Sea Notes

Playing “Ring Toss” with a Pelagic Ray

Aquarist Ann Greening gets ready to place a plastic “target” in the water to summon the pelagic rays over for their daily feeding, but it’s not really necessary. They heard her come in, and they’re already flopping about in front of her in anticipation of today’s mixture of squid, fish and shrimp. “They come right over,” says Ann. “I think they hear the door open, and they know it’s their time.”

Ann has been caring for the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s pelagic rays for six years, and the daily feeding is one of the highlights of her day. “They’re very charismatic,” she says. “They flip over on their backs and scoop the food in with their fins.”

Just then she tosses another shrimp toward one of the rays, which quickly scoops it into its central mouth. Feeding them, she says, “is like playing ring toss at the carnival.”

Pups Born at the Aquarium
The Aquarium has a history of success with pelagic rays (Dasyatis violacea). In 2003, one of the Aquarium’s rays gave birth to two pups, one of which is still on exhibit in the Outer Bay, alongside its mother. “We’re one of the only places to have successfully raised a ray to adulthood on exhibit,” says Ann. Another ray qualifies as one of the Aquarium’s elder statesmen, at 15 years of age.

Aquarium husbandry staff and volunteers have also been involved in important studies of pelagic rays. Volunteer Henry Mollett authored papers on the worldwide distribution of rays, and their growth in captivity. Manny Ezcurra, associate curator of elasmobranchs, also wrote a paper on the metabolism and growth of adult pelagic rays. Ann followed this up with an undergraduate thesis on neonatal growth, using the pups born at the Aquarium. “All the information on young rays had been estimated,” she says, “but we could get exact data.”

These Rays Range Widely
While other rays sift through the sand close to shore, pelagic rays have adapted to open waters. They’re dark purplish above and purplish gray underneath—coloration that makes them almost disappear from view against the sky or the dark water below. Pelagic rays occur throughout the world, including Monterey Bay. Adult females can be up to 39 inches across and weigh more than 100 pounds. (Males are generally smaller.) 

Conservation Concerns
Pelagic stingrays are captured as unwanted “bycatch” on pelagic longlines or driftnets. Although they’re not considered threatened, there are concerns. To pelagic rays, sea turtles and other animals that eat jellies, drifting plastic bags look like their natural prey. This can be a deadly mistake. Animals can choke as they try to swallow the bags, or slowly starve as the plastic clogs their stomachs. You can help save a ray just by picking up plastic bags at the beach and making sure trash is disposed of far from the ocean.

Interestingly, recent data indicates that pelagic ray populations may be increasing, but for the wrong reason: populations of their largest predators—large sharks and whales—are declining.

“Beautiful to See”
Back at the Outer Bay exhibit, Ann is lying on her stomach, practically placing the food in their eager mouths. She has to be careful, though. “They have sharp teeth,” she says. “You can get a little paper cut.” There is one other thing that she needs to be careful of: a venomous spine that protrudes above the tail. A sting can be extremely painful.

When they flip over on their backs to be fed, they are actually practicing a skill that serves them well in the wild.  “The way they catch prey is to swim through a school of fish upside-down,” says Ann. “They use their fins as a funnel, to cup food in. They’re well adapted.

“It’s a beautiful animal for visitors to see, and a fun animal to feed. They’re happy to see you, and show a lot of enthusiasm.”

(Website visitors can occasionally view a pelagic ray feeding on our live webcam in the late afternoon, Pacific time.)

 

Julie Packard: Obama's Big Blue Commitment

Monterey Bay Aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard's latest commentary for HuffingtonPost.com is live now.

Julie's got great things to say about President Obama's big blue commitment: his announced plan to begin crafting a coordinated national ocean policy. It's worth checking out!

The Wonders of Whales

An amateur photographer and former Monterey Bay Aquarium volunteer is giving the world a new view of whales. And he's hoping through his photos to make the world safer for these gentle giants.

Bryant Austin of Scotts Valley, California captures magnificent life-sized images by free diving with whales: sperm whales and humpbacks so far, with plans to add blue and fin whales, minkes and southern right whales.

Austin believes that by taking his time, the whales are more relaxed, more themselves. And that his photos can communicate that to the people who see them.

"I get right up next to the eye," Austin told reporter John Sammon with the Media News Group. "If the whale is harassed, you get a wide eye, the white of the eye. But if it's relaxed, the eye is heavy-lidded, calm and mindful."

