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NY Times: Sea Level Rise Becomes REAL for Army Corps

2009-11-30T14:27:00.000-08:00

November 11, 2009

New Army Corps Policy Forces Project Designers to Consider Rising Seas

By TARYN LUNTZ of Greenwire

The Army Corps of Engineers must consider the effects of climate change as it draws up plans for flood control, navigation and other water projects under a new agency policy.

The idea is to keep rising seas from swamping major federal investments.

"You don't want to make stupid large investments that are difficult or impossible to undo," said Jeffrey Gebert, the Army Corps' chief of coastal planning in the Philadelphia district and a member of the team that drafted the policy.

In some cases, extra up-front investment could armor projects against worst-case scenarios, the policy's authors say. In others, the corps could leave room for future adjustments.

"If you look at something like a levee in the Sacramento area and say we're going to design it to a certain height, well, if we get a higher sea-level rise, then a levee won't provide 100-year protection anymore," said Kevin Knuuti, engineering chief in the Sacramento district and the lead technical author of the policy. "We can either build it extra-high now, which is expensive and will cost more to design, or maybe we can do things that will make it easier to modify the project in the future, if the need arises."

Planning for future changes in the case of the Sacramento levee, Knuuti said, might mean purchasing extra land to accommodate future widening.

Officials said existing projects also will be evaluated with rising seas in mind.

"There is no grandfathering," said Kathleen White, the corps' senior leader for global and climate change initiatives. "It's going to apply to everything. We are going to have to undergo a large effort to evaluate our projects to see what this guidance may mean to them."

Experts said the policy signals a shift in the culture of corps leaders, some of whom rose in the ranks during a time of growing awareness about rising seas.

"The people who had just joined this corps when we were pushing this idea, 25 years later, they're now the bosses," said Jim Titus, a U.S. EPA researcher who specialized in sea-level rise.

World Ocean Warmest on Record this Summer

2009-09-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON — The world's in hot water. Sea-surface temperatures worldwide have been the hottest on record over the last three months, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday.

Ocean temperatures averaged 62.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the June-August period, 1.04 degree higher than normal for the period.

And for August the world sea-surface average was 62.4 degrees, 1.03 higher than usual, also the warmest for August on record, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center said.

The report is based on data back to 1880.

The combined land and water temperature worldwide was 61.2 degrees, third warmest on record for the three-month period. For August it was 58.2 degrees, fourth warmest.

Climate change has been raising the planet's average temperature steadily in recent decades. All of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1997.

In hot water: World's ocean temps warmest recorded

2009-08-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP)

WASHINGTON — The world's oceans this summer are the warmest on record.

The National Climatic Data Center, the government agency that keeps weather records, says the average global ocean temperature in July was 62.6 degrees. That's the hottest since record-keeping began in 1880. The previous record was set in 1998.

Meteorologists blame a combination of a natural El Nino weather pattern on top of worsening manmade global warming. The warmer water could add to the melting of sea ice and possibly strengthen some hurricanes.

The result has meant lots of swimming at beaches in Maine with pleasant 72-degree water. Ocean temperatures reached 88 degrees as far north as Ocean City, Md., this week.

The Gulf of Mexico, where warm water fuels hurricanes, has temperatures dancing around 90. Most of the water in the Northern Hemisphere has been considerably warmer than normal. The Mediterranean is about three degrees warmer than normal. Higher temperatures rule in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

It's most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average.

Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land. That's because water takes longer to heat up and doesn't cool off as easily, said climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

"This is another yet really important indicator of the change that's occurring," Weaver said.

At Risk From Rising Seas, Tuvalu Seeks Clean Power (Reuters)

2009-07-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

Alister Doyle

OSLO - The Pacific island state of Tuvalu set a goal Sunday of a 100 percent shift to renewable energy by 2020, hoping to set an example to industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gases it blames for rising sea levels.

Tuvalu, a string of coral atolls whose highest point is 4.5 meters (15 ft) above sea level, estimates it would cost just over $20 million to generate all electricity for its 12,000 people from solar and wind power and end dependence on diesel.

"We look forward to the day when our nation offers an example to all -- powered entirely by natural resources such as the sun and the wind," Kausea Natano, minister for public utilities and industries, said in setting the 2020 target.

