Constantine Alexander's Journal

Conserving our biodiversity: Priorities for well-connected protected areas

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).

The JRC's work in this area contributes to stimulating progress towards the global Aichi Target 11 for year 2020, as well as to related efforts in Europe such as the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2020, the EU Green Infrastructure Strategy and the EU Action Plan for nature, people and the economy.

The results of the indicator are available on the JRC's Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA).

Citation: Santiago Saura, Bastian Bertzky, Lucy Bastin, Luca Battistella, Andrea Mandrici & Grégoire Dubois; Biological Conservation, Volume 219, March 2018, Pages 53-67; DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2017.12.020.

Contact: Edward McCafferty
European Commission Joint Research Centre

World War I era maps help track history of kelp forests in Pacific Northwest

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.

Citation: Catherine A. Pfister, Helen D. Berry & Thomas Mumford; The dynamics of Kelp Forests in the Northeast Pacific Ocean and the relationship with environmental drivers; Journal of Ecology, 2017; DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12908.

Contact: Matt Wood
University of Chicago Medical Center

New discovery: Common jellyfish is actually two species

Researchers determine that US Atlantic sea nettle and the Atlantic bay nettle are individual species.

This image shows two different jellyfish. At left is US Atlantic sea nettle (Chrysaora quinquecirrha) and at right is the Atlantic bay nettle (Chrysaora chesapeakei). Credit: Shannon Howard, South Carolina Aquarium; Keith Bayha.

University of Delaware professor Patrick Gaffney and alumnus Keith Bayha, a research associate with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, have determined that a common sea nettle jellyfish is actually two distinct species.

The Atlantic sea nettle is one of the most common and well known jellyfish along the U.S. East Coast, especially in the Chesapeake Bay and Rehoboth Bay where they commonly sting swimmers in large numbers. Since it was described nearly 175 years ago, the jellyfish has been assumed to be a single species.

The discovery that is was actually two distinct species, Gaffney said, was made possible by DNA sequencing techniques.

"Before DNA came along, people in museums looked at organisms and counted spines and bristles, measured things, and sorted organisms by their physical characteristics in order to identify species," Gaffney said. "In the case of this jellyfish, which has been commonly known for centuries, Keith found through DNA sequencing that there were actually two groups."

Turns out, the ocean-based sea nettle jellyfish is larger and has approximately 40 percent more tentacles (40, as compared to 24) than its bayside counterpart. The ocean sea nettle also has a larger bell, the top portion of the aquatic animal, while the tentacles are shorter than those in the bay nettle species.

Bayha, the paper's lead author, earned his doctoral degree in biological sciences at UD in 2005. While at UD, he worked closely with Gaffney at the Hugh R. Sharp Campus in Lewes and, during fieldwork, collected jellyfish off the Delaware coast near Cape Henlopen. Bayha's interest in the species continued well after he completed his degree, and he's collected specimens everywhere from Norway to Brazil, and studied museum specimens from the Smithsonian, where he now works.

Genetic testing of samples revealed differences in some of the sea nettle jellyfish. Working with Gaffney and Allen Collins from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's National Systematics Laboratory, Bayha confirmed that there were actually two distinct species: an ocean-based species (Chrysaora quinquecirrha, "sea nettle") and a bay-based species (Chrysaora chesapeakei, "bay nettle") by comparing DNA data from the physical measurements of each species, and using statistical modeling to ask, "how good is the morphology for separating the species?"

"When you go back and pay close attention, you start counting the number of stinging cells and types, you see discrete differences that correspond to the DNA," said Gaffney. "In many cases, when we plotted the data, the graphs looked entirely different with no overlap, reaffirming that it was two species."

The newly recognized of the species is the bay nettle, which is found in less salty waters called estuaries, such as the Chesapeake Bay. NOAA produces a daily jellyfish forecast for the Chesapeake Bay, where jellyfish blooms can sometimes become a nuisance. According to Gaffney, having two distinct species may explain why efforts to understand the factors that affect a jellyfish bloom are so difficult.

The discovery also may be good news for the Eastern oyster, which is found on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and is the most widely consumed type of oyster. This is because bay nettle jellyfish eat harmless comb jellies called Mnemiopsis, a key predator to oyster larvae. If the bay nettles are effective at scooping up the Mnemiopsis, then the Eastern oyster larvae may have a better chance at survival.

Interestingly, the new research showed that the bay nettle seems to be closely related to jellyfish found in coastal regions of Ireland, Argentina and Africa. But according to Bayha, it's not unusual that no one took notice of these differences before.

"It's not that I did anything that different, it's just that no one else looked for a very long time," Bayha said. "Jellyfish are something people don't pay attention to because they're fleeting. They come and go, are difficulty to study, and they don't have hard parts like shells that wash up on shore."

