsol, a sleepy town in the Philippine province of Sorsogon, hosts what is arguably the largest known annual congregation of whale sharks in the world.

On the morning of March 7, word reached Nitz Pedragosa, Donsol's tourism officer, that a whale shark had been caught on March 6th in nearby San Antonio, a barangay of Pilar town, adjacent to Donsol. It was allegedly tied up, and being sold.

When the report was confirmed through local informants, the team - made up of the Tourism Officer, the Agricultural Officer, the BIO and Elson - quickly drew up an operational plan. As they pulled up to the seashore an hour later, the team was met by Captain Berango, the Pilar police chief. They expected to see a giant animal helplessly stuck, its tall dorsal fin and tail sticking out of the water. But there was nothing there. All they saw was a stick, stuck in sand, with a small rope leading away from it, into the water. Elson walked up to the stick and was amazed to find the smallest whale shark he had ever seen - a mere 15 inches long!

The team freed the shark from the rope that was tied around its tail. After checking to see that the animal was unhurt, documenting the discovery, and measuring the shark, they transferred it into a large, water-filled plastic bag to allow it to swim freely while preparing for its release. Less than three hours after the report first reached Donsol, the response team was back on their banca, shark safely in hand. They took the shark out to deeper water, where it was less likely to get entangled in a fish net, and there, they set it free.

In spite of all the research that is being done worldwide on whale sharks, to this date no one knows where they breed or give birth. The Pilar 'pup' was so small, it was probably born here and could have been what biologists call a neo-nate. Not only is this animal the smallest live whale shark on record ever to be captured and released here in the Philippines (and arguably, anywhere in the world), it is also the first indication that the Philippines, at the apex of the Coral Triangle, is probably one of the places on the planet where these giants of the sea are born.

For many years, scientists thought that Donsol was merely one of many 'gas stations' along the global network of marine highways where whale sharks cruised. This new discovery is the first ever indication that this coastline may actually be a 'birthing site'.

15-inch butanding rescued in Sorsogon
Katherine Adraneda The Philippines Star 10 Mar 09;

MANILA, Philippines - A 15-inch whale shark, locally known as butanding, has been found in Sorsogon.

Conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines (WWF-Philippines) reported yesterday that the rescue of what could be the smallest whale shark in the country, and perhaps in the world, might lead to answers to the mystery of where the sea creatures breed.

According to the WWF, the baby whale shark was caught last Friday in nearby San Antonio, a barangay of Pilar town, adjacent to Donsol in Sorsogon and was allegedly about to be sold.

A Butanding Interaction Officer (BOI) from Donsol town identified as Embet Guadamor alerted the municipal agricultural officer as well as WWF’s project leader in Donsol, Elson Aca, as soon as he received the information Saturday morning.

“A veteran of several years of fieldwork, including a multi-year stint with humpback whales in the Babuyan Islands, Elson (Aca) knew instinctively what to do. Now in stranding response mode, he grabbed his camera, cell phone and a copy of Fisheries Administrative Order 193, protecting whale sharks, and rushed to the Tourism Office,” related Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan, vice-chairman and CEO of WWF-Philippines.

A team consisting of the tourism officer, agricultural officer, BIO, and Aca quickly drew up an operational plan to rescue the small whale shark, which WWF-Philippines christened the “Million Dollar Baby” for its significance and rarity.

They found the whale shark with a rope around its tail tied to a stick stuck into the sand.

The team freed the shark and checked to see that the animal was unhurt. They then documented the discovery and measured the shark, which was 15 inches from tip to tail. They put the whale shark in a large plastic bag with water to allow it to swim freely in preparation for release.

About three hours later, the team boarded a banca and took it out to deep water, where it was less likely to get entangled in a fish net, and set it free.

Tan said many researches have been done worldwide on whale sharks, but to date, no one knows where the whale sharks breed or give birth.

Tan noted that the whale shark rescued in Pilar town last Saturday was so small that “it was probably born (there) and could have been what biologists call a neo-nate.”

“Not only is this animal the smallest live whale shark on record ever to be captured and released here in the Philippines, it is also the first indication that the Philippines, at the apex of the Coral Triangle, is probably one of the places on the planet where these giants of the sea are born,” Tan pointed out.

“For many years, scientists thought that Donsol was merely one of many ‘gas stations’ along the global network of marine highways where whale sharks cruised. This new discovery is the first ever indication that this coastline may actually be a birthing site. This comes as no surprise. After all, this happened in the Coral Triangle – the nursery of the seas – where life begins, and many things remain possible,” he added.

Tiny whale shark gives clues to sea giant’s behaviour
WWF 6 Mar 09;

The shock discovery in the Philippines of a tiny whale shark – possibly the smallest of its kind ever recorded – has given scientists new insight into the breeding behavior of these mysterious fish.

Scientists from WWF-Philippines, working with local police and government officials, freed a 38 cm whale shark over the weekend captured by a fisherman in the Philippines province of Sorsogon, near the coastal town of Donsol, a hub where whale sharks congregate.

The rescued shark was the smallest whale shark ever recorded in the Philippines, and possibly the smallest ever found in the world.

The whale shark is the world’s largest living fish, measuring up to more than 12 meters and weighing up to almost 14 tons, making the weekend encounter by scientists with the miniscule captive whale shark a unique opportunity to learn more about the huge fish species.

Despite all the ongoing research on whale sharks, little is known about where they breed or give birth.

Because of its small size, the whale shark found in the Sorsogon Province was likely born near the area. This indicates that the Philippines – at the apex of the Coral Triangle – likely is one of the places where these giants of the sea are born, according to WWF-Philippines.

For many years, scientists thought that the Sorsogon coastline was merely one of many stops along the global network of marine highways traveled by whale sharks. The recent discovery of the small whale shark could change that long-held belief and instead establish the coastline as a birthing area for the sharks.

After being tipped off that a whale shark had been caught to be sold, researchers from WWF-Philippines alerted local authorities and together they located and freed the shark, which the fisherman had restrained with a rope tied around its tail.

The rescuers then checked to make sure the shark had not been injured, and documented and measured it, before transferring it into a large, water-filled plastic bag to allow it to swim freely prior to its release. They eventually took the shark out to deeper water, where it was less likely to get entangled in a fish net, and set it free.

Although listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a status which strictly regulates the trade of the species based on quotas and permits to prevent their unsustainable use, whale sharks continue to be harvested for a variety of products, including their liver oil and fins.

The waters around Donsol are part of the Sulu-Sulawesi Seas ecoregion, one of WWF's Global 200 ecoregions — a science-based global ranking of the world's most biologically outstanding habitats and the regions on which WWF concentrates its efforts. The also make up part of the Coral Triangle, a major area of marine biodiversity.

Leaders of the six nations that make up the Coral Triangle – Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor Leste –will meet on May 15 in Manado, Indonesia for the World Oceans Conference where they will announce a comprehensive set of actions to protect ecosystems and food security in the region.

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Beached marine mammals: Coral triangle countries to check phenomenon

BusinessWorld 9 Mar 09;

THE ENVIRONMENT department will discuss the recent phenomena of beached marine mammals during the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) meeting in Papua New Guinea this week, the department yesterday said in a press release.

Environment Secretary Jose L. Atienza, Jr., said he would discuss with member countries Timor Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands the abnormal behavior of dolphins and whales.

"We want to understand, as well as pinpoint, the reason why these sea mammals have been acting unusual. We suspect that these are caused by underwater quakes or change in temperature brought about by global warming and climate change," the statement quoted Mr. Atienza as saying.

