Waiting to Inhale: Deep-Ocean Low-Oxygen Zones Spreading to Shallower Coastal Waters

Oxygen-deprived areas in the world's oceans usually found in deeper water are moving up to offshore areas and threatening coastal marine ecosystems by spurring the die-off of some species and overpopulation of others. By Michael Tennesen A plague of oxygen-deprived waters from the deep ocean is creeping up over the continental shelves off the Pacific Northwest and forcing marine species there to relocate or die. Since 2002 tongues of hypoxic, or low-oxygen, waters from deeper areas offshore have slipped into shallower near-shore environments off the Oregon coast, although not close enough to be oxygenated by the waves. The problem stems from oxygen reduction in deep water, a phenomenon that some scientists are observing in oceans worldwide, and that may be related to climate change. The hypoxic seawater is distinct from the well-known "dead zones" that form at the mouths of the Mississippi and other rivers around the world. Those areas result from agricultural runoff, which lead to algae blooms that consume oxygen. Rather, the Pacific Northwest problem is broader and more mysterious.Shelf waters off the Pacific Northwest extend anywhere from 30 to 80 kilometers offshore and lie beneath the California Current, one of the richest marine ecosystems in the world. Francis Chan, a senior research professor at Oregon State University, has been monitoring the area's low-oxygen events, which normally peak in the late summer months. "Oxygen is just about the most crucial necessity for anything biological," he says.*Chan is one of a number of scientists alarmed at the dramatically reduced oxygen levels showing up in these waters. In fact, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife put submersible vehicles off Oregon's coast during a hypoxic event that went anoxic (oxygenless) in 2006, he says, monitoring conditions and recording numerous carcasses of sea stars, sea cucumbers, marine worms and fish.**Lothar Stramma, a physical oceanographer at the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel in Germany and his associates describe the hypoxic problem as global in a paper accepted for publication in Deep-Sea Research , stating that tropical low-oxygen zones have expanded horizontally and vertically around the world, and that subsurface oxygen has decreased adjacent to most continental shelves. Low-oxygen zones where large ocean species cannot live have increased by close to 5.2 million square kilometers since the 1960s, the team found. Where this expansion intersects with the coastal shelf, oxygen-deprived waters are slipping up and over shelf floors, killing off creatures such as crabs, mussels and scallops. Such bottom-dwellers normally have a lot to eat in such rich ecosystems, but these species are sensitive to oxygen loss. Similarly, the anoxic ocean at the end of the Permian period (around 250 million years ago) was associated with elevated carbon dioxide and massive terrestrial and oceanic extinctions.Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., says that as oxygen-starved layers move upward, large animals such as marlin, tuna and sailfish will be forced into ever-shallower waters. "That may be good for fishermen, but it also makes it a lot easier for fishermen to fish these species out of the ocean," says Levin, who worked with Stramma on Deep-Sea Research .Biodiversity will be the big loser as these low-oxygen zones knock out some species and promote others. Among the big winners is the Humboldt squid, which can tolerate low oxygen; it has expanded its range in the northeastern Pacific in the past 10 years, from the Gulf of California all the way to southeastern Alaska. Biologists worry about the hunting pressure the squid will put on other species.Increases in jellyfish blooms also are likely to be part of the process. Levin encountered such blooms recently in low-oxygen environments off India's coast, where "the jellyfish were as thick as soup," she says. Larval fish are especially susceptible to low-oxygen ocean zones. "Larvae are really a ball of cells with a mouth and a gut. There is only so much they can do. They're not as mobile as fish," she says. Reproducing female crustaceans and fish may be adversely affected, as well.Levin says that the Pacific's deeper currents keep its waters less oxygenated than those of the Atlantic. "It's what we call 'old water,' since deeper Pacific waters haven't been at the surface in a long time," Levin says. Stramma thinks that some of the Pacific's oxygen problems could also result from El Niño. But climate models predict reductions in dissolved oxygen in all oceans as average global air and sea temperatures rise, and this may be the main driver of what is happening there, she says.Chan says that lighter warm water creates a cap over the colder depths, making it less likely that deeper waters—where everything from "plankton to whale poop" sucks up oxygen—will rise to mix with the oxygenated surface. Plus, warmer water simply holds less oxygen. According to Chan, most hypoxia-intolerant species engulfed in low-oxygen waters quickly move away. "But for those whose stress response is to hunker down and wait," he adds, "they will die."

Tipping Elements in the Earth System

A Special Feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents the latest scientific insights on so-called tipping elements in the planetary environment. These elements have been identified as the most vulnerable large-scale components of the Earth System that may be profoundly altered by human interference. If one or more of those components is tipped -- especially in the course of global warming -- then the age of remarkably stable environmental conditions on Earth throughout the Holocene may end quickly and irreversibly.

This Special Feature was designed and edited by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). It is meant to make a major contribution to the emerging field of sustainability science. The authors involved analyse altogether eight Earth System components. Three of them, the biggest dust source on our planet, oceanic biogeochemical cycles, and marine methane hydrates, are discussed in depth as potential tipping elements for the first time ever.

"It is the cardinal question of Earth System and sustainability science whether global warming actually triggers singular transformations of crucial components of the planetary machinery," says Schellnhuber. Singular transformations -- as opposed to smooth linear and nonlinear ones -- would dramatically alter the environment in which human civilisations have developed and thrived over many millennia. "Currently, the climate system still operates in the Holocene mode, but the research presented here underlines that a rise of the global mean temperature beyond two degrees Celsius might push the world into singular-change terrain and therefore needs to be avoided," Schellnhuber adds.

The PIK scientist has introduced the tipping-elements concept into the research community some ten years ago. It describes components of the Earth System that could be pushed past critical thresholds by anthropogenic forcing, so that they may "tip" into qualitatively different modes of operation. In a recent seminal paper, Tim Lenton from the University of East Anglia, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and an international group of colleagues presented a formal definition and compiled a short-list of the nine tipping elements ranked as the most policy-relevant. The current Special Feature examines five of these in much more depth: the El Niño/Southern Oscillation phenomenon, Arctic sea-ice and the great polar ice sheets, the Amazon rainforest, the major monsoon systems, and the circulation of ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean.

In their article, Matthias Hofmann and Stefan Rahmstorf, also from PIK, discuss the last topic, i.e. the stability properties of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The authors present new model simulations of the AMOC response to increased freshwater inflow into the North Atlantic. These challenge the hypothesis that the resulting circulation weakening and the possibility of abrupt oceanic change are just artefacts arising from model flaws. Rather, improving the physical realism of the model leads to a greater vulnerability of the projected AMOC stability.

A group of PIK scientists led by Anders Levermann show that every monsoon circulation inherently bears the possibility of an abrupt collapse. The reason is the moisture-advection feedback which is the core of any monsoon system and was captured in a conceptual model by the authors. The monsoon rains are essential for agriculture as the source of livelihood for several hundred million people in the pertinent regions, the authors state.

David Archer from the University of Chicago and his co-authors provide evidence that methane hydrates in ocean sediments should be regarded as a "slow tipping element" in the Earth's climate system. Global warming of some three degrees Celsius could lead to the escape of more than half of the relevant methane stocks, estimated 940 billion tons of carbon, on a millennial time-scale. This hydrate leakage could cause an additional rise in planetary temperature by 0.5 degrees Celsius. The authors tie this increase in global mean temperature to the methane, but it would persist through many millennia because methane is oxidised in about a decade to carbon dioxide, which continues to impact climate for many millennia.

Ulf Riebesell and colleagues from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) describe the oceans as a climate-system component which is presently undergoing major changes. The sea is not only warming, it is also becoming more acidic. Unbridled anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases could alter the cycling of carbon and nutrients in the surface ocean and might damage entire marine ecosystems. The authors conclude that the current level of knowledge allows no clear answer on whether tipping points in the marine ecosphere exist, but they regard some of the projected shifts in oceanic biogeochemistry and their impacts as severe.

Mojib Latif and Noel Keenlyside, also of IFM-GEOMAR, present a review of the complicated mechanisms ruling the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. It leads to strong temperature and precipitation fluctuations in the Equatorial Pacific from one year to another and has widespread effects on the global climate system. However, current climate models cannot capture the potential tipping point behaviour of the ENSO phenomenon, the authors resume. Given the potentially huge impacts on biological, chemical and socio-economic systems, the question whether global warming will fundamentally alter the ENSO dynamics in the future has to be investigated further.

