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Where did all the fish go?


The sea was not so vast, once we deployed an industrial armada against it.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff

Early European explorers to the Americas encountered an astounding abundance of marine life. White beluga whales, now limited to the arctic, swam as far south as Boston Bay. Cod off Newfoundland were so plentiful that fishermen could catch them with nothing more than a weighted basket lowered into the water. As late as the mid-19th century, river herring ran so thick in the eastern United States that wading across certain waterways meant treading on fish. And everywhere sharks were so numerous that, after hauling in their catches, fishers often found them stripped to the bone.

“It completely bowled me over when I started reading some of these early accounts,” says Cal­lum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the University of York, England, and author of “The Unnatural History of the Sea,” which tells much of this tale. “The picture painted is one of an abundance of life which is very hard for us to grasp today.”

Hundreds of years of fishing – and especially the last half century of industrialized fishing – have drastically altered the oceans. Measured by weight, only 1/10th of the large predators that once swam the seas – the big fish and sharks that shape the entire ecosystem – is estimated to remain. And many of these changes have occurred relatively recently. Any middle-aged fisherman will wax nostalgic about the catches of just 20 years ago. Any marine scientist will glumly check off reefs they once studied that are now bleached and overgrown with algae as a result of overfishing and pollution, and the marine life that’s simply disappeared.

“Today’s oceans have got far less in the way of biomass than they used to,” says Professor Roberts. “We’re altering ecosystems in a way that reduces the level of productivity they can support.”

The rest here [features.csmonitor.com]

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Persistent Man-made Chemical Pollutants Found in Deep-sea Octopods and Squids
10.06.2008

Contamination of the deep oceanic food web is occurring, new study reports

New evidence that chemical contaminants are finding their way into the deep-sea food web has been found in deep-sea squids and octopods, including the strange-looking “vampire squid". These species are food for deep-diving toothed whales and other predators.

In a study to be published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, Michael Vecchione of NOAA Fisheries’ National Systematics Laboratory and colleagues Michael Unger, Ellen Harvey and George Vadas at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of The College of William and Mary report finding a variety of chemical contaminants in nine species of cephalopods, a class of organisms that includes octopods, squids, cuttlefishes and nautiluses.

“It was surprising to find measurable and sometimes high amounts of toxic pollutants in such a deep and remote environment,” Vecchione said. Among the chemicals detected were tributyltin (TBT), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), brominated diphenyl ethers (BDEs), and dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT). They are known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) because they don't degrade and persist in the environment for a very long time.

The rest here [www.innovations-report.com]

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Western Oceans Quickly Going Acidic, Say Scientists

By Brandon Keim May 22, 2008 | 1:57:05 PMCategories: Climate, Environment, Oceans


Greenhouse gas pollution has acidified the coastal waters of western North America more rapidly than scientists expected, says a study published today in Science.

In a survey of waters stretching from central Canada to northern Mexico, researchers led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Richard Feely found cold, unexpectedly low-pH water "upwelling onto large portions of the continental shelf." In some locations, the degree of acidification observed had not been expected to occur until 2050.

Ocean acidification is a side effect of excessive atmospheric carbon dioxide, lesser-known but no less troubling than climate change. When seawater absorbs CO2, the proportion of hydrogen ions rises [pdf] -- a phenomenon remembered from high school chemistry class as the reddening of a litmus test.

The availability of carbonate ions falls correspondingly, the trends dovetailing to form bad news for marine organisms whose shells or skeletons require calcium carbonate. The shells become weaker and dissolve. Among the affected creatures are corals, crustaceans and shellfish -- and if those populations collapse, entire marine ecosystems will follow.

In September of 2005, Feely was among the authors of a Nature article predicting that acidication would claim Antarctic Ocean waters by 2050, spreading into the subarctic Pacific by 2100. "Our findings indicate that conditions detrimental to high-latitude ecosystems could develop within decades, not centuries as suggested previously," they wrote [pdf].

In the latest study, they found unusually low-PH water off the continental shelf of western North America. This occurred primarily at depths between 40 and 120 meters, but in one region off the California coast it extended all the way to the surface. Such upwellings are a seasonal phenomenon, the researchers noted, but appear to be getting worse, with low-pH water claiming ever-larger ocean areas.

"Our results show for the first time that a large section of the North American continental shelf is impacted by ocean acidification," they wrote.

The waters now rising to the ocean surface were last exposed to atmospheric CO2 in the mid-2oth century. What hill happen, one wonders, when water that sank to the deep sea during our own CO2-choked time comes back again?

"Water already in transit to upwelling centers is carrying increasing anthropogenic CO2 and more corrosive conditions to the coastal oceans of the future," write the authors. Ocean acidification "could affect some of the most fundamental biological and geochemical processes of the sea in the coming decades." If anything, the clinical language of science only makes their words more disturbing.

From [blog.wired.com]

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Oxygen-starved ocean 'deserts' emerging

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 8:01pm BST 01/05/2008

Underwater "deserts" are emerging in tropical oceans as the oxygen vanishes from seawater, warns a new study.

One of the consequences of a changing climate, the warmer oceans, is causing a decrease in the oxygen concentration and creating oxygen-starved, or "hypoxic" conditions underwater.


The low-oxygen zones at depths of around 500 metres near India and in the equatorial Pacific waters off the Americas have grown thicker during the past 50 years, says a report in the journal Science.

