Sea Notes

A Sea of Hope

Time was when it didn't seem surprising that a river could catch fire because it was so polluted. And the idea that the Aral Sea -- once the fourth largest lake on the planet -- could dry up and blow away? It was unspeakably sad, but somehow not surprising.

Forty years after its most infamous fire, Ohio's Cuyahoga River is no longer the cesspool that burned 13 times over the course of a century. Today, says the New York Times, it is "a river reborn." Now the same thing is happening for the Aral Sea in Central Asia.

As Peter Leonard of Associated Press reports, there's again water in the vast inland sea, and the abundant fish it once produced are making a comeback. Migratory birds, too, are finding a home in its restored waters.

The picture's not a perfect one. While Kazakhstan is undertaking a recovery by diverting river water into the Aral Sea, neighboring Uzbekistan continues to channel the Aral's feeder rivers to irrigate its cotton fields. And it's exploring for oil and gas in the dry seabed rather than bringing back a lost ecosystem.

Still, half a sea is better than none. And the lessons of the Cuyahoga and the Aral highlight the potential for recovery in other waters -- if we give them half a chance. That's one reason we're working so hard to create marine protected areas in California's ocean waters, and around the nation.

 

Talking Trash

Researchers from the Project Kaisei/Scripps expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are back ashore. They're sharing what they found -- and it's not a pretty picture.

Not too many surprises, just confirmation that there's an obscene amount of plastic debris floating in the ocean, causing a great deal of harm to marine life that confuses plastic with food.

While they expedition team was at sea, new research found that it's not just debris that's a problem. Turns out the plastic decomposes in seawater, leaving behind a soup of toxic chemicals that poses an additional set of problems for marine life.

It's a wake-up call to deal with how we use plastics. Here at Monterey Bay Aquarium, our cafe has eliminated all plastic straws and disposable beverage cups, and switched to plant-based materials for "plastic" food containers. We're reducing the amount of disposable plastic used elsewhere -- including encouragement for our vendors not to use plastic shrink-wrap on products they ship to us.

And our Laysan albatross, Makana, is a great ambassador for cleaner oceans.

It will take more, to be sure. But one step at a time.

Julie Packard, Ocean Hero

Monterey Bay Aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard has been named one of nine 2009 California Coastal Heroes by Sunset magazine and the California Coastal Commission. She and her fellow honorees are profiled in the September issue of Sunsetand will be honored at the California Coastal Commission's 25th anniversary celebration in San Francisco on September 17.

Here’s what Sunset editor Katie Tamony had to say about her:

“From the day it opened in 1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has been the standard by which all other aquariums are measured. Much of its success is due to its extraordinary executive director, Julie Packard, who has steered the organization since its opening.”

Under her leadership, the aquarium has pioneered innovative exhibits and education initiatives, and has evolved into one of the nation’s leading ocean conservation organizations through its Seafood Watch program, its activities on behalf of ocean policy reform, and field research that is throwing new light on the challenges facing sea otters, white sharks and bluefin tuna in the wild.

A graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz with bachelors and masters degrees in biology, she brings a lifelong passion for the natural world to her service with many organizations dedicated to conservation activities. She is a trustee of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and chairs the board of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, a leader in development of new technologies for understanding the deep sea and global ocean. She has also served on the boards of the California Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund.

A member of the Pew Oceans Commission, she serves on the Joint Oceans Commission Initiative that works to implement comprehensive reform of U.S. ocean policy.

Packard was the 1998 recipient of the Audubon Medal for Conservation and the 2004 Ted Danson Ocean Hero Award from Oceana.  Earlier this year, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences –- one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies.

She will be honored as a California Coastal Hero along with John Hanke of Google Earth, Linda Sheehan of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, State Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), Serge Dedina of Wildcoast, actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, marine scientist Dr. Gary Griggs, and Pierce and Keely Brosnan.

A great honor for Julie, and a nice way for the aquarium to celebrate its 25th anniversary year!

Success Stories: Wild Atlantic Salmon!

Wow! Two great pieces of news today about endangered Atlantic salmon. Separate reports in the media this week confirm large numbers of wild Atlantic salmon unexpectedly returning to rivers on both sides of the Atlantic.

In France, anglers are catching good-sized wild salmon in the Seine River, headed toward Paris. Given that the species is considered endangered throughout Europe, and that the Seine has been notoriously polluted for some time, this is fantastic news.

Bernard Breton, head of France's national fishing federation, said the return of perhaps 1,000 salmon to the river "has surpassed anything we could have imagined."

On the other side the Atlantic, reports by the U.S. Geological Survey from New York State document large numbers of young Atlantic salmon in the Salmon River -- a tributary of Lake Ontario -- for the first time in more than a century. Outdoors writer David Figura of the Syracuse Post-Standard notes that the lake once supported the largest population of Atlantic salmon on the East Coast.