A research team led by Richard Washington from the University of Oxford qualifies the biggest dust source on our planet, the Bodélé Depression in Chad, as a potential tipping element. This area in the southern Sahara releases huge plumes, which carry about 700,000 tons of dust towards the Atlantic and the Amazon basin. The authors explain that the so-deployed mineral aerosols play a vital role in transcontinental climatic and biophysical feedbacks. If regional wind patterns or surface erosivities changed due to anthropogenic interference, the dust export from the Bodélé Depression could be substantially modified at time scales as small as one season.

A research team headed by Yadvinder Malhi, also of the University of Oxford, has employed nineteen different global climate models to investigate, whether climate change could cause a large-scale dieback of Amazonian rainforest. The analysis based on a scenario with continuously increasing global emissions of greenhouse gases over the 21st century suggests that dry season water stress is likely to increase in parts of Amazonia. The researchers provide evidence that the Amazonian rainforest could reveal characteristic properties of a tipping element with the tendency to change into a seasonal forest.

In his paper on potential threshold behaviour of sea-ice and continental ice-sheets, Dirk Notz of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology concludes that tipping points more likely exist for the loss of the Greenland ice sheet and the West-Antarctic ice sheet than for the loss of Arctic sea-ice, which could recover rapidly in a cooler climate. Inland ice could be much more vulnerable to regional warming due to the lack of large internal stabilizing feedbacks as existing for the Arctic sea-ice dynamics. Melting of the continental ice-sheets could lead to rapid multi-meter rise in mean sea level over the coming centuries.

Finally, Nobel Laureate Mario Molina and his co-authors demand fast action from political and economic decision makers to avoid activation of tipping elements. They propose to strengthen the Montreal Protocol regarding substances that have high global-warming potentials. In particular, the scientists make strong cases for an accelerated phasing out of hydrochlorofluorocarbons and a massive reduction of the emissions of soot.

"After two decades of failed climate protection since the 1990 IPCC Report it is more doubtful than ever whether society will manage to confine global environmental change to sub-dangerous levels," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. The tipping-elements field is developing quickly into a broad and relevant research frontier domain, but the issues pose tough challenges for contemporary science. Practically none of the planetary cases studied can be either dismissed now -- by firmly ruling out a possible anthropogenic triggering of irregular dynamics -- or settled by providing reliable estimates for activation temperatures and reaction time scales. "Many of the papers sketch the research way forward, but it seems that we will have to live with at least another decade of tantalising ignorance concerning the most worrying potential impacts of global warming," says Schellnhuber.

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), via AlphaGalileo

Journal Reference:

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. Tipping Elements in Earth Systems Special Feature: Tipping elements in the Earth System. PNAS, December 7, 2009 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0911106106


Icebergs breaking off from the Dawes Glacier in the Endicott Arm. (Credit: iStockphoto/Joseph Gareri)

How Will Future Sea-Level Rise Linked to Climate Change Affect Coastal Areas?

The anticipated sea-level rise associated with climate change, including increased storminess, over the next 100 years and the impact on the nation's low-lying coastal infrastructure is the focus of a new, interdisciplinary study led by geologists at The Florida State University."Our hypothesis is that the historic storm record, which extends back only about 150 years, isn't a reliable indicator of true storm frequency, but the long-term geologic record is," said Joseph F. Donoghue, an associate professor of geology at Florida State University and the study's lead investigator. "This project is crucial because the rates of change in environmental parameters predicted for the near future are much greater than those of the past several millennia. For example, some of the worst-case sea-level rise scenarios predicted for the near future have not been experienced by the coastal system for more than 8,000 years."Funding for the research comes from a three-year, $1.03 million grant from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), an environmental science and technology initiative headed by the U.S. Department of Defense and administered in partnership with the Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.By 2012, the study is expected to produce methodologies and models that help coastal planners and managers in all low-lying coastal regions better understand, address and mitigate the near-future effects of sea-level rise -- an especially critical issue for the Sunshine State. The research team will perform its field work along the Gulf of Mexico coast in Northwest Florida, a region of the Florida Panhandle distinguished by rare coastal lakes, which harbor sediments that form an environmental record dating back thousands of years."We have decided to focus our field work on the Northwest Florida coast for several reasons besides its proximity to Florida State," Donoghue said. "In terms of major coastal infrastructure, the area has Eglin Air Force Base, one of the largest air bases in the U.S. In addition, the central Panhandle coast has natural features, including coastal lakes, that lend themselves particularly well to the kind of work we want to do."That work will employ a variety of possible scenarios for both sea level change and increased "storminess" -- more storms and more intense storms. Using models of coastal systems that include elements such as barrier islands, wetlands, estuaries and coastal groundwater supplies, the researchers will combine the various sea level and storm scenarios in multiple ways to gauge the potential effects.Florida State University geologist Steve Kish, a co-leader of the study, is responsible for gathering and interpreting the remote sensing data. To lay the groundwork, he has sought and found maps, photos and other records dating back about 150 years that show the evolution of the Northwest Florida coast. The documents reflect surprising rates of change for the coastline in the last two decades, including a retreat landward averaging about six to 10 feet per year.Meanwhile, a fast start on the field work has yielded significant early findings."We have been collecting sediment cores from some of the coastal lakes in Walton County," Donoghue said. "These lakes are unique. They are relatively long-lived, possibly 4,000 to 6,000 years old. Their bottom sediments contain a long, continuous record of coastal environmental conditions, including the occurrence of major storms. The lakes are situated behind barrier dunes, breached only during large storms that carry in marine water and overwash sand. As a result, the lake floors have a chemical and sedimentologic 'signature.'"The researchers are analyzing the lake sediment cores using radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analyses and standard sedimentologic measurements. They hope to obtain a long-term -- several thousand years -- geologic record of storm occurrence for the region."This long geologic record of storm frequency will be compared with the 150-year-old historic storm record," Donoghue said. "Using the geologic record to run our climate models would give us greater confidence in the model results, which we then would use to predict the near-future climate for the coastal region."Florida State University

'Hotspots' Of Human Impact On Coastal Areas Ranked

Coastal marine ecosystems are at risk worldwide as a result of human activities, according to scientists at UC Santa Barbara who have recently published a study in the Journal of Conservation Letters. The authors have performed the first integrated analysis of all coastal areas of the world.

"Resource management and conservation in coastal waters must address a litany of impacts from human activities, from the land, such as urban runoff and other types of pollution, and from the sea," said Benjamin S. Halpern, first author, who is based at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at UCSB.
"One of the great challenges is to decide where and how much to allocate limited resources to tackling these problems," he said. "Our results identify where it is absolutely imperative that land-based threats are addressed –– so-called hotspots of land-based impact –– and where these land-based sources of impact are minimal or can be ignored."
The hottest hotspot is at the mouth of the Mississippi River, explained Halpern, with the other top 10 in Asia and the Mediterranean. "These are areas where conservation efforts will almost certainly fail if they don't directly address what people are doing on land upstream from these locations."
Nutrient runoff from upstream farms has caused a persistent "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi runs into this body of water. The dead zone is caused by an overgrowth of algae that feeds on the nutrients and takes up most of the oxygen in the water.
The authors state that they have provided the first integrated analysis for all coastal areas of the world. They surveyed four key land-based drivers of ecological change:
nutrient input from agriculture in urban settings
organic pollutants derived from pesticides
inorganic pollutants from urban runoff
direct impact of human populations on coastal marine habitats.
Halpern explained that a large portion of the world's coastlines experience very little effect of what happens on land –– nearly half of the coastline and more than 90 percent of all coastal waters. "This is because a vast majority of the planet's landscape drains into relatively few very large rivers, that in turn affect a small amount of coastal area," said Halpern. "In these places with little impact from human activities on land, marine conservation can and needs to focus primarily on what is happening in the ocean. For example: fishing, climate change, invasive species, and commercial shipping."
Coauthors from NCEAS are Colin M. Ebert, Carrie V. Kappel, Matthew Perry, Kimberly A. Selkoe, and Shaun Walbridge. Fiorenza Micheli of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station and Elizabeth M. P. Madin of UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology are also co-authors. Selkoe is also affiliated with the University of Hawaii's Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.
NCEAS is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the National Marine Sanctuaries, and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship provided additional support for this research.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara.

Disappearing Seagrass Threatening Future Of Coastal Ecosystems Globally

An international team of scientists warns that accelerating losses of seagrasses across the globe threaten the immediate health and long-term sustainability of coastal ecosystems. The team has compiled and analyzed the first comprehensive global assessment of seagrass observations and found that 58 percent of world's seagrass meadows are currently declining.

