Survey to gather seabed data off Canadian East Coast
Canadian fisheries ambassador Loyola Sullivan
An international seabed survey of some previously unexplored deep waters will be conducted off Canada’s East Coast, the federal government announced last week. Loyola Sullivan, Canada’s ambassador for fisheries conservation, said the survey will be conducted in the northwestern Atlantic over the next two years.
Canada has joined Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia in the study.
“Our objective through this project is to work collaboratively with our international partners to collect important new information from the sea floor,” Sullivan said in a statement. “Our findings will help us to better identify and protect sensitive areas, while allowing responsible fisheries to continue.”
The researchers, including Canadian scientists from the federal Fisheries Department, arrived in St. John’s on August 24th onboard the Miguel Oliver, a Spanish research vessel.
They have now concluded the first three-month leg of at-sea research, surveying over 24,000 square kilometres and collecting samples from around the Flemish Cap, the Flemish Pass and an area south of the Grand Banks.
Researchers also collected over 140 seabed and deepwater samples examining organisms living on the bottom of the sea, and 150 oceanographic samples examining water temperature and salinity conditions.
The study will include a total of six months of at-sea research supported by approximately 18 months of data analysis.
The study is primarily taking place onboard the Miguel Oliver, which is equipped with state-of-the-art marine research technology and can accommodate 22 researchers.
Complementary studies are also taking place onboard Spain’s Vizconde de Eza vessel and the Hudson, a Canadian Coast Guard ship.
Somali Pirates Losing Their Edge?
136 ships have been attacked so far this year off Somalia, and 28 (21%) have been taken. Last year, the pirate success rate was 40%.
Moreover, 80 percent of the attacks defeated do not involve the foreign warships now patrolling the coast. The merchant sailors, and the ship owners, have adopted defensive measures that have become remarkably successful in defeating pirate attacks.
For the captain, the best defense is knowing what speeds and manoeuvres his ship can use to keep the pirates away. Larger ships can create dangerous wakes for the pursuing speedboats, by zig-zagging. Captains also have to learn how fast their ship can accelerate to escape oncoming speed boats. Normally, captains are more skilled at moving their ships at slower speeds. Putting the pedal to the metal and hot rodding around the high seas is not normally part of their skill set. But that’s how you avoid getting hijacked by pirates. Captains are learning, and so are their crews.
Ship captains are organizing and drilling their crews on things that can be done to keep the pirates from getting aboard. This ranges from stringing barbed wire around likely boarding points, to practicing the use of fire hoses and other tools (like long poles) to keep the ladders or grappling hooks from enabling the pirates to get aboard. These drills build confidence in the ability of the crew to defend their ship.
The sailors also now keep track of where the nearest warships are, and prepare a “safe room” (an area of the ship the crew can barricade themselves in, until help arrives.) This includes providing emergency communications in the safe room. All this takes advantage of the fact that the pirates cannot take control of the ship unless they have the crew.
Usually this comes down to barricading the crew in the engine compartment. If the crew prepares for that eventuality (having a radio available to contact the warships, along with water, food and medical supplies there), just getting everyone into the engine room when it appears that the pirates are going to get on board, means that the pirates will be caught between the crew they cannot reach, and the approaching warship that can certainly reach the pirates.
Warming Of Arctic Current Over 30 Years Triggers Release Of Methane Gas
Researchers in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres. (Credit: Image courtesy of National Oceanography Centre, Southampton)
The warming of an Arctic current over the last 30 years has triggered the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from methane hydrate stored in the sediment beneath the seabed.
Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham, Royal Holloway London and IFM-Geomar in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres.
Methane released from gas hydrate in submarine sediments has been identified in the past as an agent of climate change. The likelihood of methane being released in this way has been widely predicted.
The data were collected from the royal research ship RRS James Clark Ross, as part of the Natural Environment Research Council’s International Polar Year Initiative. The bubble plumes were detected using sonar and then sampled with a water-bottle sampling system over a range of depths.