Given the precarious state of wild salmon in most of the rivers where they're found, this is definitely news worth celebrating.

[Atlantic salmon photo © Hans-Petter Fjeld (CC-BY-SA)]

Researchers Set Sail for Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Out of sight is not out of mind, especially when it comes to all the plastic debris we generate on land. Everything flows downstream, ultimately into the ocean and then...it just stays there...forever.

That's the short story behind the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area perhaps twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific, where there's more floating plastic per square mile than there is living plankton.

And that's a big, big problem.

Now a scientific expedition uniting the nonprofit Project Kaisei and scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography near San Diego, is heading out to sea to study the Patch. By documenting its size, and the potential for cleaning it up, they hope to shed more light on the magnitude of the problem.

This all builds on good work by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, who first drew attention to the Patch. All this is of interest to us at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, since plastics are a persistent threat to marine wildlife-- including far-ranging albatross like the Laysan albatross, Makana, that visitors can meet here in Monterey.

Fortunately we can all do something, like limiting our own use of disposable plastics and helping clean up plastic trash wherever we see it. (International Coastal Clean-Up day is coming up again on September 19, at a coast or river near you!)

Phasers Locked on Salmon Farms

Canadian actor William Shatner, best known for his portrayal of Capt. James Kirk on the original Star Trek series, has taken dead aim at salmon farms in British Columbia.

In a letter to Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, Shatner urges that all salmon farms be removed from migration routes of wild salmon and steelhead in order to safeguard the native fish from infestations of sea lice transmitted from the farms.

He says the step is needed to protect "one of Earth's most precious assets, the wild salmon and steelhead of B.C."

His letter was inspired by a visit with biologist Alexandra Morton of the Raincoast Research Society, who has been studying the sea lice issue. She met Shatner during a visit to the region. The issue of farmed salmon later was highlighted on the show "Boston Legal," in which Shatner stars.

Salmon farming interests were not pleased. They discounted the impact that intensive aquaculture operations have on the health of wild juvenile fish that swim past their farms.

Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program rates farmed salmon as something to "Avoid" -- based in part on precisely the concerns that Shatner raises in his letter.

(This has nothing to do with the fact that Shatner was part of the Star Trek cast when they filmed scenes at the Aquarium for the best of the Star Trek films, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.)

Photon torpedoes launched. No official response yet from the Canadian government.

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!

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.

Portraits of Penguin Poo

So who would ever have dreamed that photos from space of penguin poo would contribute to the advancement of science?

Well, it's true. Teams from the British Antarctic Survey have pinpointed the location of ten new colonies of emperor penguins thanks to aerial photos it capture of excrement-stained ice.

Turns out the guano stains -- a tell-tale reddish brown, circled in the photo below -- are large enough to be captured by satellite photos and are reliable indicators to show where the colonies congregate, mapping expert Peter Fretwell told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

(Special thanks to Kaylin of Penguin Wonderings Blog for the tip!)

Two Tales: Leatherback Savior, Shark-Killing Outrage

You know something's changed for the good when two great stories of people standing up for marine life make the news on the same day.

First, CNN featured Trinidad's "crazy turtle woman" as one of its Heroes during American Morning today. I caught the story on the treadmill at the gym, then found more online:

Seems that Suzan Lakhan Baptiste has single-handedly led a crusade to protect nesting leatherbacks from slaughter on a six-mile stretch of beach near her home. In the process she's rallied community support, turned a graveyard for Caribbean leatherbacks into a maternity ward, and through her Nature Seekers organization is helping build a thriving ecotourism economy around the endangered turtles. (Remember her work next time you plan a vacation!) Now she's taking the campaign to other Caribbean islands. CNN has a full story and videos online.

Second, the St. Petersburg Times in Florida reports incredible outrage over coverage of the killing of a 9-foot bull shark by two teenage fishermen, and an earlier killing of a pregnant hammerhead shark by a fishing captain bent on notching a world record.

"If shark killing is out," write reporters Stephanie Hayes and Brant James, "shark sympathy is in."

The article focuses on the demonization of sharks, and their rapid decline in the wild, with populations in the Gulf of Mexico down by about 90 percent from historic levels.

They quote George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida:

"Sympathy toward sharks has grown, and the recognition process has come upon the general public that these are magnificent animals. They hold a very special place in the sea as apex predators at the top of the food chain, and they're deserving of our concern."

With World Ocean Day just around the corner, this is very good news indeed.

(Photo of Bucky Dennis' record hammerhead catch via St. Petersburg Times, courtesy Judy Deibler.)