Citation: Keith M. Bayha, Allen G. Collins and Patrick M. Gaffney; Multigene phylogeny of the scyphozoan jellyfish family Pelagiidae reveals that the common U.S. Atlantic sea nettle comprises two distinct species (Chrysaora quinquecirrha and C. chesapeakei); Peer Journal (October 13, 2017); DOI:10.7717/peerj.3863.

Contact: Peter Bothum
University of Delaware

Are cities affecting evolution?

Explosion of rats, clovers, bedbugs, mosquitoes unintended evolutionary consequence of urbanization.

In “Evolution of Life in Urban Environments,” Munshi-South and Johnson show how the study of urban evolution has been documented in cities all across the globe. In this accompanying map, blue silhouettes represent the approximate regions of origin of species that have adapted to humans since ancient times. Black silhouettes represent locations where urban evolution of species have been studied.

The recent uproar about seats on a British Airways flight crawling with bedbugs is only one of the unintended consequences that urbanization worldwide has on evolution, say Marc Johnson, an associate professor of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and Jason Munshi-South, who is an associate professor of biological sciences at Fordham University.

"As we build cities, we have little understanding of how they are influencing organisms that live there," says Johnson, who is also director of the University of Toronto's Centre for Urban Environments. "It's good news that some organisms are able to adapt, such as native species that have important ecological functions in the environment. But it can also be bad news that the ability of some of these organisms to adapt to our cities might increase the transmission of disease. Bedbugs, for example, were scarce two decades ago, but they've adapted to the insecticides used to keep them at bay and have exploded in abundance worldwide."

In the first study to take a comprehensive look at the way urbanization is affecting evolution, Johnson and Munshi-South reviewed all existing research studies about urbanization and evolution and synthesized the results.

"Traditionally, we've thought about evolution as a long-term process driven by environmental pressures and the interactions between species. But now there is a new driver that is rapidly changing many other species, which is how they interact with humans and our built environment", says Munshi-South. "Humans and our cities are one of the most dominant forces of contemporary evolution now."

The study raises questions about which native species can persist during urbanization and whether those that adapt will influence the health of ecosystems and human beings. Loss of habitat and urban barriers (roads, buildings, etc.) pose challenges to all kinds of species and some may adapt in undesirable ways. The researchers assessed various means of genetic adaptation, such as mutation, the movement of genes through dispersal, neutral evolution and adaptive evolution through Darwinian natural selection, concluding that the urban environment has an impact on each of these mechanisms of evolution.

Their work touches on mammals, plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects and viruses, identifying evolutionary impacts on species as diverse as the common blackbird in Europe to white clovers and white-footed mice in North America. Populations of white-footed mice in New York City, for example, became differentiated from each other after urbanization, due to their isolation in various parks.

"We've created a novel ecosystem that no organism has ever seen before," said Johnson, noting that their study, published Nov. 3 in the journal, Science, is a "wake-up call for the public, governments and other scientists."

He and Munshi-South suggest that we need to think carefully about how we're altering our environment in unintended ways when we build cities, influencing the evolution of species that may, in turn, influence our lives. A number of organisms, such as rats, urban lizards, cockroaches, pigeons and bedbugs, have evolved to depend on humans.

There are now mosquitoes, for example, that have evolved to live in the London Underground stations and adapted so that they no longer need to feed on blood to produce eggs. They also have no need to become dormant during the winter. Unfortunately, these mosquitoes can carry a number of diseases and are now found in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, too. Our healthcare systems may be required to adapt in response.

Johnson and Munshi-South suggest that when we're planning cities, we need to think about the impact our designs have on native species and whether we can design them to "be kinder to ourselves and the environment," considering ways to conserve native species and mitigate the prevalence of disease-carrying pests.

Given that species are evolving so rapidly in response to urbanization, the outdoors also becomes a classroom that offers an opportunity to see examples of evolution firsthand. Urban evolution can be used as a tool to educate city dwellers and others about the reality and importance of evolutionary biology.

"People who don't believe in evolution need not go further than their backyards to see evidence of it," Johnson said.

Citation: Marc T. J. Johnson & Jason Munshi-South; Evolution of life in urban environments; Science, 2017; 358 (6363): eaam8327; DOI: 10.1126/science.aam8327.

Contact: Nicolle Wahl
University of Toronto

 

Climate shifts shorten marine food chain off California

Research counters earlier thinking that food chains remain constant through time.

Skin cells collected from common dolphins revealed sharp changes in the marine food web off Southern California. Credit: Lindsey E. Peavey (NOAA/CINMS)

Environmental disturbances such as El Niño shake up the marine food web off Southern California, new research shows, countering conventional thinking that the hierarchy of who-eats-who in the ocean remains largely constant over time.

The new research published in the journal Science Advances examined the skin cells of common dolphins for chemical clues about the length of the marine food chain, which begins with tiny plankton and continues as species eat them, and other species eat those species. Large predators such as dolphins occupy the top of the food chain, their cells carrying chemical information from all the species beneath them.

