Constantine Alexander's blog

BSPB uses satellite technology to save eagles from extinction | BirdLife Community

Europe, News Posts

The Bulgarian Society for Protection of Birds (BirdLife Partner) has announced the start of its new campaign for the satellite tracking of Eastern Imperial Eagles.

The experts of the Society are going to place GPS transmitters on seven young eagles currently located at different spots around Bulgaria.

The initiative is part of the LIFE+ project for saving Eastern Imperial Eagle and Saker Falcon from extinction, and is funded with EU money.

The satellite tracking allows the Bulgarian scientists to collect and analyze information about the habits of the birds, but also about the causes of their extinction.

A total of 20 nesting couples of the Eastern Imperial Eagle have been registered in Bulgaria but their number is probably slightly higher, according to the Society for Protection of Birds.

The preservation of the Bulgarian population is seen as crucial for saving the eagles in Europe and globally.

Last summer for the first time, the GPS transmitters were attached to seven young eagles in Bulgaria. Most of them migrated south, with one of them named Boril reaching Saudi Arabia where its transmitter most likely broke as the signal was lost.

Two of the birds – Sofia and Topola – came back safely to Bulgaria this spring, which the others died in various causes – two were electrocuted, one was poisoned, and another one disappeared without any trace.

The seven young eagles to be tracked are almost adult but still have not learned how to fly and are in their nests. The satellite transmitters are attached to their backs, and weigh only 70 grams. They are charged with solar energy.

A total of 23 young Eastern Imperial Eagles were hatched in Bulgaria this spring, which means 1.4 per couple, compared to 1.1 per couple in 2009. The couples with young eagles are only 16 compared to 18 last year.

Last week a 40-day-old imperial eagle was stolen from its nest in Southeastern Bulgaria. The police are currently investigating the case as the criminals left on the spot part of their climbing equipment.

“Despite such incidents we hope that the young eagles will be able successfully to fly out of their nests”, said Svetoslav Spasov from the Society, who is in charge of the LIFE+ project.

The way of the seven birds from last year can tracked on the special website savetheraptors.org HERE

via www.birdlife.org

Study shows stability and utility of floating wind turbines

Wind turbines may be one of the best renewable energy solutions, but as turbines get larger they also get noisier, become more of an eyesore, and require increasingly larger expanses of land. One solution: ocean-based wind turbines. While offshore turbines already have been constructed, they've traditionally been situated in shallow waters, where the tower extends directly into the seabed. That restricts the turbines to near-shore waters with depths no greater than 50 meters -- and precludes their use in deeper waters, where winds generally gust at higher speeds.

An alternative is placing turbines on floating platforms, says naval architect Dominique Roddier of Berkeley, California-based Marine Innovation & Technology. He and his and colleagues have published a feasibility study of one platform design -- dubbed "WindFloat" -- in the latest issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, which is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).

By testing a 1:65 scale model in a wave tank, the researchers show that the three-legged floating platform, which is based on existing gas and oil offshore platform designs, is stable enough to support a 5-megawatt wind turbine, the largest turbine that currently exists. These mammoth turbines are 70 meters tall and have rotors the size of a football field. Just one, Roddier says, produces enough energy "to support a small town."

The next step, says Roddier, is building a prototype to understand the life-cycle cost of such projects and to refine the economics models. The prototype, which is being built in collaboration with electricity operator Energias de Portugal, "should be in the water by the end of summer 2012," he says.

The article, " Windfloat: a Floating Foundation for Offshore Wind Turbines" by Dominique Roddier et al will appear in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. See: http://jrse.aip.org/

ABOUT JOURNAL OF RENEWABLE AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) that covers all areas of renewable and sustainable energy-related fields that apply to the physical science and engineering communities. As an electronic-only, Web-based journal with rapid publication time, JRSE is responsive to the many new developments expected in this field. The interdisciplinary approach of the publication ensures that the editors draw from researchers worldwide in a diverse range of fields. See: http://jrse.aip.org/

ABOUT AIP

The American Institute of Physics is a federation of 10 physical science societies representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world's largest publishers of scientific information in the physical sciences. Offering partnership solutions for scientific societies and for similar organizations in science and engineering, AIP is a leader in the field of electronic publishing of scholarly journals. AIP publishes 12 journals (some of which are the most highly cited in their respective fields), two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. Its online publishing platform Scitation hosts nearly two million articles from more than 185 scholarly journals and other publications of 28 learned society publishers.

Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi
jbardi@aip.org
301-209-3091
American Institute of Physics

Bioenergy: a carbon accounting time bomb

Burung Indonesia Eka Tresnawan The carbon debt created when woody biomass is burned takes centuries to pay off. Zoom In

Bioenergy – a carbon accounting time bomb

30-06-2010

Two new independent scientific studies commissioned by BirdLife International, the European Environmental Bureau and Transport and Environment cast further doubt on the EU's policy of promoting biomass as fuel for heat and power generation, and biofuels for transport.

The first study, carried out by Joanneum Research, identifies a major flaw in the way carbon savings from forest-derived biomass are calculated in EU law as well as under UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. It concludes that harvesting trees for energy creates a 'carbon debt': the carbon contained in the trees is emitted upfront while trees grow back over many years. The true climate impact of so-called woody biomass in the short to medium term can, as a result, be worse than the fossil fuels it is designed to replace.

"The EU is taking out a sub-prime carbon mortgage that it may never be able to pay back. Biomass policy needs to be fixed before this regulatory failure leads to an ecological crisis that no bail out will ever fix", commented Ariel Brunner, Head of EU Policy at BirdLife International. 

The second study, by CE Delft, examines the full climate impact of the main biofuels used in Europe. In particular it looked at the impact of the expansion of agricultural land into environmentally sensitive areas when food production is displaced by fuel crops, a process known as indirect land use change (ILUC).

The report, based on analysis of several EU Commission-sponsored research projects and other international model studies, found that most current biofuels are as bad as fossil fuels for the climate once ILUC is taken into consideration. The study proposes concrete ways of correcting current greenhouse gas balance calculations to fully account for indirect land use change related emissions.

"The EU is taking out a sub-prime carbon mortgage that it may never be able to pay back" —Ariel Brunner, Head of EU Policy at the BirdLife International European Division

"As long as the EU refuses to take the full climate impacts of biofuels into account, its climate strategy for transport is doomed to failure", said Nuša Urbancic, Policy Officer at Transport & Environment, the sustainable transport campaigners. 

"If left unchanged, biomass for energy policy will soon be in the same dire and confused state as biofuel policy is today", added Pieter de Pous, Senior Policy Officer at the European Environmental Bureau. "This can be avoided if the Commission and industry are ready to face up to these facts and develop the necessary measures that will ensure bioenergy policy will actually make a positive contribution to fi

via www.birdlife.org

Unseen Victims of the BP Oil Disaster - Environmental Defense Fund

The daily count of sea creatures dying from coating with oil on the surface of the sea, or on the beaches, continues to rise.  We see sea turtles, sea and shore birds, and marine mammals, familiar creatures to us all.

As sad as these deaths are, the death toll is massively greater for animals not quite as visible, because they are small, living among marsh grasses, or under the surface of the sea, out-of-sight and thus out-of-mind.  The full litany of the dead is deeply disturbing.

Surface currents carry valuable life

The surface waters of a healthy Gulf swim with life, much of it too small to see.  Larvae of shrimp, crab, and other shellfish, and many familiar seafood fishes, spawned at sea, drift toward nurseries in coastal marshes and other shallow waters. Floating mats of seaweed, called sargassum, provide key habitats for babies of many species, now hopelessly contaminated. The interior and underside of these seaweed mats – under normal conditions – are wonderlands of life, as every offshore fisherman knows.

The evolution of the Gulf Loop Current from a strong downstream delivery phase on May 7 to a cutoff eddy phase on June 11, temporarily detaining oil pollution. Credit: NWS.

