The UN's New York climate summit is guilty of a major sin of omission

Climate Change & The Global Ocean

From The Guardian by David Miliband, José María Figueres and Trevor Manuel are co-chairs of the Global Oceans Commission

Despite a key role in cutting emissions, the ocean is completely absent from Ban Ki-moon’s climate meeting for world leaders

On Tuesday, the UN headquarters in New York is hosting the largest gathering of world leaders ever to address climate change.
It is an enormously important event, intended to catalyze action ahead of next year’s Paris conference – where leaders have pledged to reach a new global climate agreement, and a great credit to secretary general Ban Ki-moon and his team.

But the summit is guilty of a major sin of omission: the ocean, over two-thirds of the planet, is completely absent from the programme.
It is neither one of the eight “action areas” on which governments and other key players are invited to announce bold new commitments, nor one of the “thematic sessions” where states and stakeholders will share solutions.
The summit is keeping its feet firmly on dry land and is highlighting the huge gap between scientific knowledge and political action.
The Global Ocean Commission is dismayed that the ocean appears to have been relegated to the status of an afterthought, something to bring up occasionally in the context of other, apparently more essential, concerns.
This is particularly shocking coming at the end of a year in which the ocean has been consistently listed among the most critical elements of the climate change challenge, by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and numerous scientific studies and reports – including our own report released in June.

This short introductory video offers the opportunity to explore the complexity of the relationship between ocean and climate and the many ways they affect one another.

Science is showing us that there can be no solution to the climate challenge without a healthy ocean, which is currently in sharp decline.
The ocean absorbs a quarter of man-made CO2 emissions, and has taken on 90% of the extra heat generated since the industrial revolution.
Without the ocean to clean up our mess, the impacts of climate change would already be far more severe.

This is where the alarm bells about ocean health should start ringing: human pressures on the ocean – both its chemical composition and its immeasurable biodiversity – are undermining its ability to carry out the essential services on which we all depend.
The latest edition of the WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin warns that the increasing acidification of the ocean has caused its capacity to absorb our carbon emissions to drop to 70% what it was at the start of the industrial era, and this could fall to just 20% by the end of the century.

While ocean acidification is a big problem for marine life and humans, there are things we can all do to slow the rate of change.

Alarming current rates of ocean acidification, unprecedented in 300 million years, are directly caused by that fact that it takes in 4 kg of CO2 per day per person on the planet.
It is therefore right that the overriding goal of negotiations must be to reduce carbon emissions as much, as rapidly and as equitably as possible.
But, in parallel, we must boost resilience to climate change.
This includes taking urgent steps to reverse ocean decline and stimulate its recovery.

Sea creatures are not only valuable for food, they are directly involved in the climate equation.
A study we commissioned earlier this year found that deep-sea life alone absorbs 1.5bn tonnes of CO2 and buries half a billion tonnes of carbon on the seabed every year – a sequestration service worth US$148bn, compared with the paltry US$16bn that high seas fishing fleets get for their annual catch.
This adds up to a convincing climate argument for taking rapid steps.
It is ludicrous to perpetuate a situation where governments and businesses are scrambling to try and reduce their carbon emissions, while we carry on squandering a natural resource that is providing that service for free.

By omitting the ocean, the summit is sending a very negative message.
As an event billed as an opportunity to catalyze commitments to action in the areas most important for keeping global temperature increase below 2C.
Yet the message is painfully clear: despite the science, for some at least the ocean is not a top priority for climate action.
It is not enough for the ocean to be an uncredited crosscutting issue; it must be front and centre as the world puts together its long-awaited plan of attack.
The ocean is both a victim of, and a fundamental part of the solution to, climate change.
It is completely out of step with reality not to highlight it as a major concern at the upcoming climate summit or at forthcoming climate negotiations and meetings.
Even at this eleventh hour we believe it can and must be done.

Following Nemo: Clownfish make epic ocean journeys

Clownfish from James Orrow

From National Geographic by Jason Bittel 

Turns out finding Nemo could take a while. A new study reveals that baby clownfish can travel up to 250 miles (400 kilometers) in search of a new reef—an almost unthinkable distance for a creature just a few millimeters long.

Scientists already knew that clownfish larvae hatch in the safety of their parents’ sea anemone, but then leave this sanctuary in search of a home of their own.

 

A spine-cheek clownfish nestles in its bulb tentacle sea anemone. 

