Ocean Dead Zones Might be Worse Than Originally Thought

Well, you didn’t think things were actually better than we initially thought, did you? Frighteningly, dead zones in oceans around the world – which are oxygen-starved areas that can’t support most life – are greater than originally thought in coastal areas that support fishing industries. More than 400 dead zones have formed along continental coastlines since the mid-20th century.  They occur when fertilizer pollution causes algal blooms, whose decomposition feeds oxygen-consuming bacteria.

From Wired Science:

These so-called hypoxic regions now cover an area roughly equivalent in size to Oregon. Compared to Earth’s total ocean area, that’s relatively small, but they’re grouped in places critical to commercial fishing. They’re also spreading, in both size and frequency: Since the 1960s, the number of hypoxic areas has doubled every 10 years.

And as significant as the problem is, it’s based on what may be outdated, overly permissive standards. The new study is a review of nearly 900 studies of 206 ocean floor-dwelling species, and suggests that the level of oxygen considered hypoxic needs to be raised.

“These results imply that the number and area of coastal ecosystems affected by hypoxia and the future extent of hypoxia impacts on marine life have been generally underestimated,” write Carlos Duarte and Raquel Vaquer-Sunyer of the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies. The paper was published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Duarte and Vaquer-Sunyer believe that we need to replace the outdated oxygen baseline, set in 1983, to 4.6 milligrams per liter, if not higher, in order to preserve the biodiversity of bottom-dwellers.  This benchmark would probably double the number of hypoxic zones, or at least increase it by 100.

Robert Diaz, a Virginia Institute of Marine Science biologist who has been studying dead zones since 1995, says “Everything is pointing towards a more desperate situation in all aquatic systems, freshwater and marine.  That’s pretty clear.  People should be worried, all over the world.”

We sure have managed to mess things up, haven’t we?

Link [Wired Science]

UK Fishermen Dump Catch Overboard to Make More Money

The European Union put fishing quotas in place for a reason: to prevent the kind of overfishing that experts warn could lead to mass extinction of marine life in the coming decades. But, European fishermen aren’t pleased with the quotas because they limit profit possibilities. So to get around that, they’re doing something pretty horrifying: dumping tons of perfectly good dead fish back into the water. Fish that should never have been caught in the first place.

Recently, the Norwegian Coast Guard shot video of UK fishermen doing just this, and the sight of such wastefulness (a whopping 5 tons of dead fish) has shocked many people who didn’t realize the extent of what was going on. Check it out at The Guardian.

From The Guardian’s Environment blog:

The practice is legal, as the EU only sets quotas for fish landed at ports, not what is actually caught at sea. In this case, it appears the fishermen were discarding low-value small (but legal) fish in order to fill their quota with higher-value big fish.

But the wasteful consequences of Europe’s fisheries policies, though well-known, are rather abstract to most people - it all happens a long way out at sea. And that’s the power of the video. At the start, a stream of dead, silvery fish slip down a chute and into the water. It goes on. And on. Seagulls gather to snap up a free lunch.

But this is apparently not rapid enough. So the men start dumping whole boxfuls of their catch over the side. And then another load comes up from the hold, and so on.

What an incredible waste, and a slap in the face to conservationists who are working so hard to maintain sustainable numbers of fish in our oceans. WTF. This is incredible disrespect and disregard not just for the fish but the future of humanity. What’s going to happen when our oceans are overfished to the point of irreparably damaging the delicately balanced ocean ecosystems?

Learn more about the problem of overfishing by reading the article ‘More Species Considered Overfished’ at the Florida Museum of Natural History website.

Link [The Guardian]

Indoor ‘River Ecosystem’ Aquarium and Hydroponic Garden

French designer Mathieu Lehanneur has created an incredible item that serves as an art installation, aquarium, fish hatchery, hydroponic vegetable garden and home décor at in one. The refrigerated aquarium houses freshwater fish, with vegetables growing in glass pods on top. The vegetables get their water from the tank, and then filter and purify the water for the fish. It’s its own little mini river ecosystem indoors.

I don’t know about the snakes, but all in all this is a pretty sleek and sexy design, and an interesting approach to dealing with the global food crisis. Check out the video of the installation below:

Via [Inhabitat]

Officials in California Filling Pools with Mosquito Fish

For months, there have been little mentions here and there about how officials all over the country are worried about mosquitoes breeding in the brackish pools behind abandoned, foreclosed homes. You would think that the standard response would be a) drain the freaking pools, b) put forth some kind of community effort to either get people back in the homes or c) drop some mosquito dunks in there. But, the brilliant officials in California have decided that mosquito-larvae-eating fish are the solution.

From Treehugger:

The mortgage crisis is not only wrecking peoples’ lives, it’s not doing much good for the environment, either. The swimming pools of abandoned homes are perfect mosquito breeding grounds, there are worries about rampant West Nile Virus infections. In California, authorities are using airplanes to find green pools and are filling them with the Gambusia affinis, or mosquito fish, which eats the larvae.

“They are real heroes,” says Josefa Cabada, a technician at the Contra Costa Mosquito & Vector Control District, a government agency, in the Wall Street Journal. “I’ve never seen a mosquito in a pool with mosquito fish.”

The problem (despite the obvious one of, uh, fish in swimming pools) is that these fish wreak havoc on each new ecosystem they’re placed in. They’ve displaced native species all over the world, and are apparently ‘master escape artists’, able to travel in as little as 3 millimeters of water.

Surely, there is a better solution than this – it sounds like a story in The Onion.

