Newsflash:

Bats can swim

And are surprisingly good at it

Bats are capable of swimming in stressful situations if the need arises

Some species, such as those belonging to the genus Pteropus (flying foxes), have been known to brave the water to secure a meal#BatStroke pic.twitter.com/ulALyPM1yI

— Laurel Coons (@LaurelCoons) November 11, 2018

And there is of course the Great Fishing Bat. Amazing video here of its impressive catching capabilities. Many apologies for the over-the-top narration.

The post Holy Swimming Bats first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Give a robot a fish, you will feed it for a day. Teach a robot to fish, you will feed it for a lifetime.

At least that’s what researchers at MIT have done with this freaky, clear robotic arm made using a new and novel hydrogel. It’s sort of rubbery, sort of tough and sort of like water. It’s the liquid properties that make this robotic appendage unique. The arm is mostly water, making it nearly invisible when placed in the tank. Pump more water into the arm, the fingers close. All the better to sneak up and gently grasp an unsuspecting domesticated carp.

In the future, these watery arms could be used to gently collect samples or even assist in biomedical applications. In the meantime, we will be dreaming of watery tentacles for the Deep Sea News Lair.

SOURCE:

https://news.mit.edu/2017/transparent-gel-robots-catch-release-fish-0201

The post And now for the all robot performance of “To Catch a Fish” first appeared on Deep Sea News.

But today Les propelled himself to Samuel L. Jackson levels of badassery.  At Nature, he attacks, and rightly so, deep-sea trawling in an article titled “Deep-sea trawling must be banned.”  No waffling here.

Not “trawling is bad.”

Not “here are some negative effects of trawling.”

Not “lets reconsider trawling.”

Not “lets hold hands, sing songs, and think about trawling.”

Open the missile silo doors, count to three, turn the double keys, and push the button.

This month, the European Union votes on a proposed ban of deep-sea bottom trawling.  An unprecedented but greatly needed move.  Of course industrial fishing lobbyists are fighting this with everything in their arsenal.

Lobbying groups have threatened legal action against scientists for publishing data deemed to be critical of the industry. The EU Fisheries Committee includes Members of the European Parliament from French, UK and Spanish areas in which deep-sea fishing vessels are docked. These ties have slowed the committee’s consideration of the proposed ban to a crawl: it has postponed its vote by several months from the originally scheduled date. By contrast, the EU environment committee, which is not so dominated by members from fishing ports, voted 58 to 1 in favour of the ban in March.

…The fishing lobby has published a series of influential pamphlets that start with the famous phrase “the inconvenient truth”. In essence, the pamphlets suggest that it is possible to use a lighter version of trawling equipment to trawl in the deep sea without doing much damage; that stocks of the target species are not being depleted; and that non-target catch is made up of just a few abundant species that are not in any kind of trouble. Many of the ‘truths’ listed are quoted by European politicians.

And this is where Les brings the pain.

[These claims] are bunk….As such, responsible scientists cannot let these claims go unchallenged. Here is a rundown of why the assertions are wrong.

Les goes on to obliterate all three of the claims above.  Please go read the article and see a master dismantle the rhetoric. Its like watching one of those old kung-fu movies where the kung-fu master takes down 12 guys without breaking a sweat.

There are so many choice quotes, but my favorite in response to lighter versions of trawling equipment

By analogy, it makes no difference if you are run over by a small car that weighs one tonne or a large truck that weighs several tonnes. The flesh of the body is no match for the strength of steel, however light the equipment.

Of course Les doesn’t stop with the science but goes after dodgy claims about the economics too.

Since 2004, the three companies involved have received about €15 million (US$20 million) [in subsidies] but showed more than €11 million in losses.

Cocktail Week at DSN doesn’t start until Sunday, but everyone raise your drink up to Les Watling.

The post It’s Time to Throw in the Trawl first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Answer: Not much.

Barotrauma can be a real beezy. Luckily we, and those fabulous little rockfish, can get down with our bad selves and the help of this most epic video montage. The following Rockfish PSA was concocted by the masterminds of California Sea Grant and NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

I give it two fins. Way way up.

Side note: I found Dr. M’s doppleganger. (@7:29 fisherapper with hat on)

The post Rockfish Recompression. (because sometimes gas just happens) first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post The Mortal Sea first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Ms. Nouvian’s landmark — or at least watermark — case was about bottom trawling, the use of heavy nets that scrape fragile ocean floors for endangered slow-growing species.

Intermarché belongs to the French group, Les Mousquetaires, which also owns a large Brittany-based trawler fleet that supplies its well-stocked fish counters.

Its ad campaign boasted that it “plays a determinant role in maintaining sustainable fishing in France, the preservation and renewal of marine resources.”

Ms. Nouvian jumped on the company’s assertion that its fishing practices down to 1,500 meters, or about 5,000 feet, caused less damage than a hiker’s footprint on a beach.

“That would be laughable if it didn’t sow doubt among officials and legislators,” she said. “This total scorn for truth bogs down the debate in technical detail and suggests there is scientific controversy, which there is not.” [more details at link above]

For years, the deep-sea was the denizen of its-not-there-if-you-can’t-see-it attitude among governments and corporations. We know too much about the ocean know and how long lasting human impacts can be. Thus, business can no longer greenwash its agenda without objection from from a knowledgable community of experts and an increasingly knowledgable and concerned voting public. Intermarché’s claims of responsible fishing are a slap in the face to every fishermen around the world who practices real sustainable fishing and diverts revenue by those seeking to make a difference with their dollars to fraudulent companies seeking to piggyback on the “green wave”.

Congrats to the small BLOOM for this victory. It goes to show that small, dedicated groups can accomplish much and that accountability still has a place in the arsenal of conservation.

The post “Small Victories Win Big Wars” first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Timing is Everything

If you were going to schedule a forum aimed at spurring progressive change in ocean conservation, when would be the absolute worst time to commence said event? This week, perhaps, during the world’s BIGGEST ocean sciences meeting – the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt Lake City? Cue our first #epicFAIL courtesy of the Economist World Oceans Summit, happening next week in Singapore.

The Economist summit has pumped itself up as follows:

The world’s oceans are the setting for increasing economic activity and will continue to be so for years to come. Only in recent years have scientists begun to understand the significant impact of this growing industrialisation on the ecosystems of the seas and, by extension, on the broader biosphere we all inhabit. Now is the time to engage the global business community and change the nature of the debate.

The Economist’s World Oceans Summit will examine how the increasing activity in and around the oceans can be managed sustainably and what this means for business and other key stakeholders. Chaired by John Micklethwait, Editor-in-chief of The Economist, the summit will bring together more than 200 global leaders from various sectors and disciplines, including government, business, international organisations, NGOs, think-tanks and academia to participate in a unique, outcome-driven dialogue.

At DSN we’re all shaking our heads in disbelief–the bad timing of the Economist summit is simply inexcusable. Many marine scientists couldn’t attend even if they wanted to, and the scheduling conflict means that media attention on ocean issues will be diverted away from any cutting edge science being presented in Utah. Aren’t marine scientists some of the most obvious people you’d want to leverage for promoting change? Shouldn’t any plan for long-term economic sustainability be fundamentally and deeply rooted in scientific data?

“Broader Ocean Dialogue” = a lot of hot air

Transformative initiatives are commonly borne from unconventional collaborations. Fresh ideas often shake the boat. Innovation is an exciting and inspiring thing. But when I look at the scheduled speakers for the Economist summit, I’m not very excited; there are a lot of titles that include the phrase “executive director”.

Even though they’re trying to highlight participation from academia, there don’t seem to be nearly enough scientists attending the Economist summit. The ones that were invited represent a typical lineup of established heavyweights, all of whom have my immense respect and admiration. Yet, this program gives the distinct impression that the Ecnonomist organizers were more worried about prestige and fanfare than inviting up-and-coming scientists and conservationists whose opinions aren’t already widely known. Given that National Geographic is the co-host of this summit, I half suspect that the conversation will be watered down in order to avoid upsetting Rupert Murdoch or anyone at News Corporation (You didn’t know that the National Geographic channel is owned by the same company as Fox News? Or that they will soon be leveraging endangered species for ratings?)