The assessment, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows an acceleration of annual seagrass loss from less than 1 percent per year before 1940 to 7 percent per year since 1990. Based on more than 215 studies and 1,800 observations dating back to 1879, the assessment shows that seagrasses are disappearing at rates similar to coral reefs and tropical rainforests.
The team estimates that seagrasses have been disappearing at the rate of 110 square-kilometers (42.4 square-miles) per year since 1980 and cites two primary causes for the decline: direct impacts from coastal development and dredging activities, and indirect impacts of declining water quality.
"A recurring case of 'coastal syndrome' is causing the loss of seagrasses worldwide," said co-author Dr. William Dennison of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "The combination of growing urban centers, artificially hardened shorelines and declining natural resources has pushed coastal ecosystems out of balance. Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes."
"While the loss of seagrasses in coastal ecosystems is daunting, the rate of this loss is even more so," said co-author Dr. Robert Orth of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of the College of William and Mary. "With the loss of each meadow, we also lose the ecosystem services they provide to the fish and shellfish relying on these areas for nursery habitat. The consequences of continuing losses also extend far beyond the areas where seagrasses grow, as they export energy in the form of biomass and animals to other ecosystems including marshes and coral reefs."
"With 45 percent of the world's population living on the 5 percent of land adjacent to the coast, pressures on remaining coastal seagrass meadows are extremely intense," said co-author Dr. Tim Carruthers of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "As more and more people move to coastal areas, conditions only get tougher for seagrass meadows that remain."
Seagrasses profoundly influence the physical, chemical and biological environments of coastal waters. A unique group of submerged flowering plants, seagrasses provide critical habitat for aquatic life, alter water flow and can help mitigate the impact of nutrient and sediment pollution.
The assessment was conducted as a part of the Global Seagrass Trajectories Working Group, supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, California, through the National Science Foundation.
Journal reference:
Michelle Waycott, Carlos Duarte, Tim Carruthers, Bob Orth, Bill Dennison, Suzanne Olyarnik, Ainsley Calladine, Jim Fourqurean, Ken Heck, Randall Hughes, Gary Kendrick, Jud Kenworthy, Fred Short, and Susan Williams. Accelerating loss of seagrasses across the globe threatens coastal ecosystems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 29, 2009
Adapted from materials provided by University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

Genes from tiny marine algae suggest unsuspected avenues for new research

By sequencing the DNA of two tiny marine algae, a team of scientists has opened up a myriad of possibilities for new research in algal physiology, plant biology, and marine ecology. The project was led by Alexandra Worden at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI). The genome analyses involved a collaborative effort between MBARI, JGI, and an international consortium of scientists from multiple institutions, including University of Washington, Ghent University (Belgium), and Washington University in St. Louis. Initial discoveries from the research appear in the April 10, 2009 edition of Science magazine. Biologists generally agree that all land plants, from tiny mosses to giant redwoods, evolved from an ancestral green alga. Some of the closest representatives of these ancestral green algae living today are thought to be the Prasinophytes, a group of microscopic green algae found across the world's oceans. Microbial oceanographer Alexandra Worden led a team of scientists that sequenced the genomes of two Prasinophytes in the genus Micromonas. Each Micromonas cell is only about one fiftieth the width of a human hair. However, they are widespread and may serve as important links in marine food webs. They may also influence the amount of carbon dioxide the oceans take up from the atmosphere. Worden's team spent four years compiling a complete list of the approximately 21 million chemical building blocks (called bases) that make up Micromonas' DNA. The recent Science paper highlights key aspects of this genetic "Morse code." The paper also compares Micromonas' genes with genes found in other organisms.A microscopic alga with leaves? Worden and her fellow researchers discovered that Micromonas carries a significant number of genes that are not found in the genomes of other green algae (at least not in the five or six other species sequenced to date). Some of these genes, however, are found in land plants or bacteria. Worden's team is currently trying to find out the functions of these genes in Micromonas. Such information will help researchers better understand how Micromonas interacts with its environment and with other marine organisms. According to Worden, "One of our main findings is that some genes that were thought to be land-plant specific were also found in Micromonas. It's possible that land plants could have developed these genes and Micromonas also developed them. Or perhaps an organism (the ancestral alga) that preceded both land plants and Micromonas had them, which is the simpler explanation." For example, the researchers found evidence that Micromonas has genes that scientists previously temporally associated with the development of leafy plants. Obviously, Micromonas never developed leaves. Thus Worden's research suggests that such genes may have other functions that are not yet understood. Another unexpected finding was that Micromonas contains genes associated with sexual reproduction (as opposed to simply dividing into two cells asexually). As Worden says, "Formerly it was thought that these algae do not have sex. Now it really looks as though they do have sex. No one has seen it, but this could be because laboratory conditions are not correct for switching to this form of reproduction." Simply knowing Micromonas can reproduce sexually could lead to additional discoveries. Worden explains, "Now that we have the sequences for those genes [for sexual reproduction], we could look for them being expressed in the field. Then we could try to figure out the conditions triggering sexual reproduction and the ecological avenues it opens for Micromonas. In addition, if we could get Micromonas to reproduce sexually in the lab, we might be able to develop a system for permanently "knocking out" genes [deactivating or removing them from an organism's DNA] and advance our knowledge of their functional roles. We don't have such a system yet for any of the more widespread marine algae." Filling in the unknowns In addition to highlighting a number of genes whose functions are known from other organisms, Worden's team found that a large number of the genes in Micromonas have no known function. She explains, "We know they're real—they're expressed and we've seen them in other organisms—but they're not genes that anyone has characterized, so no one knows what they do." Worden continues, "As an ecologist starting out on this project, I was trying to find out what genes were `special' to each genome, or those shared by the two Micromonas strains but not other competitors. By looking at the function of such genes we could then learn more about the different niches of these organisms... It turns out that we don't yet know the function of many of these genes—but we know we need to target them. This highlights the grand challenge ahead. With a focused effort on cell biology, we will be able to discover the function of such genes. This will advance our understanding of these organisms and their ecology as well as metagenomic analyses. It's really basic cell biology, but the implications for doing ecological work are huge." Figuring out what these genes "do" could also help researchers in other fields, such as plant science. As Worden put it, "A lot of important agricultural plants are already sequenced. But there's a big difference between having the sequence and making meaning of the sequence. For example, there is a huge list of genes that contain 'domains of unknown function.' We've seen these domains in many organisms and we know they must be real, but we don't know their cellular function. If we can fill in such blanks, using these `simpler' organisms, we'd be doing everyone a favor." Finally, the research will help researchers understand how algae respond to changes in their environment. This should give scientists a better idea of how marine algae take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a central feature of the roles they play in mitigating greenhouse warming of the Earth. As Worden points out, "There is a lot of work that needs to be done integrating our discoveries with research being done on other marine microbes in order to understand more about community interaction, synergies, and how together they shape ecosystem responses. With this in mind we can develop a more mechanistic understanding of how carbon is moving within the marine environment and develop more sensitive tools for investigating carbon flow." Sequencing the genomes of two small marine algae may not seem to have many real-life benefits. But when you consider that these organisms share genes with other microbes and suites of genes with land plants, the possibilities are virtually endless. Worden and her team are looking forward to further exploration of the "toolbox" of genes used by the multitude of organisms that keep our planet green.

Flame Retardants Concern To US Coastal Ecosystems, NOAA Reports

NOAA scientists, in a first-of-its-kind report issued today, state that Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs), chemicals commonly used in commercial goods as flame retardants since the 1970s, are found in all United States coastal waters and the Great Lakes, with elevated levels near urban and industrial centers.