Tuvalu and many other low-lying atolls in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean fear that rising sea levels could wipe them off the map. They want governments to agree a strong new U.N. deal in Copenhagen in December to slow climate change.

Natano said in a statement that Tuvalu's own efforts to curb the islanders' tiny greenhouse gas emissions "will strengthen our voice" in the negotiations.

A first $410,000 solar system on the roof of the main soccer stadium in the capital, Funafuti, has been generating 5 percent of electricity for the town since it was installed in late 2008.

The installation was led by Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co. backed by Tokyo Electric Power Co. Both are members of the e8, an international non-profit organization of 10 utilities from the Group of Eight industrialized countries.

SOLAR-POWERED SCHOOL

G8 leaders at a July 8-10 summit in Italy promised to help the poor cope with climate change, but have not yet said how much cash or technology they will provide.
"We are hoping to secure assistance from our traditional donor partners and any other funding assistance to achieve (the) ultimate goal" of 100 percent renewable power, Natano said.

Tuvalu says that "king tides" whipped up by more powerful cyclones are already bringing salt water onto crops.

Sea levels rose 17 cm (6 inches) in the 20th century and the U.N. Climate Panel estimated in 2007 they could rise by another 18-59 cm by 2100, and perhaps even more if a thaw of Greenland or Antarctica accelerates.

Tuvalu, a group of atolls covering 26 sq km, aims to expand the e8 project from 40 to 60 kilowatts and extend solar power to outer islands, starting this year with an $800,000 solar power system for a school in Vaitupu funded by the Italian government.

"The plight of Tuvalu versus the rising tide vividly represents the worst early consequence of climate change," said Takao Shiraishi, general manager of Kansai Electric Power Co.

The islands, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, would keep generators as back-up sources of power. Tuvalu's average fuel consumption is 5,000 liters of imported diesel per day.

Tuvalu's annual emissions of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning fossil fuels, are just 0.4 ton per inhabitant against more than 20 per American.

Al Gore's new Talk at TED

2009-06-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

Study shows how marine microorganisms affect ocean warming

2009-05-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

The Earth's climate system is affected by the world's oceans which have contributed to climate change deceleration by absorbing up to 33% of the human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. But a team of marine researchers from Germany has shed light on how biological factors could also play a role in this process. The results were recently published in the journal PNAS.

ENVIRONMENT: Coral Reefs Lucky – This Time

2009-05-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

MELBOURNE, May 6 (IPS) - Scientists have been surprised by the rapid recovery of coral reefs from mass bleaching on Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef, but they warn that reefs remain particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Nature: Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C

2009-04-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

More than 100 countries have adopted a global warming limit of 2 °C or below (relative to pre-industrial levels) as a guiding principle for mitigation efforts to reduce climate change risks, impacts and damages^1,². However, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions corresponding to a specified maximum warming are poorly known owing to uncertainties in the carbon cycle and the climate response. Here we provide a comprehensive probabilistic analysis aimed at quantifying GHG emission budgets for the 2000–50 period that would limit warming throughout the twenty-first century to below 2 °C, based on a combination of published distributions of climate system properties and observational constraints. We show that, for the chosen class of emission scenarios, both cumulative emissions up to 2050 and emission levels in 2050 are robust indicators of the probability that twenty-first century warming will not exceed 2 °C relative to pre-industrial temperatures. Limiting cumulative CO₂ emissions over 2000–50 to 1,000 Gt CO₂ yields a 25% probability of warming exceeding 2 °C—and a limit of 1,440 Gt CO₂ yields a 50% probability—given a representative estimate of the distribution of climate system properties. As known 2000–06 CO₂ emissions³ were 234 Gt CO₂, less than half the proven economically recoverable oil, gas and coal reserves^4,^5,⁶ can still be emitted up to 2050 to achieve such a goal. Recent G8 Communiqués⁷ envisage halved global GHG emissions by 2050, for which we estimate a 12–45% probability of exceeding 2 °C—assuming 1990 as emission base year and a range of published climate sensitivity distributions. Emissions levels in 2020 are a less robust indicator, but for the scenarios considered, the probability of exceeding 2 °C rises to 53–87% if global GHG emissions are still more than 25% above 2000 levels in 2020.

