Low-frequency sonar used for training and testing can injure whales and other marine life, and disrupt their feeding and mating
A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the US Navy was wrongly allowed to use sonar in the nation’s oceans that could harm whales and other marine life.
The ninth circuit court of appeals reversed a lower court decision
upholding approval granted in 2012 for the Navy to use low-frequency
sonar for training, testing and routine operations.
The five-year approval covered peacetime operations in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea.
The appellate panel sent the matter back to the lower court for further proceedings.
A message seeking comment from representatives of the US Pacific Fleet in Honolulu was not immediately returned. Sonar, used to detect submarines, can injure whales, seals, dolphins and walruses and disrupt their feeding and mating.
The 2012 rules adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service
permitted Navy sonar use to affect about 30 whales and two dozen
pinnipeds; marine mammals with front and rear flippers such as seals and
sea lions, each year.
The Navy was required to shut down or delay sonar use if a marine
mammal was detected near the ship. Loud sonar pulses also were banned
near coastlines and in certain protected waters.
Environmental groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council,
filed a lawsuit in San Francisco in 2012, arguing the approval violated
the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
A blue whale swims near a cargo ship in the Santa Barbara Channel off the California coast. Photograph: John Calambokidis/AP/Cascadia Research
The appellate court ruled 3-0 that the approval rules failed to meet a
section of the protection act requiring peacetime oceanic programs to
have “the least practicable adverse impact on marine mammals”.
“We have every reason to believe that the Navy has been deliberate
and thoughtful in its plans to follow NMFS guidelines and limit
unnecessary harassment and harm to marine mammals,” the appellate ruling
said.
However, the panel concluded the fisheries service “did not give
adequate protection to areas of the world’s oceans flagged by its own
experts as biologically important,” according to a summary accompanying
the court’s decision.
“The result is that a meaningful proportion of the world’s marine mammal habitat is under-protected,” according to the decision.
Overseas Development Institute report says crackdown on illegal fishing,
and building up national fleets, could generate billions of dollars for
the region
If governments in western Africa could end illegal fishing by foreign
commercial vessels and build up national fleets and processing
industries, they could generate billions of dollars in extra wealth and
create around 300,000 jobs, according to a new report (pdf).
The devastating, social, economic and human consequences
of overfishing in western Africa’s coastal waters have been well
documented but the report, Western Africa’s Missing Fish, by the Overseas Development Institute and Spanish investigative journalists porCausa, lays bare the extent of lost opportunities across countries including Senegal, Mauritania, Liberia, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
“The scale of the losses is enormous. Instead of jobs and
development, the livelihoods of artisanal fishers are being decimated by
foreign fishing fleets, which operate virtually unchecked,” says
Alfonso Daniels, lead author of the report, which presents new evidence
of the extent and pattern of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing
(IUU) in the region – a global “epicentre” of overfishing.
For the first time, researchers used detailed satellite and tracking
data to analyse the two main practices of IUU fishing: the activities of
reefers – large-scale commercial vessels that receive and freeze fish
at sea – and the transportation of fish in large refrigerated containers
that are subject to less strict reporting requirements.
In 2013, they followed reefers off the coast of western Africa and
found vessels from China, Holland and South Korea operating there, with
fish exported globally.
Among the 35 reefers operating in the region
that year, routes were consistent with the transfer of catches from
fishing vessels to reefers, including inside the exclusive fishing
waters of Senegal and Ivory Coast, countries that have banned
ship-to-ship transfers of catches.
The 120 m long Russian super trawler trawler Mikhail Verbitsky ishing in West Africa waters. Foreign fleets are plundering the West African waters while fish stocks are diminishing
Bycatch like dolphins end up dead or dying in the giant nets of the super trawler
The
tracking data also revealed the extent of IUU fishing via transfers on
to container ships.
Daniels says that 84% of illegal fish is taken out
of the region in this way, making it hard to stop illegally caught fish
entering the global supply chain.
“Container ships are ignored,” he
says.
“Whether willingly or not, the industry has found a way to take
out fish under the radar.”
The report says that a “crisis of global governance on the world’s
oceans” has meant that international efforts to prevent the plunder of
marine resources are likely to fail.
Daniels says it is essential to
address all parts of the chain, highlighting three measures to combat
IUU fishing: a ban on transferring fish at sea, strengthening
regulations, and investment in patrols in “hot spots” of IUU fishing.