The Gulf Loop Current – a term now commonplace– is a superhighway in the sea for spawned babies of giant tunas, swordfish and other billfishes, groupers, snappers and other reef fishes, and even for hatchling turtles. These creatures ride the current —our version of Nemo’s East Australian Current— toward adult habitats, at risk as they pass through the 'kill zone' of oil in the northern Gulf.  

See an animation of the current loop here and see a video of the oil spreading here.

This figure represents the evolution of the Gulf Loop. Credit: NOAA.

Luckily, the chance development on June 1 of a cutoff eddy—a normal phase in the evolution of the Gulf Loop Current, where the current bends deep enough to interact with itself, ultimately cutting off a spinning gyre in the northern Gulf—has delayed the otherwise rapid delivery of oil pollution to the pristine coral reefs, mangrove swamps and seagrass beds of northern Cuba, the Florida Keys and beyond.  Delivery of oil downcurrent to those habitats remains likely, as the Gulf Loop redevelops.  In fact, the weathered oil currently held in the cutoff eddy will likely drift northwest towards the Texas coast.

The beauty, and now oil, down below

via blogs.edf.org

BBC News - Conservationists hail arrival of India vulture chicks

Three species of rare vultures in India have been successfully bred in captivity, conservationists say.

Most of the birds were reared in the Indian state of Haryana, but also in the state of West Bengal.

Among the 10 chicks that have fledged this year are four oriental white-backed vultures.

Experts say this species - once found all over India - has been declining at a "rate quicker than the dodo before it became extinct".

Population crash

The birds have been bred by a partnership of British and Indian conservation groups including BirdLife International, Bombay Natural History Society, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), UK International Centre for Birds of Prey (ICBP), and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Chris Packham, RSPB: "The bird world would be a poorer place without vultures"

"This exciting news provides some long-term hope for these three critically endangered species, especially as the ultimate aspiration will be to return birds to the wild," an RSPB statement said.

Conservationists say that South Asia's vulture population has in recent years undergone a drastic population crash.

It used to number tens of millions, but now the combined population of all three species is believed to be well below 60,000 birds.

via news.bbc.co.uk

Key component indentified that helps plants go green

A team of researchers from Duke University and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has found a central part in the machinery that turns plants green when they sense light.

In the Rube Goldberg world of cellular mechanics, this key player turns out to be a garbage truck.

Light is so essential for plants that they have two different systems to take advantage of it, explains Meng Chen, an assistant professor of biology at Duke.

There's the familiar system of organelles called chloroplasts that turn sunlight into fuel via photosynthesis. The photosynthetic pigment inside chloroplasts, chlorophyll, is where the green color comes from.

And then there's a system of light-sensitive proteins called photoreceptors that use light as information and direct plant development and growth. One of the things the plant does with that information is control how it makes chloroplasts. "The greening process is completely dependent on the presence of light. However, how light triggers the making of chloroplasts is still unknown," Chen said.

In a paper appearing in the June 25 issue of Cell, Chen and his team have identified a key intermediary between the light system for information and the light system that makes fuel. The hope is that this knowledge will help researchers use a plant's own photo-sensory systems to increase agricultural yields or improve the photosynthesis of biofuel crops.

"Light is probably the most important environmental cue for a plant," said co-author Joanne Chory, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. "Understanding how light signaling triggers morphological changes in the plant will have a really big impact on every facet of plant biology."

Plants have an array of photoreceptors that are tuned to different wavelengths of light. One type, called phytochromes, are sensitive to red and far-red light and play a major role in the making of chloroplasts and the growth of the stem, said Chen, who is the first author on the study.

One of the first things that happens when the plant detects light is that these phytochromes move from the cell's cytoplasm to its nucleus, where the genes are kept. The photoreceptors gather in discrete spots known as phytochrome nuclear bodies. In an earlier study, Chen had found that the size and number of phytochrome nuclear bodies was directly related to light intensity.

