Scubaism

How did an electronic tag placed in a salmon at a hatchery in Washington end up in the stomach of a bird found 7,700 miles away in New Zealand?

At the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) in Seattle, scientists said a juvenile steelhead at the Ringold Hatchery in Franklin County, north of Pasco, was tagged in September 2004 and released into the Columbia River in April 2005.

The fish’s tag indicated the steelhead passed through the Bonneville Dam in May 2005. Two years later, the tag was found in the stomach of a muttonbird (formerly known as the sooty shearwater) in New Zealand.

“The most likely scenario is that the young salmon was caught and consumed by an adult sooty shearwater at the mouth of the Columbia River sometime in the summer of 2005. The tag then remained in the bird’s stomach for over 16 months until it was regurgitated to feed young chicks early in 2007,” explained John Ferguson, director of the NWFSC’s Fish Ecology Division.

Scientists said they’ll work with colleagues in New Zealand and conduct research to find out if any more salmon tags have been taken there by sooty shearwater birds feeding on the Columbia River.

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Anel van Veelen shot this swarm with her Olympus SP350 in the Red Sea. 1/80@f5.6. Wish I shot that!

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For the second time in a decade, the California Department of Fish and Game plans to poison Lake Davis to rid the lake of unwanted northern pike fish.

In the early 1990s, someone illegally planted northern pike in the Plumas County lake, a fish so voracious, it eats almost all other fish. If it swam downstream, officials warned it could threaten and perhaps wipe out native fisheries in the delta.

Sometime after Labor Day, an army of fish and game workers will descend on Lake Davis. First they’ll treat streams, then the lake itself. Fish and Game will then spray CFT Legumine, a rotenone-based organic chemical. Within hours after the application, fish should start dying.

Ten years ago, residents of the nearby city of Portola, which at that time got its drinking water from Lake Davis, staged massive protests when Fish and Game went in with plans to poison the lake. On the day of the poisoning, concerned residents, even the mayor, chained themselves to buoys in the lake. Chemicals were pumped in, fish died and Portola lost its water source. Three years later, pike reappeared.

While most Portolans are accepting the poisoning as a necessary evil to eradicate the pike, just in the past several weeks some opposition has begun to form. “We really don’t know the total effect but we see diseases like autism, Down syndrome, cancer, breast cancer in women going way up,” said Dan Wilson, organizer of the newly formed Save Lake Davis Committee.

Wilson says there has been an unusually high rate of autism and cancer among students at C. Roy Carmichael Elementary School in Portola where he teaches. However, Dr. Hank Foley of The Plumas County Public Health Agency told News 10 there is no statistical evidence to support that claim and no evidence to indicate even a casual connection between the poisoning a decade ago and illnesses or birth defects that have occurred since then.

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Reefbase’s new Geographic Information System (GIS) shows the global observations of coral bleaching occurrences combined with NOAA Coral Reef Watch’s satellite monitoring products including Sea Surface Temperature, Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly, Bleaching HotSpot and Degree Heating Weeks. These datasets are added into ReefBase Online GIS each month.

Features:

1. A new Flash based map with integrated navigation toolbar providing a more user friendly interface and quick access to information.
2. Broader map saving options (.png, .jpg, .tif) provide easier integration of maps into publications or presentations. You can customize the map by modifying the title, adding legend, and including custom notes. A preview function allows you to view customized map before saving. The saved map can then be downloaded directly to your hard drive or emailed to any account.
3. Save selected datasets into various file formats (.xls, .doc, .csv, .txt, .xml). This feature provides for better data sharing. You can easily import the datasets to your system for further analysis.
4. Email the URL of a specific map view (zoomed, specific layers and etc) to colleagues.
5. New maps added include Coral Reef Morphology, Coral Bleaching, NOAA Sea Surface Temperature and Solomon’s Post-disaster.

Access it at http://reefgis.reefbase.org.

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“Japan is believed to have 40,000 tones (44,000 short tons) of whale meat in storage in spite of a move to serve it in lunches in Japanese schools and using it in pet food,” New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter said in a statement.

It “appears obvious” there is almost no market for whale meat, Carter noted.

“Perhaps Iceland’s official recognition that there is no market for this meat could finally encourage Japan to stop its expanded ’scientific’ whaling program and leave Antarctic whales in peace,” he said.

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To protect consumers from getting ripped off, scientists at the University of Bologna have developed : skipjack, yellowfin and bigeye.Fishmongers sometimes get caught labeling, for example, skipjack tuna as more expensive yellowtail. Consumer advocates or government agencies could use the new procedure to spot check canned or frozen fish and keep the vendors honest.

In a paper that appeared on the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry website, Aldo Roda and his team described the quality-control procedure and explained how it was developed. The researchers noted that similar tests could be used to check for traces of endangered animal flesh in food products.

To develop the test, Roda and his colleagues used a computer program to look for slight differences in a gene carried by the three types of tuna that are most popular in Italy. Using that information, they designed three short and unique DNA molecules called primers — one for each species.

