Scubaism

EXPERTS fear a turtle discovered by adventurer Steve Irwin, which can breathe underwater through its backside, could be nearing endangered status.

Elseya irwini, named after the Crocodile Hunter and his father Bob, is one of the largest freshwater turtles in Australia and can weigh around 6kg. It’s also colourful, with a yellowish head, pink nose and blue-grey eyes.

Irwin and his father found the turtle on a family camp in 1990 after Bob Irwin hooked the animal on a fishing line. They took photos and later handed them to a turtle expert who confirmed it as a new species - but only after the death of Steve Irwin while filming on the Great Barrier Reef on September 4, 2006. Elseya irwini only lives in the Broken-Bowen River system and in the lower Burdekin River.

Ecologist Dr Ivan Lawler, from James Cook University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said research suggested the species could now be endangered. “My best guess is there are only 4000 to 5000 in the wild,” Dr Lawler said today.

He said researchers from the university had caught 82 turtles but only five had been juveniles. “The population structure is a real problem because if you don’t have more juveniles coming in when this generation of adults dies, there’s very little to replace them,” he said.

Another unusual finding had been the lack of males in the population, he said. “Of the 77 adults we’ve found, only five have been male,” Dr Lawler said. “This is the most female-biased turtle population of which we know.” But researchers were at a loss to explain why, he said.

The group of turtles which Elseya irwini belonged to was unique because of the way they could breathe under water. “They can breathe underwater by taking water into their cloaca or bum,” Dr Lawler said. “They have a chamber with gill-like structures to extract oxygen and this enables them to stay underwater for long periods without taking a breath.”

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Approximately 175 sea stars were found dead at Belcarra Regional Park last Friday, and preliminary findings suggest those deaths were caused by human tampering.

Ron Wood, an operations supervisor with Metro Vancouver, spoke to The NOW Thursday after conferring with officials from the federal department of fisheries and oceans. Though he couldn’t speculate on the exact cause, he did say that the marine animals — known as pisaster stars — were found too far above the high-tide mark to have gotten there on their own.

“There is the suspicion that this was some very irresponsible human behaviour,” Wood said, adding that Metro staffers have increased their presence in the park since the incident. “It’s really disturbing.”

Though the park is monitored by Metro Vancouver staff, its waters fall under the jurisdiction of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. A representative from the federal department told The NOW Thursday that the lead investigator in the Belcarra case was not available for comment after being called to look into the Robson Bight oil spill off northern Vancouver Island.

The sea star incident came to light last Friday after a series of photos submitted to The NOW showed the dead marine animals scattered about the shores near the first lookout point of the regional park.

Incidentally, Coquitlam resident Fiona Situ told The NOW Thursday afternoon that she and her husband had been walking near the lookout area on Saturday, Aug. 11 when they came across a couple collecting about a dozen sea stars in a plastic bag.

Situ estimates the animals had been out of the water for about 10 minutes before she and her husband asked the couple to stop what they were doing. “They threw them back immediately into the water — but not in a gentle way,” she said.

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The Navy can use high-powered sonar during exercises off the Southern California coast, despite the technology’s threat to whales and other marine mammals, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The ruling allows the Navy to use high-powered sonar in 11 planned training exercises.

National security interests outweigh the possible harm to marine life, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined in overturning a judge’s order banning the practice.

“The public does indeed have a very considerable interest in preserving our natural environment and especially relatively scarce whales,” Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote for the majority. “But it also has an interest in national defense. We are currently engaged in war, in two countries.”

Judge Milan Smith Jr. disagreed, writing that he would have kept the ban in place in part because the Natural Resources Defense Council is likely to win its lawsuit to stop the use of sonar.

Cara Horowitz, an attorney for the Santa Monica-based resources defense council, said she was disappointed by the ruling but remained confident the lawsuit would force the Navy to refashion it so it doesn’t harm marine life off the Southern California coast. The council alleges the Navy’s sonar causes whales to beach themselves, among other environmental harms.

The Navy maintains it already minimizes risks to marine life and has monitored the ocean off Southern California for the 40 years it has used sonar without seeing any whale injuries. The service says the sonar is vital for tracking submarines.

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Attacks against government observers monitoring commercial fishing fleets doubled in one year, an indication of rising tensions on the high seas, according to agency figures released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER.Figures obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act show that the number of observer harassment cases more than doubled from 2004 to 2005, at the top of a rising trend over the past decade.

During 2005, the last year for which figures are available, more than one in 10 of the 500 observers in service experienced some form of intimidation or obstruction, according to agency records. Many of the observers are female and face particular challenges from all-male fishing crews on long, difficult voyages.

Other violations reported by observers rose dramatically starting in 1999 and continued to rise through 2005, according to PEER, a national association of government workers in natural resources agencies.

