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Joining Forces to Save the Seas: Unprecedented Partnership Has Potential to Transform Ocean Governance and Leverage Billions of Dollars for Ocean Health

Statement from Conservation International on the Global Partnership for Oceans announced by World Bank President Robert Zoellick 

 Following a presentation from World Bank President Robert Zoellick at The Economist World Ocean Summit in Singapore today, Conservation International announced its enthusiastic support of the Global Partnership for Oceans. The partnership, according to Zoellick, will be coalition of governments, international organizations, civil society groups and private interests, joining together to confront widely documented problems of over-fishing, pollution, habitat loss and climate change.

"The bottom line is our lives depend on oceans, but we need to better understand them. We need to adequately value oceans and the benefits they provide, and act on this knowledge. If we don't do this, we and future generations of people will be hurt," said Conservation International Chairman and CEO Peter Seligmann. "I commend Robert Zoellick and the World Bank on taking a critical step to catalyze the funding required by governments, businesses and civil society to secure ocean health for us and our children."

Conservation International has already demonstrated a successful ocean conservation model in the field with its Seascape approach, which aims to establish responsible governance and recovering ocean health at a large scale (hundreds of thousands or millions of square kilometers) through collaboration among governments of bordering nations, stakeholder groups and partner organizations.

"This partnership is timely because oceans are under threat and have not been properly managed. Demand for seafood and other benefits from the oceans are growing while marine ecosystems are declining in health," said Sebastian Troëng, Vice President of Marine Conservation at Conservation International. "Conservation International has talented staff and strong partnerships around the globe, but no organization has the ability to singlehandedly resolve the challenges facing the world’s oceans. Working with the World Bank in this Partnership, we bring together governments, businesses, financial institutions and local communities to support healthy and productive oceans in a way we could not have done alone."

Over the past decade, Conservation International has catalyzed the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape (a collaboration between Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador); the Papuan Bird's Head Seascape (Indonesia); the Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape (Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia); and the Abrolhos Seascape (Brazil).

"When the governance situation changes and countries establish marine protected areas, an average there is a 21 percent increase in the diversity, and a 28 percent increase in the size of the organisms inside the reserves relative to unprotected areas nearby," added Troeng. "Those same reserves have seen the tons of fish per square kilometer increase 446 percent on average. And research has shown that communities using marine protected areas have greater incomes, more diversified livelihoods and greater environmental awareness than nearby communities that do not have marine protected areas."

Conservation International is joined in this partnership by a number of developed and developing countries and country groupings, including island nations; non-government organizations and advocacy bodies like Environmental Defense Fund, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), National Geographic Society, The Nature Conservancy, Oceana, Rare and World Wildlife Fund (WWF); science bodies like the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); industry groups like National Fisheries Institute, and the World Ocean Council whose members rely on sustainable seafood supplies or are dependent on ocean resources; international organizations including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The Global Environment Facility, Global Ocean Forum, GRID Arendal (Norway), the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and the World Bank Group.

 

Study IDs new marine protected areas in Madagascar

		The new study allows Madagascar to plan for different marine protected areas -- from strict no-take zones to areas where some fishing will be allowed. Credit: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS

A new study by the University of California, Berkeley, Wildlife Conservation Society, and others uses a new scientific methodology for establishing marine protected areas in Madagascar that offers a "diversified portfolio" of management options – from strict no-take zones to areas that would allow fishing.

The methodology looks at existing information on the country's climate, along with dependence on fisheries and marine resources, and applies three different planning approaches to establish priorities for management along the entirety of Madagascar's west coast.

The diversified portfolio approach to marine conservation greatly increases the likelihood of finding and implementing successful management that fits a country's needs while simplifying the process of picking locations and the most appropriate forms of marine management, the authors say.

Considering the need to develop a management regime for the reefs and mangroves of Madagascar that factors in the impacts of climate change, the methodology recommends a range of conservation areas with strict no-take protection as only one type of management recommendation.

The paper appears in the February 16th issue of the open access journal PLoS One. Authors include: Thomas Allnut, Merrill Baker, and Claire Kremen of the University of California, Berkeley; Tim McClanahan, Caleb McClennen, Andry Rakotomanjaka, and Tantely Tianarisoa of the Wildlife Conservation Society; Erwann Lagabrielle and Serge Andrefouet of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement; and Reg Watson of the University of British Columbia.

The authors say the process provides a more efficient and comprehensive way to plan on a large scale and found that several marine areas in Madagascar come out as conservation priorities across all methodologies. Specifically, these included reefs in the vicinity of the Barren Islands, the large shallow banks to the northwest and southwest, and the reefs of Juan de Nova.

The study highlights the differences in the country's regional patterns. These include heavy human pressure in the south and areas of high climate variability intermixed with lower vulnerability but high biodiversity in the northwest. Areas of particularly high biodiversity value include the islands, reefs, and bays of the northwest; the fringing reefs of the southwest; and the barrier reefs and islands of the central west coast.

Madagascar is one of the poorest countries on Earth yet has proposed to create over 1 million hectares (3,861 square miles) of protected areas to provide for the long-term conservation of its marine resources.