Chen, who started this line of work as a postdoctoral researcher in Chory's lab at the Salk Institute, ran genetic screens for mutants with abnormal phytochrome nuclear bodies. He identified a new gene, hemera, that seems to be required for both the localization and the signaling of phytochrome.

He named the gene for the Greek goddess of daylight, Hemera. It is present in all land plants studied so far.

Mutant plants without hemera were found to have dramatically reduced sensitivity to red and far-red light, they failed to develop chloroplasts, were albino, and died while still only seedlings. Without Hemera, "a plant is blind to light and the chloroplasts can't develop," Chen said.

The prevailing model of chloroplast development involves signaling molecules called PIFs that hold chloroplast development back when the plant senses darkness. But when phytochromes are activated by light, they destroy the PIFs, clearing the way for chloroplast development. PIFs tended to aggregate around these phytochrome nuclear bodies before being destroyed. Hemera also tended to be found near the nuclear bodies, suggesting that the nuclear bodies were the site of PIF destruction.

In a series of experiments with hemera mutants, the team found these plants tended to have smaller phytochrome nuclear bodies and were unable to remove PIFs in light, which could explain why the mutants weren't making chloroplasts.

The team also found that hemera is structurally similar to a yeast protein called RAD23, that is known to be the garbage truck that rounds up other proteins flagged for destruction and carries them to the place where they are ground up. They inserted Hemera from Arabidopsis plants into yeast that lacked RAD23, and found that it partially took over RAD23's job, Chen said.

Other researchers who contributed to the study include postdoctoral fellows Rafaelo M. Galvão and Meina Li from the Chen laboratory at Duke, and Brian Burger, Jane Bugea and Jack Bolado at the Salk Institute.

Chen's work on this project was supported in part by a National Science Foundation grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and Duke University. The work at the Salk Institute was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

"Arabidopsis HEMERA/pTAC12 Initiates Photomorphogenesis by Phytochromes," Meng Chen, Rafaelo M. Galvao, Meina Li, Brian Burger, Jane Bugea, Jack Bolado, Joanne Chory; Cell, Volume 141, Issue 7, 1230-1240, 25 June 2010 http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2810%2900543-X

Contact: Karl Leif Bates
karl.bates@duke.edu
919-681-8054
Duke University

NOAA-supported scientists predict 'larger than average' Gulf dead zone

The northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone, an underwater area with little or no oxygen known commonly as the "dead zone," could be larger than the recent average, according to a forecast by a team of NOAA-supported scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, Louisiana State University, and the University of Michigan.

Scientists are predicting the area could measure between 6,500 and 7,800 square miles, or an area roughly the size of the state of New Jersey. The average of the past five years is approximately 6,000 square miles. It is the goal of a federal state task force to reduce it to 1,900 square miles. The largest dead zone on record, 8,484 square miles, occurred in 2002.

This forecast is based on Mississippi River nutrient flows compiled annually by the U.S. Geological Survey. Dead zones off the coast of Louisiana and Texas are caused by nutrient runoff, principally from agricultural activity, which stimulates an overgrowth of algae that sinks, decomposes, and consumes most of the life-giving oxygen supply in the water. It is unclear what impact, if any, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill will have on the size of the dead zone.

"The oil spill could enhance the size of the hypoxic zone through the microbial breakdown of oil, which consumes oxygen, but the oil could also limit the growth of the hypoxia-fueling algae," said R. Eugene Turner, Ph.D., professor of oceanography at Louisiana State University. "It is clear, however, that the combination of the hypoxic zone and the oil spill is not good for local fisheries."

Hypoxia is of particular concern because it threatens valuable commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries. In 2008, the dockside value of commercial fisheries was $659 million. The 24 million fishing trips taken in 2008 by more than three million recreational fishers further contributed well over a billion dollars to the Gulf economy.

"As with weather forecasts, this prediction uses multiple models to predict the range of the expected size of the dead zone," said Robert Magnien, Ph.D., director of NOAA's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. "The strong track record of these models reinforces our confidence in the link between excess nutrients from the Mississippi River and the dead zone."