Schools of dolphins and melon-head whales wanted to get out of the water and beached themselves at the coasts of Bataan province last month and Romblon province the other day.

"We would present this as a major concern why the sea mammals are behaving that way. The moment we are able to determine the major causes [of the peculiar animal behavior], we’ll be able to act in unison," Mr. Atienza said in a separate interview.

The 2.3-million square mile Coral Triangle is home to more than a third of all the world’s coral reefs, hosts about 600 species of reef-building coral, or three-quarters of all known coral species, over 3,000 species of reef fish, and holds nearly the same size of the world’s mangrove species.

Last October, CTI member countries drafted the Regional Action Plan involving high-level leadership and policy reforms, sustainable management of marine resources, and regional and multi-stakeholder partnerships for the protection of the biodiversity-rich area.

The department initially deemed these as effects of dynamite fishing.

However, it also happened in Singapore, which has no recorded activities of dynamite fishing.

Mr. Atienza told Business-World that local communities in coastal areas will be guided on how to react on future cases through literatures and training. — NJCM

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Myanmar elephant camp empty as tourists stay away

Hla Hla Htay Yahoo News 8 Mar 09;

PHO KYAR, Myanmar (AFP) – Curious elephant calf Wine Suu Khaing Thein should be the star attraction of the Pho Kyar eco-reserve down a rocky road in an isolated mountain range in central Myanmar.

The one-year-old is the youngest of about 80 elephants roaming the reserve packed with decades-old teak trees and filled with bird song.

Yet despite the promise of elephant rides and jungle treks, the eco-tourists the camp wants to attract are simply not coming to the military-ruled nation, let alone making the bumpy ride to remote Pho Kyar.

Tourist arrivals to Myanmar have been dropping since a bloody 2007 crackdown on anti-junta protests, while last year's cyclone and pressure from pro-democracy groups overseas to boycott the country also deter holiday-makers.

"We have very few visitors now," said a manager of Asia Green Travels and Tours Company, which arranges tours of Pho Kyar park, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

"It is not because of difficult transportation to this place but because of tourist arrivals declining these past months."

On the day AFP visited, there were no foreign or local visitors at the 20-acre (eight-hectare) Pho Kyar in the Bago mountain range, despite it being the height of the tourist season, which runs from October to April.

Instead, the only attention Wine Suu Khaing Thein gets is a beating with a bamboo stick by one of the elephant handlers, known as mahouts.

"You shouldn't run here and there. Stay beside your mother," the man shouts, herding the calf back to her family as they wait for a check-up from the vet.

The reserve is about 200 miles (320 kilometres) away from the commercial and transport hub Yangon, closer to the military regime's new capital Naypyidaw, a sprawling, hidden-away city that tourists are not allowed to visit.

Myanmar has been ruled by various military juntas since 1962, and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been locked away and kept under house arrest for most of the last two decades.

She once urged foreigners to stay away from Myanmar -- formally known as Burma -- to deny the military rulers revenue from tourism, although as she is mostly kept silent by the junta it is unclear if her views have changed.

Whether to explore Myanmar's ancient temples, crumbling cities and remote jungles remains a heated debate among travellers, with the Rough Guide travel series not even publishing a book on the nation out of protest.

Moral arguments aside, the global economic downturn and recent events in Myanmar have hammered the industry just as it was finding its feet.

Images of Buddhist monks fleeing gunfire on Yangon's streets during protests in September 2007 and of bloated corpses littering paddy fields in the southern delta after Cyclone Nargis last May did not inspire tourists' confidence.

The government's hotel and tourism department has said that 177,018 foreigners arrived at Yangon International Airport in 2008, nearly 25 per cent down from the 231,587 foreigners who came in 2007.

"Tourist arrivals have declined because of Cyclone Nargis. Tourists think that we have a very bad situation and dare not visit for relaxation," said Khin, a manager of a Yangon tour company.

Exactly how many people make it to Pho Kyar elephant camp, which was set up 20 years ago, is unclear as the reserve does not keep records.

More than half the elephants at the camp are working animals still used by the Myanma Timber Enterprise in the logging industry, and spend the dry season heaving felled trees through the jungle.

Come the rainy season -- or if the elephant is too old to work -- the pachyderms return to the reserve to amuse any tourists who do show up.

"Pho Kyar elephant camp is the best one in the country," said a vet from the forestry ministry who did not want to be named. "We always take care of the elephants."

Myanmar has the largest elephant population in Southeast Asia, with an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 animals, said a recent report by wildlife group TRAFFIC that warned the animal is threatened by poaching.

Environmentalists in the country have also said that as Myanmar's junta expands logging in the teak forests, wild elephants are being captured and trained for clear-cutting operations that destroy their own habitats.

Managers at Pho Kyar camp hope that they can help educate visitors on preserving Myanmar's elephants, if only the holiday-makers would turn up.

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Growing Acid Problem Thins Shells of Ocean Creatures

Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com 8 Mar 09

Scientists have started to see some of the expected effects of Earth's increasing carbon dioxide burden: The shells of microscopic animals in the ocean are becoming thinner thanks to the ocean's absorption of some of that excess carbon dioxide, a new study shows.

The shells of those creatures studies are about one-third lighter.

As carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels has accumulated in the atmosphere, some of it has been absorbed by the ocean. As the gas dissolves in the water, it forms a week acid (the same kind that's in bubbly soft drinks), causing the ocean itself to become gradually more acidic.

As ocean water becomes more acidic, it also lowers the amount of calcium carbonate available to aquatic animals that use the mineral to build shells or skeletons, such as corals. These organisms can be important links in the marine food chain.

Scientists have predicted that the increase in ocean acidification could significantly reduce the ability of these creatures to build their casings, potentially devastating them and causing rippling effects through the ecosystem. But "until now the potential impact on ocean chemistry and marine life has been based on projections and models" and laboratory experiments, said leader of the new study, Will Howard of the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre in Australia.

With funding from the Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Howard and his colleagues collected microscopic marine animals - called planktonic foraminifera, or forams - from the South Tasman Rise region of the Southern Ocean. They compared the weights of the shells of these modern forams to those trapped in ocean sediments before the industrial revolution and the build-up of carbon dioxide.

They found that the modern shell weights were 30 to 35 percent lower than those of the older forams.

The researchers also found a link between higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and lowr shell weights in a 50,000-year-long record from a marine sediment core (a long column drilled out from the ocean floor that shows layers of sediments as they were laid down over time).

"Today's results publish the first evidence from nature, rather than a laboratory, that the two are linked," Howard said.

The findings are detailed in the March 8 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

If the results are applicable to the rest of the ocean, they could lead to large ecosystem shifts.

"The potential knock-on effects pose significant implications for the oceanic food chain and the findings are a worrying signal of what we can expect to see elsewhere in the future," Howard said. "The Southern Ocean is giving us a strong indication of an acidification process that will spread throughout the global ocean."

Rising ocean acidity cutting shell weights - study
David Fogarty, Reuters 8 Mar 09;

SINGAPORE, March 9 (Reuters) - Acidifying oceans caused by rising carbon dioxide levels are cutting the shell weights of tiny marine animals in a process that could accelerate global warming, a scientist said on Monday.

William Howard of the University of Tasmania in Australia described the findings as an early-warning signal, adding the research was the first direct field evidence of marine life being affected by rising acidity of the oceans.

Oceans absorb large amounts of CO2 emitted by mankind through the burning of fossil fuels. The Southern Ocean between Australia and Antarctica is the largest of the ocean carbon sinks.

