August 30th 2007
Posted under Wish I Shot That by Tim Yang
Archive for August, 2007
August 30th 2007
Posted under Conservation by Tim Yang
Iceland’s fisheries minister, Einar K. Guofinnsson, told Reuters this week it made no sense to issue new quotas when the present quota period expires on August 31 if the market for whale meat was not strong enough.Iceland announced last year it would allow up to 30 minke whales and 9 fin whales to be hunted, controversially ending a ban in place since 1986. But they have killed just seven minke whales and seven fin whales because of slack demand for whale meat and products.
Buyers of whale products demand thorough testing to ensure food safety. In addition, without an export agreement with Japan, a huge source of buyers is taken out of the equation. Stefan Asmundsson, an officer at the ministry of fisheries, said negotiations for market access to Japan were ongoing.
Whalers had celebrated the decision to allow them to resume a traditional custom despite protests from some two dozen anti-whaling countries, including the United States. They are now frustrated with the government’s stance and say they should be allowed to keep hunting to develop the market.
August 30th 2007
Posted under Conservation by Tim Yang
As part of their efforts to protect the dugong, the Center for Biological Diversity has been leading a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense. The U.S. military has maintained a strong presence in Okinawa since World War II, with more than 30,000 personnel currently stationed on the island. The lawsuit addresses a planned relocation of the Marine Corps’ Futenma Airbase, which sits in a densely populated site, to a more isolated stretch of shoreline in Camp Schwab, according to the U.S. military.
But the project requires expanding runways into a bay that “is the richest area of sea grass in Okinawa,” Peter Galvin, conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity in Shelter Cove, California, said. “It’s the best of the last habitat for the dugong.”
Marine Corps spokesperson Garron Garn in Okinawa said via email that the expansion project is designed to meet the military unit’s operational needs. The “exact location of the airfield was determined by higher authorities in the U.S. and Japanese governments,” he said, and declined further comment.
In an August 15 article in the military newspaper the Stars and Stripes, Japanese and U.S. officials said that the [dugong’s recent “critically endangered” listing on Japan’s Ministry of the Environment Red List] isn’t expected to delay the planned construction. The newspaper also quoted Ministry of the Environment spokesperson Harumi Nakajima as saying the listing is meant simply to inform the public that dugongs are at risk. The agency does not plan to restrict activities at dugong feeding grounds as part of the new classification, she said.
Hideki Yoshikawa is a member of the Save the Dugong Campaign Center in Okinawa. He said in an email that the Defense Facilities Administration Agency (DFAA), a Japanese organization that manages facilities for the U.S. military, does appear to be moving ahead with the base construction.
The next hearing in the lawsuit is scheduled for September 17.
August 30th 2007
Posted under Conservation by Tim Yang
The Sekisei Lagoon, one of the nation’s largest coral reefs, spans about 15 kilometers north-south and about 20 km east-west, between Ishigakijima and Iriomotejima islands. It is the centerpiece of a government rejuvenation project.
In one initiative led by the Environment Ministry, young coral heads were transplanted into the bed of the lagoon, off Kuroshima island, in February 2006. Underwater monitoring in June found the coral heads were steadily growing, giving some cause for hope. The coral had grown to more than 10 centimeters in diameter.
In 1997 and 1998, the rise in seawater temperatures caused widespread bleaching of coral around the globe. In Okinawa, flooding caused large amounts of red soil to be deposited onto the seabed–causing more damage. The red soil covered areas where the coral larvae implant naturally, making it difficult for new coral to be produced. Further complicating the issue has been an increase in numbers of crown-of-thorns starfish, the coral’s natural predator.
Under the government project, about 240,000 small ceramic implantation modules, used to anchor the coral, have been placed in the Sekisei Lagoon over the past several years. So far, about 6,000 of the modules, on which coral has successfully been implanted, have been removed and transplanted to other parts of the reef, around Kuroshima island, for example.
Mineo Okamoto, associate professor of ocean instrumentation at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, is pleased with the progress so far. “If nothing was done, the coral on the southern side of the Sekisei Lagoon could have been devastated,” said Okamoto, who is cooperating with researchers in the government project. “The results have given us hope.”
August 29th 2007
Posted under Marine Behaviour by Tim Yang
Foam swallowed an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including the local lifeguards’ centre, in a freak display of nature at Yamba in New South Wales. It stretched for 30 miles out into the Pacific in a phenomenon not seen at the beach for more than three decades.
Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed. All are churned up together by powerful currents which cause the water to form bubbles. These bubbles stick to each other as they are carried below the surface by the current towards the shore. As a wave starts to form on the surface, the motion of the water causes the bubbles to swirl upwards and, massed together, they become foam.
The foam “surfs” towards shore until the wave “crashes”, tossing the foam into the air. “It’s the same effect you get when you whip up a milk shake in a blender,” explains a marine expert. “The more powerful the swirl, the more foam you create on the surface and the lighter it becomes.”
In this case, storms off the New South Wales Coast and further north off Queensland had created a huge disturbance in the ocean, hitting a stretch of water where there was a particularly high amount of the substances which form into bubbles.
As for 12-year-old beachgoer Tom Woods, who has been surfing since he was two, riding a wave was out of the question. “Me and my mates just spent the afternoon leaping about in that stuff,” he said. “It was quite cool to touch and it was really weird. It was like clouds of air - you could hardly feel it.”
August 29th 2007
Posted under Medical and safety by Tim Yang
Amy Dalla Mura is banned from going within 50m of the sea in Britain after jumping off piers, jetties and cliffs. She has been slapped with an Asbo for playing a “game of cat-and-mouse” with police and “causing harassment, alarm and distress”.
Now she has moved from Wales to Ardingly, near Haywards Heath, and there are fears she will head for the reservoir or the coast.
Her move east comes days after she breached a court order by causing four alerts in five days in June. A judge has banned her from going near Ardingly Reservoir. She is not allowed to move to her mother’s house in Kingsway, Hove, because it is too near the sea, so she is staying with her sister.
Since 2001 she has made scores of attempts to apparently drown herself in the Irish Sea at Aberystwyth. Emergency services believe painful hip and back problems have driven her to attempt to drown herself as a “cry for help”.
Ms Dalla Mura told The Argus the number of rescues had been exaggerated by the authorities. She said: “It is a very complicated and bitter story. I had a very active and special life which has, over the last few years, been taken away from me.”
The 45-year-old former professional golfer is on first-name terms with lifeboat crews, police, coastguards and RAF air-sea rescue helicopter crews in Wales. One PC won a bravery award in 2003 after swimming 300m out to sea to save her.
August 29th 2007
A mandarin farmer in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture admitted Tuesday to having accidentally leaked a large amount of pesticide into a ditch, the Sankei Shimbun reports. When the prefecture inspected the nearby Tamashima river, they found some 3,000 sweetfish (ayu) and brook trout had died because of the leakage.
According to the prefecture’s environmental section, a hose leading to a tank filled with mite insecticide became clogged up and came off, leading to some 300 liters of the substance ran into a nearby ditch..
Tamashima river is famous for being a good spot for sweetfish, but there has since June this year been several reports of large finds of large amounts of the fish dead. The prefecture is currently examining whether there is a link to mandarin and other farmers’ use of pesticide.
August 29th 2007
Posted under Conservation by Tim Yang
Scientists estimated that a total of 186 million fish weighing 72,000 tons was caught by English and Welsh commercial fishing vessels in the English Channel, Western Approaches, Celtic and Irish Seas between 2002 and 2005. Of this total catch, 63 per cent of the fish, weighing 24,500 tons, were thrown back over the side.
Few if any of these fish would survive because trawling ruptures their swim bladders. Discarding in European waters is known to kill up to 800,000 tons of fish a year but the number of individual fish killed shown in the study will come as a surprise to many.
The study shows that the most destructive vessels were beam trawlers – which tow a metal bar at the mouth of the net – and heavy otter trawls which fish on the bottom. These accounted for 90 per cent of all discards. Beam trawlers discarded 71 per cent of their catch and otter trawlers 65 per cent.
The ten most discarded species included some of the most-overfished – cod, plaice and lesser-spotted dogfish. Others included gurnards, dab and whiting. Mackerel, pilchard and sprat were the most discarded fish by vessels fishing in mid-water for pelagic or surface-swimming fish.
Factory pelagic trawlers, which use purse-seine nets, had the fastest discard rate at 78,000 fish per hour. In those waters fishing by English and Welsh vessels represented only 14 per cent of the total number of fish caught but the results are thought to be comparable to the discard rates of French and Irish fleets.
