RELATED e360 DIGEST ITEMS

19 Nov 2009: Oceans’ Ability to Absorb CO2
May be Diminishing, New Study Says

A study of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans from 1765 to the present shows that as humanity pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere, the capacity of the world’s oceans to continue absorbing carbon appears to be decreasing. Researchers from Columbia University and NASA estimate that since 2000, the proportion of fossil-fuel emissions absorbed by the oceans may have declined by as much as 10 percent. In effect, researchers say that industrial activity has been producing so much C02 since 1950 that the oceans are slowly becoming saturated with the gas. “The more carbon dioxide you put in, the more acidic the ocean becomes, reducing its ability to hold CO2,” said lead researcher Samar Khatiwala, an oceanographer at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The study, published in the journal Nature, estimated that the oceans currently hold about 150 tons of industrial carbon — a third more than in the 1990s. The researchers used data on ocean chemistry, salinity, temperature, and other measures to calculate the amount of industrial carbon in the ocean for the past 245 years. The study showed that the land may now being absorbing more carbon than it is producing, perhaps because higher atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing the rate of photosynthesis.
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05 Nov 2009: Atlantic Fish Stocks Are
Moving North as Ocean Warms, NOAA Finds

About half of 36 fish stocks in the northwest Atlantic Ocean have shifted north over the last four decades as ocean temperatures have warmed, according to a new U.S. study. Comparing data for dozens of fish stock from 1968 to 2007 — and using ocean temperature records from the same period — researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that many species in the waters from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the Canadian border have shifted northward or migrated farther offshore. Some species have nearly disappeared from U.S. waters altogether. “They all seem to be adapting to changing temperatures and finding places where their chances of survival as a population are greater,” said Janet Nye, a NOAA researcher and lead author of the study, which was published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. Researchers selected fish stocks that were consistently caught in greater numbers in NOAA's annual fish surveys and were considered important commercially or ecologically, including Atlantic cod and haddock, and yellowtail and winter flounder.
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04 Nov 2009: Seismic Fissure in Ethiopia
Evidence of Ocean in Making, Study Says

A 35-mile seismic crack that formed over a few days in 2005 in the Ethiopian desert is evidence of a new ocean in the making, scientists report in a new study. The abrupt formation of the rift, which is 20 feet wide in places, is similar to the shifting that occurs on the ocean’s floor, according to the study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Using seismic data from the September, 2005 eruption of Dabbahu, a volcano located in Ethiopia’s remote Afar Region, scientists were able to reconstruct how, over just a few days, the fissure stretched 35 miles. The evidence, they say, suggests that volcanic boundaries near the edges of tectonic plates can experience massive, sudden splits and do not necessarily separate slowly during a series of smaller events. “We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift,” said study co-author Cindy Ebinger, of the University of Rochester, “but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this.” The African and Arabian plates, which meet in this remote area of Ethiopia, have been separating by less than an inch per year for 30 million years. Scientists believe the Red Sea will eventually pour into the new sea — perhaps in about a million years.
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30 Oct 2009: Thick, Multi-Year Arctic Ice
Has Effectively Disappeared, Scientist Says

One of Canada’s top Arctic experts, recently returned from an expedition in the far north, has told the Canadian parliament that the Arctic’s thick, multi-year sea ice has largely vanished, removing the last barrier to ships navigating the polar region. David Barber, Canada’s Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, said his expedition aboard an icebreaker was looking for a huge pack of thick ice that has existed for tens of thousands of years in the Beaufort Sea. But that multi-year ice, often dozens of feet thick, has largely been replaced by one-year-old “rotten” ice less than 20 inches thick, which is not an impediment to navigation. “We are almost out of multi-year ice in the northern hemisphere,” Barber told Parliament. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 30 years of working in the high Arctic... From a practical perspective, we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now.” Barber’s icebreaker did find a 10-mile-wide floe of multi-year ice that was 20 to 26 feet thick, but he said the expedition watched as those floes began breaking apart after being hit large waves. In 2007, the extent of Arctic sea ice, most of it thin, was 40 percent below the long-term average.
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29 Oct 2009: Electronic Fisheries Monitoring
Proves A Success in Danish Experiment