He's using a $60,000 Hasselblad camera to get the photos, and stitches multiple photos together to produce what he calls "the world's only high-resolution, life-size composite photos of whales."

That's not all.

Through his nonprofit, Marine Mammal Conservation Through the Arts, he's bringing these photos to people in whaling nations like Norway and Japan, as a way to transform consciousness so that more countries will support whale protection rather than whale hunting.

"My goal is not to antagonize or polarize people further," Austin said in his interview. "I just want to share with them knowledge, to serve as a platform, especially for people who have no previous experience or interest in whales."

(It's a far different approach from that taken by the creators of The Cove, an award-winning documentary about the annual slaughter of dolphins in a Japanese fishing village. I got a chance to see it last week, and it is very, very powerful -- a film that has great potential to galvanize public opinion in Japan and around the world to halt the killing.)

Bryant Austin's story is beautifully told, and Austin's photos are well represented on his website. Check it out.

(Photos of the minke whale, top, and composite photo of sperm whale are © Bryant Austin and used with permission of the photographer.)

Turtles, Whales and Us

Sea turtles have roamed our oceans since the days of the dinosaur. Since the modern age of industrialized fishing, their numbers have plummeted. In fact, some scientists predict that the Pacific leatherback--the largest living sea turtle--could go extinct within a couple of generations.

So it's always good news when someone comes up with a way to have our fish (or shrimp) and keep our turtles, too. Researchers believe that sea turtles stand the best chance of surviving being tangled in a net if they are not submerged for more than 50 minutes. So an underwater equivalent of an egg timer has been developed to help fishermen know when their net is cooked. Let's hope that the "logger" helps the loggerheads and other sea turtles survive another human encounter. (Don't forget to use your Seafood Watch pocket guide to find the turtle-friendly choices.)

For whales, the news is not so good. This week is the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which some had hoped might be the year for resolving some issues between those countries for and against commercial whaling. It doesn't seem to be shaping up that way.

 Unfortunately, the IWC meeting was timed with Japan's first catch of the season: a Baird's beaked whale, which sadly for the species, is not included in the international ban on whaling. Though beaked and pilot whales are excluded, the ban is of course not helping out their 2,000 cousins, (mostly minke whale), who died last year at the hands of the whaling fleets of Norway, Iceland and Japan. These nations are still circumventing the moratorium through whaling for "scientific purposes." So far, the science hasn't come up with much - but has kept the shops supplied with whale meat. We don't have whale on our Seafood Watch pocket guide; perhaps we should?

The Aquarium Hosts a Rare Rockfish

Three cowcod rockfish recently went on display at the Monterey Bay Aquarium—the first time these rare and beautiful fish have been exhibited in any public aquarium.

There are close to 100 rockfish species worldwide, but the cowcod (Sebastes levis) is one of the largest. It can reach 39 inches in length, and live up to 55 years. You’ll find our new arrivals in the Monterey Bay Habitats exhibit, and can recognize them by their large heads and faint, vertical bars—resembling ribs—on the sides of their bodies. They also have spiky dorsal fins that have earned them the playful name, “roosterfish.”

Life Down Deep
Like most rockfishes, cowcod prefer life down deep. They’re rarely seen at depths shallower than 300 feet, and can be found all the way down to 1,600 feet. (View a NOAA video of cowcod taken at 290 feet by a remotely operated vehicle.) If a rockfish comes up too quickly—for instance, on a fishing line—rapid decompression of the air bladder causes it to inflate and die.

But just as scuba divers decompress, it’s possible for fish to avoid the harmful effects of rapid pressure changes. Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute in San Diego (HRSWI), which captured our three cowcod, built a pressurized chamber that allows the fish to slowly decompress over the course of a week before they emerge healthy and intact. Our cowcod underwent this procedure at HSWRI and are thriving. The Aquarium—working in partnership with Hubbs-SeaWorld—has created its own compression chambers to help fishes survive when brought to the surface. One such chamber, resembling a scuba tank, is small enough to keep onboard a collecting boat. Having these devices mean that fishes can be safely transferred to research facilities like Hubbs-SeaWorld—or to other aquariums, where they can serve as ambassadors and promote awareness of the conservation issues that rockfishes face in the wild.

Cowcod Conservation
Because of their large size, cowcod were prized by recreational and commercial fishermen. Through the 1960s, California fisherman could pull up a longline with dozens of fish attached. But, as with many long-lived fishes that reproduce slowly, cowcod couldn’t take the pressure.