Many scientists have long considered the length of the food chain in the open sea to be relatively stable, with roughly the same animal species feeding on each other through time. But the chemical signatures in the skin of Southern California dolphins collected over two decades now show otherwise, report scientists from NOAA Fisheries, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

"We documented for first time marked changes in the pelagic food web length in response to various natural and anthropogenic related stressors," said lead author Rocio I. Ruiz-Cooley, formerly of NOAA Fisheries' Southwest Fisheries Science Center and now at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. "This tells us that the food web is very dynamic, and reveals changes with the ecosystem around it."

The finding helps scientists understand the health and resilience of the ecosystem, she said. A longer food chain is more typical, and reflects a relatively diverse community, while shorter chains occur during extreme environmental conditions and suggest a decline in that diversity.

During strong climate perturbations such as the 1997-1999 El Niño Southern Oscillation that included the most intense El Niño event of the century, which brought unusual warming to the U.S. West Coast, the food chain in the California Current shortened sharply, the scientists found. That coincided with declines in ocean productivity such as reduced growth of plankton, declines of some fish and birds and expanded ranges of some species such as jumbo squid, perhaps as they searched for scarce food or followed favorable temperatures.

"These changes in life history traits and population dynamics likely reduced and/or removed populations of many species, including important components of the food web," in turn shrinking the food chain, scientists wrote in the new report. Predators may have exacerbated this impact as they fed on what was left and reduced the length of the food chain that supported them. Although some species such as jellyfish and tunicates such as salp may multiply quickly to fill such gaps, they provide so little nutrition that most predators do not pursue them and the food chain remains short.

The research demonstrates that top predators such as the common dolphin can serve as important indicators of the length of the food chain, which in turn provides insight into the ecosystem, Ruiz-Cooley said. The study drew upon the Southwest Fisheries Science Center's collection of skin tissue samples gathered from dolphins inadvertently entangled in gillnets off Southern California from 1991 to 2008, highlighting the value of that collection over time.

"This research, and the results it has produced, illustrate the great value of this time series reflected in the cell samples," said Lisa Ballance, director of the Science Center's Marine Mammal and Turtle Division, and coauthor on this paper. "As technology advances, we can extract even more information from the time series as a window into the past, and a baseline to address tomorrow's emerging issues."

Citation: Rocio I. Ruiz-Cooley, Tim Gerrodette, Paul C. Fiedler, Susan J. Chivers, Kerri Danil and Lisa T. Ballance; Temporal variation in pelagic food chain length in response to environmental change; Science Advances, 2017; 3 (10): e1701140; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701140.

Contact: Michael Milstein
NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region

 

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Vaquita porpoise rescued as part of VaquitaCPR conservation project, then released

VaquitaCPR demonstrating success in locating endangered Vaquita Porpoises as field operations continue.

Team members from the VaquitaCPR project lift a vaquita porpoise into a rescue boat. Credit: VaquitaCPR

Scientists with the VaquitaCPR conservation project and Mexico's Secretary of the Environment Rafael Pacchiano announced they succeeded in locating and rescuing a highly endangered vaquita porpoise yesterday, but in an abundance of caution the vaquita, which was a calf, was released. Experts say the calf was being closely monitored by marine mammal veterinarians and showed signs of stress, leading to its release.

"The successful rescue made conservation history and demonstrates that the goal of VaquitaCPR is feasible," said Secretary Pacchiano. "No one has ever captured and cared for a vaquita porpoise, even for a brief period of time. This is an exciting moment and as a result, I am confident we can indeed save the vaquita marina from extinction.

Experts had planned extensively for the scenario that unfolded on Wednesday and every precaution was taken to safeguard the health of the vaquita calf, which was estimated to be about six months old.

"While we were disappointed we could not keep the vaquita in human care, we have demonstrated that we are able to locate and capture a vaquita," said Dr. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a senior scientist with SEMARNAT, CIRVA and VaquitaCPR Program Director. "We also succeeded in transporting one and conducting health evaluations that are part of our protocols safeguarding the animals' health."

Scientists returned the vaquita calf to the same spot in the Gulf of California where it was originally located and where other vaquitas were observed. Before releasing the vaquita, various tissue samples were taken which scientists will analyze and share with colleagues at other research institutions like the Frozen Zoo in San Diego, California which will conduct genetic sequencing.

The precedent-setting rescue comes as the bold conservation plan led by the Mexican government (SEMARNAT) to save the endangered vaquita porpoise from extinction enters its second week of field operations. During the first three days, scientists spotted several vaquitas using visual search methods and acoustic monitoring. Vaquitas were repeatedly located by the VaquitaCPR 'find' team.

The vaquita porpoise, also known as the 'panda of the sea,' is the most endangered marine mammal in the world. Latest estimates by scientists who have been monitoring the vaquita for decades show there are fewer than 30 vaquitas left in the wild. The vaquita only lives in the upper Gulf of California.