Artisanal fishers are at the frontline of the crisis.
Usmane
Kpanabum, a fisherman on the island of Sherbro off Sierra Leone, says
his nets were slashed by South Korean trawlers that fish inside the
five-mile coastal zone reserved for artisanal fishers.
Sierra Leone had
just two coastguard boats to patrol its entire coastline in 2013.
If regional governments end illegal fishing and build up fish
processing industries and indigenous fishing fleets, they could generate
$3.3bn (£2.5bn), eight times the $400m they currently raise by selling
foreign rights, says the report.
It could also have a significant impact on food security, improving
the diet and nutrition of people in the region as more households would
consume fish protein normally exported by foreign vessels.
Daniels says: “We have a situation not only of missed opportunity but
where resources are being exhausted very quickly – Nigeria and Senegal
have very little left at all.”
According to one previous estimate, more than half of the stocks in
the stretch of coast from Senegal to Nigeria alone have been overfished,
with IUU fishing believed to account for between one third and half of
the total catch. In 2012, according to data from USAid, Senegal was
losing around $300m due to IUU fishing – equivalent to 2% of GDP.
“There are several global epicentres of overfishing – including the
Pacific and South America – but western Africa is one of the worst
because of the impact of overfishing on problems such as the drugs
trade, organised crime and illegal migration,” Daniels says.
D-646 Latouche-Treville, French fregate for anti-submarine warfare,
class F-70 Georges Leygues, 139 m length, 4910 tons vessel, with 240 crew members. A part of this movie is visible in the movie "Oceans" of Jacques Perrin & Jacques Cluzaud.
The RNZN vessel HMNZS Otago sailing through a storm in the Southern Ocean.
A new microscopic imaging system is revealing a never-before-seen view of the underwater world. Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have designed and built a diver-operated underwater microscope to study millimeter-scale processes as they occur naturally on the seafloor.
From The Conversation by Jules Jaffe, Andrew Mullen, Tali Treibitz
The Homo sapiens view of our world is all a matter of
perspective, and we need to remember that we’re among the larger
creatures on Earth.
At around 1.7 meters in length, we’re much closer in
size to the biggest animals that have ever lived – 30-meter-long blue
whales – than the viruses and bacteria that are less than one-millionth
our size.
Our relative size and their invisibility to our naked eye makes it
easy to forget that there are vastly more of those little guys than us –
not just in number, but also in mass and volume.
And they’re vital to
the health of our planet.
For example, every other breath of oxygen you
take is courtesy of the photosynthetic bacteria that live in the ocean.
As early microscope pioneer Antony Van Lewenhook discovered approximately 350 years ago, these little “animalcules” are in almost every nook and cranny
you can think of on Earth.
But until now, we haven’t been able to study
most microscopic forms of ocean life in their native marine habitats at
sufficient resolution to discern many of their miniature features.
This
is important, as there are thousands of different millimeter-sized
underwater creatures we previously couldn’t study unless they were
removed and brought to the lab.
BUM has a high magnification lens surrounded by focused LED lights and a companion computer with ceramic buttons.Andrew D. Mullen/UCSD
Our new Benthic Underwater Microscope (BUM) changes that.
In building our underwater microscopes, we are inspired by oceanographer Victor Smetacek’s question
of whether an in situ computerized telemicroscope could “do for
microbial ecology what Galileo’s telescope did for astronomy.”
Simply
put, we hope so. Underwater microscopy can help scientists tackle
research questions in new ways.
Using the BUM, we’ve already seen some
amazing new coral behaviors.
A glimpse of what we’ve been missing: Pocillopora polyps: a 2.8 x 2.4 mm field of view.
Andrew D. Mullen/UCSD
Underwater optics
When researchers bring marine samples back to the lab, it’s
impossible to exactly mimic the environment they came from – what we
observe might not perfectly reflect creatures' real lives. Better, then,
to bring the lab to the ocean.
For nearly five years now, our group has been tackling the technical challenges of underwater microscopy
with the goal of recording images of marine life at these miniature
scales.
We aim to explore microscopic life in a variety of natural
settings via underwater imaging and video systems.
Previously, there was no technology available to see these tiny
things from several centimeters away. The distance is important because
we needed to put our components in a waterproof bottle and look out
through an underwater port – placing us a bit away from our subjects.
