Carnival of the Blue

It's that time of the month again... Carnival of the Blue! Strap on your snorkel and head over to Shifting Baselines for an eclectic collection of posts about the ocean.

Oceans in Metro

I knew that DC is a little different than other cities. The convergence of political elite with urban culture is already strange enough for a goateed, granola munching whitey like me who hardly remembers how to put on a tie. Even so, I was surprised to encounter a political issue ad in the Metro tunnels. And this one used the word, 'subsidies.' I'm not sure about you, but I'm neither comfortable lauding subsidies nor excoriating them. So I was happy to check out Oceana's description of how subsidies affect the fishing industry. Granted, we know from the billboard what Oceana thinks of this, but at least they are out there trying to raise awareness.

Oceana is an international advocate for the oceans. They appear to be a well connected, well funded group that takes practical approach to diplomacy and lobbying on behalf of ocean health. The group supports fisheries management, efforts to reduce man-made climate change, and responsible governance of ocean resources. From their website,

OCEANA CAMPAIGNS TO PROTECT AND RESTORE THE WORLD'S OCEANS. Our teams of marine scientists, economists, lawyers and advocates win specific and concrete policy changes to reduce pollution and to prevent the irreversible collapse of fish populations, marine mammals and other sea life.

This sounds like something I could get on board with. It's an advocacy group of citizen scientists.

So what of this lighted billboard? Well, it happened to be in the Capitol South Metro stop. I wonder how many congressional staffers use that station? Are they the ad's intended audience? I also wonder if there is current legislative activity concerning American fisheries on the board. A quick search on THOMAS revealed that fishing subsidies are included in the farm bills in the House and Senate, but finding the specifics is a task outside the scope of this post. What is in the scope of this post is a brief primer on food subsidies.

Hearkening back to our intro economics courses, recall that the definition (Wikipedia) of subsidy is,

financial government assistance, such as a grant, tax break, or trade barrier, that encourages the production or purchase of a good.

Fishing subsidies come in the form of tariffs on imported fish, grants to build boats and pay for fuel, and reduced taxes for fishermen. According to Oceana, this accounts for $30 billion a year given to fishermen that enables the fishing industry to expand capacity beyond its normal capacity. More of the ocean is fished and when fishing occurs in largely unregulated open waters, there is critical damage to fish populations. Oceana's campaign to reel in those subsidies is an effort to improve global fishery sustainability.

The ad's clever graphic hits this home: Government coin raining into the trawlers makes up (in the fisherman's purse) for the fact that no fish are biting. Unfortunately, as long as fishing for fewer fish remains a viable way to make a living, sustainable fisheries will be impossible.

Not So Extinct

I was one of many who lamented last month's echo of a proclamation in January 2007 that the Baiji, or Yangtze River Dolphin, was 'most-likely extinct.' Well, it seems like I should have respected the principle of scientific uncertainty a little more than I did. ScienceBlogger Zooilogix has posted a report that a Chinese factory owner filmed the dolphin on August 19, and a science daily article provides more details. One question I have is whether a private citizen's siting counts against the 50 year clock needed to announce 'definitive extinction.' I think the consensus is that this will merely delay the inevitable. I'll still stand by my opinion that the great leap forward set the environment several steps behind.

But this situation is a good case study of how scientists tend to choose their words carefully whenever certainty is concerned, but that this care is forsaken by mass media reports of the studies. The international commission charged with monitoring the status of the river dolphin used the phrase, "functionally extinct" to describe the baiji's plight. This followed a 6 week expedition at the end of 2006 to search for the dolphin. Another expedition in July made the same conclusion, and that two 'exhaustive' searched yielded no sightings was evidence to reinforce the original claim. "Functionally extinct" is a term that Wikipedia defines as

The population is no longer viable. There are no individuals able to reproduce, or the small population of breeding individuals will not be able to sustain itself due to inbreeding depression and genetic drift, leading to a loss of fitness.

A good example of this is Lonesome George, the Galápagos Abingdon Island Tortoise, who is that species one known surviving individual, but is going strong as a 70 year old who can look forward to a 120 year lifespan.