Save Money, Save the Ocean, Save Ourselves

2008-08-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

Save Money, Save the Ocean, Save Ourselves

Good Times Weekly
WRITTEN BY WALLACE J. NICHOLS
THURSDAY, 21 AUGUST 2008

As oil prices break records daily and the $75 fill-up becomes standard fare at the corner station, Dow Chemical, purveyor of everything plastic, has been forced to raise prices 20 percent for the second month in a row.

The connections between oil and plastic are numerous. In the past 50 years, these two products have come to dominate our lives. But, over-consumption of both is destroying the ocean. Burning of fossil fuels is changing the climate and warming the ocean. Excess carbon dioxide is making the sea more acidic, destabilizing coral reefs and upsetting the ocean food web. Big oil spills, seepage from ships and residue runoff from roads make a toxic mess of all things aquatic.

Plastic, by the way, is made from oil. It lasts a very long time. And it’s everywhere. It’s in the North Pacific Ocean, for instance, where a continent-sized patch best described as “plastic soup” fills up albatrosses, sea turtles and even plankton that feed unwittingly on the stuff.

The oil ties to the ocean run deeper still. So high are fuel prices, that diesel subsidies are necessary to prop up the fuel-dependent fishing sector, which in turn uses those subsidies to strip the seas of millions upon millions of pounds of fish and wildlife annually. Monofilament lines and ghost nets—made of rugged, non-biodegradable plastic (read: oil)—break free, wander the ocean untended, and reap countless fish, dolphins, turtles, birds and whales along the way.

Oil and plastic and the ocean just don’t mix.

The current Administration’s “solution” to the crisis is to drill for more oil along our coasts and in wildlife refuges. The profits, of course, will fall to the oil companies and plastic manufacturers who seek to expand their sales. Exxon-Mobil and Dow both set new records for profits and sales even as news reports and scientific journals lay out in shocking detail how the ocean is warming, sea level is rising and the Pacific plastic garbage patch is expanding.

What this means to the rest of us is that traveling anywhere, eating at a seafood restaurant and buying just about anything plastic are about to get ridiculously expensive. So, here are a few ways you can pinch some pennies and protect the ocean at the same time:

• First, buy your food local and seasonal. This summer, dig into your farmers’ market and ask for local produce and seafood. Buying local and seasonal require less energy for transport and refrigeration.

• Wash, reuse and refill plastic containers: not just water bottles and shopping bags, but Zip-Loc bags, disposable forks and plastic plates. Better yet, avoid plastic completely. Can you make it through a day without throwing any plastic in the trash? It’s harder than you think (aDayWithoutPlastic.org).

• Instead of a road trip, join the International Coastal Cleanup and spend a day under the blue sky with friends in a global effort to clean local waterways and shores. (coastalcleanup.org).

• Share a ride, walk, bike, or hop a train or bus. If you’re looking to replace your car, go for one that doubles, or even triples, your previous miles-per-gallon. A 2003 Ford Expedition gets 14 mpg. A roomy, next-generation Toyota Prius is said to get nearly 100 mpg.

• Be heard: Tell your elected officials that there are safer, cheaper, smarter solutions to the energy crisis than hasty drilling for more oil along our coasts. And let the politicians who are leading the way to a greener future know that you like their style.

Americans aren’t strangers to this way of thinking. My grandmother called it frugality. To her it was a virtue. Maybe it is old-fashioned or just trendy eco-consciousness, but one thing is certain: the incentives to conserve our ocean and to protect our pocketbooks have never been greater—and, who knows, may come at just the right time to do some good for the ocean.

It’s time for each of us to join the revolution in ocean and energy conservation. Let’s get petroleum and plastic out of the ocean and put the profits back in our own pockets.

Save money. Save the ocean. Maybe even save ourselves.

Dr. Wallace J. Nichols is a marine biologist and ocean activist, living in Davenport. Visit wallacejnichols.org

Seas Rising and Warming Faster Than Realized

2008-06-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Residents of Fire Island, N.Y., will find no comfort in a new study on sea level trends.

[UPDATE 6/20: On slowing of sea rise since 2006.] On a very busy climate-oil-politics day I was able to just squeak in a short print piece last night on a new study in the journal Nature clarifying what’s happening with the oceans in a heating world (the heat held in by a building greenhouse blanket has largely accumulated in the oceans and physics demands that it will eventually add to atmospheric warming).