Fortunately, with the commercial appearance of our hoped-for “long
working distance” lenses, miniature cameras and efficient LED lights, we
were able to assemble several underwater microscopes.
There were some technical challenges to overcome.
We had to figure
out how to illuminate a very tiny area while simultaneously focusing a
lens on precisely the same spot.
We also weren’t sure we could achieve
the mechanical stability necessary to keep our system still enough to
get great images.
And it was also paramount for a diver to be able to
control the system via a computer interface.
Have BUM, will travel.
Emily L. A. Kelly/UCSD
After 18 months of work, we’d invented the first underwater
microscope that a diver could carry into the field and use to take
pictures of seafloor inhabitants at nearly micrometer resolution.
Our
instrument allows us to clearly see features as small as one-hundredth
of a millimeter underwater. An additional feature, a squishy
electrically tunable lens, gives us the ability to rapidly focus on the
objects that we are imaging.
This allows us to capture all parts of an
object with substantial three-dimensional relief in focus.
The final system consists of two housings: one for the camera, lights
and the lenses, the other for a computer controlling the camera along
with a live diver interface and data storage.
After we finished testing the instrument in California, we traveled
to Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel, to work with colleagues at
the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences.
With their help, we set up our system in the Red Sea’s well-preserved coral reefs.
In deploying the instrument, we use an undersea tripod to position
the camera housing while resting the computer housing on the seafloor.
We then control the system’s parameters through a series of computer
screens that culminate in recording the scene.
A newly visible underwater world
On our test dives, we saw with unprecedented detail a strange
behavior of coral polyps, the tiny individual animals that make up a
coral colony.
In a never-before-seen action, the polyps periodically
embraced their neighbors, potentially to share food, in what we called
polyp kissing.
In situ time series video of interaction between the coral Platygyra and four different stimuli.
In each frame Platygyra is on the left: top-left Galaxea, top right Stylophora, bottom left mesh net filled with Artemia, and bottom right another colony of Platygyra.
Images were captured at night with red light at a frame rate of 1 FPS. The playback is at a speed that is 480 times faster.
(Courtesy Andrew D. Mullen/UCSD)
Not all of the interactions were so amorous; when we put different
kinds of corals side by side, microscopic warfare broke out.
We were
surprised to see that at the same proximity, corals of the same species
were at peace.
This is shown in the lower right corner of the video –
the two Platygyra corals are not fighting.
The polyp communities that share connective tissue work together to
ward off predators.
They’re not hostile to other colonies of their own
species.
But when confronted with foreigners, or when aiming to expand
their territory, they can extrude their digestive organs and rub a
digestive enzyme all over the bodies of their enemies, as seen in the
videos.
We hypothesize, as others have, that some set of chemicals they emit mediates the corals' awareness of each other.
The BUM was able to document algae
beginning to colonize the surface of bleached corals that were still
alive. 2.82 x 2.36 mm field-of-view.
Andrew D. Mullen/UCSD
In a further investigation, this time in Hawaii, we used the Benthic
Underwater Microscope to view the sad consequences of a large-scale
bleaching event.
For the first time in a natural setting, we examined
how algae colonize and overgrow bleached corals at the microscale. Where to focus in the future
Now that we have this new instrument, hopefully it will open up a
whole new realm of scientific inquiry.
We imagine researchers will be
eager to point the underwater microscope at kelp forests, rocky reefs,
sea grass beds and mangroves.
For instance, we’re interested in exploring how kelp propagate as
microscopic baby kelp seeds land on rocky areas of the seafloor.
Their
success and density is important for understanding how kelp forests emerge.
And there are plenty of other questions about coral reefs that the
BUM could help investigate.
How do coral diseases progress?
What happens
on a microscopic level when coral polyps bleach?
How do corals deal
with sedimentation and shed sand?
How do coral larvae grow and how are
they recruited by a colony?
How do corals and algae compete?
With the new ability to see and record these processes happening in
real-time in the ocean, researchers could make some interesting new
discoveries.
As such, we have made our systems available to the
scientific community – we plan to aid researchers by traveling to their
work sites and taking photos and videos.
And we’re always thinking about further improvements – developing a
next generation of underwater instruments that have higher frame rates
and even better resolution.
In addition, there is one enchanting
frontier to think about: underwater microscopic virtual reality – an
immersive new way for scientists and everyone else to explore the
wonders of the oceans.
