Shrimp Industry Bites Hand That Feeds It

Danilo Valladares IPS News 11 Aug 11;

GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 11, 2011 (IPS) - Mangrove forests in silt-laden intertidal coastal ecosystems provide a natural habitat for countless marine species, as well as livelihoods for thousands of families in Latin America and the Caribbean. But mangrove swamps are shrinking year by year, besieged by aquaculture, especially shrimp farming, environmentalists warn.

Aquaculture in "Latin America and the Caribbean showed the highest average annual growth in the period 1970-2008 (21.1 percent), followed by the Near East (14.1 percent) growth and Africa (12.6 percent)," says a report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

"Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador and Chile, the leading aquaculture producers, have spearheaded this development, producing growing quantities of salmon, trout, tilapia, shrimp and molluscs," says the study, titled The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2010.

But far from generating sustainable development, shrimp farming is destroying biologically diverse mangrove forests and estuaries in Latin America and round the world, without regard for the importance of these ecosystems for the environment and livelihoods of thousands of families who depend on fishing.

María Dolores Vera, of Ecuador's Coordinating Body for the Defence of Mangrove Ecosystems (C-CONDEM), a non-governmental organisation, told IPS that shrimp farming was introduced in her country "in the 1970s, and had already destroyed 70 percent of the country's mangrove ecosystems by 2008."

A major concern among environmentalists in Ecuador is that in 2008 the government of leftwing President Rafael Correa legalised shrimp farming in areas where it had previously been banned, under decree 1391.

"The decree permits formerly illegal activities, like creating and enlarging shrimp pools," the activist said. "Not only have the mangroves been deforested by logging, but also rivers and estuaries are being polluted with chemical effluents."

Today, Ecuador has 108,000 hectares of mangroves, down from 360,000 hectares in 1994, Vera said. The mangrove forests are found in the coastal provinces of Esmeraldas, Manabí, Santa Elena, Guayas and El Oro.

Mangroves, which represent only one percent of the world's forested areas, are a highly productive ecosystem. They harbour great numbers of species of birds, molluscs and crustaceans that are food and employment sources for thousands of families.

The tall, dense-growing shrubs with their tangled roots also purify the water and shield the coasts against extreme climate phenomena.

In spite of the many environmental services they provide, mangroves are being damaged by human activities so quickly that close to 35,600 square kilometres were lost worldwide between 1980 and 2005, mainly by direct conversion of the mangroves to aquaculture, agriculture and urban land use, according to the FAO.

Biologists believe that mangroves originally covered over 200,000 square kilometres of the earth's surface, although precise figures are lacking.

The Latin American countries with the greatest areas of mangroves are Brazil, with nine percent of the planetary total, and Mexico, with five percent. Indonesia has 21 percent of the world's mangroves, Australia has seven percent and Nigeria five percent, according to the New World Mangrove Atlas published by the United Nations and partner organisations.

Carlos Alberto Santos, of Brazil's Artisanal Fisherfolk Movement, told IPS that destruction of mangroves in South America's giant is occurring mainly in the Atlantic coast states of Bahia, Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte.

"The big multinational companies want to chop down the mangroves to make room for shrimp pools, but these areas are vital for fishermen, who are dependent on the mangroves for their livelihood," he said.

The statistics confirm his view. The 2010 FAO report on world fisheries and aquaculture says the number of people employed by the sector worldwide rose from 16.7 million in 1980 to 44.9 million in 2008.

In addition to the shrimp industry, Santos said, large scale transnational infrastructure projects, like the construction of ports, shipyards and hotels for tourists, have also devastated great swathes of mangrove forest along the Brazilian coastline.

To prevent total destruction of the mangroves, artisanal fisherfolk are pushing for a bill to modify Brazil's forest code and ban logging in mangrove areas. But the proposal is encountering stiff resistance from the industrial fisheries sector.

But shrimp farming is not always the primary threat to species-rich mangrove ecosystems in every country in Latin America.

In Venezuela, for instance, extractive industries like oil and mining are the worst enemies, according to Henderson Colina of the Ecological Association for the Environmental Preservation of Falcón State, in the northwest of the country.

"Government policies have made our economy almost entirely dependent on extraction of fossil fuels, granting big concessions for oil and gas exploration and putting the mangroves at even greater risk," the activist complained to IPS.

"In Falcón alone, natural gas exploration is being undertaken in 33 blocks, by Italian, Chinese and Cuban corporations, among others," he said.

Economic diversification and technological innovation have "an essential role to play in mitigating environmental impacts, because if we lose the mangroves, opportunities for more sustainable economic development in our countries, like tourism, will also disappear," Colina said.

For his part, the executive secretary of Redmanglar Internacional (International Mangrove Network), Carlos Salvatierra, told IPS that shrimp farming has "a high environmental impact" on these ecosystems worldwide, prompting a campaign with the motto: "Mangroves Yes! Shrimp Ponds No!"

The last straw, according to Salvatierra, is that "there are moves afoot to legalise shrimp farming activities, despite the fact that they are neither socially nor environmentally sustainable and generate too many social conflicts that have caused fatalities."

For this reason, activists believe it of supreme importance to lobby states that have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands which lists internationally important wetlands, in order to block legalisation of the shrimp industry. "To tolerate and approve the industry would just paint it green," he said.

Beyond the shrimp ponds, Salvatierra said threats against the mangroves are multiplying due to river pollution, privatisation of land, changes in land use and other human activities.

That is why it is vital to raise awareness about the importance of mangroves and undertake environmental remediation, to recover the lost mangrove ecosystems, he said. (END)

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Philippines: Nipa habitat on the decline

Eufemio T. Rasco Jr. Malaya 12 Aug 11;

MANGROVES, where nipas grow abundantly, are on the decline in the Philippines.

As in other Southeast Asian countries, mangroves have been converted into what was believed to be more profitable ventures.