Photograph by David Doubilet, National Geographic Creative

This is the opposite of the plot in Pixar’s Finding Nemo, in which a father clownfish, Marvin, sets out across the open ocean to find his son Nemo after he was caught in an amateur aquarist’s net.
(Read more about clownfish in National Geographic magazine.)
But until recently, scientists didn’t know just how truly epic the voyage was.
“This study is the first to directly measure long-distance dispersal [of clownfish larvae] over hundreds of kilometers,” study co-author Stephen Simpson, a marine biologist at the U.K.’s University of Exeter, said by email.

Fishy Accents

Tracking larvae has always been extremely difficult—after all, it’s not as if you can attach a GPS tag or GoPro camera to such a tiny organism.
So instead of tracking a single larva’s trek, Simpson and his team caught hundreds of Omani clownfish (Amphiprion omanensis) living in two coral reefs that are hundreds of kilometers apart off the southern coast of Oman. (See a map of where clownfish live in the world.)
The team removed a tiny part of each fish’s fin before releasing them unharmed into the ocean.
They then ran a DNA analysis on these fins, which revealed that fish living on Reef A have a different genetic signature than a fish living on Reef B, according to the study, published September 17 in the journal PLOS ONE.
The scientists liken these signatures to accents that are as easily recognizable as the difference between someone from New York City and someone from London.
By comparing the DNA signatures from the fin samples, the team proved what they’d long suspected—the two reefs were swapping clownfish despite being so far apart.
(See more coral reef pictures.)

“That larval fish can disperse between remote reef locations is impressive,” said David Coughlin, a professor of biology at Widener University in Pennsylvania who wasn’t involved in the study.
“However, it seems likely that some small number of larval fishes would end up at other reef locations as a matter of chance.”

In other words, the ocean’s currents probably have a greater impact on where the little fishies end up than which way they point their minuscule fins.
In fact, the team’s research showed that greater numbers of larvae traveled from the northern reef to the southern reef, and this mirrored the predominant current of the ocean.

Into the Great Wide Open

If you’re picturing a tiny, bright orange clownfish larvae plunging headlong into the high seas—stop.
Nearly see-through and smaller than a grain of rice, clownfish larvae don’t look much like Nemo. These defenseless youngsters also have it tough from the get-go.
The larvae can’t metamorphose into adults until they find a host anemone.
Other animals, like lobsters, may spend nearly a year in this open-ocean phase, called the pelagic larval duration (PLD).
However, the PLD of this species of clownfish lasts just two to three weeks, limiting the amount of time they can travel and find a new home. (See beautiful pictures of clownfish and anemones.)
And they’re easy prey: Of the many thousands of clownfish that hatch, only a lucky few will ever reach a reef—and most of those will be eaten within the first 24 hours, study co-author Hugo Harrison, a research fellow with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said by email.

“These kids don’t have it easy,” Harrison said.
“Pretty much everything is out there to eat them!”
For instance, clownfish larvae must escape hungry mouths large and small, from enormous filter feeders like baleen whales to tiny jellyfish, shrimp, copepods, and even zooplankton.

Why Risk It?

If there’s so much danger in the open ocean, why do clownfish venture out at all?
Because dispersing to new environments is “crucial” for the animals, said Harrison.
Traveling far from home ensures genetic diversity among the fish, and mixing up genes serves as a buffer against extinction.
It also allows species to colonize new habitats as they become available or to recolonize areas that were previously disturbed or depleted.
(Also see “Do You Know Where Your Aquarium Fish Come From?”)
Overall, the paper’s authors think the research could shed new light on just how connected even seemingly isolated marine populations are and may even help scientists develop and better manage marine reserves in the future.
In any event, the next time your kids want to watch Finding Nemo, you can tell them all about the real-life struggles of clownfish and their young.
Though you might need to censor it a bit.  

Links :

• DailyMail : Finding Nemo comes true! Researchers find young clownfish travel up to 400km when they are just a week old
• GeoGarage blog : Finding Nemo 3D - 10 funniest scenes in Finding Nemo / The reality of ‘Finding Nemo’s’ marine life
  

I am a surfer

I Am A Surfer | INDIE ALASKA from Alaska Public Media

There isn't a whole lot of surfing going on in Alaska, but Homer based Scott Dickerson aims to change that.

Surfing in Alaska is experienced by a very few and forgotten by not one of them.
While we don’t always remember the individual waves ridden, or even the specific sessions, it’s the whole adventure that is so memorable.
It’s the rawness and beauty of the total wilderness that we discover waves in that sticks in our daydreams.
Those mornings after a long stormy night when there’s a bit of frost on the deck of the boat but the wind is calm, the stars are out and the only thing you can hear is the roaring of surf outside the bay.