A broader ocean dialogue implies a diverse audience – but who exactly IS the audience for this summit? Who is attending this event apart from the invited participants? On whose ears will their message fall? Amongst the invited scientists, where is the diversity in gender, race, or career stage? For the latter, we would expect the younger generation to have the best answers. This could have been an unprecedented networking and training opportunity for early-career scientists. Researchers like myself are passionate, driven, and willing to do the legwork; but how can we know what needs to be done if we’re not privy to such high-level discussions?

Besides that, there are some significant gaps in the list of attendees. Where are the representatives from developing nations (apart from the President of Kiribati, the token representative it seems)? Where are the small-scale fishers most impacted by catch systems? There’s not even an indigenous representative on the Arctic panel, when the Arctic tribes are the ones most adversely impacted. There’s no Asian representative on the aquaculture panel when Asia (e.g., China, Vietnam) is the biggest consumer and producer of aquaculture products – and the conference is in Singapore! It’s not exactly far to travel!

Major oversight in topics

There were also a lot of topics that were conveniently left out of the program. Shelf and deepwater resource extraction, anyone? Namely, oil drilling and deep sea mining. So far as I can tell this issue is not being discussed at all during the World Oceans Summit. This is quite ironic considering resource extraction is being extensively scrutinized at the Ocean Sciences Meeting, with a long list of sessions and scientific presentations. And have we already forgotten what resulted from the deepwater resource extraction in the Gulf of Mexico? Since these problems relate directly to the activities of international corporations (not “tragedy of the commons”), we at DSN can’t help but suspect this is a deliberate oversight so the corporate partners don’t feel threatened.

Where are the defined outcomes?

Yes Economist, what do you hope to accomplish out of your ocean summit? The scientists you have invited – however important their message – aren’t the ones out in the trenches. Executive directors don’t tend to go sampling or sequence DNA. And where is the cutting edge science? We are in the midst of a post-Genomics era that could revolutionize our capacity to monitor the oceans. How are you going to spur innovation if you aren’t bringing in any fresh ideas or promoting new technology? I know that Jane Lubchenco thinks that social media has an important role to play in conservation – but she doesn’t have a clear vision of the way forward. At DSN we’re trudging ahead in uncharted territory and promoting online tools as a new paradigm for ocean conservation. Shouldn’t scientists like us be a part of the Economist’s conversation? We have the expertise and are willing to work our assess off to make a difference.

Dear Economist, will your summit produce ANYTHING new that you can’t get from, say, the Pew Ocean report?

Even more frustrating, there are working group sessions on the last day, with no solid items slated to come out of them:

The final afternoon of the World Oceans Summit is in many ways the most important and exciting. If we are to tackle the myriad causes of our troubled oceans-the market failures, the irrational economic behaviour, poor governance and so on—we must do so with new and innovative solutions built around enlightened self-interest, and by a multiplicity of stakeholders. The oceans conversation must expand now from the confines of academia, NGOs, governments and international bodies—where much important progress has been made—to businesspeople and boardrooms, where small steps have been taken but bigger steps around innovation and sustainability, and responsible use of the oceans, will bring new rewards and opportunities.

Each of the working groups below will aim to tackle an area where a real difference might be made, and generate ideas for solutions. These are highly interactive sessions, each bringing together the widest group of oceans stakeholders. Thought-provoking case studies of initiatives and innovation, in and out of the oceans, will act as catalysts for discussion, while discussion leaders—experts in their field—will help shape and form the proceedings. The outcomes of each working group will then be relayed at the final plenum.