In the 1950s, vast tracts of mangroves were awarded by the government to concessionaires and logged over for firewood and tan barks. Mangrove firewood was the preferred fuel for coastal villages and most bakeries because of its high heating value. Mangrove firewood was exported to Japan as a source of rayon.

Starting in the 1960s, the government encouraged prawn and bangus farming in mangroves. These resulted in the reduction of mangroves from 500,000 hectares in the beginning of the 20th century to only 117,000 hectares in 1995.

It is estimated that half of the mangrove forests, or about 141,000 hectares, was lost to fishpond construction.

In effect, what were once common property of multiple use and benefit to a large number of people was narrowly channeled to the benefit of a select few.

Shrimp and fishponds are now being abandoned voluntarily. But the economic folly of conversion is not the reason why. It is the unsustainability of shrimp and fish farming in former mangroves.

Pond soil has gradually becomes acid sulfate, which indirectly causes toxicity to shrimps.

In the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand, shrimp farming collapsed because of diseases that reduced profitability.

Today, more money can be earned from undeveloped mangrove forests.

As a crop, nipa is unaffected by typhoon or unfavorable weather. It does not need to be replanted. And it continues to produce sap for 50 years or more without replanting.

One fruiting head could have as many as 90 fruits. The fruit is used as food in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, India and Bangladesh – but not in the Philippines where the fruits are simply left to rot or made into handicrafts.

There is a thriving cottage industry based on the nipa leaves used in bahay kubo or thatched houses. Thousands of people, particularly women and children, depend on nipa shingle production as their main source of livelihood.

The leaflets are used for making raincoats, hats, baskets, mats, bags and wrappers for sticky rice delicacies. The midribs are used for coarse brooms and the petioles for fuel.

The nipa shingle industry is for the poorest of the poor. In Vinzons, Camarines Norte, a conservative estimate shows people producing 1.2 million leaflets per hectare per year. Based on P150 per 100 shingles, this is worth P36,000.

One hectare of nipa could provide 240 man-days of employment for weaving (assuming one weaver can make 100 shingles a day); and 50 man-days for leaf gathering (assuming one gatherer can get 25,000 leaflets a day).

The young seeds are edible and the nipa sap is a source of vinegar, sugar and alcohol. The fermented juice called tuba is extensively used as a beverage, the earliest record of which was made by Pigafetta during the 1521 voyage of Magellan.

The World Agroforestry Center estimates the annual sap yield per hectare is 126,000 liters in the Philippines. For alcohol production, one person can tap 250 nipa plants a day and turn in 180 liters of sap, enough for one load using the native distilling apparatus which produces 30 liters of a 70-proof, colorless alcoholic brew.

It is a raw material for sugar as the sucrose content of nipa (up to 17 percent) is higher than that in sugarcane (12 percent). When the sap is collected within 12 hours, only a slight fermentation takes place. Boiled in open pans, the saps turns into a brown mass, like the panocha or solidified sugar made from cane.

Except for crushers which are unnecessary, the same facilities required for making sugar from sugarcane juice are needed for nipa.

After coconut, nipa is the second most popular raw material for vinegar; the are buri and kaong.

When distilled to 100 percent alcohol, roughly 10 liters of ethanol is produced. Which makes nipa an alternative fuel source.

The Biofuels Act mandates an increasing proportion of ethanol in fuel blends – 10 percent by 2011.

And yet, aside from sugarcane, which is the main source, cassava and sweet sorghum are being explored as sources of alcohol. Somehow, nipa – the world’s cheapest source – had been forgotten.

This doesn’t seem to make sense. The alcohol yield of Philippine nipa is about 10,000 liters per hectare per year – and could be doubled with improved management.

Unlike sugar, cassava and sweet sorghum, nipa does not compete with food crops for land and water because it grows where most crops cannot grow. It requires very little maintenance because once established, it will last for at least 50 years – if not forever.

The main constraint is labor intensity which accounts for almost the entire cost of the sap. But in a country where rural unemployment is very high, labor-intensive sap gathering is an advantage; nipa is abundant in the country’s poorest areas: Bicol, Eastern Visayas and Northeast Mindanao.

Even though the list is long, new uses for nipa are still being discovered: for treating wastewater contaminated by heavy metals; as inhibition of metal corrosion; and as a possible source of pulping material.

Not only are scientists busy identifying the chemical components of nipa, they are studying the fungi, bacteria and other organisms associated with the plant.

They are building knowledge on the relationships between plant and organisms to give further clues on the survival skill of nipa as well as find application in food processing, industries, agriculture and the environment.

All these economic uses pale in comparison with the environmental roles of nipa mangroves which benefit everyone. Among these are its role as a breeding ground for fish and invertebrates and in maintaining the stability of the riverbanks and the removal of heavy metals from water.

Without mangroves, there will be less fish and more floods, as drainage is hampered by the collapse of riverbanks.

The environmental role of nipa is thus priceless.

(Dr. Eufemio T. Rasco heads the Philippine Rice Research Institute. The plant breeder is a member of the National Academy of Science and Technology.)

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Ecological crisis looms for Great Barrier Reef

Extreme weather, mining and port projects blamed for record deaths of turtles and dugongs
Jonathan Pearlman, For The Straits Times 12 Aug 11;

SYDNEY: Record numbers of turtles and dugongs have been washing up dead and starving along the Queensland shoreline, prompting warnings of an ecological disaster in the Great Barrier Reef.

The turtles and dugongs - or sea cows - along the reef are believed to be starving to death after a series of extreme weather events destroyed their main food source, seagrass. Some think nearby mining projects and a port expansion may also have destroyed some seagrass.

