Constantine Alexander's Journal

Kimberley dolphins in trouble off Broome

A little-known species of dolphin, found only in northern Australia, is taking a battering from boats and lost fishing gear off the WA tourist town of Broome.

Nearly two thirds of the Snubfin Dolphins that live in Roebuck Bay show injuries from boat hits and fishing gear snags, a new report shows.

Dolphin researcher Deborah Thiele wrote the report for the conservation organisation WWF, which is working with the Broome community to minimise harm to the animals.

Dr Thiele identified 161 Snubfins in the bay, finding nearly two thirds had injuries such as deep gashes and line marks and in some cases completely severed dorsal fins.

The problem occurred because the dolphins' foraging and socialising grounds overlapped the heavily used recreational fishing zone in the bay, she told AAP.

Dr Thiele said the slow-moving dolphins, often in shallow water, were hit by speeding boats across the bay.

Even more injuries were caused by lost or discarded fishing line and hooks that cut into the animals' skins.

Dr Thiele has worked with the Roebuck Bay Working Group, set up to protect the bay's ecosystem, on guidelines to minimise harm to the dolphins, dugongs, turtles and other wildlife.

"My purpose is not to stop any fishing, my purpose is to get people who are fishing to slow down and to try and look after their line and just by doing that I think we're going to make a huge difference," she said.

The Snubfin Dolphin was only recently recognised as Australia's only endemic dolphin, found in tropical coastal waters across northern Australia.

Until 2005, they were thought to be Irrawaddy Dolphins found in Asia, but they are now classified as a separate species.

WWF's spokeswoman on tropical marine species, Lydia Gibson, said the number of injuries seen in Roebuck Bay meant it was likely dolphins had died, while injured animals would find it harder to feed and socialise.

She said raising awareness was key, but state, territory and federal governments must also work together to protect areas crucial to the Snubfins' survival, including more research, which could see it put on the threatened list.

Environment Minister Donna Faragher has said the WA government would commit nearly $30,000 for more research on Snubfins and there were opportunities for establishing a marine park at Roebuck Bay.

Broome Fishing Club president Jeff Cooper said the club was keen to ensure the Snubfins were unharmed, but tourists needed to be educated about how to protect the animals in the bay.

via news.smh.com.au

NOAA reports health of Hawaiian Islands humpback whale | Hawaii247.com | Hawaii 24/7

A new NOAA report on the health of humpback whales within the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary evaluates resources protected by the sanctuary.

The status of humpback whales is rated as “good/fair”; however, their health is rated as “fair.”

Although humpback whale population numbers are increasing in the sanctuary, their overall health rating is “fair” because of an increase in reported collisions, entanglements and associated impacts.

Entanglement and whale-vessel collisions have been widely identified as the primary human cause of mortality for humpback whales, both in Hawaii and around the world. Therefore, these two issues have been identified as immediate and pressing issues for the sanctuary.

“The sanctuary was designated to protect humpback whales and their habitat in Hawaii, and this report reaffirms why humpbacks need protection,” said Allen Tom, Pacific Islands Regional Director for the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. “It also reveals that adaptive management strategies are necessary in order to preserve the sanctuary today and into the future.”

Prepared by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary Condition Report provides an important baseline for the status of sanctuary resources at the beginning of the management plan review process.

Water quality in the sanctuary as it relates to humpback whales appears to be in “good” to “good/fair” condition because it is not likely to pose a threat to humpback whales.

This is because most water quality issues occur in nearshore waters, where humpback whales do not frequent. Also, humpback whales do not feed while wintering in Hawaiian waters, avoiding risks from consumption of potential pollutants.

Habitats used by humpback whales in the sanctuary are in “good/fair” condition. Although humpback whale habitat remains widely available in the Hawaiian Islands, some preferred habitats could be removed due to offshore development activities.

This condition report also includes the most up-to-date information from the North Pacific-wide research project, Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance and Status of Humpbacks (SPLASH). SPLASH is the most comprehensive humpback whale research study ever undertaken for any population of whales.

The primary objectives are to improve the description of the stock structure of humpback whales in the North Pacific to better understand the population over time, and to assess the human impact on whales. The sanctuary played a central role in initiating, funding and coordinating this cooperative international project.

Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary was created by Congress in 1992 and was fully established in 1997 with the approval of the sanctuary’s first management plan. The sanctuary is administered by the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in partnership with the State of Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources.

