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

 As advanced celebration of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker tomorrow, here are a few links, photos, videos and news for you all, stuffed inside the shoes you are putting out tonight:

    •A team of scientists at Santa Cruz's University of California have spent the past three years studying the submarine springs at Puerto Morelos, Mexico.  The springs offer a preview of sorts of the fate of coral reef ecosystems in a less basic (damaged by Ocean Acidification) marine environment.  The submarine springs, known as "ojos", are common along the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula.  For thousands of years limestone "karst" landforms near the coast have featured underground drainage systems that discharge brackish water at the ojos.  The discharged water has lower pH than the surrounding seawater.  Professor Adina Paytan and the rest of the team monitored ten of those "eyes" (ojos) and conducted ecological surveys around each site.  "This study has some good news and some bad news for corals," said Paytan, coauthor of a paper published last november in the journal Coral Reefs,  "the good news is that some species of corals are able to calcify and grow at very low pH.  The bad news is that these are not the ones that build the framework of the coral reefs.  So if this is an indication of what will happen with future ocean acidification, the reefs will not be as we know them today."
Read more HERE.

Download THIS extremely informative PDF.

    •Following up on such efforts as the World Seed Bank, Australia's Taronga Western Plains Zoo has started developing a "frozen zoo", a bank of genetic material from endangered species.  Some frozen sperm and IVF embryonic cells from two coral species present in the Great Barrier Reef were flown this past November to the New South Wales zoo.  The vials, stored now in liquid nitrogen, contain enough material to produce more than a million new corals even hundreds of years from now.  Those new corals could be used in some future re-population or to increase the genetic diversity of particular reefs.  The work was carried out by the zoo's manager of research and conservation programs, Dr Rebecca Spindler, and by Dr Mary Hagedorn, a world expert in coral IVF at the Smithsonian Institution.  They worked with two common staghorn species (Acropora millepora and Acropora tenuis), but Dr Hagedorn understands they now "need to sit with Australian coral scientists and ask which are the most important species for Australia [to store]". Read more on THIS Sydney Morning Herald piece.

Photo by Rebecca Spindler

    •Northwest oyster die-offs made the news in newspapers, television and the internet last month.  THIS is a good piece by Elizabeth Grossman for Yale Environment 360 on the hatcheries and the problems this $73 million a year industry has had to endure since 2006.  The particular water conditions of this region, in which colder, more acidic waters surge from the bottom of the ocean, has already made it very difficult, at times impossible, for oyster larvae to grow.  The article has interesting quotes by NOAA's Dick Feely, George Waldbusser from Oregon State University and Benoit Eudeline, chief scientist at the Taylor Shellfish Hatchery.

    •Virginia's oyster industry is taking very seriously the news about Pacific Northwest farms being affected by Ocean Acidification and is trying to take proactive monitoring measures and lessons learned in other areas for the more-than-probable future.  Although cases of damage from acidification have only been noticed in Maine, the Atlantic coast could begin to suffer from the same oyster larvae hatching problems seen West. READ MORE HERE.

    •A large ceramic coral reef is awaiting those who visit the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.  The 10 by 15 feet piece was created by artist Courtney Mattison with the title "Our Changing Seas: A Coral Reef Story".  In the words of Ms. Mattison it "combines marine conservation science and policy, fine art and social sciences".  The large mural work is part of a group exhibition called "Beneath the Surface: Rediscovering a World Worth Conserving".
More info from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program HERE.

    •Scientists at UCSB's Marine Science Institute recently confirmed the critical role algae-clearing fish have in coral growth and recovery.  At Moorea Coral Reef in French Polynesia the researchers discovered that the region's herbivorous fish clear the way for coral growth by eating algae from around the reef.
A combination of a series of cyclones and the raise in numbers of crown-of-thornes sea stars had brought the previous 40-45% outer reef coral coverage (which is significantly high) to almost zero, but the corals are beginning to make a comeback.  Although algae usually take over a cleared area, fish prevented them from reaching a level of coverage that kept baby corals from growing.  MSI scientists believe more effort should be put in the future into preserving fringe reefs, where algae-consuming fish grow up, in order to have a healthy population of adult fish in the future.
More info HERE.

    •A year or two ago we already wrote about this: Mussel shells are perfect recoding devices into which scientists can examine water acidity and other significant data.  Dr. Cathy Pfister from the University of Chicago and her colleagues have been taking samples from 1,000 year old middens from the Makah Nation in Washington State, comparing them with shells from the 1970s and 2000s and measured the changes.  

The conclusion is that they are even greater than would be expected from the process of Ocean Acidification, local upwelling or the changes in nitrate and phosphate.
You can download a copy of the recently published PLoS ONE manuscript HERE.
A VIDEO from the Seadoc Society with Cathy Pfister HERE.

