I am always star struck when I look at nature. Perhaps this is because we are all made from stardust forged in the heart of a star and infused with a whisper of celestial wisdom.
Like so many others, I have come to realize that our lives are completely dependent on nature that provides us with clean water, fruits, vegetables, grains, fuel, fresh air, seasonal climates, coastal protection, recreation and scenic landscapes around the world that will take your breath away. It is no wonder then that nature has been immortalized for centuries by poets, musicians, artists and explorers who have appreciated that which has too often been overlooked by others.
In spite of the extent to which we have unwittingly disturbed so many terrestrial and marine ecosystems in our quest for what is often termed as progress, nature in its infinite wisdom has so far been resilient against our unnatural and often toxic incursions, adaptable, forgiving and regenerative except in some localized areas which are experiencing an unnatural species extinction rate. This degradation signals to us that nature’s strength alone cannot endure the unnatural incursions that are increasingly reaching areas of the world previously thought to be impenetrable by man such as 1,500 meter depths at which fishermen can now trawl for orange roughy and areas beneath the blue-white Antarctic ice from which tons of krill on which whales feed are now being harvested for sport fishing bait, aquarium feeds and aquaculture.
After hearing from people all over the world who share a passion and concern for the preservation of life’s necessities as well as gifts from nature, this blog was launched to share with you international wildlife news, exciting environmental research activities, political action or inaction, and what each of us can do to ensure that the wisdom of nature endures for the benefit of us all as we are mere caretakers of nature for future generations of all species which have a right to thrive in and contribute to a healthy and beautiful world.
Good morning. Welcome to the Balkan Economic Forum 2023 conference.
United in diversity is the motto of the European Union.
It signifies how Europeans have come together to work for peace and mutually beneficial cooperation, while at the same time economically benefiting from the continent’s many different cultures.
The future of peace and prosperity that we seek needs a foundation of acceptance, security, equality, justice, and respect of other nations’ sovereignty.
Our organization offers the opportunity to build the bridges of cooperation as together we uncover the riches of our region and are strengthened by our differences as well as what binds us together as a people in one of the most diverse regions of Europe.
We are all driven by the same dreams and aspirations. And what began as a dream a decade ago evolved into reality as our organization has become infused with a collective energy from which new ideas and business relationships have emerged.
Together, we can collaborate toward a brighter future as long as we remain mindful of history which has shown us that there will be no future if we remain divided. We are all made of the same clay, spirit and dreams and now we can all work for our common future. Regional exchange can be a source of growth and development as well as the enhancement of good governance for the benefit of every one of us.
It is a great honor to declare this Balkan Economic Forum open.
BALKAN ECONOMIC FORUM 2022, Skopje, North Macedonia, November 18, 2022.
Good morning. I am delighted to welcome you to the Balkan Economic Forum 2022 conference.
I founded this non-profit organization in 2014 for the purpose of bringing together some of the most talented and motivated individuals from government, industry and academia in the Balkan countries. The Balkan Economic Forum members represent the very essence of what the Irish poet William Butler Yeats described more than a century ago when he said “In dreams begin responsibilities”. Every one of our members represents organizations and institutions that are making enormous contributions to the development of our economies, the protection of our natural resources on which our economies depend, and the ever-widening Balkan business network.
My dream envisions a Balkan Peninsula with good governance, responsible economic growth, sustainable employment, environmentally sustainable development, regional cooperation and widening educational opportunities. To achieve these goals, the pathway to the future is sustainable development for our region. It offers a framework to generate economic growth, achieve social justice, exercise environmental stewardship and strengthen accountability.
Since the first Balkan Economic Forum conference, all Balkan States have made significant strides towards achieving this goal but just as our economies looked to a growth recovery beyond the pandemic, a new set of challenges confronted the region. Output for the Balkans as a whole has now surpassed pre-pandemic levels, but the response to COVID-19 has resulted in higher public debt and has left lasting scars. The war in Ukraine is sending shockwaves across the region, particularly through higher energy and food prices but also via disruption to trade and investment flows, putting the region’s recovery at risk. As Central Banks struggle to control inflation, the Eastern Mediterranean is once again filled with provocative language as a regional superpower is trying to flex its muscle and dominate the geopolitical field. It is not long ago that our region was associated with vulnerability and political upheaval. We proved to the world that out of our vulnerabilities came our strength to commit to peace and commit to a united future within the political and institutional framework of the European Union. The future couldn’t look brighter than it does right now.
Our organization presents the opportunity for a wonderful voyage of discovery as together we uncover the riches of our region and are strengthened by our differences as well as what binds us together as a people in one of the most diverse regions of Europe. We are all driven by the same dreams and aspirations. And what began here as a dream evolved into reality as our organization became infused with a collective energy from which sprang new ideas.
In this voyage, I have been blessed in making new friends and deriving inspiration from some incredible minds that share our vision and our hopes. Professor Sasho Kjosev is one of these people. At the end of my tenure, Professor Kjosev was elected as our new President with the enthusiastic support of our Board of Directors. We are very proud of his work and vision for our organization and we know that with the support of every member, the Balkan Economic Forum will maintain its elevated position as a forum of intellectual minds.
Together, we can collaborate toward an even brighter future as long as we remain mindful of history which has shown us that there will be no future if we remain divided. We are all made of the same clay, spirit and dreams and now we can all work for our common future. Regional exchange can be a source of growth and development, and of enhancing good governance.
An old African proverb says “if you want to go fast, go alone ... but if you want to go far, go together.” What started as a dream a few years ago, today celebrates its second gathering of motivated individuals committed to the sustainable economic development of the Balkan nations. This movement will succeed for those who embrace it and become part of it. We live in the most culturally diverse and naturally gifted part of Europe. Our strength lies in our diversity and in our determination to be part of the European family of democratic nations.
It is a great honor to declare this Balkan Economic Forum open.
Constantine Alexander Founder Balkan Economic Forum
A study, led by Newcastle University’s Dr Alan Jamieson, has uncovered evidence that not only have plastics now reached the deepest chasms of our oceans but they are being ingested by the animals that live there.
Revealing their findings as part of Sky Ocean Rescue - a campaign to raise awareness of how plastics and pollution are affecting our seas - the team tested samples of crustaceans found in the ultra-deep trenches that span the entire Pacific Ocean - the Mariana, Japan, Izu-Bonin, Peru-Chile, New Hebrides and Kermadec trenches.
These range from seven to over 10 kilometres deep, including the deepest point, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, at a staggering 10,890 metres deep.
Using state-of-the-art facilities at Newcastle University and Shimadzu UK Ltd in Milton Keynes, the team examined 90 individual animals and found ingestion of plastic ranged from 50% in the New Hebrides Trench to 100% at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
The fragments identified include semi-synthetic cellulosic fibres, such as Rayon, Lyocell and Ramie, which are all microfibres used in products such as textiles, to Nylon, polyethylene, polyamide, or unidentified polyvinyls closely resembling polyvinyl alcohol or polyvinylchloride - PVA and PVC.
Research lead Dr Jamieson, said: “We published a study earlier this year showing high levels of organic pollutants in the very deepest seas and lots of people asked us about the presence of plastics, so we decided to have a look. The results were both immediate and startling. This type of work requires a great deal of contamination control but there were instances where the fibres could actually be seen in the stomach contents as they were being removed. We felt we had to do this study given the unique access we have to some of the most remote places on earth, and we are using these samples to make a poignant statement about mankind’s legacy."
Surface to seafloor
Using deep-sea ‘landers’ developed by Dr Jamieson, the technology free-falls to the ocean floor and carries out a variety of monitoring and sampling tasks. The technology has been used at locations around the globe and the team’s deepest landers have been dropped over 200 times around the Pacific Trenches.
There is now an established appreciation of plastic pollution in our oceans and the detrimental effects this has on marine organisms. An estimated 300 million tonnes of plastic now litters the oceans, with more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons currently floating on the surface.
Although the majority of marine litter can be observed floating on the surface, the degradation and fragmentation of plastics will ultimately result in sinking to the underlying deep-sea habitats, where opportunities for dispersal become ever more limited.