Secretary Pacchiano has visited the VaquitaCPR facilities in San Felipe several times and accompanied scientists during a day of field operations on the Sea of Cortez. "The individuals involved in this unprecedented conservation project are the best in their respective fields," said Secretary Pacchiano. "I've personally witnessed their dedication and incredible expertise. We're all committed to saving the vaquita porpoise and this is the team who can do it."

The project, which has been recommended by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA), involves locating, rescuing and then temporarily relocating the vaquitas to an ocean sanctuary off the coast of San Felipe. The explicit goal of CPR is to return the vaquitas to their natural habitat once the primary threat to their survival has been eliminated. Experts from all over the globe, including Mexico, the United States, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are all working together on VaquitaCPR.

VaquitaCPR field operations, including efforts to locate and bring vaquitas into temporary sea pens, began on October 12 and are expected to continue for several weeks. Windy conditions prevented VaquitaCPR field operations from taking place at sea for three days. When there are sustained winds of more than about eight knots, conditions on the water are too choppy for scientists to visually locate vaquitas. It also could risk the safety of vaquitas during the capture operation.

"We've unfortunately been at the mercy of the weather and were in the position of 'waiting on the wind' for several days," said Dr. Cynthia Smith, VaquitaCRP Program Manager. "However, the time hasn't been wasted, as there has been a tremendous amount of productive discussion at all hours of the day as we continue to refine the process of rescuing the animals. Now that we're back on the water and conditions are better, the entire team is optimistic and working together seamlessly to support the mission."

 

In an unprecedented move in April of 2015 that demonstrated Mexico's commitment to conservation, President Peña Nieto announced a two-year gillnet ban throughout the vaquitas' range, compensated fishermen and related industries for their loss of income, and enhanced multi-agency enforcement of the ban led by the Mexican Navy.

In June of 2017, the ban on gillnet fishing was made permanent. The government also launched an extensive survey of the vaquita population using an approach that included both visual monitoring and advanced techniques that use sound to locate the animals. All told, the Mexican government has committed more than $100 million in an effort to protect the vaquita and support the local fishing community.

A crucial part of CPR is the acoustic monitoring system that will help to locate the remaining vaquitas. This monitoring has been supported since 2012 by WWF and operated by the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change of Mexico (INECC) to help estimate the vaquita's population, and will continue during the CPR operations. WWF will also continue supporting the retrieval of lost or abandoned "ghost" nets, many of them illegal, which drift aimlessly and continue to entangle and kill vaquitas and other marine species. Both the acoustic monitoring and the net retrieval are conducted with the help and experience of local fishermen.

VaquitaCPR is led by Mexico's Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT). The National Marine Mammal Foundation, Chicago Zoological Society and the Marine Mammal Center are primary partners in this extraordinary conservation effort.

VaquitaCPR operates as a private and public partnership, relying on both private donors and government funds. VaquitaCPR has many key collaborators including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and groups like the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Baja Aqua Farms, and Museo de la Ballena.

As part of VaquitaCPR, large floating sea pens will be anchored off the coast of San Felipe, where veterinarians and animal care experts will carefully monitor the health of any vaquitas that are successfully rescued. The sea pens have been designed and built by Baja Aqua Farms, a fish farm operation based in Ensenada.

The Museo de la Ballena's mission is to promote the knowledge, study and conservation of cetaceans. Since the museum initiated a conservation operation last year, its vessel has succeeded in retrieving more than 900,000 linear feet of 'ghost' and illegal fishing nets. The museum is providing key logistical support for the VaquitaCPR team.

In order to make the Gulf safe for the vaquita in the future, experts agree it's important to prevent illegal fishing of the also-endangered totoaba fish and to support alternative economies for the fishing community.

VaquitaCPR has been adopted by Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT) on the recommendation of their expert advisory group, the Comité Internacional Para La Recuperación De La Vaquita (CIRVA).

Contact: Steve Walker
National Marine Mammal Foundation

Relevant Articles:

• Scientists begin bold conservation effort to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction.
• Fishery bycatch rapidly driveing Mexico's vaquita to extinction.
• Sea Shepherd saves humpback whale entangled in illegal gillnet.

 

VaquitaCPR is an international conservation program led by SEMARNAT in coordination with the National Marine Mammal Foundation, The Marine Mammal Center, and the Chicago Zoological Society. Key collaborators in Mexico include Instituto Nacional de Ecología and Climate Change (INECC), Asociación Mexicana de Hábitats para la Interacción y Protección de Mamíferos Marinos (AMHMAR), Museo de la Ballena, and Baja Aqua Farms. United States collaborators include Duke University and the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contributing technical support. World Wildlife Fund is contributing with acoustic monitoring and the retrieval of lost or abandoned "ghost" nets from vaquita habitat. European collaborators include Dolfinarium Harderwijk, Aarhus University, and Fjord&Baelt. Additional support and expertise has been offered from Dolphin Quest, SeaWorld, and the Vancouver Aquarium. VaquitaCPR operates as a private and public partnership, relying on both individual donors and government grants. VaquitaCPR has received generous financial support from the Mexican government, Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Global Wildlife Conservation, Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums, Africam, International Marine Animal Trainer's Association, Waitt Foundation, Disney Conservation Fund, YAQU PACHA, and the Firedoll Foundation.

