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Showing posts with label
Sea Turtle Restoration Project.
Show all posts
Showing posts with label
Sea Turtle Restoration Project.
Show all posts
To the many people who watched or read of the ocean exploits of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a visible icon of that era was the research vessel Calypso. I know it's white outline, punctuated by scientific toys like the distinctive yellow submarine "saucer," was burned into my memory. I built the Revell model kit, supported the Cousteau Society's occasional efforts at refurbishing it, and watched with sadness as it was eventually eclipsed by its high-tech replacement, the Alcyone. Ultimately, it sat rusting away in a French dry dock after having been rammed and sunk by a barge in Singapore in 1996.
However, according to British news reports in the Independent and BBC News, efforts are underway to resurrect the famed ship, making it once again seaworthy as a touring educational exhibition. Cousteau's widow from a second marriage is involved in the effort and would like the French government to declare the Calypso as part of France's national heritage, making it eligible for 
public restoration funds. But getting the Calypso, a converted minesweeper, to once again ply the waves will be no small feat, as the years of abuse and neglect have definitely taken their toll.
According to long-time crew member Albert Falco, "Everything which is not rusted is rotten and everything which is not rotten is rusted."
Unfortunately, various controversies have dogged the Calypso and the Cousteau family regarding ownership since Jacques-Yves Cousteau's death in 1997. Hopefully, the passage of time has healed some of those wounds and as we enter the centennial of Cousteau's birth, we can look back on the legacy of his work and how it fired our fascination in the undersea world. Oceanographic science undoubtedly received a public relations boost that helped support further research which built on and refined some of the studies and observations made aboard the Calypso.
Whether that famed vessel can once again make its own wake upon the open sea remains to be seen. But what it has meant to many ocean conservationists - professional or armchair - would seem to justify not seeing the Calypso become a distant memory.
Read the BBC News article.
Read the Independent article.
While oil pollution is, understandably, capturing a lot of our attention of late, there are other forms of ocean pollution that need our continued attention. Plastics, in its multitude of forms, constitutes a major ongoing threat not only to marine animals but the entire marine ecosystem.
Much has been written about the North Pacific Gyre, a congregation of floating plastics coming together due to the various movements of Pacific Ocean currents. While it contains pieces of plastics that pose immediate threats to fish, marine mammals, and birds due to entanglement or ingestion, there is the additional problem of what becomes of the plastics over time. Sunlight combined with water/wave action breaks the plastic down into smaller and smaller particles which can be ingested by smaller and smaller creatures - down to the plaktonic level - which means that the plastic can permeate its way through the entire oceanic web of life.
Plastics seemingly last forever. Their so-called biodegradability involves breaking down into base components, which means the separation of the various chemicals used in the production of plastics - chemicals which can prove to be toxic and, again, enter the food chain at base levels, impacting plankton, and more. So first you have large plastics pieces - discarded bags, bottles, soda can container rings, rope, netting, etc. - that can ensare, entangle, or if ingested, block the digestive tracts of a variety of sea creatures. Then as the plastic breaks down, there are the micro-particles that can be consumed by smaller creatures. And finally, there are all the chemicals being given off: low-level poisons that can have a cumulative effect.
Plastics: the "gift" that keeps on giving.
To address the issue requires industrial science to generate improved or alternative products - a new generation of plastics or plastic-like products that break down safely, as opposed to the current specific and unrealistic set of precise circumstances (light, temperature, moisture) needed for "successful" biodegradation. And there must be a more responsible use of plastics on the part of the consumer to reuse and/or recycle.
And there is also the need for legislation to nudge both industry and the consumer in the right direction. The Sea Turtle Restoration Project recently alerted its California members of 
upcoming state legislation to restrict the use of plastic bags, bottle caps, and more (plastics endanger leatherback turtles that feed on the plastic or became entangled). Within California, several cities have already banned the use of plastic shopping bags or instituted stiffer fines for plastic littering. Here are the three bills:
AB 2138 (Chesbro) - Plastic Ocean Pollution Reduction, Recycling and Composting Act
AB 2138 would prohibit food providers from distributing single-use food packaging and bags unless they are accepted for either recycling or composting in at least 75% of households in a jurisdiction and are recovered at rate of at least 25%. This policy will make the fast food sector financially responsible to:
- Switch to packaging that is compatible with the recycling and/or composting services available in the communities they serve.
- Work with local governments and recyclers to increase processing and market capacity for recyclable and compostable packaging alternatives.