But even as reported incidents increase, the government agency responsible for the monitoring program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, has stopped keeping track of incidents.

For more than 30 years, professional observers have accompanied commercial fishing vessels to monitor compliance with catch limits, by-catch rules and regulations protecting dolphins and other marine mammals. These observers, who work under contract to NOAA, are the only independent source of information for what occurs on the high seas.

The economic pressures facing commercial fishing fleets are growing more intense as fish populations continue to decline and international competition grows fiercer. At the same time, reported cases of harassment of and interference with observers is on the rise.

Yet in 2006, NOAA abruptly stopped collected data, writing to PEER that “no documents were found that are responsive to your request … for a summary of all incidents of violence, threats or harassment against professional observers … between January 1 and December 31, 2006.”

Agency data also indicated that in the vast majority of cases, NOAA took no enforcement action, and when it did, a warning was the most frequent sanction. Many violations were dismissed on the basis that the agency lacked resources to investigate them.

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However, a study by the Sydney Aquarium Conservation Fund has found that for every threatening shark caught in the nets, up to 40 harmless marine creatures are trapped, including dolphins and turtles.

The effectiveness of the nets was made blatantly clear today in an unexpected development during a Sydney Aquarium demonstration of the nets’ construction and framework. An unsuspecting shark hovering on the oceanarium floor became entangled in the demo net, and had frantic divers trying to free the distressed creature before it was injured.

The conservation fund was launching a project aimed at raising the awareness of the threat shark nets pose to Australia’s aquatic ecosystems.

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Spain has asked authorities around the Mediterranean and adjoining seas for help in monitoring an infection which threatens a protected species of dolphin, warning it may become an epidemic.“The virus identified is practically the same one which provoked a massive epidemic in the 1990s and could affect other species of the whale family, such as pilot whales,”the Environment Ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Morbillivirus, a potentially fatal infection which causes measles in its human form, was found in dead striped dolphins — a protected species — washed up on beaches in Spain, it said. The ministry did not say how many dolphins had been affected but a report in newspaper El Mundo on Wednesday said dozens had been killed.

Spain asked countries along the Mediterranean basin to collect samples from any animals infected to help track the disease more effectively. Spanish regional governments and environmental experts will meet to discuss the issue on September 13.

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WWF and Papua New Guinea’s national postal service are issuing a new series of postal stamps featuring six species of endangered marine turtles found in the country’s waters — leatherback, green, hawksbill, loggerhead, olive ridley and flatback.

Papua New Guinea has some of the world’s most important nesting beaches, feeding areas and nurseries for leatherback, hawksbill, green and loggerhead turtles. Although internationally protected, the marine turtle populations are on the decline as a result of over-harvesting for meat and egg consumption, accidental capture in fishing nets, coastal development and marine pollution.

Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Solomon Islands last year agreed to protect the crucially endangered leatherback turtle in the Pacific through joint conservation activities. The tri-national partnership, supported by WWF, will allow the three countries to enhance conservation of leatherback turtles through information sharing, data exchange and cooperative research. It also plans to establish a network of marine protected areas covering critical leatherback habitats throughout parts of the western Pacific Ocean.

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THIS teenager was taken from the water near Sydney’s Palm Beach with four fish hooks in her gut. The green sea turtle is still in intensive care but after two months of treatment at Taronga Zoo and two lots of surgery, she may yet make a full recovery.

If she survives, she will be one of the lucky ones. This year alone, the Zoo has taken in 20 different sea turtles found by fishers. Only five have lived.

The turtles swallow fish hooks and lines and many starve to death as the metal claws eroded their stomachs. “Unfortunately, when we find the turtles they’ve (usually) had the hooks and lines in them a long time,” the Zoo wildlife hospital manager Libby Hall said. “The hooks . . . put holes in the intestines (and) they end up with a very large gut impaction. They can’t feed and they starve to death,” she said.

Many sea turtles that suffer this fate are not found until they rise to the surface and float after they die. This particular green sea turtle, a 8.6kg teenager, was found early. The hooks could be surgically removed as they had not settled deep in her gut.

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Eliecer Cruz, governor of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, a United Nations World Heritage Site, said Tuesday that Ecuador plans to expel 6,000 illegal residents from the archipelago. The government warned in April that it would deport illegal residents to preserve the islands, which are located in the Pacific Ocean, 950 km west of Ecuador.

The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) said in June that the Islands’ environment was at risk from tourists, immigrants and foreign species. Cruz said that authorities bar tourists from Ecuador or overseas from spending more than three months on the islands, but that many come and stay permanently.

Raquel Molina, director of the Galapagos National Park, praised planned restrictions on visitors. “It was a question of having the political will to carry out what is already laid down in law and regulate people’s extended stays on the island,” she said. UNESCO listed the islands as a world heritage site because of its unique flora and fauna.

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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.

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