Bob and Ray have entered the 21st century and now have a blog! We're cool! We thought a blog dealing with especially sealife conservation issues was the logical next step...
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Welcome to Calvin's fundraising website. Calvin has recently undergone a surgery to remove one of his kidneys after a kidney stone was discovered. He has endured an extensive hospital stay with some life threatening complications. He is doing better, and we are praying for a full recovery. Calvin's owner, Krissie, is now looking at a vet bill in excess of $5000. Some of her friends decided to help out with a donation page. Any donation contribution will be truly appreciated, no matter what the amount. Please donate what you can, and pass this website on to other people you know.
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Labels: bad news
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"The study found there is a 26 percent chance the Cook Inlet belugas will be extinct in 100 years and a 68 percent chance they'll be gone in 300 years."
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"Andrés Patiño, a marine who is winding up his month-long stretch on Malpelo, insists that the hammerhead shark must be preserved in its habitat rather than served in a soup bowl. 'I saw hundreds of sharks out there and they don't eat you when you swim, even without your boots on,' says Private Patiño. 'They're strange animals but very beautiful, and there is no good reason to eat them.'"
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"Victory! Today, Amazon has pulled all shark fin related products from their offering. No official statement has yet been made by the company; however it appears that they have chosen the ecologically responsible path....
If you would like to voice your support for Amazon's decision to remove shark fin products and press them to take a public stand on this issue, please feel free to you use the following text:To Amazon Customer Service/Investor Relations
Sincerely,..."
I would first like to voice my support for Amazon's decision to remove shark based products from your website. You have listened to the overwhelming feedback in opposition to shark products from your customers, and have taken appropriate action to address them. It is my hope and expectation that shark based products will not return to your website in the future. Furthermore, I expect that Amazon will take a public stand against trade in shark products.
It is important that you understand the basis for my concern regarding shark fin and related shark products. Shark finning trade has exploded in the last 15 years and is continuing to grow at a rate of over 5% per year. Most recent studies indicate that sharks are being harvested at a rate of 23 to 73 million sharks per year. As a consequence, worldwide shark populations have plummeted with many species declining more than 90%. Since sharks are very slow to mature and reproduce, the present rate of over-fishing is pushing many shark species to the brink of extinction.
The value of the sharks fin far exceeds the value of the rest of the shark. In restaurants, shark fin soup can fetch as much as USD150 per bowl. A shark's fin represents about 2-5% of the total body weight and takes up relatively little storage space. As such, it is far more profitable for fishermen to sever the fins and dump of the finless sharks into the water to drown. This has lead to a worldwide ecological disaster. Finning is a cruel, wasteful and destructive practice. Sadly it is the primary means by which shark fins are harvested.
Many nations have outlawed the practice of shark finning. In particular, shark finning is banned in the Eastern Pacific, North Atlantic and waters of Australia. Having decimated shark populations in other regions of the oceans, the commercial shark fishing fleets are illegally operating in protected waters and harvesting shark fins by the millions. In the open ocean, there is little that can be done to stop them.
By ceasing to sell shark based products, Amazon has taken an important step in the right direction. Amazon now has an opportunity, and responsibility, to join other world class organizations in taking a public stand against trade and consumption of shark products and other endangered species. As an example, Disney took public action in response to significant outcry against their initial plan to serve shark fin soup. In a press release they stated, "After careful consideration and a thorough review process, we were not able to identify an environmental sustainable fishing source, leaving us no alternative except to remove shark's fin soup from our wedding banquet menu,"
I urge Amazon to issue a similar statement to the public stating why they will no longer carry shark fin and related products. This would further position Amazon as an environmentally responsible and conscientious organization. Furthermore, this would cause me to resume my purchases with Amazon and resume referring others to your website.
I look forward to Amazon taking this next step.
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"Experts point out that for all the hoopla over shark attacks, they're relatively few and fatalities are even fewer. Last year there were 86 known and suspected shark encounters, with seven confirmed deaths and the shark involvement in another two ocean fatalities uncertain, according to the Global Shark Attack File.