By the 1980s they had become increasingly rare, and were declared over-fished by the Pacific Fishery Management Council in 2000. A recovery plan was adopted in 2001, and the California Department of Fish & Game established a conservation area devoted entirely to cowcod in southern California waters. Still, it may take a century to rebuild the cowcod population to sustainable levels, even with limited fishing.

Raising awareness of these issues is one reason these fish are being studied at Hubbs-SeaWorld and displayed at the Aquarium. In an ambitious project sponsored by Chevron Corporation, Hubbs-SeaWorld is trying to rear cowcod and other vulnerable species, and to release their captive-bred offspring to replenish wild populations. Our three cowcod have been at the research institute for several years, and were transferred to the Aquarium in hopes that they will reproduce in our large, cold-water exhibit.

“Cowcod have never been on public display anywhere,” says Aquarium Senior Collector Joe Welsh. “We’re lucky that Hubbs-SeaWorld chose us.”

Great Whites: Serial Killers of the Seas?

That's what researchers have concluded in a new study published online in the Journal of Zoology. To learn how white sharks stalk their prey at Seal Island in South Africa, marine biologists teamed up with a criminal justice expert who used profiling methods like those police employ to track down terrorists and serial killers. And he found definite similarities.

The good news is that the study did NOT reinforce the Jaws depiction of white sharks as malevolent killers that actively target innocent humans as victims. It did find that the most successful hunters among white sharks frequent particular locations, called "anchor points," near seal rookeries; hang out in waters close enough to attack easily but far enough away not to spook the seals; target young seals that are swimming alone; and strike from below in low-light conditions.

The firm conclusion was that the sharks aren't attacking random animals from random locations, but have patterns that -- especially for older, more experienced sharks -- give then a better chance of success.

"There's some strategy going on," says Neil Hammerschlag, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and co-principal investigator of the study.

And, he adds, "Our need for more knowledge of these fascinating animals has become critical because of recent drastic declines in their populations globally."

We're doing what we can to contribute. Our white shark research team is back in the field in southern California, tagging young white sharks to map their migrations. (And we hope to bring another young shark back to Monterey for a few months on exhibit.)

Meanwhile our colleagues at Stanford University continue to lead the Tagging of Pacific Predators teams that tag adult white sharks off the Farallones and Año Nuevo State Reserve each winter.

You can lean more on our website, or at a Project White Shark presentation next time you visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Cuttlefish Kids

The Aquarium has gone crazy with cuttlefish—we’ve currently got 44 juvenile pharaoh cuttlefish on exhibit in Splash Zone! Measuring about one and a half inches long, they hatched in February from eggs laid by a female previously on exhibit. “They have a pretty impressive growth rate,” says Aquarist Aaron Spotswood. “When they hatch they’re about the size of a pea, but by the time they’re done growing they’re going to be around 14 inches.”

Cuttlefish can hover above the ocean floor like submarines, thanks to a porous internal shell called a cuttlebone that's divided into small sections. By varying the amount of gas and liquid filling these compartments, cuttlefish can control their buoyancy. Pharaoh cuttlefish (Sepia pharaonis) typically live near seagrass beds or reef structures, so they’re perfectly at home in Splash Zone’s Coral Reef Kingdom.

Chameleons of the Deep
Cuttlefish aren’t fish at all; they’re cephalopods, related to octopuses and squids. Like their relatives, cuttlefish have three hearts and blue-green blood. And if that’s not impressive enough, they’re able to change their skin’s color and pattern when they hunt, mate and hide. “If they’re hunting,” says Aaron, "you might see them flashing like a Christmas light.

  “If they’re trying to look big and scary, like they sometimes do when the raccoon butterfly fish are nearby, they’ll actually change their posture and stand up on end with the tip of their mantle down and their eyes up. Then they’ll flash two big eye spots—that makes them look big from the front.”

They can blend in, too—in fact you may have trouble spotting them when they’re resting near the rocks in our exhibit. In experiments, cuttlefish have mimicked an astonishing array of colors and patterns with their bodies, including the geometrical pattern of a checkerboard. This is particularly impressive, since cuttlefish are colorblind.

Perfect Predators
Cuttlefish have eight short arms and two long tentacles that extend to about one and a half times their body length. To catch dinner in the wild they flash a rainbow of colors and wave their arms, luring shrimp, fish and crabs close before grabbing them with their tentacles.