A 'Lander' developed by Dr Jamieson. Credit: Newcastle University
“Deep-sea organisms are dependent on food raining down from the surface,” explains Dr Jamieson, “which in turn brings any adverse components, such as plastic and pollutants with it. The deep sea is not only the ultimate sink for any material that descends from the surface, but it is also inhabited by organisms well adapted to a low food environment and these will often eat just about anything. This study has shown that man-made microfibres are culminating and accumulating in an ecosystem inhabited by species we poorly understand, cannot observe experimentally and have failed to obtain baseline data for prior to contamination. These observations are the deepest possible record of microplastic occurrence and ingestion, indicating it is highly likely there are no marine ecosystems left that are not impacted by anthropogenic debris.”
By 2300, climate change may cause fishery yields to decline by as much as 20% around the globe, and by as much as 60% in the North Atlantic, a new modeling study suggests.
The study primarily attributes this decline to a lack of ocean mixing, such that nutrients sink into the deep ocean instead of staying at the ocean surface; such alterations to ocean mixing would ultimately drive a decline in fish populations near the surface, the authors say. Climate change models consistently estimate that fisheries will decline by the end of this century, yet there have been few efforts to explore what changes might occur beyond 2100. Here, J. Keith Moore and colleagues used modeling to explore the effects of climate change on fisheries under a "business-as-usual" scenario whereby carbon emissions continue apace, at the same level as they are now.
The Southern Ocean currently experiences mixing between the bottom and top oceanic layers, delivering such a substantial amount of nutrients to the surface that an abundance flows into other oceans. However, simulations by Moore et al. suggest that a combination of changing winds and warmer upper oceanic layers, plus a poleward shift of nutrient upwelling in the Antarctic, will cause an increased portion of nutrients to sink into the deeper layer of the ocean and become trapped there (for example, the amount of phosphate being upwelled will be reduced by 41%, the model estimates). This will reduce the delivery of nutrients to other oceanic areas, they note. While ocean warming and stratification will increase globally, deep mixing in the North Atlantic will be particularly reduced, the authors find. They note that the long-term effects of these changes mean that fisheries will be reduced for a thousand years or more.
This is a graphic examining the impacts of seabed mining. Credit: Design Studio, University of Exeter.
Mining on the ocean floor could do irreversible damage to deep-sea ecosystems, says a new study of seabed mining proposals around the world. The deep sea (depths below 200m) covers about half of the Earth's surface and is home to a vast range of species.
Little is known about these environments, and researchers from the University of Exeter and Greenpeace say mining could have "long-lasting and unforeseen consequences"- not just at mining sites but also across much larger areas. The study is the first to give a global overview of all current plans to mine the seabed, in both national and international waters, and looks at the potential impacts including physical destruction of seabed habitats, creation of large underwater plumes of sediment and the effects of chemical, noise and light pollution arising from mining operations.
"Our knowledge of these ecosystems is still limited, but we know they're very sensitive," said Dr David Santillo, a marine biologist and senior Greenpeace scientist based at the University of Exeter. "Recovery from man-made disturbance could take decades, centuries or even millennia, if these ecosystems recover at all."
"As we learn more about deep sea ecosystems and the role of oceans in mitigating climate change, it seems wise to take precautions to avoid damage that could have long-lasting and unforeseen consequences."
Despite the term "mining", much seabed mining would involve extraction of minerals over very wide areas of the sea floor rather than digging down to any great depth, potentially leaving a vast 'footprint' on the deep-sea habitats in which these mineral deposits occur. Rising demand for minerals and metals, including for use in new technology, has sparked renewed interest in seabed mining. Some operations are already taking place, generally at relatively shallow depths near national coastlines. The first commercial enterprise in deeper waters, expected to target mineral-rich sulphides at depths of 1.5-2km off Papua New Guinea, is scheduled to begin early in 2019. Speaking about these plans last year, Sir David Attenborough said it was "tragic that humanity should just plough on with no regard for the consequences".
The Exeter and Greenpeace research team say there are "many questions and uncertainties" around seabed mining, including legal issues and the difficulties of predicting the scale and extent of impacts in advance, and of monitoring and regulating mining activity once it takes place in the deep sea. The paper says that alternatives to seabed mining have already been proposed, including substituting metals in short supply for more abundant minerals with similar properties, as well as more effective collection and recycling of components from disused products and wastes.
However, Dr Santillo said demand for seabed mining would also diminish if humanity could cut overproduction and overconsumption of consumer goods. "Rather than using human ingenuity to invent more and more consumer products that we don't actually need, we could deploy it instead to build good that last longer, are easier to repair and make better use of the limited natural resources we have," he said. "With the right approaches, we can avoid the need for seabed mining altogether and stop the 'race to the bottom. As governments prepare to set the rules and the first companies gear up to mine, now is the time to ask whether we just have to accept seabed mining, or should instead decide that the potential damage is just so great that we really need to find less destructive alternatives."
Conservation of shoreline plants and seaweeds could, in turn, help preserve shellfish habitats.
Study authors Nyssa Silbiger, then a UCI postdoctoral researcher, and UCI graduate student Laura Elsberry (standing) survey tide-pool communities at Corona del Mar State Beach. Credit: Cascade Sorte / UCI.
Marine plants and seaweeds in shallow coastal ecosystems can play a key role in alleviating the effects of ocean acidification, and their robust population in shoreline environments could help preserve declining shellfish life, according to a study by University of California, Irvine ecologists.
In a new study on the Pacific Coast, Nyssa Silbiger, former UCI postdoctoral researcher, and Cascade Sorte, assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology, determined that marine plants and seaweeds decrease the acidity of their surroundings through photosynthesis. Their findings suggest that maintaining native seawater vegetation could locally lessen the acidifying effects of rising CO2 levels on marine animals who are sensitive to ocean pH, which has declined since preindustrial times.
The study results appear online in the open-access Scientific Reports. "Our findings from sites spanning some 1,000 miles of coastline show that marine life plays a leading role in driving local pH conditions," Sorte said.
About 90 percent of fishery catch comes from coastal ecosystems. Any coastal pH decrease has a major impact on animals such as corals, oysters and mussels, whose shells and skeletons can become more brittle in low-pH environments.
This is a major concern for shellfish fisheries, which contribute over $1 billion annually to the U.S. economy while providing more than 100,000 jobs.
Due to their findings, the authors recommend efforts to conserve marine plants and seaweeds in shoreline habitats, including where commercial seafood is harvested.
"The environmental and economic consequences resulting from ocean acidification are dire," said Silbiger, now an assistant professor of biology at California State University, Northridge. "Decreasing CO2 emissions is still the No. 1 most important way to protect our marine ecosystems, but our research indicates that marine life also has substantial control over coastal pH."
The study received UCI seed funding for single- and multi-investigator research projects and support from the UCI OCEANS Initiative; research travel was sponsored by GoWesty.
Only one-third of the world´s countries, and half of EU Member States, currently meet global targets when it comes to the connectivity of their designated natural protected areas (PAs).
While 14.7% of land around the world is covered by PAs, only 7.5% of the land of the world's countries is covered by PAs that are connected. This currently falls short of meeting the UN target for 2020 of having 17% of the land covered by well-connected PA systems. Considerable efforts are therefore needed to improve PA connectivity globally. These results come from the first global assessment of the connectivity of terrestrial PA systems at country level, conducted by the JRC and published in Biological Conservation. PAs, such as Natura 2000 sites or National Parks, are critical for the conservation of biodiversity and for supporting long-term human wellbeing. However, if PAs are isolated from each other, it is unlikely that they can meet these goals.
The study makes specific recommendations for national authorities worldwide - most of which need to make significant progress by designating new protected areas in strategic locations for connectivity.
Joining the dots: priorities for a well-connected PA system in the EU
When PAs are connected it has a direct and positive impact on wildlife. The endangered brown bears native to the Cantabrian Range in northern Spain are a good example.
By designating PAs in this region, national and regional authorities have supported the recovery in the number of brown bears, and promoted connectivity (gene flow) between two populations that were previously isolated.
The JRC's study finds that an effective and functional network of PAs could be accomplished more widely throughout the EU by following three priority strategies:
First, and most importantly, conserving or restoring pathways for nature (corridors) is vital so that wildlife species can move and other ecological processes can flow through the unprotected lands that separate the PAs. This would require policy planning across a number of areas, from agriculture to transport.
Second, coordinated planning of PA connectivity between EU countries is essential. A significant number of PAs are located on or near borders. And if they were to work alone, several EU countries would be too small to ensure connectivity on a scale big enough to match the needs of species movements and other ecological flows.