The new findings are in contrast to analysis of samples as far back as 1996 that identified PBDEs in only a limited number of sites around the nation.
Based on data from NOAA’s Mussel Watch Program, which has been monitoring coastal water contaminants for 24 years, the nationwide survey found that New York’s Hudson Raritan Estuary had the highest overall concentrations of PBDEs, both in sediments and shellfish. Individual sites with the highest PBDE measurements were found in shellfish taken from Anaheim Bay, Calif., and four sites in the Hudson Raritan Estuary.
Watersheds that include the Southern California Bight, Puget Sound, the central and eastern Gulf of Mexico off the Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla. coast, and Lake Michigan waters near Chicago and Gary, Ind. also were found to have high PBDE concentrations.
“This is a wake-up call for Americans concerned about the health of our coastal waters and their personal health,” said John H. Dunnigan, NOAA assistant administrator of the National Ocean Service. “Scientific evidence strongly documents that these contaminants impact the food web and action is needed to reduce the threats posed to aquatic resources and human health.”
PBDEs are man-made toxic chemicals used as flame retardants in a wide array of consumer products, including building materials, electronics, furnishings, motor vehicles, plastics, polyurethane foams and textiles since the 1970s. A growing body of research points to evidence that exposure to PBDEs may produce detrimental health effects in animals, including humans. Toxicological studies indicate that liver, thyroid and neurobehavioral development may be impaired by exposure to PBDEs. They are known to pass from mother to infant in breast milk.
Similar in chemical structure to polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, they have raised concerns among scientists and regulators that their impacts on human health will prove comparable. PBDE production has been banned in a number of European and Asian countries. In the U.S., production of most PBDE mixtures has been voluntarily discontinued.
The NOAA Mussel Watch survey found that the highest concentrations of PBDEs in the U.S. coastal zone were measured at industrial and urban locations. Still, the chemicals have been detected in remote places far from major sources, providing evidence of atmospheric transport. Significant sources of PBDEs introduction into the environment include runoff and municipal waste incineration and sewage outflows. Other pathways include leaching from aging consumer products, land application of sewage sludge as bio-solids, industrial discharges and accidental spills.
NOAA and the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project have recently held meetings with representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Geological Survey, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the California State Water Resources Control Board to discuss water quality monitoring of emerging contaminants. NOAA’s research and monitoring information found in this report will be used by relevant resource managers to better understand, assess and address the threats from PBDEs.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

Disaster declared after Australia oil spill

Authorities declared parts of Australia's northeast coast a disaster area Friday after tons of oil from a damaged cargo ship contaminated several beaches popular with tourists.Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh declared Moreton Island, Bribie Island and southern parts of the Sunshine Coast as disaster zones after a ship lost more than 30 tons of fuel when its hull was pierced by a container washed overboard."It may well be the worst environmental disaster Queensland has ever seen," Bligh told Australian Associated Press. The ship was capable of carrying 100 tons of oil and the spill was now much larger than initial reports indicated, she said.At least 60 kilometers (37 miles) of beach coastline had been covered by the slick, which came from the Hong Kong-flagged ship Pacific Adventurer after it was damaged on Tuesday in heavy seas generated by tropical cyclone Hamish.A team of environmental cleanup experts was on its way to the area and local people would be barred from the disaster zones to aid a cleanup, Bligh said, ordering an investigation."If there is any grounds for prosecution of this ship and its owners, we will not hesitate to take that action. We will also be pursuing them for compensation as this is going to be a very big clean-up cost," Bligh said.Environment experts said the clean-up would be delicate as cyclonic seas and high tides continued to erode beaches, carrying the spill into nearby rivers. But heavy seas were also helping to break up the slick and push it offshore, they said.The Sunshine coast is one of Australia's most popular tourist destinations with several major resort towns located not far from the spill area, including the coastal towns of Caloundra, Mooloolaba, Maroochydore and Noosa."It's certainly bigger than the first reports I was getting in terms of the extent of it and the magnitude of what's impacting our beaches," Sunshine Coast Council Environment Manager Stephen Skull told state radio.Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Clive Cook said the spill had already affected small numbers of local wildlife including seabirds and turtles.Marine experts are also searching for 31 containers of ammonium nitrate, used for making fertilizer and explosives, which were lost from a ship near the city of Brisbane.If the containers, which have 620 tons of ammonium nitrate, leak it could cause major algae blooms which would choke marine life in Moreton Bay, say marine scientists.(Reporting by Rob Taylor, editing by Sugita Katyal)

Plankton study helps forecast toxic tides

The coastal ocean can be likened to a parfait of enormous proportions. Rather than being homogeneous, it’s a layered affair of water, nutrients and organisms.
Among the layers are those that contain large concentrations of plankton. These layers are usually just a few yards below the surface, only a few feet thick but potentially miles long. They serve as ecological hot spots, providing food for other creatures. But they can also be the scene of huge algal blooms that cause toxic red tides.
Just how those plankton layers form has been unclear. Now in a paper in Science, William M. Durham and Roman Stocker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John O. Kessler of the University of Arizona have shown that plankton’s swimming and shape play a role.
Stocker, who studies the large-scale consequences of the motility of plankton, said that the single-celled organisms tended to swim upward during the day and down at night. If the water is still, they just go straight up and down.
But ocean currents set up layers of faster- and slower-moving water. At the boundary between two layers, shear forces occur that act on the plankton, causing them to swim in an inclined direction and, if the forces are strong enough, making them tumble and spin. Because they are no longer swimming upward, the tumbling plankton become trapped at this boundary, joined by more and more plankton as they swim up into the zone. The findings should help in efforts to forecast red tides, Stocker said.
``It points oceanographers in the right direction in terms of what they should measure to predict these things,” Stocker said. ``They need to measure vertical shear, and measure something about cell morphology.”— New York Times News Service

Antibiotic Resistance: Rising Concern In Marine Ecosystems

A team of scientists, speaking February 13 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called for new awareness of the potential for antibiotic-resistant illnesses from the marine environment, and pointed to the marine realm as a source for possible cures of those threats

The group stated that newly completed studies of ocean beach users point to an increasing risk of staph infections, and that current treatments for seafood poisoning may be less effective due to higher than expected antibiotic resistance. The group also asserts that new research has identified sponge and coral-derived chemicals with the potential for breaking down antibiotic resistant compounds and that could lead to new personalized medical treatments.
"While the marine environment can indeed be hostile to humans, it may also provide new resources to help reduce our risks from illnesses such as those caused by water borne staph or seafood poisoning," stated Paul Sandifer, Ph.D., former member of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, chief scientist of NOAA's Oceans and Human Health Initiative, and co-organizer of the symposium.
Carolyn Sotka, also with the NOAA Oceans and Human Health Initiative and lead organizer of the session, stated "It is critically important that we continue research on the complex interactions between the condition of our oceans and human health. Without doubt, this research will develop new understandings of ocean health risks and perhaps more importantly crucial discoveries that will lead to new solutions to looming public health problems."
Coral, Sponges Point To Personalized Medicine Potential
"We've found significant new tools to fight the antibiotic resistance war," says NOAA research scientist Peter Moeller, Ph.D., in describing the identification of new compounds derived from a sea sponge and corals.
"The first hit originates with new compounds that remove the shield bacteria utilize to protect themselves from antibiotics. The second hit is the discovery of novel antibiotics derived from marine organisms such as corals, sponges and marine microbes that fight even some of the worst infectious bacterial strains. With the variety of chemicals we find in the sea and their highly specific activities, medicines in the near future can be customized to individuals' needs, rather than relying on broad spectrum antibiotics."
The research team, a collaboration between scientists at NOAA's Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, S.C., the Medical University of South Carolina and researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., noticed a sponge that seemed to thrive despite being located in the midst of a dying coral reef. After extraction, testing showed that one of the isolated chemicals, algeliferin, breaks down a biofilm barrier that bacteria use to protect themselves from threats including antibiotics. The same chemical can also disrupt or inhibit formation of biofilm on a variety of bacteria previously resistant to antibiotics which could lead to both palliative and curative response treatment depending on the problem being addressed.
"This could lead to a new class of helper drugs and result in a rebirth for antibiotics no longer thought effective," notes Moeller. "Its potential application to prevent biofilm build-up in stents, intravenous lines and other medical uses is incredible."
The compound is currently being tested for a variety of medical uses and has gone through a second round of sophisticated toxicity screening and thus far shows no toxic effects.
Staph: A Beach Going Concern
Research, funded by multiple agencies and conducted by the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, found that swimmers using public ocean beaches increase their risk for exposure to staph organisms, and they may increase their risk for potential staph infections once they enter the water.
"Our study found that if you swim in subtropical marine waters, you have a significant chance , approximately 37 percent, of being exposed to staph — either yours or possibly that from someone else in the water with you," said Dr. Lisa Plano, a pediatrician and microbiologist with the Miller School of Medicine. Plano collaborated in the first large epidemiologic survey of beach users in recreational marine waters without a sewage source of pollution. "This exposure might lead to colonization or infection by water-borne bacteria which are shed from every person who enters the water. People who have open wounds or are immune-compromised are at greatest risk of infection."
The Miami research team does not advise avoiding beaches, but recommends that beach-goers take precautions to reduce risk by showering thoroughly before entering the water and after getting out. They also point out that while antibiotic resistant staph, commonly known as MRSA, has been increasingly found in diverse environments, including the marine environment, less than three percent of staph isolated from beach waters in their study was of the potentially virulent MRSA variety. More research is needed to understand how long staph (including MRSA) can live in coastal waters, and human uptake and infection rates associated with beach exposures.
Antibiotic Resistance in Seafood-borne Pathogens Increasing
Researchers at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science in West Boothbay Harbor, Maine, report that the frequency of antibiotic resistance in vibrio bacteria was significantly higher than expected. These findings suggest that the current treatment of vibirio infections should be re-examined, since these microbes are the leading cause of seafood-borne illness and death in the United States. The severity of these infections makes antibiotic resistance in vibrios a critical public health concern.
Naturally-occurring resistance to antibiotics among Vibrios may undermine the effectiveness of antibiotic treatment, but as yet this has not been extensively studied. Furthermore, antibiotics and other toxicants discharged into the waste stream by humans may increase the frequency of antibiotic-resistant Vibrio strains in contaminated coastal environments.
"We found resistance to all major classes of antibiotics routinely used to treat Vibrio infections, including aminoglycosides, tetracyclines, and cephalosporins," stated Bigelow's Ramunas Stepanauskas, Ph.D. "In contrast, we found that Vibrios were highly susceptible to carbapenems and new-generation fluoroquinolones, such as Imipenem and Ciprofloxacin. This information may be used to design better strategies to treat Vibrio infections."
Adapted from materials provided by National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Nutrient Pollution Chokes Marine And Freshwater Ecosystems

