The drone they are talking about here is the underwater version, otherwise known as a glider. Gliders are vehicles that carry a suite of oceanographic sensors that measure ocean properties. This could include a CTD to estimate physical properties such as temperature, salinity, depth and sound speed or oxygen, chlorophyll fluorescence and backscatter sensors to measure biological properties. Oceanographers love these things because they are autonomous, meaning they can drive themselves with only a little help from humans on shore (although they sometimes do need to wake up at ungodly hours to help redirect them). Plus, they are much cheaper than using a ship.

From the vague and conflicting description on news reports, I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what kind of “ocean glider” was seized by the Chinese. It is either this Seaglider

or this Slocum Glider:

Operationally, both of these gliders work pretty much the same. They are buoyancy-driven, which means they have a bladder that fills up with either oil or seawater allowing it to sink or float. The wings force the glider forward as it is diving and dive pitch and speed is adjusted by internally shifiting weight inside the body (usually the heavy battery pack). The Seaglider also uses changes in the location of the battery pack to roll itself and steer, while the Slocum Glider steers with an adorable little rudder. What differs is the range and the scientific payloads these gliders can carry. Generally Seagliders go deeper but carry less stuff, while Slocum’s cruise the shallow seas and can be more heavily loaded.

It’s pretty well known that the US has economic and security interests in the region around the South China Sea where the drone was seized. These ocean gliders have been used here before, the Office of Naval Research regularly supports oceanographic research in the region. The question to ask is not why the glider was taken, as it was unclassified and a small asset, rather why was it taken now? As of the writing of this article, the answer to this question is still unclear. However, the US and China have struck a deal and apparently the US is getting its glider back unharmed, which is good news for once ocean robot who took an unexpected detour.

The post Ocean robot seized, causes international incident first appeared on Deep Sea News.

While the images, collected between 2010 and Dec 2013, clearly show one or more whale sharks being butchered, WildLifeRisk also submitted samples of “shark oil” to the lab of Mahmood Shivji at Nova Southeastern University’s Guy Harvey Research Institute for DNA based identification.  The team there confirmed the presence of white shark and basking shark in the samples, but “inconclusive” for the whale shark.  I called up Mahmood to ask him what that meant and he clarified that the sequence was consistent with whale shark for the supposed whale shark sample, but that the data quality wasn’t good enough to make a unequivocal ID, possibly due to the processes involved in rendering the liver down to an oil.  You hardly need a confirmed DNA ID in my opinion, since no other shark has the size and spotted pattern evident from the photos.

Perhaps most damning of all, the report links to a Vimeo video apparently taken in covert fashion, wherein the proprietor of the facility and his brother describe how much whale shark, blue shark, and basking shark oil they produce in a year, where they send it and what they do with the skins.  He also admits to relabeling the oil and smuggling the material overseas (specifically to Chinese restaurants and grocers in Europe), presumably to get around the CITES restrictions.  He also describes receiving substantial numbers of whale sharks from Taiwan, where they have been protected for several years.

China Whale Sharks from WildLifeRisk on Vimeo.

This is one of the more appalling instances of shark exploitation that I know of, and I can’t help but be particularly appalled about the inclusion of whale sharks.  As the WildLifeRisk folks point out in their release, sharks can be worth way more alive as part of the ecotourism trade than they are dead and rendered down to a bottle of oil.  But putting all that aside, whale sharks and basking sharks are magnificent, peaceful, filter feeding giants, and white sharks are an awesome and misunderstood predator.  All of them are among the most spectacular animals on the planet and they deserve and need our protection, especially in light of the recent IUCN report stating that a quarter of all shark and ray species are at risk of extinction.  They all have low reproductive potential, which means that they are not very resilient in the face of the kind of harvest shown in this report.  This isn’t a problem restricted to China, either; the whale sharks from the South China Sea may travel through the Indian and Pacific oceans, including many other countries that feature whale shark ecotourism.  So, while this specific factory is on Chinese soil, this is most definitely the world’s problem and many nations have a stake.

What can we do to help remedy this sort of situation?  I see three things.  One comes in the form of this very important exposé from WildLifeRisk: we need to recognise and define the problem.  Second, we need to enforce existing regulations that are designed to prevent this sort of tragedy. Third, we need to educate consumers so that the market forces that motivate these business practices cease to be.  WildAid has had great success with their campaign “When the buying stops, the killing can too”, where they have recruited serious star power in the form of basketball star Yao Ming and others, to reduce the market for shark fin soup in Chinese traditional cuisine.  Sometimes it’s as simple as getting people to realise “what’s in the bowl”. The story goes that the Chinese name for shark fin soup is “fish wing soup”, and many who consumed it had no idea from where it came.  Once alerted, they stopped eating it.  WildAid reports a significant success on the fin soup front, including a drop in shark fin soup consumption rates and the removal of the product from official government events.  It seems that a fairly simple extension of the successful approach of WildAid might help to reduce the motivations for the sort of unconscionable slaughter revealed by WildLifeRisk.  Perhaps you can spread the news to everyone you know and ask that they do the same, so that we might not need to see these sorts of disturbing images again.  Who knows, maybe some of our Chinese readers can help spread the word, too, because I for one prefer this:

To this:

 Are you in China and reading this?  If so, we’d love to hear from you.  Please chime in in the comments section with your perspectives, we value your feedback.

