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Life In The Garbage Patch | Earth Wise

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A team of scientists has found thriving communities of coastal creatures living thousands of miles from their original homes and now ensconced on plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 

A new study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution reports that dozens of species of coastal invertebrate organisms – including tiny crabs and anemones – have been able to survive and reproduce on plastic garbage that has been floating in the ocean for years.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area in the ocean between California and Hawaii, larger than Texas, where plastic debris has been collected by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, one of five huge, spinning circular currents in the world’s oceans.  The patch is estimated to contain about 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic weighing an estimated 90,000 tons.  The Ocean Cleanup Initiative is dedicated to removing this immense accumulation of plastic, but it is an immense job.

Researchers discovered this new ecosystem after analyzing plastic samples collected by The Ocean Cleanup organization during its expeditions in the Pacific.  They were surprised to find 37 different invertebrate species that normally live in coastal water and only a dozen species that live in open waters.  These species have made their way from North America and have thrived.  So, the garbage patch has created a novel community that didn’t previously exist.

Debris from the Great Pacific Garbage patch constitutes the majority of debris arriving on Hawaiian beaches and reefs.  Hawaii’s fragile marine ecosystems have long been protected from invasive species because of the very long distances from North America or Asia.  With the coastal species now inhabiting the garbage patch, there is increased danger of colonization by them in Hawaii’s ecosystems.

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Coastal species persist on high seas on floating plastic debris

Photo, posted September 30, 2020, courtesy of Kees Torn via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Seaweed On The Way | Earth Wise

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A type of seaweed called sargassum has long formed large blooms in the Atlantic Ocean.  It gets its name from the Sargasso Sea in the western Atlantic.  Since 2011, scientists have been tracking massive accumulations of the stuff each year that starts out off the coast of Africa and works its way across the Atlantic to end up in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The amount of sargassum present each year can shift depending on factors like changes in nutrients, rainfall, and wind conditions.  But since the 1980s, nitrogen content in the Atlantic has gone up by 45%.  This is likely due to human activities such as agriculture and fossil fuel production dumping materials into the rivers that feed into the ocean.

According to recent observations, the mass of seaweed now heading for Florida and other coastlines throughout the Gulf of Mexico may be the largest on record.  The giant blob of sargassum spans more than 5,000 miles in extent.  It is moving west and will pass through the Caribbean and up into the Gulf during the summer.  The seaweed is expected to become prevalent on beaches in Florida around July.

The seaweed provides food and protection for fishes, mammals, marine birds, crabs, sea turtles, and more.  But unfortunately, when sargassum hits the beaches, it piles up in mounds that can be difficult to walk through and eventually emits a gas that smells like rotten eggs.

Tourist destinations in the Caribbean region have their work cut out for them to remove seaweed that can pile up several feet deep.  For example, in Barbados, locals were using 1,600 dump trucks a day to clean their beaches.  Caribbean and Florida resorts spend millions of dollars each year to remove sargassum seaweed.

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A 5,000-mile-wide blob of seaweed is headed for Florida, threatening tourism across the Caribbean

Photo, posted February 24, 2020, courtesy of Bernard Dupont via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Climate Change And Crabs | Earth Wise

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Globally, there are more than 6,000 species of crabs.  In Alaska’s waters alone, there are 18 species, including 10 that are commercially fished.  The perils of crab fishing in this region, including freezing temperatures, turbulent seas, and raising full pots that can weigh well over a ton, have been highlighted for many years in the reality TV series Deadliest Catch.        

One of those commercially-fished species is the Alaska snow crab.  Alaska snow crabs are a cold-water species found off the coast of Alaska in the Bering, Beaufort, and Chukchi Seas. 

In October, officials in Alaska announced that the upcoming winter snow crab season would be canceled for the first time ever due to a sharp population decline. While the number of juvenile snow crabs was at record highs just a few years ago, approximately 90% of snow crabs mysteriously disappeared ahead of last season.  Officials also canceled the Bristol Bay red king crab harvest for similar reasons for the second year in a row.

The closures dealt a severe blow to crab fishers in the region.  According to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, Alaska’s crab fishing industry is worth more than $200 million. 

The canceled seasons also raise questions about the role of climate change in the snow crab population crash. While the causes of the decline are still being researched, scientists suspect that warmer temperatures are responsible.  Temperatures in the Arctic region have warmed four times faster than the rest of the planet. 