The focus group conversions will merely be presented to all attendees in yet *another* discussion session. In my experience, the most successful workshops establish solid action points before the end of the event and subsequently follow up on their progress. The present summit might be fine for smaller scale events, but seems grossly inappropriate for such a large supposedly ‘transformative’ event. Everyone might leave the Ocean Summit excited, but then reality will soon take over as the glow fades away–especially for high-level directors whose workload is already bulging at the seams.

Maybe I’m wrong–I sure hope I am. Maybe this summit will indeed be a transformative event. I remain forever optimistic, but perpetually skeptical.

The post Hot air and #epicFAILs for Ocean Conservation first appeared on Deep Sea News.

IRIN, the Humanitarian News and Analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported on this major problem recently:

“Taing Ky* and his cousin were told they would be gardeners in Thailand, but instead they were forced to work on Thai fishing boats.

Each year, hundreds of Cambodian men, many impoverished farmers, are lured from their homes with the promise of better-paying jobs in Thailand, only to find themselves on Thai fishing boats plying the waters of the South China Sea.

“We were told we would earn good money,” Taing Ky, 37, a father-of-five from Cambodia’s Kampot Province, about 200km southwest of Phnom Penh, told IRIN. After six months, they managed to escape while the boat was offloading on Benjina island in northern Indonesia. There they were picked up by local authorities.

Thousands of Cambodian men are now believed to be working against their will in exploitative working conditions on long-haul trawlers well beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies, and often alongside Burmese men. ” *-Not his real name

There are reports of 20 hour work days, regular beatings by crew and officers, inadequate food, and being forced to work at gun point. This goes beyond the “oh, it’s just how things go in the third world” mindset. This is blatant 21st century slavery. Very little difference from the types of slavery endured for centuries by Africans and their descendants around the Americas. According to the article, “those deemed expendable are tossed overboard”. Not able to work any longer? No point to your presence on the ship. I imagine that few, if any, survive.

Some of this might be from our choices half a world away, and out of sight. I don’t have data to back this up. Maybe all the fish they haul in is sold in China, Korea, or elsewhere. But I willing to place a high bet that some, possibly most, of the products make its way into the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Sadly, this type of slavery is very hard to bust:

“Thai authorities say there is little they can do about the trafficked Cambodians working on Thai fishing boats, particularly when the alleged crimes occurred outside Thai waters, if they do not report it.

According to UNIAP, most of the deportees who were exploited choose not to report their cases due to fear of their broker, employer, or the police; a lack of understanding of their rights; and/or inability to speak Thai.”

But for those of us with a conscious and care about our fellow humans, even those that we will never meet or know, we should do what we can to reduce our consumption of products from the countries that turn a blind eye to human trafficking and slave labor in their fishing industries. Thailand has a very blemished record in human trafficking. I implore you to care as much as I and not support this inhumane and illegal practice by not buying seafood from these countries. If its a “product of thailand” put it back on the shelf. To make matters worse, many of these fishing vessels care little for sustainable fishing practices and accurate labeling of its products. If they treat their fishermen worse than dogs, how do you think they treat their seafood?

The solution to this problem is very hard. Boycott is the ultimate answer, there needs to be enforcement and international will to make this problem go away. Even that is not enough as the reasons these men get tricked in slavery runs much, much deeper. But, the LEAST we could do is not take part and send the message that fishermen’s livelihoods are more important than saving a few bucks on seafood. I am fortunate enough to live on the coast and purchase locally caught seafood at prices similar to the freezer section at the big chain grocery  from fishermen who lives and jobs I can impact directly. This means a lot to me. Cause I know the fishermen here care about the ocean, they are born of the sea and spend all their lives here. I am proud to support my local fishermen.

I feel it is important to know where your food comes from. We are so disconnected from our sources due to the dozens of middlemen between us and the products we purchase. How do we know when our buying power fuels inhumanity and environmental ruin? More importantly, how do we get people to care? Maybe we need an ad campaign in popular magazine and billboards to get the word out. Marine conservation and seafood safety and labeling organizations need to take into account human factors and working conditions, as well as environmental problems and quota management.

