ApocaDocuments (14) for the "Species Collapse" scenario from this week
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Sun, Jun 27, 2010
from PhysOrg:
What is killing Argentina's right whales?
Fatal strandings of southern right whales around Argentina's Valdes Peninsula have soared in recent years, and worried scientists are not sure why, the International Whaling Commission heard Friday. From 1971, when systematic monitoring began, only a relative handful of whale deaths were reported over the next three decades.
Starting in 2003, however, the mortality rate began to soar: from 31 that year, to 47 in 2005, 83 in 2007, 95 in 2008 and 79 last year, the IWC's scientific committee reported.
"Over 90 percent of the deaths have been of first-year calves," the scientists said.... Three causes, possibly in combination, have been fingered as possible culprits.
One is reduced availability of food for adult females, notably small crustaceans called copepods and krill. Poor feeding conditions lengthen the normally three-to-five year reproduction cycles, studies have shown.
High concentrations of biotoxins and the spread of an infectious disease are also suspects.... Weakening might also explain "an extremely strange phenomenon": kelp gulls that alight on the backs of young whales at the water's surface and feed on their backs, creating lesions vulnerable to toxins or viruses. ...
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I think the right whales just don't want to be the only things left.
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Sat, Jun 26, 2010
from New York Times:
Turtle Deaths Called Result of Shrimping, Not Oil Spill
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist says he believes most of the dead turtles that have been examined since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill died not from the oil or the chemical dispersants put into the water after the disaster, but from being caught in shrimping nets, though further testing may show otherwise. Dr. Brian Stacy, a veterinary pathologist who specializes in reptiles, said that more than half the turtles dissected so far, most of which were found shortly after the spill, had sediment in their lungs or airways, which indicated they might have been caught in nets and drowned.
"The only plausible scenario where you would have high numbers of animals forcibly submerged would be fishery interaction," he said. "That is the primary consideration for this event." ...
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Well, that's a relief!
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Fri, Jun 25, 2010
from Scientific American:
Unintended whale kills deadlier than intentional whaling
More whales are being killed by chemical and noise pollution, entanglement in nets, climate change or collisions with ships than by whaling itself, delegates to the world's main whaling body said this week.
Harpooning whales for their meat and oil pushed many species close to extinction in the last century. Stocks have begun to recover under a moratorium on whaling agreed in 1986, although Japan, Norway and Iceland still hunt the giant mammals.
But climate change now means it is harder for whales to find food, ship collisions are growing, pollution is disrupting their reproduction, and fishing nets can kill or wound them, according to delegates at the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) annual meeting in the Moroccan Atlantic city of Agadir.... Marine wildlife experts say growing numbers of whales succumb to "by-catch" -- getting entangled in nets or hooked to fishing lines stretching up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) and known by green campaigners as "curtains of death."
Many of the whales which escape succumb to their injuries months or years later. ...
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Pretty soon that worldwide pool will be spanking clean!
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Thu, Jun 24, 2010
from PhysOrg:
Seismic probe threat to endangered whales: experts
International Whaling Commission scientists have warned that a seismic survey in Russia's Far East could push a critically endangered population of whales closer to extinction. "The committee is extremely concerned about the potential impact on western gray whales and strongly recommends that Rosneft postpone their survey until at least June 2011," the scientists said in a report released this week, referring to the Russian company carrying out the testing.
There are probably fewer than 130 Western North Pacific Gray Whales remaining, and only a couple of dozen females of calf-bearing age, according to the IWC.... "The Rosneft survey (is set to) occur while the highest number of feeding gray whales, including cow and calves, are present," the 120-strong committee cautioned.... "It's not as if the committee is asking them not to do the survey," said Wendy Elliott, species manager at WWF International.
"All they have to do is wait a year and conduct it earlier, before the whales arrive in the area."
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Wait a whole year for just a buncha whales? Nyet!