But scientists say the world's oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more planet-warming CO2, disrupting the process of calcification used by sea creatures to build shells as well as coral reefs.

Laboratory experiments had earlier predicted these impacts.

Howard and co-author Andrew Moy, also of the University of Tasmania, studied the shells of tiny amoeba-like animals called foraminifera in the Southern Ocean and compared the shell weights to data from sediment core records dating back 50,000 years.

Their findings, which appear in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience, show shell weights of modern-day foraminifera falling between 30 and 35 percent.

"The big challenge will be how do we scale up this kind of change to understand what it means for the ecosystem. And to be honest, we don't know yet," he told Reuters.

The implications for climate change were clearer, he said.

CARBON TRANSFER

Foraminifera, which live on the ocean's surface, play a major role in trapping CO2 and transporting it to the ocean depths where it can be locked away for decades or more.

Disrupting this process could accelerate climate change.

Foraminifera, he said, comprise a significant proportion of all the carbonate shell material produced in the ocean.

"Their presence and production helps facilitate the sinking of organic matter from the surface layers of the ocean into the deep ocean," said Howard, project leader of the ocean acidification team at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre.

"That translates into the transfer of carbon from the atmosphere into the deep ocean. If these organisms are not calcifying as much it may translate into a reduction in the carbon transfer from the atmosphere."

Oceans are alkaline and Howard said that a century ago, oceans had a pH of 8.2, with a pH of 0 being battery acid and 13 being household bleach.

Oceans were now just under 8.1, he said.

"We've already changed the pH of the ocean by about 0.1. At these levels this represents about a 30 percent increase in the acidity of the oceans," Howard said.

"Anything that makes a shell is going to have a hard time making that shell."

The big challenge was understanding the ocean's response to climate change and what happens to ecosystems. The Southern Ocean was one of the first areas scientists will see this kind of shift, Howard said, in part because it is a major carbon sink.

"There's no question acidification is going to affect every part of the ocean because every part of the ocean is taking up CO2 from man-made emissions," he said. (Editing by Paul Tait)

Proof on the Half Shell: A More Acid Ocean Corrodes Sea Life
Ocean acidification is taking a toll on tiny shell-building animals
David Biello, Scientific American 8 Mar 09;

The shells of tiny ocean animals known as foraminifera—specifically Globigerina bulloides—are shrinking as a result of the slowly acidifying waters of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. The reason behind the rising acidity: Higher carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere, making these shells more proof that climate change is making life tougher for the seas' shell-builders.

Marine scientist Andrew Moy at the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center (ACE) in Hobart, Tasmania, and his Australian colleagues report in Nature Geoscience this week that they made this finding after comparing G. bulloides shells in ocean cores collected along the South Tasman Rise in 1995 with samples from traps collected between 1997 and 2004. The cores provide records that stretch back 50,000 years.

"We knew there were changes in carbonate chemistry of the surface ocean associated with the large-scale glacial-interglacial cycles in CO2 [levels], and that these past changes were of similar magnitude to the anthropogenic changes we are seeing now," says study co-author William Howard, a marine geologist at ACE. "The Southern [Ocean] works well [to study this issue] as it is a region where anthropogenic CO2 uptake, and thus acidification, has progressed more than in other regions. Other variables, such as temperature, have changed, but not as much."

The researchers found that modern G. bulloides could not build shells as large as the ones their ancestors formed as recently as century ago. In fact, modern shells were 35 percent smaller than in the relatively recent past—an average of 17.4 micrograms compared with 26.8 micrograms before industrialization. (One microgram is one millionth of a gram; there are 28.3 grams in an ounce.)

"We don't yet know what impact this will have on the organisms' health or survival," Howard says, but one thing seems clear: the tiny animals won't be storing as much CO2 in their shells in the form of carbonate. "If the shell-making is reduced, the storage of carbon in the ocean might be, as well."

That's bad news for the climate, because the ocean is responsible for absorbing at least one quarter of the CO2 that humans load into the air through fossil fuel burning and other activities—and it is the action of foraminifera and other tiny shell-building animals, along with plants like algae that lock it away safely for millennia.

It will be harder to get such a clear sign in a shell from other ocean regions—as variables like temperature and the amount of minerals available can significantly change the chemistry of a given ocean region. As Howard noted, the Southern Ocean has absorbed lots of manmade CO2 while temperatures and nutrients have not changed as much, making it more ideal for studying ocean acidification than other areas. Scientists examining foraminifera in the Arabian Sea, however, have found similar results, and Howard speculates the situation may be similar in the North Atlantic region, because it also absorbs a significant chunk of manmade CO2.

Howard says that CO2 emissions must be cut or captured and stored permanently in some fashion to halt this gradual acidification of the world's oceans. In the meantime, he adds, it's likely that many of the other shell-building oceanic animals are suffering similar fates as G. bulloides.

World's oceans face an acid test
Roger Harrabin, BBC News 10 Mar 09;

Carbon dioxide emissions from modern society are turning the ocean more acidic and some sea creatures are already suffering, according to research to be discussed at a major global science conference.

Studies in the Southern Ocean by Australian scientists found that the shells of tiny amoeba-like creatures called foraminifera have become thinner since the Industrial Revolution.

The scientists say this shows that increasing CO2 uptake in the ocean has a direct effect on the ability of micro-organisms to make shells.

The paper, being presented at the University of Copenhagen's International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, will add to a rising tide of scientific concern over ocean acidification.

Already, ocean acidity has increased about 32% since pre-industrial times. By 2100, it is projected to have increased by perhaps 130%, which scientists fear could have a potentially catastrophic impact on marine life.

In a study published in Nature Geoscience, William Howard, Andrew Moy and colleagues collected the shells of the organisms as they fell towards the sea floor.

They compared the mass of the shells, about the size of a grain of sand, to the mass of older shells on the sea floor.

The modern shells were 30 to 35% lighter than those that formed prior to the industrial period.

The researchers from the University of Tasmania attribute the change to the acidification of the Southern Ocean, which they say is driven by the uptake of CO2 from factories, cars and power stations.

Mussel test

Other scientists are wary of attributing all the blame for the acidification of the Southern Ocean on humans - there is major upwelling of more acidic water from the deep seas.

Waters from the deep ocean are colder than the surface waters and contain more carbon, which mixes with the seawater to form carbonic acid.

But this will not diminish concern over the problem of ocean acidification in general.

Some of the cutting-edge work in this new field of science is being done at Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) in south-west England.

A blustery wind is cutting in from the English Channel when we go to meet the laboratory's Steve Widdicombe, who is gathering mussels from the estuary of the River Exe.

He will use the molluscs to test how they will respond to increasing acidity as CO2 emissions rise.

The Exe is nearly a mile wide at this point and Steve has to work quickly because the tide is about to turn.

The specimens are taken back to the lab where their blood is sampled with a needle thrust through a gap in their shell.

An enzyme test indicates the strength of their immune system.

Then they are placed in tanks where acidity has been increased by bubbling CO2 through the water.

This is a long-term test, and Dr Widdicombe suspects it will show that mussels will be seriously compromised by the levels of acidification expected by 2100.

A previous experiment at PML, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, showed that starfish would be killed by a pH of 7.7, which may occur by 2100 if CO2 emissions continue to rise.

Ocean pH levels have previously remained roughly constant at 8.2 for at least half a million years.

"We found that relatively small changes in pH (acid/alkali balance) for a long period cause creatures to use up energy trying to respond to the change," Dr Widdicombe says.