"It behooves countries, in the face of impending fisheries and climate crises, to plan and implement intelligent management that will increase the resilience of their natural marine resources," said co-author Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society, "This paper will provide a roadmap for Madagascar to plan and manage these resources and the methods should prove affordable and useful for the poorest countries where adaptation to climate change will make marine spatial planning a critical part of a successful response."

Co-author Caleb McClennen, WCS Director for Marine Programs, said: "Creation of protected areas is a key conservation strategy to safeguarding marine resources, but one size doesn't fit all. This study demonstrates the need for a comprehensive portfolio of management solutions from community based coastal fisheries to fully protected marine parks."

This study has been supported partly by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. 

The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. We do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the Flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes toward nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony. WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth.

Contact: Stephen Sautner
ssautner@wcs.org
718-220-3682
Wildlife Conservation Society

Neurotoxins in shark fins: A human health concern

University of Miami study shows alarming accumulation of BMAA neurotoxins in shark fins, which may pose a serious threat to shark fin consumers

		In a new study by University of Miami marine biologist Neil Hammerschlag and Deborah Mash, M.D., uncover an alarming accumulation of BMAA neurotoxins in shark fins, which may pose a serious threat to shark fin consumers. Credit: Eric Cheng

Sharks are among the most threatened of marine species worldwide due to unsustainable overfishing. Sharks are primarily killed for their fins alone, to fuel the growing demand for shark fin soup, which is an Asia delicacy. A new study by University of Miami (UM) scientists in the journal Marine Drugs has discovered high concentrations of BMAA in shark fins, a neurotoxin linked to neurodegenerative diseases in humans including Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig Disease (ALS). The study suggests that consumption of shark fin soup and cartilage pills may pose a significant health risk for degenerative brain diseases.

"Shark fins are primarily derived through finning, a practice where by shark fins are removed at sea and the rest of the mutilated animal is thrown back in the water to die," said co-author Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, research assistant professor of Marine Affairs & Policy and director of the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program (RJD) at UM. "Estimates suggest that fins from as many as 70 million sharks end up in soup. As a result, many shark species are on the road to extinction. Because sharks play important roles in maintaining balance in the oceans, not only is shark fin soup injurious to the marine environment, but our study suggests that it is likely harmful to the people who are consuming them."

Seven species of shark were tested for this study: blacknose, blacktip, bonnethead, bull, great hammerhead, lemon, and nurse sharks. Samples were collected from live animals in waters throughout South Florida.

"The concentrations of BMAA in the samples are a cause for concern, not only in shark fin soup, but also in dietary supplements and other forms ingested by humans, " says study co-author Prof. Deborah Mash, Director of the University of Miami Brain Endowment Bank. The Bank supports basic and clinical research and holds one of the world's largest collection of postmortem human brains encompassing a wide range of neurological disorders. In 2009, Prof. Mash and her co-authors published a study in the journal Acta Neurological Scandinavica, demonstrating that patients dying with diagnoses of Alzheimer's Disease and ALS had unusually high levels of BMAA in their brains up to 256 ng/mg, whereas normal healthy aged people had no BMAA, or only trace quantities of the toxin present. "BMAA was first linked to neurodegenerative diseases in Guam, which resulted in the progressive loss of structure and function of neurons."

The shark study found a similar range and even higher BMAA in the fins tested. The new study found levels of between 144 and 1836 ng/mg of BMAA, which overlapped the levels we measured in the brains of Alzheimer's and ALS victims. Surprisingly, this level fits with the BMAA levels in fruit bats examined by Paul Cox, animals which concentrate BMAA from their diet of cycad seeds. He linked ingestion of fruit bats to the severe ALS/Parkinsonism dementia that afflicted many people in Guam.

"Not only does this work provide important information on one probable route of human exposure to BMAA, it may lead to a lowering of the demand for shark fin soup and consumption of shark products, which will aid ocean conservation efforts," added Hammerschlag.

The project was funded through a generous donation from the Herbert W. Hoover Foundation. Established in 1990, the foundation takes a leadership role in supporting unique opportunities that provide solutions to issues related to the community, education, and the environment. Herbert W. Hoover was an early leader in the conservation movement, fighting to protect Biscayne Bay and leading the effort to create Biscayne National Park.

The University of Miami is the largest private research institution in the southeastern United States. The University's mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives.

The Leonard Miller School of Medicine's Department of Neurology, through interdisciplinary collaborations with other medical specialists, and scientists in other disciplines, provides both compassionate quality care for complex neurological disorders and seeks better treatment and prevention mechanisms through cutting-edge research.

Founded in 2009, the R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation Program is a joint program of the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science and the Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. The Rosenstiel School offers one of largest, most comprehensive marine and atmospheric programs in the nation. The Abess Center encourages innovative interdisciplinary initiatives that bridge the gap between hard science and environmental policy. 

Contact: Barbra Gonzalez
barbgo@rsmas.miami.edu
305-421-4704
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science

 

Scientists call for no-take coral sea park

Coral Sea Map

More than 300 eminent scientists from 21 other countries around the world today urged the Australian Federal Government to create the world's largest no-take marine reserve in the Coral Sea.