Protecting drinking water and preventing harmful coastal "dead zones", as well as eutrophication in many lakes, will require reducing both nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. Because streams and rivers are conduits to the sea, management strategies should be implemented along the land-to-ocean continuum. In most cases, strategies that focus only on one nutrient will fail.These policy recommendations were put forth by a team of distinguished scientists in the recent issue of Science, published February 20. Led by Dr. Daniel J. Conley, a marine ecologist at the GeoBiosphere Science Centre in Sweden and a Visiting Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, the paper reviews weaknesses in single-nutrient management strategies. In most cases, improving water quality and preserving coastal oceans will require a two-pronged approach.Plant growth is tied to nitrogen and phosphorus availability. Human activities have greatly increased the abundance of these nutrients, causing the overproduction of aquatic plants and algae. Nitrogen pollution is largely derived from agricultural fertilizers and emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels. Phosphorus pollution is tied primarily to wastewater treatment and detergents. Inputs to the landscape make their way to coastal areas through the drainage networks of rivers and streams.Dr. Gene E. Likens, one of the paper's authors and an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, comments, "Historically, environmental management strategies in freshwater systems have focused on reducing phosphorus pollution. While this has minimized freshwater algal blooms, it passed a great deal of nitrogen pollution on to coastal ecosystems, driving eutrophication and causing serious and widespread problems in those regions."These environmental problems include reductions in the oxygen levels of coastal water, which can cause "dead zones" and fish die-offs; the proliferation of undesirable plant growth; reductions in water quality; and the loss of important coastal fish habitat, such as sea grass and kelp beds.Likens stresses, "By focusing only on minimizing phosphorus in our fresh waters, and ignoring nitrogen inputs, existing management strategies are exacerbating the decline of coastal ecosystems. We need to stop passing the problem downstream and adopt dual-nutrient reduction strategies."Eutrophication is a problem of global concern. Worldwide, there are over 415 eutrophic coastal ecosystems. As a result of human population growth and increased pollution, this number continues to rise.The paper's authors included: Drs. Daniel J. Conley, Hans W. Paerl, Robert W. Howarth, Donald F. Boesch, Sybil P. Seitzinger, Karl E. Havens, Christiane Lancelot, and Gene E. Likens.Source: Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Cleaner waters attract sharks

Environmental protection of Sydney's beaches and harbor has created a cleaner marine environment, but is attracting sharks closer to shore chasing fish, say marine experts, after two shark attacks in two days.Fishermen say shark numbers are on the rise, but marine scientists say while there have been more sightings it is unclear whether there are more sharks off Sydney.A shark almost severed a surfer's arm in an attack just before dark at Sydney's famous Bondi Beach Thursday. The first attack at Bondi since 1929.A navy diver was attacked in Sydney Harbor near the Opera House Wednesday, losing his hand and he may lose his leg.New South Wales state Primary Industries Minister Ian MacDonald said Friday he would order a survey of shark numbers off Sydney, after the attacks and as a result of more sightings."I think you'll find that the protective measures that have been put in place by governments in recent years have halted the decline of many species of sharks," MacDonald said on Friday."Coupled with some improved environment conditions, plus a reduction in fishing efforts in parts of the state, would mean shark numbers could enhance," MacDonald told local radio."The reports I am getting from people spotting sharks, there seems to be a build up in sharks in the estuaries, as well as along the ocean shore," he said.PATROLS INCREASED, BONDI CLOSEDMany shark species, including the Great White, are protected in Australian waters. There are 30 sharks, including the Great White, on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's threatened species list.Beach rescue helicopter patrols were increased along Sydney's beaches Friday and Bondi Beach was closed for the morning, but some surfers still ventured out into the waves."Shark sightings have increased, particularly in the past five to six years," said Harry Mitchell who conducts aerial shark patrols over Sydney's beaches.Mitchell said cleaner ocean waters had made it easier to spot sharks from the aerial patrol. "Shark sightings do not necessarily mean shark numbers have increased," he said.Bondi Beach lifeguard Bruce Hopkins said sharks regularly swam into Bondi, despite shark nets aimed at protecting swimmers."We usually get all types of sharks come through Bondi. We get hammerheads and the grey nurse ... with the occasional tiger or bull shark. It's nothing out of the ordinary," he said.NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service said sharks were increasingly common in Sydney Harbor, particularly in February and March as they chase seasonal fish into the harbor."I guess it's the downside of the environmental controls ... 20 or 30 years ago the harbor was a very difficult place to be for a fish, these days it's actually quite beautiful," said the service's John Dengate.In the past 10 years Sydney Harbor has become a much clearer marine environment due to a reduction in commercial shipping, less foreshore marine industry, a ban on waste discharge and boat paint containing lead, and better stormwater control measures. Sydney's beaches have also become cleaner due to the installation of offshore sewage treatment plants and better stormwater controls. While large stretches of Sydney's coastline are now protected marine sanctuaries to encourage marine life. Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA), whose volunteers patrol beaches, called for calm Friday. "It is important to recognize that there is always some inherent risk when using an environment inhabited by sharks," said Barry Bruce, a scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization and SLSA shark advisor. "The risk of shark-related incidents varies according to the time of day, time of year, the geographic location and species of shark in the area," said Bruce. The SLSA advises people not to swim at dawn and dusk, when sharks usually feed, or in known shark feeding areas, such as estuaries or harbors. The last fatal attack occurred in December 2008, when a Great White attacked a 51-year-old man while he was snorkeling off a beach south of Perth in Western Australia. There have only been a total of 56 fatal shark attacks in Australia in the past 50 years, or an average of about 1 a year, says the Australian Shark Attack File.

Polarized Light Leads Animals Astray: 'Ecological Traps' Cause Animal Behaviors That Can Lead To Death

Human-made light sources can alter natural light cycles, causing animals that rely on light cues to make mistakes when moving through their environment. In the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, a collaboration of ecologists, biologists and biophysicists has now shown that in addition to direct light, cues from polarized light can trigger animal behaviors leading to injury and often death.