The Queensland government said 96 dead dugongs have been found so far this year. Hundreds of turtles have also been found, though official figures have not been released. Environmental sources told The Straits Times that up to 1,500 dugongs and 6,000 turtles are expected to die in the coming months.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said the loss of turtles and dugongs will be the worst on record. Most of the carcasses have been found around Townsville and Gladstone, but experts said this is 'the tip of the iceberg' and many more turtles and dugongs will have died at sea.

'What we have seen is just a snapshot of what's really going on,' Dr Ellen Ariel, a turtle expert at James Cook University, told The Straits Times.

'We are aware of turtles that float up on beaches where people find them, but there will be others that die and sink to the bottom or are taken by predators. There are some pretty fat sharks out there.'

Levels of seagrass along the coast are at their lowest on record after the state was hit by a series of floods, heavy rain and Cyclone Yasi in February. Seagrass tends to be highly delicate and can take as long as 10 years to grow back.

The Queensland government, however, said the dugongs are not under threat.

'Our dugong population has been traditionally very resilient and there's no reason to believe they will not bounce back,' said the state's Environment Minister Vicky Darling.

The reef's dugongs are listed as a vulnerable species, meaning they risk becoming endangered under current environmental conditions. The strange- looking herbivore, related to the Florida manatee, is believed to be the source of the mermaid myth. The Great Barrier Reef has provided a stable habitat for the dugong, which helped the region to gain its listing as a World Heritage area in 1981.

Australia has the highest number of dugongs in the world, with most in Western Australia and the Torres Strait. While the 50,000-odd dugongs in these waters are unlikely to be badly affected by Queensland's recent extreme weather, the 5,500 dugongs in the southern, tourist-visited parts of the reef are now under threat.

Professor Helene Marsh, from James Cook University, said many dugongs have died or will die in the coming months and others will flock to safer waters, mainly to the north.

Asked whether the dugongs could be lost entirely from the main section of the reef, Prof Marsh said she did not know, but believed they will probably survive.

'What is unprecedented is the extent of the damage from the cyclone and the floods,' she said. 'Next year, there won't be any conceptions because the animals will be too skinny... In that region, I am quite worried about the dugong's future.'

The Great Barrier Reef is also facing a growing threat of environmental damage from several multi-billion dollar mining projects occurring on its doorstep.

Unesco's World Heritage Committee has expressed 'extreme concern' at the construction of a massive processing facility at Curtis Island, near Gladstone, which will become one of the world's biggest hubs for natural gas exports.

Shipping traffic through the reef is set to double in the next decade from current levels of 3,500 a year.

Environmental groups believe the recent dredging work on Gladstone harbour to expand its port may have further destroyed seagrass and led to more deaths of marine life.

Around the town of Gladstone, four dugongs, three dolphins and more than 40 turtles have been found dead in recent months.

The Queensland government has launched an inquiry into the Gladstone animal deaths but insisted that the development adhered to stringent environmental requirements.

A Gladstone resident, Mr Clive Last, who works on a privately-owned island near the town, came across a dead dugong on Witt Island two weeks ago. He took five photographs and contacted Queensland Parks and Wildlife.

He said he has lived in the area for 50 years and believed the marine deaths cannot be explained merely by the recent poor weather.

'We never had this quantity of deaths before the dredging,' he said. 'Something strange is going on.'

Famine threatens Australia's gentle sea cows
Extreme weather has destroyed the dugong's feeding grounds – just the latest menace facing this already endangered species
Roger Maynard The Independent 28 Aug 11;

An underwater famine is posing the latest threat to one of Australia's most endangered marine species, the dugong, which lives entirely on sea grass. At least 100 have starved to death in recent months and many more are likely to follow in the absence of their only food source.

Torrential rain and storms, including Cyclone Yasi earlier this year, have destroyed vast swathes of sea grass from northern Queensland to the New South Wales border. More than 1,000 miles of coastline which once provided the perfect habitat for these oddly shaped and gentle creatures are now denuded of the dugong's natural foodstuff.

Known as sea cows because of their total dependency on sea grass, numbers have plummeted over the past decade as they struggle to cope with extreme weather conditions, escalating industrial activity, and hunting by indigenous fishermen. Turtles, too, have fallen victim to the seagrass famine with several hundred reported washed up dead along the coastline.

"This is a national environmental disaster," says Professor Ellen Ariel, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Townsville. "What's happening now is they have nothing to eat and it's not going to change in any way soon. Sea grass takes between two to three years to recover, if there are no other extreme weather events in the meantime."

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is similarly concerned, recently launching a campaign to protect dugong and green turtles which it predicts will die in record numbers. Forced to stray from their regular foraging areas in search of food, the two species are much more vulnerable to disease, injury and death. A major industrial development at Gladstone on the mid-Queensland coast is also increasing pressure on the marine habitat.

A multi-billion pound gas processing plant on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef has already attracted criticism. Last month Unesco's world heritage committee expressed its extreme concern at the Queensland and federal government's backing of the project. For her part, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has pledged to make a comprehensive assessment of the plant's environmental impact.

In addition to climatic and industrial threats to the dugong population, indigenous fishermen have also been accused of endangering the species. Next month a television campaign will be launched by animal activists who believe Australia's Native Title laws are allowing the "uncontrolled" and "unmonitored slaughter" of dugongs and turtles. Australians For Animals has accused some aboriginal groups of "appalling cruelty".

Campaign organiser Colin Riddell says: "We have a confirmed report of a dugong calf being tied to the back of a boat, its cries bringing in the mother so they can both be killed. We have reports in our office of indigenous groups going out in motor boats with a GPS to find dugongs. Once found, they radio their mates and entire pods of dugongs are slaughtered."

Dugong hunting has been an accepted part of Australia's indigenous culture for thousands of years. Their ivory and bones are used in traditional crafts and their meat, which is said to be similar to high quality beef, is regarded as a delicacy. The Native Title Act allows dugongs to be caught by aborigines for personal, domestic or non-commercial needs, but, according to Mr Riddell, some are being sold for profit. He claims the meat sells for nearly £100 a kilo and is even being exported.