The results indicate that the warming of the northward-flowing West Spitsbergen current by 1° over the last thirty years has caused the release of methane by breaking down methane hydrate in the sediment beneath the seabed. Professor Tim Minshull, Head of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science based at that the National Oceanography Centre, says: “Our survey was designed to work out how much methane might be released by future ocean warming; we did not expect to discover such strong evidence that this process has already started.”
Methane hydrate is an ice-like substance composed of water and methane which is stable in conditions of high pressure and low temperature. At present, methane hydrate is stable at water depths greater than 400 metres in the ocean off Spitsbergen. However, thirty years ago it was stable at water depths as shallow as 360 metres.
This is the first time that such behaviour in response to climate change has been observed in the modern period.
While most of the methane currently released from the seabed is dissolved in the seawater before it reaches the atmosphere, methane seeps are episodic and unpredictable and periods of more vigorous outflow of methane into the atmosphere are possible. Furthermore, methane dissolved in the seawater contributes to ocean acidification.
Graham Westbrook Professor of Geophysics at the University of Birmingham, warns: “If this process becomes widespread along Arctic continental margins, tens of megatonnes of methane per year – equivalent to 5-10% of the total amount released globally by natural sources, could be released into the ocean.”
The team is carrying out further investigations of the plumes; in particular they are keen to observe the behaviour of these gas seeps over time.
Hugh Catches of Mackerel in Iceland
Iceland’s fishermen are finding mackerel in such huge quantities that they have sent a plea to their government to increase this year’s quota.
The abundance of mackerel remains something of a mystery, but it is causing a problem for the trawlers fleets because they cannot avoid picking it up as a by-catch.
This year’s self-imposed quota of 112,000 tones has virtually been used up. Now the National Federation of Fishing Vessel Owners has asked the Minister of Fisheries to issue a new quota with immediate effect, but as yet there has been no decision.
The HB Grandi pelagic fleet a few days ago reported that the mackerel “were in a feeding frenzy” off the Westmann Islands in Iceland.
A company spokesman said that the huge volumes of mackerel on are causing some major problems for their three pelagic vessels, which were fishing for herring, and according to HB Grandi’s pelagic division, their skippers have been forced off grounds further south due to the abundance of mackerel there. Some vessels had to stop fishing altogether.
There appear to be large volumes of mackerel all around Iceland. Mackerel have been observed off the south, west and north coasts and there have been occasions when mackerel has gone into harbours, such as in the Westmann Islands, Gardur and Akureyri. Off the east coast there is also plenty of mackerel to be found.
Scientists Discover Bioluminescent ‘Green Bombers’ From The Deep Sea
In the latest proof that the oceans continue to offer remarkable findings and much of their vastness remains to be explored, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and their colleagues have discovered a unique group of worms that live in the depths of the ocean.
The discoveries feature worms—nicknamed “green bombers”—that can release body parts that produce a brilliant green bioluminescent display. The discovery is described in the August 21 issue of the journal Science and is led by Karen Osborn of Scripps Oceanography.
The researchers introduce seven previously unknown species of swimming worms in the annelid phylum ranging from 18 to 93 millimeters (.7 to 3.6 inches) in length. They were discovered by the scientists using remotely operated vehicles at depths between 1,800 and 3,700 meters (5,900 and 12,140 feet). The first species described in the paper has been given the scientific name Swima bombiviridis, referring to its swimming ability and the green bombs.
Osborn says one key aspect of the discoveries is that the newly found worms are not rare. Opportunities to witness such animals and collect and study them, however, have been extremely rare.
“We found a whole new group of fairly large, extraordinary animals that we never knew anything about before,” said Osborn, a post-doctoral researcher in the Marine Biology Research Division at Scripps. “These are not rare animals. Often when we see them they number in the hundreds. What’s unique is that their habitat is really hard to sample.”
Largely transparent except for the gut area, the worms propel themselves with fans of long bristles that form swimming paddles.