Meanwhile, about 100 million sharks and their close relatives are killed each year, either deliberately or as fishermen's bycatch, according to the Shark Alliance, a five-month-old international coalition of advocacy and ocean recreation groups.
That would make for a fatality ratio of about 1 human to every 10 million sharks, some conservation advocates point out."
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By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 30, 2006; B01
Zookeepers want Frisbees for the pandas. They want feather dusters for birds. They want nature CDs for the zebras and a Double Decker Super Slide for the otters.
Like little kids everywhere, the animals at the National Zoo have wish lists this time of year. But their wants, which are posted on the zoo's Web site and can be donated through January, aren't just for fun. They are specifically designed to make life in captivity more stimulating, more wildlife-like, zoo officials say. They are meant to help animals feel more a part of their species and less a part of a display.
The process of stimulating an animal's senses to replicate life in the wild is called enrichment, and it's an increasingly emphasized part of zoo life, as researchers test different approaches to pique animals' instincts and as activists vie for happier living conditions for those in captivity.
So although Little Tikes toys might resemble nothing of the Southeast Asian streams where small-clawed otters slide down rocks and flop in the water, zookeepers think they will provide a similar level of amusement.
"They like to slide, hide under things, snuggle in corners," zookeeper Jenny Spotten said.
The otters are making do with their old toys for now -- they crawled all over one another yesterday as they took turns bouncing and rolling three toys filled with raw fish and mealworms -- because they haven't gotten the slide or other toys on their list, such as the Naturally Playful Teeter Totter.
Santa has come slowly to the nation's pets so far. About a dozen people have brought in wrapped packages, and nearly as many have given money for toys through the zoo's Web site.
A "gift tree" in the visitors center has ornaments bearing the various requests, including a hot-air popcorn popper so the zookeepers can make a low-fat treat for the gorillas. Other requests include a little sleeping bag for ferrets and other small mammals who like to burrow, sheets for orangutans to play tug of war with and laser pointers for monkeys so they can chase the little red dots.
The feather dusters are meant to feel like mothers for birds that never had them, and the nature CDs are supposed to calm zebras that get skittish when big crowds come.
Despite the desire for toys and other human-style gifts, zookeepers said some presents would be kept in holding areas, out of visitors' sight. "People like to see the natural stuff out here," Spotten said.
Still, amid all the artificial trees and carefully crafted savanna landscapes on exhibit, it's possible to see more flashes from the toy chest. Yesterday, for instance, the cheetahs chased a purple rubber ball, and the golden-headed lion tamarins picked insects from a brightly colored "crazy ball."
Zookeepers designed other toys themselves to look less playpen and more natural. A PVC pipe burned by a blowtorch has a wooden feel and can be filled with bugs. The little monkeys use their long fingers to pick insects from them as they would from trees in the tropical forests of Brazil.
Such toys "let them use their natural hunting abilities," explained Heidi Hellmuth, curator of enrichment and training at the zoo.
Hellmuth was hired six months ago as the first full-time staff person to coordinate enrichment and training for the animals, and she is surely the only professional in Washington with an office full of soft dog toys and a lion pacing outside her window.
A few months ago, she consulted with zookeepers, curators, nutritionists and veterinarians to create the wish list so visitors could contribute to their growing stash of gadgets. The Friends of the National Zoo organized the toy drive.
Hellmuth said that the wish list is versatile, and she hopes it can give people gift ideas for their own pets, because the same old toys can make those captive animals bored, too.
"We want people to see what we are doing at the zoo . . . and what you could be doing with your own pets at home," she said.
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If fishing around the world continues at its present pace, more and more species will vanish, marine ecosystems will unravel and there will be "global collapse" of all species currently fished, possibly as soon as midcentury, fisheries experts and ecologists are predicting.
The scientists, who report their findings today in the journal Science, say it is not too late to turn the situation around. As long as marine ecosystems are still biologically diverse, they can recover quickly once overfishing and other threats are reduced, the researchers say.