"The more we look at long-term chronic effects of acidification, the more worrying it becomes," he adds.

"It's a continuous stress. We can all respond to temporary stress but if we are under continuous stress we get sick."

The big question with acidification is whether calcifying organisms that need more alkaline conditions to create their shells will be able to adapt to more acidic waters.

"We need to look at evolutionary timescales," Dr Widdicombe explains.

"No-one has done the studies on what if anything would drive the ability to adapt.

"I personally think evolutionary timetables are simply too short to respond to the sort of changes we are making. I really fear the worst."

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

• Up to one half of the CO2 released by burning fossil fuels over the past 200 years has been absorbed by world's oceans
  
• This has lowered its pH by 0.1
  
• pH is the measure of acidity and alkalinity
  
• The vast majority of liquids lie between pH 0 (very acidic) and pH 14 (very alkaline); 7 is neutral
  
• Seawater is mildly alkaline with a "natural" pH of about 8.2
  
• The IPCC forecasts that ocean pH will fall by "between 0.14 and 0.35 units over the 21st Century, adding to the present decrease of 0.1 units since pre-industrial times"

With an explanation of acid oceans.

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Endangered tigers remain on the prowl in Jambi, Indonesia

Jon Afrizal, The Jakarta Post 6 Mar 09;

Tigers have struck once again in the district of Jambi on Wednesday, with an unidentified resident being mauled to death by a wild animal.

This incident brings the total number of attacks in the border area between Jambi and South Sumatra to 10, with only one victim surviving their severe injuries.

The Jambi Natural Resources Conservation Center (BKSDA) and the Muarojambi Police said they will soon place traps to catch the tigers as the situation had gone far enough and caused too much death already.

Muarojambi Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Tedjo Dwikora said his office had coordinated with Jambi BKSDA head Didy Wurdjanto to seek a way out to solve the problem and they mutually agreed to re-install traps.

Unlike last time, the traps will be placed outside the forest area because they are not allowed to place them in areas deemed natural habitats for the tigers.

The Muarojambi regency administration said it had made efforts to address this problem, but the Jambi BKSDA had rejected its proposal to hunt the tigers because it was against the law.

"The regent has taken the moves and coordinated with the local police chief, but they obstructed the law," said Muarojambi regency secretary Syaifuddin Anang.

The administration has also urged residents to stay on alert and avoid clearing forest areas because they are the natural habitat of tigers.

Head of the BKSDA team assigned to trace the tigers, Nurazman, said he had not yet figured out the tigers' movement. The team had been unable to venture any further into the forest since they evacuated the two victims previously attacked by the tigers.

"We are also restricted by our number of personnel," he said.

So far there have been no new reports of tigers actually wandering into plantation areas or villagers, but patrol teams are still conducting observations in the area.

"We have not yet received any new reports. We are urging residents to be more alert and for team members to remain on standby there," said Nurazman.

Jambi Governor Zulkifli Nurdin called for illegal logging activities in Petaling village, Sungai Gelam district to cease and vowed to continue working with police to solve the issue.

"I will speak with the Jambi police chief to stop illegal logging in the area and prevent loggers from entering the area," he said.

He said the latest case was different from those which had occurred in Kumpeh, as in Petaling the victims were illegal loggers.

"Until recently we had not encountered problems with tigers, but now they are furious because their habitats are being destroyed," said Zulkifli.

Meanwhile Forestry Minister M.S. Kaban said illegal logging had driven tigers into plantation areas and human settlements in search of food.

"We cannot blame the tigers alone. They would not leave their habitat if food was readily available there. They would also naturally be distraught if their homes were disturbed," said Kaban recently.

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Best of our wild blogs: 8 Mar 09

Butterflies of the Singapore Botanic Gardens
on the Butterflies of Singapore blog

Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher: Fright moult?
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Hummingbird hawkmoth
New paper on Nature in Singapore on the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research website. Download PDF.

Mangroves in the city
on the wild shores of singapore blog

More on going coastal works in Singapore
'small rocks' to be laid near Cyrene Reefs and landslide protection on St. John's Island on the wild shores of singapore blog.

Why was fish 'manhandled' in Botanic Gardens?
on the Lazy Lizard's Tales blog

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Puffer fish almost kills sushi chef in Singapore

He samples fish imported from Japan which was supposed to be toxin-free
Hedy Khoo, The New Paper 8 Mar 09;

HE is a sushi chef who tasted death - well, almost.

Mr Anson Lim, 28, came within a sliver of being the first person here to die of puffer fish poisoning when he tasted the deadly Japanese delicacy as part of his job.

A few slices of puffer fish, known as fugu in Japanese, were enough to cause temporary paralysis to his face.

Doctors at Gleneagles Hospital later told him that they had never come across a case of puffer fish poisoning here before.

The incident, which took place in late 2007, came to light when The New Paper was alerted to it recently.

Mr Lim, who has 10 years of experience, was then the head sushi chef at a restaurant near the city.

'I thought I was going to die for sure,' he said in Mandarin.

He had bought two fugu fish for $150 each from a seafood supplier.

'I was slicing the first fugu fillet and my three assistant cooks were watching me,' he said.

'As a sushi chef, it is my responsibility to taste the fugu first to ensure it is safe before serving it.'

Mr Lim, who was trained by a Japanese master chef in 2003, ate a slice.

'I was watching the clock and it was 7pm then,' he recalled.

He then offered his assistants the opportunity to taste the fugu.

'I was confident it was safe because the imported fugu we bought had been prepared in Japan with the toxins removed before export,' explained Mr Lim.

It is not known how the poisonous fillet got into Singapore, but Mr Lim's 'taste test' probably saved the lives of his customers.

The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority would only say that the import of puffer fish into Singapore is allowed.

As with the import of all other seafood, the importer in Singapore must be licensed by AVA and an import permit is required for each consignment.

Said Mr Lim: 'My three assistants asked me how long it would take before I know if I have been poisoned. I told them half an hour.

'One decided to try it on the spot, but the other two replied that they would only taste it half an hour later if I was still alright,' he recalled with a smile.

Mr Lim himself ate two more slices and some of the fugu skin as he continued to slice and prepare the fish for serving later.

It took only 20 minutes for the poison to kick in.

'I remember reaching out my hand for a glass of water when I suddenly experienced a momentary black-out,' he said.

'It was like a lightning flash, then I felt my mouth and lower jaw go numb. I knew I had been poisoned.'

Mr Lim then turned to his assistants and told them he had been poisoned.

'It was difficult for me to speak as I was losing control of my tongue and stuttering. Nobody believed me. They thought I was joking,' recalled Mr Lim, who said he frequently joked with his colleagues.

They were convinced only when he insisted they call the manager.

'I told the manager that I must get to the hospital within half an hour. I got into his car, then remembered my assistant had eaten the fugu too,' Mr Lim said.

'I was very frightened and anxious at that time, but I tried to think.'

Mr Lim ran back to the restaurant, got his assistant to join them and told the kitchen staff not to serve the fugu.

They then rushed to the emergency department of the Gleneagles Hospital.

'My heart sank when I asked the nurse if there was any injection they could give me to neutralise the poison and she said no,' he recalled.

Mr Lim was told to wait for a doctor.

'It was the longest and most agonising five minutes of my life. I kept thinking of my fiance and worried about what would happen to her if I died,' he said.

'I didn't want to die so young when I have yet to fulfil my ambitions.'

Mr Lim then had his stomach pumped.