As you may be aware, those rejecting the enormous body of evidence pointing to a growing human influence on climate had embraced some transitory findings implying that the oceans were cooling. This new work may help resolve that particular line of debate. The formula holds: more CO2 = warming world = less ice + higher seas + lots of changing climate patterns.

Read it all HERE

OpEd: Live like you love the ocean

2008-06-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

World Ocean Day OpEd: Live like you love the ocean

Everywhere I go, people ask: “What one thing can I do for the ocean?”

My daughter, a kindergartener, answers simply: “pick up your trash.” Of course, using energy efficient light bulbs or driving a hybrid are good answers, since global warming is fundamentally an ocean issue. Then again, the simple act of choosing to eat only seafood that is sustainable and healthy can help the ocean.

But our ocean is in serious trouble. Reading recent news and scientific papers is enough to make your head spin. They tell us that there is no corner of our vast ocean that is not free of human fingerprints.

As an oceanographer, I’m quite familiar with the relentless bad news. Keeping up-to-date on it all is a part of my job. Since the ocean holds the majority of life on Earth and governs our air, our climate, and our food, that means we’re in real, big trouble.

As daunting as it appears, the ocean crisis can be boiled down to three problems: we’ve put too much in, we’ve taken too much out, and we are wrecking the edge.

Who wouldn’t be concerned about the ever-expanding Texas-size “garbage patch” in the Pacific Ocean, the shutdown of West Coast salmon fishing, right whales and sea turtles drowning in fishing gear, and the summer closure of beaches due to toxic pollution?

Obviously, there is no silver bullet … or, is there? If I had one answer to give to those who ask, “What can I do for the ocean?” it would be this: “Live like you love the ocean.” Living like we love the ocean means putting less in, taking less out, and protecting the ocean’s edge where so much life lives.

Less in. Less out. Protect the edge.

Simple.

Rather than wringing our hands, hope is on the horizon. We can live like we love the ocean in many ways.
First, shop like you love the ocean.

Buy products that are ocean-friendly. Use a canvas bag to get your stuff from the store to your car to your house, rather than a plastic bag that will stick around forever. Drink filtered tap water from a refillable glass or steel bottle instead of buying water shipped halfway around the world.

Second, eat like you love the ocean.

When you choose seafood, be sure it’s caught sustainably. That’s gotten a heck of a lot easier lately as Whole Foods, thousands of local restaurants, and even WalMart are going organic and sustainable.

Third, vacation like you love the ocean.

This summer, hike in a coastal park or visit an aquarium. Go on a sea turtle or whale watch where your visit supports conservation. Surfing, kayaking, and snorkeling are all ocean-friendly activities. Why not join Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup and make a day of it with your friends?

Lastly, vote like you love the ocean.

Many local, state, and national politicians support bold efforts to tackle global warming, create ocean parks—our so-called “Undersea Yosemites” that Ocean Conservancy is helping to build—and better fund cutting-edge ocean science. With our votes, we must be perfectly clear: we want leaders who bring about sea change.

We are entering a decade of progress in the culture of conservation and sustainability. Millions who care deeply about the ocean are joining to transform our relationship with the sea … they are starting a sea change.
Each of us must be part of this ocean revolution -- each in our own way, each as part of a connected whole.

Join for yourself. Join for others. Join for the ocean. But, when you join, please remember to live like you love the ocean.

June 8th is World Ocean Day. Find out more at www.oceanconservancy.org

Dr. Wallace J. Nichols is a senior scientist at Ocean Conservancy and a research associate at California Academy of Sciences. He was featured in the documentary film The 11th Hour. On World Ocean Day he will be speaking in Baja California Sur, Mexico, on the shores of the Bay of Loreto National Marine Park.

Bioneers Plenary 2007: Stop Ocean Warming!

2008-06-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

Bioneers 2007 Plenary

UN Says Warming Threatens Fish Stocks

2008-02-23T09:59:00.000-08:00

By ANGELA CHARLTON – 20 hours ago

PARIS (AP) — Major world commercial fish stocks could collapse within decades as global warming compounds damage from pollution and overfishing, U.N. officials said Friday.