The study shows that discarding rates in British waters are one and a half times those recently reported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome.
The Organisation says that globally, on average, 27 million tons of unwanted fish catch are thrown back each year. There is understood to have been intense nervousness in the fishing industry in the run-up to the publication of the study in Fisheries Research because of a potential adverse reaction from the public.
August 29th 2007
Posted under Malaysia News by Tim Yang
Two decommissioned foreign naval ships are poised to be sunk in Malaysian waters next year to create artificial reefs, the first of its kind here. The ships, between 110m and 160m in length, will come from the United States and Canada and are scheduled to be sunk off Pulau Redang here and Pulau Tioman, Pahang.
The project, estimated to cost about RM20 million, will be undertaken by the Kuala Terengganu Rotary Club and the B&J Diving Centre Sdn Bhd as well as the state government. The Rotary club and B&J are looking to choose two from the three options made available, namely a US navy ship, a Canadian destroyer or a Canadian MARS class ship to be either donated or purchased with a minimal fee.
Terengganu Rotary president Scott Steven said shipwrecks as artificial reefs had better benefits compared to other artificial reefs like reefballs or through the electro-deposition process, which have very little impact, both on marine ecology and the tourism industry. Reefballs are ball-shaped artificial reefs made out of concrete, while electro-deposition is the process where a metal artificial reef is set under constant electric current to enhance coral growth.
Studies show that wrecks reduce the pressure of scuba diving on existing natural reefs by up to 20 per cent. A well chosen site also means that there will be no negative impact reported on the existing natural reef. Steven said a large ship wreck sunk intentionally as an artificial reef, provides shelter and protection for a myriad of marine species.
To date artificial wrecks (including several small wooden vessels in the vicinity of Pulau Tioman) are known to attract certain species, which do not find a stronghold on natural coral reefs. These include frogfish, leaf fish, pipefish and moray eels. He also said that with more fish being attracted to such reefs, a large artificial wreck sunk in a strategic place would encourage more people to dive in the area. “This will augur well for Visit Terengganu Year 2008 as the shipwrecks will provide a new site for tourists,” Steven told the New Straits Times.
Steven, a former military engineer, said the idea of sinking the ships came about as he was studying alternative methods for artificial reef projects for the club. At the same time, his friend B&J Diving Centre marketing and sales director Martin Ritter was working on the same idea. “Then a mutual friend from the Malaysian Sports Diving Association got us together to collaborate on the project.”
While Steven is confident of securing the vessels, he however needs to raise funds to tow the ships preferably before the monsoon season. The funds will also be used to clean and sink the ships.
The Rotary Kuala Terengganu and B&J will work closely with local authorities and international advisers to ensure that international guidelines are followed. “Right now we are liasing with the relevant government authorities like the Defence Ministry and the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry for their input,” Steven said.
August 29th 2007
Posted under Marine Behaviour by Tim Yang
Since it was discovered in May by a pair of spearfishermen 5 miles (8 kilometers) off Trinidad’s eastern shore, a mud volcano has attracted hordes of sightseers who trek to a bluff to watch waves crash over its summit, which measures 160 feet (49 meters) across. If it does become an island, don’t plan on ever spending your holiday on it: It would be a muddy, wave-lashed piece of ground that could slip back underneath the sea at any moment.
Graham Scott, 37, was spearfishing in May in a favored spot with a friend when he discovered the mud volcano, then only 5 feet (1.5 meters) high. “It was strange,” Scott recalled in a telephone interview. “The mud was soft. Soft like clay.” Since then, it has ballooned to a height of some 40 feet (12 meters), reaching to just below the ocean’s surface, with a base 490 feet (149 meters) across.
On shore, there is disquiet. “It may grow, and grow, and grow until some day it blows up,” said Jude Neckles, who can see the site from the front porch of his house in Mayaro. Scientists say that’s unlikely.
Mud volcanoes are not normal volcanoes, which erupt lava and superheated gases from deep within the earth, said Roderick Stewart, a seismologist at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. Rather, they are created when natural gases, often methane, escape pressurized areas from shallower levels in the crust. “There is little heat and energy behind it,” Stewart said in a telephone interview. “There’s no lava. There’s no magma.”
Disaster officials insist the new mud volcano poses no threat to people on land. Mud volcanoes are a common phenomenon on and around the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago — the world’s fifth-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.