'It was the worst experience of my life because I was conscious throughout the procedure,' he recalled.

'It was very painful as they had to put a pipe down my nose and I could see the water travelling up and down the pipe.'

He then saw the slivers of fugu being sucked out from his stomach.

'That was when I felt I had a chance to live,' he said.

Midway through the procedure, Mr Lim vomited blood.

Immediate relief

'It was horrible. The blanket over my lap was soaked with my blood. But as soon as I vomited out the toxins, I felt the sensation coming back to my mouth and jaw,' he remembered.

After a gruelling two hours, Mr Lim was sent to the intensive care unit.

'As I was being wheeled in, I called my mentor chef on my handphone and told him I just had my stomach pumped after eating poisonous fugu,' he said.

But his mentor told him he was not yet out of danger.

'He told me I had to wait another two to three hours before I knew for sure if I was going to live, as the poison can take up to six hours to kill a person.

'I told myself to just get past midnight.'

It was 9pm then.

All through the three hours, Mr Lim had his eyes glued to the clock.

'Even after midnight, I didn't dare sleep. I was afraid I would never wake again.'

But at 2am, Mr Lim's condition remained stable and his anxiety turned to elation.

'I couldn't sleep after that because I was so happy,' said Mr Lim, the memory putting a big grin on his face even now.

His assistant cook did not have his stomach pumped, but was given charcoal water.

Mr Lim was discharged after two days.

'I never regretted tasting the fugu because it was part of my duty as a chef,' he said.

His Japanese master chef trainer had a condition: he would impart his skills only to trainees who dared to eat fugu themselves.

But Mr Lim said he would never eat fugu in Singapore again.

Mr Lim, who now works at a Japanese bar and restaurant called Chiharu at Bukit Timah, said he also tells friends and customers not to eat fugu here.

'The fugu itself is tasteless. Fugu is eaten only for the thrill of gambling with death, so you can boast to your friends that you are brave enough to eat it,' he said.

'But most people don't understand this fish.

'Japan has very strict regulations on fugu. Not only must the chefs be licensed, the restaurants must also be certified.

'I'll still eat fugu, but only in Japan.'

FISHY FACTS

1 The puffer fish contains a poison, tetrodotoxin, which has no antidote. It causes paralysis and eventually death. In Japan, only licensed chefs are allowed to prepare the fish. They remove the toxins before serving. Cooking does not destroy the poison.

2 Each prefectural local government in Japan has its own qualifying system for chefs, who are not allowed to serve fugu in other prefectures, said Mr Hiroshi Abe, First Secretary of the Economic Section of the Embassy of Japan in Singapore. The certification is not valid here.

3 It was reported in 2007 that in Thailand - where the puffer fish has been banned since 2002 - some vendors sold it by dyeing the meat and passing it off as salmon. Between 2004 and 2007, more than 15 people in Thailand died and 115 were hospitalised after eating fugu.

4 Last year, two Malaysians died from eating the fish, known locally as ikan buntal. The sale of the fish is banned in Malaysia, but a black market for it was reported in Pontian, Johor.

5 The National Environment Agency said there have been no other reported cases of poisoning from fugu in Singapore.

More links
Don't eat toxic fish balls on the wild shores of singapore blog.

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Tonnes of elephant tusks smuggled into Vietnam: reports

Yahoo News 7 Mar 09;

HANOI (AFP) – Vietnam customs officials have uncovered up to five tonnes of elephant tusks smuggled in from Tanzania, state media said Saturday.

The tusks were found Friday hidden in around 114 boxes of plastic waste after being transported from Africa through Malaysia to Vietnam's northern Hai Phong port, said the Tuoi Tre newspaper.

The Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Dang Tat The, a national wild animal expert, as saying the tusks were from African elephants.

It was not yet clear if the tusks were for selling in Vietnam or if they were smuggled in for onward movement, the papers said, but officials were chasing the owner of the goods.

Ivory and ivory-based products sell well in Vietnam, with the main buyers including Chinese, Thai and local and overseas Vietnamese, wildlife trade monitoring organisation Traffic said last month.

According to a Traffic survey, ivory prices in Vietnam could be the world's highest, with tusks reportedly selling for up to 1,500 dollars per kilogram and small, cut pieces selling for up to 1,863 dollars per kilogram.

The trend has put elephants in Indochina under increasing threat, it said, adding that wild elephant numbers in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia dropped from an estimated 6,250 in the late 1980s to 1,510 in 2000.

Vietnam outlawed the ivory trade in 1992 but shops can still sell ivory dating from before the ban. This allows some to restock illegally with recently-made carved items, the organisation said.

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Scientists to issue stark warning over dramatic new sea level figures

Rising sea levels pose a far bigger eco threat than previously thought. This week's climate change conference in Copenhagen will sound an alarm over new floodings - enough to swamp Bangladesh, Florida, the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary
Robin McKie, The Observer 8 Mar 09;

Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.

Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while, in Britain, large areas of the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary are likely to disappear by 2100. In addition, cities including London, Hull and Portsmouth will need new flood defences.

"It is now clear that there are going to be massive flooding disasters around the globe," said Dr David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey. "Populations are shifting to the coast, which means that more and more people are going to be threatened by sea-level rises."

The issue is set to dominate the opening sessions of the international climate change conference in Copenhagen this week, when scientists will outline their latest findings on a host of issues concerning global warming. The meeting has been organised to set the agenda for this December's international climate talks (also to be held in Copenhagen), which will draw up a treaty to replace the current Kyoto protocol for limiting carbon dioxide emissions.

And key to these deliberations will be the issue of ice-sheet melting. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - when it presented its most up-to-date report on the likely impact of global warming in 2007 - concluded that sea-level rises of between 20 and 60 centimetres would occur by 2100. These figures were derived from estimates of how much the sea will increase in volume as it heats up, a process called thermal expansion, and from projected increases in run-off water from melting glaciers in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges.

But the report contained an important caveat: that its sea-level rise estimate contained very little input from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. The IPCC forecast therefore tended to underestimate forthcoming changes.

"The IPCC felt the whole dynamics of polar ice-sheet melting were too poorly understood," added Vaughan. "However, we are now getting a much better idea of what is going on in Greenland and Antarctica and can make much more accurate forecasts about ice-sheet melting and its contribution to sea-level rises."

From studying satellite images, scientists have watched the sea ice that hugs the Greenland and Antarctic shores dwindle and disappear. Sea-ice melting on its own does not cause ocean levels to rise, but its disappearance has a major impact on land ice sheets. Without sea ice to prop them up, the land sheets tip into the water and disintegrate at increasing rates, a phenomenon that is now being studied in detail by researchers.

"It is becoming increasingly apparent from our studies of Greenland and Antarctica that changes to sea ice are being transmitted into the hearts of the land-ice sheets in a remarkably short time," added Vaughan. As a result, those land sheets are breaking up faster and far more melt water is being added to the oceans than was previously expected.

These revisions suggest sea-level rises could easily top a metre by 2100 - a figure that is backed by the US Geological Survey, which this year warned that they could reach as much as 1.5 metres.

In addition, in September, a team led by Tad Pfeffer at the University of Colorado at Boulder published calculations using conservative, medium and extreme glaciological assumptions for sea-level rise expected from Greenland, Antarctica and the world's smaller glaciers and ice caps. They concluded that the most plausible scenario, when factoring in thermal expansion due to warming waters, will lead to a total sea level rise of one to two metres by 2100.