A U.N. Environment Program report details new research on how rising ocean surface temperature and other climate changes are affecting the fishing industry. It says that more than 2.6 billion people get most of their protein from fish.

"You overlay all of this and you are potentially putting a death nail in the coffin of the world fisheries," Achim Steiner, head of the program, said in a telephone news conference from Monaco.

READ MORE

Ocean Impact Map Reveals Human Reach Global

2008-02-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

News - February 15, 2008
Ocean Impact Map Reveals Human Reach Global

As vast as the oceans are, almost no waters remain untouched by human activities

By David Biello, Scientific American

Fishing, fertilizer runoff, pollution, shipping, climate change—these are just a few of the ways that human activities influence the oceans that cover 70 percent of Earth's surface. And in all that vastness—139 million square miles (360 million square kilometers)—less than 4 percent remains unaffected, and more than a third has suffered serious human impacts, according to a new map published in Science.

more HERE

New Global Map of Ocean Impacts

2008-02-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

The first-ever comprehensive map of our planet's marine environment shows that human activity has heavily affected 41 percent of the world's ocean-covered area, with no area left completely untouched.

"This new picture of ocean warming reveals a far greater degree of local ... variation in temperature anomalies than previously recognized or even anticipated," said John Bruno, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

READ MORE

Changing the Climate on Campus

2008-02-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

By Bryan Walsh

In the 1960s and early '70s, civil rights and the Vietnam War were the defining issues on college campuses. In the 1980s, it was apartheid. Today, that issue is climate change — or at least it will be, if Eban Goodstein has anything to do about it. An economics professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., Goodstein became convinced of the threat from climate change in the early 1990s. He started writing and speaking about it and eventually created the Green House Network in 1999 to train other global warming advocates — doing Al Gore's work before Gore was. But a couple of years ago, Goodstein came to realize that his response wasn't meeting the sheer scale of the climate change risk. "Americans don't really understand," he says. "They think global warming is scary, but they don't realize how short a window of time we have." The message needed to get bigger — and so Focus the Nation was born.

More from TIME Magazine

Scientist finds specific relationship between ocean warming and hurricanes

2008-01-31T09:16:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - It just takes one degree of warming in the waters of the Atlantic, to produce a big jump in hurricane activity.

Researchers find that with that one-degree of warming in the hurricane breeding grounds of the Atlantic, overall hurricane activity jumps by half.

Scientists have known for a while that hurricanes get their enormous energy from warm water. The warmer the water, the more fuel a storm can use to start up, or get stronger.

This research, though, calculated to what extent the frequency and strength of storms are the result of warmer sea water.

A professor of climate prediction at the University College London found a distinct numerical connection between the ups and downs of water temperatures and how nasty a hurricane season gets. Mark Saunders says it helps explain why hurricanes have been so much worse in the past dozen years.

The study appears in the journal Nature.

Sea turtles and climate change

2007-12-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

WWF organises workshop on climate change in the insular Caribbean

MIAMI, USA: The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has organised a workshop in Miami on Dec 10-12, to investigate the potential effects of climate change on hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata).

With the support of the MacArthur Foundation, a group of the world’s best biologists on marine turtles and climate change will gather to study the threats and effects of climate change on this indicator species.
The recommendations of the workshop will be incorporated into an 18 month data gathering and research period, ending with a reconvening of the specialist network to revisit the recommendations and make best use of the information gathered.

Hawksbills are an “indicator species” with which to measure biological effects of climate change since they live in habitats ranging from beaches to the open ocean throughout their lives. As adults, Hawksbills mainly feed on sponges, found on coral reefs, and therefore the fate of coral reefs may be very important to them.

The health of beaches as well as mangrove, sea grass beds, coral reefs and deep ocean ecosystems can be gauged by the presence of sea turtles that use these areas for nesting, foraging, rookeries and migrations.

Increased understanding of how climate change may affect the beaches, the reef and the open ocean will not only benefit endangered sea turtle populations, but also the millions of people who live along the coastlines of the world.

By designing strategies to avoid the negative impacts of climate change, many other species in these environments will also benefit.

Global climate change is pushing many species towards probable extinctions and causing them to shift poleward at rates faster than in geological pasts.