Third, coordinated management for connectivity of adjacent PAs within countries is needed, to provide effective movement pathways that allow species to reach considerably more land through the concatenation of contiguous PAs than by moving within individual PAs only.
Most of the world's countries need to reinforce their PA systems to reach connectivity targets, particularly by strategically designating new PAs in key locations where they can efficiently function as stepping stones or corridors between other PAs.
The situation and strategic needs in the EU significantly differ from those in other regions or continents. Although half of the EU countries do not yet meet the 17% connectivity target, the PA systems are better designed for connectivity and cover more land in the EU than in the global average.
Currently, when averaging the connectivity levels for all countries across the EU, 18.9% of the land is covered by PAs that are connected (compared to 25.7% of the EU land covered by PAs), which is above the 17% target for 2020. For this reason, less emphasis is necessary in many of the EU countries on designating new PAs for connectivity than on the other priority strategies highlighted above.
Background
The report makes use of the Protected Connected (ProtConn) indicator, which has been developed by JRC scientists to quantify the percentage of a country's land covered by protected and connected areas.
It also differentiates several categories of land through which movement between protected locations may occur, and assesses the part of the connectivity that is actually in the power of a country to influence, factoring out the isolation of terrestrial PAs due to the sea and to foreign lands (both beyond the control of the country).
Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego were part of an international team that for the first time used hydroacoustics as a method for comparing the abundance of fishes within and outside marine protected areas (MPAs).
They found that the abundance of fishes was four times greater in Mexico's protected Cabo Pulmo National Park than in areas outside the park. Study authors said that hydroacoustics points the way toward a new, more cost-effective method of assessing fish populations.
"Managers and authorities in many countries spend a lot of financial resources assessing marine protected areas," said study co-author Octavio Aburto, a marine ecologist at Scripps. "The results of this paper demonstrate that it is possible to use acoustic technologies to generate information about marine resources inside MPAs in a faster and less expensive way, reducing the costs for governments in ocean conservation."
Cabo Pulmo has been the site of several studies by Scripps researchers since 2002. In 1995, local fishermen led the creation of a 71-square-kilometer (27-square-mile) undersea park to protect the waters they fished. The current MPA has been identified as the most successful in the world in terms of maintaining a sustainable fishery in which fleets operate just beyond the boundaries of the MPA. There, as in other parts of the world, surveys of coastal marine life are often performed through underwater visual censuses taken by scuba divers. Results of a 10-year analysis of Cabo Pulmo National Park (CPNP), published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE journal, revealed that the total amount of fish in the reserve ecosystem (the "biomass") boomed more than 460 percent from 1999 to 2009. Citizens living around Cabo Pulmo, previously depleted by fishing, established the park in 1995 and have strictly enforced its "no take" restrictions.
"We could have never dreamt of such an extraordinary recovery of marine life at Cabo Pulmo," said National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala, who started the study in 1999. "In 1999 there were only medium-sized fishes, but ten years later it's full of large parrotfish, groupers, snappers and even sharks."
The most striking result is that fish communities at a depleted site can recover up to a level comparable to remote, pristine sites that have never been fished by humans. Factors such as the protection of spawning areas for large predators have been key to the reserve's robustness. Most importantly, local enforcement, led by the determined action of a few families, has been a major factor in the park's success. Boat captains, dive masters and other locals work to enforce the park's regulations and share surveillance, fauna protection and ocean cleanliness efforts.
Researchers surveyed the waters of the MPA using sound waves produced by hydroacoustic equipment mounted on boats to image schools of fish and other marine life. They performed transects, scanning the water column in rows. They similarly surveyed waters outside the MPA. Fish density, total biomass, and the size of individuals were significantly greater inside the MPA. In comparison with waters outside the MPA, animal abundance in reefs was as much as 50 times higher, "highlighting the importance of both habitat complexity and protection from fishing for fish populations."
"Both hydroacoustics and marine protected areas are well-established but it is novel to use the former to assess the latter," said study lead author Jack Egerton, now a researcher at the University of Texas who performed the work while at Bangor University in Wales, UK. "Through this, we have been able to see how important the Cabo Pulmo National Park is for fish populations in the area."
Although acoustic surveys can be done much faster than underwater visual censuses, the researchers acknowledge that fish sizes can only be approximated and the method doesn't provide species-specific information. However, they concluded that the hydroacoustic method could still be useful in gauging the benefit of MPAs, as conventional survey methods are often prohibitively expensive and can be limited by issues such as diver depth limits and water clarity.
Small no-fishing zones around colonies of African penguins can help this struggling species, new research shows.
Working with the South African government, researchers from the universities of Exeter and Cape Town tested bans on catching "forage fish" such as sardines and anchovies - key prey for the endangered penguins - from 20km around their breeding islands. The body condition and survival of chicks improved when the no-fishing zones were in place. More research is needed, but the scientists say the fishing closures should continue in South Africa and should be considered elsewhere.
"The amount of forage fish caught worldwide is increasing and - although the effects are disputed - the impact on marine ecosystems could be severe," said Dr Richard Sherley, of the Environment and Sustainability Institute on the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.
"Forage fish are a key link in the food chain as they eat plankton and are preyed on by numerous species including tuna, dolphins, whales and penguins.
"We need to do more to understand the circumstances in which small no-fishing zones will improve the food available to predators, but our research shows this is a promising way to help African penguins."
The test areas were on a small scale compared to some no-fishing zones worldwide, which can cover hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. Researchers examined colonies at Dassen Island, Robben Island, St Croix Island and Bird Island, and compared fishing bans of about three years with similar periods when fishing was allowed. The study says evidence for overall effects was "subtle and inconsistent", with clear benefits for penguin populations at only two of the four islands. Dr Sherley said it was difficult to discover the full effects of the no-fishing zones because many other factors also affect the birds.
"Decades of research may be needed to be absolutely certain of the impact on the penguins' population size," he said.
However, the researchers used a statistical method called Bayesian inference to demonstrate beyond doubt that the zones improved the health and survival rates of penguin chicks.
"There's never going to be a quick answer to problems in complex ecosystems," Dr Sherley said.
"However, without conservation action, there's a good chance African penguins will go extinct in at least some of their current colonies.
"We are calling for a precautionary and adaptive approach - no-fishing zones to protect this species, with an open mind to change as more evidence emerges."
Dr Stephen Votier, senior author of the study, added: "This is an excellent example of how a collaboration between government, fisheries and scientists can lead to positive outcomes for conservation. Statistics have played an important role here - only by using the approach we adopted was it possible to understand fully that these fisheries closures do indeed work."
A new partnership between Global Fishing Watch and NOAA matches night-time imagery with monitoring data from fishing vessels.
Arufura Sea, January, 2018. Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data from Indonesia is shown in the Global Fishing Watch map as yellowish dots. This image is overlayed with data from NOAA's satellite-based Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) which detects many vessels not broadcasting VMS. VIIRS-detected vessels are shown here as blue sailboats. Credit: Global Fishing Watch 2018.
Global Fishing Watch has entered into a new data-sharing partnership with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to improve understanding of the activity of fishing vessels in Indonesian waters. Through the partnership, Global Fishing Watch and NOAA are matching Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data from the Indonesian government with NOAA's satellite based Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which reveals the locations of brightly lit vessels at night. The idea is to identify fishing vessels that are not picked up by other monitoring systems and to test and refine the use of VIIRS for identifying and distinguishing different types of fishing vessels.
By cross matching VMS from Indonesia with VIIRS, the team found that roughly 80 percent of VIIRS detections could not be correlated to a vessel broadcasting VMS. The vast majority of these vessels are likely to be fishing vessels using bright lights to attract fish. While a small number may be other types of vessels, most ships do not use lights bright enough for detection. This work indicates that the addition of VIIRS data can greatly enhance transparency in commercial fishing in Indonesia.
The team believes most of the VIIRS detections are from fishing vessels not required to carry VMS because they are under the 30 gross ton (GT) threshold established by the government of Indonesia. It is also possible that some vessels detected only by VIIRS meet the size requirement but have switched off their VMS or have a faulty device. Another possibility is that VIIRS is detecting foreign boats that are not carrying VMS because they are poaching from Indonesian waters.
On the left, blue boats represent vessels detected by NOAA's satellite-based Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) over the Arufura Sea on January, 2018. On the right, yellow dots represent active fishing vessels using Indonesia's Vessel Monitoring System plotted on the Global Fishing Watch map. About 80 percent of VIIRS-detected vessels do not broadcast VMS, and so combining the two data sources provides a more complete picture of fishing activity in Indonesia. Credit: Global Fishing Watch 2018.