     •The University of New Hampshire will benefit from the more than $1.7 million federal funding recently awarded by NOAA to NEARCOOS, the Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems.  The money will go to the University of Maine, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the Universities of Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut and the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, in Nova Scotia as well.  The University of New Hampshire plans to use these moneys to support a wave buoy implemented with instruments to continue measuring Ocean Acidification at Great Bay.
Read more HERE.

By Daniel de la Calle

Here are a few Ocean and Ocean Acidification news bits found while surfing the web over the past week.  I hope some are news to you:

    •How long has man been catching fish from the open ocean? 42,000 years at the very least. Archeologists from the Australian National University in Canberra have found two broken fish hooks made from shells amongst 38,000 fish bones in a cave in East Timor.  It is not known how the fish were caught, but researchers speculate that it was done from boats or rafts using either nets or fiber lines with hooks.  Published three days ago in the journal SCIENCE. READ IT HERE.

The fishing hooks. Scale is in millimeters.

  •According a study in the current issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences by researchers led by David Bellwood from James Cook University in Queensland, the depletion of large fish due to overfishing can lead to a reef containing only small fish that cannot perform crucial cleaning tasks for the development and sprouting of new colonies.  Research focused on parrotfish across 18 locations from the western Indian and Central Pacific Oceans and concluded that large parrotfish are the real efficient pruners and cleaners of vast reef systems thanks to their jaw size.

Chlorunus Microrhinos parrotfish from the North coast of East Timor.  Photo by Nick Hobgood, Wikipedia.  

In their absence, small fish can only do their light grazing activities that are known as "dusting".  An increase in the number of small fish means the dusting is overdone while the mowing and weeding is being neglected.  Once again, a lesson on moderation and the fragility of ecological balance.  Read more HERE or HERE.

    •Colleen Flanigan, an environmental artist and metallurgist from the US is going to use Biorock (a trademark technology developed in the 1970s that runs a low-voltage electric current through metal in saltwater, causing the accumulation of limestone) to grow a coral colony on a metal sculpture.  The sculpture was built in Cancún last June; it has a 15 by 6 feet sinuous design inspired by the DNA double helix and is planned to be lowered via crane into the shallow waters of MUSA, the underwater museum off Cancún I wrote about last year, the one with the 400 life-size submerged sculptures by Jason deCaires Taylor.  The electrolysis taking place with Biorock lowers the acidity of water and could one day make possible small "artificial" niches of corals in a marine environment that might otherwise be hostile to polyps. READ MORE HERE.

Artist Colleen Flanigan. Photo by Ray Whitehouse/The Oregonian

    •Going much farther back than the aforementioned 42,000 years, to some 250 million ago, about 95% of our planet's marine life and some 70% of all terrestrial species vanished forever as wildfires covered the planet, oceans acidified and temperatures soared.  A research team led by Shu-Zhong Shen, member of China's Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology believes evidence points to a "runaway greenhouse event".  A study published last week on Science gives the most detailed picture yet on how the Permian mass extinction unfolded.  Our current problem comes from fossil fuel burnings, while during the Permian period the culprits were volcanoes releasing massive amounts of CO2 and methane.  Geological and also fossil records point to several "kill mechanisms", such as fires, acidification, loss of oxygen in the oceans and even hypercapnia (too much CO2 build up in organisms, causing death).  The world's climate at the end of the Permian changed "from basically like today, where you had hot tropics and cooler polar regions, to a world in which everything was a tropics", says Charles Henderson, of the University of Calgary.  This catastrophe did not happen overnight, though. It took thousands of years to die out and the bulk of the extinctions most probably occurred over a 20,000 year period.  Link to an article on the VANCOUVER SUN covering this information.

    •PDF on the Impact of Ocean Acidification on Reproduction, Early Development and Settlement of Marine Organisms HERE.

    •The Carnegie Institution for Science series of videos about Ocean Acidification research done in Australia continues.  This is the one from November 12th:


    •Interested in the Effects of Ocean Acidification on Sexual Reproduction and Early Life History Stages of Reef-Building Corals? HERE you can quench that thirst.

    •An 8 minute podcast on Ocean Acidification with Joan Kleypas, 2011 Heinz Award winner. From EarthSky.org

    •Mark Hays , biology professor at Georgia Tech, writes from Fiji about his research and corals at the New York Times Scientists At Work blog.
http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/a-disappearing-underwater-world/

    •Ph.D. graduate research assistant position in zooplankton ecology and biological oceanography at the School of Oceanography of the University of Washington. INFO HERE.

    •In need of some beautiful time lapse views of our planet from Space to be reminded of its magnificence and our technical achievements?:

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

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: