A video of feeding cucumbers...

This is a burrowing tentacular feeding sea cucumber.  I believe this is Sclerodactyla briareus although if anyone else has a better idea, let me know.

Also, look for some changes to the Chronicles in the coming week. Happy Halloween!

Disapointment? Yep...

Maybe I was expecting a battle royal of sorts.  I mean, I had seen Dr James Ammerman of NY SeaGrant take the government position on the Gulf oil spill, painting a rather rosey picture of whats happening down there.  And I have read Carl Safina's blog posts, seen him on TED talks and watched him on Colbert talking about the devastation of this ecological disaster.  So you might imagine how excited I was to learn that both men, affiliated with Stony Brook's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, would be on a panel discussing the oil spill.  I imagined the gloves would be off in a no-holds barred slugfest between a government scientists and a staunch conservationist. 

I was telling everyone to go.  I predicted a lot of yelling.

I was disappointed.  I guess I should say I wasn't disappointed by the news.  It was encouraging to hear the consensus agreement that it could have been much, much worse.  Despite not knowing the exact impact due to lingering effects for a considerable amount of time, everyone on the panel seemed to agree that the oil dissipated quickly, the scenes of oiled animals occurred in a very small portion of the Gulf, and oil only reached a very very small percentage of the marsh lands.  No shouting.  No fisticuffs between Ammerman and Safina, or any of the other members on the panel for that matter. 

And, while they all stopped short of calling the spill the worst anthropogenic ecological disaster in US history, they did raise some very alarming issues.  Basically, the panelists agreed that of greater concern for the Gulf ecosystem is the increasing dead zone and the loss of salt marshes.  While the oil spill was an acute occurrence that will likely have some lingering effects, both the dead zone and marsh losses are Gulf impacts that are occurring over a long timescale and will continue to have considerable long term effects.  In the question-answer period, Safina pointed out that the Gulf of Mexico has a large amount of natural resilience, as long as the ecological factory is still there - but that factory is the salt marsh, an important habitat which is vital for many species during various portions of their life histories.  It is this reason that the dramatic loss of wetlands should be of much greater concern than any one oil spill.  Without marshes, many species wouldn't be able to recover. 

And yes, while this might seem a little sympathetic toward the oil companies, the truth if that this is a 20-30 billion dollar industry in the Gulf and as long as people continue to drive and use petroleum products, the industry won't go anywhere.  We are all contributing to that problem.  This event should have strengthened our resolve for clean energy, but as a NATION, we need to encourage a change in policy.  That just doesn't seem to be happening.  And while I don't like to get political on here, with the expected results of the coming election, we will be farther away from a clean energy nation despite the events in the Gulf, and our ever increasing pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere.  This is why its important for everyone to vote, even if you have lost faith in your party or aren't enthusiastic about any candidates, remaining on the sidelines could have very serious repercussions. 

Reading through the interwebs...

Been reading some interesting things out there on the internet.  Thought I might share a few things.

Though you had heard it all about the oil spill? On a recent blog post at Discover magazine, one scientist is attributing these fish kills to oil related effects.

Google is helping some off-shore wind energy plans get connected.

A humpback whale traveled a really, really, really, REALLY long way, probably in search of a mate.

A major anomalous warming and bleaching event in the Caribbean.

New species discovered in deep trenches.

Spiny dogfish eating stripers.

As responsible scientists, we should all go out and vote.

And finally, since we are 2 weeks away from scallop season in NY, I'll leave you with this video:

South Shore Estuary Learning Facilitator Program

Or, sSELF for short.  I just recently learned about this program when I attended the New York Marine Science Consortium annual conference.  The idea behind this program is that it gives groups, such as schools, the opportunity to be active stewards by monitoring their local environments.  The south shore estuary system extends from highly impacted water bodies in the west, to less impacted embayments to the east, and encompasses a watershed with a variety of land uses.  The program aims to educate citizens on some of these issues while allowing them to become active in collection of data that helps scientists monitor the estuaries.  The program gives interested groups all the equipment and training they need to get started on the monitoring.  This started back in 2007 and now has 35 different groups that have contributed to 400 different data sets.  In addition to local schools around Long Island, other citizens groups also participate, including the Sierra Club and SPLASH - a group of concerned citizens, started by local fishermen, whose goal is to remove waterfront pollution through both public awareness and individual participation.  It is an interesting program, and I hope to become involved with some local schools getting this established on the East End. 

Census of Marine Life

The results of the 10 year long study on all walks of marine life ended recently, and the results have recently been released, reports an article on CNN.com.  This "decade of discovery" was started by a Rutgers researcher and ended up using data collected from over 2700 researchers from 80 nations - quite the collaborative effort.  These scientists collected data on the smallest bacteria to the largest whales, from the frigid Antarctic to the balmy tropics and everywhere in between.  General conclusions: the oceans are much more connected and the species are much more diverse than previously thought.  And that most of the species are as yet unidentified.  You can read some research highlights here and check out many of the images from the decade long study here.