"Marine reserves are an important tool for managing and restoring ecosystems. They protect brood stocks for sustainable fisheries and rebuild distorted foodwebs. We know how well they work because of the differences that we observe again and again between different marine zones under existing management schemes. Already, the recent rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef has resulted in a doubling of coral trout and other commercially important species" says the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Professor Terry Hughes.

"The Australian Government's draft plan for a marine reserve in the Coral Sea is a significant step forward - but misses a unique opportunity for Australia to demonstrate global leadership in marine stewardship, by declaring the Coral Sea within Australia's EEZ as the world's largest no-take area," according to the statement, signed by more than 300 scientists.

"The Coral Sea adjoins the Great Barrier Reef, and because of its remoteness is one of the most intact oceanic ecosystems in the world. Together the two reserves would constitute the world's largest protected ocean ecosystem – at a time of growing concerns over the widespread loss of megafauna, corals and other marine life closer to shore," says Professor Hugh Possingham, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions.

"We believe that an increased level of protection would be of immense benefit to Australia and to the world, at negligible cost. The Coral Sea is one of only a handful of places in the world where a very large oceanic no-take park could be created within a single national jurisdiction," the scientists said.

Their statement identifies six main reasons for extending the level of protection in the proposed marine reserve:

• Most of the shallow coral reefs, cays and sublittoral reefs of the western Queensland Plateau and the seamounts of the southern Coral Sea will not be fully protected in the Government's proposed reserve.
• The reefs of the Coral Sea need more protection: under the current plan only 2 new reefs out of 25 will receive a high level of protection. These reefs are important for recharging the corals of the GBR.
• Deep sea systems and seamounts need greater protection. The area contains Australia's largest deep trough system, which attracts large numbers of feeding and spawning fish, birds and whales.
• Ocean ecosystems need better protection from long-line fishing vessels, which threaten populations of yellowfin tuna, barracuda, sharks, turtles and seabirds.
• Catch-and-release fishing in the Coral Sea should be banned because of the high losses caused by predation and barotrauma, and its impact on shark populations
• It is much more cost-effective to manage a single, large no-take zone with simple boundaries than a variety of differently classified zones .

"A reserve of this scale and level of protection would provide unprecedented refugia for top ocean predators that are fast disappearing elsewhere in the world,", Professor Terry Hughes said.

"Such a reserve will help to improve the resilience of the region's coral reefs to climate change, and provide a globally significant scientific reference site," adds Professor Bob Pressey of CoECRS and James Cook University.

"We believe that our recommendations will have minimal social and economic costs because there is very little current use of the Coral Sea region - but the recommendations will boost Australia's international reputation as a leader in marine protection and as an eco-tourism destination," he adds.

"Fully protecting the Coral Sea will provide a lasting legacy for future generations to enjoy and will reinforce the excellent levels of protection already achieved in the GBR," Professor Hughes said.

A Consensus Statement from the Australian and International Science Community on the proposed Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserve

The Australian Government's draft plan for a marine reserve in the Coral Sea is a significant step forward, but it contains a number of short-comings. The draft plan misses a unique opportunity for Australia to demonstrate global leadership in marine stewardship, by declaring the Coral Sea within Australia's EEZ as the world's largest no-take area, to protect its immense environmental and heritage values from the escalating threats of overfishing and climate change.

We believe that an increased level of protection would be of immense benefit to Australia and to the world, at negligible cost. The Coral Sea is one of only a handful of places in the world where a very large oceanic no-take park could be created within a single national jurisdiction. A single large no-take area encompassing Australia's Coral Sea jurisdiction would ensure that the scale of management appropriately matches the biological scale of important ecosystem processes such as dispersal and migration. A very large no-take park immediately adjacent to the GBRMP and its network of highly protected areas would be by far the world's largest protected ocean ecosystem. It would substantially enhance Australia's reputation as a world leader in the stewardship of marine biodiversity, and bolster the World Heritage values of the Great Barrier Reef, which is showing concerning signs of degradation (GBR Outlook Report 2009).

We identify six major issues in the draft plan that need to be addressed:

