Diving Thoughts

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 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.

Given all the press recently about the serious decline of blue fin tuna worldwide, should we be eating  tuna? Well, it seems to depend on what type of tuna it is and which tuna “stock” it comes from. There are seven species which are divided into 23 stocks. Research shows that six of these stocks are overfished, six are fully utilised, two have not been assessed and nine are not yet fully utilised. So leaving aside blue fin tuna, the largest and most highly prized species, it sounds as though things could be a lot worse. However there is an over-capacity of tuna fishing boats, and there are no controls to prevent new boats from entering fisheries.

Tuna migrate long distances and may well pass through fishing zones of several countries as well as international waters. This makes their conservation that bit more problematic, as they suffer from the tragedy of the commons, meaning everyone has an incentive to take as much as possible of a resource  because if they don’t then other people will. Now would seem to be a good time  for countries to look at working together to try and preserve tuna while their numbers are in relatively good shape.

There is a good article on this on the New Scientist’s website.

A couple of days ago, SCMP were reporting that a dead fin whale was spotted on the bow of a cruise ship as it arrived in Vancouver last Saturday. An investigation is now under way to try and find out if it was killed by the ship, or whether it was already dead when the vessel hit picked up its unexpected passenger.

The Princess Cruise Line, owner of the Sapphire Princess which is the ship involved, claim to have a strict whale avoidance policy, and the company said that there were not reportings of whale sightings as they came into Vancouver.

The photo above comes from the SCMP’s website, and if you are a subscriber you can read the article here.

Swiss group, Act Responsible showcases striking ways to raise awareness of green issues. Here are 27 adverts to save the planet from the Guardian’s website.

Project Kaisei have organised a charity fundraiser on Saturday 11 July. This is part of their programme to raise awareness about the Plastic Vortex that we mentioned several weeks ago. It consists of a sunset cruise on the Bounty out to Hemingway’s in Discovery Bay. HKD 600 per head for the cruise, snacks and open bar on board.

At 8pm on Wednesday 8th July they will be screening the award-winning documentary “Addicted to Plastic” at Hemingway’s. The screening is free.

You can find out more on Hemingway’s website.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed 64 species on their first ever red list for oceanic sharks. These include hammerheads, giant devil rays and porbeagles. Overfishing is getting the blame, and it is particularly problematic for sharks which produce few young and take many years to mature.

Scalloped hammerheads have been categorised as globally endangered. In some parts of the world their numbers have declined by 99% over the last 30 years.

Conservationists are calling for limits to catches and enforcement of strict bans on finning, where a shark’s fins are chopped off before the shark is thrown back to die.

There is a lot more information in an article on the Guardian’s website.

As part of their Seafood Choice Initiative to encourage people to choose what seafood they eat responsibly, WWF Hong Kong have also published a Seafood Guide. In it seafood is broken down into 3 categories:

• Recommended
• Think Twice – Ask for its origin and production method
• Avoid

Whether you are at a restaurant or at the supermarket this gives you the chance to choose seafood from the recommended category.

Unlike some people I know, WWF are not insisting on people giving up seafood altogether, but just encouraging us all to choose what we eat with consideration of the marine environment.

There is a PDF version of the Seafood Guide that you can download, print out, fold up and put in your bag so you’ve got it when you need it. You can download it from WWF’s website.