By outfitting six Danish fishing boats with GPS systems, closed circuit television cameras, and sensors that can gauge the weight of catches, scientists in Denmark have discovered that they can accurately track which fish were caught, the size and location of the catch, and what species were thrown back in the sea as by-catch. In a year-long experiment that ended last month, Danish fisheries scientists said the new system gives “100 percent documentation of fishing activities.” The Danish system would be of little help in halting illegal fishing carried out by unregistered boats on the high seas. But Danish scientists said their electronic monitoring system could be extremely useful in tracking and regulating legal fisheries for such species as cod, sand eel, sprat, blue whiting, and Norway pout in territorial waters. A Danish fisheries manager said that “determination of where an when a fishing event takes place can be made with a high degree of accuracy.”
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27 Oct 2009: Ocean Acidification’s Effects
Documented in New Study of Shellfish

Relatively small increases in ocean acidity significantly harm clams, bay scallops, and oysters, particularly in their crucial larval stage, according to a new study. Researchers at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, exposed shellfish to levels of acidity expected in Earth’s oceans later this century and next century, and found that modest increases in acidity led to a 50 percent decline in survival of clam and scallop larvae, reduced the size of the larvae, and caused the larvae to develop more slowly. Oyster larvae also grew more slowly, but their survival was not affected until ocean acidity reached levels expected next century. The world’s oceans absorb about half of the 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide released annually by burning fossil fuels, and the increased carbon dioxide is rapidly making the oceans more acidic, inhibiting the ability of mollusks such as clams and scallops to make their calcium carbonate shells. The researchers said the detrimental impact of ocean acidity on shellfish larvae growth rates is particularly worrisome, as the larvae are free-swimming and exposed to predation. The group’s work is being published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.
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23 Oct 2009: Protected Polar Bear Habitat
Proposed by U.S. Government in Alaska

The U.S. Interior Department is proposing that more than 200,000 square miles of land, sea, and ice in Alaska and nearby waters be given special protection to help preserve 3,500 polar bears threatened by the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice. The Interior Department has proposed designating the vast area as “critical habitat,” which means that any government agency or company must show that activities such as oil drilling and shipping will not affect the bears’ habitat or accelerate the extinction of the species. In 2008, the Interior Department declared that polar bears were threatened with extinction. Shell Oil this week was given permission to drill in the proposed protected area, and conservation groups have criticized the Interior Department for not banning all oil and gas activity in the protected zone. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its annual “Arctic Report Card” saying there is mounting evidence of widespread warming in the Arctic, including a drastic reduction in thick, multi-year sea ice; record-setting heat in Greenland and other parts of the Arctic; an unprecedented amount of freshwater on the surface of the Atlantic from melting ice; and growing evidence that Arctic warming is altering weather patterns in the northern hemisphere.
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15 Oct 2009: Major Arctic Ice Survey
Finds Significant Drop in Ice Thickness

A pioneering expedition to the North Pole, during which a team trekking across the Arctic Ocean drilled 1,500 holes in the ice, has found that most of the ocean is covered by thinner, first-year ice, leading scientists to forecast that the ocean will be largely ice-free in summer within a decade or two. The Catlin Arctic Survey, carried out last spring as the expedition trekked for 73 days across 280 miles of the northern Beaufort Sea to the North Pole, determined that the average thickness of ice in the area was close to six feet. Analyzing the data, ice experts said that much of the sea ice is only about a year old, replacing the thicker ice, formed over many decades, that once covered the sea. Measurements made by nuclear submarines in the 1950s showed that much of the northern Beaufort Sea was once covered by multi-year ice that was twice as thick. “With a larger part of the region now first-year ice, it is clearly more vulnerable,” said Peter Wadhams of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University. “The area is more likely to become open water each summer.” Within 10 to 20 years, Wadhams said, the Arctic Ocean “will essentially be an open sea in the summer.”
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14 Oct 2009: Salt Marshes and Mangroves
Cited as Vital in Combating Climate Change

