By Daniel de la Calle

Today we want to briefly share with you our plans for A Sea Change during the upcoming months.  During the last few months last year, we had been discussing our possible presence during the RIO+20 summit this coming June.  We kept receiving mixed signals: encouraging, hopeful news together with worried comments about the role given to the oceans at the summit, the sudden change of schedule (it was initially going to coincide with Britain's Queen Elizabeth's crowning anniversary…), about the official agenda and the way things were being organized.  In the end both Barbara and Sven thought it might be important for Niijii Films to travel back to Brazil with the hope of creating more focused buzz around ocean acidification.  It was their view that with credentials, we could enter the conference itself and share an ocean acidification media package that would contribute information to ongoing discussion about ocean health in  Rio de Janeiro.  We are still working on the specific plan for the days of Rio+20, so your suggestions and ideas are more than welcome.  Should we organize our own event during the summit? Of what type? Would it make an impact to distribute copies of the documentary amongst the delegations? Do we need to be present at all the major meetings? Which are a most critical? Should I pack my own lunch or buy it there? Please email me at aseachangedocumentary@gmail.com if you plan to attend the conference and would like to meet, or if you have some words of advice or experience for me, I will be delighted and grateful.

We have also begun to schedule some work both in Peru and Chile for late April and early May.  We are aiming for a couple of screenings in Peru followed by three in Chile and hope to do as many interviews as possible, get the media interested and willing to inform Chileans and Peruvians; the same type of effort we displayed in Brazil and Colombia during 2010 and 2011.  Again, if you have any recommendations of universities or institutions we should contact for the screenings, or know which are the most crucial newspapers and television channels to deliver our message about Ocean Acidification through, please write us at aseachangedocumentary@gmail.com.

It has been over three years since the film premiered in the States, five since we began filming, but the story continues to resonate with force.  Maybe because A Sea Change came out before most people had heard about Ocean Acidification, because the scientific community keeps revealing the detrimental consequences of higher acidity in the ocean or because of the film's deeper message about our legacy for future generations, the truth is that A Sea Change will be very much alive in 2012.

An already nostalgic look at our shooting in Alaska in 2007. The baby tooth test scene

By Daniel de la Calle

We are still in January, the month of lists and resolutions for the remaining 11 months or the rest of our lives.  Here I list of some of those lists:
•The Center for Biological Diversity announced their Top Ten priorities for 2012. Here is the list:
1    Save the Endangered Species Act.
2    Protect more species.
3    Save wolves.
4    Stop Arctic drilling.
5    Expand awareness of overpopulation.
6    Defend polar bears.
7    Fight Climate Change.
8    Stem the tide of Ocean Acidification.
Quoting what they write about Ocean Acidification:
"As oceans absorb carbon dioxide, or CO2, seawater chemistry changes and the water becomes more acidic. According to scientists, the oceans have become about 30 percent more acidic due to human CO2 emissions — and this spells trouble for ocean life. First of all, ocean acidification depletes seawater of the compounds that organisms need to build shells and skeletons, impairing the ability of corals, crabs, seastars, sea urchins, plankton and other marine creatures to build the protective armor they need to survive. To make matters worse, fish and other ocean organisms may be adversely affected from the rise in acidity in their ocean habitat. Fish are common ocean prey, and plankton are at the base of the ocean food chain, so when these animals suffer, so do the countless animals that eat them. Ocean acidification could disrupt the entire marine ecosystem.
Since ocean acidification is one of the gravest threats to marine biodiversity, the Center is tackling it head on, and has launched an initiative to protect our oceans from CO2 pollution. The Clean Water Act is the nation’s strongest law protecting water quality, and we’re using the tools provided by this law to stop pollution causing ocean acidification as well as to improve water-quality standards and monitoring for pH. In 2007, we petitioned eight coastal states to declare ocean waters impaired under the Clean Water Act due to ocean acidification, which would require those states to limit CO2 pollution entering waters under their jurisdiction, helping to reduce the devastating effects of ocean acidification. The same year, we also petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose stricter pH standards for ocean water quality and publish guidance to help states protect U.S. waters from acidification. Finally, in spring 2009, the agency for the first time invoked the Clean Water Act to address the acidification crisis, calling for data to use for evaluating water-quality criteria under the Act. But when it failed to take action against ocean acidification in Washington state waters — which are in violation of the state’s already lax water-quality standard for pH — we were forced to sue the agency in spring 2009. Thanks to our landmark lawsuit, the next year the EPA recommended that coastal states begin addressing ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act.
We also advocate for the protection of species affected by ocean acidification, most notably elkhorn coral and staghorn coral, which comprise much of the rapidly declining coral reefs of Florida and the Caribbean. These corals were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 2006 as a result of a Center petition, and in September 2007, we sued the National Marine Fisheries Service to speed designation of critical habitat. While elkhorn and staghorn corals are the first species to be listed because of vulnerability to global warming, they unfortunately won’t be the last. The Center will continue to defend our ocean’s life and oppose the pollution that threatens it."
9    Safeguard wildlife and people from pesticides.
10   Protect public lands from dirty energy projects.
Plus a link to their page on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