But improvements must come quickly, said Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, who led the work. Otherwise, he said, "we are seeing the bottom of the barrel."
"When humans get into trouble they are quick to change their ways," he continued. "We still have rhinos and tigers and elephants because we saw a clear trend that was going down and we changed it. We have to do the same in the oceans."
The report is one of many in recent years to identify severe environmental degradation in the world's oceans and to predict catastrophic loss of fish species. But experts said it was unusual in its vision of widespread fishery collapse so close at hand.
The researchers drew their conclusion after analyzing dozens of studies, along with fishing data collected by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and other sources. They acknowledge that much of what they are reporting amounts to correlation, rather than proven cause and effect. And the F.A.O. data have come under criticism from researchers who doubt the reliability of some nations' reporting practices, Dr. Worm said.
Still, he said in an interview, "there is not a piece of evidence" that contradicts the dire conclusions.
Jane Lubchenco, a fisheries expert at Oregon State University who had no connection with the work, called the report "compelling."
"It's a meta analysis and there are challenges in interpreting those," she said in an interview, referring to the technique of collective analysis of disparate studies. "But when you get the same patterns over and over and over, that tells you something."
But Steve Murawski, chief scientist of the Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the researchers' prediction of a major global collapse "doesn't gibe with trends that we see, especially in the United States."
He said the Fisheries Service considered about 20 percent of the stocks it monitors to be overfished. "But 80 percent are not, and that trend has not changed substantially," he said, adding that if anything, the fish situation in American waters was improving. But he conceded that the same cannot necessarily be said for stocks elsewhere, particularly in the developing world.
Mr. Murawski said the Bush administration was seeking to encourage international fishery groups to consider adopting measures that have been effective in American waters.
Twelve scientists from the United States, Canada, Sweden and Panama contributed to the work reported in Science today.
"We extracted all data on fish and invertebrate catches from 1950 to 2003 within all 64 large marine ecosystems worldwide," they wrote. "Collectively, these areas produced 83 percent of global fisheries yields over the past 50 years."
In an interview, Dr. Worm said, "We looked at absolutely everything - all the fish, shellfish, invertebrates, everything that people consume that comes from the ocean, all of it, globally."
The researchers found that 29 percent of species had been fished so heavily or were so affected by pollution or habitat loss that they were down to 10 percent of previous levels, their definition of "collapse."
This loss of biodiversity seems to leave marine ecosystems as a whole more vulnerable to overfishing and less able to recover from its effects, Dr. Worm said. It results in an acceleration of environmental decay, and further loss of fish.
Dr. Worm said he analyzed the data for the first time on his laptop while he was overseeing a roomful of students taking an exam. What he saw, he said, was "just a smooth line going down." And when he extrapolated the data into the future "to see where it ends at 100 percent collapse, you arrive at 2048."
"The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I said, 'This cannot be true,'" he recalled. He said he ran the data through his computer again, then did the calculations by hand. The results were the same.
"I don't have a crystal ball and I don't know what the future will bring, but this is a clear trend," he said. "There is an end in sight, and it is within our lifetimes."
Dr. Worm said a number of steps could help turn things around.
Even something as simple as reducing the number of unwanted fish caught in nets set for other species would help, he said. Marine reserves would also help, he said, as would "doing away with horrendous overfishing where everyone agrees it's a bad thing; or if we banned destructive fishing in the most sensitive habitats."
Josh Reichert, who directs the environmental division of the Pew Charitable Trusts, called the report "a kind of warning bell" for people and economies that depend on fish.
But predicting a global fisheries collapse by 2048 "assumes we do nothing to fix this," he said, "and shame on us if that were to be the case."
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For centuries, the tusk of the narwhal has fascinated and baffled.
Narwhal tusks, up to nine feet long, were sold as unicorn horns in ages past, often for many times their weight in gold since they were said to possess magic powers. In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth received a tusk valued at £10,000 - the cost of a castle. Austrian lore holds that Kaiser Karl the Fifth paid off a large national debt with two tusks. In Vienna, the Hapsburgs had one made into a scepter heavy with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds.