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Thu, Jun 24, 2010
from New York Times:
Asian Carp gets to threshold of Great Lakes
After months of worrying over hints and signs and DNA traces suggesting that Asian carp, a voracious, nonnative fish, might be moving perilously close to the Great Lakes, the authorities here have uncovered the proof they did not want. They caught a fish. One bighead carp -- a 19.6-pound, 34.6-inch male -- became entangled Tuesday in a fishing net about six miles from Lake Michigan, in part of a waterway that connects the Mississippi River system to the Great Lakes. The authorities have searched for nearly a half-year with nets, chemicals and electrofishing equipment, but the fish was the first actual Asian carp to be found beyond an elaborate electric fence system officials spent years devising to avoid this very outcome.... Around the Great Lakes, where scientists fear that the arrival of Asian carp could upend the ecosystem, the discovery reopened a simmering fight. ...
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But I had heard that carp-pooling was a good thing.
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Wed, Jun 23, 2010
from Huffington Post:
Oil Spill Forces Animals To Flee To Shallow Water Off Coast, Scientists Warn Of 'Mass Die-Off'
Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.
Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena.
Fish and other wildlife seem to be fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast in a trend that some researchers see as a potentially troubling sign.
The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily be devoured by predators.... Researchers say there are several reasons for the relatively small death toll: The vast nature of the spill means scientists are able to locate only a small fraction of the dead animals.... "Their ability to avoid it may be limited in the long term, especially if in near-shore refuges they're crowding in close to shore, and oil continues to come in. At some point they'll get trapped," said Crowder, expert in marine ecology and fisheries. "It could lead to die-offs." ...
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It's as if they think there's some sort of Ark waiting to take them out of the deluge.
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Wed, Jun 23, 2010
from AP, via PhysOrg:
Nations fail to limit whaling, Japan still hunts
An international effort to truly limit whale hunting collapsed Wednesday, leaving Japan, Norway and Iceland free to keep killing hundreds of mammals a year, even raiding a marine sanctuary in Antarctic waters unchecked. The breakdown put diplomatic efforts on ice for at least a year, raised the possibility that South Korea might join the whaling nations and raised questions about the global drive to prevent the extinction of the most endangered whale species.
It also revived doubts about the effectiveness and future of the International Whaling Commission. The agency was created after World War II to oversee the hunting of tens of thousands of whales a year but gradually evolved into a body at least partly dedicated to keeping whales from vanishing from the Earth's oceans.
"I think ultimately if we don't make some changes to this organization in the next few years it may be very serious, possibly fatal for the organization - and the whales will be worse off," said former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer. ...
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This "international effort" was almost as effective as Copenhagen!
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Wed, Jun 23, 2010
from PhysOrg:
Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist
Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.... [He] said homo sapiens will not be able to survive the population explosion and "unbridled consumption," and will become extinct, perhaps within a century, along with many other species.... Fenner told The Australian he tries not to express his pessimism because people are trying to do something, but keep putting it off. He said he believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late because the effects we have had on Earth since industrialization (a period now known to scientists unofficially as the Anthropocene) rivals any effects of ice ages or comet impacts. ...
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It's always darkest before the doom.
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Wed, Jun 23, 2010
from 3News New Zealand, from DesdemonaDespair:
Squid-fishing industry starving whales of food
Mr O'Shea has been studying beached whales for seven years and their food source, squid, for 20 - and he doesn't like what he's seeing.
Around 10,000 whales have died on New Zealand beaches in the last 30 years. Research by marine biologist Steve O'Shea shows many of these whales now beaching are in such a poor state of health he believes they may be starving.
"We're exploring the possibility that these animals are hungry, are both hungry and thirsty in fact, because they get all of their food and their water from squid and if you take the squid out of the food chain there's obviously going to be cascading effects," he says. Mr O'Shea's team will take samples from the dead whales' stomachs; almost 100 percent of the whales they've studied so far have had ulcers.... The young pilot whales at Raglan have worn teeth, a sure sign they're eating the wrong food - in their case that's anything other than squid. ...
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Whattaya expect? They're stealing our squid!