Two beaked whale species take very long, deep dives for their size

These whales may use both aerobic and anaerobic respiration to dive for prey.

Beaked whale. Credit: Bahamas Marine Mammal Research Organization.

Two relatively small beaked whale species took exceptionally long, deep dives while foraging in the Bahamas, confounding expectations that larger whales dive should be able to dive for longer than smaller whales, according to a study published October 11, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Trevor Joyce from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, United States of America, and colleagues.

Most species of Ondotocetes (toothed whales and dolphins) eat creatures found at depths from tens to thousands of meters, and beaked whales dive as deep as 2,992 meters for their prey. Dive capacity in Ondontocetes generally increases with body mass, presumably because bigger bodies have more substantial oxygen reservoirs. However, another hypothesis holds that beaked whales -- a type of toothed whale -- extend the duration of deep dives by shifting from aerobic to anaerobic respiration.

To examine these competing hypotheses, Joyce and colleagues used satellite telemetry and biologging to study dive patterns of five toothed whale species foraging in underwater canyons in the Bahamas. The researchers tagged 17 beaked whales (12 Mesoplodon densirostris and 5 Ziphius cavirostris) as well as 13 melon-headed whales (Peponocephala electra), 15 short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus), and 27 sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). Data included body weights, concentrations of myoglobin (a muscle protein that binds oxygen), and intervals between deep dives.

The researchers found that the two beaked whale species took very long, deep dives for their size. They also took exceptionally long recovery periods between deep dives. These inter-deep-dive intervals averaged 62 minutes for M. densirostris and 68 minutes for Z. cavirostris.

When taken together, body size and myoglobin concentration explained only 36% of the variance in maximum dive times. However, when inter-deep-dive intervals are also considered 92% of the variance in maximum dive times is explained. Longer inter-deep-dive intervals likely correspond with metabolism of the lactic acid that accumulates during anaerobic respiration, supporting the hypothesis that beaked whales extend their foraging dives by shifting from aerobic to anaerobic respiration.

The researchers suggest that this alternative strategy allows the beaked whales to access deeper prey without growing larger, which fits with the fact that prey is limited at the extreme depths, of up to 1,900 meters, where they forage.

Citation: Joyce TW, Durban JW, Claridge DE, Dunn CA, Fearnbach H, Parsons KM, et al. (2017); Physiological, morphological, and ecological tradeoffs influence vertical habitat use of deep-diving toothed-whales in the Bahamas; PLoS ONE 12(10): e0185113; DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185113.

Related articles

CO2 removal cannot save the oceans if we pursue business as usual

Shifting winds, ocean currents doubled endangered Galápagos penguin population

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Health effects of cruise ship air emissions in Greek ports

Scientists begin bold conservation effort to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction

Fewer than 30 vaquitas left; project aims for temporary sanctuary.

An international team of experts has gathered in San Felipe, Mexico at the request of the Mexican government (SEMARNAT) and has begun a bold, compassionate plan known as VaquitaCPR to save the endangered vaquita porpoise from extinction. The vaquita porpoise, also known as the 'panda of the sea,' is the most endangered marine mammal in the world. Latest estimates by scientists who have been monitoring the vaquita for decades show there are fewer than 30 vaquitas left in the wild. The vaquita only lives in the upper Gulf of California.

The project, which has been recommended by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA), involves locating, rescuing and then temporarily relocating the vaquitas to an ocean sanctuary off the coast of San Felipe. The explicit goal of CPR is to return the vaquitas to their natural habitat once the primary threat to their survival has been eliminated. Experts from Mexico, the United States, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom are all working together on VaquitaCPR.

"Rescuing these animals and placing them in a temporary sanctuary is necessary to protect them until their natural habitat can be made safe," said Dr. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, lead vaquita expert and chair of CIRVA. "We realize that capturing even a few vaquitas will be very difficult, but if we don't try the vaquita will disappear from the planet forever."

VaquitaCPR field operations, including efforts to locate and bring vaquitas into temporary sea pens, begin on October 12 and are expected to continue for several weeks.

In an unprecedented move in April of 2015 that demonstrated Mexico's commitment to conservation, President Peña Nieto announced a two-year gillnet ban throughout the vaquitas' range, compensated fishermen and related industries for their loss of income, and enhanced multi-agency enforcement of the ban led by the Mexican Navy. In June of 2017, the ban on gillnet fishing was made permanent. The government also launched an extensive survey of the vaquita population using an approach that included both visual monitoring and advanced techniques that use sound to locate the animals. All told, the Mexican government has committed more than $100 million in an effort to protect the vaquita and support the local fishing community.