Similarly, a commission of 20 international experts, called on by the Dutch government to help plan its coastal defences, recently gave a range of 55cm to 1.1 metres for sea-level rises by 2100. "Equally important, this commission has highlighted the fact that sea-level rise will not stop in the year 2100," said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "By 2200, they estimate a rise of 1.5 to 3.5m unless we stop the warming. This would spell the end of many of our coastal cities."

This point was backed by Dr Jason Lowe of the Hadley Centre, the UK's foremost climate change research centre. "It is still not clear exactly how much the sea will rise by the end of this century, but it is certain that rises will continue for hundreds of years beyond that - even if we do manage to stabilise carbon dioxide emissions and halt the rise in atmospheric temperature. The sea will continue to heat up and expand. In addition, the Greenland ice sheets will continue to melt," he said.

This latter effect could, ultimately, have a particularly destructive impact. Scientists have calculated that if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases eventually produce a global temperature increase of around 4C, there is a risk that Greenland's ice covering could melt completely. This could take several hundred years or it might require a couple of thousand. The end result is not in doubt, however. It would add around seven metres to the planet's sea levels. The consequence would be utter devastation.

Such a scenario is distant, but real, scientists insist. However, at present, the most important issue, they argue, is that of short-term sea-level rises: probably around one metre by 2100. When that occurs, the Maldives will be submerged, along with islands like the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal, and Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific. The US - which has roughly 12,400 miles of coastline and more than 19,900 square miles of coastal wetlands - would face a bill of around $156bn to protect this land. Cities such as London would require massive investments to provide defences against the rising waters. Others, such as Alexandria, in Egypt, would simply be inundated.

Rising oceans will also contaminate both surface and underground fresh water supplies, worsening the world's existing fresh-water shortage. Underground water sources in Thailand, Israel, China and Vietnam are already experiencing salt-water contamination.

Coastal farmland will be wiped out, triggering massive displacements of men, women and children. It is estimated that a one-metre sea-level rise could flood 17% of Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, reducing its rice-farming land by 50% and leaving tens of millions without homes.

Such destruction would not be caused merely by rising sea levels, however. Other effects of global warming will also worsen the mayhem that lies ahead: in particular, the increase in major storms. "When we talk about the dangers of future sea-level rises, we are not talking about a problem akin to pouring water into a bath," added Dr Colin Brown, director of engineering at the Institution of Mechanical Engineering. "Climate-change research shows there will be significant increases in storms as global temperatures rise. These will produce more intense gales and hurricanes and these, in turn, will produce massive storm surges as they pass over the sea."

The result will be the appearance of the super-surge, a climatic double whammy that will savage low-lying regions that include Britain's south-eastern coastline, in particular East Anglia and the Thames Estuary, along with cities such as London, Portsmouth and Hull, which are rated as being particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise.

In addition to these hotspots, the country will also face massive disruption to its transport and energy systems unless it acts swiftly, according to a report - Climate Change, Adapting to the Inevitable - published last month by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Many rail lines run along river valleys that will be flooded with increased regularity while bridges carrying trains and lorries often cross shipping lanes and may have to be redesigned to accommodate rising water levels.

"Power supplies will also be affected," added Brown. "The Sizewell B nuclear plant has been built on the Suffolk coast, a site that has been earmarked for the construction of several more nuclear plants. However, Sizewell will certainly be affected by rising sea levels. Engineers say they can build concrete walls that will keep out the water throughout the working lives of these new plants. But that is not enough. Nuclear plants may operate for 50 years, but it could take hundreds of years to decommission them. By that time, who knows what sea-level rises and what kinds of inundations the country will be experiencing?"

Most scientists believe Britain remains relatively well placed to combat sea-level rises. "The government has been fairly far-sighted over this issue, with projects such as Thames Estuary 2100 being set up to prepare flooding defence projects," said Professor Robert Nicholls, of Southampton University.

This does not stop the controversy, however. In its report, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers warned that many areas would have to be abandoned because they are simply too expensive to protect. In particular, large areas of the Norfolk coastline would be left to be inundated, a massive loss of human habitat.

But this approach represents an abrogation of national duty to many people - particularly those whose homes will be destroyed, individuals such as Martin George, former chairman of the Broads Society. "A country that has the technological know-how to extract oil and coal from below the North Sea should surely be capable of finding a way to protect a concrete sea wall against the effects of climate change. We should do our damnedest to safeguard our heritage," he said.

• Additional research by Lisa Kjellsson
Why the sea is rising

• Thermal expansion. All bodies expand when they are heated, and that is true for the water that covers 70 per cent of the planet. The oceans are expanding - upwards. It is estimated this increase in volume will raise levels by 10-40 cms.

• Melting glaciers and mountain ice caps - outside Greenland and Antarctica - are also adding water to rivers that flow to the oceans. However, these remain a modest source of sea-level rise. Possibly around 10 cms.

• The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets represent vast reserves of frozen fresh water. The former would add 7m to sea levels if melted completely; the latter would bring a further 60m rise to the levels of the world's oceans.

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The toxic sea: ocean acidification

Each one of us dumps a tonne of carbon dioxide into the oceans every year, turning them into acidified soups — and threatening to destroy most of what lives in them
Richard Girling, The Times Online 8 Mar 09;

They are calling it “the other CO2 problem”. Its victim is not the polar bear spectacularly marooned on a melting ice floe, or an eagle driven out of its range, nor even a French pensioner dying of heatstroke. What we have to mourn are tiny marine organisms dissolving in acidified water.

In fact we need to do rather more than just mourn them. We need to dive in and save them. Suffering plankton may not have quite the same cachet as a 700-kilo seal-eating mammal, but their message is no less apocalyptic. What they tell us is that the chemistry of the oceans is changing, and that, unless we act decisively, the limitless abundance of the sea within a very few decades will degrade into a useless tidal desert.

In every way — economically, environmentally, socially — the effects of ocean acidification are as dangerous as climate change, and even harder to resist. It has been a slow dawning. Until recently, marine scientists have had little luck in engaging the public or political mind. The species most directly at risk — plankton, corals, sea snails, barnacles and other stuff that most people have never heard of — seemed as remote from our lives as cosmic dust. But now at last “the other CO2 problem” may have found a mascot of its own — the tiny but colourful clownfish, winsome star of the Disney classic Finding Nemo. In the film, Nemo gets lost. Now it turns out that real clownfish might lose their way too.

In early February, the American academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) carried a paper titled “Ocean acidification impairs olfactory discrimination and homing ability of a marine fish”. The sombre language concealed a stark message. What the researchers had found was that clownfish larvae in acidified water were unable to detect the odours from adult fish that led them to their breeding sites. The implications were obvious. If the fish don’t breed, the species will not survive, and what is true for one species must be true for others. In time, the world’s fishing fleets will be less a food resource than a disposal problem.

What’s happening is this: the oceans absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. As most climate scientists and governments now agree, human activity — most importantly, burning fossil fuels — has intensified CO2 in the atmosphere, causing long-term climate change. The good thing is that the seas have absorbed a lot of the gas and so have slowed the pace of atmospheric warming. The bad thing is that CO2 reacts with sea water to make carbonic acid.

Since 1800, humans have generated 240 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, half of which has been absorbed by the sea. On average, each person on Earth contributes a tonne of carbon to the oceans every year. The result is a rapid rise in acidity — or a reduction in pH, as the scientists prefer to express it — which, as it intensifies, will mean that marine animals will be unable to grow shells, and that many sea plants will not survive. With these crucial links removed, and the ecological balance fatally disrupted, death could flow all the way up the food chain, through tuna and cod to marine mammals and Homo sapiens. As more than half the world’s population depends on food from the sea for its survival, this is no exaggeration.