1. Most of the shallow coral reefs, cays and sublittoral reefs of the western Queensland Plateau and the seamounts of the southern Coral Sea are not included in the proposed no-take zone. Thus the representativeness of the no-take reserve is poor, with inadequate protection for key habitats in the west and south, contrary to the Australian Government's own principles for marine conservation. The draft plan also makes significant concessions to pelagic fishing activities that are inconsistent with achieving the conservation of species affected by these activities. The South Equatorial Current bifurcates in the Coral Sea into the Coral Sea Gyre in the north and the southwards flowing East Australian Current (Young et al 2011), connecting the Coral Sea biota to both the GBR and southern reefs (Bode et al. 2006), as well as creating unique habitats and a genetic break in the north (van Oppen et al. 2008). The western Coral Sea, which is excluded from no-take zoning, has exceptionally high conservation value, because it includes the majority of the reefs and cays of the Queensland Plateau, breeding and calving grounds for humpback whales, nesting grounds for green turtles, foraging grounds for hawksbill turtles, populations of migratory pelagic species and breeding and foraging areas for seabird species, and the only known spawning aggregation site for black marlin (Ceccarelli 2011). Therefore, the proposed marine national park is not effective at representing the diversity of important habitats, environmental gradients, dispersal potential and highly sensitive species.
2. The coral reefs of the Coral Sea need more protection. Only 2 new reefs out of 25 named reefs in the Coral Sea are afforded a high level of protection. Monitoring by SEWPAC showed that of the two existing high-level reserves (Coringa-Herald and Lihou Marine Reserves), Coringa-Herald Marine Reserve has depauperate coral reef communities with low coral cover at present (Ceccarelli et al. 2008). To enhance connectivity in the region, and facilitate dispersal and recovery processes, additional reef habitat needs to be afforded no-take designation. Commercial and sport fishing targeting reef predators in the Coral Sea also has the potential to deleteriously affect the integrity of the small, relatively isolated and highly exposed reefs, which host smaller populations that are more reliant on large-scale dispersal of larvae than the highly interconnected Great Barrier Reef.
3. Deep benthic systems and seamounts need more protection. Neither the Queensland nor the Townsville Troughs are included in the proposed western no-take zone. Together they represent Australia's largest trough system, attracting large aggregations of feeding and spawning pelagic species. The Marion Plateau sub-region, including Marion and Saumarez Reefs, contains a high proportion of endemic species, in particular demersal sponge communities. Southern Coral Sea reef and deep benthic communities are also not represented in the no-take zone, yet they provide potential stepping stones for southwards range expansions of tropical reef species to gain access to climate change refugia (Beger et al. 2011).
4. Pelagic ecosystems need more protection. The southern Coral Sea is a hotspot for apex predators such as yellowfin tuna, barracuda and sharks. Long-lining should be excluded from the entire Coral Sea because of bycatch of non-target species, among which are sharks and rays, turtles and seabirds, including rare and endangered species in many of these groups. Consequently, as with the adjacent Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, long-lining should not be considered a reasonable activity in the proposed Coral Sea marine reserve.
5. Catch and release fishing in the Coral Sea is inadvisable. Catch-and-release fishing on coral reefs, which will be specifically allowed under the proposed plan, is especially problematic because released fish are vulnerable to predation and to high rates of mortality from barotraumas, hook injury and physiological stress. Catch-and-release fishing also poses a threat to sharks, which are a frequent bycatch in recreational reef fisheries. For example, studies on the Great Barrier Reef shows that grey reef sharks in Blue (fishing) zones are reduced by 97% compared to Pink (no-go zones) (Robbins et al. 2006). Recreational fishing for pelagic species in the Coral Sea Conservation Zone from 1989-2009 amounted to only 0.8% of total catch of black, blue and striped marlin, sailfish, and shortbill spearfish that were caught (and released) in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (NSW Dept. of Primary Industries). Therefore, the economic and social cost of extending the Coral Sea no-take zone to the outer GBRMP boundary is negligible.
6. Cost-effective management requires large no-take zones with simple boundaries. A recent study of potential management costs for the Coral Sea (Ban et al. 2011) demonstrated that management costs would increase sharply with subdivision of the Coral Sea into multiple-use zones, compared to a single no-take zone, largely due to the increased need for compliance activities. Cost-effectiveness of management therefore requires that the extensive additional no-take zoning in the western Coral Sea should be made, contiguous with the proposed eastern no-take zone. A reserve of this scale and level of protection would provide unprecedented refugia for top ocean predators that are under serious pressure elsewhere in the world (Game et al. 2009), improve the resilience of the region's coral reefs to climate change, and provide a globally significant scientific reference site. We believe that our recommendations will have minimal social and economic costs due to the low levels of use in the region, will boost Australia's reputation and branding as a leader in marine protection and destination for wild nature tourism, and will provide a lasting legacy for future generations.

References:

• Ban N.C., Adams V., Pressey R.L. & Hicks J. (2011). Promise and problems for estimating management costs of marine protected areas. Conservation Letters, 4, 241-252.
• Beger M., Babcock R., Booth D.J., Bucher D., Condie S.A., Creese B., Cvitanovic C., Dalton S.J., Harrison P., Hoey A., Jordan A., Loder J., Malcolm H., Purcell S.W., Roelfsma C., Sachs P., Smith S.D.A., Sommer B., Stuart-Smith R., Thomson D., Wallace C.C., Zann M. & Pandolfi J.M. (2011). Research challenges to improve the management and conservation of subtropical reefs to tackle climate change threats. Ecological Management & Restoration, 12, e7-e10.
• Bode M., Bode L. & Armsworth P.R. (2006). Larval dispersal reveals regional sources and sinks in the Great Barrier Reef. Mar Ecol Prog Ser, 308, 17-25.
• Ceccarelli D.M. (2011). Australia's Coral Sea: A biophysical profile. In. Report for the Protect our Coral Sea Coalition Australia.
• Ceccarelli D.M., Choat J.H., Ayling A.M., Richards Z.T., van Herwerden L., Ayling A., Ewels G., Hobbs J.P. & Cuff B. (2008). Coringa-Herald National Nature Reserve Marine Survey – 2007. Report by C&R Consulting and James Cook University to the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts Canberra.
• Game E.T., Grantham H.S., Hobday A.J., Pressey R.L., Lombard A.T., Beckley L.E., Gjerde K., Bustamante R., Possingham H.P. & Richardson A.J. (2009). Pelagic protected areas: the missing dimension in ocean conservation. Trends Ecol Evol, 24, 360-369.
• Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (2009) Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report. (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville).
• Robbins, W. M. Hisano, S.R. Connelly, and J.H. Choat (2006). Ongoing collapse of coral-reef shark populations. Current Biology 16: 2314-2319.
• van Oppen M.J.H., Lutz A., De'ath G., Peplow L. & Kininmonth S. (2008). Genetic traces of recent long-distance dispersal in a predominantly self-recruiting coral. PLoS ONE, 3, e3401.
• Young J., David McKinnon A., Ceccarelli D., Brinkman R., Bustamante R., Cappo M., Dichmont C., Doherty P., Furnas M., Gledhill D., Griffiths S., Hutton T., Ridgway K., Smith D., Skewes T., Williams A. & Richardson. (2011) A. Workshop on the ecosystem and fisheries of the Coral Sea: an Australian perspective on research and management. Rev Fish Biol Fish, 1-8.