Salt marshes, sea grasses, mangroves, and other forms of marine vegetation withdraw and store an enormous amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and should be preserved and restored by creating a new global fund, according to a U.N. report. The study, calling for the creation of a “Blue Carbon” initiative, said that although such marine vegetation covers less than 1 percent of the world’s seabed, these plants are estimated to store 1.6 billion tons of CO2 every year — more than half of all carbon buried in the ocean floor. The U.N. report said that these vital marine habitats are being destroyed at a rapid rate, with parts of Asia losing up to 90 percent of their mangrove forests since 1940 and an estimated 2 to 7 percent of salt marshes, sea grasses, and mangroves lost annually to human development. But the report said that such ecosystems can be restored, and that the restoration of large areas of marine vegetation, coupled with efforts to preserve tropical forests, could reduce global carbon emissions by 25 percent.
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12 Oct 2009: U.S. Scientists Back Reduction
In Drilling Plans Off Coasts and in Arctic

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have recommended dramatically scaling back oil drilling plans off U.S. coasts and have proposed a ban on oil and gas exploration in the Arctic until oil companies significantly improve their ability to prevent and clean up oil spills. The non-binding recommendations to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar represent a stark reversal from the pro-drilling policies of the Bush administration; the new administrator of NOAA, Jane Lubchenco, is an oceanographer who has vowed to restore science to federal environmental policy. The NOAA scientists recommended excluding large tracts of coastline off California, the Atlantic seaboard, the Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska from a proposed 2010 to 2015 drilling plan that had been pushed by the Bush administration. The scientists said the previous plan understated the risks that oil exploitation posed to marine life and coastlines. In recommending the temporary Arctic drilling ban, the scientists expressed concern about the impact of potential oil spills on commercial and subsistence fisheries in the North Aleutian Basin and Chukchi Sea.
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Interview: Sylvia Earle Discusses
Restoring the Oceans to Health

Oceanographer Sylvia Earle has spent nearly half a century exploring the world’s oceans and breaking numerous barriers in deep-sea exploration, including holding the record walking untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth — 1,250 feet — than anyone ever has. In her new book, The World is Blue, Earle describes the two-pronged assault on the seas — humanity’s extraction of vast amounts of marine life, while at the same time pouring into the oceans huge quantities of pollutants and carbon dioxide — and also discusses ways to bring the oceans back from the brink. Chief among these, Earle says in an interview with Yale Environment 360, are the creation of a global network of marine reserves and developing a more sustainable system of aquaculture. Earle believes that the world’s oceans can still be redeemed, but only through swift and decisive action. “We either get to choose by conscious action or by default... thinking somebody else will look after this,” she says. “But nobody else will take care of these issues.”
Click here to read the full interview.
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07 Oct 2009: From ‘Albatross Cam’
New Insights into Foraging Behavior

By attaching small digital cameras to the backs of several albatrosses in the sub-Antarctic, Japanese and British scientists have discovered that the great seabirds sometimes feed in conjunction with pods of killer whales, apparently picking up scraps left by the predatory mammals. The researchers affixed the cameras to four black-browed albatrosses captured on Bird Island in South Georgia in January, then retrieved three of the four cameras when the seabirds returned to their breeding colonies. The scientists collected nearly 29,000 digital images, some of which showed albatrosses flying behind killer whales and landing in the sea near the orcas. Reporting in the journal PLoS ONE, the scientists said that the albatrosses appeared to be feeding on scraps of Patagonian toothfish or other prey devoured by the killer whales. Such interactions between albatrosses and killer whales have rarely been observed, and the researchers said that one way albatrosses may locate prey in a vast, featureless sea is by spotting orcas and feeding in their vicinity. The cameras, each weighing 82 grams, captured other images of fellow albatrosses in flight, as well as icebergs adrift in the Southern Ocean.
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06 Oct 2009: Arctic Sea Ice Extent
At Third-Lowest Level Since 1979

