“…in the final analysis, the thing we really need to fix is ourselves. It’s not about the fish; it’s not about the pollution; it’s not about the climate change. It’s about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today. So the question is: Will we respond to this or not? I would say that the future of life and the dignity of human beings depends on our doing that.”

This past fall, I had the privilege of hearing the renowned ecologist Dr. Jeremy Jackson speak at the 2013 Western Society of Naturalist Meeting. What I most appreciate about Dr. Jackson, is that he gives it to you straight. No bullshit. And I respect that.

I encourage you all to check out his 2010 TED talk “How We Wrecked the Ocean“.

The post How we wrecked the ocean 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.

Meet The Hawaiian Petrel (or ʻUaʻu or Pterodroma sandwichensis) a bird species endemic to the Hawaiian Islands but with an appetite causing it to dine on squids, fish, and crustaceans from around the Pacific.  A single individual may take off on a 10,000 kilometer (>6,000 mile) trip just to feed.  Similar to those midnight runs to Krispy Kreme in the city hours away, when I was more youthful and my metabolism higher.  And much like my waste reveals that love of Krispy Kreme, Hawaiian Petrels so to show their diet.  The chemistry of the Hawaiian Petrel’s tissues, much like any animal’s, tells the story of this biologically and geographically diverse diet.

Both carbon and nitrogen can exist in a number of different isotopic forms with relatively lighter and heavier weights.  For example, most carbon is present as ¹²C, with approximately 1% being the heavier ¹³C.  The ratio of these isotopes is altered by both biological and geological processes.   For carbon, differences between ¹²C and ¹³C indicate different food sources based on different primary producers, i.e. plankton verses bacteria verses algae.  Nitrogen isotopes can tell us where a animal sets in the food chain, i.e. its trophic position.  Organism are much more likely to excrete, or urinate, the lighter  ¹⁴N than ¹⁵N.  Thus an animal’s tissues accumulate ¹⁵N which is passed along to predators.  Higher up the food chain the higher the ¹⁵N.

A  peek at the carbon and nitrogen ratios of Hawaiian Petrels in their collagen one can learn something about their feeding habits.  By examining both modern Hawaiian Petrels from recent collections and ancient Hawaiian Petrels from fossils, we might understand if dietary shifts have occurred through time?  Did the late 80’s/early 90’s fad of the Atkins diet impact Hawaiian Petrels?

Anne Wiley and colleagues discovered something astonishing when they examined 250 specimens spanning the last 4,000 years.  For 3,500 years everything was static.  The distint populations of Hawaiian Petrels on the different Hawaiian Island had a diverse set of diets from a diverse set of areas.  Birds on Hawaii and Lanai fed slightly higher on the trophic totem pole than those from Maui and Oahu. However, more recently, especially since 1950, something radical has taken place.  Despite the island they call home, all Hawaiian Petrels now feed on a very similar food source. In the last 100 years nitrogen ratios have declined by 1.8 parts per thousand.

Why the decline? Most likely industrial fishing.  Declines in trophic postion, decreasing nitrogen ratios have been seen in other birds as fishing pressure increases and fish prey decrease. As more predatory fish have declined, Hawaiian Petrels are forced to feed lower down the food web.

Anne E. Wiley, Peggy H. Ostrom, Andreanna J. Welch, Robert C. Fleischer, Hasand Gandhi, John R. Southon, Thomas W. Stafford, Jr., Jay F. Penniman, Darcy Hu, Fern P. Duvall, and Helen F. James Millennial-scale isotope records from a wide-ranging predator show evidence of recent human impact to oceanic food webs PNAS 2013 ; published ahead of print May 13, 2013, doi:10.1073/pnas.1300213110

The post An overfishing story told by bird collagen first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a 2011 Japanese documentary film directed by David Gelb. The film follows Jiro Ono, an 85 year old sushi master and owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, on his continuing quest to perfect the art of sushi and his elder son Yoshikazu’s struggle with living up to the legacy of his father. The film briefly contrasts this with the younger son Takashi running a mirror-image restaurant, except with a more relaxed feel.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi debuted in the US in 2011 at the Provincetown International Film Festival[2] and was an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival[3] in the same year. [Source: Wikipedia]

If that’s not convincing enough, you can’t argue with the trailer:

The imagery is amazing – Gelb is an expert at interweaving music and striking camera angles as he details Jiro’s moving story.  This film boasts an impressive score to accompany the gorgeous cinematography, including music by Phillip Glass, Mozart, and Bach.