Contact: Terry Hughes
terry.hughes@jcu.edu.au
61-747-814-000
ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies

 

Climate change affects bird migration timing in North America

		Geographic variation in phenological response and example trajectories of temperature and arrival date. Credit: Hurlbert AH, Liang Z (2012) Spatiotemporal Variation in Avian Migration Phenology: Citizen Science Reveals Effects of Climate Change. PLoS ONE 7(2): e31662. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031662

Bird migration timing across North America has been affected by climate change, according to a study published Feb. 22 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The results are based on a systematic analysis of observations from amateur birdwatchers. This citizen science approach provided access to data for 18 common North American bird species, including orioles, house wrens, and barn swallows, across an unprecedented geographical region.

The researchers, led by Allen Hurlbert of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that the average arrival time for all species and all locations was shifted earlier by almost a full day for every degree Celsius of warming of the spring temperature, and some species shifted their arrival time by as much as 3-6 days per degree. These results highlight both the power of citizen science for obtaining data, and the potential important impacts of climate change on migration patterns.

"We now have a much better idea of which parts of the country are seeing big shifts in migration timing, and which species may be least able to adapt to the changing climate", says Dr. Hurlbert.

Citation: Hurlbert AH, Liang Z (2012) Spatiotemporal Variation in Avian Migration Phenology: Citizen Science Reveals Effects of Climate Change. PLoS ONE 7(2):e31662. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031662

Contact: Yael Franco
yfranco@plos.org
415-568-3169
Public Library of Science

Even in winter, life persists in Arctic Seas

Results of research cruise to Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas surprise scientists and may have implications for climate modeling

		This image shows the USCGC Healy breaking through the Bering Sea waves. Credit: Chantelle Rose/NSF

Despite brutal cold and lingering darkness, life in the frigid waters off Alaska does not grind to a halt in the winter as scientists previously suspected. According to preliminary results from a National Science Foundation- (NSF) funded research cruise, microscopic creatures at the base of the Arctic food chain are not dormant as expected.

After working aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy for six weeks in waters where winds sometimes topped 70 knots, wind chills fell to -40 degrees and samples often had to be hustled safely inside before seawater froze to the deck, researchers are back in their labs, assembling for the first time a somewhat unexpected picture of how microscopic creatures survive winter in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Although they have much more work to do before publishing their results, they say they are surprised on a number of fronts, including the discovery of active zooplankton--microscopic organisms that drift or wander in ocean, seas or bodies of fresh water.

"The zooplankton community seemed to be quite active, said Carin Ashjian of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the chief scientist on the expedition. "They were feeding at low rates. That was a surprise."

Ashjian is scheduled to discuss the preliminary results from the cruise during a session at the American Geophysical Union's 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah this week.

Although perhaps arcane to non-scientists, the kinds of information gathered by the researchers previously was unattainable and is vital if scientists are to understand how a changing climate in the Arctic might affect the food chain, which extends upward from zooplankton through marine mammals to, eventually, subsistence hunters.

The ecological balance--and potential changes in that balance--of the northern waters potentially has large repercussions for commercial fisheries. The Bering Sea, for example, supports one of the world's most productive fisheries.

"This kind of research is really improving our fundamental understanding of this very important part of the ocean and giving us new information that we can put to use both in numerical models that are used to investigate ecosystem responses to environmental changes, but also in scientists' conceptual models of how these ecosystems really function," Ashjian said.

But, Ashjian noted, as the researchers, including scientists from the University of Rhode Island and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, were working in an area of the globe that is poorly understood by scientists even in the warmest months of the year and seldom visited in winter, discovery was one object of the expedition.

"Our understanding of biological and physical processes during the winter in the Arctic is severely limited because it is so difficult to access these winter seas," Ashjian said. "In particular, understanding of the overwintering strategies of one of the dominant copepod species in the region is not well understood."

Copepods are crustaceans that form a link in the food web between the primary-producing phytoplankton and the plankton-feeding fish as well as being important prey for large baleen whales--such as the bowhead--in the Arctic.