“The depths between 1,000 and 4,000 meters (3,280 and 13,120 feet) form the biggest habitat on Earth and also the least explored,” said Scripps Professor Greg Rouse, a coauthor of the paper and curator of Scripps Benthic Invertebrate Collection. “With fairly limited time on submersible vehicles, mainly off California, we’ve picked up seven new species. It goes to show that we have much more exploration ahead and who knows what else we’ll discover?”
Each of the species features a variety of elaborate head appendages. Five of them are equipped with luminescent structures, the “bombs,” that are fluid-filled spheres that suddenly burst into light when released by the animal, glowing intensely for several seconds before slowly fading.
Due to the bright lights of the submersible, scientists were not able to witness bomb-casting in the worm’s natural habitat, but rather on ships after the animals were captured. While the scientists speculate that the bombs are used as a defensive mechanism against potential predators, more studies are needed to fully understand the process.
Rouse says the green bombers in the newly discovered clade, (a common ancestor and all its descendant organisms), are fascinating from an evolutionary standpoint. Looking closely at their relatives that live on the seafloor, it appears the bombs were once gills that evolutionarily transformed over time.
“The relatives have gills that appear to be in exactly the same places as the bombs,” said Rouse. “The gills can fall off very easily so there’s a similarity of being detachable, but for some reason the gills have transformed to become these glowing little detachable spheres.”
Osborn continues to probe many of the various adaptations the worms have made since evolving into swimming species. The challenges faced by animals living in a three-dimensional open water habitat above the seafloor are very different than those faced by animals living on the seafloor. These include locating new food sources, finding ways to maintain optimal depth and grappling with predators that come from various directions.
“I’m interested in how animals have evolved in the water column,” said Osborn. “These worms are great examples. How does a worm transform into a wonderful glowing animal?”
In addition to Osborn and Rouse, coauthors of the Science paper include Steven Haddock of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Fredrik Pleijel of the University of Göteborg in Sweden and Laurence Madin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
The research was supported by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, NOAA, WHOI and the National Geographic Society.
NATO Counter-Piracy Mandate is Enhanced
NATO’s contribution to international efforts to combat piracy off the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf of Aden entered a new phase on 17 August after NATO approved Operation Ocean Shield.
This new mission builds on the experience gained during Operation Allied Protector, NATO’s previous counter-piracy mission, and develops a distinctive NATO role based on the broad strength of the Alliance by adopting a more comprehensive approach to counter-piracy efforts.
While at-sea counter-piracy operations will continue to be the focus, a new element of regional state counter-piracy capacity building has been developed for Operation Ocean Shield. NATO’s capacity building effort will aim to assist regional states, upon their request, in developing their own ability to combat piracy activities. This element of the operation is designed to complement existing international efforts and will contribute to an improved maritime security situation off the Horn of Africa.
Allied Joint Command Lisbon is in overall command of Operation Ocean Shield while Maritime Component Command Headquarters Northwood, United Kingdom, will execute day-to-day tactical control.
Naval forces in support of the operation currently consist of units comprising the Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2), which include the United Kingdom frigate HMS Cornwall as flagship, the Italian frigate ITS Libeccio, the Greek frigate HS Navarinon, the United States destroyer USS Donald Cook and the Turkish frigate TCG Gediz.
Greenhouse Warming May Increase Atlantic Hurricane Activity
This is a bird’s eye view of hurricane Katrina approaching the Gulf coast. (Credit: NASA)
Reconstructions of past hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean indicate that the most active hurricane period in the past was during the “Medieval Climate Anomaly” about a thousand years ago when climate conditions created a “perfect storm” of La Niña-like conditions combined with warm tropical Atlantic waters.
“La Niña conditions are favorable for hurricanes because they lead to less wind shear in the tropical Atlantic,” said Michael E. Mann, professor of meteorology, Penn State. When combined with warm tropical Atlantic ocean temperatures, a requirement for hurricanes to form, conditions become ideal for high levels of activity.”
During an El Niño, the more familiar half of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), there is more wind shear in the Caribbean and fewer hurricanes. The low Atlantic hurricane activity so far during this current season is likely related to the mitigating effects of an emerging El Niño event.