Now he is urging the government to call a moratorium on dugong hunting until population numbers are established. "I don't have a problem with Native Title hunting if it's done sustainably," he insists. "But let's just see how many are left."

The dugong's placid nature and slow swimming style make it easy prey for predators. Spending their entire life at sea, they swim by moving their broad spade-like tail in an up an down motion and by the use of their two flippers. The large grey mammals which are up to 10ft long, can live for decades but take time to reach sexual maturity and do not breed rapidly. Without the sea grass they will simply starve to death.

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Best of our wild blogs: 11 Aug 11

How do Bees Sleep at Night?
from Macro Photography in Singapore

Ray the Rotifer!
from The Biology Refugia

BeMUSE features the creatures that call Singapore home
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

Checklist of the Vascular Plant Species of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve from Raffles Museum News

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More oppose plan for dolphin exhibit at Resorts World Sentosa

Two activist websites gather 800,000 signatures globally in petition to free 25 mammals
Sandra Davie Straits Times 11 Aug 11;

MORE animal lovers both here and abroad have come out to oppose Resorts World Sentosa's (RWS) plans to exhibit wild-caught dolphins in its Marine Life Park.

Two United States-based online activist groups, Avaaz and Change.org, have gathered a total of nearly 800,000 signatures from members around the world, including Singaporeans.

They want RWS to free the 25 dolphins which were caught off the Solomon Islands, near Papua New Guinea.

Local animal protection group Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) launched a campaign three months ago asking Singaporeans to send in video petitions, and has attracted 13,800 supporters to its cause.

Asia for Animals, a coalition of 10 animal protection groups, has written to RWS, asking it to show proof of its claim that wild-caught dolphins thrive in captivity.

In May, dolphin rescuer Ric O'Barry, who shot to fame with his film on the capture and killing of dolphins in Japan, wrote to the integrated resort's chief executive Tan Hee Teck, urging him to show that RWS is a 'true steward of the environment' by freeing the dolphins.

The marine mammal specialist, 72, who works for US-based environmental group Earth Island Institute, also offered his help to rehabilitate the dolphins and release them back into the wild.

Yesterday, he said Mr Tan has yet to respond to his offer, but warned that the protest is likely to grow. 'It's 800,000 people now and it will keep growing as more people learn about the cruel practices involved in capturing the dolphins and keeping them in marine parks,' he said.

The activist, who investigated the dolphin hunts in the Solomon Islands for a television documentary last year, said the capture process is traumatic and violent.

'The dolphins are corralled into a cove by the villagers. The healthy ones are caught to be sold to aquariums but the others are speared, clubbed and stabbed to death.'

New York-based Avaaz, which has gathered almost 700,000 signatures on its petition, said RWS should not underestimate people power. Ms Brianna Cayo Cotter, a media campaigner for the online activist network, said it has more than nine million members and a proven success record.

'Our members' actions have been instrumental in a number of major victories, whether preserving a ban on international whaling or passing powerful anti-corruption measures,' she said.

RWS' plans to use dolphins and whale sharks in its park attracted criticism from animal lovers from the start.

In May 2009, it scrapped the plan to exhibit whale sharks, which can grow to more than 12m and weigh 15 tonnes, saying it might not be able to care for them. But it later said it would go ahead and use the dolphins, despite two dying last October from a bacterial infection.

Yesterday, when asked to respond to the growing protests, RWS spokesman Krist Boo said the 25 dolphins in the Philippines are thriving. 'It will be gravely irresponsible of us to contemplate any thought of letting our animals into the wild after three years in human care. Despite contrary claims, the track record for marine mammal releases is patchy at best.'

She added that the resort recognises animal lovers' concerns but suggested they should do independent research before they take on a cause.

She said RWS will provide people with more information on its blogs and website, and stressed that the Marine Life Park has been designed to meet international accreditation standards and already has a strong professional core team, including five vets.

But Acres president Louis Ng said all the best care and international rules in the world can never replicate the free and open oceans.

'If RWS truly believes that the remaining 25 wild-caught dolphins are happy in their current enclosures, then Acres asks that RWS open the enclosure gates,' he said.

'If the dolphins are truly happy then surely they will remain in the enclosure?'

He said Acres was not opposed to a marine park filled with species that take well to confined spaces, but dolphins roam large distances and should not be confined.

Mr O'Barry said his offer to rehabilitate and release the dolphins still stands. 'The dolphins can adapt to their home range where they were born much easier than the concrete, steel and glass tanks at the Marine Life Park.

'If Resorts World frees the dolphins, not only will it show good corporate citizenship, but it will also be a massive windfall of good publicity for them.

IR's dolphin plan faces global heat
David Lim My Paper AsiaOne 11 Aug 11;

THE number of animal lovers, here and abroad, opposing Resorts World Sentosa's (RWS') plan to showcase 25 wild-caught bottlenose dolphins at its upcoming Marine Life Park (MLP) has spiked.

Two United States-based activist websites, Avaaz.org and Change.org, have collectively garnered more than 780,000 signatures globally in two separate petitions over the past two months.

They are part of a movement that is pushing RWS to free the dolphins caught off the Solomon Islands, located east of Papua New Guinea.

RWS bought the dolphins between 2008 and 2009 and is currently housing them in Ocean Adventure Park in Subic Bay in the Philippines, while awaiting MLP's opening next year.

Singapore animal-protection group, Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres), also launched an online campaign in May and now has a following of more than 14,000 supporters.

Speaking to my paper yesterday, Acres executive director Louis Ng said: "There are already dolphins at the Dolphin Lagoon in Sentosa, so why do we want to duplicate attractions?"

Mr Ng also stressed that the campaign is not to lobby for the closure of the MLP but "for the release of animals that don't do well in captivity".