"This critical rescue effort is a priority for the Mexican government and we are dedicated to providing the necessary resources in order to give the plan its best chance of success," said Rafael Pacchiano, Mexico's Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources. The plan will be implemented in tandem with ongoing efforts to remove the threat of gillnets in the Upper Gulf of California and eliminate illegal fishing.

A crucial part of CPR is the acoustic monitoring system that will help to locate the remaining vaquitas. This monitoring has been supported since 2012 by WWF and operated by the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change of Mexico (INECC) to help estimate the vaquita's population, and will continue during the CPR operations. WWF will also continue supporting the retrieval of lost or abandoned "ghost" nets, many of them illegal, which drift aimlessly and continue to entangle and kill vaquitas and other marine species. Both the acoustic monitoring and the net retrieval are conducted with the help and experience of local fishermen.

"Although this effort faces a lot of uncertainty and is highly risky, WWF recognizes it as a necessary action to save the vaquita from extinction. WWF supports CPR with the sole aim of returning a healthy vaquita population to the wild, and as such our primary focus will continue to be ensuring a healthy, gillnet-free Upper Gulf of California where both wildlife and local communities can thrive. We remain hopeful that together with all actors, we will see the CPR effort become a success", said Jorge Rickards, CEO of WWF Mexico.

VaquitaCPR is led by Mexico's Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT). The National Marine Mammal Foundation, Chicago Zoological Society and the Marine Mammal Center are primary partners in this extraordinary conservation effort.

"The international team of experts that have stepped up to save the most endangered marine mammal on the planet is extraordinary and a project like this has never been tried before," said Cynthia Smith, Executive Director of the National Marine Mammal Foundation. "VaquitaCPR is important because if this conservation model works, we may be able to use a similar approach to save other marine mammals that face extinction."

A floating sea pen is anchored off the coast of San Felipe, Mexico where vaquitas will temporarily be held. Photo by Kerry Coughlin/National Marine Mammal Foundation.

VaquitaCPR operates as a private and public partnership, relying on both private donors and government funds. VaquitaCPR has many key collaborators including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and groups like the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Baja Aqua Farms, and Museo de la Ballena.

"The rescue project is, quite literally, the last chance to save the vaquita," said Dan Ashe, President and CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. "We know and accept that the rescue plan is risky, but if we do nothing, extinction of the vaquita is certain. Zoos and aquariums have a proud history of working to save species from extinction, including black-footed ferrets, the California condor, the Florida manatee and the blue iguana. AZA and its members are proud to stand with the Mexican government and the VaquitaCPR coalition. Together, we will do everything we can to prevent the extinction of the vaquita."

As part of VaquitaCPR, large floating sea pens will be anchored off the coast of San Felipe, where veterinarians and animal care experts will carefully monitor the health of any vaquitas that are successfully rescued. The sea pens have been designed and built by Baja Aqua Farms, a fish farm operation based in Ensenada.

"Baja Aqua Farms believes strongly in the work being done to save the vaquita and we're so glad we are able to help," said Benito Sarmiento, CEO of Baja Aqua Farms. "Our communities all need to work together, not only to protect the wildlife in the Gulf of California, but also to support a sustainable fishing economy in Mexico that can continue into the future.

The Museo de la Ballena's mission is to promote the knowledge, study and conservation of cetaceans. Since the museum initiated a conservation operation last year, its vessel has succeeded in retrieving more than 900,000 linear feet of 'ghost' and illegal fishing nets. The museum is providing key logistical support for the VaquitaCPR team. "The vaquita porpoise is a national treasure in Mexico and we are committed to helping save this species for future generations," said museum Operations Director Diego Ruiz.

In order to make the Gulf safe for the vaquita in the future, experts agree it's important to prevent illegal fishing of the also-endangered totoaba fish and to support alternative economies for the fishing community.

The plight of the vaquita continues to gain increasing international attention after actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim signed an agreement committing Mexico to save the vaquita, identifying specific conservation goals.

VaquitaCPR has been adopted by Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT) on the recommendation of their expert advisory group, the Comité Internacional Para La Recuperación De La Vaquita (CIRVA).

Contact: Steve Walker
National Marine Mammal Foundation

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is also trying to protect the vaquita but without removing it from its natural environment. The crews of Sea Shepherd’s vessels M/V Sam Simon and M/V Farley Mowat are patrolling in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, the only waters on Earth called home by the world’s smallest and rarest cetacean. The organization has partnered with the government of Mexico to protect the waters of the vaquita refuge, is patrolling for poachers, is documenting issues facing the endangered cetacean, and is collecting vital data to share with the scientific community. It is also conducting outreach in the region, meeting with marine biologists, researchers and other NGOs working locally to save the vaquita.

 

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Mathematics predicts a sixth mass extinction

By 2100, oceans may hold enough carbon to launch mass extermination of species in future millennia.

In the past 540 million years, the Earth has endured five mass extinction events, each involving processes that upended the normal cycling of carbon through the atmosphere and oceans. These globally fatal perturbations in carbon each unfolded over thousands to millions of years, and are coincident with the widespread extermination of marine species around the world.

