So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

[Michaelangelica]

Beating poverty could save fish
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Developing societies tend to over fish,
leading to a cycle of poverty and reef
destruction.


An international team of researchers has proposed a revolutionary strategy for ending the plunder of the world’s coral reefs and destruction of their fish stocks – beating poverty.

In a major study released today of the western Indian Ocean the team shows that reef fisheries are in far better condition where the society is more highly developed or where there is little or no development – than in places where the society is developing.

Most studies about the human impacts on reefs focus on the negative role of human populations. This novel study went a step further, exploring how socioeconomic development can actually play a positive role in sustaining coral reefs.

Beating poverty could save fish(ScienceAlert)

I have worked out why deep sea creatures are so ugly. That's why they are deep sea creatures.

Deep-sea discovery mission uncovers new species
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
California Institute of Technology

This carnivorous sea squirt was one of the
new species seen during the voyage.
Image: Advanced Imaging and
Visualization Laboratory, WHOI/Jess
Adkins, Caltech

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and an international team of collaborators, including CSIRO researchers, have returned from a month-long deep-sea voyage to a marine reserve near Tasmania, Australia, that not only netted coral-reef samples likely to provide insight into the impact of climate change on the world's oceans, but also brought to light at least three never-before-seen species of sea life.

"It was truly one of those transcendent moments," says Caltech's Jess Adkins of the descents made by the remotely operated submersible Jason. Adkins was the cruise's lead scientist and is an associate professor of geochemistry and global environmental science at Caltech. "We were flying--literally flying--over these deep-sea structures that look like English gardens, but are actually filled with all of these carnivorous, Seuss-like creatures that no one else has ever seen."

The voyage on the research vessel RV Thompson explored the Tasman Fracture Commonwealth Marine Reserve, southwest of Tasmania. The voyage was funded by the National Science Foundation and was the second of two cruises taken by the team, which included researchers from the United States--including scientists from Caltech and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, which owns and operates the submersible Jason--and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The first of those voyages was taken in January 2008, with this most recent one spanning 33 days from mid-December 2008 through mid-January 2009.

Up until now, the area of the reef the scientists were exploring--called the Tasman Fracture Zone--had only been explored to a depth of 1,800 meters (more than 5,900 feet). Using Jason, the researchers on this trip were able to reach as far down as 4,000 meters (well over 13,000 feet).

Deep-sea discovery mission uncovers new species(ScienceAlert)

[Moontanman]

Recently it has been officially found that blue crabs can be raised to marketable size in freshwater, three crops a year are possible. I can say with total honesty I have been aware of that possibility for 30 years but no one would believe me. I have talked to a great many people only to be told at every turn it won't work, but I continued to catch blue crabs in freshwater. At one time I had made plans to raise soft shell blue crabs in freshwater but life had other plans for me. Seafood farming is the answer to the hungry worlds cry, at least if they want crabs at a premium price!

[Michaelangelica]

News in Science

Jellyfish threaten to 'dominate' oceans

Monday, 8 June 2009 Anna Salleh
ABC
Giant jelly fish are taking over parts of the world's oceans due to overfishing and other human activities, say researchers.

Dr Anthony Richardson of CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research and colleagues, report their findings in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

"We need to take management action to avert the marine systems of the world flipping over to being jellyfish dominated," says Richardson, who is also a marine biologist at the University of Queensland.

Richardson says jellyfish numbers are increasing, particularly in Southeast Asia, the Black Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.

He says the Japanese have a real problem with giant jellyfish that burst through fishing nets.
. . .
Richardson says researchers are experimenting with different ways of controlling jellyfish.

Some methods involve sound waves to explode jellyfish, while others use special nets to try and cut them up.
Simple animals

Jellyfish are considered simple jelly-like sea animals, which are related to the microscopic animals that form coral.

They generally start their life as a plant-like polyp on the sea bed before budding off into the well-known bell-shaped medusa.

Jellyfish have tentacles containing pneumatocyst cells, which act like little harpoons that lodge in prey to sting and kill them.

The location and number of pneumatocysts dictate whether jellyfish are processed for human consumption.

While dried jellyfish with soya sauce is a delicacy served in Chinese weddings and banquets, not all kinds of jellyfish can be eaten, says Richardson.

According to Richardson, the species increasing in number aren't generally eaten.

World Oceans Day 2009 Registered Events
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The Ocean Project

[Boerseun]

They actually blow up jellyfish with soundwaves?