This is why 155 marine scientists from 26 countries recently signed the Monaco Declaration, identifying the twin threats of global warming and ocean acidification as “the challenge of the century”. It is, nevertheless, a challenge they have taken up only recently.

“The whole scientific community was caught with its pants down,” says Jason Hall-Spencer, research lecturer at Plymouth University, who was one of the signatories. The term “ocean acidification” was coined only in 2003 — by odd coincidence the same year Finding Nemo was released and 35,000 people died in the European summer heat wave — though, unlike global warming, it has not had to face the opposition of truth-deniers. Verging on panic in 2005, the Royal Society published a 68-page report in which it calculated that acidification had increased by 30% in 200 years. If we went on as we were, it said, this would rise to 300% by 2100, making the seas more corrosive than they had been at any time for hundreds of millennia. In every practicable sense, the damage was irreversible. “It will take tens of thousands of years for ocean chemistry to return to a condition similar to that occurring at pre-industrial times,” the Royal Society said.

It is a truism that might have been minted for the Darwin bicentenary. A species once lost is gone for ever. You can’t rewind evolution, or reinvent fish. We are not talking about dispossessing our children, or even our grandchildren’s grandchildren. We are talking so many generations into the fog of geological time that we might not even be talking about the same species. We are certainly not talking about low-lying countries protected by coral reefs, such as the Maldives. In future they will not be studying the marine environment: they will be part of it.

Doomy stuff like this, of course, is nothing new. The “warmists”, as the deniers like to call them, have been telling us for years that our rate of consumption is unsustainable and that future generations will pay a terrible price for our carelessness. If you don’t want to believe in climate change, you can argue that forecasts created by computer modelling are “theoretical”. Or you can confuse the long-term graph of “climate” with the short-term spikes of “weather”. Look, there’s a snowflake! Global warming can’t be happening!

But acidification permits no such equivocation. It is demonstrable, visible and measurable, and there is nothing theoretical about how it is caused or what it does. All the same, until now there has been one significant shortcoming.

As with the clownfish, it has been easy enough under laboratory conditions to see how individual species respond to acidity. What is much less easy is to observe the effects on entire ecosystems.

This problem has now been cracked by a team from Plymouth led by Jason Hall-Spencer, who scanned the world for a location where the sea conditions expected in future were already happening naturally. They found it in the Bay of Naples, just off the holiday island of Ischia.

The sea bed here is chalk. Deep geological activity converts some of this into carbon dioxide and forces it up through volcanic vents into the water. In and around the neighbourhood of these vents, the result is a perfect “gradient” of pH levels from the normal 8.1 all the way down to 7.4 (remember: the lower the pH, the higher the acidity). To non-scientists, the giving or taking of a few decimal points can look undramatic. To experts they mark the difference between life and death. The 30% increase in acidity during the industrial age is reflected by a drop in pH of just 0.1. On current trends, it will plummet by another 0.4 points to hit an unprecedented low of 7.7 by 2100. By 2300 it could be down to 7.3.

Few species living in the sea have experienced conditions like these at any time throughout their entire life on Earth. With pH as low as this, it is at least questionable that land creatures emerging from the primal swamp could have evolved into the bony specimens that roam the Earth today. And it is certain that the pace of environmental change is far too fast for evolution to keep in step. As a recipe for life on Earth, it is about as efficacious as nuclear war. Experiments have shown that the tipping point at which shell growth ceases comes at a pH of 7.8. This is the level which, on current trends, will be the global norm before the end of the century, and it is the level at which the Plymouth team has focused its attention.

Given all the dire warnings, the first visual impression at Ischia is something of a surprise. There are plenty of fish. Is it, then, a false alarm? Could the world’s scientists have got their statistical knickers in a twist and jumped to a false conclusion? Will life just go on as normal? Alas, no. The acidified water is a small zone in a wider sea. There is no barrier. The fish are just visitors. They come to feed on the soft-bodied algae that survive in the altered conditions, then they swim away again. What they don’t do is breed — which is exactly what the Nemo research predicts.

“Fish breed naturally at a pH of 8.1,” says Hall-Spencer. He believes the sensory loss observed in clownfish is only one part of the story. “Losing the sense of smell,” he says, “is not likely to be the only effect. It’s much more likely to be one impairment among many. Eggs in these conditions cannot develop normally.”

Shelled creatures in the Ischian waters are visibly suffering. Sea urchins thin out and disappear as the acidity increases; so do corals, limpets and barnacles. Sea snails straying into the zone have thin, weak shells, and produce no young. There is another important absentee, too — the coralline algae (seaweed with a chalk skeleton) that glues coral reefs together. Without it, reefs become weakened and fall apart.

In just a few decades, if the output of carbon dioxide does not abate, this will be the condition of all the world’s oceans. Many if not all commercially fished species, including shellfish, will suffer. So, too, will coral reefs, whose disintegration will leave low-lying coasts in the tropics unprotected from the rising seas and fiercer storms that climate change will unleash. By some calculations reefs will have vanished by 2065, and nobody expects them to survive into the 22nd century.

Nature, however, will continue to abhor a vacuum. Species that disappear will be replaced by alien invaders. Shelled and vertebrate creatures will be replaced by the soft and the blobby. Celebrity chefs, if they survive as a species, will be teaching us how to stuff jellyfish. The plant species that thrive around the volcanic vents in the Bay of Naples are alien to the Mediterranean, laying the foundations of an entirely different ecosystem.

Already, says Hall-Spencer, similar changes are occurring along the southern coasts of England. Oyster farmers and ships discharging ballast water have accidentally introduced Japweed, Sargassum muticum, a fast-growing brown seaweed that clogs beaches and harbours. Originally a native of southeast Asia and Japan, it is unfazed by low pH and almost impossible to eradicate. As in the classic case of the grey squirrel ousting the red, the invasive alien expels and replaces the natives.

“It perturbs the ecosystem and drives out things that should live there,” says Hall-Spencer. Plants are the base of the food chain, so everything in the water depends on them directly or indirectly. With the professional caution of the scientist, he declines to speculate on which species will be the first to disappear, but acknowledges that many creatures have little hope of survival.

To reprise the old Star Trek mantra, there will be life here, but not life as we know it.

Various ideas have been put forward to mitigate the damage and downgrade the outcome from fatal catastrophe to expensive nuisance. It will take some doing. One idea is “ocean fertilisation”, which involves adding iron to the water to stimulate a plankton bloom. The plankton then absorb atmospheric CO2 before sinking into deep water and locking the poison away.

Another scheme from the top shelf of academic fantasy is “ocean sequestration”, which involves sinking waste carbon into the deep ocean where, at depths in excess of 3.5 kilometres, the gas will solidify into crystals. A possibly more viable option is “geological sequestration”, though it is one that will whiten environmentalists’ hair. It involves “capturing” gas from industrial plants and injecting it into exhausted aquifers or worked-out oilfields, where it can be stored in the rock. Capacity is not a problem — the North Sea alone could hold as much as 800 gigatonnes, which is approximately 1,600 times the UK’s entire annual output of industrial carbon dioxide. Neither is the idea merely theoretical. The Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil pumps a million tonnes a year into a saline aquifer.

But the risks quite literally are incalculable. What happens if there is a leak? Drilling and extraction in the oilfields may well have caused subsidence and cracking in the rock. The idea makes no sense unless storage is safe, secure and “permanent” — which, in the case of CO2, means somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years, or about the same as some nuclear waste.