•Treehugger's David DeFranza made a list of "Ten marine species on the brink of mass extinction due to Ocean Acidification". We had to have it here:
1    Blue Sea Slugs
2    Pteropods

3    Brittle stars
4    Squids
5    Shirmp
6    Oysters
7    Sea Urchins
8    Abalones
9    Corals
10   Clown Fish

•Greepeace's blacklist of irresponsible fishing operators and the companies behind them.
 They say: "This database is a convenient tool for national fisheries administrators, and anyone interested to quickly check on the compliance status of a foreign vessel trying to unload its catch in port, seeking services in port, seeking a fishing license or to register or flag in a country. Greenpeace also encourages retailers and suppliers to use the database to ensure the fish they source do not come from pirate fishing vessels or from companies involved in such activities."

•Vermont Law Top Ten environmental watch list 2012.
Vermont Law School, which has one of the top-ranked environmental law programs in the USA, just released its second annual Top 10 Environmental Watch List of issues and developments that should be closely followed in 2012.
1    With Republicans Attacking the EPA, 2012 Could Be a Turning Point for Environmental Regulation
2    EPA and White House Clash Over Ozone Standards
3    Powder River Basin’s Abundance of Coal at the Epicenter of Energy Development
4    Activists Claim Victory, Temporarily, on Disputed Keystone XL Pipeline
5    EPA, Transportation Department Step Up Sector-by-Sector Regulation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
6    Federal Appeals Court Settles Roadless Rule…for Now
7    Fukushima Fallout Affects Global Energy Security, Cost, Safety, Grid Reliability
8    U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Bid to Regulate Greenhouse Gases Under Federal Common Law
9    Landmark Settlement Under the Endangered Species Act
10   Combating Climate Change Through Enforcement: EPA v. TVA

•The US Government list of popular New Year's resolutions with some resources and personal encouragement to achieve your goals:
1    Drink Less Alcohol
2    Eat Healthy Food
3    Get a Better Education
4    Get a Better Job
5    Get Fit
6    Lose Weight
7    Manage Debt
8    Manage Stress
9    Quit Smoking
10    Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
11   Save Money
12   Take a Trip
13   Volunteer to Help Others

•NOAA's list of coastal counties in the USA (PDF).

If you read this far you deserve to know that a couple of the links are arbitrary when not preposterous.

By Daniel de la Calle

    •Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute scientists have launched a sophisticated, unique tool to study the effects of Ocean Acidification on deep-sea animals in their native habitat, using free-flowing water.  The idea behind Free-Ocean Carbon Enrichment (FOCE) is to create a test area on the seafloor where seawater pH can be controlled.  Small animals can be placed in the test chamber and their behavior and physiological responses monitored.

Photo by MBARI
Read more about the fascinating experiment HERE.