Performing the test is simple. Mix DNA from some suspicious seafood with the three unique primers and put them in a gene-copying machine. Since each primer corresponds to a different type of fish, identifying the correct species is as simple as checking to see which primers became much longer. That can be done with a very inexpensive method called gel electrophoresis — an experiment that just about every biochemistry student learns before graduating from college.

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Scientists are searching this summer for one of the most precariously positioned animals on the planet — Pacific right whales. The whales, once prized by commercial whalers, have been teetering on extinction for decades. The search for the slow-moving behemoths is being prompted by the search for a less rare but increasingly valuable commodity — oil and gas in the Bering Sea.

The problem is that the area where the whales have shown up in surprising numbers in recent years overlaps an area the federal government earlier this year approved for oil and gas development. Lease sales in the southeastern Bering Sea are proposed for 2011.

It is an unfortunate juxtaposition, said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which is fighting the federal government’s five-year oil and gas development plan for the Bering Sea. He said that it is no surprise that the U.S. Minerals Management Service is funding the whale survey.

“Their existence is so tenuous as it is,” Cummings said. “Any new research is completely welcomed. The unfortunate irony of it is that the impetus to do this research is propelled in part by the Department of the Interior proposal to open up right whale critical habitat to oil and gas leasing.”

Last year, the center was successful in getting the National Marine Fisheries Service to designate almost 36,000 square miles of the Bering Sea as critical habitat for the whales. Some of that designated habitat is within the North Aleutian Basin, an area that the Bush administration has proposed to open up for oil and gas leasing. This summer’s survey is part of a larger four-year project to assess the seasonal distribution of the whales, their numbers and where they go.

With oil and gas development looming, the more detailed information is required under the Endangered Species Act. Right whales have been listed as endangered since the early 1970s. It’s believed that perhaps 11,000 of the slow-moving whales once swam the Northern Pacific. Current estimates put the number at less than 100, perhaps fewer than 50.

The ESA requires that an assessment be made of how oil and gas development could affect the few whales left. That means finding out how many whales there are and where they go, said Alex Zerbini, a whale biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle.

“Perhaps the worst thing we can do for the right whales is oil and gas development in their area,” Cummings said. “A lease does not simply mean a single oil rig is magically installed. It is seismic surveys that can disturb and potentially even kill the whales.”

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Jackson Wong took this little colourful boxfish in Lembeh. Wish I shot that!

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A joint Australian-funded operation between Palau, Federated States of Micronesia and the U.S. Navy has intercepted a tuna long-liner within Palau’s economic zone waters loaded with illegal shark fins.

The Taiwanese-flagged tuna boat , F/V Sheng Yi Hsing No. 16 which is licensed and based in Palau was intercepted last week. Its captain, a Taiwanese national, has been arrested for attempting to bribe an officer from the Palau Bureau of Marine Resources, Marine Law Enforcement .

The vessel was brought into Palau and a search of its fish holding areas uncovered more than 90 shark bodies, 10 shark heads and 650 shark fins. Shark fishing is illegal in Palau. Investigators also found marlin, mahi-mahi, wahoo, and barracuda that were not entered on the vessel’s catch log.

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Walter Golet of the University of New Hampshire’s Large Pelagics Research Lab partnered with veteran tuna grader Robert Campbell at the Yankee Fisherman’s Co-op in Seakbrook, N.H. to analyze the quality of 3,082 Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). “In a drawer, he had two or three notebooks with every fish he graded in the last 14 years, from 1991 — 2004,” says Golet.

Specifically, Golet and co-authors analyzed the fat and oil content and shape of the tuna. “Fat content is in high demand for the market, because that’s what makes the meat taste good,” he says.

Beyond the tekkamaki, however, fat content is a valuable indicator of the overall health condition of the bluefin. Highly migratory, traveling from their spawning grounds to the Gulf of Maine and possibly across the Atlantic, Atlantic bluefin have high metabolisms and energetic needs.

In 1991, he found, the probability of landing a C+ fish (A being the highest grade) was 16 percent and 9 percent for August and September, respectively. By 2004, the probability increased to 68 percent and 76 percent in the C+ category for August and September, respectively. He also found that the bluefin are leaner on arrival to the Gulf of Maine; the probability of catching a poor quality fish (grade C or worse) in June 1991 was 30% compared with 70% in 2004. Good quality fish, such as B or better, now comprise less than one percent of the commercial catch at this New Hampshire cooperative.

Now that the researchers have documented the decline of bluefin quality, they’re looking into the reasons behind it. One obvious cause would be a decline in their food supply; bluefin are voracious predators with a high metabolism. “Bluefin will eat just about anything — sponges, seahorses, dogfish — but according to recent studies, up to 60 percent of their prey is comprised of Atlantic herring,” says Golet, noting that herring, along with mackerel and bluefish, is tuna health food, providing maximum energy to these long-distance swimmers.

Since stock assessments indicate that herring abundance is at historically high levels, however, the researchers wonder if perhaps the herring themselves have experienced a decline in quality, or if they have dispersed into smaller schools, requiring greater energy output: Bluefin have to swim farther for each meal.

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