As the climate continues to change, the warming waters around Alaska may become increasingly inhospitable to snow crabs and other species.   

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Alaska’s Bering snow crab, king crab seasons canceled

Alaska cancels snow crab season for first time after population collapses

Photo, posted November 16, 2010, courtesy of David Csepp / NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Invasive Species On Ships In Antarctica | Earth Wise

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The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is the most isolated marine environment on Earth.  Antarctica’s native species have been isolated for the last 15-30 million years.  As a result, wildlife there has not evolved the ability to tolerate the presence of many groups of species.

New research by the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey has traced the global movements of all the ships entering Antarctic water and has found that Antarctica is connected to all regions of the globe via ship activity to an extent much greater than previously thought.  Fishing, tourism, research, and supply ships are exposing Antarctica to invasive, non-native species that threaten the existing ecosystems.

In all, the research identified over 1,500 ports with links to Antarctica.  From all these places, non-native species including mussels, barnacles, crabs, and algae attach themselves to ships’ hulls.  The process is known as biofouling. 

The greatest concern is the movement of species from pole to pole.  These species are already cold-adapted.  They may come on tourist or research vessels that spend the northern hemisphere summer in the Arctic before traveling south for the Antarctic summer season.

Mussels have no competitors in Antarctica should they be accidentally introduced.  Shallow water crabs would introduce a new form of predation that Antarctic animals have never encountered before.

Current biosecurity measures to protect Antarctica, such as cleaning ships’ hulls, focus on a small group of so-called gateway ports.  The new findings indicate that these measures need to be expanded to protect Antarctic waters from non-native species.

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Invasive species ‘hitchhiking’ on ships threaten Antarctica’s unique ecosystems

Photo, posted April 12, 2016, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Gulf Of Mexico Dead Zone | Earth Wise

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Every summer, a so-called dead zone forms in the Gulf of Mexico.  It is primarily caused by excess nutrient pollution from human activities in urban and agricultural areas throughout the Mississippi River watershed. 

When these excess nutrients reach the Gulf, they stimulate excess growth of algae, which eventually die and decompose, depleting oxygen as they sink to the bottom.  These low oxygen levels near the Gulf bottom cannot support most marine life.  Animals that are sufficiently mobile – such as fish, shrimp, and crabs – generally swim out of the area.  Those that can’t move away are stressed or killed by the low oxygen.

A team of scientists funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issues an annual forecast for the dead zone based upon a suite of models that incorporate river flow and nutrient data. 

The 2021 forecasted area is somewhat smaller than, but close to, the five-year measured average for the dead zone, which is 5,400 square miles, roughly the size of the state of Connecticut.   Each year, these forecasts are reported as comparisons to long-term averages, but the problem is that the long-term average is unacceptable.

The Interagency Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force has set a goal of reducing the size of the dead zone to a five-year average of 1,900 square miles – about a third of the current average.

Large reductions in nutrient loads have been called for in federal and state action plans for nearly 20 years, but clearly these reductions have not yet been sufficient. The Interagency Task Force continues to provide information for managing nutrient loads in the Mississippi River Basin. 

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Average-sized ‘dead zone’ forecast for Gulf of Mexico

Photo, posted October 6, 2020, courtesy of Christine Warner via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The World’s Largest Harmful Algal Bloom | Earth Wise

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Brown sargassum seaweed floats in surface water in a bloom that stretches all the way from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.  Sargassum provides habitat for turtles, crabs, fish, and birds.

The stuff carpets beaches along the tropical Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the east coast of Florida disrupting tourism.  Florida’s Miami-Dade County alone spends $45 million a year cleaning up sargassum.  Annual Caribbean clean-up is in excess of $120 million.

A study by Florida Atlantic University has discovered dramatic changes in the chemistry and composition of sargassum which has transformed the so-called Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt into a toxic dead zone.

The findings of the study suggest that increased nitrogen availability from both natural and human-generated sources, including sewage, is supporting blooms of sargassum and turning a critical marine nursery habitat into harmful algal blooms with catastrophic impacts on coastal ecosystems, economies, and human health.

The study found that today’s sargassum tissues compared with those of the 1980s have 35% more nitrogen content and 42% less phosphorus.  Much of the nitrogen increase is a result of agricultural and industrial runoff from the Congo, Amazon, and Mississippi Rivers. 