"I'm excited for this opportunity to see the dark fleet," said David Kroodsma, Global Fishing Watch Research Program Director. The dark fleet being a common term used to describe vessels that don't show up in vessel monitoring systems and therefore are said to operate in the dark. "NOAA's VIIRS data shows us vessels we can't see by any other means and helps us to gain a more complete picture of fishing activity."
Global Fishing Watch detects nearly all large fishing vessels in Indonesian waters by combining Indonesia's VMS data and publicly broadcast AIS data which is required on vessels exceeding 300 GT. Global Fishing Watch can even tell when vessels turn off their monitoring devices. But the system is unable to see vessels when they are not broadcasting either AIS or VMS. Incorporating VIIRS, which represents a completely new source of data, into the Global Fishing Watch database and, eventually, the public mapping platform, will reveal the activity of even more of the world's commercial fishing fleet.
To cross match VMS and VIIRS, NOAA's Earth Observation Group developed an orbital model that predicts the probable location of each VMS-broadcasting vessel at the time of the VIIRS data collection. The model checks the predicted location against the actual VIIRS detections to define matches. Prior to the partnership with Global Fishing Watch, NOAA had access to two months of Indonesia VMS data, which they used to develop their cross-matching algorithm.
The partnership with Global Fishing Watch has provided three years-worth of Indonesian VMS data, which NOAA has now matched to its VIIRS vessel detections. In addition, the partnership has provided NOAA with valuable information on vessel gear types and identification numbers in the VMS records.
Arufura Sea, January, 2018. Comparing Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data from Indonesia with satellite-based Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) data reveals a more complete picture of fishing activity in Indonesia. Credit: Global Fishing Watch 2018.
This new data is enabling NOAA to calculate the frequency of VIIRS boat detections for the different fishing gear types and to work towards a calibration for estimating wattage from the VIIRS detected radiance. "When I saw what Global Fishing Watch could provide in the data, I said, Wow, that could really help us a lot, because we don't have access to this information in any other way," said Chris Elvidge, NOAA's Earth Observation Group Lead. His team is creating an atlas of fishing grounds for Indonesia using the three years of VMS provided by Global Fishing Watch and multiple years of VIIRS data.
Global Fishing Watch is able to provide the VMS data because of its partnership with Indonesia, which began publicly sharing their VMS through the Global Fishing Watch platform in June 2017. They are the first nation to take such bold steps toward transparency, and Peru has recently signed an MOU to do the same.
Now that Global Fishing Watch has access to the VIIRS boat detection data they can vastly expand the number of fishing boat records reported in the public database. In addition, it would be possible to cross match VMS or AIS data with VIIRS boat detections to identify "dark vessels" which may be fishing illegally. The combined data sources could also be analyzed to detect clusters of fishing boats straddling international boundaries, or fishing in Marine Protected Areas.
In a new commentary in the journal Nature Climate Change, IIASA researchers argue that a broader range of scenarios is needed to support international policymakers in the target of limiting climate change to under 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to avoid potential negative environmental and social consequences of carbon dioxide removal on a massive scale.
"Many currently used emissions pathways assume that we can slowly decrease fossil fuel emissions today and make up for it later with heavy implementation of negative emissions technologies," says IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management Program Director Michael Obersteiner, lead author of the article. "This is a problem because it assumes we can put the burden on future generations--which is neither a realistic assumption nor is it morally acceptable from an intergenerational equity point of view."
The researchers point out that 87% of the scenarios in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report that limit climate change to less than 2°C rely heavily on negative emissions in the second half of the century, with most of the carbon dioxide removal coming from a suite of technologies known as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). Assuming that it's even possible to deploy BECCS on the scale required (a big question for a technology that has not yet been widely tested or implemented), massive implementation of land-based carbon dioxide removal strategies would have impacts on both the environment and the food system, with previous research showing trade-offs for food security and environmental conservation.
At the same time, reliance on future negative emissions to achieve climate goals may also fail to account for feedbacks in the climate system such as methane release from thawing permafrost, which are not yet fully understood.
"Many of our scenarios do not account for the uncertainties related to the climate mitigation process. Are our carbon budget estimates reasonable? Are the technologies going to develop the way we need them to be? Are natural carbon sinks reliable, or might they turn around?" says IIASA researcher Johannes Bednar, a coauthor.
In the article, the researchers present four archetype scenarios that incorporate a broader range of potential mitigation options. These include:
Major reliance on carbon dioxide removal in the future, the current archetype of many existing scenarios for achieving the 2°C or more stringent 1.5°C target.
Rapid decarbonization starting immediately, and halving every decade as proposed in a recent Science commentary coauthored by IIASA researchers.
Earlier implementation of carbon dioxide removal technologies, and phasing out by the end of the century
Consistent implementation of carbon dioxide removal from now until the end of the century.
Under all these scenarios, current country commitments under the Paris Agreement would not be sufficient to achieve the required cuts, the researchers say.
The article adds to a large body of significant IIASA research on pathways and scenarios for climate mitigation, as well as integrated research on climate and other sustainable development goals. It also provides a critical look at the current outlook for reaching climate targets.
IIASA researcher Fabian Wagner, another study coauthor adds, "In this paper we have shown that negative emission technologies may not only be an asset but also an economic burden if not deployed with care. We as scientists need to be careful when we communicate to policymakers about how realistic different scenarios might be. When we present scenarios that require the world to convert an amount of land equivalent to all today's cropland to energy plantations, alarm bells should go off."
Increased fluctuations in the path of the North Atlantic jet stream since the 1960s coincide with more extreme weather events in Europe such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires and flooding, reports a University of Arizona-led team. The research is the first reconstruction of historical changes in the North Atlantic jet stream prior to the 20th century. By studying tree rings from trees in the British Isles and the northeastern Mediterranean, the team teased out those regions' late summer weather going back almost 300 years -- to 1725.
"We find that the position of the North Atlantic Jet in summer has been a strong driver of climate extremes in Europe for the last 300 years," said Valerie Trouet, an associate professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.
Having a 290-year record of the position of the jet stream let Trouet and her colleagues determine that swings between northern and southern positions of the jet became more frequent in the second half of the 20th century, she said.
"Since 1960 we get more years when the jet is in an extreme position." Trouet said, adding that the increase is unprecedented.
When the North Atlantic Jet is in the extreme northern position, the British Isles and western Europe have a summer heat wave while southeastern Europe has heavy rains and flooding, she said. When the jet is in the extreme southern position, the situation flips: Western Europe has heavy rains and flooding while southeastern Europe has extreme high temperatures, drought and wildfires.
"Heat waves, droughts and floods affect people," Trouet said. "The heat waves and drought that are related to such jet stream extremes happen on top of already increasing temperatures and global warming -- it's a double whammy."
Extreme summer weather events in the American Midwest are also associated with extreme northward or southward movements of the jet stream, the authors write.
"We studied the summer position of the North Atlantic jet. What we're experiencing now in North America is part of the same jet stream system," Trouet said.
This winter's extreme cold and snow in the North American Northeast and extreme warmth and dryness in California and the American Southwest are related to the winter position of the North Pacific Jet, she said.
The paper, "Recent enhanced high-summer North Atlantic Jet variability emerges from three-century context," by Trouet and her co-authors Flurin Babst of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL in Birmensdorf and Matthew Meko of the UA is scheduled for publication in Nature Communications on Jan. 12. The U.S. National Science Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation funded the research.
"I remember quite vividly when I got the idea," Trouet said. "I was sitting in my mom's house in Belgium."
While visiting her family in Belgium during the very rainy summer of 2012, Trouet looked at the newspaper weather map that showed heavy rain in northwestern Europe and extreme heat and drought in the northeastern Mediterranean.
"I had seen the exact same map in my tree-ring data," she said. The tree rings showed that hot temperatures in the Mediterranean occurred the same years that it was cool in the British Isles -- and vice versa.
The part of an annual tree ring that forms in the latter part of the growing season is called latewood. The density of the latewood in a particular tree ring reflects the August temperature that year. Other investigators had measured the annual latewood density for trees from the British Isles and the northeastern Mediterranean for rings formed from 1978 back to 1725. Because August temperatures in those two regions reflect the summer position of the North Atlantic jet stream, Trouet and her colleagues used those tree-ring readings to determine the historical position of the jet stream from 1725 to 1978. For the position of the jet stream from 1979 to 2015, the researchers relied on data from meteorological observations.
