Diving Thoughts

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.

There’s more on the Arctic methane story in this article from New Scientist.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, so if large quantities of it are released into the atmosphere it could make climate change even worse.That may be starting to happen as researchers have found 250 plumes of methane bubbles that are rising from the sea bed off Norway.

Vast quantities of methane are trapped as methane hydrate in sediment under the Arctic seabed. Methane hydrate is a frozen substance made up of water and methane, which is stable under high pressure and low temperature. But as temperatures rise, the hydrate is starting to break down which can result in the methane being released.

The lower the temperature is, the less pressure is required to keep the methane hydrate stable.  Data collected over 30 years shows that it used to be stable at a depth of 360 metres, but recent evidence shows that it is now stable at depths of over 400 metres.  This is probably because this area of the ocean is now 1 C. warmer than it used to be.

Researchers have found that most of the methane is dissolving into the seawater and they have not yet detected any evidence that the gas is breaking the surface and getting into the atmosphere, although they emphasise that this doesn’t mean that it isn’t doing. But even if it’s not getting into the atmosphere, it is making the ocean more acidic, as it is combining with oxygen in the water to form CO2, which in sea water forms carbonic acid.

The full BBC story can be found on their website.

The following comes from a WWF Hong Kong email which I received this morning:

© Lindsay Porter / WWF Hong Kong

The Highways Department has recently released the environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macau Bridge (the Bridge) for public consultation. The Bridge cuts right through the middle of a major dolphin habitat. The impact on the dolphins of such a massive development is expected to be significant but difficult to measure, so the project represents a dangerous experiment to the dolphin’s very survival in our waters. WWF is now calling for your support to ask for more marine protected areas for dolphins, which should include:

• The two marine parks endorsed by the Country and Marine Park Board in 2002 at Southwest Lantau and Soko Islands and;
• The waters around the Brothers Islands and Tai O which are confirmed to be hotspots of dolphin occurrence.

Please submit a letter to the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) on or before 12 September 2009 when the public consultation ends.

Fish eating killer whales (Orcinus orca) in the Avacha gulf off the coast of Russia tend to live in pods of 10-20 whales. But scientists have now observed 8 such pods coming together to form a super-pod of over 100 animals. This behaviour has also been seen in other parts of the world, such as Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia and Iceland.

Observations have now shown that the whales rarely forage or feed in these large concentration, and since they have very few natural predators, it is unlikely that they are gathering for mutual protection. Instead it seems that the whales are using these large groups to socialise, and perhaps to assess potential mates.

The above photograph comes from this BBC article.

The BBC has an interesting article on whether jellyfish help to stir up the oceans, helping to distribute heat, nutrients and chemicals. They draw their material from a recent article in Nature where researchers used a green dye to see the effects caused by swimming jellyfish.

Over 50 years ago Charles Darwin (no, not that one – his grandson) identified that animals contribute to marine turbulence and the influence of this “biogenic” mixing in comparison to wind and tides has been debated ever since. This recent research has shown that small creatures as well as very large ones contribute. The researchers studied jellyfish because they were relatively easy to study, but they feel that crusteceans like krill are more likely to be more significant since there are so many of them.

The principle is to do with aerodynamics. That a creature at depth will carry colder, deeper water up with it as it migrates upwards. The effect is likely to be largest in specific areas where there is a high concentration of life.

For more information, go to the BBC’s website.