In spite of the challenges associated with working in severe weather and in the sea ice, the cruise was highly successful. In the Chuckchi Sea more sampling stations than originally planned were occupied, even though sea ice was forming as the cruise progressed and almost all of the stations in the Chukchi Sea were occupied in ice cover. Ocean-water temperatures were near the freezing point of seawater at all depths, with little to no stratification of the water column on the shallower shelves.

Despite the ice cover and very short days, low levels of phytoplankton--photo-synthesizing microscopic organisms--were still detected.

"This was a remarkably productive cruise, especially given the conditions under which these scientists were working," said William Wiseman, Natural Sciences Program Manager in the Office of Polar Programs' Division of Arctic Sciences at NSF. "It is easy to forget that, even in the early part of the 21st century, much of the globe remains unexplored by science. As a result, cruises like this are able to produce fundamental and vital knowledge about complex ecological systems; which is why NSF supports exactly this kind of research at the intellectual and physical frontiers."

Technology aboard the Healy also allowed the ship to do what earlier Polar explorers--and even Ashjian's colleagues a few years ago--could not; share their experience with students ashore.

Chantelle Rose, who teaches at Graham High School in St. Paris, Ohio, joined the cruise as part of the NSF-funded PolarTREC (Teacher and Researchers Collaborating and Exploring) program.

She posted on-line journals from the ship and communicated remotely with students, activities that are both in keeping with NSF's goal of combining research and education.

"I know that we need to engage the younger generation in science, but working scientists generally are not great teachers," Ashjian said. "Whenever I always go into a classroom, I worry that I am not always effective. That's a big concern for me. So I like this partnership: I think that this is a good way to get science out into the classroom."

What they continue to learn from specimens and data gathered on the cruise, which wrapped up in January may well change scientific conceptions of how animals at the bottom of the Arctic food chain persist through the Arctic winter and help scientists to improve models designed to predict the effects of a changing climate.

Contact: Deborah Wing
dwing@nsf.gov
703-292-5344
National Science Foundation

Solved! Mystery that stumped ecosystem modelers

Scientists show that predator/prey relationships make possible the rich biodiversity of complex ecosystems

As scientists warn that the Earth is on the brink of a period of mass extinctions, they are struggling to identify ecosystem responses to environmental change. But to truly understand these responses, more information is needed about how the Earth's staggering diversity of species originated.

Curiously, a vexing modeling mystery has stymied research on this topic: mathematical models have told us that complex ecosystems, such as jungles, deserts and coral reefs, in which species coexist and interact with another, cannot persist--even though they obviously do.

But now, Stefano Allesina and Si Tang, both of the University of Chicago, have solved that vexing modeling mystery, and have thereby laid the groundwork for improvements in the modeling of complex ecosystems to environmental change.

The researchers' work, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is published in this week's issue of Nature.

The tension between mathematical models of ecosystems and the existence of the Earth's rich biodiversity was first exposed about 40 years ago by the development of a ground-breaking mathematical model that represented the relationship between ecosystem stability and diversity; the model was developed by Robert M. May of Oxford University.

According to May's model, ecosystems that harbor large numbers of interacting species would necessarily be extremely unstable--so unstable that even slight perturbations, such as variable weather and environmental conditions, would be enough to trigger massive extinctions within them. Therein lies a paradox: According to May's modeling, the persistence in nature of the complex ecosystems we observe should be exceedingly improbable.

Ever since May released his modeling results, scientists have been attempting to identify factors that enable species to persist despite the general tendency towards instability and extinctions highlighted by May's results. Now, in their Nature paper, Allesina and Tang explain why May's results do not accurately describe ecosystems in which "Eat or be eaten", relationships (predator/prey relationships) are prevalent. Allesina explains: "May's model assumes that any two species in a large ecological network interact with one another at random, and without any consideration of the specific type of interaction between them, whether it is a predator-prey relationship, a mutualistic relationship or a competitive relationship."

But in their recent research, Allesina and Tang modeled ecosystems in which species consume each other in addition to interacting with one another as competitors or mutualists. Their results explain why large numbers of species do, in fact, thrive instead of necessarily going extinct as predicted by May's model. This advance provides the foundation for the development of increasingly sophisticated analyses of ecosystem responses to environmental change.

Allesina believes that it is predator/prey relationships (not competitor or mutualistic relationships) that provide the necessary stability for almost infinite numbers of species to exist in ecosystems. They do so by keeping the size of species populations in check at supportable levels. Allesina explains, "When prey are high, predators increase and reduce the number of prey by predation. When predators are low, prey decrease and thus reduce the number of predators by starvation. These predator/prey relationships thereby promote stability in ecosystems and enable them to maintain large numbers of species."

By contrast, mutualistic relationships may reinforce the growth of large populations and competitive relationships may depress population numbers to the point of ecological instability. Allesina says that May's model mixed various types of species interactions but could not represent these relationships accurately because of technical modeling constraints that he and Tang overcame.

"The results of Allesina and Tang's network analyses are important," says David Spiller, an NSF program director, "because they show that the stability properties of complex ecological systems are determined by the type of interaction among species (predation, competition, mutualism) and the strength of those interactions."

Allesina says that he and Tang intend to further improve their ecosystem model by embedding into it well-known interactions that exist between particular species. He also says that the insights gleaned through this study may be used to improve models of other types of networks that are unrelated to ecology, such as various types of gene regulatory networks and chemical reactions.