"There's a debate about whether the increased variability of the jet stream is linked to man-made global warming and the faster warming of the Arctic compared to the tropics," Trouet said.
"Part of the reason for the debate is that the data sets used to study this are quite short -- 1979 to present. If you want to see if this variability is unprecedented, you need to go farther back in time -- and that's where our study comes in."
With the discovery of much older trees in the Balkans and in the British Isles, Trouet hopes to reconstruct the path of the North Atlantic jet stream as much as 1,000 years into the past. She is also interested in reconstructing the path of the North Pacific jet stream, which influences the climate and weather over North America.
Oscillations of water temperature in the tropical Pacific Ocean can induce rapid melting of Antarctic ice shelves.
Front of the Getz Ice Shelf. Credit: Jeremy Harbeck/NASA.
A new study published Jan. 8 in the journal Nature Geoscience reveals that strong El Nino events can cause significant ice loss in some Antarctic ice shelves while the opposite may occur during strong La Nina events.
El Niño and La Niña are two distinct phases of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally occurring phenomenon characterized by how water temperatures in the tropical Pacific periodically oscillate between warmer than average during El Niños and cooler during La Niñas.
The research, funded by NASA and the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship, provides new insights into how Antarctic ice shelves respond to variability in global ocean and atmospheric conditions.
The study was led by Fernando Paolo while a PhD graduate student and postdoc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. Paolo is now a postdoctoral scholar at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Paolo and his colleagues, including Scripps glaciologist Helen Fricker, discovered that a strong El Niño event causes ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica to gain mass at the surface and melt from below at the same time, losing up to five times more ice from basal melting than they gain from increased snowfall. The study used satellite observations of the height of the ice shelves from 1994 to 2017.
"We've described for the first time the effect of El Niño/Southern Oscillation on the West Antarctic ice shelves," Paolo said. "There have been some idealized studies using models, and even some indirect observations off the ice shelves, suggesting that El Niño might significantly affect some of these shelves, but we had no actual ice-shelf observations. Now we have presented a record of 23 years of satellite data on the West Antarctic ice shelves, confirming not only that ENSO affects them at a yearly basis, but also showing how."
The opposing effects of El Niño on ice shelves - adding mass from snowfall but taking it away through basal melt - were at first difficult to untangle from the satellite data. "The satellites measure the height of the ice shelves, not the mass, and what we saw at first is that during strong El Niños the height of the ice shelves actually increased," Paolo said. "I was expecting to see an overall reduction in height as a consequence of mass loss, but it turns out that height increases."
After further analysis of the data, the scientists found that although a strong El Niño changes wind patterns in West Antarctica in a way that promotes flow of warm ocean waters towards the ice shelves to increase melting from below, it also increases snowfall particularly along the Amundsen Sea sector. The team then needed to determine the contribution of the two effects. Is the atmosphere adding more mass than the ocean is taking away or is it the other way around?
"We found out that the ocean ends up winning in terms of mass. Changes in mass, rather than height, control how the ice shelves and associated glaciers flow into the ocean," Paolo said. While mass loss by basal melting exceeds mass gain from snowfall during strong El Niño events, the opposite appears to be true during La Niña events.
Over the entire 23-year observation period, the ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea sector of Antarctica had their height reduced by 20 centimeters (8 inches) a year, for a total of 5 meters (16 feet), mostly due to ocean melting. The intense 1997-98 El Nino increased the height of these ice shelves by more than 25 centimeters (10 inches). However, the much lighter snow contains far less water than solid ice does. When the researchers took density of snow into account, they found that ice shelves lost about five times more ice by submarine melting than they gained from new surface snowpack.
"Many people look at this ice-shelf data and will fit a straight line to the data, but we're looking at all the wiggles that go into that linear fit, and trying to understand the processes causing them," said Fricker, who was Paolo's PhD adviser at the time the study was conceived. "These longer satellite records are allowing us to study processes that are driving changes in the ice shelves, improving our understanding on how the grounded ice will change," Fricker said.
"The ice shelf response to ENSO climate variability can be used as a guide to how longer-term changes in global climate might affect ice shelves around Antarctica," said co-author Laurie Padman, an oceanographer with Earth & Space Research, a nonprofit research company based in Seattle. "The new data set will allow us to check if our ocean models can correctly represent changes in the flow of warm water under ice shelves," he added.
Melting of the ice shelves doesn't directly affect sea level rise, because they're already floating. What matters for sea-level rise is the addition of ice from land into the ocean, however it's the ice shelves that hold off the flow of grounded ice toward the ocean.
Understanding what's causing the changes in the ice shelves "puts us a little bit closer to knowing what's going to happen to the grounded ice, which is what will ultimately affect sea-level rise," Fricker said. "The holy grail of all of this work is improving sea-level rise projections," she added.
In broadest view yet of world's low oxygen, scientists reveal dangers and solutions.
Low oxygen caused the death of these corals and others in Bocas del Toro, Panama. The dead crabs pictured also succumbed to the loss of dissolved oxygen. Credit: Arcadio Castillo/Smithsonian.
In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as Earth warms.
"Oxygen is fundamental to life in the oceans," said Denise Breitburg, lead author and marine ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. "The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth's environment."
"It's a tremendous loss to all the support services that rely on recreation and tourism, hotels and restaurants and taxi drivers and everything else," said Levin. "The reverberations of unhealthy ecosystems in the ocean can be extensive."
The study came from a team of scientists from GO2NE (Global Ocean Oxygen Network), a new working group created in 2016 by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. The review paper is the first to take such a sweeping look at the causes, consequences and solutions to low oxygen worldwide, in both the open ocean and coastal waters. The article highlights the biggest dangers to the ocean and society, and what it will take to keep Earth's waters healthy and productive.
The Stakes
"Approximately half of the oxygen on Earth comes from the ocean," said Vladimir Ryabinin, executive secretary of the International Oceanographic Commission that formed the GO2NE group. "However, combined effects of nutrient loading and climate change are greatly increasing the number and size of 'dead zones' in the open ocean and coastal waters, where oxygen is too low to support most marine life."
In areas traditionally called "dead zones," like those in Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, oxygen plummets to levels so low many animals suffocate and die. As fish avoid these zones, their habitats shrink and they become more vulnerable to predators or fishing. But the problem goes far beyond "dead zones," the authors point out. Even smaller oxygen declines can stunt growth in animals, hinder reproduction and lead to disease or even death. It also can trigger the release of dangerous chemicals such as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas up to 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and toxic hydrogen sulfide. While some animals can thrive in dead zones, overall biodiversity falls.
Climate change is the key culprit in the open ocean. Warming surface waters make it harder for oxygen to reach the ocean interior. Furthermore, as the ocean as a whole gets warmer, it holds less oxygen. In coastal waters, excess nutrient pollution from land creates algal blooms, which drain oxygen as they die and decompose. In an unfortunate twist, animals also need more oxygen in warmer waters, even as it is disappearing.
People's livelihoods are also on the line, the scientists reported, especially in developing nations. Smaller, artisanal fisheries may be unable to relocate when low oxygen destroys their harvests or forces fish to move elsewhere. In the Philippines, fish kills in a single town's aquaculture pens cost more than $10 million. Coral reefs, a key tourism attraction in many countries, also can waste away without enough oxygen.
Some popular fisheries could benefit, at least in the short term. Nutrient pollution can stimulate production of food for fish. In addition, when fish are forced to crowd to escape low oxygen, they can become easier to catch. But in the long run, this could result in overfishing and damage to the economy.
Low-oxygen zones are spreading around the globe. Red dots mark places on the coast where oxygen has plummeted to 2 milligrams per liter or less, and blue areas mark zones with the same low-oxygen levels in the open ocean. Credit: GO2NE working group. Data from World Ocean Atlas 2013 and provided by R. J. Diaz.
Winning the War: A Three-Pronged Approach
To keep low oxygen in check, the scientists said the world needs to take on the issue from three angles:
Address the causes: nutrient pollution and climate change. While neither issue is simple or easy, the steps needed to win can benefit people as well as the environment. Better septic systems and sanitation can protect human health and keep pollution out of the water. Cutting fossil fuel emissions not only cuts greenhouse gases and fights climate change, but also slashes dangerous air pollutants like mercury.