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Tue, Jun 22, 2010
from EnvironmentalResearchWeb:
Bee decline could be down to chemical cocktail interfering with brains
A cocktail of chemicals from pesticides could be damaging the brains of British bees, according to scientists about to embark on a study into why the populations of the insects have dropped so rapidly in recent decades. By affecting the way bees' brains work, the pesticides might be affecting the ability of bees to find food or communicate with others in their colonies.... Chris Connolly of Dundee University's Centre for Neuroscience has been awarded £1.5 m to lead the work on whether pesticides are having an affect on the brains of bees. Pesticides could be blocking the electrical and chemical signals between neurons, he said, and only subtle changes may be required to produce serious brain disorders. These problems might stop bees identifying the best sources of nectar, or it might affect their ability to navigate to nearby food source and back home again.
Brain disorders in bees might also interfere with their ability to communicate with nest-mates using the "waggle dance", where bees come back to their hive and spread information about the food sources they have found.
The IPI will bring together ecologists, molecular biologists, mathematicians and computer experts to study the decline of honeybees and other insect pollinators from a range of different angles. ...
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Why would pesticides affect bugs that aren't pests?
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Tue, Jun 22, 2010
from AP, via PhysOrg:
Officials scramble to save endangered Javan rhinos
The discovery of three dead Javan rhinos has intensified efforts to save one of the world's most endangered mammals from extinction, with an electric fence being built Monday around a new sanctuary and breeding ground. With only about 50 of the species left in the wild - all but a handful living in one national park in western Indonesia - conservationists are even talking about taking the rare step of relocating some of the 5-ton animals to spread out the population and give the Javan rhino a better chance to survive.
Drought and proximity to an active volcano in the densely forested Ujung Kulon park have raised fears that a natural disaster could destroy almost the entire population at once. In Vietnam, the only other place the rhinos can be found, there are just four. ...
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I think we need to have a new designation beyond "critically endangered" -- maybe "Last Gasp?"
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Mon, Jun 21, 2010
from GISD:
The Global Invasive Species Database: 100 worst invasive species
Invasive species have been recognised globally as a major threat to biodiversity (the collected wealth of the worldís species of plants, animals and other organisms) as well as to agriculture and other human interests.
It is very difficult to identify 100 invasive species from around the world that really are "worse" than any others. Species and their interactions with ecosystems are very complex. Some species may have invaded only a restricted region, but have a high probability of expanding and causing further great damage (e.g. see Boiga irregularis: the brown tree snake). Other species may already be globally widespread, and causing cumulative but less visible damage. Many biological families or genera contain large numbers of invasive species, often with similar impacts. Species were selected for the list according to two criteria: their serious impact on biological diversity and/or human activities, and their illustration of important issues surrounding biological invasion. To ensure the inclusion of a wide variety of examples, only one species from each genus was selected. Absence from the list does not imply that a species poses a lesser threat. ...
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Invasive species are just friends we would never have otherwise met.
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Mon, Jun 21, 2010
from BBC:
Secrecy of talks on whaling compromise condemned
The opening session was swiftly adjourned so that delegates could begin a day and a half of private talks.
Some observers condemned the secrecy, one commenting that recent UN talks on North Korea's nuclear programme were held in public - so why not on whaling?
Conservation groups are split on the merits of pursuing a deal. Some argue for maintaining a hard line against all whaling, while others believe agreement could improve the current picture, where Iceland, Japan and Norway set their own quotas and run their hunts without international oversight. ...
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Secret agreements have worked out pretty well for the world so far!
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Want more context?
Try reading our book FREE online:
Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
More fun than a barrel of jellyfish!
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Mon, Jun 21, 2010
from Telegraph.co.uk:
Nightingale population down 91 per cent
The number of nightingales in Britain has declined by 91 per cent in 40 years, prompting fears over the survival of the species. The population of the songbird was known to have dropped but researchers were shocked to learn of the rate at which nightingales are dying out.
A study by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) revealed that numbers reduced by more than nine in ten between 1967 and 2007 - the largest recorded fall of any bird still breeding in Britain except the tree sparrow (93 per cent).... Experts believe the dwindling population could be down to an increasing number of deer, who are blamed for destroying the undergrowth which is the bird's natural habitat.
There could also be factors relating to its winter home in west Africa, which it shares with other declining species including the willow warbler, garden warbler and cuckoo. ...
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Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?
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