Biologists all over the world are turning to this seemingly harsh mantra referring to the rescue efforts of birds that have been harmed by the oil spilled in the Gulf. Instead of cleaning birds whose feathers have been soaked and matted with oil, researchers are now encouraging a “quick and painless” death instead of a slower one that results even after the birds have been cleaned.
Survival rates among birds that have been cleaned are less than one percent. The ones that do survive and are released into the wild only survived for about a week in efforts to clean birds after an oil spill in the UK in 2002. The reason for this is that the cleaning and preening instincts of birds are stronger than their instincts to feed. Once cleanup teams get to the birds they have most likely consumed more oil from cleaning their own feathers than their kidneys or liver can handle. Even after they are cleaned, their feathers are not in good condition and they continue to neglect their feeding instincts in order to preen.
Most of the birds in the Gulf that are being cleaned as a result of the spill are thousands of brown pelicans that have only been taken off the endangered species list last year. Is it worth it to take the time and effort to clean these birds just for that reason?
Also I wonder if the oil that still remains in the bodies of cleaned birds that do survive has a chance to stick around in the bird meat that predators eat? Is that a probability that’s high enough to cause concern for chemicals spreading throughout the food chain?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,693359,00.html
Would you rather save the whales or make some money? This article discusses how the Columbian government is being faced with this decision.
Malaga Bay, a booming ecological system, home to sea otters, dolphins, and coral, has long been an important breeding ground for humpback whales. With up to 1,000 whales arriving from June to August, this bay is a critical location along the humpback whales migration. Unfortunately, just as the Columbian government was about to declare Malaga Bay a national park, corporations proposed that the bay be turned into a deep-water port in order to profit off of trade coming out of the Panama Canal.
Initially, the government was looking into creating a port in a different location in order to curb drug trafficking, but a silting problem would cause yearly dredging of costs up to tens of millions of dollars. Malaga Bay is deeper and lacks a river outlet, meaning that it would be a much cheaper option to designate a port. Although the Columbian government has rejected proposals to “build a timber and pulp mill as well as an oil pipeline and tanker depot” in recognition of the ecosystem, the newly proposed port idea has a large economic advantage. However, the whales’s high birth rate is dependent on “low ship traffic and industrial contamination.”
Now the Columbia must make their decision – wealth or whales?
Businesses argue that humans are part of the environment as well and our needs must be met, but how will this kind of perspective effect other parts of the environment?
If you could make the decision for the Columbian government, what would you choose?
Ever seen a Sladinia remiger, or maybe a gorgonian? Well researchers Eric Vetter, Craig Smith, and Fabio De Leo have. This article tells us of the 36 dives they made off the coast of Oahu, Molokai, Nihoa and Maro Reef in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands where they discovered that deep canyons off the Islands are home to abundant and unique marine life habitats. “Some of the creatures, astonishingly odd in appearance, seem to have stepped off the pages of a Dr. Seuss storybook.” Aboard the UH Pisces IV and Pisces V submersibles, researchers descended between 1,100 and 4,900 feet. ‘”Craig Smith and I wondered if the same dramatic contrast in (ocean floor) food resources between canyon and non canyon settings seen in continental margins would also occur in tropical oceanic islands,” said Vetter.” They had expected to see “sparser marine habitats because tropical islands and atolls transport less nutrient-rich sediment from land into the ocean to feed deep-sea organisms. They also believed the steepness of the ocean floor and the islands’ curved coastlines would limit how far the sediment could travel to the canyons.” However, they discovered a surprisingly large amount of species (41 to be exact) that exist only in these deep canons.
If there are so many unknown creatures off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands, where else might there be undiscovered species? How many more might there be?
Sea weed does, in this article I have stumbled upon.
Researchers have found that these chemicals are fatal for coral just by contact.
usually the sea weed is in control by herbivorous fish but lately due to over fishing… the population of the sea weed has risen and the population of the fish have dropped drastically.
In studies performed by the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Teasely Endowments at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Researchers have reported “Between 40 and 70 percent of the seaweeds we studied killed corals,” said Mark Hay, a professor in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech. “We don’t know how significant this is compared to other problems affecting coral, but we know this is a growing problem.
Coral reefs are at an all time low and at this rate there will be no such thing as a coral reefs. so many contributors are reason to this.. some naturally and some man made.
