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jjacquet | February 20, 2008Ocean dead zones are "the new normal," according to Jane Lubchenco, marine biologist at Oregon State University in this article in the L.A. Times. The low oxygen zones off the west coast appear to be spreading--exacerbated by global warming and overfishing. Grrlscientist has a good review of the dead zone paper published in Science last week. While she was discussing her work at AAAS, Lubchenco also voiced support for ScienceDebate2008.
jjacquet | February 18, 2008This week at triple-A S, there was a triplet of fish discussed: cod, tuna, and sharks. The news is bleak.
Today at AAAS, a panel of scientists compares the fate of tuna to that of cod, which helped shape the economies of whole nations in the early 20th century. Leading the discussion were UBC's Rashid Sumaila and Daniel Pauly, Barbara Block from Stanford University, Andy Rosenberg from the University of New Hampshire, Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod and other scientists from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Their talks all converge on the point that warning signs are clear that tuna stocks are…
jjacquet | February 6, 2008In 1998, Pauly et al. published their seminal paper in Science on Fishing Down Marine Food Webs (FDFW). The paper has been cited nearly 1000 times and today it turns 10 years old. The paper has been influential, namely in establishing the mean trophic level of fisheries as a tool for measuring the health of the oceans. In 2000, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)--a treaty to sustain biodiversity adopted by every country except the U.S.--mandated that each country report on its the change in mean trophic level over time as an indicator of ocean health.
How did they do the study?…
jjacquet | January 7, 2008Surfrider's State of the Beach report is designed to encourage the measurement of "beach health indicators" to see if coastal zone management (CZM) programs are succeeding in their goals to balance conservation with economic development. In the 30 years of CZM, are things getting better or worse?
Surfrider is looking to measure ocean health in a consistent way so that they can adequately answer this question. And this year, Surfrider has decided to add British Columbia to the 2009 report based on research done during during the summer of 2008. This will be Surfrider's first international…
jjacquet | January 4, 2008Goro Yoshizaki wants to breed bluefin tuna from mackerel, a technological challenge that Olivia Judson recently blogged about at the New York Times. She writes:
At first, I thought he was joking. After all, it's a bit like saying you want to breed elephants from hamsters. It's not just that tuna are much bigger than mackerel (a fully grown tuna can weigh more than 1,300 pounds (600 kg) and reach more than 13 feet (4 meters) in length, whereas the typical mackerel is a mere snackerel). It's that part of what makes a mackerel a mackerel is that when they mate and reproduce, you get more…
jjacquet | December 13, 2007I went to the library at the University of the South Pacific (USP) today. Man, they're tough (see photo). If I had gone to USP, I'd be broke. For a first noise offense, the library demands a ~$20 fine. Second offense, the fine is doubled. Third offense, suspension of your library card for a month. No bags can be taken in. Books from the Pacific collection must be checked out one at a time and not removed the premises. But, that said, the library is fully intact and things are where you want them to be.
I also found some tidbits in the National Archives from historical colonial documents…
jjacquet | December 11, 2007Carl Zimmer has written another excellent article for the New York Times. It's all about scientists who are solving "gastronomical mysteries of these leviathans by creating the first detailed biomechanical model of a feeding fin whale." One of these scientists is friend and fellow UBC Ph.D. candidate, Jeremy Goldbogen.
The whale grinds to a halt, the scientists concluded, by opening its mouth. Water floods in, pushing its giant lower jaws back until they hang perpendicularly from its body. Suddenly the whale is producing colossal amounts of drag. "The whales are beautifully streamlined so…
jjacquet | November 18, 2007Last week, I heard zoologist Chris Harley speak on how climate change will affect intertidal diversity along our rocky shores. There was a typo in his poster ("acification" instead of "acidification") and he said he would like to officially coin assification for what we're collectively doing to the oceans (climate change, pollution, overfishing, etc.). Well, today there is greater consensus for ocean acifidication and, therefore, ocean assification.
A report completed yesterday by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that increasingly acidic oceans due to…
jjacquet | November 6, 2007Researchers just published their discovery of four types of well-preserved fossil jellyfish in the open-access journal PLoS ONE (go Bora). The jellies are from about a half a billion years ago and not much seems to have changed in their physiology. Utah, of course, is no longer under the sea. See if you prefer this image from the journal:
Or this image from The New York Times:
jjacquet | October 25, 2007Tanzania used to be two countries. Now, Tanzania still has two sets of fisheries data and two options for reporting their fish catch: report it all (accurate) or report only half (inaccurate). Currently, only the mainland reports their fish internationally; Zanzibar's fish are missing from the statistics.
