The Canadian Press Published Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:57PM EDT
OTTAWA – A renowned Canadian scientist says there appear to be similarities between fish deformities found downstream from Alberta's oilsands and those observed after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and Florida's Deepwater Horizon disaster.
David Schindler of the University of Alberta has written two federal cabinet ministers pointing out the research similarities.
He's proposing that some chemical or suite of chemicals found in crude oil may be causing the malformations, and he'd like to see Canada take the lead in researching the issue.
By Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News. 2 April 2013
Canada's Information Commission is to investigate claims that the government is "muzzling" its scientists.
The move is in response to a complaint filed by academics and a campaign group.
BBC News reported last year instances of the government blocking requests by journalists to interview scientists.
Some scientists alleged that the muzzling could help suppress environmental concerns about government policies.
The former president of the Canadian Science Writers' Association, Veronique Morin, says that the commissioner's office will now have to find out if the federal government has in effect been operating a policy of censorship.
"Vital stories pertaining to the environment, natural resources, food safety, fisheries and oceans are not coming out in Canada because, for several years now, the government has imposed rules which prevents its scientists from speaking freely about their publicly funded research," she said. Read the full article
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico nearly three years ago, but the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that it released are still killing dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life in record numbers, according to new research.
“Three years after the initial explosion, the impacts of the disaster continue to unfold,” Doug Inkley, senior scientist for the National Wildlife Federation and lead author of the report, said in a press release. “Dolphins are still dying in high numbers in the areas affected by oil. These ongoing deaths — particularly in an apex predator like the dolphin — are a strong indication that there is something amiss with the Gulf ecosystem.”
* Dolphin deaths in the area affected by oil have remained above average every month since just before the spill began. (The infant dolphin data was gathered in January and February of 2013.)
* NOAA called the dolphin die-off “unprecedented” — a year ago. While NOAA is keeping many elements of its dolphin research confidential pending the conclusion of the ongoing trial, the agency has ruled out the most common causes of previous dolphin die-offs.
* More than 1,700 sea turtles were found stranded between May 2010 and November 2012 — the last date for which information is available. For comparison, on average about 240 sea turtles are stranded annually.
* A coral colony seven miles from the wellhead was badly damaged by oil. A recent laboratory study found that the mixture of oil and dispersant affected the ability of some coral species to build new parts of a reef. Read the full article
Nineteenth Century tools made from sharks' teeth suggest that two species of shark used to populate the Central Pacific but are no longer present.
Using artefacts from museums, a team of US researchers found that spot-tail and dusky sharks used to inhabit the reefs surrounding the Gilbert Islands.
The unusual historical data would help evaluate the success of ecological conservation measures, they added.
In their paper, the team from the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, and Columbia University, New York, said indigenous artefacts often represented an "under-utilised source of data". Read the full article
Today we released the reportFisheries Economics of the United States 2011. The report provides economic statistics on U.S. commercial and recreational fisheries and marine-related businesses for each coastal state and the nation. The report is the sixth volume in an annual series designed to give the public accessible economic information on fishing activities in the U.S., and is a companion to Fisheries of the United States.
This report highlights that U.S. commercial and recreational saltwater fishing combined, generated more than $199 billion in sales and supported 1.7 million jobs in the nation's economy in 2011. Both the landings and value climbed in 2011, demonstrating U.S. fisheries are moving in the right direction – even during this challenging time of transition in some of our fishing communities.
The seafood industry-harvesters, seafood processors and dealers, seafood wholesalers and retailers-generated $129 billion insales impacts, $37 billion in income impactsand supported 1.2 million jobs in2011, the most recent year included in the report.
Recreational fishing generated $70 billion in sales impacts, $20 billion in income impacts, and supported 455,000 jobs in2011. Compared to 2010, thenumbers are up for allof these impacts except commercial seafood sales.
The report is posted on the NOAA Fisheries, Office of Science and Technology homepage at http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/.
Stay up-to-date with the latest fisheries topics and join FishNews
A new report commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) highlights how humans have massively altered global cycling of nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients. While this had huge benefits for world food and energy production, it has also created a web of water and air pollution that is damaging human health, causing toxic algal blooms, killing fish, threatening sensitive ecosystems and contributing to climate change.