The extent of ice covering the Arctic Ocean reached its third-lowest level this summer since satellite observations began in 1979, rebounding from record lows in 2007 and 2008, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Arctic sea ice, measured at its low point in September, covered an area of two million square miles last month — 649,000 square miles below the September average from 1979 to 2000. This year’s summer sea ice extent was nevertheless 409,000 square miles greater than the record low ice extent set in 2007. Ice extent grew this year, scientists say, because cloudy skies in late summer kept sea surface temperatures lower and because atmospheric patterns in August and September helped to spread out the ice pack. Despite the rebound in extent, ice thickness continues to decline, with only 19 percent of the ice cover more than two years old — far below the 1981 to 2000 average of 52 percent. Arctic sea ice is still declining at a rate of 11 percent per decade. “It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen back in the 1970s,” said NSIDC director and senior scientist Mark Serreze. “We still expect to see ice-free summers sometime in the next few decades.”
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02 Oct 2009: Loss of World’s Large Predators
Causing Alarming Rise in ‘Mesopredators’

The decline of the world’s large, or “apex,” predators is leading to an increase in smaller, so-called “mesopredators,” causing significant ecological and economic damage, according to a new study. The populations of primary predators such as wolves, lions, and sharks have sharply declined because of hunting, fishing, and habitat disruption, researchers from Oregon State University say in a report published in the journal Bioscience. And in numerous cases worldwide, the next species in line — including birds, sea turtles, lizards, rodents, and insects — have flourished, often with unintended consequences. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, the decimation of lion and leopard populations has caused a surge in populations of baboons, which increasingly destroy crops and menace villagers. Steep declines in sharks have led to increases in ray populations, which have decimated some bay scallop fisheries. In North America, the largest terrestrial species have declined for two centuries, enabling 60 percent of smaller predators to expand their ranges. Among other findings, researchers say the surge in smaller predators has triggered collapses of entire ecosystems and led to significant plant and crop damage. The researchers said it may be more cost-effective to reintroduce apex predators into ecosystems than spending large sums controlling mesopredators.
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28 Sep 2009: U.S. May Remove Humpbacks
From List of Endangered Species

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service may remove the humpback whale from its list of endangered species, citing evidence that the species has rebounded from near extinction. Since an international ban on their whaling in 1966, populations of the north Pacific humpback have increased about 4.7 percent each year, researchers say. An estimated 18,000 to 20,000 humpbacks now exist in the north Pacific, a sharp increase from the 1960s, when populations had dropped to about 1,400. About 60,000 humpbacks exist globally, according to the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature. “Humpbacks by and large are an example of a species that in most places seems to be doing very well, despite our earlier efforts to exterminate them,” said Phillip Clapham, a senior whale biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The U.S. must review the status of endangered species whenever there is “significant” new information, and this is the first time the humpback’s status has been reviewed since 1999. Some groups object to lifting the endangered status of the humpback, citing climate change and ocean acidification as emerging threats to the species.
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24 Sep 2009: Melting of Greenland and Antarctica Ice Sheets is Accelerating