    •Two papers recently published in Global Change Biology by scientists from Australia, the US and France provide an interesting look at how the threat of Ocean Acidification to reefs vary from one to another.
"Overall, CO2 enrichment and ocean acidification is bad news for coral reefs", says Dr. Ken Anthony, Research Team Leader for the Climate Change and Ocean Acidification team at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.  "But some reef areas take up more CO2 than they produce (through photosynthesis), which can lower the vulnerability of neighboring reef areas to ocean acidification.  On the other hand, reef areas with greater coral cover produce more CO2 than they consume (through calcification and respiration) and that adds locally to the ocean acidification threat".  Dr Joanie Kleypas of the National Center for Atmospheric Research believes that "If we can start to understand which areas of large reef systems such as the Great Barrier Reef can counteract pH changes locally and which areas cannot, then we are better able to assess the relative risks of ocean acidification".
"Reef managers have been faced with the problem of ocean acidification as a uniform threat affecting all reef areas equally.  These new studies are a first step to help reef managers understand how some areas might in fact lower the impact of ocean acidification in neighboring areas, whereas others will further acidify themselves.  Seagrass beds, for example, can significantly reduce CO2 levels in the water, providing more favorable chemical conditions for neighboring reefs", says Dr Anthony.  Continue reading HERE.

    •I recently saw an advertising piece about the use of biodegradable bags and plastic wrappings on sailing boats.  Sailors around the world should embrace the idea and commit to only using compostable and biodegradable bags, leading an example and modestly fighting the alarming presence of plastics in the oceans.  The particular brand is called BioBag, and HERE is the page where you can read more about the benefits of using such products.

    •Ken Caldeira continues his series of videos about Ocean Acidification and coral reefs for the Carnegie Institution for Science on Youtube.  This one is with Julia Pongratz:

    
    •David Shiffman, a PhD Student and research assistant at the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program asked for our vote in the 2011 Blogging Scholarship (which provides $10,000 towards education and research expenses) finals.  I already voted for him and his shark conservation blog HERE.  If you want to vote too just remember that it is the bubble next to "David Shiffman: Southern Fried Science".

    •Two or three blog posts ago I wrote about insular dwarfism and this week I have some news about animals diminishing in size: recent studies indicate that climate change might be shrinking numerous plant and animal species.   David Bickford, from the National University of Singapore believes ectotherms (cold-blooded animals like toads, turtles and snakes that rely on environmental heat sources) are changing a lot.  The study draws information from fossil records as well as "comparative studies and research implicating anthropogenic climate change over the last hundred years".  For example, fossils from a warming phase during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum indicate that burrowing invertebrates like beetles, bees and ants shrank in size by up to 75%.  In the seas, each degree of warming has been shown to decrease the size of fish by up to 22%, but the biggest threat to marine life could be the reduced growth rates of phytoplankton in response to acidification, which "could negatively affect all ocean life because it forms the basis of the marine food web", says Bickford.
You can read more in THIS CNN piece.
    •Researchers in Spain are using posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows to track the evolution of heavy metal pollution in Mediterranean waters all the way back to 4,500 years ago.

Photo by Alberto Romero
The first heavy metal residue is found in the strata going 2,800 years back, coinciding with the first mining and metal work by Romans and Greeks.  During the last 1,200 years the presence of metals has increased gradually, but it was within the last 350, since the beginning of the industrial revolution, that the levels began to skyrocket, with a significant increase in the presence of lead, zinc and arsenic.  These threatened seagrass beds can be invaluable to research, but they more importantly serve as a great filter and storer of heavy metals along the Mediterranean shoreline.
As a footnote, the posidonia meadows around the coast of the island of Ibiza are over 5 miles long and are believed by some to be the biggest and eldest living organism, continually growing for over 100,000 years.
 Read about it (in Spanish) HERE.

