Marine Population Halved in 40 Years -Report

Humans catching fish faster than they can reproduce, while also destroying their nurseries —WWF

Population sizes of vertebrate species—mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish—have declined by 52 percent over the last 40 years, says a new report.

These findings coincide with the growing decline of marine habitats, where the deforestation rate of mangroves exceeds even the loss of forests by 3-5 times…; and almost one-third of all seagrasses have been lost.

The study has highlighted the following factors in the population decline:

• Overfishing
• Decline of habitats/ destruction of nurseries
• Climate change
• Ocean acidification due to excessive absorption of carbon dioxide

“Human activity has severely damaged the ocean by catching fish faster than they can reproduce while also destroying their nurseries,” said head of WWF International.

The report authors have analyzed 5,829 populations of 1,200 species of marine creatures since 1970.

Populations of some commercial fish stocks including tuna, mackerel and bonito, have declined by  almost three-quarters (74%).

“An index for Scrombidae, based on data from 58 populations of 17 species, shows a decline of 74 per cent between 1970 and 2010. While the most rapid decline is between 1976 and 1990, there is currently no sign of overall recovery at a global level,” said the report.

Some deep-sea fish populations in the North Atlantic have also declined by 72 percent over the last 40 years.

“Largest Extinction Event” Caused by “Acid Oceans”

Earth’s “worst die-off” caused by “drop in ocean pH” —Report

Massive amounts of carbon dioxide released during colossal volcanic eruptions in Siberia may have turned the world’s oceans dangerously acidic 252 million years ago, causing a global environmental catastrophe that killed more than 90 percent of all species, according to a new study published Thursday.

“The largest mass extinction in Earth’s history occurred at the Permian-Triassic boundary 252 million years ago. Several ideas have been proposed for what devastated marine life, but scant direct evidence exists,” says the study.

“Now, locked in limestone that was formed in shallow seawater offshore of the supercontinent Pangaea, scientists [say they have] have found an isotopic signal to support a sharp drop in pH,” according to a report summary.

The volcanoes spewed trillions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, some of which was dissolved in the oceans, lowering the pH and dangerously acidifying the water and weakening marine creatures’ ability to form calciferous shells.

“It appears that, although the oceans buffered the acidifying effects of carbon release from contemporary pulses of volcanism, buffering failed when volcanism increased during the formation of the Siberian Traps. The result was a widespread drop in ocean pH and the elimination of shell-forming organisms.”

The eruptions, thought to be the most powerful explosions occurred over the past 500 million years, lasted for a million years, spanning the boundary between the Permian and and Triassic Period, and resulting in the extinction event that occurred over a period of 60,000 years, said the researchers.

Permian-Triassic extinction event supposedly exceeded even the K-T extinction [officially, Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event] that occurred 66 million years ago and that allegedly erased the dinosaurs and many other animals, i.e, 75% of all species.

‘Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction’

Abstract

Ocean acidification triggered by Siberian Trap volcanism was a possible kill mechanism for the Permo-Triassic Boundary mass extinction, but direct evidence for an acidification event is lacking. We present a high-resolution seawater pH record across this interval, using boron isotope data combined with a quantitative modeling approach. In the latest Permian, increased ocean alkalinity primed the Earth system with a low level of atmospheric CO2 and a high ocean buffering capacity. The first phase of extinction was coincident with a slow injection of carbon into the atmosphere, and ocean pH remained stable. During the second extinction pulse, however, a rapid and large injection of carbon caused an abrupt acidification event that drove the preferential loss of heavily calcified marine biota.

M. O. Clarkson, S. A. Kasemann, R. Wood, T. M. Lenton, S. J. Daines, S. Richoz, F. Ohnemueller, A. Meixner, S. W. Poulton, E. T. Tipper
Science 10 April 2015:
vol. 348 no. 6231 pp. 229-232
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa0193

Super Typhoon Headed Towards Taiwan, Okinawa

DISASTER CALENDAR SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,268 Days Left

[September 25, 2012] Mass die-offs resulting from human impact and the planetary response to the anthropogenic assault could occur by early 2016. 

• SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,268 Days Left to the ‘Worst Day’ in Human History

• Symbolic countdown to the ‘worst day’ in human history began on May 15, 2011 ...

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Global Disasters/ Significant Events

JELAWAT Intensifies to a Super Typhoon with 265kph Winds

Super Typhoon JELAWAT, described as “violent,” is currently packing maximum sustained winds of about 265 kilometer  per hour (kph), with wind gusts exceeding 325 kph, moving NNW in the Philippines Sea at forward speeds of about 12kph.

• The Super Storm could top maximum sustained winds of 280kph in the next 12 hours, according to models.