Functionally extinct in the case of the baiji could mean isolation by dams or population dispersement in murky water or genetic inbreeding leading to loss of fitness. There is, in other words, a chance of slim to none that the species will recover to a sustainable population. If population biologists use the same criterion we use in biomedical science, slim means less than 5%. What concerns me is when public media (and bloggers outside their field) uncritically take 'very sure' to mean 'definitive.' That sets up situations like this one where those same media outlets (or worse, anti-science interest groups) can point to an outlier or other counterexample and say, "See, those scientists don't know what they are talking about!"

I still want an answer to my question above concerning the 50 year rule, but we all should question how it is that the practice and language of science can be better represented by the media.

Baiji: RIP

Extinction occurs in the modern era not with a bang, but a whisper.

The Yangtze River Dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) was declared "functionally extinct" in December 2006, but was confirmed today as fully non-existent after a second six-week search found no animals. Technically, the Baiji can't be classified as extinct until 50 years after the last sighting, according to the standards of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Is the Great Leap Forward to be blamed for the first vertebrate extinction in half a century and the first ever cetacean (whale or dolphin) extinction due to human influence? The ultimate cause of death can be attributed to pollution, dams, overfishing, and boat traffic. That sounds like good old 'progress' to me. Your local news will report several tragic deaths tonight. Why won't this be one of them?

Baiji
Millions of Years Couldn't Prepare You for a Century of Progress

Carnival of the Blue III

Want to catch up on this month's ocean news? Rick over at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets put together a nice collection of essays, musings, and observations about oceans. It's Carnival of the Blue III. Cruise on over there at your coffee break.

Carnival... Cruise... Don't worry if you missed that one. I'll use it again.

Real Time Ocean Science

Just northwest of SeaTac Airport on the shores of Puget Sound are two inconspicuous moorings that house what could be important new tools in oceans research. The Seahurst Observatory, located at Seahurst Park in Burien, consists of installations designed to collect marine information including salinity, temperature, pressure, chlorophyll concentration, currents, sound and video. The innovation in this system is the remote deployment and automated data collection. The researchers intend for this placement to serve as a test-run for installation in 3,000 feet of water in Monterrey Bay and eventually as deep as 2 miles on the Juan de Fuca plate off Washington State's Pacific Coast.

The armchair oceanographers amongst us will be most interested in the project's videos. The Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington hosts several clips of the most interesting animal life, each collected after motion sensor activation. I recommend checking out the jellyfish on this page, the seal(s) on this page, and the sunflower star on this page.

Carnival of the Blue (II)

Swim on over to the second Carnival of the Blue, hosted by blogfish. I am proud to be able to contribute this month. Blogfish and the other carnival hosts focus on any issue related to ocean science and policy.

Wild Spawned v. Hatchery Raised

Did anyone catch the latest news about salmon? By way of Kansas, I learned of an interesting ruling regarding salmon fisheries. The National Marine Fisheries Service, an executive branch administered department, had been counting hatchery-raised salmon the same as wild-spawned salmon in its environmental impact calculations. The hatchery-raised fish generally boost census counts, changing the status of species like steelhead trout from 'endangered' to the less restricted 'threatened.' Clearly, it was the developers that argued for including hatchery raised fish in the counts.

A Seattle P-I article details this story quite well, and Blogfish has another analysis.

Wouldn't it be nice if environmental agencies could listen to science BEFORE a judge has to take account of the situation? On the one hand, we probably only hear about the most egregious cases, but on the other hand, you have to wonder how else is science being ignored by the current administration...

Just as clarification, this ruling does not apply to "farm-raised salmon." Blogfish nicely points out that:

Scientists are careful not to call salmon wild if they're raised by people for part of their life cycle. For a scientist, there are three main types of salmon, wild, farmed, and hatchery. But fishermen and the seafood industry call salmon wild if they're caught in the ocean, no matter how long they actually lived free.

So if you eat fish, keep buying those wild salmon.

I spotted the salmon pictured above at this weekend's Solstice Parade.