The question for many scientists is whether the carbon cycle is now experiencing a significant jolt that could tip the planet toward a sixth mass extinction. In the modern era, carbon dioxide emissions have risen steadily since the 19th century, but deciphering whether this recent spike in carbon could lead to mass extinction has been challenging. That's mainly because it's difficult to relate ancient carbon anomalies, occurring over thousands to millions of years, to today's disruptions, which have taken place over just a little more than a century.

Now Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and co-director of MIT's Lorenz Center, has analyzed significant changes in the carbon cycle over the last 540 million years, including the five mass extinction events. He has identified "thresholds of catastrophe" in the carbon cycle that, if exceeded, would lead to an unstable environment, and ultimately, mass extinction.

In a paper published in Science Advances, he proposes that mass extinction occurs if one of two thresholds are crossed: For changes in the carbon cycle that occur over long timescales, extinctions will follow if those changes occur at rates faster than global ecosystems can adapt. For carbon perturbations that take place over shorter timescales, the pace of carbon-cycle changes will not matter; instead, the size or magnitude of the change will determine the likelihood of an extinction event.

Taking this reasoning forward in time, Rothman predicts that, given the recent rise in carbon dioxide emissions over a relatively short timescale, a sixth extinction will depend on whether a critical amount of carbon is added to the oceans. That amount, he calculates, is about 310 gigatons, which he estimates to be roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon that human activities will have added to the world's oceans by the year 2100.

Does this mean that mass extinction will soon follow at the turn of the century? Rothman says it would take some time -- about 10,000 years -- for such ecological disasters to play out. However, he says that by 2100 the world may have tipped into "unknown territory."

"This is not saying that disaster occurs the next day," Rothman says. "It's saying that, if left unchecked, the carbon cycle would move into a realm which would be no longer stable, and would behave in a way that would be difficult to predict. In the geologic past, this type of behavior is associated with mass extinction."

History follows theory

Rothman had previously done work on the end-Permian extinction, the most severe extinction in Earth's history, in which a massive pulse of carbon through the Earth's system was involved in wiping out more than 95 percent of marine species worldwide. Since then, conversations with colleagues spurred him to consider the likelihood of a sixth extinction, raising an essential question:

"How can you really compare these great events in the geologic past, which occur over such vast timescales, to what's going on today, which is centuries at the longest?" Rothman says. "So I sat down one summer day and tried to think about how one might go about this systematically."

He eventually derived a simple mathematical formula based on basic physical principles that relates the critical rate and magnitude of change in the carbon cycle to the timescale that separates fast from slow change. He hypothesized that this formula should predict whether mass extinction, or some other sort of global catastrophe, should occur.

Rothman then asked whether history followed his hypothesis. By searching through hundreds of published geochemistry papers, he identified 31 events in the last 542 million years in which a significant change occurred in Earth's carbon cycle. For each event, including the five mass extinctions, Rothman noted the change in carbon, expressed in the geochemical record as a change in the relative abundance of two isotopes, carbon-12 and carbon-13. He also noted the duration of time over which the changes occurred.

He then devised a mathematical transformation to convert these quantities into the total mass of carbon that was added to the oceans during each event. Finally, he plotted both the mass and timescale of each event.

"It became evident that there was a characteristic rate of change that the system basically didn't like to go past," Rothman says.

In other words, he observed a common threshold that most of the 31 events appeared to stay under. While these events involved significant changes in carbon, they were relatively benign -- not enough to destabilize the system toward catastrophe. In contrast, four of the five mass extinction events lay over the threshold, with the most severe end-Permian extinction being the farthest over the line.

"Then it became a question of figuring out what it meant," Rothman says.

A hidden leak

Upon further analysis, Rothman found that the critical rate for catastrophe is related to a hidden process within the Earth's natural carbon cycle. The cycle is essentially a loop between photosynthesis and respiration. Normally, there is a "leak" in the cycle, in which a small amount of organic carbon sinks to the ocean bottom and, over time, is buried as sediment and sequestered from the rest of the carbon cycle.

Rothman found that the critical rate was equivalent to the rate of excess production of carbon dioxide that would result from plugging the leak. Any additional carbon dioxide injected into the cycle could not be described by the loop itself. One or more other processes would instead have taken the carbon cycle into unstable territory.

He then determined that the critical rate applies only beyond the timescale at which the marine carbon cycle can re-establish its equilibrium after it is disturbed. Today, this timescale is about 10,000 years. For much shorter events, the critical threshold is no longer tied to the rate at which carbon is added to the oceans but instead to the carbon's total mass. Both scenarios would leave an excess of carbon circulating through the oceans and atmosphere, likely resulting in global warming and ocean acidification.

The century's the limit

From the critical rate and the equilibrium timescale, Rothman calculated the critical mass of carbon for the modern day to be about 310 gigatons.