That must be pretty cool to see.

I wonder what that'll do to whale communications, however...

Anybody here had jellyfish before? What does it taste like? I suppose if we can somehow figure out a way how to make money out of jellyfish, it won't be such a bad thing, and pretty soon they, too, will become extinct...

[Michaelangelica]

Probably a Spanish line. Still carring on the 17 C rape and pillage mindset?

Australia confiscates 130 km long deepwater gillnet

This vessel—the Anela—was photographed by a New Zealand Patrol on the high seas between Australia and New Zealand, and is believed to have deepwater gillnetting equipment aboard Click photo to enlarge © New Zealand Maritime Surveillance Patrol

Sydney, Australia, 6 November 2009—Just days after TRAFFIC wrote to the fledgling South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO) to express alarm that Flag States are allowing deepwater gillnetting, Australia has revealed it confiscated a huge gillnet set illegally in Antarctic waters earlier this year.

The net, or rather series of nets strung together, was confiscated this April at Banzare Bank in the south western Indian Ocean and measured a staggering 130 km end to end—roughly the same distance as the width of New Zealand’s South Island—and set at a depth of 1.5 km.

The area is within waters controlled by CCAMLR (the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources), the international fisheries management body that regulates fishing in Antarctic seas, where gillnet fishing has been banned since 2004.

Inside the net were 29 tonnes of Antarctic Toothfish, plus a significant bycatch of skates. No vessel was apprehended.

Vessels fishing illegally (so-called Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) vessels) in Antarctic waters are increasingly using gillnets rather than longlines to target Patagonian and Antarctic Toothfish.

TRAFFIC - Wildlife Trade News - Australia confiscates 130 km long deepwater*gillnet

Glenn Sant, the global marine program leader at TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network, said the discovery was devastating for the marine environment in the commission area.

''These nets are actually an invisible curtain of death for everything that swims into them,'' he said. ''The nets kill indiscriminately, and if they are lost they keep killing as ghost nets.''
. . .
Mr Burke said Australian officials would take up with the European Union the discovery of Spanish fishermen in the Tasman Sea with the same type of nets.

The Spanish are exploiting a gap in the fisheries zone boundaries of Australia and New Zealand, where endangered sharks migrate. Nets have been set for two seasons, an environment assessment by the Spanish Government disclosed.

''As fish stocks are increasingly depleted worldwide, fleets such as Spain's are scanning the farthest seas for stocks left in unguarded patches,'' Mr Sant said.

A Spanish Government assessment concluded that the nets would have very low impact on deep water corals and sponges.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/il...1106-i251.html
It's good to know the sponges will be OK???????????

Complicated, large-scale business
Last year, Australian customs caught two illegal fish vessels in their nets. The two vessels had been fishing illegally for Patagonian toothfish inside the Australian exclusive economic zone (EEZ) on the Kerguelen Plateau in the Southern Ocean. As the poachers were interrogated, a picture started to unfold of systematic pirate fishing on a scale never seen before.

Documentation onboard revealed a literal alphabet of boats (their names being the Austin, Boston, Champion, etc, until Jackson, with vessels K, L and M under construction). These ’alphabet boats’ were part of a web of professionally coordinated fishing activities, with transshipment, refuelling and changing of crew and provisions at sea, and with operational techniques designed to evade apprehension. Such sophisticated coordination ensures that the fishing vessels can stay virtually permanently on the fishing grounds, while the catch is landed safely in port.

The setup of the company involved in the ’alphabet saga’ and its subsidiaries disguises the origin of fish and fish products, which then can be sold legitimately and reach the consumer market. Ownership structure, flag states, operational bases and names of these vessels have been changed numerous times in the past year to conceal their true identity and purpose. The Russian company whose name was painted on the back of the boat did not even exist. The fishing boats were flagged in countries where company ownership is not public information, providing a perfect curtain for illegal activity and beneficial owners to hide behind.

”If such a large-scale fishing operation is allowed to continue, it is likely to result in the commercial extinction of the local toothfish population within a few years”, said Jenny Hodder of the Coaliton of Legal Toothfish Operators (COLTO), a group representing legal fishers for Patagonian toothfish.

Complete "fishing out" of the Patagonian toothfish stock has already happened at the South African Prince Edward Islands, where CCAMLR has recommended a zero catch for several years for the highly prized fish

.
WWF - Pirate fishing plundering the oceans