“They’re just the coolest, most purpose-built animal,” says Aaron. “They’ve got the ability to reach out with their hunting tentacles and grab with the other eight arms and pull the prey in. Then the beak just starts gnawing—sharks have nothing on these other than size!”

Watch great videos of cuttlefish on our website and the PBS website.

Freshwater Otter Tickles the Ivories

Dua, one of four Asian small-clawed otters at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, has learned to play the piano as a behind-the-scenes “enrichment.” Our husbandry staff created this activity to give Dua something interesting to do, extend his feeding time and make use of his incredible dexterity—a trait he shares with others of his species.

Alicia Pereyra, our senior sea otter aquarist, got the idea by watching how skillfully these freshwater otters use their paws and fingers. She also thought training Dua to play the piano would be a good way for her to spend time with this young male otter.

Dua is playing his special brand of music behind the scenes, as you can see in the accompanying video. His brother, Satu, is keeping him company off exhibit. (And no, the brothers aren’t performing duets.) The two are behind the scenes in preparation for their move to the International Primate Protection League in South Carolina on June 23. There they’ll provide company—and may be the future mates—for a lone female Asian small-clawed otter.

You can see two other Asian small-clawed otters, brothers Empate and Tiga, in our Wild About Otters exhibit. But be quick! The special exhibition closes on September 13. (Our sea otter exhibit remains open as always. No music lessons behind the scenes for them, though. If our female sea otters are off exhibit, it’s usually because they’re raising stranded pups we hope to return to the wild.)

As you can see, Dua’s become quite accomplished on the keyboard. With practice, maybe he’ll be able to woo his new female companion with a romantic song!

 

Obama Takes Action for the Ocean!

Big day for the ocean! President Barack Obama created a federal task force to shape a coordinated national ocean policy. He gave it 180 days to report back with results.

Following in the steps of his predecessors, he also proclaimed June as National Oceans Month. All this comes at the conclusion of Capitol Hill Ocean Week -- a week during which a key piece of sea otter legislation cleared a significant hurdle.

Monday was World Oceans Day, so the timing could not be better.

You'll find all the details of the president's memo creating the ocean policy task force here. It explains the tremendous value that healthy oceans play in our lives, and outlines the grave threats the oceans face, from pollution and mismanaged fisheries to climate change.

The president directs the executive branch to develop "a unifying framework under a clear national policy, including a comprehensive, ecosystem-based framework for the long-term conservation and use of our resources."

Leading the interagency effort will be Nancy Sutley, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She was formerly deputy mayor of Los Angeles for energy and environment, has a long record on environmental and natural resources policy, and has been expected to be a key player in shaping the Obama administration's policies on climate change and the environment.

Stay tuned as the recommendations move forward. It's a huge, huge step toward realizing the vision of two national ocean commissions for comprehensive ocean policy reform.

Ethical Seafood Choices

What is our responsibility -- as consumers, chefs and businesses -- when it comes to our seafood choices?

The issue's very much in the news, especially with Monday's World Oceans Day release of the powerful documentary, The End of the Line, about the global crisis in the ocean. (Ted Danson, who narrates the film, was interviewed on CNN about the film and the state of the ocean today, and wrote a commentary, too.)

With 90 percent of the large fish in the sea already gone, and researchers forecasting the collapse of most major fisheries by mid-century if we don't change our ways, our ethical responsibilities are far from an abstract consideration. Our choices DO matter, for ocean wildlife and marine ecosystems.

The New York Times thinks so, too. It created a conversation about the issue in its online Room for Debate blog. Sheila Bowman, senior outreach manager for our Seafood Watch program, is one of the contributors. You can weigh in with your thoughts in the Comments section.

The discussion is timely, too. Celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa, creator of 24 restaurants on five continents, has faced withering criticism -- and protests -- because he continues to serve critically endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna. He has shown no sign he plans to pull the fish off his menu.

Other renowned chefs have been -- and still are -- leaders in the sustainable seafood movement. Check out the Room for Debate forum. If you're inspired, Monterey Bay Aquarium & Seafood Watch have tools you can use to make a difference.

ADD: The Times' coverage begins with MarK Bittman's essay on the challenges facing the ethical seafood lover today; and includes three sustainable seafood recipes, featuring lobster, mackerel and squid.