The management plan for the sanctuary was last revised in 2002. The sanctuary is currently engaged in a multi-year process with many opportunities for public participation to review and revise the current management plan. In August 2010, the sanctuary will hold public comment meetings statewide.

NOAA prepared the condition report in consultation with outside experts from the scientific community. The full report is available online: http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/science/condition/

Encompassing 1,370 square miles of federal and state waters surrounding the main Hawaiian Islands, the sanctuary extends from the shoreline to the 100-fathom isobath (600-foot depth) and is composed of five separate marine protected areas accessible from six of the eight main Hawaiian Islands.

via www.hawaii247.com

Brutal slaughter of pilot whales | The Sun |News

THE disembowelled bodies of brutally slaughtered whales line a dockside just 230 miles from Britain - as families with children wander among them.

More than 200 protected pilot whales were hacked to death with knives and sharpened hooks by fishermen who trapped them in coves on the Faroe Islands.

Disturbing images show deep gouges where whalers hacked at the animals to sever their spinal cords. Others show the bodies of unborn calves torn from their mothers' wombs.

Crowds of islanders, including youngsters, gathered to watch the slaughter, known as "the grind".

Anti-whaling activist Peter Hammarstedt, 28, exposed last week's killings by posing as a film-maker in the fishing town of Klaksvik.

He said: "One whale had five to six chops to her head. Her death would have been slow and extremely painful. Some whales are hacked repeatedly for up to four minutes until they finally die. When I got to the docks it was a truly gruesome sight."

Swede Peter, a member of activist group Sea Shepherd, said he counted 236 dead whales before he was recognised by a local and made his escape.

Pilot whales are classified as "strictly protected" under EU rules.The Faroes are a protectorate of Denmark and Sea Shepherd says the Danes are failing in their obligations by allowing the slaughter to continue.

Locals kill whales for food. A Fisheries Office spokesman said: "We use the most efficient and humane means of killing."

But Campaign Whale director Andy Ottaway said: "This appalling slaughter must end. It's an unfolding tragedy."

via www.thesun.co.uk

CBC News - Prince Edward Island - P.E.I. whale gets special burial

A dead whale that washed up on P.E.I. has been laid to rest in a unique burial place.

Environment officials have buried the remains of an eight-metre-long female minke whale in a huge compost pit.

"The thought process is to just see how they compost and what's left after the compost procedure," said wildlife biologist Chuck Gallison.

The burial pit is in a field in St. Andrews, approximately 25 kilometres northeast of Charlottetown. The pit contains straw and manure, and underground pipes will help a team control oxygen and temperature levels. The hope is that the whale flesh will melt away, and the bones will remain — clean and whole.

"There's a lot of bones that are really small," said crew member Glen Kelly. "We don't want to lose those, but we have them bagged up."

Kelly added, "If this works we'd like to use the hole again."

This particular whale was discovered dead Tuesday on a beach in Cavendish.

The P.E.I. government has buried up to 100 such whales of various species over the past 20 years.

This burial, however, marks the first time they've done so specifically with a view to one day retrieving the bones.

P.E.I. whale skeletons have attracted interest from museums in recent years. Ripley's Believe it Or Not has a sperm whale buried near Darnley and it hopes someday to dig it up. A blue whale was also removed from P.E.I. two years ago for display in British Columbia.

"I guess if I had my way, I'd love to see a natural history museum of Prince Edward Island of some kind, or a biodiversity centre, or something where we had skeletons of what we have on P.E.I.," Gallison said. "Not only whales, but all our other animals."

Three minke whales have washed up dead this year.

Two had become tangled in fishing gear. Investigators who examined this whale could not determine how it died.

via www.cbc.ca

Undersea microphones listen for whales threatened by Gulf oil spill - CSMonitor.com

Recently deployed electronic ears are eavesdropping on whales in the Gulf of Mexico, giving scientists insights into what areas they frequent, population numbers and how they are faring in the oil-ravaged waters.

"Night after night, on TV and on webcams, we saw oil spewing from the bottom of the ocean," said Christopher Clark, head of the Bioacoustics Research Program (BRP) team at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "You wonder, 'What can we do? What's the impact of this?' In the case of marine mammals, we don't know because we don't even know what's there."