Entire regions are suffering from the effects of climate change and will continue to suffer for the indefinite future.

Eventually all ecosystems will be affected by climate change, as well as the host of other anthropogenic threats that already challenge them (e.g., habitat degradation and pollution).

Some of the most heavily impacted and relied upon ecosystems are rich in biodiversity and sustain essential services.

The Insular Caribbean has a unique biodiversity that supports complex coastal and marine systems (e.g. the Meso American barrier reef – the second largest in the world), making it a region highly vulnerable to climate change effects, including sea-level rise.

WWF is trying to link abundant but scattered existing resources, databases, and information sources within the Insular Caribbean to assess their validity, usefulness and accessibility aiming at the future development and implementation of a climate change-related ecosystems vulnerability and adaptability action plan.

The Insular Caribbean consists of the region between North and South America comprised of three subregions: the Bahamas, the Lesser Antilles, and the Greater Antilles. This region includes 25 different countries and territories spread over more than 4 million km2 of ocean with only an estimated 230,000 km2 of land.

The Insular Caribbean is known for its rich biodiversity and high levels of endemism, yet has a long history of human exploitation resulting in a significant amount of resource degradation and depletion.

For example, 90% of the Insular Caribbean forest cover has been converted to agroscapes, over 70% of its coral reefs are threatened, mangroves deforested, and its beaches impacted, altered and squeezed by coastal development.

The Insular Caribbean islands emerge as top priority for the expansion of the global protected areas with endemically rich islands in need of preservation, and requiring biodiversity assessments, and management tools to conserve the remaining resources and create sustainability.

Oceans and CO2

2007-11-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

Oceans are 'soaking up less CO2'

The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, scientists have said.
University of East Anglia researchers gauged CO2 absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments.

Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.

Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.

Researchers said the findings, published in a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research, were surprising and worrying because there were grounds for believing that, in time, the ocean might become saturated with our emissions.

'Saturated' ocean

BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said: "The researchers don't know if the change is due to climate change or to natural variations.

"But they say it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become 'saturated' with our emissions - unable to soak up any more."

He said that would "leave all our emissions to warm the atmosphere".

Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only half of it stays there; the rest goes into carbon sinks.

There are two major carbon sinks in the biological cycle: the oceans and the land "biosphere", which includes plants and the soil.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7053903.stm

Published: 2007/10/20 04:50:45 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Changing Ocean, Arctic Humpbacks

2007-11-08T08:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/9438455p-9350294c.html

Humpback, fin whales observed in the Arctic Ocean
OUT OF USUAL RANGE: Federal officials say it's too early to determine a cause.

By DAN JOLING
The Associated Press

(Published: November 8, 2007)

Endangered humpback whales swam into the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's northern coast this summer, far beyond their usual range, but federal officials monitoring the waters say it's too soon to determine if it's a trend or an anomaly.

Environmental groups say the presence of humpbacks hundreds of miles north of their usual habitat is probably another sign of the effects of global warming and the shifting Arctic ecosystem. They are calling for more study of the endangered animals' habits before industrial activity is allowed to expand off Alaska's northern shores.

Robin Cacy, a spokeswoman for the federal Minerals Management Service, which oversees lease sales for offshore petroleum drilling in federal waters, confirmed that humpback whales were spotted in the Beaufort Sea east of Barrow, the northernmost community in the United States. Humpback whales were seen in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast last year, she said.

Also, endangered fin whales were detected this summer by acoustic monitoring north of the Bering Strait in the Chukchi Sea, Cacy said. The fin whales were recorded as far north as Point Lay, a coastal Inupiat Eskimo village of 235 about 700 miles northwest of Anchorage.

Some of the whales were spotted by observers involved with the oil industry. Shell Exploration and Production and its contractors performed seismic work this summer in anticipation of bidding on leases. Lease sales are scheduled for 2008 in the Chukchi Sea and 2009 in the Beaufort Sea.

UNEXPECTED SIGHTINGS

No one was expecting humpbacks near the activity connected to Outer Continental Shelf lease sales, said Brad Smith, a protective resources biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

"We expected those to be farther south and west of the OCS planning areas," Smith said. "We didn't anticipate that they'd been encountered in any of the OCS exploration activity that we're doing this year."

Brendan Cummings, ocean programs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the sightings may be an indication of a recovering humpback population expanding its range or of desperate animals in search of food.

Other species that use the Chukchi Sea, from walrus congregating on Alaska's northwest shore to gray whales seeking new feeding areas, are behaving differently because of climate change, he said.

"It looks like the populations are suffering from it," he said. "All signs point to global warming. That would be the first suspect of why the whales are there."

Deborah Williams, a former Department of Interior special assistant for Alaska, and now an advocate for finding solutions to climate change, said the presence of humpback and fin whales so far north has significant implications for the animals' management and development.

"We now have even more compelling reasons to protect the Arctic Ocean and the species dramatically affected by climate change," she said.

RECORD LOW PACK ICE

Sheela McLean, spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries service in Juneau, said humpbacks range widely and have been spotted on the Russian part of the Chukchi Sea. However, humpbacks are not usually associated with pack ice, so sightings farther north might be shifts in distribution caused by climate change, she said.

This year was a record low year for pack ice. The National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder in September recorded 1.65 million square miles of sea ice. That's 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.

Gary Strasburg, a spokesman for the Minerals Management Service in Washington, D.C., said a sighting of an endangered species in a new area would not mean an immediate change in how the agency regulates petroleum exploration. The agency would determine whether the presence of humpbacks was a trend, and if so, determine the appropriate response, he said.

Federal laws allow a certain level of "harassment" of marine mammals, Smith said. Permits issued in 2007 for exposure of marine mammals to noise from seismic activities covered neither humpback nor fin whales, he said.

"They do, however, have authorization to harass other whales and marine mammals, which were expected to be encountered during the course of their seismic operations," Smith said, including ringed seals, bearded seals, gray whales and bowhead whales.

Conditions imposed upon exploration for humpbacks may be no different than what's in place now, Smith said. The sensitivity of bowhead whales, which remain close to sea ice and are hunted in limited numbers by Eskimo whalers, is considered equal to or greater than the sensitivity of humpbacks, he said.

Cummings does not agree with that assessment of humpbacks -- or with the government's protective measures in general.

"These are animals that are entirely dependent on sound," he said of humpbacks.

"We don't believe that permits issued to date in the Beaufort Sea comply with the spirit or the letter of the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the Endangered Species Act," he said.

Skinny whales, warming ocean

2007-07-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

A giant of the sea finds slimmer pickings
Gray whales are skinnier, and scientists suspect Arctic warming is the reason why

By Kenneth R. Weiss
Times Staff Writer

July 6, 2007

SAN SIMEON, CALIF. — A female gray whale labored up the coast, the bony ridge of a shoulder blade protruding from what should be the smooth, plump roundness of healthy blubber.

"That female looks a little skinny," said federal biologist Wayne Perryman, peering through his binoculars. "You can see her scapula sticking out. Yeah, she's a skinny girl."

Scientists from Mexico to the Pacific Northwest are reporting an unusually high number of scrawny whales this year for the first time since malnourishment and disease claimed a third of the gray whale population in 1999 and 2000.

So far this year, scientists haven't seen a decline in numbers, and they are not sure what's causing the whales to be so thin. But they suspect it may be the same thing that triggered the die-off eight years ago: rapid warming of Arctic waters where the whales feed. Whales depend on cocktail-shrimp-size crustaceans to bulk up for their long southerly migration. As Arctic ice recedes, fat-rich crustaceans that flourished on the Bering Sea floor are becoming scarce.

Skinny whales were first spotted this year in the protected waters of San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California, where gray whales spend the winter breeding and nursing their calves before returning every summer to the Arctic.

That's where a team led by Steven Swartz of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Silver Spring, Md., and Jorge Urban of the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur noticed that about 10% looked more bony than blubbery, a telltale sign of malnutrition.

Instead of making steady progress during their long migrations, the whales have been stopping often to eat along the way.

They have been seen straining mysid shrimp from kelp beds off California and British Columbia, sucking up mouthfuls of sand in Santa Barbara Harbor and skimming surface waters for krill-like crustaceans all along the West Coast.

Such opportunistic feeding has its risks. Switching to new food can expose the whales to harmful parasites as well as other hazards. There have been at least two fatal accidents this spring near San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Gray whales, surfacing to breathe after dining on seafloor snacks, have been ripped apart by propellers on cargo vessels.