All in all, a very exciting conclusion to an epic task of trying to understand, survey, and catalog ocean life.   

Jaws:Fire Island?

Well not quite.  White sharks have been receiving a considerable amount of press this summer in the northeast (see here, here, here, and here). Apparently, there were so many sightings that the US Coast Guard issued a white shark advisory, warning people of the northeast that (shocker!) there are white sharks in the water. However, these sea creatures hardly pose a threat to Long Island bathers, Dr. Demian Chapman, shark biologist from the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook, assured the general audience at Southampton College last Friday night.

True, the northeast used to be a hot spot for white sharks.  There were a great many sightings in the 50s and 60s, sighting of both juveniles, adults and even some pairs that were believed to be mating.  While little is known about the white sharks around Long Island at this time period, Dr. Chapman said that some researchers believe this might have been a spawning and nursery ground.  That being said, there is little data on white sharks from this time period other than sightings.  White shark fishing then became quite common, and some of the largest white sharks ever caught were landing on Long Island, particularly out in Montauk, where Captain Frank Mundus was renowned for being a top shark fisherman.

What happened over the course of the past decades is that white shark populations have dwindled in the northeast.  While there might be some debate as to the magnitude of the decline, I think most researchers will agree that it is significant.  Dr. Chapman is looking to use genetic tools to get a grip on how small (or big) the white shark population might be.  Using samples from around 50 sharks, the data thus far shows that northeast white sharks have a low genetic diversity, indicative of a species that has experiences a considerable decline, also known as a bottleneck.  This could be potentially devastating to coastal ecosystems along the US, as these animals are apex predators in the coastal food web. 

So maybe the white shark advisory shouldn't have been alerting the public about their presence in the waters of New England, but perhaps, they should have been warning us about their disappearance.

That all being said, I am no shark biologist, and the above information was from my notes at the lecture.  To learn more about sharks, you should check out some other websites, like the one about New England Sharks, and other blogs by people in the know, such as this entry at Ya Like Dags

Sea lions devastating threatened fisheries...

Another article about the devastation sea lions are causing on fish stocks on the west coast.  Only this time, the focus isn't on salmon.  Sea lions have been congregating at passage points on dammed rivers on the west coast for years, and have been consuming salmon as they enter these passages to return upriver to spawn.  This has been in the news for quite some years, since around 2005, and have continued to receive some level of attention in the public eye, where sea lions are being killed to save salmon, even while salmon experts call for other options.It has also received attention in scientific communities,  to the point where large dollars have been invested to examine the exact impacts on salmonid populations by the increase in sea lion and seal populations. 

However, the new article as it appeared today talked about sea lions now beginning to consume female sturgeon as they reach these dam points.  This is a relatively new idea.  It appeared in a Northwest Council report about strategies to address the sturgeon population.  Not sure if this is a prey switching situation, as my recent online search hasn't turned up many results.  But this was a finding in the above report:

"Limiting Factor:  Marine mammal predation

Primary Threat:  Predation by sea lions on sub-adult, adult, and spawning-size white sturgeon below Bonneville Dam.  Oregon and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife staff have directly observed more that 150 white sturgeon being preyed upon between January 2006 and May 2007, more than 60% of which were spawning-size fish.  These are actual numbers based on direct observations during other sampling activities, not a targeted sampling effort; the actual number of white sturgeon taken by sea lions is likely much higher.  Steller sea lions appear to be especially effective in preying upon large, spawning-size sturgeon, and may selectively capture fish of this size.

Strategy:  Conduct non-lethal hazing actions on the Columbia River to deter California and Steller sea lions from feeding on white sturgeon. 

Measures: Hazing with acoustic and percussive devices, flares, and rubber bullets has been shown to be relatively effective in deterring predation on white sturgeon by Steller sea lions in the area immediately below Bonneville Dam.  Hazing has been an ineffective deterrent for California sea lions.  Steller sea lions have been appearing earlier in the year each year since first sited near Bonneville Dam.  Hazing to protect sturgeon should begin when Steller sea lions are first sited near the dam in each year.  In 2007, hazing began in mid-December from Bonneville Dam downstream approximately six miles to Navigation Marker 85.  Hazing will take place four days a week during daylight hours.  Separate from the hazing efforts, fishery managers from Washington, Oregon and Idaho are seeking federal approval to use lethal means to remove individual California sea lions from below Bonneville Dam that prey on white sturgeon as well as Chinook salmon and steelhead listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).  Efforts to date have focused on the area immediately below Bonneville Dam, but predation by sea lions on white sturgeon is known to occur throughout the lower Columbia River."

Well back to the article, its brief, but basically it talks about observations of the sea lions eating sturgeon on the Columbia River.   And while this isn't being observed at the Fraser River yet, given the still increasing sea lion and seal populations, its probably only a matter of time.