Yesterday, Asia for Animals, an alliance of 10 international organisations including Acres and the Britain-based Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, addressed an open letter to RWS, asking it to prove that dolphins can "thrive in marine parks".

An RWS spokesman had previously told Acres that releasing the dolphins into the wild "would be gravely irresponsible", as they have been in human care for three years. The spokesman cited the "patchy track record of marine mammal re-releases".

Yesterday, an MLP spokesman told my paper: "Any allegations that our dolphins are 'in peril' and subject to 'animal cruelty' are completely false. Our dolphins are healthy and residing in a facility that is safe and conducive to their health and well-being.

"We exceed stringent (standards set out in) international regulations to ensure that our dolphins have space to exercise, socialise, rest and grow healthily."

The spokesman added that the dolphins have become used to human care and "we are confident they will continue to thrive".

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Malaysia: Major gains from wild dolphin sightings

New Straits Times 11 Aug 11;

DOLPHIN sightings present a valuable opportunity to promote conservation efforts in the country, the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) said.

MNS head of communications Andrew Sebastian said dolphin sightings in Malaysia, common at coastal areas and river estuaries, are often celebrated events, which can help create greater awareness of the need to protect marine life.

"After all, protecting our dolphins also means protecting their natural habitats -- ensuring the cleanliness of our waters and maintaining healthy ecosystems for them to survive," he said.

He said dolphin sightings could also help promote ecotourism, but cautioned that tourists should not expect to spot dolphins on every dolphin-spotting expedition.

He said more studies on the behaviour of dolphins in local waters should be carried out so that the public can be properly educated on how to treat the marine mammals.

"Fishermen or tourists sometimes do not know how to react or behave around dolphins when they encounter them, and this can create a dangerous situation."

"Dolphins are sociable creatures but that does not mean their friendliness should be taken for granted," he said, adding that dolphins were classified as protected animals under the Wildlife Conservation Act 2010.

He said the MNS' Marine Mammal Project, an on-going study on marine mammal activities at the islands of Tioman, Redang and Langkawi, has already begun to improve knowledge on dolphin behaviour.

MNS president Professor Dr Maketab Mohamed said that about 20 species of dolphins have been recorded in Malaysian waters, most of which were found in mangrove and large river systems.

"Their occurrence must be looked upon as a natural biological indicator and an opportunity to gain awareness, research and monitoring," he said.

"Therefore, it is important for us to safeguard its habitat and manage our fisheries sustainably."

A marine biologist contacted by the New Straits Times said river dolphins were threatened with extinction as their preferred habitats -- estuaries -- were both ecologically sensitive and attracted heavy human activity.

He said the group of pink dolphins, recently spotted at the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve in Perak, could have come from either the Irrawady River in Myanmar or the Mekong River in Thailand where they have become increasingly rare.

"I doubt there was a hidden population (in Matang) before -- dolphins are free-ranging oceanic species, which will happily travel to find an optimal environment."

He said while the proper species of the Matang dolphins have yet to be identified, they were believed to be the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinensis chinensis), which are white or pink-skinned as adults, and can grow up to between 2m and 3.5m.

Lady luck, dolphins smile on us
New Straits Times 11 Aug 11;

WHEN I arrived in the sleepy fishing village of Kuala Sepetang, near Taiping, I was buoyed with the hopes of being able to see dolphins up close.

However, the locals in the area dashed those hopes when they told me that I might not be able to catch a glimpse of the dolphins.

Still optimistic, I asked fishermen Muhammad Zamyr Affar, 19, and Mohd Safuan Shahidan, 19, for assistance, who agreed to take photographer Hasriyasyah Sabudin and I out in their fishing boat.

We set off from the Kuala Sepetang Eco-Education Centre jetty and headed for Kuala Sangga, a small Chinese fishing village located at the river mouth, about half an hour away by boat.

The dolphins, believed to be Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (also known as Chinese white dolphins), are frequently spotted in the waters there, which is located within the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve that stretches over 40,000ha across the state.

At first, only brief flashes of fins and noses could be seen breaking the surface of the water from afar, but perhaps curiosity led the dolphins to come closer to our boat.

Hasriyasyah and I had our work cut out for us, though, as we struggled to photograph the lively dolphins, which would come up for air for mere seconds before vanishing into the murky water.

It was as though they were playing hide and seek with us as they appeared on one side of the boat, dove underwater and reappeared on the other side.

Sitting at the prow of the boat, I got a close-up view of the dolphins as they surfaced beside the boat, just within my reach, though I didn't dare to reach out and touch them.

After an hour and a half of "playtime" with us, the pod of five dolphins began to tire and headed out to sea.

Returning to Kuala Sepetang, Muhammad Zamyr and Mohd Safuan said that we were very lucky, as they had never seen so many dolphins at one time. I count myself lucky to have been able to spend an afternoon with such magnificent creatures. -- By Hanis Maketab

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Coral Reefs: Winners and Losers

Christopher Pala Science AAAS 10 Aug 11;

Scientists have just made the job of those trying to save the world's coral reefs a bit easier. A new map published today pinpoints the reefs that can still be saved—and those that are likely to die. The team hopes that the data will help reef managers better focus their conservation efforts.

Some corals (green spots) are located in places where climatic conditions are likely to allow them to survive global warming, whereas others (red dots) are likely to die early from more adverse regional conditions. Credit: Joseph Maina

Today, about 19% of the world's coral reefs have died as a result of overfishing of algae-eating fish, pollution, and temperature spikes, according to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (based on the opinion of 370 coral reef scientists and managers from 96 countries). Another 15% are expected to die in the next 15 years. More than 100 million people depend on them for food, as a live reef supports many edible fish and crustaceans. In addition, many more people rely on reefs as a buffer against high waves.