"The 2010 spring nutrient load transported to the northern Gulf of Mexico is about 11 percent less than the average over the last 30 years," said Matthew Larsen, Ph.D., USGS associate director for water. "An estimated 118,000 metric tons of nitrogen in the form of nitrate were transported in May 2010 to the northern Gulf."

The collaboration among NOAA, USGS, and University scientists facilitates understanding of the linkages between activities in the Mississippi River watershed and the downstream effects on the northern Gulf of Mexico. Long-term data sets on nutrient loads and the extent of the hypoxic zone have improved forecast models used by management agencies to understand the nutrient reductions required to reduce the size of the hypoxic zone to the established goal. This year's forecast is an example of NOAA's growing ecological forecasting capabilities that allow for the protection of valuable resources using scientific, ecosystem-based approaches.

An announcement of the size of the 2010 hypoxic zone, which is an annual requirement of the Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force Action Plan, will follow a NOAA-supported monitoring survey led by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium between July 24 and August 2. Information on the extent of hypoxia will also be available on the NOAA's Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Watch Web page, which displays near real-time results of the NOAA Fisheries Service summer fish survey in the northern Gulf of Mexico currently underway and scheduled to be completed by July 18.

NOAA's mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources.

Contact: Ben Sherman
ben.sherman@noaa.gov
301-713-3066
NOAA Headquarters

Arctic climate may be more sensitive to warming than thought, says new study

		From left to right, Ashley Ballantyne of the University of Colorado at Boulder, Dara Finney of Environment Canada and Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature search for fossils...

A new study shows the Arctic climate system may be more sensitive to greenhouse warming than previously thought, and that current levels of Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide may be high enough to bring about significant, irreversible shifts in Arctic ecosystems.

Led by the University of Colorado at Boulder, the international study indicated that while the mean annual temperature on Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic during the Pliocene Epoch 2.6 to 5.3 million years ago was about 34 degrees Fahrenheit, or 19 degrees Celsius, warmer than today, CO₂ levels were only slightly higher than present. The vast majority of climate scientists agree Earth is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping atmospheric gases generated primarily by human activities like fossil fuel burning and deforestation.

The team used three independent methods of measuring the Pliocene temperatures on Ellesmere Island in Canada's High Arctic. They included measurements of oxygen isotopes found in the cellulose of fossil trees and mosses that reveal temperatures and precipitation levels tied to ancient water, an analysis of the distribution of lipids in soil bacteria which correlate with temperature, and an inventory of ancient Pliocene plant groups that overlap in range with contemporary vegetation.

"Our findings indicate that CO₂ levels of approximately 400 parts per million are sufficient to produce mean annual temperatures in the High Arctic of approximately 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees F)," Ballantyne said. "As temperatures approach 0 degrees Celsius, it becomes exceedingly difficult to maintain permanent sea and glacial ice in the Arctic. Thus current levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere of approximately 390 parts per million may be approaching a tipping point for irreversible ice-free conditions in the Arctic."

A paper on the subject is being published in the July issue of the journal Geology. Co-authors included David Greenwood of Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada, Jaap Sinninghe Damste of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Adam Csank of the University of Arizona, Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and Jaelyn Eberle, curator of fossil vertebrates at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and an associate professor in the geological sciences department.

Arctic temperatures have risen by about 1.8 degrees F, or 1 degree C, in the past two decades in response to anthropogenic greenhouse warming, a trend expected to continue in the coming decades and centuries, said Ballantyne. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 parts per million during the pre-industrial era on Earth to about 390 parts per million today.

During the Pliocene, Ellesmere Island hosted forests of larch, dwarf birch and northern white cedar trees, as well as mosses and herbs, including cinquefoils. The island also was home to fish, frogs and now extinct mammals that included tiny deer, ancient relatives of the black bear, three-toed horses, small beavers, rabbits, badgers and shrews. Because of the high latitude, the Ellesmere Island site on the Strathcona Fiord was shrouded by darkness six months out of the year, said Rybczynski.