Artificial light that occurs at unnatural times or places – often called light pollution – can attract or repulse animals, resulting in increased predation, migrating in the wrong direction, choosing bad nest sites or mates, collisions with artificial structures and reduced time available to spend looking for food, just to name a few. In a classic example, baby sea turtles use the direction of star- and moonlight reflected off the water surface to help them find the ocean when they emerge from their beach nests; in urbanized areas, many turtles turn the wrong way and migrate toward the brighter lights of buildings or streetlamps.
"Environmental cues, such as the intensity of light, that animals use to make decisions occur at different levels of severity in the natural world," explains Bruce Robertson, an ecologist at Michigan State University. "When cues become unnaturally intense, animals can respond unnaturally strongly to them." That heightened response, he says, happens because of the way humans have changed the environment.
Smooth, dark buildings, vehicles and even roads can be mistaken by insects and other creatures for water creating “ecological traps” that jeopardize animal populations and fragile ecosystems. It’s the polarized light reflected from asphalt roads, windows – even plastic sheets and oil spills – that to some species mimics the surface of the water they use to breed and feed. The resulting confusion could drastically disrupt mating and feeding routines and lead insects and animals into contact with vehicles and other dangers, Bruce Robertson said.
In their study, lead author Gabor Horvath, Robertson and their colleagues explain that many animals are also thrown off course by light reflecting from man-made structures. The darker and smoother a surface is, the more highly polarized its reflected light. In most cases, artificial polarized light symbolizes one thing to animals.
"For example, the primary source of horizontally polarized light in nature is water," says Robertson. "Biologists discovered in the 1980s that such polarized light is an amazingly reliable cue for finding bodies of water."
Especially in the case of dragonflies and other insects, which often lay their eggs and spend their first phase of life in ponds, streams and lakes, mistaking human-made objects for water can be deadly. Horizontal, shiny, dark surfaces – such as dark glass surfaces of buildings, asphalt, dark-colored cars and black plastic sheeting – reflect horizontally polarized light that is more strongly polarized than that reflected by water, which augments the animals' attraction to it. Polarized light pollution can disrupt the entire food web in an ecosystem: When insects mistake the sheen of an oil slick for water, their predators often follow the insects to the source and risk becoming trapped and drowning, as in the La Brea tar pits of Los Angeles and other oil-slicked lakes around the world.
Even in the absence of a physical trap, if the attraction is great enough, animals can't remove themselves from a polarized light source, ultimately causing death from dehydration and exhaustion. For example, a dragonfly laying its eggs on a shiny black highway may become paralyzed by attraction to the pavement after laying its eggs, effectively dooming its fate and that of its offspring. These so-called ecological traps occur when environmental change happens more quickly than animals can evolve to react to it. If large numbers of animals fall victim to these false cues, says Robertson, it could cause populations to decline, perhaps to extinction.
There are several ways humans can ameliorate the effects of their overlarge dark, shiny structures. Preliminary studies show that white hatch marks on roads can prevent insects from mistaking them for bodies of water. The addition of white curtains to shiny black buildings, suggests Robertson, also deters insects, bats and birds.
"It's yet another case where we're faced with a choice between what's more expensive or what's better for biodiversity," Robertson says. "Aquatic insects are the foundation of the food web, and what's harmful to them is harmful to entire ecosystems and the services they provide."
Adapted from materials provided by Ecological Society of America, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Baby Fish In Polluted San Francisco Estuary Waters Are Stunted And Deformed

Striped bass in the San Francisco Estuary are contaminated before birth with a toxic mix of pesticides, industrial chemicals and flame retardants that their mothers acquire from estuary waters and food sources and pass on to their eggs, say UC Davis researchers.

Using new analytical techniques, the researchers found that offspring of estuary fish had underdeveloped brains, inadequate energy supplies and dysfunctional livers. They grew slower and were smaller than offspring of hatchery fish raised in clean water.

"This is one of the first studies examining the effects of real-world contaminant mixtures on growth and development in wildlife," said study lead author David Ostrach, a research scientist at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. He said the findings have implications far beyond fish, because the estuary is the water source for two-thirds of the people and most of the farms in California.

"If the fish living in this water are not healthy and are passing on contaminants to their young, what is happening to the people who use the water, are exposed to the same chemicals or eat the fish?" Ostrach said.

"We should be asking hard questions about the nature and source of these contaminants, as well as acting to stop the ongoing pollution and mitigate these current problems."

The new study, published online Nov. 24 by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of a series of reports by Ostrach and UC Davis colleagues on investigations they began in 1988. Their goal is to better understand the reasons for plummeting fish populations in the estuary, an enormous California region that includes the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay.

The estuary is one of the world's most important water supplies for urban use and agriculture, and is also one of the most contaminated aquatic ecosystems.

The ominous decline in estuary populations of striped bass, delta smelt, longfin smelt and threadfin shad, named the "pelagic organism decline," or POD, by the region's environmental scientists, was first reported at the turn of the century and has continued to worsen through 2007.

Ostrach's lab at UC Davis is part of the multi-agency POD research team and charged with understanding contaminant effects and other environmental stressors on the entire life cycle of striped bass.

Studies of striped bass are useful because, first, they are a key indicator of San Francisco Estuary ecosystem health and, second, because contaminant levels and effects in the fish could predict the same in people. For example, one of the contaminants found in the fish in this study, PDBEs, have been found in Bay Area women's breast milk at levels 100 times those measured in women elsewhere in the world.

The new study details how Ostrach and his team caught gravid female striped bass in the Upper Sacramento River, then compared the river fishes' eggs and hatchlings (larvae) to offspring of identical but uncontaminated fish raised in a hatchery.

In the river-caught fishes' offspring, the UC Davis researchers found harmful amounts of PBDEs, PCBs and 16 pesticides.

PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) are widely used flame retardants; PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are chemicals once used in making a range of products, from paper goods to electric transformers; and the pesticides detected include some currently widely used in agriculture, such as chlorpyrifos and dieldren, and others banned decades ago, such as DDT.

These compounds are known to cause myriad problems in both young and adult organisms, including skeletal and organ deformities and dysfunction; changes in hormone function (endocrine disruption); and changes in behavior. Some of the effects are permanent. Furthermore, Ostrach said, when the compounds are combined, the effects can be increased by several orders of magnitude.

Ostrach's co-authors Janine Low-Marchelli and Shaleah Whiteman are former UC Davis undergraduate students. Co-author Kai Eder was Ostrach's postdoctoral scholar in Joseph Zinkl's laboratory in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

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Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Davis.

Environmental fugitives get own most-wanted list

The government is starting a different kind of most-wanted list — for environmental fugitives accused of assaulting nature.These fugitives allegedly smuggled chemicals that eat away the Earth's protective ozone layer, dumped hazardous waste into oceans and rivers and trafficked in polluting cars.And now the government wants help in tracking them down.In its own version of the FBI most-wanted list, and the first to focus on environmental crimes, the Environmental Protection Agency is unveiling a roster of 23 fugitives, complete with mug shots and descriptions of the charges on its Web site at http://www.epa.gov/fugitives.A top EPA enforcement official said the people on the list represent the "brazen universe of people that are evading the law." Many face years in prison and some charges could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines."They are charged with environmental crimes and they should be brought before the criminal justice system and have their day in court," said Pete Rosenberg, a director in the agency's criminal enforcement division.On display will be John Karayannides, who allegedly helped orchestrate the dumping of 487 tons of wheat tainted with diesel fuel into the South China Sea in 1998. Karayannides is believed to have fled to Athens, Greece.Also at large are the father and son team of Carlos and Allesandro Giordano, who were arrested in 2003 as the owners of Autodelta USA, a company that was illegally importing and selling Alfa Romeos that did not meet U.S. emission or safety standards. The two men are believed to be hiding out in Italy.Raul Chavez-Beltran, another fugitive on the list, ran an environmental cleanup company in El Paso, Texas, that is accused of transporting hazardous waste from factories along the Mexican border and improperly disposing and storing it in the U.S. In one case, he allegedly stockpiled mercury-laced soil from an environmental spill in a warehouse.The launch of the most-wanted list comes as EPA's criminal enforcement has ebbed. In fiscal 2008, the EPA opened 319 criminal enforcement cases, down from 425 in fiscal 2004. And criminal prosecutors charged only 176 defendants with environmental crimes, the fewest in five years.EPA officials defend the agency's record, saying the agency has focused on bigger cases with larger environmental benefits.But Walter D. James III, an environmental attorney based in Grapevine, Texas, says the EPA is critically understaffed to investigate environmental crimes. While the budget for the division has increased by $11 million since 2000, there are still only 185 criminal investigators. Congress authorized the EPA to hire 200 investigators in 1990.James said that while the list could prompt the public to turn people in, he questioned whether it would deter others from committing environmental crimes."It's like telling John Gotti he is a bad man," James said. "Is that going to matter to John Gotti?"___On the Net:EPA's Most Wanted List: http://www.epa.gov/fugitives

Sea Level Rise Alters Chesapeake Bay's Salinity

While global-warming-induced coastal flooding moves populations inland, the changes in sea level will affect the salinity of estuaries, which influences aquatic life, fishing and recreation.