Scientists have long tried to explain why a stocky whale that lives in arctic waters, feeding on cod and other creatures that flourish amid the pack ice, should wield such a long tusk. The theories about how the narwhal uses the tusk have included breaking ice, spearing fish, piercing ships, transmitting sound, shedding excess body heat, poking the seabed for food, wooing females, defending baby narwhals and establishing dominance in social hierarchies.
But a team of scientists from Harvard and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has now made a startling discovery: the tusk, it turns out, forms a sensory organ of exceptional size and sensitivity, making the living appendage one of the planet's most remarkable, and one that in some ways outdoes its own mythology.
The find came when the team turned an electron microscope on the tusk's material and found new subtleties of dental anatomy. The close-ups showed that 10 million nerve endings tunnel from the tusk's core toward its outer surface, communicating with the outside world. The scientists say the nerves can detect subtle changes of temperature, pressure, particle gradients and probably much else, giving the animal unique insights.
"This whale is intent on understanding its environment," said Martin T. Nweeia, the team's leader and a clinical instructor at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Contrary to common views, he said, "The tusk is not about guys duking it out with sticks and swords."
Today in San Diego, Dr. Nweeia is presenting the team's findings at the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, sponsored by the Society for Marine Mammalogy.
James G. Mead, curator of marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where Dr. Nweeia is a research associate, said the exposed nerve endings appear to be unparalleled in nature.
"As far as I can see, it's a unique thing," Dr. Mead said in an interview. "It's something new. It just goes to show just how little we know about whales and dolphins."
He noted that no theory about the tusk's function ever envisioned its use as a sensory organ.
In the Canadian wilds, the team recently conducted a field study on a captured narwhal, fitting electrodes on its head. Changes in salinity around the animal's tusk, Dr. Nweeia found, produced signs of altered brain waves, giving preliminary support to the sensor hypothesis. The unharmed whale was then released.
With the basics now in hand, the team is working to understand how the narwhal uses the information. One theory is that the tusk can detect salinity gradients that tell if ice is freezing, a hazard that has killed hundreds of narwhals. Tusk readings may also help the whales track environments that favor their preferred foods.
"It's the kind of discovery," said Dr. Mead of the Smithsonian, "that opens up a lot of other questions."
Little about the narwhal's appearance or behavior offers clues to the tusk's sensory importance. The whale has eyes, though small ones. It also has a thick layer of blubber and no dorsal fin so it can swim easily under the ice. Like any whale, it must surface periodically to breathe air. And as in dolphins, its mouth is set in a permanent smile.
The word narwhal (pronounced NAR-wall or NAR-way-l) is said to derive from old Norse for "corpse whale," apparently because the animal's mottled, splotchy coloring recalled the grayish, blotched color of drowned sailors.
Though shy of humans, the animals are quite social. They often travel in groups of 20 or 30 and form herds of up to 1,000 during migrations.
Males weigh up to 1.5 tons, grow about 15 feet long and are conspicuous by their tusks, which can grow from six to nine feet in length. A few females have tusks and, in rare cases, narwhals can wield two of the long teeth. Though often ramrod straight, the tusks always grow in tight spirals that, from the animal's point of view, turn counterclockwise.
The long ivory tusk "looks like a cross between a corkscrew and a jousting lance," Fred Bruemmer, an Arctic explorer, wrote in "The Narwhal" (Swan Hill Press, 1993).
Narwhals live mainly in the icy channels of northern Canada and northwestern Greenland, but they are found eastward as far as Siberia.
The whale's close cousin, the snowy white beluga, thrives in captivity. The shy narwhal tends to die.
Arctic explorers have often observed them at a distance because narwhals frequently raise their heads above the water, their tusks held high. Jens Rosing, in his book "The Unicorn of the Arctic Sea" (Penumbra Press, 1999), tells of seeing them during expeditions off Greenland. There the whales would frolic and apparently mate.