		This is an artist's rendering of the Beaver Pond site on Ellesmere Island, in Canada's High Arctic, as it may have looked about 3 to 5 million years ago....

Fossils are often preserved in a process known as permineralization, in which mineral deposits form internal casts of organisms. But at the Ellesmere Island site known as the "Beaver Pond site," organic materials -- including trees, plants and mosses -- have been "mummified" in peat deposits, allowing the researchers to conduct detailed, high-quality analyses, said Eberle.

Ballantyne said the high level of preservation of trees and mosses at Ellesmere Island allowed the team to measure the ratio of oxygen isotopes in plant cellulose, providing information on water absorbed from precipitation during the Pliocene and which yielded estimates of past surface temperatures. The team also compared data on the width of tree rings in larch trees at the Beaver Pond site to trees at lower latitudes today to help them estimate past temperatures and precipitation levels.

The researchers also analyzed the distribution of ancient membrane lipids from soil bacteria known as tetraethers, which correlate to temperature. The chemical structure of the fossilized tetraethers makes them highly sensitive to both temperature and acidity, or pH, said Ballantyne.

The last line of evidence put forward by the CU-Boulder-led team was a comparison of Pliocene ancient vegetation at the site with vegetation present today, providing a clear "climate window" showing the overlap of the two time periods. "The results of the three independent temperature proxies are remarkably consistent," said Eberle. "We essentially were able to 'read' the vegetation in order to estimate air temperatures in the Pliocene."

Today, Ellesmere Island is a polar desert that features tundra, permafrost, ice sheets, sparse vegetation and a few small mammals. Temperatures range from roughly minus 37 degrees F, or minus 38 degrees C, in winter to 48 degrees F, or 9 degrees C, in summer. The region is one of the coldest, driest environments on Earth.

"Our findings are somewhat disconcerting regarding the temperatures and greenhouse gas levels during the Pliocene," said Eberle. "We already are seeing evidence of both mammals and birds moving northward as the climate warms, and I can't help but wonder if the Arctic is headed toward conditions similar to those that existed during the Pliocene."

Elevated Arctic temperatures during the Pliocene -- which occurred shortly before Earth plunged into an ice age about 2.5 million years ago -- are thought to have been driven by the transfer of heat to the polar regions and perhaps by decreased reflectivity of sunlight hitting the Arctic due to a lack of ice, said Ballantyne. One big question is why the Arctic was so sensitive to warming during this period, he said.

Multiple feedback mechanisms have been proposed to explain the amplification of Arctic temperatures, including the reflectivity strength of the sun on Arctic ice and changes in vegetation seasonal cloud cover, said Ballantyne. "I suspect that it is the interactions between these different feedback mechanisms that ultimately produce the warming temperatures in the Arctic."

In 2009, CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center showed the September Arctic sea ice extent was 649,000 square miles, or 1,680,902 square kilometers, below the 1979-2000 average, and is declining at a rate of 11.2 percent per decade. Some climate change experts are forecasting that the Arctic summers will become ice-free summers within a decade or two.

In addition to its exceptional preservation of fossil wood, plants, insects and mollusks, the Beaver Pond site on Ellesmere Island is the only reported Pliocene fossil site in the High Arctic to yield vertebrate remains, said Rybczynski.

Eberle said there is high concern by scientists over a proposal to mine coal on Ellesmere Island near the Beaver Pond site by WestStar Resources Inc. headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. "Paleontological sites like the Beaver Pond site are unique and extremely valuable resources that are of international importance," said Eberle. "Our concern is that coal mining activities could damage such sites and they will be lost forever."

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council in Canada, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and the European Research Council.