    •A new study by a group of European scientists led by Michael T. Burrows, from the Scottish Marine Institute, reveals that, although ocean temperatures are increasing at a slower rate than in the atmosphere, its progress and effects on sea life is quite similar.  Spring keeps coming two days earlier every year and regional temperatures are traveling North and South from the equator at an average speed of 27 kilometers per decade.  Also, the rate of warming seen by the scientists was greatest in equatorial oceans, which is also where biodiversity is currently highest, the analysis shows.
Species are having to either migrate to keep living within the same temperatures or, in some cases, modify their reproductive times.  But these options are not available for all animals.  Arctic species cannot migrate to colder regions and in places like the Mediterranean, where the sea is enclosed between Europe and Africa, a migration North is not possible.  Carlos Duarte, research scientist for the Consejo Superior de Investivaciones Científicas in Spain concludes: "when the speed of climate change is faster than the speed organisms can disperse or when there are physical barriers that make dispersion impossible species can only adapt or become extinct." The ARTICLE in the online edition of El País.  The information published in the journal SCIENCE IS HERE.

By Daniel de la Calle

I know it has been a while since we last posted news about Ocean Acidification and other related environmental problems on the blog.  In an effort to catch up with the latest information out there, here we offer a first list:

    •Scientists launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study in the hope of answering all skeptics' doubts and suspicions about global temperature rise.  It is highly unlikely any amount of information or further work will convince those who base their lives on not believing that they were wrong, but the numbers are pretty unanswerable and the results are basically the same as we knew (by the way, this time after comparing 1.6 billion temperature reports).  We recommend THIS article by Kelly Levin or to THIS NY Times piece to get more details.

    •The Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology has set up an expedition to One Tree Island with the purpose of improving our understanding of the effects of Ocean Acidification on coral reefs. There will be a video research diary of those 25 days in Australia with Ken Caldeira and Jack Silverman. Here is the first:

And HERE another.

    •Washington Sea Grant has organized a symposium on Ocean Acidification on November 9th at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture.  The scientific panel will be moderated  by Richard Feely and a policy/public perception panel by former US Congressman Brian Baird, author of the 2009 Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act.  More info on the previous link and HERE.

    •Another Symposium, in the more distant future: The Third International Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World. From September 24th to 27th in Monterey, California. More details HERE.

    •This is a cool video that shows about how to make your own soda pop or carbonated milk at home.  It can also serve to demonstrate the effects of Ocean Acidification with a little imagination:

    •The Institute of Marine Research has an open position as postdoctoral researcher on the effects of Ocean Acidification on marine zooplankton.  More information on the EPOCA website link HERE.  It is your chance, postdoctoral scientist reading our blog, to live in beautiful Bergen, Norway.  We were there for the filming of A Sea Change and liked it very much.

    •350.ORG is promoting a symbolic encircling of the "White House to ask President Obama to reject Keystone XL and to live up to his promise to free us from the tyranny of oil." They will start at 2PM, carrying signs with Obama's own words to serve as reminders of his promises.  More info HERE.

    •And finally, one more video from NOAA on how carbon emissions influence Ocean Acidification:

By Daniel de la Calle

Right where you read these words now many others have stood, layer upon layer, in a frustrated attempt to write about corals and my dives at the Tayrona National Park back in June.  They were not the problem, the source of trouble was the confusing mixture of sensations and thoughts I had while being underwater in that awe inspiring underworld of the Northern Colombian Coast.  Remembering this morning the time I last visited my grandmother in Germany, soon before she died, I came to understand:  I was very happy to get one more chance to see her again, to introduce her to my little daughter, but felt profoundly sad as well, overwhelmed with that "last time" feeling, with the apparent absurdity and purposelessness of a whole lifetime of acquired knowledge and experiences disappearing forever.

