Diving Thoughts

An 18 foot whale shark was found last week in Bahay Kambing, a cove in the municipality of Tingloy, by some divers, including several from Hong Kong. Its dorsal and pectoral fins had all been cut off and there were rope marks on its tail. It was towed to Caban cove which was calmer and volunteers tried to help it. Unfortunately it died in the night from its injuries.

Having been fortunate enough to see a similarly sized whale shark in Thailand, this is very sad.

Whale sharks are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and they are protected under Philippine law. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to have made much difference in this case.

The photo above was taken from WWF-Philippines website, where they have a long article on this.

Here’s another photo and a link to an article, this time from the Philippine Star’s website.

I’ve also seen a number of photos on Facebook, so the incident is becoming more widely reported worldwide.

There’s also a thread on Scubaboard’s forum.

According to a couple of the articles I read, “locals” have suggested that the whale shark may have become entangled in a fishing net, and had its fins off in order to recover the net! Several years ago in Hong Kong during a shallow night dive a bunch of squid fishermen turned up. Since lights attract the squid, they no doubt concluded that underwater dive lights would be even better at attracting them, so they dropped nets around 3 pairs of divers. It’s a good job they didn’t apply the same logic as these Philippine “locals”, otherwise we’d have got 6 divers back with no arms and legs left.

Presumably if these “locals” are to be believed and saving the nets were the priority, the fins would have been discarded and no-one would dream of selling them for USD 800 per kilo. And I’m not convinced that under Philippine law that it makes any difference why you kill a protected animal, it is still illegal. I don’t think I’m alone in that view as apparently WWF-Philippines and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) have announced a reward of P100,000 to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest of the people involved.

The Standard are reporting that Elizabeth Quat will become the first woman from Hong Kong to be involved in a diving expedition to the Antarctic for research purposes. The article isn’t actually clear on whether she will actually be diving there, or whether she is the first Hong Kong woman on a diving expedition there or just the first on a diving expedition “for research”. All in all they don’t give us much news to go on, although their photo does show some diving gear and a camera housing.

She will apparently be a photographer as part of Project Elysium which will “document the vista, flora and fauna of the Antarctic Peninsula”. This is done with a view to raise awareness of climate change. It should be a great trip, so good luck to Ms  Quat. Hopefully we’ll have some great photos to show later.

You can read the article on the Standard website, from where the photo above came.

Dense superswarms of krill form in the Southern Ocean and some can stretch for tens of kilometres. Krill are shrimp-like crustaceans such as the Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba).

Scientists have discovered that there are two main types of swarms. The smaller ones may be  up to 50 metres long  and 4 metres deep, with an average density of 10 krill per cubic metre.  These are usually made up of adult krill, which are negatively buoyant. This means they have to swim to keep afloat, which takes up energy and means they need to eat more. But while a swarm offers some protection against predators, it means they are also competing for food, which could be why these adult swarms are not larger or more dense.

The second type of swarms are much bigger and also much denser. These tend to be formed of juvenile krill which are buoyant and so need less energy.

One worrying aspect is the possible impact of overfishing, if most krill in the Southern Ocean are gathered in a few very large superswarms. Fishing fleets can effectively locate these superswarms and by fishing them out could remove the majority of krill living in the ocean, which would have a dramatic effect on other species and the environment.

The next thing scientists may have to look at is why the largest swarms form at night, when the animals would typically be feeding and people had expected them to disperse.

The above photo comes from an article on the BBC’s website.

President Mohamed Nasheed (pictured) of the Maldives and 11 of his ministers held the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting. They were all in diving gear at a depth of 4 metres. It was a PR stunt to raise awareness of global warming which could result in sea level changes that could flood the Maldives and make it uninhabitable. The immediate target is to focus attention on trying to get a better deal at the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen.

The ministers sat around a horseshoe shaped table at 10am surrounded by fish, and signed an “SOS”  agreement, calling for carbon emission cuts.

The president, already a keen diver, told the BBC that “What do we hope to achieve? We hope not to die. I hope I can live in the Maldives and raise my grandchildren here,”

There is a video of the meeting and an article on the BBC’s website.

Scientists from Diversitas, an international programme of biodiversity science, have warned of an alarming increase of animal extinctions as a result of threats to biodiversity and ecosystems. In a blog they seem particularly concerned about freshwater species.

At the 6th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in April 2003,  123 world ministers committed to “achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the local, national and regional levels, as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth.”  Georgina Mace of Imperial College, London, and Vice-Chair of the international DIVERSITAS programme says that ““We will certainly miss the target for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 and therefore also miss the 2015 environmental targets within the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to improve health and livelihoods for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people”.

The Diversitas programme is organising its second Open Science Conference in Capetown on Oct. 13-16 with 600 experts from around the world.