Contact: Ashley Ballantyne
ashley.ballantyne@colorado.edu
University of Colorado at Boulder

Ocean Futures Team Returns to Gulf Oil Disaster Front Line

OFS Alert June 29, 2010 Dear Constantine Alexander, At dawn the morning of June 29, I dispatched the Ocean Futures Society response team back to the Gulf of Mexico.    Equipped with hazmat suits and gear, they loaded equipment onboard the van and began the 2000-mile trip back to Louisiana, spurred on by their achievements from the first trip: our team captured the first images of masses of oil moving beneath the surface   , providing evidence that the surface booms would not be sufficient defense for the vulnerable marshlands. The team will again drive the 31 hours straight through in shifts and the entire trip will be carbon-offset via GreenShipping   and Bonneville Environmental Foundation   , including all travel by truck, plane, boat, and any lodging. We now better understand the massive volumes of oil still spewing into the waters of the Gulf and the measures being tried.  I will soon join the team to lend my experience in searching for solutions and to support those efforts that can be most successful.   Follow the team on the way in real time   as they carbon-offset the trip and to find out where we are following the oil and the stories. Our work is made possible by your generous support, so please consider making a donation to keep this dedicated team on site   to do the job we all need done. Please help us follow more than oil; help us follow the solution. Protect the Ocean and You Protect Yourself,  Jean-Michel Cousteau, President Donate Now Yes, I want to protect the Oceans!   Ocean Futures Society depends on public support. Your charitable, tax-deductible contribution allows Ocean Futures Society to fulfill our mission at the Gulf Oil Crisis front line.   Creature Feature To remind yourself of the beauty and wonder we're all committed to protecting, watch Coral Spawning   and marvel at footage shot by OFS filmmakers on expedition in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006.  It will remind you of all that is yet to be discovered and of the ocean's stunning vitality under normal circumstances.   Take Action: Oil Drilling Konstantinos Alexandros, the Gulf of Mexico is in a state of emergency after the disastrous oil platform explosion, and the oil continues to spew from broken pipes. Please make your voice heard.
Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society www.oceanfutures.org

BBC - Richard Black's Earth Watch: Whaling commission: What's missing?

So the whales have been put to bed for another year; and at Agadir airport, amid all the tanned Europeans making their way back from their beach holidays (well, lobster-red in the case of Brits, obviously) I'm thinking about all the issues that didn't get solved this time.

One of the issues that concerns conservationists most about the IWC is where its competence ends.

For most of the time, its discussions concern just 12 species from the global total of about 90 cetaceans.

(I deliberately leave the number vague because there are always changes of mind about what's a separate species and what isn't, especially in the case of the beaked whales, the most enigmatic branch of the order.)

So it doesn't have a remit, for example, to regulate or even cast much of eye over the Dall's porpoise hunt off the Japanese coast, which accounts for about 15,000 animals each year, with perhaps a further 5,000 taken as bycatch in fishing nets.

Two years ago, the IWC's scientific committee recommended [300KB PDF] that the take be reduced to levels it considered sustainable, and asked for more research on quantifying the population size. But it is unable to mandate either.

The same is true of hunting for species such as beluga, narwhal, pilot whale, and Baird's beaked whale that variously takes place around the Arctic, in Japanese waters, and the Caribbean.

From the standpoint of ecology and conservation, this is absolutely illogical. Small cetaceans are just as capable of being rendered extinct through hunting as big ones, and often inhabit the same ecosystems.

It's also illogical from a territorial point of view. These hunts take place within national waters; but so does most hunting for minke whales, bowheads, humpbacks, gray whales and other species that are under the IWC's explicit aegis.

It stems from history; from the fact that at its inception the IWC was a forum of whale-hunting nations - with Norway and the UK in the vanguard at that particular point - with a remit to conserve commercially important species so there was something to hunt.

Is that appropriate now?

Many would say not - and that if they were coming at the issue afresh, governments would either establish a body that encompassed all cetaceans, or one that acted on the high seas only - or (a favoured option of some within the hunting nations) a series of regional organisations analogous to Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) such as the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission.

How much these bodies would be geared towards pure conservation and how much management of hunting they would do depends, of course, on your vision of cetaceans.

As it is, species such as the Dall's porpoise are left without any effective international management.

The same is true, more starkly, of the smallest cetaceans living in rivers or in coastal zones.

The baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, is almost certainly extinct, as we've discussed before on these pages; the

via www.bbc.co.uk