The fact that the bloom itself has expanded so tremendously was already suspected to be the result of significant changes in the ocean’s chemistry.  Given the negative effect that the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is having on the coastal communities, additional research is essential to guide mitigation and adaptation efforts.

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Sargassum now world’s largest harmful algal bloom due to nitrogen

Photo, posted June 5, 2016, courtesy of J Brew via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Vanishing Kelp Forests | Earth Wise

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Bull kelp is the dominant species in offshore kelp forests north of Santa Cruz, California along the west coast of North America.  Bull kelp has similar physical structures to terrestrial plants; it anchors to the ocean floor with root-like structures called holdfasts, and has stem-like structures called stipes from which leaf-like blades stretch out through the water, absorbing nutrients and sunshine.

These giant seaweeds form lush underwater forests in northern California’s coastal waters and have long provided critical habitat for many species like salmon, crabs, and jellyfish.  But now, for much of the California coast, only a few patches of bull kelp remain.

A team from University of California Santa Cruz has studied satellite images of about 200 miles of coastline.  They found that starting in 2014, the area covered by kelp has dropped by more than 95%. 

The die-off was driven in part by an underwater heat wave that depleted nutrients in the water and made it harder for the kelp to grow.  Making matters much worse, populations of purple sea urchins, which eat kelp, have exploded in the region because of overfishing and other reductions in urchin predators such as sea otters.  The sea urchins eat kelp holdfasts, creating so-called urchin barrens where their destructive grazing has decimated kelp forests.

Bull kelp is a species at high risk of becoming endangered.  In coming decades, more marine heatwaves are expected.  These events as well as stronger El Niños will become more common and frequent with climate change.  Between these thermal events and the sea urchins, it will be difficult for kelp forests to survive.

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Ninety-five percent of bull kelp forests have vanished from 200-mile stretch of California coast

Photo, posted October 28, 2015, courtesy of Florian Graner/Green Fire Productions via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Biodiversity And Trawling Bans | Earth Wise

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Trawling is a method of commercial fishing that involves pulling or dragging a fishing net – called a trawl – through the water or across the seabed in hopes of catching fish.  Commercial fishing companies favor towing trawl nets because large quantities of fish can be caught in one go.  

However, the trouble with trawling is that it’s destructive to the seafloor and indiscriminate in what it catches.  When towing these large trawl nets, the largest of which is reportedly big enough to catch thirteen 747 jets, everything that happens to be in the way gets caught.  As a result, trawling results in lots of bycatch, a fishing industry term used to describe the deaths of non target species during the process. 

In 2012, the Hong Kong government implemented a territory-wide trawling ban in its waters in hopes of rehabilitating the marine benthic habitat.  The benthic zone refers to the ecological region at the bottom of the ocean. 

Researchers from City University of Hong Kong collected sediment samples from 28 locations six months before the trawl ban and two and a half years after the trawl ban to see whether such interventions can facilitate ecosystem recovery. 

According to the study, which was recently published in the journal Communications Biology, the ban on trawling significantly improved marine biodiversity.  The researchers observed substantial increases in the richness of species and the abundance of benthic marine organisms following the trawling ban.  And since small benthic organisms are the main source of food for large species like fish and crabs, the trawling ban actually helps support fisheries.

More governments should consider a trawl ban to promote sustainable fisheries and marine biodiversity conservation.

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Research confirms trawl ban substantially increases the abundance of marine organisms

Photo, posted December 4, 2018, courtesy of John via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Restoring Seagrass In Virginia | Earth Wise

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Seagrass is found in shallow waters in many parts of the world.  They are plants with roots, stems, and leaves, and produce flowers and seeds.  They can form dense underwater meadows that constitute some of the most productive ecosystems in the world.  Seagrasses provide shelter and food to a diverse community of animals including tiny invertebrates, fish, crabs, turtles, marine mammals and birds.

In the late 1920s, a pathogen began killing seagrasses off the coast of Virginia.  In 1933, a hurricane finished them off completely.  For nearly 70 years thereafter, the bay bottoms of the Virginia coast were muddy and barren, essentially devoid of fish, shellfish, mollusks and other creatures that inhabit seagrass meadows.  The local scallop industry was no more.