The study will focus on sperm whales and Bryde's whales (a baleen whale that feeds on plankton), which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) identified as species of concern in the Gulf as a result of the oil spill.

via www.csmonitor.com

BBC News Video: Greek dolphin park prompts animal welfare row

Animal welfare groups in Greece are calling for the closure of the country's first dolphinarium and urging schools not to visit the attraction.

But the park's owners say the facility is helping raise awareness about nature in a country with an often poor environmental record.

Malcolm Brabant reports from Athens.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Catch Share Design Case Study: Gulf of Alaska Rockfish Pilot Conservation Cooperation - Blogs & Podcasts - Environmental Defense Fund

Our last case study in this week’s Catch Share Conversation about harvesting cooperatives comes from the Gulf of Alaska. In 2007, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council implemented a five year pilot cooperative program in the commercial sector of the Central Gulf of Alaska Rockfish Fishery. The program was designed to address problems of overcapacity and derby fishing and to meet various additional goals. After three years, the pilot program is meeting its goals of ending the race for fish, improving product quality, protecting shore plants and communities, and decreasing bycatch and discards.

Prior to cooperative formation, the fishery was plagued by problems due to traditional management approaches including overcapitalization, shrinking fishing seasons, decreased safety and poor product quality. The fishing season shrunk to a dismal derby-filled three weeks. Read the full case study of how the Rockfish cooperative combines a number of design features to meet their goals including shares for target and bycatch species, provisions for new entrants, limitations on trading and more.

via blogs.edf.org

The Gulf Bird Toll: How Low Can You Go? - Environmental Defense Fund

Like crude oil, scientific comparisons can be slippery. When Americans first hear that “only” 2,900 dead birds have been collected and tallied in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil disaster, they can be forgiven for initially thinking that the Exxon Valdez spill was worse for wildlife. By the time the full story unfolds, this media myth may prove to be untrue.    

For several reasons, the official daily casualty report is an incomplete account of wildlife damages in the Gulf of Mexico, especially for birds, and shouldn’t be the only metric used to describe the wildlife impact.     

• The daily casualty report represents only the number of collected and captured animals, which may only be a fraction of the birds left to die in the wild. 
• Oil and chemical-exposed birds may die and be scavenged or sink in Gulf waters, uncounted, and a dynamic environment of winds and currents decreases the likelihood that carcasses will wash ashore. 
• Open waters and coastal wetlands can be particularly challenging environments to access and survey, compared to rocky shorelines. 
• Finally, assessing wildlife damages goes beyond counting individual animals; ecosystem impacts like habitat damage and persistent toxins may only reveal themselves through long-term studies of population and food web dynamics.

It is very encouraging that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state and federal wildlife agencies, and non-governmental organizations are working pro-actively with farmers in the region to create emergency habitat for shorebirds and waterfowl as fall migration season approaches. To evaluate the success of these programs, trained wildlife biologists should be employed to observe and report on how these and other alternate habitats are being used, compared to the oiled coastal areas.    

To openly assess the full damage to fish and wildlife, we need independent, long-term, and widespread surveys that systematically monitor and publicly report:   

• Habitat use in damaged, restored, and alternate emergency habitats;
• Short- and long-term effects of the disaster on  animal populations and the entire food web; and
• The fate and transport of oil  and chemical dispersants from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

This view was reinforced by Dr. Robert Spies of Applied Marine Sciences, Dr. Erik Rifkin of the National Aquarium, and Stanley Senner of the Ocean Conservancy in their testimony on July 28 before the Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. They all stressed the need for ecosystem studies in the Gulf that are long-term, independent, and peer-reviewed, and they emphasizing the importance of scientific rigor and transparency in the Gulf Natural Resource Damage Assessment.   

Dr. Stacy Small is an EDF wildlife ecologist who specializes in bird populations.

via blogs.edf.org

Fears for unique wildlife of Galapagos as UN drops islands' protected status - Nature, Environment - The Independent

A panel of politicians has voted to remove the Galapagos Islands from the UN's list of World Heritage Sites in danger – in spite of a firm recommendation from scientists and officials who visited the islands that they should keep their status.

The Pacific archipelago, whose unique wildlife inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution were included on the list in 2007 after scientists warned they were facing environmental disaster from mass tourism, immigration, development, overfishing and the invasion of alien species.