Millions of consumers live away from the sea, away from sources of local seafood. Buying frozen products shipped from afar is their only option to enjoy seafood. The challenge is not create a certification process for seafood – which could get mismanaged or corrupted, rely on outdated science, or not take into account various levels of the manufacturing and shipping process – but to get a consensus among western consumers about what they are willing to risk, morally and financially, to acquire and consume seafood. I just know that I’m not willing to risk others’ lives and humanity for my seafood. I hope you feel the same.

The post “Product of Thailand” Could Be Result of Slave Labor first appeared on Deep Sea News.

This is why this very important report on gCaptian tonight hit me hard. Fishing is a tough occupation. Human rights abuses are ripe in southeast Asia and fishermen from these countries are in a very bad situation. As reported on gCaptain:

Now, an investigation by the University of Auckland has revealed Indonesian fisherman working on Korean-owned vessels in New Zealand waters have found themselves subject to unbelievably savage work conditions and treatment at the hands of their Korean officers.

“Officers are vicious bastards … factory manager just rapped this 12kg stainless steel pan over his head, splits the top of his head, blood pissing out everywhere…,” one informant told the University of Auckland.

Written by Management and International Business staff Dr Christina Stringer and Glenn Simmons, the report documents substandard conditions, verbal and physical abuse, sexual harassment, intimidation and threats, and absence of responsibility suffered by crew onboard particularly Korean fishing vessels.

There is much more. You need to go read it. This story needs to be told because it appears the New Zealand government is trying to sweep this one under the rug. A colleague in NZ sent me this report about the NZ government’s response, from The Standard:

An Auckland University study, “Not in our waters, surely?” was released last night. It details a gruesome list of human rights abuses, crimes, and breaches of labour law being carried out abroad the slave ships contracted by our quota-holders to harvest our fish. Now, the government is moving to deport the prime witnesses before they can testify.

[…]

After months of inaction, Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson and Fisheries Minister have launched a ministerial inquiry but, before it can get underway, immigration has decided to deport the crew of the Oyang 75 as early as tomorrow. The order to deport them came from the top, apparently from Associate Immigration Minister Kate Wilkinson.

In Parliament yesterday, Wilkinson shamefully tried to avoid answering questions by playing technical games over which portfolio she was answering as. She then lied and said that no deportation decisions had been made.

Before the end of question time, Labour learned that the crew could be deported as early as Saturday and sought to urgently question the minister on why she was sending the main witnesses to slave-fishing in New Zealand waters out of the country before their evidence could be heard by the inquiry. National, shamefully, blocked that question on technical grounds.

Wilkinson rejected a motion to waive the $550/person fee to appeal their deportation. But commenters on The Standard are reporting from TV News that an NZ anglican church has picked up the tab for 32 sailors to appeal their deportation. But this all smells fishy. Why all the sudden deport the witnesses? And especially right after a damning report on the fishing company is published? Here are just a few of the atrocities being reported (from The Standard, gCaptain, and Anglican Taonga)

• Sexual harassment, including rape
• Substandard conditions including little or no heating, drinking water a brownish rusty color, food supplies rationed, crew fed fish bait
• Working on average 112 hours per week with shifts up to 53 hours in length and with no time off for two years
• Cambodian men and boys are deceived into working long haul fishing boats which stay out at sea for 2+ years
• “We were beat frequently by the Thai crew, on the back of the head and across the back.  The captain had a gun.  On shore [on Sarawak] we saw a Thai captain decapitate a Vietnamese fishmerman, and another Thai captain decapitate a Thai fisherman.” – 19-year-old victim from Banteay Meanchey
• A fisherman said: “The captain asked one by one to give him a massage … from head to toe … we don’t want to do it, but I am pressured to do it… every day.”
• The study revealed that a foreigner on an FCV [foreign commercial vessel] can expect to earn between $6700 and $11,600 a year while a foreigner working on a New Zealand-flagged fishing boat would earn between $60,000 and $80,000.
• “[The report] found crews were regularly exploited by fishing companies and the agents who hired them, and that New Zealand officials were routinely lied to about wages and conditions.”
• “Their main complaint is they were forced to work for sometimes days at a time without a break, but had their hours recorded as only six hours a day. A complication, sources have told the Press, is the crew signed timesheets for the six hours a day. The crew say they did not know what they were signing.”