The report – entitled ‘Our Nutrient World’ – highlights the problems of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution and proposes a goal for future intergovernmental agreement to improve nutrient efficiency by 20%, saving 20 million tonnes of nitrogen per year by the year 2020: ‘20:20 for 2020’.
Counting the nitrogen savings, implementation cost and the environmental and health benefits they estimate that such a goal would provide a net saving of £108 billion pounds per year. Read the report
7 February 2013, by Tom Marshall. http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk
The chemicals that give some corals their luminous pink and red colours also protect them from damage caused by too much sunlight, scientists have shown.
The idea isn't altogether new, but this is the first conclusive evidence for it. Corals need light to survive, but too much can kill them, so they've evolved various countermeasures.
This research adds another to their arsenal – chemicals known as chromoproteins (CPs), which turn out to absorb potentially harmful portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Smith, E.G., D'Angelo, C., Salih, A., Wiedenmann, J. Screening by coral green fluorescent protein (GFP)-like chromoproteins supports a role in photoprotection of zooxanthellae. Coral Reefs. DOI: 10.1007/s00338-012-0994-9
ScienceDaily-Feb. 6, 2013 — Since the observations made by English naturalist Charles Darwin on the Galapagos Islands, researchers have been interested in how physical barriers, such as isolation on a particular island, can lead to the formation of new species through the process of natural selection. Natural selection is a process whereby heritable traits that enhance survival become more common in successive generations, while unfavorable heritable traits become less common. Over time, animals and plants that have morphologies or other attributes that enhance their suitability to a particular environment become more common and more adapted to that specific environment.
Researchers today are intimately familiar with how physical barriers and reproduction isolation can lead to the formation of new species on land, especially among plants and animals with short generation times such as insects and annual plants. Michael E. Hellberg, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at LSU, however, is interested in a more obscure form of speciation: the speciation of animals in the ocean.
"Marine plants and animals can drift around in the ocean extremely long distances," Hellberg said. "So how do they specialize?" Read the full article
ScienceDaily. Jan. 29, 2013 — Coral reefs build their structures by both producing and accumulating calcium carbonate, and this is essential for the maintenance and continued vertical growth capacity of reefs. An international research team has discovered that the amount of new carbonate being added by Caribbean coral reefs is now significantly below rates measured over recent geological timescales, and in some habitats is as much as 70% lower.
Coral reefs form some of the planet's most biologically diverse ecosystems, and provide valuable services to humans and wildlife. However, their ability to maintain their structures and continue to grow depends on the balance between the addition of new carbonate, which is mostly produced by corals themselves, set against the loss of carbonate through various erosional processes. Scientists have long known that reef ecosystems are in decline and that the amount of live coral on reefs is dwindling. But the paper, published on DATE TBC in Nature Communications, is the first evidence that these ecological changes are now also impacting on the growth potential of reefs themselves. Read more
Multiple hurricanes impacted southeast Florida during 2004 and 2005, producing record rainfall and large-scale stormwater runoff into the urbanized St. Lucie Estuary (SLE). To assess effects on water quality, field samples were taken in June and November 2005 and March 2006 along the SLE’s three main segments: the South Fork, connected via the C-44 canal to Lake Okeechobee; the North Fork, which receives residential and agricultural runoff from the C-23 and C-24 canals; and the Middle Estuary, which flows into the Indian River Lagoon and Atlantic Ocean. Salinities were ,1% throughout the normally brackish estuary during the 2005 samplings, but returned to near-normal levels by March 2006 in all but the South Fork. Low salinities in 2005 correlated with low dissolved oxygen, high turbidity, elevated nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations, and high fecal and total coliform counts. Highest turbidity (84.4 NTU), nitrate (37.9 mM), and total dissolved nitrogen (130.8 mM) concentrations occurred in the South Fork, whereas the highest ammonium (15.4 mM), soluble reactive phosphorus (10.5 mM), and total dissolved phosphorus (13.8 mM) concentrations occurred in the North Fork. High fecal and total coliform counts occurred in tidal creeks adjacent to dense residential areas that rely on septic tanks for on-site sewage disposal. The data suggest that increased stormwater retention, minimization of freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee, and enhanced treatment of both stormwater and sewage are needed to mitigate future stormwater-driven water quality perturbations in the SLE.