Are you hungry yet? Cause I definitely am.

The post Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and so do I first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The Story of Sushi from Bamboo Sushi on Vimeo.

The post TGIF: The Story of Sushi first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Note: from now on, I will only throw out my trash in slow motion, with a suitable backing track. I may also try to give my next seminar wearing those slotted Kanye West sunglasses.

The post TGIF – Overfishing Rap first appeared on Deep Sea News.

[…] In the 17th century Hugo Grotius developed the doctrine of the “freedom of the seas”, in the face of Portuguese and Spanish claims to sovereignty over vast areas of ocean. He argued that nobody could own the seas, which had been “created by nature for common use”; and was convinced that there were enough fish to go around, that the ocean could deal with what we threw at it and that the bounty was vast enough to share without ownership. The trouble is that then there were perhaps half a billion people – but now there are more than 6 billion of us exploiting what we now know are limited resources. […]

I’ve touched on this changing paradigms idea a little bit in my Deep Sea 101 series and it will be a reoccurring theme. As a society, we are still reluctant at times to shake off out-dated and even harmful ideas. The Hall-Spencer article is certainly worth reading, so head over! Additionally, here is an article on cold water corals he wrote for Deep Sea News in 2007.

The post Reforming “17th Century Ideas of Marine Exploitation” first appeared on Deep Sea News.

But this 50-year old panda icon represents a land based conservation mission. Even in an expanded view the panda only represents vertebrates which would incorporate only the most historically charismatic of ocean species, e.g. turtles, whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, and otter.  I find this extremely troubling giving 75% of the earth is ocean and 90% of that is ocean below one kilometer.  And perhaps this is even more unsettling if we consider 90% of known species are invertebrates and 92% of species inhabit the ocean. Invertebrates also incorporate a greater span of ecological roles and body sizes, are fundamental in nutrient cycling, and form the basis of many food chains and habitats for other animals.  Marine invertebrates are no less than key to our planet and vital for our own survival. Yet, marine invertebrates except corals do not attract public or political attention and thus ultimately protection.  Invertebrates are only protected by default when we conserve other species or set ocean aside.

What is the emblematic species of the ocean that will serve to energize and unite us?

This species needs to represent a vast array of species, suffer from the same conservation threats as they do, thus protecting other species when it is protected, serve as indicator about the health of marine systems, and of course capture the public’s attention.

Guerra et al. believe that species is the Giant Squid, Architeuthis, and I agree.

Architeuthis attracts public interest

One doesn’t need to search far to grasp that the Giant Squid attracts public attention. The pages of this blog are riddled with examples. In the last month alone, according to Google News, Giant Squid occurred 128 times in the news.  In that same period of time 940,000 websites also mentioned Giant Squid.  Thirty specimens lie for public viewing in museums. Amazon returns close to 1,000 books, toys, apparel, and other products featuring the Giant Squid. On the web the Giant Squid is a cult sensation found on stickers and t-shirts. I could flood this webpage with data to demonstrate the Giant Squid is already in the public’s attention.

Architeuthis is an indicator of ocean climate change

Giant Squid like most other cephalopods possess statoliths, a calcium carbonate structures contained by the squid’s equilibrium receptors (think your inner ear). Much like many other species, the Giant Squid would not fair well in an acidic ocean. An acidic ocean would dissolve the statoliths impairing its movement and equilibrium.  Moreover, the Giant Squid’s blood is poor at oxygen transfer making them particularly vulnerable to lowered oxygen (anoxia & hypoxia), warming, and acidification.  Heat speeds an animal’s metabolism.  Because of their energy requirements and oxygen needs, giant squid must stick to cooler waters.  Indeed, it is hypothesized their global distribution in the oceans is limited by warm temperature barriers.  Guerra et al. also demonstrate that strandings of Giant Squid in Newfoundland were always associated with rises in ocean bottom temperature.

Architeuthis is an indicator of overfishing

Guerra et al. demonstrate “that there has been a clear increase in the frequency of captures in fishing trawls, since the expansion of deep-sea trawler fisheries.” Indeed, “The world records of Architeuthis due to commercial fishing represent about 29% of the total records.” But this likely represents an underestimate as bycatch is often underreported.