1. How do you think this is a problem?
2. How can you help solve this problem?
From: http://media.komonews.com/images/100503_gulf_oil.jpg
Technology has come a long way since the Exxon Valdez 1989 spill. However, scientists are furthering their efforts to efficiently clean up oil spills according to this article. They are testing new oil spill cleaning technology on the recent Gulf Spill, like multispectral and thermal imaging sensors, ADIOS2 (Automated Data Inquiry for Oil Spills), and oil eating microbes.
It sounds like the technology people of the world are trying to help, right? Well, actually some are saying that the testing of new clean up technology is inefficient, especially the microbe attempts. “Floating crude oil on the water does not readily lend itself to biological degradation, because the organisms cannot penetrate into the crude oil; rather, they munch at the boundary where water and oil meet.” So, is the testing really helping? Or is it just wasted money?
How is the testing benefiting the clean up process?
What other new technology is being created to help clean up this and future spills?
I was reading in this article that some new fish were found. In the deep waters of Greenland scientists have recently found 38 new species of fish. All these fish were discovered on the first exploration of the waters since 1992. The angler fish used to be a stranger to the waters of Greenland, until now. The scientist’s thought that global climate change could be playing a role in the sudden appearance. 10 of the fish that were new to Greenland are new to the knowledge of scientist’s too.
Why do you think all these fish have suddenly converged in the waters of Greenland?
Why do you think that there were 10 NEW species of fish found that we have never seen before?
For decades scientists believed that phytoplankton were the only marine organisms that could obtain energy from the sunlight for growth. This article discussed a recent discovery by researchers from Sweden and Spain determining that oceanic bacteria also have a similar “chlorophyll driven photosynthesis process”.
Ten years ago, American scientists discovered a gene in marine bacteria that encoded a new kind of light-harvesting pigment called proteorhodopsin. This is a similar pigment in the retinas of humans that vision in less intense light. The studies show that the proteorhodopsin allows marine bacteria to survive periods of starvation when they are living in nutrient-depleted waters. The researchers suggest that by understanding these organisms better, we might be able to learn how to use solar energy more efficiently. They say that these organisms could play “a crucial role in the global carbon cycle by determining oceanic production of CO2 through respiration and determining how the fluxes of energy that are fixed by photosynthesis are channeled through marine food chains”, providing an abundant energy source.
Do you think there are any other organisms that use a similar photosynthetic process?
Do you think these bacteria are a reasonable material to research as an energy source as the researchers suggest?
The last couple days there was a huge oil leak and it’s still going on. They say that the leak is at high speeds, 5 thousand pounds of oil is being pored into the Gulf Of Mexico every day. They came up with an idea, they want to inject garbage in to the hole at a high velocity which would hopefully plug the hole and stop the leak of oil and stop a major problem. By doing this idea though there could be a major set back if it doesn’t work for example what if the pressure to high and it shoots the garbage back into the ocean that just make the ocean even worse then it already is.
Is it really worth the chance of polluting the ocean with more garbage?
how long is it going to take them to find another idea and save part of Gulf Of Mexico?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100315230916.htm
Tired of Barnacle growth on your F/V? Pissed off cause it is against the law to use toxic paints? Well researchers in Sweden have found a solution, with out the toxic chemicals. They made a surface that the Barnacles glue can not stick to. They figured out how the larva detect if they like the surface or not by using there little feet to feel the surface. But the researchers found that if you apply a layer of gel to the bottom that fills in all the holes, so they can’t move back and forth on the surface. Then they won’t like it and they won’t stick to the boat.
How long will the gel stick?
What color does the gel go on as, or is it clear?
From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moody75/60085591/
Have you ever heard the phrase sleeping with the fishes? If you have you would only hear that phrase as a negative response, but this time I don’t think you will see this as a negative response. Near the island of Palawan, Philippines an underwater resort is being planned on being built by Moñozca, a Singapore-based financier. The name for this project is called “The Last Frontier Resort”. The plan for the project is going to expect to bring a total of a billion dollars in investments that could go to a 10-year period. The way the resort if going to be made is by using submarine technology. The plans have been going on since last year. A businessman and resort developer Steve Tajanlangit owns the site that it is being built under. So when this comes into effect you could have a bunch of fishes staring at you, or imagine a shark just staring at you.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100405-262424/Futuristic-underwater-resort-to-be-built-off-Palawan
Do you think that this will be successful?
Do you think this is the start of underwater cities?