Again, a brief history is useful: In the past, the mainland (called Tanganyika) and Zanzibar were separate countries. Both Tanganyika and Zanzibar fell under German colonial control in 1886 and then to the British in 1920, after WWI. Tanganyika gained independence in 1961 and Zanzibar…
jjacquet | October 22, 2007Here at the WIOMSA conference. This morning a woman delivered a nice talk about artisanal fishing in Rodrigues. My first thought: Rodrigwhere? (Turns out, Rodrigues is an autonomous island of Mauritius.) She studies the seine fishery in one of the lagoons and had an excellent data set for the last five years (excellent in terms of the quality of the data, not the disconcerting results). She showed 1) the fishery system is dominated now by herbivorous fish (there probably used to be more predators) 2) the majority of all the species caught were juveniles (66-98%, depending on the species)…
jjacquet | October 20, 2007Tomorrow, bright and early, I am headed for the South African shore. For me, unlike (what might be) my distant relatives, this journey is not a matter of survival (but to attend WIOMSA in Durban). Last week, an article in Nature showed that Homo sapiens developed a taste for brown mussels, giant periwinkles and whelks along the craggy South African coast at least 164,000 years ago. The New York Times has an abridged (and free!) version here.
This is interesting for so many reasons but here are the big ones:
1) Until now, we only knew that the consumption of seafood by early hominids began…
jjacquet | October 18, 2007After 19 hours via London (where I had the unfortunate Sea Cow sighting), I arrived (and felt like I put the 'poo'ped) in Maputo, Mozambique. Tomorrow I deliver a talk to the Mozambique Fisheries Division on the fisheries catch reconstructions I recently completed as part of my Ph.D. research (co-funded by the Sea Around Us project and WWF).
Small-scale fisheries are often overlooked statistically, politically, and in economic terms. This is because small-scale fishers, as Dr. Daniel Pauly once explained during a talk, don't play golf. Their physical and socio-economic remoteness from…
jjacquet | October 3, 2007Yesterday, a team of scientists that use NASA satellite data to study climate and pollution's effects on the oceans wrote to NASA and NOAA to voice their concern over the future data collection system designed by the two agencies. Here are a few interesting lines from the letter:
High quality ocean color observations have applications such as detecting and monitoring changes in water quality, tracking harmful algal blooms, assessing underwater visibility for divers, and a variety of other applications related to ocean ecosystems, carbon and elemental cycling, coastal habitats, and coastal…
jjacquet | September 23, 2007A federal report shows that loggerhead sea turtle populations, listed as 'threatened' under the Endangered Species Act, are decreasing. The news is particularly disappointing because the last report showed that from 1989-1998, the number of nesting sites had increased about 4% each year. According to The New York Times,..."the report showed nestings in the United States dropping about 7 percent a year on the Gulf of Mexico. In southern Florida, nestings were down about 4 percent a year, and populations in the Carolinas and Georgia have dropped about 2 percent a year." The Times speculates…
jjacquet | September 17, 2007Remember the good old days when salmon would court one another in the eddies of rivers? After a long song and dance, the females would flap their tales and dig their nests by moving the gravel (some as big as oranges) before releasing thousands of pea-sized orange eggs for the chosen male to fertilize them. Voila! Baby fish.
But more and more salmonids face extinction. Often, we preserve the genetic material from endangered species by freezing it. But salmon eggs are to big and fatty to freeze. So researchers have figured out a way to produce sperm and eggs of rainbow trout within a…
jjacquet | September 10, 2007"There are times when life imitates art. Then there are times when life imitates science fiction," the Loom's Carl Zimmer writes in todays' The New York Times article on the jaws of moray eels. And there are times when the jaws that belong to that life latch down on your left ring finger and you shriek in pain, as I did when a baby jeweled moray eel bit me while exploring a Galapagos tidepool. Read all about the moray's feisty bite here. The article is better than the real thing.
jjacquet | August 24, 2007Remember Greenpeace's John Hocevar? He made an appearance here on Ocean Day and then in post about his upcoming Bering Sea research. He reported in from the field a couple weeks ago but his message and photo was temporarily lost in my email box to be recovered now.
John wrote: As I type, I'm listening to the subs on the radio - one just reported that she found obviously visible trawl tracks.
Everything's going well so far. We only lost one day to weather (out of six), and are covering ground more quickly than expected so we may even be able to make up for the one missed day. The bottom'…