SUPER TYPHOON JELAWAT  – Vis/IR Sat Image.  Source: CIMSS

Other Disasters, Significant Events

• California, USA. A wildfire 50 miles east of San Diego has destroyed at least 3 dozen buildings including 20 houses, threatening more homes and forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate.
  • At least a dozen other homes have reportedly been damaged by the fire.
  • The 3,000-acre blaze may have started in Mexico, officials said.

• Philippines Sea. Typhoon EWINIAR (TY 19W), currently positioned NNW of Mariana Islands, is heading north towards Tokyo, Japan with sustained winds of about 75kph.

• Pacific Ocean.  MIRIAM, a category 2Bg hurricane, targets Baja, California.

Global

• Island Nations.  Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World (PDF file)

Global Disasters: Links, Forecasts and Background

• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Back to the Primordial Future
• The Fate of Energy Dinosaurs
• Mass Die-offs

• 2010 Disasters [Links to 2010 Disaster Calendar]
• Mega Disasters
• 2011 Disaster Calendar
• 2012 Disaster Calendar

GLOBAL WARNING

• WARNING: Human impact 2.85 x Earth’s diminishing carrying capacity
• WARNING: RAPID DECLINE IN PROGRESS!

Ocean Deserts Source of GHG

Dead zones contribute to climate change

Hypoxic Waters Elevate Greenhouse Gasses in the Atmosphere

A University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer says  that the increased amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) produced in aquatic dead zones, low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters, increases concentrations of the potent GHG in the atmosphere, worsening the impacts of global warming and contributing to the widening of ozone “holes” that allow harmful UV radiation through.

Eutrophication in the Sea of Azov.  Eutrophication is caused by human activity. (Source: NASA).

“As the volume of hypoxic waters move towards the sea surface and expands along our coasts, their ability to produce the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide increases,” explains Dr. Codispoti of the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory. “With low-oxygen waters currently producing about half of the ocean’s net nitrous oxide, we could see an additional significant atmospheric increase if these ‘dead zones’ continue to expand.”

N2O, a highly potent greenhouse gas, is present in minute concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere, and is now a major factor in the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer. “For the past 400,000 years, changes in atmospheric N2O appear to have roughly paralleled changes in carbon dioxide CO2 and have had modest impacts on climate, but this may change. Just as human activities may be causing an unprecedented rise in the terrestrial N2O sources, marine N2O production may also rise substantially as a result of nutrient pollution, warming waters and ocean acidification. Because the marine environment is a net producer of N2O, much of this production will be lost to the atmosphere, thus further intensifying its climatic impact,” a UMC news release said.

As dissolved oxygen levels decline in coastal waters, the N2O production increases. “Under well-oxygenated conditions, microbes produce N2O at low rates. But at oxygen concentrations decrease to hypoxic levels, these waters can increase their production of N2O.”

Shallow suboxic and hypoxic waters produce high rates of N2O “because respiration and biological turnover rates are higher near the sunlit waters where phytoplankton produce the fuel for respiration.”

“When suboxic waters (oxygen essentially absent) occur at depths of less than 300 feet, the combination of high respiration rates, and the peculiarities of a process called denitrification can cause N2O production rates to be 10,000 times higher than the average for the open ocean. The future of marine N2O production depends critically on what will happen to the roughly ten percent of the ocean volume that is hypoxic and suboxic.

“Nitrous oxide data from many coastal zones that contain low oxygen waters are sparse, including Chesapeake Bay,” said Dr. Codispoti. “We should intensify our observations of the relationship between low oxygen concentrations and nitrous oxide in coastal waters.”

The article “Interesting Times for Nitrous Oxide” appears in the March 12, 2010 edition of the journal Science.

University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science

Related Links:

• Eutrophication and Hypoxia
• Our oceans are dying
• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish

Amazing Images: Mandarinfish

As colorful as a butterfly!

Mandarinfish or mandarin dragonet (Synchiropus splendidus) in aquarium-Muséum Liège (Belgium). Credit: Luc Viatour. GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or later.

Native to the Pacific [an area extending from the Ryukyu Islands to northern Australia,] the tiny [6cm long] mandarinfish are reef dwellers, and feed on small crustaceans.

Related Links:

• Rising CO2 accelerates coral bleaching: study

Terrible Ocean Headlines

Even the average high school grad could have made an educated guess …

About one third of the world’s annual emissions of CO2 is absorbed by the surface of the oceans forming carbonic acid (ancient name acid of air or aerial acid), H₂CO_3, which is increasing the acidity of the oceans to as much as 7.7 pH in some areas off the California coast. [Pre-industrial (1700s) ocean pH: 8.179]

Ocean Acidity Kills Corals. Photo Credit: Associated Press. Image may be subject to copyright!