Remarkably, Allesina says that he and Tang cracked the biodiversity mystery without supercomputers or other high-tech instruments that are so frequently at the core of current biological discoveries: "We did the necessary calculations with just a pen and paper after finding a 1988 article on quantum physics that gave us the key to crack the problem."

Contact: Lily Whiteman
lwhitema@nsf.gov
703-292-8310
National Science Foundation

To celebrate prairie landscapes, research says to take an aesthetic approach

A Kansas State University researcher and former park ranger is helping people take a new view of the prairie and see it as more than a seemingly empty landscape.

Tyra Olstad, doctoral student in geography, North Tonawanda, N.Y., is studying the rich -- although sometimes hidden -- beauty of Kansas landscapes. It's an abstract, yet important, field of study that may help develop new ways to promote and celebrate Kansas tourism, history and geography.

"I became interested in the pejoratives that people layer on prairie landscapes," Olstad said. "I wanted to study how we psychologically interact with places and what this interaction means for the different places."

Kansas landscapes do not fit the conventional definition of beautiful scenery, Olstad said, making it difficult to persuade people that the prairie is anything but flat and dull. But if Kansans learn to celebrate the beauty and rhythm of prairie landscapes in new ways, they can deepen their own sense of place, engender local pride and promote tourism in rural communities.

It all starts with understanding open spaces. Most research in this area focuses on the aesthetics of mountains, forests or seashores -- destinations that fit the convention of beautiful scenery. Different government agencies are beginning to integrate this type of aesthetic research of landscapes into historical and tourism material.

"Researchers have come up with all sorts of ways to measure how important it is to appreciate landscapes as a whole," Olstad said. "We want to understand the aesthetics side of landscapes and not just how much you can get from the land economically or recreationally. Researchers and agencies are looking at scenery as an asset and a part of a place -- a value in and of itself."

But few researchers have studied the prairie under such aesthetic guidelines. While many researchers have noted that it is hard to evaluate seemingly empty landscapes, Olstad argues that prairies are more of an experience than they are a piece of scenery.

"The prairie is an experience that you can't fit into any rubric because it is just as much temporal as it is spatial," Olstad said. "I developed a strong connection with prairie landscapes, and I am trying to translate that into some kind of wider societal appreciation."

Olstad's research encompasses several different fields of study: scientific analysis, ecology and environmental history. She traveled throughout Kansas and visited landmarks such as the Konza Prairie Biological Station, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve and Mount Sunflower -- the highest point in Kansas.

Olstad has spent 10 years working for the National Park Service in places such as Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, Badlands National Park in South Dakota, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado and Fossil Butte National Monument in Wyoming. For her research, Olstad worked under the direction of Kevin Blake, professor of geography, and Elizabeth Dodd, university distinguished professor of English.

Olstad looked at prairie landscapes according to several traditional styles, but noted that using such standards do not always make prairies appear valuable. For instance, Olstad studied scenic evaluations of the prairie using architectural standards and noted that by these standards, the prairie appears empty. She also took a psychological approach and concluded that psychological standards suggest that prairies often make people feel alienated.

But Olstad saw much more positive results when she took an aesthetic approach to the prairie. She took the same artistic techniques used in photography, literature and visual arts and applied them to the prairie. By doing so, she was able to find new perspectives that represent prairie landscapes in positive ways.

"People talk about photographs, images and literature and how they should tell stories," Olstad said. "So I started writing down some of my own experiences of the prairie and taking pictures that shared these experiences."

In the process of applying artistic concepts, Olstad looked at aspects that make up the prairie -- the small insects, spider webs, stones and plants -- and then expanded her view to study the horizon, the wide-open sky, the sunrise and the sunset.

"You can't really fit a horizon or a sunrise and sunset in a book or photograph," Olstad said. "All you can really do is celebrate them. The more you talk about them, the more that other people will either be curious enough to visit the prairie, or they will be intrigued enough to start sharing that with others."

That is how appreciation of the prairie can spread, Olstad said, and she hopes that her research inspires people to celebrate the prairie and look at it with new eyes.

"You don't have to go on grand adventures in Siberia or the Congo," Olstad said. "You can just look in your backyard and it's wondrous."

Olstad also recently published an essay called "How to Draw the Prairie" in the journal Precipitate.

Contact: Tyra Olstad
tolstad@k-state.edu
Kansas State University

For disaster debris arriving from Japan, radiation least of the concerns

Kathryn Higley, a radiation health physicist at Oregon State University, studies uptake of uranium contaminants in plants, information that may help address cleanup issues near the Fukushima nuclear plants in Japan. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)

The first anniversary is approaching of the March, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that devastated Fukushima, Japan, and later this year debris from that event should begin to wash up on U.S. shores – and one question many have asked is whether that will pose a radiation risk.

The simple answer is, no.

Nuclear radiation health experts from Oregon State University who have researched this issue following the meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant say the minor amounts of deposition on the debris field scattered in the ocean will have long since dissipated, decayed or been washed away by months of pounding in ocean waves.

However, that's not to say that all of the debris that reaches Pacific Coast shores in the United States and Canada will be harmless.