Researchers from Penn State and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science are studying the Chesapeake Bay to see how changes in sea level may have affected the salinity of various parts of the estuary.
"Many have hypothesized that sea-level rise will lead to an increase in estuarine salinity, but the hypothesis has never been evaluated using observations or 3-D models of estuarine flow and salinity," says Timothy W. Hilton, graduate student in meteorology at Penn State.
"The Chesapeake is very large, the largest estuary in the U.S. and it is very productive," says Raymond Najjar, associate professor of meteorology. "It has been the site of many large fisheries and supported many fishermen. A lot of money has gone into cleaning up the bay and reducing nutrient and sediment inputs. Climate change might make this work easier, or it could make it harder."
The Chesapeake is naturally saltier near its mouth and fresher near the inflow of rivers. The researchers, who also included Ming Li and Liejun. Zhong of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, studied the Chesapeake Bay, using two complementary approaches, one based on a statistical analysis of historical data and one based on a computer model of the bay's flow and salinity.
They looked at historical data for the Susquehanna River as it flows into the Chesapeake Bay from 1949 to 2006. The flow of this fresh water into the bay naturally changes salinity. After accounting for the change in salinity due to rivers, the researchers found an increasing trend in salinity. The researchers reported their results in a recent edition of Journal of Geophysical Research.
The team then ran a hydrodynamic model of the Bay using present-day and reduced sea level conditions. The salinity change they found was consistent with the trend determined from the statistical analysis, supporting the hypothesis that sea-level rise has significantly increased salinity in the Bay. However, the Penn State researchers note that historical salinity data is limited and sedimentation reshapes the bed of the Bay. There are also cyclical effects partially due to Potomac River flow, Atlantic Shelf salinity and winds.
"Salt content affects jelly fish, oysters, sea grasses and many other forms of aquatic life," says Hilton. "The Chesapeake Bay is a beautiful place, used for recreation and for people's livelihoods. It is a real jewel on the East Coast and changes in salinity can alter its uses. Our research improves our understanding of the influence of climate change on the Bay and can therefore be used to improve costly restoration strategies."
The National Science Foundation supported this work.
Adapted from materials provided by Penn State.

Slow progress on ocean protection

Protected areas should also replenish catches for fishers, scientists say Less than 1% of the world's oceans have been given protected status, according to a major survey. Governments have committed to a target of protecting 10% by 2012, which the authors of the new report say there is no chance of meeting. Protecting ecologically important areas can help fish stocks to regenerate, and benefit the tourism industry. The survey was led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and is published in the journal Conservation Letters. "For those of us working in the issue full-time it's not a surprise, we've known all along that marine protection is lagging behind what's happening on land, but it's nice to have it pinned down," said TNC's Mark Spalding. "It's depressing that we've still got so far to go, but there are points of hope," he told BBC News. Coastal concentration Four years ago, signatories to the UN's biodiversity convention - which includes almost every country - pledged to protect at least 10% of the oceans in a way that makes sense ecologically. The hippos of the Bijagos Archipelago are benefiting from protection Protecting them does not mean banning activities such as fishing or shipping completely, but making sure they are carried out sustainably. All of the areas currently protected fall into countries' Exclusive Economic Zones, and the majority are along coasts, the study finds. Even so, only about 4% of coastal waters are protected. Countries diverge widely in how much protection they have mandated. Whereas New Zealand has almost 70% of its coastline under some form of protection, countries around the Mediterranean have set aside less than 2%. In the developing world, Dr Spalding cites Guinea-Bissau as a country that has had invested in protection, particularly in the Bijagos Archipelago, which is home to a community of hippos dwelling along its mangrove coast, as well as more conventional marine species. Palau, Indonesia, Micronesia and several Caribbean states are also making significant progress, he said. About 12% of the Earth's land surface has been put under protection.

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website

How Global Warming May Affect U.S. Beaches, Coastline

In “Dover Beach,” the 19th Century poet Matthew Arnold describes waves that “begin, and cease, and then again begin…and bring
the eternal note of sadness in.”

But in the warming world of the 21st Century, waves could be riding oceans that will rise anywhere from 0.5 meters (19 inches) to 1.4 meters (55 inches), and researchers believe there’s a good chance they will stir stronger feelings than melancholia.
Several scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego are finding that sea level rise will have different consequences in different places but that they will be profound on virtually all coastlines. Land in some areas of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States will simply be underwater.
On the West Coast, with its different topography and different climate regimes, problems will likely play out differently. The scientists’ most recent conclusions, even when conservative scenarios are involved, suggest that coastal development, popular beaches, vital estuaries, and even California’s supply of fresh water could be severely impacted by a combination of natural and human-made forces.
Scripps climate scientists often consider changes in average conditions over many years but, in this case, it’s the extremes that have them worried. A global sea level rise that makes gentle summer surf lap at a beachgoer’s knees rather than his or her ankles is one thing. But when coupled with energetic winter El Niño-fueled storms and high tides, elevated water levels would have dramatic consequences.
The result could transform the appearance of the beaches at the heart of California’s allure.
“As sea level goes up, some beaches are going to shrink,” said Scripps oceanographer Peter Bromirski. “Some will probably disappear.”
Sea level has been trending upward for millennia. For the last 6,000 years, it is estimated that global sea levels have rising an average of five centimeters (2 inches) per century. Before that, between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago, the seas rose a full 120 meters (400 feet). Step by step, they bit into rocky coastlines like California’s by smashing cliffs, creating beaches with the debris, rising a bit more, and repeating the process over and over again.
Humans are speeding up the pace of that assault. The United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that sea level rose, on average, 1.7 millimeters (0.07 inches) per year over the entire 20th Century. But recent estimates from satellite observations find a marked increase, at 3.1 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year since 1993.
The oceans are rising because the warming ocean water increases in volume and because water is being added from melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets. The complex difficult-to-predict contribution of the latter is such a matter of controversy that the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment report didn’t factor glacial melt into its sea level rise estimates. Today there is quite broad-based opinion that the IPCC estimates are considerably lower than the higher range of possible sea level rise. Some individuals, pointing to the quantity of water frozen in Greenland and Antarctica and to ancient sea level evidence, have suggested that sea level rise could reach several meters by the end of the 21st Century. However, an August paper in the journal Science co-authored by former Scripps postdoctoral researcher Shad O’Neel suggests that some of the more exaggerated claims that water could rise upwards of 10 meters (33 feet) by century’s end are not in the realm of possibility. O’Neel and co-authors indicate that the realities of physics impose a cap of 2 meters (6.6 feet) for possible sea level rise by 2100.
“That’s fine,” said Scripps climate researcher Dan Cayan, who is leading an analysis of climate change scenarios for the state of California, “but two meters is still enough to do a lot of damage.”
Recent news footage of overtopped levees makes it easy to envision what two meters’ difference means to low-lying cities like New Orleans, especially when extreme events like hurricanes are factored in. Any flooding would be proportionately higher than it is now. Additionally Bromirski recently showed that sea level rise will amplify the power and frequency of hurricane-generated waves that reach shore, even if the storms themselves don’t make landfall.
In contrast to the beaches of the East Coast, many of which are covered with vast expanses of sand, California’s coastline is predominantly bedrock covered by a relatively thin veneer of sand. That sand can shift or disappear during storms. Thus, preserving the precious supply that keeps the tourists coming has for decades been a priority for state officials. Resource management, however, has required them to make trade-offs. They have constructed seawalls to protect houses built on ocean cliffs. They have dammed rivers to create supplies of water for drinking and to prevent floods and debris from damaging downstream developments.
In so doing, nature’s two primary sources of beach replenishment have been muted in a process known as passive erosion. Managers have compensated through artificial beach replenishment projects but at a costs that approach $10 per cubic yard. Since usually millions of cubic yards of sand need to be moved, there are monetary limits to what they can reasonably accomplish.
Reinhard Flick, who received his doctorate in oceanography from Scripps in 1978, needs only to look out his office window to watch the losing battle of beaches unfold. During his student days, he used to play volleyball on stretches of sand that are now underwater except during low tide. Rocks buried under several feet of sand four decades ago are now exposed for large parts of the year.
The staff oceanographer for the California Department of Boating and Waterways, Flick said that seawalls causing passive erosion will likely combine with sea level rise to doom some Southern California beaches. The change will become most apparent during El Niño events, when a pool of warm Pacific Ocean water settles off the coast for a year or two. El Niño has a dual effect on the West Coast. It not only feeds more intense storms but the warm ocean water itself causes a temporary spike in sea level that is above and beyond the rise that climate change is causing. During the 1997-98 El Niño, for instance, tide gauges off San Francisco recorded that sea level was 20 centimeters (8 inches) above normal for more than a year, including the winter storm season. That temporary rise is about equal to the rise observed for the entire 20th Century.
If sea levels rise substantially, when a large storm coincides with a high tide during an El Niño event, there could be widespread inundation along the California coast. Effects could range from a submersion of areas of San Diego’s Mission Beach to an inundation of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. There, an overtopping of the delta’s levees by brackish water could paralyze the main component of the state’s water delivery system. Cayan noted that repairs to the system could take months.
The threat resonates with state officials, who have tasked Scripps and other institutions with creating and updating sea level rise scenarios.
“There’s no clear path forward with sea level rise,” said Tony Brunello, deputy secretary for climate change and energy at the California Resources Agency, a key Scripps partner in developing the state’s response to manifestations of global warming. “You typically want to work with one number (but) what we want people to do is work with the whole range of estimates.”
Cayan and other Scripps researchers who are collaborating to study sea level rise emphasize that there remains a great deal of uncertainty in the creation of estimates for the coming century. The range of rise estimated by Cayan is based on scenarios of global air temperatures over the next 100 years, which range from about 2° C (3.6° F) to about 6° C (10° F). By 2100, global sea level rise reaching a half-meter seems likely, and if the higher rates of potential warming occur it could rise by more than one meter. The potential cost of any government project or policy change puts a high premium on narrowing this range. As O’Neel and his co-authors observed in their paper, the cost of raising Central Valley levees only 15 centimeters (6 inches) to prepare for higher sea levels has been estimated at more than $1 billion.
“These are very broad-brush preliminary kinds of studies right now, but you have to start somewhere,” said Scripps coastal oceanographer Bob Guza.
Flick said it will be essential for scientists to be able to study the effects of the next El Niño so they can begin to understand not just where damage will happen on the California coast but to what extent. He only had surveyor’s equipment and aerial photos available to him to measure beach changes after the 1982-83 El Niño, but Guza and his collaborators now have light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and GPS technologies to make precise surveys of beach and cliff damage. Guza and Flick hope that Scripps can not only enhance its use of such technology but to deploy it within hours of a major storm event.
“We need to be geared up to quantify what beach changes are,” said Flick. “We have to do an even better job of studying wave forces and wave climate.”
If there’s any good news for Southern California, Scripps climate scientist Nick Graham has estimated that ocean warming trends will drive storm tracks farther north, perhaps sparing the state’s lower half from the full brunt of buffeting El Niño waves the 21st Century will generate. Graham compared winds produced in three different simulations of climate change with those generated in the late 20th Century. The models showed that Southern California can expect a moderate decrease in wave size of about 0.25 meters (10 inches). But even there, Graham sees a problem.
“I’m a surfer. I think that’s horrible,” he said.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, via Newswise