"Over a hundred can be seen at once," he wrote. "They often rise vertically out of the water, lifting themselves with strong movements of their tail fin so that half their body is above water."
Mr. Rosing added: "There is great confusion of movement - both females and males take part. Often one can see a male and female shoot up from the water, trembling, belly to belly."
When luxuriating on their backs in the water, narwhals often turn their heads so their tusks point straight up. Dr. Nweeia of Harvard said the Inuit, the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, who know the narwhal intimately, have a name for the whale that translates as "the one that is good at curving itself to the sky."
Around A.D. 1000, the narwhal tusk debuted in history as a profitable lie. Historians say people in the far north learned of narwhals from Norsemen or perhaps from finding animal bodies occasionally washed up on northern shores. It is known that the Vikings hunted the narwhal and acquired tusks from Arctic natives.
Unscrupulous traders passed them off as one of the most prized objects of all time: unicorn horns.
The ancient Chinese, Greeks, Romans and other peoples had accepted the unicorn as real, and the arrival of the beautifully spiraled objects seemed to prove the animal's existence. The supposed horns sparked huge interest because they were said to have the power to cure ills and neutralize poisons.
Kings and emperors, eager to foil assassins, had cups and eating utensils made of the precious horns. A London doctor advertised a drink made from powdered tusks that could cure scurvy, ulcers, dropsy, gout, consumption, coughs, heart palpitations, fainting, rickets and melancholy.
The horns became an icon of power, both earthly and divine, in part because of their religious associations. In medieval times, the unicorn was seen as a symbol of great purity and of Christ, the motif common in religious art. The fantastic beast appeared in many thousands of images, Mr. Bruemmer wrote, and "All carry a horn that is unmistakably a narwhal tusk, the only long, spiraled horn in all creation."
Churches put small pieces of "unicorn horn" in holy water, giving ailing commoners hope of miracle cures. Meanwhile, the bishops of Vienna carried staffs made of the precious ivory, while St. Mark's Basilica in Venice displayed a horn wreathed in purple velvet.
By the 17th century, the deception began to falter amid the expansion of New World exploration and multiplying reports of bizarre whales that bore long tusks. Ole Wurm, a Danish zoologist, investigated the matter and in 1638 exposed the horn's true origins in a public lecture.
As the unicorn myth died a slow death, the reputation of the narwhal grew larger than life. Explorers claimed its tusk could punch holes in thick ice, and that males battled with their long tusks for supremacy. In 1870, Jules Verne told how a narwhal could pierce ships "clean through as easily as a drill pierces a barrel."
Dr. Nweeia, a general dentist in Sharon, Conn., with an interest in dental anthropology, developed a taste for exotic investigations while doing research on Indian tribes in the Amazon and children in Micronesia. He lectured on how animal and human teeth differ, and eight years ago he began to wonder about narwhals and their odd tusks.
"They defied most of the principles and properties of teeth," he recalled. Many narwhal reports proved contradictory, he found, and "my interest spiraled like the tooth."
In 2000, Dr. Nweeia decided to investigate the animal closely and first trekked to its icy habitat in 2002, going to Pond Inlet, a tiny settlement at the northern tip of Baffin Island. There he met David Angnatsiak, an Inuit guide who agreed to help. Under international agreement, the Inuits are allowed to hunt narwhals, which they eat and harvest for their tusks.
During expeditions in 2003 and 2004, aided by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Dr. Nweeia was able to gather head and tusk specimens, which he brought back for analysis. He and his colleagues tracked a clear nerve connection between the animal's brain and tusk, finding the long tooth heavily innervated. But why it should be so remained a mystery.
The investigators zeroed in on the riddle with sophisticated instruments at the Paffenbarger Research Center of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal organization in Gaithersburg, Md. The American Dental Association finances the research center.
Rough deposits of calcified algae and plankton coated the outside of the tusks Dr. Nweeia brought back. The scientists decided to remove them in an acid bath to get down to the surface of the tooth before viewing it under an electron microscope. First, however, they decided to give the uncleaned tusk a cursory microscopic examination.