The largest seagrass restoration project ever attempted has changed all that.  During the past 21 years, scientists and volunteers have spread more than 70 million eelgrass seeds within four previously barren seaside lagoons.  This has spurred a natural propagation of meadows that have so for grown to almost 9,000 acres, the largest eelgrass habitat between North Carolina and Long Island Sound.

The long-term research conducted by the team from the University of Virginia shows that the success of the seagrass restoration project is improving water quality, substantially increasing the abundance of fish and shellfish in the bays, and capturing carbon from the water and atmosphere and storing it in the extensive root systems of the grasses and in the sediment below. 

The study shows that marine restorations are possible on scales that contribute directly to human well-being.

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Some Good News: Seagrass Restored to Eastern Shore Bays is Flourishing

Photo, posted May 17, 2019, courtesy of Virginia Sea Grant via Flickr. Photo credit: Aileen Devlin | Virginia Sea Grant.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Finding Plastic In Seafood | Earth Wise

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Researchers from the University of Exeter in the UK and the University of Queensland in Australia have developed a new method for identifying and measuring the presence of five different types of plastic in seafood.

The researchers purchased oysters, prawns, squid, crabs, and sardines from a market in Australia and analyzed them using the new technique.  They found plastic in every single sample.

Their findings showed that the amount of plastics present varies greatly among species and differs between individuals of the same species.  The measured plastic levels were 0.04 mg per gram of seafood in squid, 0.07 mg in prawns, 0.1 mg in oysters, 0.3 mg in crabs, and 2.9 mg in sardines. 

All the plastics are types commonly used in plastic packaging and synthetic textiles and are increasingly found in marine litter:  polystyrene, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene, and polymethyl methacrylate.

The new method treats the seafood tissues with chemicals that dissolve the plastics present within them.  The resulting solution is then analyzed using a highly sensitive technique called Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry which both identifies and quantifies the plastics.

Microplastics are an increasing source of pollution for much of the planet, including the oceans where they are eaten by all types of marine creatures ranging from planktonic organisms to large mammals.  Microplastics enter our diet not only from seafood, but also from bottled water, sea salt, beer, and honey, as well as from dust that settles on our food.

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Seafood study finds plastic in all samples

Photo, posted June 23, 2007, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Dead Zone In The Gulf Of Mexico | Earth Wise

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The Gulf of Mexico has an area of low to no oxygen in the water that can kill fish and other marine life.  It is an annual event that is primarily caused by excess nutrient pollution from human activities in urban and agricultural areas throughout the Mississippi River watershed.   When these excess nutrients reach the Gulf, they stimulate the overgrowth of algae, which eventually die and decompose, depleting the oxygen in the water as the algae sink to the bottom.

These low oxygen levels near the bottom of the Gulf cannot support most marine life.  Some species – among them many fish, shrimp, and crabs – swim out of the area, but animals that can’t swim or move away are stressed or killed by the low oxygen.  The dead zone in the Gulf occurs every summer.

A recent forecast for this summer’s dead zone predicts that the area of low or no oxygen will be approximate 6,700 square miles, which is roughly the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined.  This is about 1,100 square miles smaller than last year’s dead zone and much less than the record of 8,776 square miles set in 2017.  But it is still larger than the long-term average size of 5,387 square miles.

Making comparisons to the long-term average ignores the fact that the long-term average itself is unacceptable.  The dead zone not only hurts marine life, but it also harms commercial and recreational fisheries and the communities they support.  The actions that have been taken so far to reduce pollution in the Mississippi watershed are clearly not sufficient to drastically reduce the dead zone in the Gulf.

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Large ‘dead zone’ expected for Gulf of Mexico

Photo, posted October 17, 2017, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Pesticides In The Great Barrier Reef

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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the greatest natural wonders in the world and it has been under siege by warming waters and ocean acidification.  Widespread coral bleaching has damaged or destroyed large portions of the 1,400-mile long coral reef system.  But the effects of climate change are not the only threat to the reef.  Pesticides found in waterways that flow into the Great Barrier Reef are another serious problem.

According to a new study by the University of Queensland, the combined toxicity of 22 of the most common pesticides that flow into the Reef are not meeting pollution reduction targets.

Different pesticides affect different organisms.  Herbicides affect organisms that photosynthesize such as seagrass, corals, mangroves, and algae.  Insecticides affect insect larvae in freshwater, and crustaceans such as crabs, prawns, and lobsters.  Previous assessments have only examined individual pesticides and only for limited times.  The new study has utilized a methodology that estimates the combined toxicity of multiple pesticides found in the waterways that discharge into the Reef and does it for the entire wet season.

The research revealed that the pesticide reduction target set in the Australian Government’s Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan is not being met.  Only one natural resource management region – the Cape York region – was found to be meeting its target.

By having estimates of the risk posed by pesticides in the various regions and individual waterways, governments, farmers, and conservationists can see which areas pose the greatest risk and where to maximize efforts.  Stakeholders have to come together to reduce pesticide concentrations through better management practices and by using less toxic pesticides.

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High pesticide concentrations continue to enter Great Barrier Reef

Photo, posted July 29, 2010, courtesy of Kyle Taylor via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Giant Seaweed Bloom

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Scientists using data from NASA satellites have discovered and documented the largest bloom of seaweed in the world, stretching all the way from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.  The gigantic macroalgae bloom has been dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt. 

The brown seaweed floats in surface water and in recent years has become a problem to shorelines lining the tropical Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and east coast of Florida.  The stuff carpets popular beach destinations and crowded coastal waters. In 2018, more than 20 million tons of it floated on the ocean surface.

Scientists have been studying the Sargassum algae using satellites since 2006, but the major blooms have only started appearing since 2011.  They have occurred every year between 2011 and 2018 except for 2013.  Before 2011, most of the free-floating Sargassum in the ocean was primarily found in patches around the Gulf of Mexico and the Sargasso Sea located on the western edge of the central Atlantic Ocean.

Sargassum provides habitat for turtles, crabs, fish and birds, and produces oxygen via photosynthesis.  However, too much of it can crowd out many marine species.

According to researchers, the ocean’s chemistry must have changed in order for the bloom to get so out of hand.  The factors involved include a large seed population left over from a previous bloom, nutrient input from West Africa, and nutrient input from the Amazon River.  The increase in nutrients may be a result of deforestation and fertilizer use.

Climate-change effects on precipitation and ocean currents ultimately do play a role in this, but increased ocean temperatures do not.  Unfortunately, these giant seaweed blooms are probably here to stay.

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NASA Satellites Find Biggest Seaweed Bloom in the World

Photo courtesy of NASA.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving Beaches With Seagrass

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Almost a quarter of the Gross Domestic Product of places around the Caribbean Sea is earned from tourism.  Preserving the beaches in the region is an economic imperative.  With increasing coastal development, the natural flow of water and sand is disrupted, natural ecosystems are damaged, and many tropical beaches simply disappear into the sea.

With such high stakes, expensive coastal engineering efforts such as repeated replenishing of sand and the construction of concrete protective walls are common strategies.  Rising sea levels and increasingly powerful storms only increase the threat to tropical beaches.

Researchers from The Netherlands and Mexico recently published a study in the journal BioScience on the effectiveness of seagrass in holding onto sand and sediment along shorelines.

Seagrasses are so-named because most species have long green, grass-like leaves. They are often confused with seaweeds but are actually more closely related to flowering plants seen on land. Seagrasses have roots, stems and leaves, and produce flowers and seeds. Seagrasses can form dense underwater meadows and are one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Seagrasses provide shelter and food to an incredibly diverse community of animals, from tiny invertebrates to large fish, crabs, turtles, marine mammals and birds.

The researchers performed measurements of the ability of seagrass along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula coastline to keep sand in place and prevent erosion.  They found that the amount of erosion was strongly linked to the amount of vegetation.  Quite often, seagrass beds have been regarded as a nuisance, rather than a valuable asset for preserving valuable coastlines.  The study opens opportunities for developing new tropical beach protection schemes in which ecology is integrated into engineering solutions.

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Seagrass Saves Beaches and Money

Photo, posted October 13, 2010, courtesy of NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Beware The Blob

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There has been plenty of discussion of El Niño, the periodic weather phenomenon in which prevailing easterly winds in the Pacific Ocean weaken, allowing warm water to move eastward and wreak havoc with the weather in North and South America.  The current El Niño is a particularly strong one; some say it may be one of the strongest ever and are calling it the “Godzilla El Niño.”

[Read more…] about Beware The Blob

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