He then compared his prediction to the total amount of carbon added to the Earth's oceans by the year 2100, as projected in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC projections consider four possible pathways for carbon dioxide emissions, ranging from one associated with stringent policies to limit carbon dioxide emissions, to another related to the high range of scenarios with no limitations.

The best-case scenario projects that humans will add 300 gigatons of carbon to the oceans by 2100, while more than 500 gigatons will be added under the worst-case scenario, far exceeding the critical threshold. In all scenarios, Rothman shows that by 2100, the carbon cycle will either be close to or well beyond the threshold for catastrophe.

"There should be ways of pulling back [emissions of carbon dioxide]," Rothman says. "But this work points out reasons why we need to be careful, and it gives more reasons for studying the past to inform the present."

Citation: Daniel H. Rothman; Thresholds of catastrophe in the Earth system; Science Advances, Vol. 3, No. 9, (20 September 2017); DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700906.

This research was supported, in part, by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Contact: Abby Abazorius
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

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Can corals survive climate change?

Coral reef experts deliver urgent recommendations for future research.

Corals live close to their temperature maxima, and even just a degree of heating over the summer months can cause a stress response called 'coral bleaching.' Why some coral species tolerate heat anomalies better than others is subject of intense research. Central GBR, March 2017. Credit: G. Torda

A group of international scientists, including scientists from Australia, have issued advice that more research is urgently required to determine whether corals can acclimatise* and adapt to the rapid pace of climate change. The team of coral experts, led by Dr. Gergely Torda from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), have delivered recommendations for future research.

As the Great Barrier Reef faces unprecedented coral mortality from back-to-back mass bleaching in 2016 & 2017, rising carbon dioxide and other natural and human-induced pressures, scientists advise more research is urgently needed into the poorly-understood mechanisms that corals might use to survive in a rapidly warming world.

"There is still a lot to understand about corals," says Dr. Torda. "While our only real chance for their survival is to reverse climate change, a nugget of hope exists - that the corals may be able to adapt to their changing environment," he says.

"However, there are major knowledge gaps around how fast corals can adapt or acclimatise to changes in their environment, and by what mechanisms they might use to achieve this," adds co-author Professor Philip Munday of Coral CoE.

"For example," explains Dr Jenni Donelson, co-author at Coral CoE,"recent studies show that fish can acclimatise to higher water temperatures when several generations are exposed to the same increased temperature, but whether corals can do the same, and how they might achieve this, is largely unknown."

There is substantial variability in temperature tolerance among and within coral species. Typically, boulder-like corals survive higher temperatures, while branching corals perish under moderate heat stress. Scientists are striving to understand and harness the molecular mechanisms that underpin this variability. Central GBR, March 2017. Credit: G. Torda

Eight research recommendations are published today in the prestigious journal Nature Climate Change and arise from a workshop with a team of experts composed of 22 biologists from 11 institutions in five different countries. The team agrees that further research identifying how corals respond to climate change is critical, as the Earth undergoes an unprecedented rate of environmental change.

AIMS Climate Change Scientist, Dr. Line Bay says, "There is sufficient inertia in the climate system that we will not be able to prevent further climate-related disturbances affecting the reef in the immediate future."

"Solutions are required to help corals adapt and acclimate to near-term future climate pressures while we figure out how to reduce emissions and halt and reverse longer-term climate change."

Co-authors Prof. Timothy Ravasi and Dr. Manuel Aranda from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) warn that the clock is ticking. "The Great Barrier Reef has suffered substantial losses of coral over the past two years. Understanding the mechanisms that could enable corals to cope with ocean warming is becoming increasingly important if we want to help these ecosystems," they say.

The paper is focused on stony, reef-building corals, which are the 'ecosystem engineers' of tropical coral reefs. These corals build the frameworks that provide shelter, food and habitat for an entire ecosystem. When corals are lost, the diversity and abundance of other reef organisms declines, until ultimately the ecosystem collapses.

"Predicting the fate of coral reefs under climate change is subject to our understanding of the ability of corals to mount adaptive responses to environmental change," says Dr. Torda. "Our paper sets out key research objectives and approaches to address this goal."

"The time to act is now, as the window of opportunity to save coral reefs is rapidly closing," he concludes.

Citation: Gergely Torda, Jennifer M. Donelson, Manuel Aranda, Daniel J. Barshis, Line Bay, Michael L. Berumen, David G. Bourne, Neal Cantin, Sylvain Foret, Mikhail Matz, David J. Miller, Aurelie Moya, Hollie M. Putnam, Timothy Ravasi, Madeleine J. H. van Oppen, Rebecca Vega Thurber, Jeremie Vidal-Dupiol, Christian R. Voolstra, Sue-Ann Watson, Emma Whitelaw, Bette L. Willis & Philip L. Munday; Rapid adaptive responses to climate change in corals; Nature Climate Change, 2017; 7 (9): 627; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3374.

Contact: Catherine Naum
ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies

 

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