“Hurricane activity since the mid-1990s is the highest in the historical record, but that only goes back a little more than a century and is most accurate since the advent of air travel and satellites in recent decades,” said Mann. “It is therefore difficult to assess if the recent increase in hurricane activity is in fact unusual.”
Mann, working with Jonathan D. Woodruff, assistant professor of geosciences, University of Massachusetts; Jeffrey P. Donnelly, associate scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Zhihua Zhang, postdoctoral assistant, Penn State, reconstructed the past 1,500 years of hurricanes using two independent methods. They report their results in the Aug. 13 issue of Nature.
One estimate of hurricane numbers is based on sediment deposited during landfall hurricanes. The researchers looked for coastal areas where water breached the normal boundaries of the beaches and overwashed into protected basins. Samples from Puerto Rico, the U.S. Gulf coast, the Southern U.S. coast, the mid-Atlantic coast and the southeastern New England coast were radiocarbon dated and combined to form a history of landfall hurricanes.
The other method used a previously developed statistical model for predicting hurricane activity based on climate variables. They applied the model to paleoclimate reconstructions of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature, the history of ENSO and another climate pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which is related to the year-to-year fluctuations of the jet stream. Warm waters are necessary for hurricane development, ENSO influences the wind shear and the NAO controls the path of storms, determining whether or not they encounter favorable conditions for development.
The researchers compared the results of both hurricane estimates, taking into account that the sediment measurements only record landfall hurricanes, but that the relationship between landfall hurricanes and storms that form and dissipate without ever hitting land can be estimated.
Both hurricane reconstructions indicate similar overall patterns and both indicate a high period of hurricane activity during the Medieval Climate Anomaly around AD 900 to 1100.
“We are at levels now that are about as high as anything we have seen in the past 1,000 years,” said Mann.
The two estimates of hurricane numbers do not match identically. The researchers note that they do not know the exact force of a storm that will breach the beach area and deposit sediments. They are also aware that the relationship between landfalling hurricanes and those that remain at sea is not uniform through all time periods. However, they believe that key features like the medieval peak and subsequent lull are real and help to validate our current understanding of the factors governing long-term changes in Atlantic hurricane activity.
One thing the estimates show is that long periods of warm Atlantic ocean conditions produce greater Atlantic hurricane activity.
“It seems that the paleodata support the contention that greenhouse warming may increase the frequency of Atlantic tropical storms,” said Mann. “It may not be just that the storms are stronger, but that there are there may be more of them as well.”
The National Science Foundation and the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences supported this work.
Faroe Islands may adopt euro
THE Faroe Islands, one of northern Europe’s most productive fishing countries, may decide to adopt the Euro as its national currency.
The islands’ influential Independence Party has applied to the central bank of the European Union to replace the Danish krona, which it has used for more than a century, with the euro.
What gives the move extra credence is that it has come to an agreement on this thorny issue with the Republic party. A public referendum has to take place on the possible changing of currency before the Faroese parliament, Logtingid, makes the final decision, according to Faroese news source Kringvarp Foroya. However, the move is unlikely to lead to an application for full EU membership at this stage, but with neighbours Iceland possibly joining the EU some think it would make economic sense.
The semi-independent Faroe Islands – Denmark now only looks after defence and certain international affairs – is heavily dependent on fishing. It has a large fishing fleet and more than 80 fish processing factories, many of which are major exporters to the eurozone and also the UK.
In fact fisheries products, including farmed salmon, represent 95 per cent of total exports.
The country is also fiercely protective of its rich and highly productive fishing grounds. There are no EU style quotas as such – instead each vessel is allocated a certain number of fishing days and grounds can be closed off during key breeding periods or if stocks appear to be threatened.
Humans Damaging The Oceans In Profound Ways
There is mounting evidence that human activity is changing the world’s oceans in profound and damaging ways.