“We were completely surprised because people had been looking at the effect of acidification on calcified structures of marine animals, but there was no evidence to suggest it was affecting non-calcified structures, like a sperm or an egg,” lead-scientist Jane Williamson from Macquarie University told Reuters on Friday.

“It is widely believed that seawater is chemically well-buffered, but these results show that the acidification process already well underway may threaten the viability of many marine species,” Williamson said.

The sea urchins study found a link between increased ocean acidity and a reduction in fertility (Credit: ABC News). Image may be subject to copyright!

“What we have now is evidence that the world’s marine life is far more sensitive to ocean acidification than first suspected, and that means our oceans may be very different places in the not-too-distant future.”

Related Links:

• World Oceans in Extreme Danger
• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂
• The Ocean’s Carbon Balance
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV

Up to 410 dead zones with a combined area of about 250,000km² and counting!

Summertime satellite observations of ocean color from MODIS/Aqua show highly turbid waters which may include large blooms of phytoplankton extending from the mouth of the Mississippi River all the way to the Texas coast. When these blooms die and sink to the bottom, bacterial decomposition strips oxygen from the surrounding water, creating an environment very difficult for marine life to survive in. Reds and oranges represent high concentrations of phytoplankton and river sediment. Image taken by NASA and provided courtesy of the NASA Mississippi Dead Zone web site.

No of Dead Zones

• 1970: 40 dead zones
• 1980: 65
• 1990: 135
• 2000: 305
• 2008: 410 dead zones with a combined area of about 250,000km²

“The biggest one measures about 30,000 square miles in the Baltic Sea, the researchers said. This is followed in size by one in the Gulf of Mexico starting at the mouth of the Mississippi River in the United States and one at the mouth of China’s Yangtze River in the East China Sea.” Reuters reported.

“It’s not sort of a local or regional problem, which is how it was thought of in the past,” said Robert Diaz of the College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “It is actually a global problem.”

“Most of it is agricultural-based, but there is a lot of industrial nitrogen in there, too, if you consider electric generation industrial,” added Diaz.

Related Links:

• Eutrophication and Hypoxia
• Congratulations! We Are Breaking Another Record: Our Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico
• Dead Zones
• Our Oceans [Index Page]
• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish
• Marsification of Earth

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Southern Ocean Carbon Sink

From NASA’s Earth Observatory:

If you drove to work or school this morning or used electricity to power the computer on which you’re looking at this image, chances are you released carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, people released about 7.8 billion tons (7.8 gigatons) of carbon into the atmosphere in 2005 by burning fossil fuels and making cement, and that number grows every year. What happens to all of the carbon dioxide that people release into the atmosphere? About half stays in the atmosphere, where it warms Earth, and the other half is absorbed by growing plants on land and by the ocean.

As people have put more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the ocean has responded by soaking up more carbon dioxide—a trend scientists expected to continue for many years. But in 2007, a team of scientists reported in the journal Science that between 1981 and 2004 carbon dioxide concentrations in the Southern Ocean didn’t change at all, even though global atmospheric levels continued to rise. This graph shows the changes scientists expected to see (blue line) compared to their estimate of actual carbon dioxide absorption (red line). The results suggested that the Southern Ocean was no longer keeping pace with human carbon dioxide emissions.

Why has the Southern Ocean started to lag behind human emissions? The answer, believes Corinne Le Quéré, is in the wind. An ocean scientist at the University of East Anglia, Le Quéré led the study that discovered the Southern Ocean’s change of pace. Le Quéré modeled the mechanisms that influence how the ocean takes up carbon and found that winds increased between 1981 and 2004. Winds stirred the ocean and enhanced the upwelling of deep, carbon-rich water. The ocean releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in areas where deep water comes to the surface, so increased upwelling allowed the ocean to vent more carbon dioxide. This increased venting made it look like the Southern Ocean was no longer taking up carbon dioxide as quickly as people were pumping it into the atmosphere.

Full article and references are available at: Southern Ocean Carbon Sink

Related Links:

• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV :  Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.

• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’

• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.

• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.

• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!

Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV

Wild Facts Series: Just when you thought the oceans were dying painlessly!

Carbon Emissions Make Oceans Corrosive!

‘Acidified’ Water Threatens Marine Life on the Continental Shelf from Canada to Mexico: NOAA

Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico last summer. The ocean water on the western North American continental shelf was previously thought not to be “acidified.”

“Ocean acidification” is caused by the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, a process which makes water corrosive.