To find food, some gray whales have been expending more energy by extending their 5,000-mile northerly migration beyond the Bering Strait into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska.

It used to be a rare occurrence to see gray whales off Barrow, Alaska, said Craig George, a North Slope Borough wildlife biologist since the 1970s. In recent years they have become summertime regulars, churning up mud plumes along the shoreline in search of food.

Their arrival has become an annoyance and even a navigational hazard for local Inupiat (Eskimo) subsistence hunters, who have permits to hunt bowhead whales but not grays. "A few people have been running skiffs along the coast and have hit them," George said. "During fall bowhead whale hunting season, they see a blow and divert off course — only to find it's a gray whale."

Historically, the eastern Pacific gray whales congregated every summer in the shallows of the Chirikov Basin, a place in the north Bering Sea known for its vast seafloor carpets of crustaceans called amphipods. The whales sucked in great mouthfuls, straining out the sand and mud, packing on the pounds in the few months before their long annual journey to Baja and back.

"You could practically walk across the gray whales in the Chirikov Basin in the 1980s," said Sue Moore, a former director of the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who has conducted aerial surveys. "They were stacked up to the horizon. In 2002, I went back and everything had changed."

The carpets of crustaceans were frayed — and, in some places, gone.

Scientists first thought that the gray whale population, which had been hunted nearly to extinction in the 1930s, had simply grown too large for its primary food source and eaten more than nature could provide. Such overgrazing was thought to have been responsible for the mass die-off in 1999 and 2000 that saw the population drop from 26,600 to about 17,400.

Now scientists suspect that the climatic changes in the Bering Sea played a role in the population plunge by reducing the whale's primary food: amphipods that appear to be affected by warming temperatures and vanishing sea ice.

These amphipods grow in tubes on sandy or muddy seafloors and cannot move around like many sea creatures. They count on bits of algae to come to them, or at least close enough so they can use their antennae to pull the food into their mouths.

One source is a confetti that rains down from shaggy mats of algae that grow on the underside of ice sheets at the ocean's surface. Another is brought by ocean currents, carrying a soupy mix of algae or plankton.

Both sources have diminished or been cut off as the northern Bering Sea has undergone a shift from a seasonally ice-dominated region to more of an open ocean dotted with thin ice that is quickly broken up by storms. And the basin's waters have warmed enough to allow new types of fish to migrate north, gobbling up the amphipods or competing with them for food.

Whales are not the only animals struggling to adapt to these rapid changes. Researchers have also noticed dramatic declines in other species that feed on the bottom, such as walruses and sea ducks.

Federal scientists believe the gray whale population is holding steady at 18,000, although they are working on an updated estimate.

The population had been growing steadily until 1998, the year of a warm El Niño now seen as a turning point for the Bering Sea's amphipod beds. Since then, the annual tally of calves has fluctuated. This year's was one of the lowest since the federal government began keeping track in 1994.

"The gray whales don't seem as robust as they once were," said Perryman, a National Marine Fisheries Service scientist in charge of the annual count of gray whale cows and calves.

He and his crew keep watch 12 hours a day from March to June tallying each gray whale that passes by the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse near San Simeon's Hearst Castle on California's Central Coast. Perryman believes that the number of calves plunges when whales do not get enough to eat.

The loss of Bering Sea feeding grounds is responsible for another trend: An increasing number of whales don't bother heading that far north. Some stop at Alaska's Kodiak Island. Others don't get even that far and spend summers near British Columbia's Vancouver Island or off the Oregon coast. Smaller groups remain off California, feeding on shrimp in kelp beds or anything else they can scrounge.

"These animals are feeding on things that scientists haven't observed in modern times," said Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. "They are beginning to become more diverse in their diet because they have to."

But switching food could expose them to parasites that contribute to their emaciated condition, scientists say.

It's possible, Swartz and other researchers said, that their scrawniness is merely a temporary condition as the whales learn to adapt to a rapidly changing Arctic.

"Gray whales are good at switching prey," Swartz said. "They need to find new places to feed, because the ocean is changing on them. I hope we are watching a transition rather than a serious problem."

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ken.weiss@latimes.com

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