The post Sweeping Fishermen’s Human Rights Under the Rug first appeared on Deep Sea News.

• I’ll take my fish in oil please. PLoS One published an article by Fodrie and Heck concluding that immediate catastrophic loss of fish was avoided in the Gulf oil spill. They also found change in the species present from before and after.  Although this is tentatively good news that coastal fish populations are unscathed for now, I remain skeptical.  As the authors are quick to note, we know little of “the potential long-term impacts facing fishes as a result of chronic exposure and delayed, indirect effects.”
• How sharks make you money. Slate publishes a great article by Juliet Eilperin discussing how shark conservation also makes economic sense.  “A recent Australian study found that, over the course of its lifetime, a reef shark off Palau brings in $1.9 million to the nation’s economy, and shark tourism brings Palau $18 million annually.”
• I sure do miss those worms.  In 1978, an experimental dredging for polymetalic nodules occurred in the deep-sea floor of the tropical Eastern Pacific.  Milijutin and colleagues sampled this area twenty six years later. After nearly three decades of recovery time, the number and diversity of nematodes has still not recovered.
• No really geo-sequestration is great idea. A new study again in my favorite journal, PLoS One, demonstrates that the cockamamie geo-sequestration scheme of fertilizing the oceans with iron is bad for the deep sea. Iron enrichment near the Southern Indian Ocean lead to changes in the types of species that lived on the deep-sea floor.  Interestingly, the living communities began to take on one of the key characteristics of  polluted marine communities, a few species became really abundant and every other species became rare. The message from this and the last study seems to be leave metals where they are.
• Holy shit. Of course nothing has stirred deep-sea scientists recently like the paper by Kato et al. The group found that rare-earth elements and the metal yttrium used in electronics and green technologies are found in abundance on the deep Pacific seafloor.  From the paper, “We estimate that an area of just one square kilometre, surrounding one of the sampling sites, could provide one-fifth of the current annual world consumption of these elements.” Given China’s monopoly on rare-earth elements and the pressure to supplant this, you can see this presents a considerable conservation risk the deep sea.  Of course some think this is a pipe dream taking decades and billions of dollar to develop.  But given the economic and political pressure and the ingenuity of the Japanese, I would rather opt on the conservative side and have conservation in place.  Word on the wire is that the International Seabed Authority is promptly acting and the deep-sea scientific community moving to issue a statement.
• Double holy shit.  A new study calls for seven commercially valuable species to be placed on the IUCN Redlist. These include White and Blue Marlin, Spanish and Australian Spotted Mackrel, and Bigeye, Atlantic Bluefin, and Southern Bluefin Tuna.  The IUCN is expected to update their list in near future.  This will greatly bolster conservation efforts in EEZ’s but conservation in international waters will still remain a challenge.
• Crying myself to sleep again tonight.  A great new study that still makes me want to cry by my friend, Derek Tittensor with Boris Worm demonstrates that 9 of 13 species of tuna and billfish occupy less ocean now than they used to.  Atlantic Bluefin Tunn have seen almost a 50% reduction in their ocean range since 1960.
• Not getting my hopes up again. Taiwan is poised to ban fishermen from killing sharks for fins.  As Parasight says on Twitter “Believe it when i see it enforced”
• I’m really never getting out of bed again. Drilling is now approved off world heritage-listed Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. “The approval to explore for gas allows Shell Australia to drill an exploration well 50km west of the boundary of the marine park.” What could go wrong? Thanks CK for bringing that to my attention.
• Thinking about a vacation.  Go ahead! Ecotourism may be our last hope.

The post Does Weeping Help? Recent Conservation News first appeared on Deep Sea News.