Reef managers can help restore coral reefs by restricting fishing and reducing pollutants in the water that then runs off land near reefs. Until now, however, they've had a hard time figuring out which reefs to focus on. Their best measure was looking at how a reef resisted past bleaching events-periods of exceptionally warm water that kill the corals and turn them white-and how fast the corals recovered from these events. But this strategy is inefficient and costly because there are not enough coral reef field biologists to study all reef locations.

To help reef managers better focus their efforts, spatial ecologist Joseph Maina of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues performed a global assessment of areas most susceptible to bleaching. They mined satellite and tidal data to determine where the water has gotten warmer and where there is the least amount of wind (wind makes waves, which cool the sun-heated top layers by mixing them with the cooler ones underneath). Differences in ultraviolet radiation were also factored in.

Then they looked at the positive factors that make a heat wave bearable: high, swift tides; big variations in temperatures (corals that are used to big swings survive warming better than those that are not); and strong, cooling currents. They also factored in one of the main direct causes of coral mortality: runoff from rivers that dumps sediment and excessive nutrients into the sea, helping algae replace corals. This is the bit that humans can do something about by regulating the use of fertilizers and soil erosion.

The team then plugged all of its data into mathematical formulas and generated a map. The map, in a paper published online today in PLoS ONE, shows that some reefs have a much brighter future than others.

La Reunion, a French island in the Pacific that recently stepped up protection, won the "Most Likely to Succeed" award. On a scale where maximum stress is 1 and minimum is 0, it scored 0.13. On the other end of the spectrum, Lombok Island, which has Indonesia's best score, rates only 0.74, a high stress value.

Florida's Key Largo scored an impressive climatic score of 0.25, but because overfishing and runoff have damaged its reefs, its total stress level is a high 0.85. That makes it a perfect candidate for stepping up protection, Maina says.

Conversely, he says, other healthy reefs in places like Bonaire off Venezuela, the Hawaiian Islands, the Great Barrier Reef, and New Caledonia are already getting good protection. This study should encourage managers to maintain their efforts there, he says.

The study yielded some surprising results. Britain's largely untouched Chagos Islands, which sit in the middle of the biggest marine reserve in the world, nearly the size of Spain, in the central Indian Ocean, scored a high climatic stress level of 0.80. The Pacific nation of Kiribati's Phoenix Islands, whose reefs are protected, scored 0.87 and nearby Palmyra, probably the most studied pristine atoll in the world, 0.83. But Takapoto Atoll in French Polynesia scored a much better 0.66.

In Southeast Asia, however, climatic conditions are so bad that most of the corals are dying and disappearing much faster than reefs in lower-stress environments. The region contains the so-called Coral Triangle that's home to 500 of the world's 700 species of coral. The remarkable biodiversity has led to the Coral Triangle Initiative convened in 2009 in which the United States, the Asian Development Bank, and others pledged more than $400 million over 5 years to protect the reefs from overfishing and pollution. That's far more than in places that the new study predict have a rosier future, despite little success in curbing a declining coral cover in the Coral Triangle over the past 30 years.

"There are a lot of reefs around the world that are going to do much better, and together they're only getting a tiny fraction of that amount," says co-author Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Mombasa, Kenya. "A lot of money is being wasted on reefs that have a dismal future," he says.

"We need to focus on the winners, not losers," McClanahan adds. "They're off in the Pacific, southern East Africa, Sri Lanka, and the northern Red Sea. They're not very well protected and they'll do much, much better if they had more fish and less sediment."

The 1982-2009 temperature data the study is based on is a good indicator of future trends, McClanahan says, because many oceanographic physical processes are stable enough to insure consistent patterns in temperature changes.

"This is a valuable contribution that helps to identify locations that will suffer the least from climate change and therefore benefit the most from local conservation measures," says Alan Friedlander, a marine biologist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, who studies reefs.

But not everyone agrees. John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says it's hard to tell which corals will bleach in the future. "The Bahamas bleached in 1998 but not in 2003, while the Virgin Islands bleached in 2010 but not before, and that's just in the Caribbean."

Worldwide Map Identifies Important Coral Reefs Exposed to Stress
ScienceDaily 11 Aug 11;

Marine researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups have created a map of the world's corals and their exposure to stress factors, including high temperatures, ultra-violet radiation, weather systems, sedimentation, as well as stress-reducing factors such as temperature variability and tidal dynamics.

The study, say the authors, will help to conserve some of the world's most important coral reefs by identifying reef systems where biodiversity is high and stress is low, ecosystems where management has the best chance of success.

The paper appears online in journal PLoS One. The authors include: Joseph M. Maina of WCS and a doctoral student at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; Timothy R. McClanahan of WCS; Valentijn Venus of Netherlands Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation; Mebrahtu Ateweberhan of the University of Warwick; and Joshua Madin of Macquarie University.

"Coral reefs around the globe are under pressure from a variety of factors such as higher temperatures, sedimentation, and human-related activities such as fishing and coastal development," said Joseph M. Maina, WCS conservationist and lead author on the study. "The key to effectively identifying where conservation efforts are most likely to succeed is finding reefs where high biodiversity and low stress intersect."

Using a wide array of publicly available data sets from satellites and a branch of mathematics known as fuzzy logic, which can handle incomplete data on coral physiology and coral-environment interactions, the researchers grouped the world's tropical coral reef systems into clusters based on the sum of their stress exposure grades and the factors that reinforce and reduce these stresses.

The first cluster of coral regions -- Southeast Asia, Micronesia, the Eastern Pacific, and the central Indian Ocean -- is characterized by high radiation stress (sea surface temperature, ultra-violet radiation, and doldrums weather patterns with little wind) and few stress-reducing factors (temperature variability and tidal amplitude). The group also includes corals in coastal waters of the Middle East and Western Australia (both regions have high scores for reinforcing stress factors such as sedimentation and phytoplankton).