EDIT: I have had some queries about CITES – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species –  so here’s my best understanding of what it means and why it is important in this case.  The three species here (white, whale and basking) are all CITES Appendix II listed, which means that fishing states would have to demonstrate that any exports were derived from a sustainably-managed population and to allow exports and imports to be monitored by a third party.  This effectively extinguishes most markets because the “sustainably managed population” criterion is an near impossible burden of proof when it comes to listed species, which are typically listed in the first place because they are vulnerable to or threatened with extinction.  Moreover, CITES listed products cannot be monitored effectively when mixed with other species and smuggled, as admitted in the video.  I think we can safely assume that “smuggle” in this case means that they didn’t have a CITES export permit from the Chinese government, which is a signatory to the CITES treaty.  I’ve done CITES export permitting for scientific samples from whale sharks, although not from China, and it was neither simple nor straightforward.

The post Whale shark slaughterhouse exposed in China first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Instead, I figured I’d highlight something more soothing–Modern Art in China. In particular, the work of one particular female artist, Yu Lanyin, who currently has a traveling exhibition of 49 contemporary ink paintings focusing on the underwater marine world. She’s been scuba diving for 27 years (!) and uses art as a passionate plea for marine conservation. Here’s a tantalizing sample of her exhibition, “Journey to the Deep and Within”:

Unfortunately, there’s not much more information available about her exhibit online (at least not in English, even though the event in Beijing was co-sponsored by the American Embassy)–very frustrating given the marine conservation message Lanyin is trying to promote! The show has also just closed in Shanghai so I won’t be able to visit and report back. There does appear to be an exhibit book that can satisfy your intrigue, but fingers crossed the works will make their way Stateside.

So in honor of Friday, take a little time out and explore some ocean-themed art!

The post TGIF: “Journey to the Deep and Within”, modern Chinese ink paintings of the underwater realm first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I can’t decide whether this is really cool or just flat-out bizarre.  I guess it depends where the specimen came from.

The post One for the bizarre-o files first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The domestic fish catching sector has remained stable and in good order as a result of improved structure of fishing vessels. Deep-sea fishing has continued to improve its structure. As a result, the ratio of high seas fishery has increased from 46 to 58 per cent.

Damn.

via FIS – Worldnews – Fisheries sector continues to grow rapidly.

The post Deep-Sea fisheries increasing in China first appeared on Deep Sea News.

On the other hand, you have China’s move to mine to sulphide deposits hydrothermal vents in international waters.

In a surprise move this May, China became the first country to apply for a contract area in international waters to prospect for massive sulphide ore. An agreement between Comra and the International Seabed Authority has yet to be approved. Its aim is “exploration not exploitation”, Liu said. China has no sulphide deposits in its waters and most of the likely sites are in international waters, along mid-ocean ridges.

Perhaps China can find better uses for their submersible and more interesting questions about the deep sea to explore instead of “Can we profit from it?”

via China seeks to mine deep sea riches | Science | Guardian Weekly.

The post China and the deep sea first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Continuing its trend as one of the top destinations for out-of-this-world fossil finds, China is yielding yet another piece to the evolutionary jigsaw puzzle. In a recent PLoS One article, Han and colleagues report the findings of a new squishy sea anemone from the Lower Cambrian. The new find lends support to genetic data that suggests anthozoans (anenomes, corals, octocorals and their kin) were one the first Cnidarian groups to diversify.

Squishy animals, like anemones, are very rare in the fossil record because they typically decay away before fossilization occurs. Since they have no hard parts, like corals, there is little trace left of their existence. Yet we know they must have existed at some point since we see a diverse array of soft-bodied animals living today. There are only few known fossil deposits in the world that have locked away within them a whole treasure trove of evolutionary history. The China deposits are in areas of Phosphorite rocks. It is thought that sulfur-oxidizing bacteria in heavily phosphate-laden seas produced the favorable conditions to the preservation of soft-bodied organisms.

These anemone-like fossils are microfossils, making for an even rarer find, measuring only one half of a millimeter in diameter and height. They are wonderfully preserved and the using a high-powered scanning electron microscope (SEM) they were able to capture the rich detail of the animal’s final moment (see figure below). Dubbed Eolympia pediculata (in honor of the Beijing 2008 Summer Games and the stalk-like pedicle: ‘pe’ in figure below), they are characterized by a long slender stalk, called a pedicle, 18 mesenteries, and their exceptionally small size.