Norway, the slow way : the route of the Hurtigruten

 Enjoy the complete cruise of M/S Nordnorge from Bergen to Kirkenes in 37 minutes.

The original footage was 8040 minutes. The speed in this timelapse varies between 100x to 300x normal speed.

Footage is from the live broadcast "Hurtigruten Minutt for Minutt" aired on television in June, 2011.

Links :

•  NYTimes by Reif Larsen : A journey in which I travel north, on the world’s most beautiful voyage, searching for the specter of my grandfather and a glimpse of the ever-elusive midnight sun.
  

Photos reveal China building on reefs in disputed waters

Johnson South Reef which China calls Chiga Reef with the Marine GeoGarage

From SMH by Lindsay Murdoch

Spy photographs obtained by Fairfax Media reveal that China is rapidly building artificial islands on reefs in fiercely disputed areas of the South China Sea.

For centuries they were dots in turquoise waters, home only to sea birds.
But the latest images show that land reclamation and construction is underway on Kennan and Burgos islands in the heart of the Spratly Islands and on its eastern and western extremes, as China aggressively presses territorial claims in the resource-rich waters.

 left picture : 31 March 2014 / right picture : 7 August 2014

CNES 2014, distribution Astrium Services/Spot Image SA/IHS

 China's reclamation on Mabini Reef (Depart. Foreign Affairs Philippines)

The United States warned last week that China's accelerated land reclamation work had proved "intimidating and worrisome" for other regional countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam.

 Burgos Reef, June 2014. Materials for constructing breakers and dredging appear.

US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel, the senior US diplomat for East Asia, said that while Beijing rightly points out it is not the only claimant country to have carried out such work "the pace of China's reclamation in the sensitive disputed waters of the South China Sea vastly outstrips what other claimants have done in the past by many orders of magnitude."
"What I think the effect of what they are doing is to destabilise the situation and make it harder, not easier, for the claimants to resolve their claims peacefully," he said.
The US has stepped up surveillance flights over the region, despite Chinese protests, including reportedly from bases in east Malaysia.

Burgos Reef, July 29, 2014.

The reclaimed portion appears with an altered shoreline that has been reinforced by breakers.

Carl Thayer, an expert on the South China Sea from the University of New South Wales, said that while the photographs do not support speculation China is building military bases or airports on the islands they support the "official Chinese position that land reclamation and other construction activities will improve the quality of life for Chinese living on these artificial islands."
"This basic infrastructure could support economic activities, including rudimentary medical facilities and, if the Chinese were so inclined, serve as lilypads to small search and rescue aircraft," Professor Thayer said.
"These photographs alert analysts to keep a close watching brief on Chinese activities and to adjust assessments of their military utility as construction continues."

Kennan Reef, April 2014.
Waterways are dredged while excavated residue is used to reinforce the land.

Defence analysts in the US and Asia have been tracking the movements of a 127-metre Chinese dredging ship, the Tian Jing Hao, that is believed to have transformed at least six reefs into artificial islands this year, sucking up the seabed and disgorging it on reefs at the rate of 4,500 cubic metres per hour.
Tensions were heightened in the region in May when China moved an oil drilling platform into an area of the sea disputed with Vietnam which prompted an eruption of anti-Chinese rioting in Vietnam.
The Philippines has attempted to shore up its claims in the sea, releasing dozens of ancient map which officials said show that China's historical southernmost territory was always Hainan island, just off the Chinese coast.

Kennan Reef, July 29, 2014.
An increased number of construction equipment, materials and container vans
used as shelter for the workers appear.

Philippine officials said the maps dating from the Song Dynasty in the year 960 do not include Scarborough Shoal as Chinese territory, an area where China has been engaged in a acrimonious stand-off with the Philippines.
The Philippines, a close US ally, has brought a case to a United Nations court in The Hague challenging China's sovereignty claims.
China claims the near entirety of the South China Sea, a major maritime thoroughfare that is also claimed by Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei.

Links :

• BBC : China's island factory 
• Philstar : China reclaiming land in 5 reefs? 
• ChinaDailyMail : China speeds up building artificial island on Johnson South Reef, in defiance of Philippines protests 
• DW : Beijing seeking to 'change facts' in South China Sea
• GeoGarage blog : South China Sea tension mounts near Filipino shipwreck / The Law of the Seas and the Spratly Islands dispute / New map boosts China's maritime claims