"The tsunami impacted several industrial areas and no doubt swept out to sea many things like bottled chemicals or other compounds that could be toxic," said Kathryn Higley, professor and head of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at OSU.

"If you see something on the beach that looks like it may have come from this accident, you shouldn't assume that it's safe," Higley said. "People should treat these debris with common sense; there could be some things mixed in there that are dangerous. But it will have nothing to do with radioactive contamination."

Higley and other OSU experts have been active in studying the Fukushima accident since it occurred, and are now doing research to help scientists in Japan better understand such issues as uptake of radioactive contamination by plants growing near the site of the accident. They also studied marine and fishery impacts near Japan soon after the incident.

"In the city and fields near Fukushima, there are still areas with substantial contamination, and it may be a few years before all of this is dealt with," Higley said. "But researchers from all over the world are contributing information on innovative ways to help this area recover, including some lessons learned from the much more serious Chernobyl accident in 1986 in the Ukraine."

Some of the technology to deal with this is complex. Other approaches, she said, can be fairly low-tech – removal of leaf litter, washing, plowing the ground, collecting and concentrating water runoff.

The repercussions of the event in the ocean, however, and implications for distant shores are much more subdued. Most of the discharge that was of concern was radionuclides of iodine and cesium, which were deposited on widely dispersed, floating marine debris days after the tsunami. Most of the iodine by now will have disappeared due to radioactive decay, and the cesium washed off and diluted in the ocean.

"There are a lot of misconceptions about radioactivity," Higley said. "Many people believe that if it can be measured, it's harmful. But we live in a world of radiation coming to us from the sun, or naturally present in the earth, or even from our own bodies.

"There are higher natural levels of radiation found all around the Rocky Mountains, for instance," she said. "And we can still measure radioactive contaminants in nature from old atmospheric nuclear weapons tests more than 50 years ago."

Like most of those other forms of radiation, Higley said, any measurable radioactivity found on debris from Fukushima should be at very low levels and of no health concern – much less, for instance, than a person might receive in a single X-ray.

Debris from Japan should start to arrive in the U.S. and Canada late this year or in 2013 following normal ocean currents, say other OSU experts who are studying this issue. When they do, some aspects of them might be dangerous – a half-filled, floating, sealed bottle of a toxic chemical, for instance. So people should exercise caution.

But they don't need to worry about radiation.

Contact: Kathryn Higley
Kathryn.higley@oregonstate.edu
541-737-0675
Oregon State University

 

Research offers way to save endangered Florida bird, and a lesson for conservationists

A team of researchers has found a key to the habitat puzzle for improving long-term survival of the endangered Florida Scrub-Jay.

New research published online today in The Royal Society's journal Biology Letters shows that "clustered habitat networks" are needed to maintain the genetic diversity of Florida Scrub-Jays, a species at risk of extinction with just more than 5,000 birds left in the world.

The new research reveals, for the first time, a direct connection between genetic variation of Florida Scrub-Jay groups and geographic distances separating patches of their favored scrub-oak habitat. Researchers analyzed DNA samples of Florida Scrub-Jays and evaluated how genetic differences between them were affected by the gaps of habitat in between them. They found that if habitat patches were separated by more than 2 to 3 miles, the distance was too far to permit free interbreeding – thereby resulting in more inbreeding within isolated groups. Inbreeding reduces genetic fitness, and raises the risk that an isolated population will blink out.

"We now know how to configure the stepping stones of scrub-oak habitat so they can link together Florida Scrub-Jay populations and maintain sufficient genetic diversity to promote long-term survival of the species," says John Fitzpatrick, co-author of the research and executive director of The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "These research findings will be critical to a revision of the recovery plan for endangered Florida Scrub-Jays."

Fitzpatrick says the findings lay out, for the first time, a precise prescription for sustaining fragmented populations of an endangered species, and could be a model for other examples around the country. For Florida Scrub-Jays, that prescription is to maintain or restore networks of the bird's scrub-oak habitat so that individual preserves would be located within 2 to 3 miles of each other. Fitzpatrick says that because the Florida Scrub-Jay population is broken up into 10 distinct genetic units, these habitat networks would only need to be established locally within the 10 regions of individual populations, not across the bird's entire range in Florida.

"We are now revising the Florida Scrub-Jay Recovery Plan to create the geometry of habitat preserves needed within each of the 10 units of the Florida-Scrub Jay population," says Fitzpatrick, who also is a team leader for the group of government and university biologists working on submitting a revised Florida Scrub-Jay recovery plan to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by year's end.

The Florida Scrub-Jay is the only bird found exclusively in Florida. It was added to the federal Endangered Species List in 1987, with a dwindling population down to less than 10 percent of its pre-settlement numbers. The high, dry, sandy scrub-oak patches where the bird lives and breeds exclusively have been prime real estate for Florida developers and for citrus farms. Today, only about 5 percent of the original scrub-oak habitat remains.

"The pizza is gone," Fitzpatrick says. "We're just trying to save the crumbs, so we can keep the Florida Scrub-Jay and a host of other scrub animals and plants in existence."

Contact: John Carberry
johncarberry@cornell.edu
607-255-5353
Cornell University