- Work with consumers to ensure that their packaging is recycled or composted.
- Single-use food packaging litter kills endangered sea turtles that become entangled or mistake it for food. Single-use packaging is a primary source of urban litter and oceanic litter pollution, according to storm drain and beach cleanup studies. Polystyrene, plastic bags and other non-recyclable packaging have a high propensity to be littered because they are light and aerodynamic and are consumed away from home. Up to 80% of ocean pollution is litter from urban runoff, and non-recyclable single-use food packaging is a primary component of urban litter.
AB 1998 (Brownley) - Carryout Bags
AB 1998 will reduce dangerous plastic bag litter pollution by banning plastic bags at large retail outlets. Plastic bags are a primary component of urban litter pollution. And urban litter pollution is the primary component of marine litter pollution. Plastic already outweighs plankton in the North Pacific Gyre. Plastic pollution costs California families hundreds of dollars annually in hidden litter clean-up costs. Current retailer practices result in the distribution of approximately 19 billion plastic carryout bags annually.
AB 925 (Saldaña) - Plastic Bottle Caps
Requires plastic bottle caps be attached to the plastic container and be recyclable. As more than half of all single use beverages in plastic containers being consumed outside of the home, these plastic bottle caps can easily become part of the litter and waste stream. Beach clean-up studies find that plastic bottle caps are among most littered items. AB 925 proposes to address this problem by requiring that the bottle caps remain connected to the bottle, more than 60% of which are currently recycled, thereby significantly reducing the waste, litter and threat to wildlife posed by discarded bottle caps.
Californians can and should voice their support for these bills (they can click on each assembly bill listed above to send an email). And for you non-Californians, check your own state's government web site to see if similar legislation is in the works to protect the quality of life where you live. It doesn't matter whether your state has an ocean coastline or is landlocked, we all have bodies of water - be they freshwater or saltwater - that can be adversely effected by the growing volume of plastics we have produced over decades.
I suspect that plastics, in one form or another, are here to stay. If that be the case, then it behooves us to produce, use, and recycle plastics more responsibly. Or it will bury us.
Learn more about plastic pollution at the Sea Turtle Restoration Project.
Just a little over a week ago, I posted information about new regulations for longline fishing in Hawaii and Florida that would further imperil the loggerhead turtle. Several conservation groups were engaged in legal action with the National Marine Fisheries Service to get them to act on behalf of the endangered turtles by implementing required provisions of the Endangered Species Act.
In a more positive development, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has proposed designating 70,000 square miles along the U.S. west coast, from Northern Washington to Southern California, as critical habitat for another endangered sea turtle, the leatherback turtle.
This ruling would provide a measure of protection for these turtles when they come to forage after their long Pacific migration. Every summer and fall, leatherback turtles travel 12,000 miles - the longest migration of any marine reptile in the oceans today - from nesting grounds in Indonesia to the western U.S. coastline to feed on jellyfish, a favorite food source of many sea turtle species. And these are BIG sea turtles, reaching lengths of nine feet and weighing in at 1,200 pounds! But they are on the edge of extinction; according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, their numbers within the past 30 years have dropped by as much as 95 %, well below what many aquatic species can recover from.
There are two hiccups with NOAA's proposal, according to the conservation groups (The Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network) who have been applying the pressure for this habitat designation. One, this is only a proposal, so there will be a public comment period open until March. You can expect opposition comments from the longline fishing industry, so if you would like to add you own voice in support, here is a link to NOAA's public response web site.
The second issue is that the proposal leaves out some key foraging areas and excludes fishing gear as a threat. This hearkens back to the same issue with Hawaii's and Florida's loggerhead turtles - the impact on their numbers from accidental catch by longlines.
“Today’s proposal marks the first step in making sure that these giant turtles have a safe and productive place to feed after their amazing swim across the entire Pacific Ocean,” said Andrea Treece, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, in an Oceana press release. “NOAA now needs to take the next step and improve its proposal by incorporating more of the species’ key habitat areas and addressing one of the worst threats to leatherback survival – entanglement in commercial fishing gear.”
All of the ocean's sea turtles exist today under some level of endangered or threatened status due to years of hunting in the past for their meat and shells. And though laws exist for their protection, they are still severely impacted by illegal poaching for their eggs and the turtles themselves, in addition to the number of turtles lost in commercial fishing nets.
Steps are being taken to protect sea turtles and ongoing research continues to investigate their living behaviors, but populations are still in critical decline and many species face an unknown future.