There is, of course, a fourth option, the simplest and yet hardest of the lot — changing the way we live. Carbon-reduction targets need to be more than just green baubles on the faraway policy tree. Greed has driven us to a level of over-consumption that threatens our health, melts the economy and progressively poisons the planet. Unless we can get a grip on ourselves, constrain our appetites and halt the mismatch between consumption and resources, the future is an empty ship sailing upon an empty sea.

Richard Girling’s new book, Greed: Why We Can’t Help Ourselves (Doubleday, £12.99), is published on March 26. It is available at the BooksFirst price of £11.69, including p&p. Tel: 0870 165 8585

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Revenge of the rainforest

The Amazon has long been the lungs of the world. But now comes dramatic evidence that we cannot rely on it in the fight against climate change
Steve Connor, The Independent 6 Mar 09;

It covers an area 25 times bigger than Britain, is home to a bewildering concentration of flora and fauna and is often described as the "lungs of the world" for its ability to absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide through its immense photosynthetic network of trees and leaves.

The Amazon rainforest is one of the biggest and most important living stores of carbon on the planet through its ability to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into solid carbon, kept locked in the trunks of rainforest trees for centuries.

But this massive natural "sink" for carbon cannot be relied on to continue absorbing carbon dioxide in perpetuity, a study shows. Researchers have found that, for a period in 2005, the Amazon rainforest actually slipped into reverse gear and started to emit more carbon than it absorbed.

Four years ago, a sudden and intense drought in the Amazonian dry season created the sort of conditions that give climate scientists nightmares. Instead of being a net absorber of about two billion tons of carbon dioxide, the forest became a net producer of the greenhouse gas, to the tune of about three billion tons.

The additional quantity of carbon dioxide left in the atmosphere after the drought – some five billion tons – exceeded the annual man-made emissions of Europe and Japan combined. What happened in the dry season of 2005 was a stark reminder of how quickly the factors affecting global warming can change.

"For years, the Amazon forest has been helping to slow down climate change," said Professor Oliver Phillips, from the University of Leeds and the lead author of the study in the journal Science. "But relying on this subsidy from nature is extremely dangerous. The emission of five billion tons of carbon dioxide was huge. It meant that a major part of the biosphere had switched from one function to another, from a carbon sink to a carbon source.

"It shows what could happen if droughts become more frequent, and climate models suggest that Amazonia will get warmer and so put more water stress on vegetation. If the Earth's carbon sinks slow or go into reverse, as our results show is possible, carbon dioxide levels will rise even faster. Deeper cuts in emissions will be required to stabilise our climate."

The study, which involved nearly 70 scientists from 13 countries, examined more than 100,000 trees in 100 forest plots. The scientists had been monitoring changes to the girth of each tree over a period of between 20 and 30 years, so were able to calculate with some precision the effect of the 2005 drought on tree growth.

The drought itself was unusual. Normally, droughts in the Amazon are the result of changes caused by El Niño, the warm Pacific Ocean current, but the one in 2005 was a result of higher-than-average temperatures at the sea surface of the tropical North Atlantic.

"The pattern of the drought was shorter but sharper and more intense than usual," Professor Phillips said. "It affected the southern two-thirds of Amazonia and especially the south-west through reduced rainfall and higher-than-average temperatures. It was the kind of drought we expect to see in a globally warming world. On the ground, it was hard to see because you had to detect by measuring lots of trees over a larger area of land. There was not a massive die-off of trees."

The researchers found that the drought sharply reversed the decades-long growth of the trees. The normal die-off rate of the trees, about 1 per cent per year, doubled to 2 per cent, and the continued expansion of tree girths effectively stopped.

"Visually, most of the forest appeared little affected, but our records prove tree death rates accelerated," Professor Phillips went on. "Because the region is so vast, even small ecological effects can scale-up to a large impact on the planet's carbon cycle."

Humans worldwide are estimated emit about 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year but just less than half of this, about 15 billion tons, remains in the atmosphere. The rest is absorbed by natural carbon sinks in the ocean and on land.

Scientists have calculated that the world's tropical forests collectively absorb about 4.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year, with the Amazon being the single biggest rainforest sink. Amazonia alone is estimated to store about 100 billion tons of carbon locked up in its trees.

This is why the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen later this year will focus heavily on what can be done to save rainforests to ameliorate the effects of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.

Lee White, the chief climate change scientist for the government of Gabon, said: "To get an idea of the value of the sink, the removal of nearly five billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by intact tropical forests, based on realistic prices for a ton of carbon, should be valued at about £13bn a year. This is a compelling argument for conserving tropical forests." Dr White was a co-author of another study last month on the role played by African tropical forests in processing carbon dioxide.

Professor Phillips added. "It's surprising to see how sensitive the system appears to be. This is the first time anyone has tried to measure the impact of a big tropical drought on the ground. Now we've quantified it and, yes, there's a specificity there and it wouldn't take a huge change to shut down this thing and switch it to an overall source of carbon dioxide."

The Amazon: Facts and figures

* The Amazon rainforest covers an area of some 600 million hectares (2.3 million sq miles), an area of land 25 times bigger than Britain. It is the biggest rainforest on Earth, responsible for about 40 per cent of the world's rainforest absorption of carbon dioxide.

* Satellite surveys indicate that about 5,800 sq miles of the Amazon rainforest is burnt or cleared each year to make way for cattle ranching, farming or other kinds of development.

* More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world's fresh water moves through the Amazon basin.

* Scientists estimate that there are at least 100 billion tons of carbon stored in the trees of the Amazon rainforest and each year the Amazon absorbs about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

* During the extreme drought of 2005, the Amazon became a net producer of carbon dioxide, releasing an estimated 3 billion tons of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere – a net increase of 5 billion tons.

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Northern Australia Sea Rangers part of world turtle project

Torres News 8 Mar 09;

Indigenous Sea Rangers from northern Australia, including a contingent from the Torres Strait Islands, impressed international delegates at the 29th Sea Turtle Symposium held in Brisbane.

The Dugong and Marine Turtle Project is the first of its kind, striving to manage marine turtles on a regional scale that matches the animal’s large migratory range.

The project aims to conserve the species across northern Australia, one of the world’s few remaining strongholds for the animals; and is coordinated by the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance - a partnership comprising the Kimberley Land Council, Northern Land Council, Carpentaria Land Council Aboriginal Corporation, Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation and the Torres Strait Regional Authority.

NAILSMA chief executive officer Joe Morrison said: "Indigenous land and sea managers across northern Australia are world-leaders in many regards; combining traditional knowledge with modern science to manage marine turtles in Australia."

Kaurareg traditional owner Pearson Wigness said the community-based management plans developed by Torres Strait Islanders had raised a lot of interest at the symposium.

"They were impressed by the way we have integrated traditional law with the needs of other stakeholders like the government and the scientific community, to manage turtle and dugong in our region. And they want to learn from our example."

TSRA Alternate Debuty Chair Kenny Bedford, who also attended the symposium, described the event as a valuable opportunity to share experiences and achievements with other indigenous people, conservationists and scientists from around Australia and the world.

"Through this process our people and community efforts in this management area are being recognised and praised internationally," he said.

"The importance of our region in the global management of sea turtles is also being acknowledged."

Attending the symposium were Mr Bedford, Charles David (Iama Project Officer) and Damian Miley (Land and Sea Management Unit, TSRA).

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