It was a shock. There, contrary to all known precepts of tooth anatomy, they found open tubules leading down through the mazelike coating to the tooth's inner nerves and pulp.
"That surprised us," recalled Frederick C. Eichmiller, director of the Paffenbarger Research Center. "Tubules in healthy teeth never go to the surface."
Extrapolating from a count of open tubules over one part of the tooth's surface, the team estimated that the average narwhal tusk had millions of openings that led down to inner nerves.
"No one knew that they were connecting to the outside environment," Dr. Nweeia said. "To find that was extraordinary."
His collaborators include Naomi Eidelman and Anthony A. Giuseppetti of the Paffenbarger Research Center, Yeon-Gil Jung of Changwon National University in South Korea and Yu Zhang of New York University.
Increasingly, the investigation centers on how the whales use their newly observed powers. One central unanswered question is how sensory abilities in males might relate to herd behavior and survival.
The scientists, noting that the males often hold their tusks high in the air, wonder if the long teeth might sometimes serve as sophisticated weather stations, letting the animals sense changes in temperature and barometric pressure that would tell of the arrival of cold fronts and the likelihood that open ice channels might soon freeze up.
Dr. Nweeia noted that the discovery does not eliminate some early theories of the whale's behavior. Tusks acting as sophisticated sensors, he said, may still play a role in mating rituals or determining male hierarchies.
He added that the nerve endings, in addition to other readings, undoubtedly produce tactile sensations when the tusk is rubbed or touched, and that these might be interpreted as pleasurable.
This tactile sense might explain why narwhals engage in what is known as "tusking," where two males gently rub tusks together, Dr. Nweeia said. He added that the Inuit seldom report aggressive contact, undermining ideas of ritualized battle.
Dr. Nweeia said that gentle tusking might also be a way that males remove encrustations on their tusks so tubules stay open, allowing them to better function as sensors. "It may simply be their way of cleaning or brushing teeth," he said.
He called the basic discovery mind boggling, especially given the freezing temperatures of the Arctic.
"This is one of the last places you'd expect to find such a thing," Dr. Nweeia said of the large sensory organs. "Cold is one of the things that tubules are most sensitive to," as people sometimes discover when diseased gums of human teeth expose the tubules.
"Of all the places you'd think you'd want to do the most to insulate yourself from that outside environment," he said, "this guy has gone out of his way to open himself up to it."
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©2005 Scotsman.com
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Q: Why does NOAA protect sharks
A: With all of the negative stories in the news about sharks, it is easy to wonder why NOAA would want to protect these "ferocious" sea creatures. However, most shark "attacks" are a case of mistaken identity - arms and legs hanging off surfboards and shiny jewelry resemble the shark's natural prey of fish and marine mammals. In fact, sharks hardly ever attack humans unprovoked, and when they do attack it is usually a "hit-and-run" with the shark quickly leaving after it realizes that what it has attacked is not a fish.
Sharks are awesome creatures whose biology has remained virtually unchanged for millions of years. Considered to be at the top of the marine food web, sharks play a role in the ocean similar to that of the top predators on land. There are not many known species that would be able to replace the shark at the top of the food web. The only known predators of sharks, other than humans, are killer whales and other sharks. Because of this, sharks play a very important ecological role affecting almost every other marine organism.
NOAA is mandated by Congress under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to conduct stock assessments, monitor the species' abundance of sharks and implement fishery regulations that maximize the benefits of sharks as a resource for humans, while also ensuring that shark populations are not depleted. Due to overfishing, NOAA began managing shark fisheries by limiting harvests in 1993. No data is available yet about the impact of this protection because sharks are long-lived, take many years to mature and only have a few young at a time. Experts estimate that it will take 30 or 40 years before NOAA's conservation efforts fully pay off with healthier shark populations.
See also the NOAA FISHERIES: Shark Web Site, especially "It's The Ocean, Not A Swimming Pool"
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