You can read more here.

In an attempt to highlight the threat of climate change, the government of the Maldives will hold a cabinet meeting underwater. On 17th October, all the cabinet ministers bar one (who has a health problem that precludes diving) will hold a meeting at which they will sign a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions.

President Nasheed, who is already a diver, will also hold a press conference in the water, although presumably not underwater which might make him a little difficult to hear. Although some might argue that would be a good thing for a politician.

The ministers are being trained at a military base in the Maldives and for the underwater meeting will each be accompanied by an instructor and military escorts.

It certainly sounds an interesting way to highlight the effects of global warming, which are likely to hit the island nation very hard, since the Maldives is on average only 2.3 metres above sea level.

President Nasheed sounds to be a bit of a character. Shortly after his election he made headlines when he talked about creating a sovereign wealth fund to buy up land with a view to relocating the entire country.

You can read more about the underwater cabinet meeting on the BBC’s website, from where the above photo came.

On Thursday evening the Royal Geographical Society – Hong Kong are presenting a lecture by Dr. Gavin Schmidt on NASA’s research into the nature of global warming and consequent climate change. The lecture is apparently going to combine scientific analysis with stunning photography illustrating the effects of climate change.

The talk is at 3F, British Council, 3 Supreme Court Road (this venue is next to Pacific Place, 5 minutes from Admiralty MTR) on Thursday 8th October. There will be a Drinks Reception at 6.30 pm followed by the Lecture at 7.30 pm.

There is more information on the RGS-HK website.

According to the BBC, Palau is intending to create the world’s first shark sanctuary by banning all commercial shark fishing in its waters. Johnson Toribiong, Palau’s President, announced this on Friday at the UN General Assembly. It will protect 600,000 sq km of ocean.

Palau gains a lot of income from their tourism, a mainstay of which is scuba diving. When I was there several years ago, I found it had a very high concentration of sharks, primarily grey reef sharks.

There are questions as to whether Palau will be able to enforce the ban as they only have one patrol boat. According to the BBC’s report, a recent aerial survey found 70 boats fishing in the area, most of them apparently illegally. However the fishermen still need to land their catches, so with improved monitoring, and international cooperation in tracking and sharing information on illegal fishing boats, perhaps things need not seem so bleak.

Palau is also intending to review its current position on whaling, where it has sided with countries which are pro-hunting, such as Japan. The President is planning bilateral meeting with Japan to discuss it based on the most recent scientific data. He has said that he wants Palau’s position to take a position that “will not lead to the depletion and extinction of whales”.

Perhaps this new shark sanctuary could make Palau an even more attractive destination for divers.

You can get more information from the BBC’s website.

Last Thursday SCDC organised a talk by Nico Zurcher about the extent to which smaller less noticeable plastics affect our oceans and environment. It was a fascinating talk based on some of the research that Nico did examining Hong Kong beaches for his MSc.

Following that, Doug Woodring showed us some photos from his recent trip to the “Plastic Vortex” as part of Project Kaisei. He also sent us the link to this YouTube video…

Scientists working in the Galapagos have found 3 new species of coral and one that had been thought to be extinct. The area they were researching was near Wolf and Darwin islands, which are in the north-east of the island archipelago. This area has apparently not been studied in detail since the 1970s.

The three new coral species are from the genera Hydrozoanthus, Parazoanthus and Antipathozoanthus. In addition, Honeycomb coral (Gardineroseris planulata) had been thought to have been wiped out in 1997/98 by the last major El Nino event but several colonies were found.

El Nino events raise sea water temperatures around the Galapagos up to say 30C., which can lead to the coral polyps ejecting the symbiotic algae that live within them. This leads to the  coral dying and the resulting bleached reefs are very obvious. This recent research suggests that the algae may be adapting to warmer temperatures, which could be a small piece of good news for reefs everywhere.

The above picture is from the Guardian, and you can read more from their website.

On Thursday the Royal Geographical Society of Hong Kong is presenting a lecture by Dr. Alan Knight, who has spent nearly 20 years in sustainable development in the fields of retail, global finance and advising government. He specialises in working with business and policy makers to ensure they can still be profitable while also being sustainable from a perspective of the planet. So not anti-business, foaming at the mouth type of environmentalist.

The talk will be at the Pacific Place Conference Centre, 5/F, One Pacific Place, Admiralty, with drinks from 6:30pm and the lecture starting at 7:30pm. It will cost HKD 100  for members and HKD 150 for non-members. There is more information on the RGS Hong Kong website.

The Guardian has got an interactive map of 10 coral reefs around the world, with a brief description of them and the pressures they are facing as a result of climate change. They reckon you should go and see them before they die.

The map is here.