Following a visit in April, a group of UN scientists raised concerns that port facilities in Ecuador, to whom the islands belong, and Galapagos were still not sufficiently bio-secure to prevent more alien species such as plants, fungi and even diseases being transported from mainland South America to the islands.

They also raised new concerns about the sport fishing industry which is taking off in Galapagos without a proper regulatory framework, and recommended the islands remain on the danger list. However, on Wednesday the politicians, members of the World Heritage Committee of Unesco, the UN's cultural body, ignored them, and in effect gave Galapagos a clean bill of health.

Last night Toni Darton, director of Britain's Galapagos Conservation Trust, the principal charity supplying environmental backup to the islands' national park and Charles Darwin research foundation, said: "We are very concerned by this decision and its implications. It is premature. It suggests the islands are out of danger and they are not. They are still in danger, absolutely."

There were 40 species on the islands whose conservation status was "critically endangered," Mrs Darton said.

The archipelago, 600 miles off Ecuador's coast, the first location to be declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco 30 years ago, is remarkable for its endemic wildlife which has developed over millions of years in isolation and includes giant tortoises, marine iguanas, flightless cormorants and 13 separate species of finch.

After visiting the islands in 1835, Charles Darwin realised that these 13 separate species had probably originated in a single species that had arrived on the islands from the South American mainland many thousands of years earlier, and as a direct result began to conceive his theory of evolution by natural selection.

In recent years the islands have become increasingly popular as a tourist destination, and the influx of tourists, combined with immigration from the mainland, has resulted in growing environmental threats. The population has grown from 2,000 people in 1960 to more than 30,000 now.

Although the World Heritage Committee put the islands on its danger list only three years ago, they were removed from the list by the committee at its meeting in Brazil's capital Brasilia. The panel of 21 states, which has a rotating membership and currently does not include the UK, voted 15-4 to delist Galapagos, at the instigation of Brazil, and after hearing an appeal from the environment minister of Ecuador.

"Although the Ecuadorian government has taken significant steps to make Galapagos a national priority for conservation, it is too early for these to have any real impact," said Mrs Darton. "Saving Galapagos is a marathon, not a sprint."

Island wonders

Marine Iguana

One of the iconic species of Galapagos, the marine iguana, Amblyrhynchus cristatus, is found nowhere else in the world and is unique among lizards in that it can live and hunt for food (much of it kelp) in the sea, with the ability to dive down to depths of 30ft. It has spread to all the islands in the archipelago where it lives mainly on rocky shores, although it can also be found in marshes and mangrove beaches.

Flightless Cormorant

The flightless cormorant, Phalacrocorax harrisi, also known as the Galapagos cormorant, is another unique species in that it is the only cormorant which has lost the ability to fly. There are only 1,500 birds in the population, which makes it one of the rarest birds in the world, and it is the subject of an active conservation programme.

Giant Tortoise

Weighing as much as 660lbs, and up to 4ft long, the Galapagos giant tortoise, Geochelone nigra, is the biggest tortoise in the world, and one of the planet's longest-lived organisms with a life expectancy in the wild estimated at up to 150 years. Its numbers have dramatically fallen since the islands were discovered because of hunting and the introduction of predators, but a captive breeding programme has been very successful and has now released hundreds of juveniles back into the wild on their home islands.

via www.independent.co.uk

Trapped glacier water threatens French Alps valley | Reuters

France (Reuters) - A pocket of water big enough to fill 20 Olympic pools, trapped inside a glacier on Mont Blanc, could burst at any time and endanger lives in a French Alpine valley, officials said Thursday.

Researchers at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) said 65,000 cubic meters of water discovered inside the Tte-Rousse glacier could explode and destroy everything in its path, including nearby villages and nearly 900 homes.

Such a catastrophe happened in the area in 1892, killing around 200 people.

Researchers made the discovery when carrying out a routine check on the glacier. "We did not expect at all to find this pocket of water," said Christian Vincent, a CNRS geophysics engineer.

"This occurrence is very rare. Water in glaciers usually drains naturally, trickling away. In this case, the glacier has imprisoned very cold water and risks exploding under pressure. It now looks like a pressure cooker," Vincent said.

Local authorities said they had warned over 3,000 residents and told them what was being done to drain the water.

"Pumping operations through vertically drilled pockets on top of glacier to drain the water will begin from mid-August to October," said Jean-Marc Peillex, mayor of the nearby town of St Gervais.

via www.reuters.com