Protect vulnerable marine life. With some low oxygen unavoidable, it is crucial to protect at-risk fisheries from further stress. According to the GO2NE team, this could mean creating marine protected areas or no-catch zones in areas animals use to escape low oxygen, or switching to fish that are not as threatened by falling oxygen levels. Improve low-oxygen tracking worldwide. Scientists have a decent grasp of how much oxygen the ocean could lose in the future, but they do not know exactly where those low-oxygen zones will be. Enhanced monitoring, especially in developing countries, and numerical models will help pinpoint which places are most at risk and determine the most effective solutions.
"This is a problem we can solve," Breitburg said. "Halting climate change requires a global effort, but even local actions can help with nutrient-driven oxygen decline." As proof Breitburg points to the ongoing recovery of Chesapeake Bay, where nitrogen pollution has dropped 24 percent since its peak thanks to better sewage treatment, better farming practices and successful laws like the Clean Air Act. While some low-oxygen zones persist, the area of the Chesapeake with zero oxygen has almost disappeared. "Tackling climate change may seem more daunting," she added, "but doing it is critical for stemming the decline of oxygen in our oceans, and for nearly every aspect of life on our planet."
Diminishing sea ice near the Arctic coast leaves more open water near the coast for winds to create waves. The increased wave action reaches down and stirs up sediments on shallow continental shelves, releasing radium and other chemicals that are carried up to the surface and swept away into the open ocean by currents such as the Transpolar Drift. A new study found surprising evidence that climate change is rapidly causing coastal changes in the Arctic that could have significant impacts on Arctic food webs and animal populations. (Natalie Renier, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution).
Scientists have found surprising evidence of rapid climate change in the Arctic: In the middle of the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole, they discovered that the levels of radium-228 have almost doubled over the last decade.
The finding indicates that large-scale changes are happening along the coast--because the source of the radium is the land and shallow continental shelves surrounding the ocean. These coastal changes, in turn, could also be delivering more nutrients, carbon, and other chemicals into the Arctic Ocean and lead to dramatic impacts on Arctic food webs and animal populations.
The research team, led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), suspects that melting sea ice has left more open water near the coast for winds to create waves. The wave action reaches down to the shallow shelves and stirs up sediments, releasing radium that is carried to the surface and away into the open ocean. The same mechanism would likely also mobilize and deliver more nutrients, carbon, and other chemicals into the Arctic Ocean, fueling the growth of plankton at the bottom of the food chain. That, in turn, could have significant impacts on fish and marine mammals and change the Arctic ecosystem.
The study was published Jan. 3, 2018, in the journal Science Advances. The research team included Lauren Kipp, Matthew Charette, and Paul Henderson (WHOI), Willard Moore (University of South Carolina), and Ignatius Rigor (University of Washington).
Scientists have long used radium-228 to track the flow of material from land and sediments into the ocean. It is a naturally occurring isotope produced by the radioactive decay of thorium in sediments. But unlike thorium, it dissolves into water, where scientists can track the sources, amounts, rates, and direction of its flow, said Kipp, who is lead author of the study and a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography.
Kipp led efforts to measure radium at 69 locations from the western edge of the Arctic Ocean to the Pole on a two-month voyage aboard the icebreaker Healy in the summer of 2015. The cruise was part of the international GEOTRACES program, which aims to measure chemical tracers in the world's ocean to understand ocean circulation and provide a baseline to assess future chemical changes in the oceans. The U.S. GEOTRACES program and this study are both funded by the National Science Foundation.
Scientists aboard the icebreaker Healy measured seawater chemistry across the Arctic Ocean and found that levels of radium-228 have almost doubled over the last decade in the middle of the ocean. The radium was transported from land and shallow continental shelves by currents such as the Transpolar Drift. The surprising finding is evidence that rapid climate change is causing large-scale changes along the Arctic coast, such as diminishing sea ice. These coastal changes, in turn, could also deliver more nutrients, carbon, and other chemicals into the Arctic Ocean and have significant impacts on the Arctic food web. (Natalie Renier, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institiution).
To their surprise, the research team found that radium-228 concentrations in the central Arctic Ocean had increased substantially since measurements had last been made in 2007. What was its source and why had it increased?
The team investigated the trajectories of sea ice drifting in the ocean and saw a pattern of ice--and hence water--flowing northward from the vast northern coast of Russia toward the middle of the Arctic Ocean, where the radium concentrations had increased. The pattern aligned with the Transpolar Drift, a powerful current flowing in same direction that could transport radium from coastal sources.
They concluded that the excess radium had to have come from sediments in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off Russia, the largest continental shelf on Earth. It is relatively shallow, with an average depth of 170 feet, but it extends 930 miles off shore and contains a vast reservoir of radium and other chemical compounds.
Something had to have changed along the coast to explain the dramatic surge in radium in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. The scientists theorize that a warming Arctic environment has reduced sea ice cover, allowing for more wave action that stirs up sediments and mobilizes more radium.
But there are other possible contributing factors that are causing changes over the shelf, the scientists say. More wave action can also cause more coastline erosion, adding more terrestrial sediment into the ocean. Warming temperatures can thaw permafrost, liberating more material into the ocean, and increasing river and groundwater runoff can carry more radium, nutrients, carbon, and other material into the Arctic.
"Continued monitoring of shelf inputs to Arctic surface waters is therefore vital to understand how the changing climate will affect the chemistry, biology, and economic resources of the Arctic Ocean," the study's authors wrote.
Data coverage over the East Siberian Shelf is currently very limited, so it is important to conduct more studies in this region in order to pinpoint the direct causes of the increased shelf inputs and allow future monitoring. "Evidence from Kipp and co-workers for substantial ongoing change in the chemical environment of the Arctic Ocean emphasizes the need for sustained study of these changes and of the processes involved," said Bob Anderson, an Ewing-Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the director of the U.S. GEOTRACES Program Office. "It would be great if related efforts by marine geochemists in Russia could be integrated with future studies by other nations, for example under the auspices of the international GEOTRACES program."
Ross Beaudette of the Severinghaus lab at Scripps Oceanography (right) and Jeremy Miner drill a shallow ice core during WAIS Divide project. Credit: Bradley Markle.
There's a new way to measure the average temperature of the ocean thanks to researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. In an article published in the Jan. 4, 2018, issue of the journal Nature, geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus and colleagues at Scripps Oceanography and institutions in Switzerland and Japan detailed their ground-breaking approach.
Determining changes in the average temperature of the entire world's ocean has proven to be a nearly impossible task due to the distribution of different water masses. Each layer of water can have drastically different temperatures, so determining the average over the entirety of the ocean's surface and depths presents a challenge.
Severinghaus and colleagues were able to bypass these obstacles by determining the value indirectly. Instead of measuring water temperature, they determined the ratio of noble gases in the atmosphere, which are in direct relation to the ocean's temperature.
"This method is a radically new way to measure change in total ocean heat," said Severinghaus. "It takes advantage of the fact that the atmosphere is well-mixed, so a single measurement anywhere in the world can give you the answer."
In the study, the scientists measured values of the noble gases argon, krypton, and xenon in air bubbles captured inside ice in Antarctica. As the oceans warm, krypton and xenon are released into the atmosphere in known quantities. The ratio of these gases in the atmosphere therefore allows for the calculation of average global ocean temperature.
Measurements were taken from ice samples collected during the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide coring project, of which Severinghaus is a leader. Over the course of six field seasons in Antarctica, a drill removed ice in cylindrical samples 3.7 meters (just under 9 feet) in length. The final sample was taken at a depth of 3,405 meters (over 11,000 feet) in 2011. This record spans nearly 100,000 years and the age of the layers can be determined to within 50 years. Earth's atmosphere mixes on a scale of weeks to months, so a measurement of these air bubbles gives what is essentially a global average. For this study, scientists focused on samples 8,000 to 22,000 years old, and collected data in increments averaging 250 years in resolution.
New insights into the glaciation cycles that occurred on Earth long before humans began affecting the temperature of the atmosphere and oceans are now possible using the technique of measuring noble gas quantities. The study determined that the average global ocean temperature at the peak of the most recent ice age was 0.9 ºC (33.6 ºF). The modern ocean's average temperature is 3.5 ºC (38.3 ºF). The incremental measurements between these data points provide an understanding of the global climate never before possible.