The second cluster -- including the Caribbean, Great Barrier Reef, Central Pacific, Polynesia, and the Western Indian Ocean -- contained regions with moderate to high rates of exposure as well as high rates of reducing factors, such as large tides and temperature variability.

Overall, stress factors such as surface temperature, ultra-violet radiation, and doldrums were the most significant factors, ones that ecosystem management has no control over. What is controllable is the mitigation of human impacts that reinforce radiation stress and where managers decide to locate their protected areas.

"When radiation stress and high fishing are combined, the reefs have little chance of surviving climate change disturbances because they both work against the survival of corals that are the foundation of the coral reef ecosystem," said Dr. Tim McClanahan, WCS Senior Conservationist and head of the society's coral reef research and conservation program.

The authors recommend that the study results be used to formulate management strategies that would include activities such as fishing restrictions, the management of watersheds through improved agricultural practices, and reforestation of coastal watersheds that play a role in healthy coral systems.

"The study provides marine park and ecosystem managers with a plan for spatially managing the effectiveness of conservation and sustainability," said Dr. Caleb McClennen, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Marine Program. "The information will help formulate more effective strategies to protect corals from climate change and lead to improved management of reef systems globally."

The Macquarie University's Higher Degree Research (HDR) and the Wildlife Conservation Society Marine Program contributed to the mapping project, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Journal Reference:

Joseph Maina, Tim R. McClanahan, Valentijn Venus, Mebrahtu Ateweberhan, Joshua Madin. Global Gradients of Coral Exposure to Environmental Stresses and Implications for Local Management. PLoS ONE, 2011; 6 (8): e23064 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0023064

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Jurong oil caverns: Singapore digs deep to be petro hub

Sharanjit Leyl BBC Ashttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifia Business Report 10 Aug 11;

One hundred and thirty metres below the sea bed of Singapore lies a most unusual construction site.

Hundred of workers are carving out a series of enormous caverns in hard rock. The work is laborious, expensive and will take years to complete, but eventually they hope to create a space large enough to store the equivalent of nine million barrels of oil.

Why? Because Singapore, all 700 sq km of it, is running out of room. The company behind the project, state-run Jurong Town Corporation, wants to provide a secure storage site for companies that will pay them for using the space.

Chief executive Manohar Khiatani explains the rationale behind the project.

"Singapore is a small country, so we have to continuously think of ways on how we can optimise land use," he says.

"In order to cater for the future growth of the petrochemical industry, we needed to create more space for storage and that's why we decided to construct these caverns underground.

"Something like this does not make sense for everybody. It makes sense for us because land is a scarce and hence a very valuable resource in Singapore."

Mr Khiatani points out that were a similar facility to be built on the surface "it would take up about 70 hectares of land".

"By going underground, we can save around 60 hectares of land, which is about the size of 70 football fields, and that space can be used for other activities that cannot go underground."
'Very deep'

The project, dubbed the Jurong Rock Caverns, is costing them about $740m (£450m). It is currently in its first phase of construction and is due for completion in 2014.

Five caverns are being dug out under the seabed of Banyan Basin, off Jurong island, a series of mostly-reclaimed islands that house most of Singapore's petrochemical industry.

Some 90 companies from the industry have facilities there, including multinational firms such as Shell and Exxon Mobil.

According to Mr Khiatani, the caverns will cater mainly for companies already producing on Jurong island and their long-term storage needs. However, he acknowledges that the project has its own "share of challenges".

"Operating caverns is different from operating on land, so we will have to learn along the way as the caverns are implemented," says Mr Khiatani.

"What we have to contend with is the fact that we're going very deep, over 100m below ground level, the kind of rock that we have here is different, so we have had to manage that. We are trying to work on and improve the processes."
New technologies

These "processes" involve drilling and blasting each rock cavern with explosives and then lining it in cement, using a high-pressure spray.

New technologies are also being used to prevent potential accidents, such as oil seeping through the rock. Part of this involves the use of a "water curtain" - water-filled tunnels and boreholes that will surround the cavern from the outside - in order to keep it sealed through hydrostatic pressure.

So arduous is the work that construction had to be stopped while the BBC crew filmed and interviewed Mr Khiatani in one of the half-completed caverns.

The cost and scale of the project shows the lengths that Singapore will go to in order to keep up its role as a regional hub for the petrochemical industry.

The nation, the smallest in South East Asia, has no natural resources, but has invested heavily over the decades in creating a refining hub that now processes much of the oil from the region.
Carving niche

According to Julian Ho from the Economic Development Board, the government entity responsible for attracting multinational firms to the city state, Singapore recognises its space and resource "constraints", which is why it has had to provide the right conditions to become Asia's largest export refining centre.

"If you look at companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell, where they have their largest refining downstream and chemical footprint in Asia Pacific in Singapore, I think it reflects a couple of things," he says.

"They have 100% control of their assets, which are very valuable. They have an environment that is stable and certain in terms of how they will operate.

"And thirdly, this is a high-technology complex industry, and when you have that industry here, you really need manpower capabilities to allow them to operate these facilities efficiently."

Singapore's petrochemical industry is now estimated to be worth about $50bn to $65bn (£30bn-£40bn) annually and contributes significantly to the economy, which grew at a slower pace in the last quarter from the previous year.

It accounts for nearly a third of Singapore's total trade in terms of both exports and imports, which is why a project like the Jurong Rock Caverns, despite its unusualness, comes as no surprise.

It shows how determined the small country is to carve out a big niche in the industry.

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Best of our wild blogs: 10 Aug 11

Mok Ly Yng celebrates with “Singapore ND 2011: Topographical Map” from Otterman speaks

110809 Semakau forest
from Singapore Nature

National Day at Semakau with otter!
from wild shores of singapore

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Malaysia: ‘Language skills only for apes that cannot live in the wild’

Muguntan Vanar The Star 10 Aug 11;

KOTA KINABALU: Teaching language skills to orang utan should only be considered for those that cannot be rehabilitated and released back into the wild.