Effects of increasing carbon dioxide and temperature on coral reefs. (NOAA Coral Reef Watch)

“Acidification of the Earth’s ocean water could have far-reaching impacts on the health of our near-shore environment, and on the sustainability of ecosystems that support human populations through nourishment and jobs,” said Richard W. Spinrad, NOAA assistant administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research. “This research is vital to understanding the processes within the ocean, as well as the consequences of a carbon-rich atmosphere.”

“Our findings represent the first evidence that a large section of the North American continental shelf is seasonally impacted by ocean acidification,” said Feely. “This means that ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on our continental shelf right now.”

“While this absorption provides a great service to humans by significantly reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and decreasing the effects of global warming, the change in the ocean chemistry affects marine life, particularly organisms with calcium carbonate shells, such as corals, mussels, mollusks, and small creatures in the early stages of the food chain,” said Feely.

NOAA said: “Previous studies found ocean acidification at deeper depths farther from shore. The researchers said that the movement of the corrosive water appears to happen during the upwhelling season during the spring and summer, when winds bring CO2 -rich water up from depths of about 400-600 feet onto the continental shelf. The water that upwells off of the North American Pacific coast has been away from the surface for about 50 years.

Typical coral-reef community observed in the U.S. Virgin Islands. [Species lables: the image to view labels: Ma, boulder star coral (Montastrea annularis); Dc, knobby brain coral (Diploria clivosa); Pa, mustard hill coral (Porites astreoides); Pp, finger coral (Porites porites); D, dead coral (probably Porites astreoides); O, octocoral (soft coral); S, sponge.] Photograph by Nathan Smiley, USGS.

“The field study collected samples from Queen Charlotte Sound, Canada, to San Gregorio Baja California Sur, Mexico. The closest they found corrosive water was about four miles off of the northern California coast.”

“We did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end of the century,” said Sabine. “Because of this effort, we have a baseline for future observations as we continue to study and monitor the relationship of biological and physical processes and their ability to respond to ocean acidification.”

“We did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end of the century,” said Sabine. “Because of this effort, we have a baseline for future observations as we continue to study and monitor the relationship of biological and physical processes and their ability to respond to ocean acidification.”

“When the upwelled water was last at the surface, it was exposed to an atmosphere with much less CO2 than today and future upwelled waters will probably be more acidic than today’s because of increasing atmospheric CO2,” said Hales, a professor of chemical oceanography, who is also funded by NASA.

“We don’t know how this will affect species living in the zone below the level of the lowest tides, out to the edge of the continental shelf,” said Ianson, an oceanographer. “We do know that organisms like corals or pteropods are affected by water saturated with CO2. The impacts on other species, such as shellfish and other juvenile fish that have economic significance, are not yet fully understood.”

“In Baja California, we have several Mediterranean-climate coastal lagoons where the main external physical and biogeochemical forcing is from the neighboring coastal ocean, strongly influenced by upwelling,” said Hernandez-Ayon, a coastal oceanographer. “We are concerned about these areas because they play an important role as nurseries and feeding grounds of juvenile fish populations but are also are ideal sites for shellfish aquaculture.” More …

What is Bleaching?

Corals are very sensitive to temperature change: a 1–2º C change in local temperature above their normal summer maximum can lead to a phenomenon called ‘bleaching’, whereby the corals expel their vital algal symbionts (algae which live in the cells of the coral), leaving the coral tissues translucent.

Bleached Coral (Pocillopora) NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

In 1998, a single bleaching event led to the loss of almost 20% of the world’s living coral. Corals can recover from these events but repeated episodes are likely to weaken the coral ecosystem, making them more susceptible to disease and causing a loss of biodiversity. (Source)

How will ocean acidification affect marine life?

Corals, calcareous phytoplankton, mussels, snails, sea urchins and other marine organisms use calcium (Ca) and carbonate (CO3) in seawater to construct their calcium carbonate (CaCO3) shells or skeletons. As the pH decreases, carbonate becomes less available, which makes it more difficult for organisms to secrete CaCO3 to form their skeletal material. For animals in general, including invertebrates and some fish, CO2 accumulation and lowered pH may result in acidosis, or a build up of carbonic acid in the organism’s body fluids. This can lead to lowered immune response, metabolic depression, behavioral depression affecting physical activity and reproduction, and asphyxiation. Since the oceans have never experienced such a rapid acidification, it is not clear if ecosystems have the ability to adapt to these changes (1,2). Effects of ocean acidification on organisms and ecosystems are still poorly understood. Over the last few years, research has intensified significantly to fill the many knowledge gaps. (Source)

Related Links:

• International Scientists Find ‘Acidified’ Water on the Continental Shelf from Canada to Mexico
• How will ocean acidification affect marine life ?
• Ocean Acidification
• Integrated Coral Observing Network

• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish
• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study
• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island
  
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I