"The reason this study is so exciting is that previous methods of reconstructing ocean heat content have very large age uncertainties, [which] smooths out the more subtle features of the record," said co-author Sarah Shackleton, a graduate student in the Severinghaus lab at Scripps. "Because WAIS Divide is so well dated, this is the first time that we've been able to see these subtle features in the record of the deglaciation. This helps us better understand the processes that control changes in ocean heat content."
This paper is the result of fifteen years of work for Severinghaus, along with graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in his lab. Discussions with another professor at Scripps, atmospheric scientist Ralph Keeling, brought about the idea. Keeling studies the argon levels in the atmosphere to get a similar record of ocean heat going back a few decades. However, air bubbles trapped in ice don't preserve argon levels accurately. Severinghaus discovered that xenon and krypton are well preserved in ice cores, which provides the temperature information that can then be used by scientists studying many other aspects of the earth's oceans and atmosphere over hundreds of thousands of years.
Going forward, the ratios of these same noble gases can be determined from atmospheric samples taken anywhere in the world. For example, a measurement from the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier in La Jolla represents a global average of ocean temperature. Severinghaus hopes to fine tune the procedure.
"Our precision is about 0.2 ºC (0.4 ºF) now, and the warming of the past 50 years is only about 0.1 ºC," he said, adding that advanced equipment can provide more precise measurements, allowing scientists to use this technique to track the current warming trend in the world's oceans.
Up to this point, the best estimates have come from the Argo program, a network of more than 3,800 robotic floats distributed around the world's oceans that measures temperature and other properties and reports the data via satellite.
Scripps operates the Argo Project Office and is one of dozens of institutions worldwide participating since its inception in 2000. The floats, however, are primarily limited to ice-free areas and only descend to a depth of 2,000 meters (6,500 feet), leaving large key areas unstudied in the quest to obtain a global ocean temperature average.
With this study, Severinghaus and colleagues have shown that measurements of noble gases in the atmosphere provide the historical record long sought by the scientific community, and can be further optimized to gain insights into modern ocean temperature changes as well.
But there is hope, according to data from 25-year monitoring program.
Karen H. Koltes, Ph.D, records data at a CARICOMP site. By measuring ocean health in the same way at sites across the Caribbean, it's possible to understand where coastal environments are the most stressed out. "If people get their act together very soon, there is still hope of reversing some of these changes," said Rachel Collin, director of the Bocas del Toro Research Station at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, one of the participating marine-monitoring stations. Credit: Karen Koltes.
Forty percent of the world's 7.6 billion people live in coastal cities and towns. A team including Smithsonian marine biologists just released 25 years of data about the health of Caribbean coasts from the Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity Program (CARICOMP). The study provides new insights into the influence of both local and global stressors in the basin, and some hope that the observed changes can be reversed by local environmental management.
The largest, longest program to monitor the health of the Caribbean coastal ecosystems, CARICOMP revealed that water quality decreased at 42 percent of the monitoring stations across the basin. However, significant increases in water temperature, expected in the case of global warming, were not detected across sites.
"We're seeing important changes in local conditions, like decreases in visibility associated with declining water quality and the increasing presence of people, but we're not picking up global-scale changes, like climate warming," said Iliana Chollett, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Marine Conservation Program in Fort Pierce, Fla..
"Our data set did not reveal significant increases in water temperature," Chollett said. "Satellites only measure temperature at the surface. Underwater temperatures are much more variable, and it may take decades of data to reveal a significant change, so we're not sure if this means that we just don't have enough data to detect it yet."
More than 25 years ago, in 1992, researchers at institutions across the Caribbean began to set up stations to gather environmental data on mangroves, seagrass beds and coral reefs at coastal sites.
They began to take weekly measurements of water temperature, salinity and visibility at stations placed to avoid direct interference from cities, towns and other direct human impacts.
The team gathered CARICOMP data from 29 sites in Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bonaire, Colombia, Costa Rica, Florida, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saba, and Venezuela and organized it into a single data set. This includes data taken for periods from three years, at stations added to the network more recently, to 22 years.
Despite attempts to locate monitoring sites in places not affected by human activities, the stations are picking up signals of human influence throughout the Caribbean basin.
"One positive implication of this report is people are capable of dealing with local change by regulating pollution and runoff," said Rachel Collin, director of the Bocas del Toro Research Station at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, one of the participating marine-monitoring stations. "If people get their act together very soon, there is still hope of reversing some of these changes."
Maps showing (a) locations of the three recording sites within Massachusetts Bay and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary north of Cape Cod in relation to the adjacent coast of Massachusetts, (b) AIS vessel tracks over the three-month recording period for both the Atlantic cod winter spawning site and the haddock winter spawning site within a 10 nautical mile radius. White lines mark the boundaries of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Location of the Spring Cod Conservation Zone, the site of the Atlantic cod spring spawning recording location. Location of the Atlantic cod winter spawning recording location. Location of the haddock winter spawning recording location. Port of Boston traffic separation scheme. Maps created in ArcMAP 10.3.1 by Jenni Stanley of NOAA Fisheries/NEFSC and Mike Thompson of NOAA/SBNMS
NOAA scientists studying sounds made by Atlantic cod and haddock at spawning sites in the Gulf of Maine have found that vessel traffic noise is reducing the distance over which these animals can communicate with each other. As a result, daily behavior, feeding, mating, and socializing during critical biological periods for these commercially and ecologically important fish may be altered, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.
Three sites in Massachusetts Bay, two inside Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS) and one inshore south of Cape Ann, were monitored for three months by researchers at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and at the sanctuary offices in Scituate, Mass. Vocalizations, such as Atlantic cod grunts and haddock knocks, were recorded by bottom-mounted instruments at each site during spawning in winter and spring.
"We looked at the hourly variation in ambient sound pressure levels and then estimated effective vocalization ranges at all three sites known to support spawning activity for Gulf of Maine cod and haddock stocks," said Jenni Stanley, a marine research scientist in the passive acoustics group at the NEFSC and SBNMS and lead author of the study. "Both fluctuated dramatically during the study. The sound levels appear to be largely driven by large vessel activity, and we found a signification positive correlation with the number of Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracked vessels at two of the three sites."
AIS is an automatic tracking system, used on ships and by vessel traffic services. It provides information on a vessel, such as its unique identification number, position, course and speed, which can be displayed on a shipboard radar or electronic chart display.
Ambient sounds - those in the surrounding environment - include animals vocalizing, physical sounds such as wind and water movement or geological activity, and human-produced sound from ships and marine construction. Many marine animals use ambient sound to navigate, to choose where to settle, or to modify their daily behaviors including breeding, feeding and socializing.
Cod grunts were present for 100 percent of the spring days and 83 percent of the winter days. Haddock knocks were present for 62 percent of the winter days within the three-month sampling period. However, ambient sound levels differed widely at the three sites, both on an hourly and daily time scale. The Atlantic cod winter spawning site, nearest the Boston shipping lanes, had the highest sound levels, while the Atlantic cod spring spawning site inshore south of Gloucester, Mass. had the lowest. Sound levels in the haddock winter spawning site, further offshore in the sanctuary, were in the middle of the range detected in the study.
Marine Autonomous Recording Units, or MARUs, used to record sound on the ocean floor. Photo credit: NOAA Fisheries/NEFSC
Study data were also used to calculate the estimated distance a fish vocalization would be heard at each of the spawning sites. The effective radius ranged widely, from roughly 4 to 70 feet, and was largely dependent on the number of tracked vessels within a 10 nautical mile radius of the recording sites.
Lower-level, chronic exposure to increased ambient sound from human activities is one of the most widespread, yet poorly understood, factors that could be changing fish behavior. If they cannot hear as well as they need to, then sound signals from other fish can be lost, compromised, or misinterpreted in ways that can cause a change in behavior. Since Atlantic cod, for example, vocalize to attract mates and listen for predators, not hearing those signals could potentially reduce reproductive success and survival.
"Anthropogenic sound in certain ocean regions has increased considerably in recent decades due to various human activities such as global shipping, construction, sonar, and recreational boating," Stanley said. "As ocean sound increases, so does the concern for its effects on populations of acoustic signalers, which range from invertebrates to marine mammals. We don't know if or to what extent specific species can adapt or adjust their acoustic signals to compete in this environment."
In addition to Stanley, other researchers involved in the study were Sofie Van Parijs at the NEFSC's Woods Hole Laboratory and Leila Hatch at Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
Study suggests coral restoration projects can help restore fish communities.
A diversity of corals. Photo by Toby Hudson (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Spending hours a day diving in and around the coral reefs off St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands sounds like the stuff of a dream vacation, but for Annie Opel it was serious business.
As part of her undergraduate thesis, Opel spent much of her time in the water working on a study showing efforts to restore coral reefs have a positive impact on local fish populations, both in the short term and over time. The study is published in the December issue of Marine Biology with Opel as first author, a rare accomplishment for an undergraduate.
"Reefs are not only biologically important - more than 4,000 species of fish rely on these ecosystems - but they're also really important for humans," Opel said. "We depend on them for commercial and recreational fisheries, they provide protection for coastal communities and they bring in a great deal of money through tourism.
"But right now they're threatened by a number of anthropogenic inputs, from pollution to the effects of climate change," Opel said. "Coral reefs have experienced bleaching and mass mortality all over the world, causing ecosystem degradation that affects the marine life that rely on the reefs to survive."
While there have been efforts to address the problem by transplanting corals grown in underwater "nurseries" to damaged reefs, the effectiveness of such restoration projects on Caribbean reefs has never been rigorously studied, Opel said.
"In St. Croix, they've been restoring corals since 2009," Opel said. "(But) no one is really looking at what's happening after the fact...so no one knows if this is an efficient way to restore (those) reef systems."
What she found, Opel said, is that in as little as a week after creating experimental coral beds, significantly more fish and a greater diversity of species could be found. The study also showed that, over time, the fish community changed as additional species began visiting the sites.
"Overall, it's a success story - we out-planted corals and there were more fish," she said. "That's really exciting and something people took for granted in these restoration projects, but no one had quantified it before. I think it's going to be interesting for future studies to use this as a benchmark to know what's going on after transplanting corals."
The project was a natural fit for Opel, as it allowed her to combine both her interest in ocean conservation and the sciences.
During a gap year after finishing high school, Opel spent time in St. Croix, working with The Nature Conservancy on coral restoration projects. As a sophomore at Harvard, she joined the lab of Colleen M. Cavanaugh, the Edward C. Jeffrey Professor of Biology in the department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and later proposed the coral study for her senior honors thesis. Prof. Cavanaugh took on the challenge of advising Annie on her own independent research with the help of her Post-doctoral Fellow, Dr. Joey Pakes Nelson, an invertebrate biologist and ecologist, and a former Post-doc, Dr. Randi Rotjan, a coral reef expert now an assistant professor at Boston University.
"This work was really cool for a variety of reasons," said postdoctoral fellow Joey Pakes Nelson. "As a global community, we spend a lot of money on coral reef restoration, but few studies describe how this practice affects the reef community, so Annie's work provides justification for investments in this type of conservation.
"When it came time to choose a thesis topic, Annie wanted to combine her love of research with her love of coral," she added. "She had great resources because of her work in the Nature Conservancy, she knew about transplanting corals, she had diving experience and she had a great question."
But having a great idea, however, didn't make it any easier to execute.
"I went down to St. Croix in March over spring break and in collaboration with other researchers, out-planted four two-by-two meter plots of an endangered species of coral found in the Caribbean called Acropora cervicornis," Opel said. "We also designated control plots ten and 20 meters away."
Opel returned to the island at the end of the academic year to plant four additional plots and began the hard work of collecting data almost entirely on her own.
"Each survey day, I spent two hours underwater where I took five minute surveys on each of my 16 plots. I sat there with underwater paper and a clipboard and I would basically mark every fish I saw for that five minutes," Opel said. "It was a steep learning curve, because I needed to learn how to identify every species of fish by sex and age before I started taking my surveys. I took surveys three times a week for all 16 plots, and I counted something like 15,000 fish in total, so it was a lot of sitting underwater in my bright orange wetsuit counting and identifying fish."
One of the most challenging parts of the project, she said, was finding partners to accompany her on dives.
"For safety reasons, you always dive with another person," Opel said. "But it's not like I had an assistant or anyone working with me, so I had to crowdsource my volunteers. I asked around at local dive shops in St. Croix and got put in contact with a lot of great people that wanted to help me with my research. One day my dad even came with me, so that was really special. One of my favorite parts of the paper is the acknowledgments, because I got the chance to thank all the volunteer divers and all of the people that helped make this project happen. And I am really thankful to have had three rock star female scientists to mentor me through this academic journey".
Ecologist uses maps produced before World War I, which have quite a history of their own, to track the growth of kelp beds in the Pacific Northwest over the last century.
Prof. Cathy Pfister compares 100-year-old kelp survey maps to modern surveys, finding that most modern kelp beds along the Washington coast have remained as abundant.
In the early 1900s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recognized a problem. The United States relied heavily on fertilizer to grow crops and support its burgeoning economy, yet a crucial ingredient for fertilizer - potash, a mixture of potassium and salts - was mined almost exclusively in Germany. German mines supplied nearly the entire world's supply of potash, and at the time the U.S. used about a fifth of its output, half of the amount exported from Germany.
"It is obviously undesirable that the United States should be dependent upon any other nation for its supply of a necessity," wrote Frank Cameron, an officer "in charge of chemical, physical and fertilizer investigations" for the USDA, in a 1915 report.
Seeking ways to ease this dependency, the USDA commissioned several surveys of an alternative source of potash: kelp beds in the Pacific Northwest. The large, hardy seaweed is a natural source of potassium, nitrogen and salts, and had been used as fertilizer for years by Native Americans and settlers. If kelp could be harvested and processed in large enough quantities, it could be a viable source of potash to offset German imports.
So, the USDA sent surveyors -- including George Rigg, an ecologist from the University of Washington -- to map the kelp beds along the coast of California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska. Rigg set out in a yacht with a 40-horsepower motor and mapped the coastline around Puget Sound in 1911-12. More than 100 years later, scientists at the University of Chicago used these maps to track historical changes in the kelp forests of the Pacific Northwest.
As it turned out, the original maps from the kelp surveys ended up at the University of Chicago Library, where Cathy Pfister, PhD, professor in the department of ecology and evolution, discovered them. She worked with the library's preservation staff to digitize the maps, and compared them to modern surveys conducted by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources over the past 26 years.
What they found is a relatively rare positive story when it comes to ecological studies in a time of accelerating climate change. The abundance of most modern kelp beds along the Washington coast has remained constant over the last century despite a seawater temperature increase of 0.72 degrees Celsius. The few exceptions are kelp beds closest to Puget Sound, Seattle and Tacoma.
"Kelp are a robust and resilient structure. You can see that in the data, as long as they have access to good water quality and waves flush through them, then they persist," Pfister said.
Pfister and her team also studied the competition among kelp species in the area. While the kelp beds were persistent over the decades, their populations could fluctuate greatly from year to year. There are two dominant species -- the annual bull kelp and the perennial giant kelp -- and they fluctuated similarly, meaning that if one was abundant in a given year, so was the other. And good years, it turns out, are associated with colder seawater temperatures, an unfortunate preference for kelp as ocean temperatures continue to rise.
Understanding how changes in the ocean affect kelp is important because they're what's called a "foundation species," a crucial source of food and habitat for organisms.
"Kelp are a natural feature that generates habitat for hundreds, probably thousands of species of fish, invertebrates and microbes," Pfister said. "They're really a locus for biodiversity along these shores, so it's important to understand how they respond to climate change."
While Cameron's 1915 report delves into the chemistry of potassium salts, nitrogen and fertilizer, it's vague on exactly what the U.S. government wanted do with a new kelp-based source of potash. But given that the world's supply of potash came from an increasingly belligerent German Empire just before World War I broke out, one could read between the lines and look to another industry that sprung up around the same time in California. These outfits focused on harvesting kelp and extracting chemicals from it, one of which, potassium nitrate or saltpeter, is a major ingredient of gunpowder.
Ultimately, kelp never became a major source of potash for the U.S. agricultural industry. Following the war, harvesting kelp for nitrogen became far more costly than a new commercial process invented by Fritz Haber in Germany to pull nitrogen from the atmosphere. For the benefit of the many species that depend upon them, the kelp beds (and the historic maps) remain.
Location of the Spring Cod Conservation Zone, the site of the Atlantic cod spring spawning recording location. 
Location of the Atlantic cod winter spawning recording location. 
Location of the haddock winter spawning recording location. 
Port of Boston traffic separation scheme.