A Sabah-based conservationist Dr Marc Ancreanz said it was more important to help displaced orang utan go back into the wild to increase their population.

“Teaching communication skills, yes, but only for those that cannot be rehabilitated,” said Dr Ancreanz, who heads the Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Project helmed by the French non-governmental organisation Hutan.

Dr Ancreanz was commenting on The Star report quoting scientist Dr Francine Neago's plan to set up an orang utan language study centre in Sarawak to teach language skills to the primate via a computer programme.

Dr Ancreanz said teaching communication skills like sign language to the orang utan was possible as other great apes gorillas and chimpanzees had already been taught to communicate with humans.

“Previous studies have shown that the intelligent great apes are able to learn language skills like sign languages but they cannot speak because they do not have larynx.”

Teaching orang utan that could not be rehabilitated or those living in captivity was apt as they get bored easily, he said.

“Teaching them communication skills may create some activity for them to experiment with.”

According to local Sabah conservationists, Dr Neago had approached them about setting up a similar project in Sepilok about five years ago but they had turned her down.

Dr Neago is hoping to acquire a piece of land on which to set up the centre.

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Wildlife groups boycott Sri Lankan elephant census

Bharatha Mallawarachi Associated Press Yahoo News 9 Aug 11;

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Wildlife groups will boycott Sri Lanka's first census of elephants because they fear the count is a "smoke screen" for capturing and domesticating the animals.

The Wildlife Department said it will go ahead with the count starting Thursday aimed at gathering information on the population and helping prepare conservation policies.

About 20 wildlife groups had agreed to deploy about 200 volunteers to help the department count the animals. But they announced Tuesday they were withdrawing their support after Wildlife Minister S.M. Chandransena was quoted as saying 300 young elephants will be captured and handed over to Buddhist temples after the census.

"This is actually a smoke screen to capture wild elephants when they are young, specially tuskers and basically take in them for domestication," said Rukshan Jayawardene, chairman of Wildlife Conservation Forum.

He feared that most of these animals will not end up in temples, but "will end up in private residences working long hours."

Costumed and decorated pachyderms are used in Buddhist ceremonies as they parade through streets carrying the sacred relics of the Lord Buddha. They are also ridden by tourists and used to carry heavy weights, such as in the logging industry.

Chandrasena could not be reached for comment. But the head of the Wildlife Department H.D. Ratnayake denied plans of capturing and taming wild elephants and said the department will go ahead with the census.

Elephants will be counted for three days as they come to drink from water holes, reservoirs and tanks. The population is believed to be between 5,000 and 6,000, about half the numbers of the last count a century ago.

More recent counts were limited because of the quarter-century civil war that ended in 2009.

Elephants are endangered in Sri Lanka. They are increasingly entering villages in search of food, and around 250 are killed every year, mostly by farmers protecting people or their crops.

About 50 people die in elephant attacks each year, too.

Activists fear that capturing and removing more elephants from their habitat would further reduce elephant population.

Most tamed elephants die early due to lack of proper food, loss of habitat and working very hard, said Shantha Jayaweera, another wildlife activist.

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Russian forests burn for second successive year

Lack of funding and equipment hampers efforts to prevent and extinguish fires despite pledges and threats from Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev
Alexandre Billette Guardian Weekly 9 Aug 11;

Only a year ago Russia was overwhelmed by an exceptional heat wave, triggering hundreds of fires that destroyed thousands of hectares of woodland. Burning peat bogs around Moscow stifled the city in a thick cloud of bitter smoke.

Now, Russia is burning again. Since the beginning of this year more than 1m hectares of forest have gone up in flames, or are still burning, outstripping the disastrous record of 2010. But the affected areas are more sparsely populated and far fewer people have been evacuated.

The far north of Russia is among the areas that have suffered the most. During the last week of July, Arkhangelsk and the Komi republic had temperatures exceeding 35C. More than 80 fire outbreaks were reported.

The far east has suffered too. At the beginning of August about 50 fires were raging, especially around Khabarovsk, Yakutsk and the island of Sakhalin. Southern Russia has not escaped: several villages have been evacuated around Rostov-on-Don and Volgograd, where temperatures rose above 40C in July.

In a country that is 97% forest or woodland, fires are an inevitable hazard. But the scale of last year's disaster drew attention to the poor job the Russian authorities were doing to prevent and combat fires.

In 2006 Vladimir Putin, the former president and current prime minister, took the job of supervising woodland out of the hands of 80,000 federal foresters and transferred responsibility to local authorities. Endemic corruption and inadequate regional budgets seriously jeopardised forest inspections and fire prevention.

Last autumn the federal government agreed to a bigger budget for monitoring forest fires, and launched a massive scheme to deal with the peat bogs in the Moscow area. After being drained during the Soviet era so the peat could be used as fuel, they have been left untended for decades.

But the administration's efforts have not been equal to the task. In April President Dmitry Medvedev attacked bureaucrats who announced that plans to flood the peat bogs would be delayed. In a meeting broadcast on television, he said: "If you fail to control the fires ... you'll all be going to fight them in the peat bogs with your own hands."

Fortunately the peat bogs have not so far given any trouble this year. But despite reassurances from the emergency situations minister, the lack of equipment, human resources and funds is often obvious.

Greenpeace claims that the government is playing down the situation. "Official reports indicate 93 hectares of land on fire in the Amur area; in fact it is more like 50,000 hectares, as can be seen from satellite images," says an NGO spokesperson.

The Russian authorities have not so far asked for outside assistance. More than 5,000 fire-fighters have already been deployed, backed by 800 specialist units, some equipped with aircraft. Current, more favourable, weather conditions may make life easier, with temperatures dropping to more usual levels all over Russia.

This story originally appeared in Le Monde.

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