Man-made carbon emissions “are affecting marine biological processes from genes to ecosystems over scales from rock pools to ocean basins, impacting ecosystem services and threatening human food security,” the study by Professor Mike Kingsford of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University and colleague Dr Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, Scotland, warns.
A new review, published in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology, says that rates of physical change in the oceans are unprecedented in some cases, and change in ocean life is likely to be equally quick.
These include changes in the areas fish and other sea species can inhabit, invasions, extinctions and major shifts in marine ecosystems. “In the past, the boundaries between geological ages are marked by sudden losses of species. We may now be entering a new age in which climate change and other human-caused factors are the major threats for the oceans and their life,” Andrew and Mike say.
“Given how essential the oceans are to how our entire planet functions it is vital that we intervene before more tipping points are passed and the oceans go down the sort of spiral of decline we have seen in the world’s tropical forests and rangelands, for example.”
Man-made carbon emissions are now above the ‘worst case’ scenario envisioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), causing the most rapid global warming seen since the peak of the last Ice Age. At the same time the carbon is acidifying the oceans, with harmful consequences for certain plankton and shellfish.
“At current emission rates it is possible we will pass the critical level of 450 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere by 2040. That’s the level when, it is generally agreed, global climate change may become catastrophic and irreversible,” they add. “At that point we can expect to see the loss of most of our coral reefs and the arctic seas.”
“The climate is currently warming faster than the worst case known from the fossil record, about 56 million years ago, when temperatures rose about 6 degrees over 1000 years. If emissions continue it is not unreasonable to expect warming of 5.5 degrees by the end of this century.”
Scientists expect ocean oxygen levels to decline by about six per cent for every one degree increase in temperature and areas in the sea which are low in oxygen to grow by at least 50 per cent. This has major implications for the world’s most productive fishing waters in the cool temperate regions. The seas provide a major source of humanity’s protein food – and any loss in fisheries production will have a direct impact on us, he adds.
Besides the changes induced by carbon emissions, the oceans are also under assault from increased UV exposure, toxic pollution, alien species and disease. The combined effect is to weaken the ability of many species to withstand these multiple stresses. Another risk is that warming will unlock vast reserves of frozen methane in the seabed, triggering uncontrollable, runaway global warming.
“In the face of such terrifying changes even large scale interventions such as establishment of very large networks of Marine Protected Areas are unlikely to be effective,” Mike cautions. “On a global scale, an immediate reduction in CO2 emissions is essential to minimize future human-induced climate change.”
The oceans can also play a role in the proposed solution of eliminating carbon emissions, by producing clean energy from wind, wave and tide, by triggering phytoplankton blooms with fertilisers to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere, or using the seabed to store CO2.
Russian Navy Ships Polluting Black Sea: Ukraine
Ukraine has complained to Russia that its ships stationed in the naval base at Sevastopol have polluted the Black Sea, news agency Interfax reported Aug. 17.
Kiev “has sent a protest note to the Russian Federation because of the pollution of the bay of Sevastopol” on the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine, deputy foreign affairs minister Yury Kostenko was quoted as saying.
Russia has had a fleet in the Ukrainian port since Soviet times, but the base has become a source of tension as relations fray between Moscow and its ex-Soviet neighbor.
The pollution occurred at the end of July when a large number of Russian vessels contaminated the bay with oil, the foreign affairs ministry said, cited by Interfax.
According to the agreement governing the fleet, Russia should let Ukraine’s environmental authorities enter the area in such a situation but this has not been allowed, Kostenko said.
Ukraine called on Moscow to take action and resolve the problem.
Since the start of the year, Kiev has sent 14 protest notes to Moscow over the fleet stationed on its territory.
Moscow has a lease on the base until 2017 and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for the fleet to leave when the lease expires.
The Russian Black Sea fleet is just one of several disputes which have caused relations to worsen between Moscow and Kiev in recent years. Russia is uneasy over Ukraine’s desire to join military alliance NATO and there have also been disagreements over the price of gas sold to Kiev by Moscow.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko last week of pursuing “anti-Russian” policies. Yushchenko rejected the accusations.
