Sea Notes

Happy Blue Year

It's been a busy and special year for us as we celebrated our 25th year of inspiring conservation of the oceans. We published a report, "Turning the Tide", introduced a sustainable seafood app for the iPhone and were featured in the new ocean layer of Google Earth. Aquarium Executive Director, Julie Packard was honored as Coastal Hero and named 2009 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, while our Seafood Watch program won Treehuggers Best of Green.

We opened a stunning new seahorse exhibit, Secret Lives of Seahorses while waving a fond adieu to the otterly delightful  Wild About Otters.

We welcomed new penguins, baby cuttlefish, a giant lobster and who could forget  her whiteness? Her stay was brief, but her appeal was as broad as her smile!

We sponsored our first ever piece of legislation and delighted in the passing of the California Sustainable Seafood Bill. We were pleased that the Southern Sea Otter Research and Recovery Act passed the House of Representatives and that California is the proud new steward of 22 new marine protected areas in the North Central Coast. Thank you to you, all of our supporters, who took action on all these important issues. Check www.oceanaction.org to see what you can do today.

In the wider world of U.S. ocean policy we were excited to see Dr. Jane Lubencho, former trustee of our Board, confirmed as head of NOAA, the government's oceanic agency. We were pleased to see NOAA's commitment to protection of Atlantic bluefin tuna, through support of a potential listing to CITES. We look forward to the findings of the President's Ocean Task Force and to a fully integrated national ocean policy.

2010 promises to yet another exciting year for the Aquarium and the oceans. We are eager to share our new special exhibition Hot Pink Flamingos: Stories of Hope in a Changing Sea and to find ways through legislation and personal and collective action to slow the climate crisis for the oceans and its wildlife.

We spend a special thanks to all of our members, donors and supporters for keeping the oceans on the agenda during this year of financial crisis.

Happy New Year from all at SeaNotes: Ken, Ali & Geoff.

The Sound of Silence

San Francisco's Pier 39 is usually heard before it is seen. The constant conversation between the sea lions at rest and those who would like their real estate resounds around the whole area.

But not this month. Visitors to the popular tourist stop are lucky if they see one or two of the blubbery mammals, where normally you might see hundreds.

Today the story has made national news and the PR phone is ringing off the hook. Where are they? Like the rest of the scientific community, we don't know! Scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Marine Mammal Center in San Francisco suspect they've gone in search of food. But no one can say why, or when they'll be back.

A similar dock at Moss Landing harbor, a few miles north of Monterey is full-loaded with its usual quota of the barking beasties.  So for now we can only speculate about why San Francisco animals have undocked.

In our upcoming special exhibition - Hot Pink Flamingos: Stories of Hope in a Changing Sea - we examine one of the impacts of climate change - when food sources move or vanish. We certainly hope that sea lion incident is not linked to changing ocean conditions precipitated by carbon pollution, but it may be some time before we can reach any conclusion.

Carbon Ocean

As a companion to today's Acid Ocean post, there's a new study published by our colleagues at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, which finds rising CO2 levels make it easier for sound to travel underwater. Upside: It may make it easier for whales to hear each other. Downside: It may interfere with commercial and military applications that rely on an uncluttered environment for sound to travel long distances: http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/12/22/man.made.carbon.dioxide.affects.ocean.acoustics

Acid Oceans

At the Copenhagen conference on climate change , there was new (and long overdue) attention to the impacts of global carbon pollution on the health of the ocean. Much of the science is coming out of Monterey Bay.

The Associated Press provides a solid overview of what ocean acidification will mean for the animals at the base of the food web. It's a sobering story that underscores the urgency of action to curb -- and reduce -- the greenhouse gases that we produce to heat and cool our homes, run our factories, raise our food and commute.

The Center for Ocean Solutions-- a three-way partnership among the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Stanford University and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute -- told the story in Copenhagen, and in a short online video. It's well worth checking out.

Aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard's been raising the issue for quite a while. More recently, actress Sigourney Weaver deflected questions from Fox & Friends about her starring role in Avatar, in favor of talking about her narration of the documentary Acid Test. It's a concise and compelling look at ocean acidification, available for online viewing.

We'll bring the story to life in March, when we open our special exhibition, Hot Pink Flamingos: Stories of Hope in a Changing Sea. Stay tuned.

Monday Inspiration: Whale Songs as Art

You're probably familiar with the haunting songs of humpback whales and the chattering clicks of dolphins. Maybe you know that blue whale songs can cross oceans, perhaps that the cacophony of human machines is making it harder for marine mammals to hear each other.

Now there's another dimension to whale songs: Stunning, kaleidoscopic visual art -- marine mammal mandalas -- created from their sounds by Mark Fischer. Mark is asoftware developer and visual artist. He takes whale vocalizations and, using a proprietary AguaSonic acoustic process, turns them into vivid, compelling artworks.

With his permission, and for your enjoyment, three of his images: The one above, created from humpback whale songs; and two below, from a humpback and a false killer whale. You can learn more about Mark and his work here and here; and see a fantastic slideshow of many images at the Daily Telegraph website. Mark also blogs about whale/art topics here.

Enjoy!

All photos are © AguaSonic Acoustics and used here with permission. (Mark has original artworks and calendars with his images available for sale.)

What’s Another Drop in the Ocean?

Jim Covel is senior manager of Guest Experience Training and Interpretation at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This entry also appeared in the National Association for Interpretation's blog.

One of my favorite activities is answering questions for curious minds.  At the Monterey Bay Aquarium we get questions from guests as well as inquiries that come in via e-mail.  A number of us staff members respond to questions, but I’m sure I get the most interesting ones.  And, of course, the best answer is one that triggers yet more questions.

As a biologist, I’m often on the receiving end of some of the more indelicate questions.  And so it was the other day when one of our visitors asked, “Does it hurt the fish if you pee in the ocean?”  Such an insightful question indeed!  The simple answer is “probably not.”  The urine from a healthy human is mostly water, sterile, and contains a small amount of salts and nitrogenous waste.  One person peeing in the ocean isn’t a big deal. 

But the bigger question is, How many humans pee in the oceans every day?  Can that hurt the fish?  Now the answer is a definitive yes.  Consider that most rivers and streams flow to the ocean, as well as all the coastal sewer systems that discharge to the ocean.  It becomes apparent that at least hundreds of millions of humans pee in the ocean every day in one way or another.  Now this starts to make a significant difference.

But there’s still more to consider.  For those that can afford medicines or vitamins, it turns out that our bodies use only a portion of those compounds, and our kidneys filter out the rest to discharge as waste.  Even the best sewage treatment plants aren’t able to neutralize all those chemicals, so some flow into the ocean in waste water.  Fishes and other marine life may be exposed to artificial hormones, antibiotics, anti-depressants and all sorts of other pharmaceuticals.  We’re only now starting to look for the effects of these chemicals in the nearshore environment.  We’re seeing impacts on the reproductive biology of some organisms, for example.

So even the most simple question can lead to a deeper conversation.  And one answer or one bit of information is just a drop in the sea of knowledge available to us.  Every question is an invitation to inspire the inquirer and help them to a greater understanding of the world we live in.