Mesenteries are are important characters in Cnidarian biology. They are radial separations, like spokes on a bicycle wheel, that develop from the body wall inward towards the actinopharynx (‘ap’ in figure below), which is sort of like the ‘mouth’ of an anemone, or the hub of the wheel. Anemones differ in how many mesenteries they have, how many are complete (i.e. reaching all the way from body wall to actinopharynx) or incomplete, how many are fertile (i.e. which carry eggs or sperm), and whether they are connected all the way from top to bottom or not. These are all traits that taxonomists use to group species of anemones together. Han and colleagues were able to computer aided microtomographic (micro-CT) scanning to peer inside the fossilized anemone to understand how its mesenteries were arranged (see figure below). Eolympia pediculata has 18 mesenteries, a feature which they describe as “exceptional”, but not unheard of. This pattern is found in 2 families of extant anemones.

Eolympia pediculata appears to be the first well-preserved anemone-like fossil with preserved internal anatomy. Though other anemone-like or indeterminate Cnidarian fossils have appeared in the strata earlier, up to the Precambrian, or later in the upper Cambrian, none have had internal structure so well-preserved as Eolympia pediculata. The new information is critical because it helps to constrain where along the Cnidarian tree of life the fossil diversified from its ancestors. In this case Eolympia appears to be well within the Anthozoa and shares all characteristics of the Hexacorallia (sea anemones and corals). Because of this similarity with Hexcorallians, and the paucity of Cambrian anemone fossils, it is difficult to say for certain whether Eolympia represents a stem species to the group. Han and colleagues suggest that the Ceriantharia, a group that continuously forms unpaired complete mesenteries, might be considered a sister group to the Hexacorallia. If this is the case, then Eolympia pediculata would be de facto the stem species of the Hexacorallia. We wouldn’t even be able to make this argument if not for the excellent “innard” preservation of the fossil and the attention to detail by these authors to studying such a minute, important fossil!

Han, J., Kubota, S., Uchida, H., Stanley, G., Yao, X., Shu, D., Li, Y., & Yasui, K. (2010). Tiny Sea Anemone from the Lower Cambrian of China PLoS ONE, 5 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013276

The post New Fossil Anemone Reveals Innard Secrets first appeared on Deep Sea News.

In recent decades, China has proven an amazing hot spot for important, gap-filling fossils. Entire ecosystems are preserved. Careful, wandering paleontologists are able to move beyond describing the random individual fossil to describing dinosaurs nests, embryonic fossils still in the egg, biometric trends in populations of fossil fish and molluscs, species interactions and just about anything else. The Chinese paleontologists have been prolific, publishing widely on their discoveries, inviting western paleontologists on digs and getting the Chinese people and government excited about their fossil wealth.

Zhang and colleagues present a new crustacean find with some interesting morphology and even more interesting implications. Yicaris dianensis is a new species named for both the people – the Yi – and the place the fossils originated from, Dian. (The suffix ‘caris’ refers to something that is a crustacean and the suffix ‘ensis’ refers to being from a place.) What is remarkable is about this discovery is that six successional developmental stages are represented in Precambrian strata, close to the hypothesized origin of the Crustacea.

“With such ontogeny data and having the age of the fossil as a time marker, it is possible to more precisely include ontogenetic evolutionary pathways in the reconstruction of relationships and ground patterns of stem species and monophyla. According to our analysis, Y. dianensis represents the first undoubted eucrustacean* known from the Lower Cambrian (the single previously described Lower Cambrian putative eucrustacean species lacks eucrustacean characters) and can serve as a substantial tool for testing relevant character acquisition and phylogenetic hypotheses. This is of particular importance because crustacean phylogeny has gained new interest by recent studies using neurobiological, developmental, biological and molecular investigations.”

* eu means true, so eucrustacea means the true crustaceans

Yicaris dianensis shares many features in common with modern day branchiopods and cephalocarids. Some of the similarities are in the mouthparts and other structures involved in feeding. The interesting character for this crustacean is called the epipod, literally “upon the foot”, which are lobe-shaped osmoregulatory or respiratory outgrowths on the external limb bases of various Eucrustaceans (SEM below). This structure is derived from setae and many of the Eucrustacea still bear at least one epipod on some of its appendages. Some authors even believe insect wings are derived from epipods (here and here).

Yicaris was found in the Orsten layer, which is rich in Phosphatocopina, the sister group to Eucrustacea characterized by a phosphotatized cuticle. By using Lyell’s Principle of Uniformitarianism, one can assume that since the characters represented in Y. dianensis are present in the Lower Cambrian, its ancestors possessed some or all of its characters. As stated by Zhang and colleagues, arthropod origins are likely Precambrian.

Zhang, X., Siveter, D., Waloszek, D., & Maas, A. (2007). An epipodite-bearing crown-group crustacean from the Lower Cambrian Nature, 449 (7162), 595-598 DOI: 10.1038/nature06138

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