Architeuthis is an indicator of pollutants

Giant Squid specimens from more polluted water have higher concentrations of zinc, mercury, silver, and copper. These concentrations are also higher in the digestive glands and higher than in other squids.  This suggests that as a long-lived, top predator, Giant Squids are bioaccumulating toxins in their systems.

Architeuthis is an indicator of damage from noise pollution and seismic surveys

Two major mass strandings of Giant Squids in 2001 and 2003 were tied geophysical surveys in the area, using 10 compressed air guns to produce low frequency sound waves.  The internal organs of the Giant Squids were a pulverized.  “Internal examinations showed that two of the squids suffered extensive damage to internal muscle fibres, their stomachs were ripped open and their digestive tracts were mangled. One probably had died from its injuries. Some of the squids had also suffered severe damage to their statocysts that would have effectively disorientated them”

Architeuthis represents a particular ecosystem

The Giant Squid is cosmopolitan in the world’s ocean but as Guerra et al. show it appears mostly in areas with submarine canyons that cut across the continental shelf. These canyons provide areas of high productivity including fishing grounds we humans often exploit.  Because submarine canyons are often close to shore, exploited, and rich with biodiversity and biomass (as I’ve seen in my own research), canyons and giant squid are both vulnerable.  Submarine canyons also often targeted as National Marine Sanctuaries, e.g. Monterey Canyon off California.  As Guerra et al. state “Architeuthis serves to raise social awareness for the conservation of a diverse group of organisms that inhabits these canyons.”

In short, Architeuthis meets the criteria of an emblematic species.  One that will hopefully unite us all on this June 8^th, World Ocean Day, to strive for something greater, to finally alter our course, shed our history, and forge a new relationship with the ocean.

Ángel Guerraa, Ángel F. Gonzáleza, Santiago Pascuala, and Earl G. Daweb (2011). The giant squid Architeuthis: An emblematic invertebrate that can represent concern for the conservation of marine biodiversity Biological Conservation, 144 (7), 1989-1998 : 10.1016/j.biocon.2011.04.021

The post From the Editor’s Desk: The Giant Squid Can Be A Panda For The Ocean first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Eric Heupel is a graduate student at University of Connecticut in Oceanography. He keeps a personal blog at Eclectic Echoes and Larval Images, and used to be part of The Other 95% team along with me before we closed shop. You can find Eric tweeting as @eclecticechoes.

—————————————————-

A few weeks ago there was an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Prof. Ray Hilborn which asserted that people should eat more fish, and do it without guilt. I agree that people should eat fish. I know I enjoy it weekly. I also agree with many of the points he brings up, but I have to disagree with a few key assertions he makes and I come to an entirely different conclusion about the state of American fish stocks.

Prof. Hilborn points out that many stocks and the management of fisheries have improved drastically over the past decade (true) and that, as an example, Acadian redfish and haddock from the New England Coasts groundfish fisheries have had six fold abundance increases (again true). He acknowledges that these two species are part of the complex mutli-technology multi-species groundfish fishery, which also includes cod and four species of flounder (among others), whose stocks have not improved and remain classified as overfished. This fishery is dominated by demersal trawlers, which drag otter trawls across the bottom. While there are mesh size limits, the otter trawl is a very unselective method of fishing, bringing up any fish in the way, target and non-target species. Some of the non-target species include cusk and wolffish, two species that many have recently argued should be listed as endangered species and are currently classified as species of concern under the Endangered Species Act. There are new trawl net designs which will target haddock preferentially over cod, flounder and several other groundfish based on different flight responses to trawl net approaches, but they have not yet been widely adopted. While the groundfish fishery is dominated by trawlers (80%), there is also a hook and line fishery for haddock. The hook and line fishery is very selective. If you want a haddock for dinner, the hook and line caught haddock is a great choice.

Interestingly, Prof. Hilborn points to the Fishery Stock Sustainability Index (FSSI) to make the claim that, “Few if any fish species in the United States are now being harvested at too high a rate, and only 24 percent remain below the desired abundance.” Even if I could come to the same conclusion from reading the latest FSSI, his statement would mean, to me, that the management improvements of the past 10-15 years are starting to work, and now we need to improve as much of the remaining 24 percent as we can. Unfortunately the FSSI does not say this. First, Prof. Hilborn states that only 24 percent of the stocks remain below desired abundance, yet the FSSI states we don’t even know if 53 of the 230 (23%) tracked stocks are overfished or not and only 110 stocks of 230 (48%) are at or above the maximum sustainable yield (the desired “abundance” for most stocks).