Ice sheets on the edges of Greenland and western Antarctica are melting faster than expected, new satellite information shows, and scientists say in some regions the melt is accelerating at “runaway” speeds. Ice in some parts of Antarctica has lost about 30 feet of thickness each year since 2003, according to a report published in the journal Nature. The rate of melt during that span is about 50 percent faster than it was from 1995 to 2003. The findings, which are based on laser readings from a NASA satellite, confirm concerns among some climate scientists that the accelerating rate of ice sheet melting has become a self-feeding phenomenon — essentially, the more the ice melts, the more the water near the ice sheets causes more melting. “The question is how far will it run?” said Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey and lead author of the study. “It’s more widespread than we previously thought.” According to researchers, 81 of the 111 Greenland glaciers are melting at an accelerated pace. The study does not indicate how this acceleration will affect sea level rise.
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21 Sep 2009: World’s River Deltas Sinking
Due to Human Activities, Study Says

Most of the world’s major river deltas are sinking as a result of human activity, making them vulnerable to increased flooding and posing a threat to tens of millions of people, according to a new study published by the University of Colorado. In addition to rising waters caused by global climate change, dams and reservoirs are trapping sediment upstream in river systems worldwide, man-made channels are sending sediment directly to the ocean, and the extraction of groundwater and natural gas is causing increased compaction of the floodplains, according to the report, which will be published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Twenty-four of the world’s 33 major river deltas are sinking, the authors say. And in recent years, 85 percent experienced major flooding, submerging some 100,000 square miles of land. According to the report, that flooding could increase by 50 percent by century’s end if the world experiences the 18-inch sea level rise forecast by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. “This study shows there are a host of human-induced factors that already cause deltas to sink much more rapidly than could be explained by sea level alone,” said co-author Albert Kettner, of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.
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17 Sep 2009: NOAA Reports World’s Oceans
Had Warmest Summer Temeratures on Record

Surface temperatures of the world’s oceans were warmer this summer than for any Northern Hemisphere summer since records were first kept in 1880, according to data released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. From June to August, ocean temperatures reached an average of 62.5° F worldwide, about 1.04° warmer than the 20th century average of 61.5°. NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center also reported that the average global land and ocean temperature for August was the second-warmest on record, behind only 1998. In August, the average global land surface temperature of 58.2° F was 1.33° above the 20th century average of 56.9°. While some areas, including the central United States, had cooler temperatures than average, large portions of the world's land mass had warmer temperatures than average, including both Australia and New Zealand, which had their warmest Augusts ever.
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11 Sep 2009: With Melting Arctic Ice, Ships Prepare to Complete Northern Passage

Aided by thawing sea ice, two German ships are en route to becoming the first commercial vessels to complete the Northern Sea Route through the Arctic from Asia to the West. The ships, which began their voyage in South Korea in July, are scheduled to depart a Siberian port this week for Rotterdam in the Netherlands. “It is global warming that enables us to think about using that route,” a spokeswoman for the shipping company, the Beluga Group, told the New York Times. The ships have been accompanied by Russian icebreakers, but reportedly so far have encountered only scattered ice floes. The Russian government declared the Northern Sea Route, or Northeast Passage, open for international vessels after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but no commercial ships have yet traveled all the way across. The Russians hope that the melting sea ice, combined with economic benefits, will eventually make the Arctic passage a strong competitor to longer southerly routes.
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10 Sep 2009: Offshore Wind Advocates
Eye Collaboration on East Coast of U.S.

Proponents of offshore wind power along the United States’ eastern seaboard are promoting a collaborative network of state and industry leaders to help the nascent industry develop. Organizers of the so-called “U.S. Offshore Wind Collaborative” say the success of offshore wind depends on the construction of infrastructure, including transmission lines, ports to deliver the turbines, and maintenance stations. That will require collaboration between the region’s state leaders, said Greg Watson, leader of the group and senior energy adviser to Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. It will also mean a single entity to lobby for federal research dollars, as well as policies to promote the industry, possibly including the extension of the production tax credit for wind projects. “There’s a difference between having a bunch of projects and having an industry,” Watson said. Among the early directors of the collaborative is Jim Gordon, developer of Cape Wind, a 130-turbine offshore project proposed off the Massachusetts coast. After years of local, state and federal review, the U.S. Department of Interior is expected to release its report on the project soon.
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