Link [Treehugger]
Photo credit: DAVID CARLSON / The Californian

Gross Olympic Souvenir: Goldfish in a Key Ring

If you were going to fly to China to attend the Olympics this summer, what kind of souvenir would you want to bring home? A t-shirt, a framed photograph? How about a plastic bag full of murky water and a decaying goldfish to attach to your key ring? Sounds like such a wonderful way to remember your great Chinese vacation.

From InventorSpot:

A plastic bag with a picture of Huan Huan, one of the cartoon mascots of the Games, on the outside. And inside: a live goldfish. The bag is part of a plastic key ring. According to the Telegraph story, the bags are sealed, so the fish live in a small pool of water, with little access to air, and no food whatsoever. The goldfish key rings are, of course, not a piece of official Olympic merchandise.

The story quotes a spokesperson from the United Kingdom’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals calling the key chains a gimmick which “show no respect for the animals at all,” though there’s no record of the story on the RSPCA’s web site. A manufacturer of the key chains could not be identified. This could mean the entire thing is a hoax, although there is a picture here of something that looks like a live goldfish in a tiny plastic bag.

A lot of people seem to think it’s a hoax, and we sure hope it is. A few months driving around with that thing on your keys and you’d be sure to end up with rotting fish remains all over your lap at some point or another.

Link [InventorSpot]

After Sewage Spill Cleanup, Fish in Lake Washington Evolving in Reverse

While locals were dealing with the fallout from a sewage spill in Lake Washington in the 1960s, the little threespine stickleback fish was evolving. It seems that the cloudy murkiness from the sewage allowed the fish to move beyond its need for armor that protected it from hungry trout. Unfortunately, now that the lake has been cleaned up, the fish has been slowly devolving back to its former state.

From Seattle PI:

By dusting off samples of the fish dating to the 1950s, researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington on Thursday documented the stickleback’s “reverse evolution” triggered by the cleanup.

“This idea of reverse evolution has only been documented in a few cases in the wild,” said Katie Peichel, an author of the paper in Current Biology and scientist in the Hutch’s Division of Human Biology.

Sticklebacks originally were found in marine waters where they grew bony armor and prickly spines to ward off predators. As they migrated into freshwater and over many years, the widespread fish lost much of its skeletal shields, or plating.

That’s how they looked in Lake Washington — at least until recently.

Scientists have documented the change and done genetic studies on the fish, confirming that the armor transformation was due to genetic changes and not an influx of plated fish from the Puget Sound. It’s a stunning example of how fast some species are able to evolve, but scientists note that we shouldn’t expect such a thing from all species as the world struggles to adjust to global warming:

Take the case of polar bears, which this week were added to the Endangered Species list. The population of bears is too small, habitat needs are too specific, reproduction is too slow, genetic variability is too limited and the melting of the polar sea ice too fast for them to adjust, scientists said.

“Whether or not (polar bears) can find some different way of utilizing the environment and adapting to the changes seems improbable,” Reznick said.

“Polar bears are doomed,” he said. “Sticklebacks may not be.”

Link + Photo Credit [Seattle PI]

Old Subway Cars Now Luxury Condos for Fish

Ever wondered where old subway cars go to die? You might not be too surprised to learn that there’s a subway car graveyard off the coast of Delaware. Before you get your panties in a wad, consider this: fish are moving into these subway cars so fast, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control can’t get more cars down there fast enough. Jeff Tinsman, the artificial reef program manager, has called them ‘luxury condominiums for fish’.

Having planted a thriving community in what was once an underwater desert, state marine officials are faced with the sort of overcrowding, crime and traffic problems more common to terrestrial cities.

The summer flounder and bass have snuggled so tightly on top and in the nooks of the subway cars that Mr. Tinsman is trying to expand the housing capacity. He is having trouble, however, because other states, seeing Delaware’s successes, have started competing for the subway cars, which New York City provides free.

I never thought I’d view tankers dumping old junk in the ocean as a good thing. Not only are the subway cars being recycled and scores of fish getting brand new homes, but states are fighting over the opportunity to do it themselves. Pretty awesome.

Link [New York Times] via [DVICE]

Photo: Tim Shaffer for The New York Times

Pavlov’s Fish: Researchers Train Fish to Swim Into Nets For Harvest

The march of science, as described by Trendhunter Magazine:

Once again, with the idea of restocking our depleting resources, scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood’s Hole, Mass. are testing a plan to train fish to catch themselves using sound.

The fish swim into a net when they hear a tone signaling feeding time. The system could eventually allow depleted fish like black sea bass to be released into the open ocean, grow to market size, then swim into an underwater cage at harvest time when they hear the signal. This way, farmed fish might be better acclimated to the wild when they can be called to feed every few days. The big goal is to help with the costs of fish farming, an important source of the world’s seafood. Trained fish return after several days of feeding saving the farms money on feed and reducing the fish waste released in concentrated areas.

The fish will actually swim into an underwater structure called the Aquadome (someone has been watching old Mad Max movies at Woods Hole).

It was the Russian researcher Ivan Pavlov who conditioned dogs to salivate when they heard the bell that announced feeding time, and the Aquadome works on the same principle. A major hurdle for the researchers will be the question of how many fish are lost to predators. I know from long personal experience that fish are pretty dense, but maybe they can be taught this skill, intricate for them. I wonder, though, if other fish will learn to associate the sound with food. Like sharks.

Link: [Trendhunter Magazine]

Photo credit: Flickr user Florian

Underwater Artistry: Master Aquarium Landscapes

Now this is an aquarium!

Check out the work of aquarium artists George and Steven Lo of Aqua Forest Aquarium in San Francisco. These things are amazing underwater landscapes. Pure Awesome.

Check out the Portfolio site for a ton of other amazing aquarium layouts.

Link [Portfolio] via Neatorama via Apartment Therapy San Francisco