Ecological Status Of Spain's Mar Menor Lagoon Will Deteriorate As Waters Warm, Researchers Predict

Researchers from the University of Murcia have demonstrated the vulnerability of the Mar Menor coastal lagoon -- a salty lagoon on the south-east coast of Spain -- to climate change. As a result of an up to 5°C increase in water temperatures over the next few years, this pioneering study shows an increase in the regression rate of benthic primary producers, a deterioration in ecological status and the appearance of eutrophication processes in many coastal lagoons. Notable effects include the proliferation of jellyfish.

The work, recently published in the Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science magazine and financed by the Euro-Mediterranean Institute of Water, represents the first data-based assessment of the vulnerability of the lagoon's entire coastal ecosystem to a probable environmental change and eutrophication. According to the researchers, it is "essential" to know the interactions between the processes for identifying future impacts and establishing effective coastal planning and management measures.

"If climate change predictions come true, the current state of the Mar Menor lagoon could collapse due to proliferations of phytoplankton and floating macroalgae", Javier Lloret, one of the study's researchers, explained to SINC. He talked about a profound deterioration of the entire ecosystem "through the appearance of eutrophication processes with high concentrations of nutrients".

The research, applicable to other lagoons, forecasts that the global climate will have a "high" effect on coastal lagoons, which are considered "one of the most fragile marine environments to these changes", Lloret pointed out. Among the most harmful effects, scientists highlight the increase in water temperature, a rise in sea level of at least a 50 cm, changes in the hydrodynamism of water masses and in the water's salinity, as well as an increase in dissolved carbon dioxide, frequency of extreme climatic events and appearance of eutrophication processes.

Proliferation of jellyfish due to climate change

One of the main consequences of an increase in lagoon temperatures is the proliferation of jellyfish, which represent "an example of the alteration of the system's trophic state and instability of parameters for the lagoon", indicated the researcher from the Ecology and Hydrology Department at the University of Murcia.

In addition, the study highlighted that a loss of benthic macrophytes and appearance of eutrophication processes could result in "a substantial decrease in the quality of the lagoon's habitat with unforeseen consequences for the biological diversity of its communities". To this is added the possible reduction in the amount of light reaching the beds of the Mar Menor lagoon due to the proliferation of phytoplankton.

"This reduction is the result of the combined effect of the rise in sea level and decrease in the transparency of the water column caused by an increase in the entry of nutrients and dissolved solids", Lloret added. The biomass of the Caulerpa prolifera macroalgae, which covers 91.7% of the lagoon's beds and is below 5 metres in depth, is responsible for maintaining a positive carbon balance. However, most of this biomass would be affected, even with death, due to a reduction in photosynthesis with an increase of water temperature over 30ºC.

The Mar Menor lagoon has ecological characteristics of high productivity and biological diversity as a result of being separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a 22 km long, 100 m to 1,200 m wide sand bar. Designated by the United Nations as a 'Specially Protected Area of Mediterranean Importance', the coastal lagoon is, however, vulnerable to eutrophication due to the rise in population along the coast and use of fertilisers for agriculture.

Climate Change Causing Significant Shift In Composition Of Coastal Fish Communities

A detailed analysis of data from nearly 50 years of weekly fish-trawl surveys in Narragansett Bay and adjacent Rhode Island Sound has revealed a long-term shift in species composition, which scientists attribute primarily to the effects of global warming.

According to Jeremy Collie, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography, the fish community has shifted progressively from vertebrate species (fish) to invertebrates (lobsters, crabs and squid) and from benthic or demersal species -- those that feed on the bottom -- to pelagic species that feed higher in the water column. In addition, smaller, warm-water species have increased while larger, cool-water species have declined.
"This is a pretty dramatic change, and it's a pattern that is being seen in other ecosystems, including offshore on Georges Bank and other continental shelf ecosystems, but we're in the relatively unique position of being able to document it. These patterns are likely being seen in estuaries around the world, but nowhere else has similar data," said Collie.
Results of the research by Collie and URI colleagues Anthony Wood and Perry Jeffries will be published in the July issue of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
The weekly trawl survey by URI scientists began in 1959 and continues to the present, making it one of the longest data sets of fish species composition available. The survey has recorded 130 species, though the analysis focused only on the top 25 species, which accounted for 96 percent of the total number of animals collected.
Collie said that while most of the changes occurred slowly, an abrupt change appeared to take place in 1980 and 1981 when benthic species like winter flounder and silver hake declined and pelagic species including butterfish and bluefish increased.
"We think there has been a shift in the food web resulting in more of the productivity being consumed in the water column," Collie explained. "Phytoplankton are increasingly being grazed by zooplankton, which are then eaten by planktivorous fish, rather than the phytoplankton sinking to the bottom and being consumed by bottom fish. It's a rerouting of that production from the bottom to the top."
Collie noted that the increase in the numbers of lobsters and crabs is a result of their taking advantage of the benthic habitat abandoned by the bottom-feeding fish species.
Overall, the survey analysis found huge changes in the abundance of some species. Butterfish and bluefish, for instance, have increased in abundance by a factor of about 100 times while cunner has decreased by almost 1,000 times.
The analysis also found that while the total number of fish caught in each trawl increased over time, peaking in the 1990s, the size of those fish decreased.
"While we're catching more fish now, we're also catching smaller fish," said Collie, "and that corresponds with how the preferred temperatures of the fish here have changed. The fish community now is dominated by warm-water adapted species compared with what we started with, and fish that live in warmer water are smaller."
Collie added that fishing may also be a factor in the decline in fish size, since fishing removes the largest individuals from a population while leaving the smaller ones. However, he believes that climate is "the dominant signal." Sea surface temperature in the area of the trawls has increased by 2 degrees Centigrade since 1959, and the preferred temperature of the fish caught in the trawls has also increased by 2 degrees C.
"That seems to be direct evidence of global warming," he said. "It's hard to explain any other way."
The shift in species composition also correlates with the winter North Atlantic Oscillation index and with chlorophyll concentrations, which declined by 50 percent, both of which are related to warmer sea temperatures.
What do these changes mean for the future of Narragansett Bay?
"Our overall prediction is that Narragansett Bay is soon going to resemble estuaries to the south of us -- Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay -- so we'll experience what they are experiencing now," Collie said. "It will continue to get warmer and attract more southern species, such as blue crabs. Species that couldn't complete their life cycle here before may be able to do that now."
Adapted from materials provided by University of Rhode Island.