Here's some info on one particular species: the large, impressive Loggerhead Turtle.
According to a report by the National Marine Fisheries Service on the status of the loggerhead turtle which is listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the turtle's worldwide population is still very much at risk of further declines. While a few areas in the world have shown some improvement at nesting beaches, most areas at at risk of further decline. In particular, the Northeast, Northwest and South Atlantic Ocean; the Mediterranean, and the North Indian Ocean.
Migratory patterns of loggerhead hatchlings are being studied as these migrations can be critical in determining risk exposure for turtles, in addition to finding correlations between nesting site and other more distant populations. Studies have shown that loggerhead turtles can travel great distances, making transoceanic migrations, possibly as far away as from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Hatchlings from South Pacific nesting sites, like Australia, have been recorded along the Peruvian coast, where no nesting sites exist.
It's not just poachers or natural predators that threaten eggs and hatchlings at nesting sites. When the subject of coastal development is brought up, many often think of construction that brings about pollution. While this is an issue, another coastal development action that threatens loggerhead and green turtles is "artificial beach nourishment." This a somewhat fancy term for beach re-shaping or just plain moving sand. Either to replace sand due to or to act as a deterrent to erosion, sand is moved in and beaches are reshaped. When this occurs in areas that are known turtle nesting sites, the re-sculpturing of the beach slope sometimes makes it difficult if not impossible for the female sea turtle to properly lay its eggs, particularly for the larger loggerhead turtle.
In addition to turtle conservation campaigns being initiated by major NGOs like Oceana, WildAid, and Ocean Conservancy , there are turtle specific organization, like the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, that are worth looking into.
I recently posted some information about improvements in the U.S. regarding marine by-catch. While there may be some overall improvements, specific issues come up from time to time that require consideration and action.
One such issue is taking place regarding the Hawaiian swordfish longline fisheries and new proposed regulations that would allow an increase in the number of sets (fishing gear deployments) in addition to an increase in the number of legally-allowed sea turtle entanglements.
To meet the industrial-strength demands for seafood, longline fishing has grown over the years, but it is a very indiscriminate method of fishing, generating tremendous levels of by-catch ranging from sharks to whales and dolphins to sea turtles and even sea birds. The vast majority of the by-catch is wasted as it does not have sufficient economic value to the boats. While some improvements in methods and hooks have been made, many conservation groups look to the statistics as to their ultimate effectiveness: the continued drop in overall populations of many of these accidentally-caught species and the growing numbers seen caught, entangled, and/or killed in longlines as recorded by federally-mandated observers.
The proposed new regulations has been making the rounds of the local Hawaiian press and several NGOs, including Oceana and the Sea Turtle Restoration Project have been pushing hard with campaigns to make the National Marine Fisheries Service reconsider the proposed new regulations, which came about as a recommendation from the commercial fishery group, Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council.
Look into it and let your voice be heard.
As many of you know, sea turtles of all species are threatened worldwide - due to hunting, poaching, and encroachment on their egg-laying habitats. According to the Sea Turtle Restoration Project (and its affiliate organization, PRETOMA, in Costa Rica), the rare Australian flatback turtle's nesting areas located on the Northwest coast of Western Australia are under siege from potential exploration and drilling for liquid natural gas (LNG) (Read article from Australia's Wilderness Society).
Given the rising demand for energy resources, this is a tough call. Western Australia is a fairly remote and rustic area, not heavily populated. Hopefully, the Australian people won't think the area or its inhabitants are expendable because of its remoteness. The Sea Turtle Restoration Project and the Wilderness Society are calling upon people worldwide to let the Australian government know that their efforts will not go unnoticed (click here). Let's hope that a solution can be found that might be workable for all parties, including the flatback turtle.
To the many people who watched or read of the ocean exploits of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a visible icon of that era was the research vessel Calypso. I know it's white outline, punctuated by scientific toys like the distinctive yellow submarine "saucer," was burned into my memory. I built the Revell model kit, supported the Cousteau Society's occasional efforts at refurbishing it, and watched with sadness as it was eventually eclipsed by its high-tech replacement, the Alcyone. Ultimately, it sat rusting away in a French dry dock after having been rammed and sunk by a barge in Singapore in 1996.
public restoration funds. But getting the Calypso, a converted minesweeper, to once again ply the waves will be no small feat, as the years of abuse and neglect have definitely taken their toll.