The FSSI is basically a fisheries management report card evaluating 230 key recreational and commercially important marine fish stocks and their management. Each stock is graded from 0 to 4 based on 5 criteria – 0.5 points for the “overfished” status being known, 0.5 points for the “overfishing” status being known, 1 point if overfishing is not currently occurring, 1 point for stocks with biomass above the overfished level defined for that stock, and finally 1 point for species with biomass above the maximum sustainable yield at or above 80% of the biomass maximum sustainable yield. Stocks which were previously classified as overfished do not receive the final point until they are considered “fully rebuilt” by reaching biomass maximum sustainable yield, a condition mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

With 230 stocks evaluated, the maximum score is a 920. The most recent quarterly evaluation (pdf file) (Jan to March 2011) yielded a score of 583 or 63%. If we use the report card analogy and assigning a letter grade, that would be a “D”. While I applaud the recent gains in stocks and the management methods that have helped bring them about, I don’t think a D is a grade to celebrate. Prof. Hilborn appears to be saying, ”Thats good enough! Time to return to the more lenient management of the 80s and early 90s.” I wish we were there, and we could be in another decades or so, but sadly we really aren’t there yet. We certainly won’t get there if we start fishing more too soon.

All of this assumes that our current management schemes and the way they are evaluated are working towards the appropriate goals. I am not convinced that we are managing for the right goals. Most of our fisheries management is for single stocks. Even in the multi-species stocks, the management of the collected stocks is for the biomass or abundance of the individual species, because they are most often caught together with non-specific gear. There has not been, until very recently, any substantial effort to protect essential fish habitat, or to examine the ecosystem implications of fisheries beyond the target species.

The Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) was enacted to “take immediate action to conserve and manage the fishery resources found off the coasts of the United States.” The definition of “conserve and manage” includes the explicitly listed requirement to assure that “(ii) irreversible and long-term adverse effects on fishery resources and the marine environment are avoided” (16 U.S.C. 1802, MSA Section 3(5)(B)(ii)). President G.W. Bush’s Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes executive order further explicitly stated that “it is the policy of the United States to: (i) protect, maintain and restore the health and biological diversity of ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems and resources; (ii) improve the resiliency of ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems, communities and economies.” While I agree it may never be possible to make the oceans pristine again (shifting baselines – we’ve forgotten what pristine is anyways) it seems clear to me from these documents that we must continue to do everything possible to protect not only individual fish stocks and fisheries, but the biodiversity of our seas and ecosystem health of our seas as well. This is something that has only recently been able to be implemented into fisheries management at all.

Prof. Hilborn concludes his editorial by throwing up a false choice between easing fishing regulations now or accepting terrestrial habitat loss, more dead zones, and water pollution: “environmental costs of producing meat on land are much higher than accepting fewer fish in the ocean”. Of course, we have regulations (Clean Water Act) to limit industrial run-off, including from meat production, which covers all of the impacts he points to except one: habitat. Interesting. Does fishing not destroy habitat then? The truth is that it does, especially trawling. I would suggest that part of our improved ecosystem and biodiversity management needs to be a focus on marine habitat. We need to set aside many more areas explicitly to protect the range of benthic habitats, especially those which include sensitive and vulnerable benthic species such as cold water corals, sea pens, etc. The beautiful part is, protecting these habitats (and allowing those that are impacted to fully recover), is not only protecting biodiversity and improving the health of the local marine ecosystem, but it will also improve the health of many fish stocks as well.

I agree, eat fish, and do it guilt free by using guides from Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch or the Blue Ocean Institute’s Seafood Guide or looking for the MSC certification logo. Far from being time to revise the MSA to relax policies, I think it is time to continue to implement the full definition of “conserve and manage” to include ecosystem health and the protection of biodiversity.

The post Scientist in Residence: Is It Time to Relax Fishing Regulations? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Enjoy your shucking while it lasts. Wild oysters are now “functionally extinct” in many places around the world where they were once plentiful. More than 85 per cent of their reefs have been lost due to overfishing, according to a new study

via Wild oysters in danger of extinction – Nature, Environment – The Independent.

The post Wild Oysters Functionally Extinct? first appeared on Deep Sea News.