When I went down the wild cliffs and coves in Tayrona, while diving inside a giant cave or during the night immersions that revealed the true magic of polyp colonies, I went through the exact same emotions: immense gratitude to be there, to get to witness such an explosion of life, that display of shapes, of colors, such frenzy of activity, invisible and impossible to guess from the surface, but also abysmal sadness at the thought that the days of this whole ecosystem as it once was, even as it is now, are numbered; all this evolved primeval wisdom, this giant bank of results from trial and error over millions of years, this sophisticated network of lifeforms that carries on, unaware of their doomed future.  I felt mostly guilty, but also greedy and dirty, knowing nothing other than the apparent needs of our generation is condemning our grandchildren to a world where tropical reefs will be talked about in the style of fairy tales, as a dream or a possible past. Swimming in Tayrona I was both the witness and perpetrator, the murderer staring amongst the crowd at the fallen body, hidden behind the safety and innocence of the masses.  The thought of this disaster in slow motion tainted what would have otherwise been a marvelous diving experience; it was all too tragic, too surreal and beautiful to be enjoyed.
The group I dove with does very innovative work "farming" corals in a nursery.  It is just the second or third location worldwide where such techniques are tried.  They initially break off little pieces with polyps and glue them to small submerged farms that consist of buoys, ropes and plastic tubes. 

A reduced group of specialists and scientists survey and clean on a weekly basis as they grow, hoping that after a year they will be ready to be implanted with epoxy glue back on the reef rocks.  I was offered to trade a regular dive for a cleaning day at the farm and took the opportunity to appease the guilt and feel useful.  It is always better to visit a place in the disguise of a worker rather than a plain tourist, to lend a hand in a project.  The platform is in the middle of a small bay, levitating some 30 feet above the sand bottom and another 30 from the surface. 

The only extra gear we wore were gloves, spatulas and some brushes to swipe the tubes clean from all the algae and barnacles that relentlessly menace with taking over.  Barnacles are sharp as micro scalpels: you end up with dozens of invisible stinging cuts in fingers and palms no matter how careful you are.  The whole place is in fact a testament to how fierce competition is underwater.  To make things worse our poor corals are not exactly set with the best weapons and defense equipment.  Algae, barnacles, muscles and other small crustaceans have the winning hand, and as temperatures go up and pH goes down corals become more and more brittle and defenseless.  We, the untrained volunteers, focused exclusively on the cleaning of the tubes that conform the skeleton of the structure, while the scientists and initiated divers carefully brushed the fragile baby corals themselves. 

Word that we were at work spread quickly throughout the bay; in a matter of minutes all kinds of fish swam around us to snack on the algae and barnacle dinner.  Those fish became the only company as visibility progressively worsened.  It is a strange sensation to focus on a task underwater, floating like an astronaut outside the space station; at a certain point you become totally disoriented, cannot quite discern what is up or down and begin to work as blind painter, reading the braille of detritus with the tips of your fingers, scrubbing away inside a dark green cloud.  My mind spun around Cousteau, sushi, Gagarin, extraterrestrial life and also Penelope and Sisyphus, pondering on the futility of life, of repeated ant labor and the inventions of mankind.  But it was knowing that these efforts take place while a bigger problem is bound to swallow all well meant smaller attempts that really sucked all the air from my soul.  This was indeed a beautiful try, the portions of coral surprisingly looked like true baby life, very cute, the size of my daughter's Calico Critters. I never thought something so small and rock-like looking could be so endearing.

The times I have delivered speeches, given interviews on behalf of Niijii Films or shown the film to groups a question tends to come out: "What have you accomplished so far? Has the film had any results in terms of policy changes, on people's awareness and commitment?" Every single time I pause for a second in the hope of getting a lightning of inspiration that will put a better answer in my mouth, a more optimistic take on the whole matter.  I begin to tell them about those few steps forward there have been so far, mention the Clean Water Act, all the research scientists are doing, the numerous screenings and festivals everywhere, the press, radio and tv, a meeting with the Minister for the Environment in some country, the handing of copies to decision makers worldwide, the increase of internet hits…  Then I pause again and say: "Are you asking me if I believe there is hope?  It depends on what you see as hope; not very much.  But I do know that this that I am doing here is exactly what I should be doing."
I am just scrubbing those tubes too.

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A LINK about redemption.