This will likely have far-reaching impacts on ecosystems because key organisms cannot survive in these zones, warn Dr Lothar Stramma of Kiel University in Germany, with colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Seattle, Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, and the Baltic Sea Research Institute Warnemunde in Rostock, Germany.

The team studied oxygen concentrations over half a century in waters of intermediate depth for select tropical ocean regions using historical data combined with recent measurements to find that these oxygen starved zones are expanding significantly, especially in tropical regions of the Atlantic Ocean.

"In an area to the south of the Cape Verde Islands the vertical extend of the layer with oxygen concentrations of less than 90 micromol/kg increased by 85 per cent from a thickness of 370 metres in 1960 to 690 metres in 2006."

As the low-oxygen zones in the tropical oceans at 300 to 700 metres have extended, the habitable regions for open ocean fish, plankton and other organisms has decreased. This has "fundamental implications for marine ecosystems and thereby fisheries resource management issues," he says.

The rest here [www.telegraph.co.uk]

I wish everyone knew about all this, they might think twice about their lifestyle habits.

Cheers,
J





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2008 12:40PM by Jose.

Sad.

I think that we need not worry about Earth in the long run as she will heal until it's time for Earth to be no more. It's humans that will eventually be purged thru our own hands most likely. I am not sad about that thought, but in the meantime I am sad for the animals, and other forms of life that encounter us and are abused, used, and tossed away, or eliminated entirely because of our interventions. As a species I don't think for all our 'intelligence' we are really very wise.

Love,
Prism

I think there is a change taking place now which has more and more people waking up to these things. I believe that once a critical mass has been reached that we can undo what we have done.

When I went veg 20 years ago I hoped that, too.
But we are still in the 2% range for westerners.
And A LOT of people on this forum are still eating fish.

It is unbearably depressing. The sea is more astonishing and gorgeous than anything that could possibly be dreamed of by people. I think we all have to take responsibility for the destruction of the seas. I believe in my heart that our earth has amazing healing capacities, if we will only stop overloading her with waste and giving her time to rest and heal. I think this healing begins with people individually. When we begin to heal ourselves, we begin to gain consciousness, this consciousness finds ways to spread to others, we then consciously minimize our contribution to the devastation and educate one other. Everyone who is committed helping our planet to heal will find their own outlets through their actions and collectively we can create change. Many may feel ready to throw up their hands in despair. We need to spread the message of hope.

I love all creatures, but the plight of the whales (including the beluga) and porpoises is hard to swallow. They are amazing. They have intelligence comparable to people. Many species have complex matrilinear, tribal social structure. Their songs are masterpieces of art. Whales and porpoises are often beached when the sonar of ships disrupts their own sonar and disorienting them and causing them to swim too close to the shore. Their sonar capabitlities is amazing. They can form a very complex mental picture of scenes miles away. They can recognize individuals, if another animal is sick or pregnant. Recently in a documentary about dolphins I saw, I learned that scientists believe dolphins tap into the sonar of others helping each other to form complete pictures of the sea. I don't think it is well understood how it works.

I also learned recently about the blue whale, which I mention because they epitomize the oceans magnificence, or at least a profound stretch of our imaginations. They are the largest creature on the planet. They are over 100 feet long. There tongue weighs as much as an elephant, there heart weighs as much as a car, a person could swim through their aorta, their song can travel across an ocean. Despite their size they are graceful and elegant creatures. People don't understand how they make their complex songs and their migratory route is largely a mystery. It is interesting that the largest creature on the planet is such an enigma to us.

I learned somewhat recently about 'dead zones' in our oceans. For example, there is approximately 7,000 square miles of 'dead zone' off in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi River drains into the sea. A dead zone is an area of the sea that is so contaminated, it lost the ability to support life. There are 150 of them on the planet, all in derived from industrialized nations, where runoff from rivers enter into the ocean. One extremely large contributor to 'dead zones' in the oceans is agricultural waste. It is hard to think about. It is also good to know that I can minimize my contribution to this problem through my food choices. Collectively we can make changes.

joanne--

>Everyone who is committed helping our planet to heal will find their own outlets through their actions and collectively we can create change. Many may feel ready to throw up their hands in despair.<

Yes! So good to be hearing this on this board. Thank you. We still have time and resources, and the main resource is the collective intent and actions of those of us who willing to dare to hope that we can heal our planet.

>We need to spread the message of hope.<

Hope is so important, because without it we wallow in fear, and fear drowns out the love and compassion that motivate us to figure out solutions and take action.

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

If any of you are familiar with the work of Dr Emoto [www.hado.net]
Then I think you will agree that the intention of each individual does make a difference. I personally feel that there is never a time positive intention becomes futile. Even when it all seems too much.

The seas are not dying, They are being murderd, 60% of thw world gets its protein from sea.
I am shocked at the rate of decline, Used to fish commercial on the east coast Hudsen Canyon dragging nets at 200 fathom on the bottom tearing up everything we rolled over. my family are still in the buss, but not for to much longer.
the US Marine fisheries is a big part of the problem, If you looked at their laws on fishing you will see they haves an other agenda in mind .
We can not live with dead oceans, and some say only 10 yrs left if no turn about.
One thing that is good is school fish if you give them the chance, they can come back from over fishing. but thsy cant swim in oil or drug run off or storm drain to the sea.
80% of our air generated from the sea bed floor.
Its one of my favorite places on this earth and it hurts to see what we have done.
Out of site out of mind.( So much to do so little time)
Ocean Peace riverhousebill