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Floating Offshore Wind | Earth Wise

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According to a new report by the Global Wind Energy Council, floating offshore wind technology is on track to grow from a miniscule market to a substantial contribution to the world’s energy supply over the next decade.  Furthermore, the United States represents one of the countries with the greatest potential.

Wind power is stronger and steadier in the ocean than on land, so the use of offshore wind is rapidly expanding.  However, because most installations are based on fixed structures attached to the sea bottom, they cannot be installed in very deep or complex seabed locations.

Floating offshore wind is based on structures that are anchored to the seabed only by means of flexible anchors, chains, or steel cables.  Apart from making it feasible to place wind turbines in deeper and more distant locations, floating turbines and platforms can also be built and assembled on land and then towed to the offshore installation site.

The floating offshore wind industry is currently in a pre-commercial phase but has great potential.  Many offshore locations with great potential in terms of their wind resources are unsuitable for conventional installations either because of the depth of the seabed or its complex structure.  This is particularly true of the waters off the coasts of California, Oregon, and the Gulf Coast, which otherwise offer excellent wind resources.

There are many issues to deal with in expanding the use of floating offshore wind, including transporting the power to shore and the ability of the local power grids to handle the incoming power.  On the other hand, distantly placed floating offshore wind reduces environmental concerns and eliminates issues associated with the visual impact of wind farms for coastal residents.

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What’s the potential of floating offshore wind?

Photo, posted May 10, 2015, courtesy of Olin Gilbert via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Training Corals To Tolerate Heat | Earth Wise

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When ocean water is too warm, corals expel the algae that lives in their tissues, which causes the coral to turn completely white.  This is called coral bleaching.   When this happens, the coral is not dead.  However, corals are dependent upon the symbiotic relationship with algae and if conditions don’t improve, they don’t let the algae back in and the corals will die.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, between 2014 and 2017, around 75% of the world’s tropical coral reefs experienced heat stress severe enough to trigger bleaching.  For 30% of the world’s reefs, the heat stress was enough to kill the coral.

According to new research by the University of Miami published in the journal Coral Reefs, corals subjected to a stressful regimen of very warm water in the laboratory came to be more tolerant of high temperatures, offering a potential tool for preserving ailing coral reefs.

In the study, some corals were kept in water at a constant temperature of 82 degrees while others saw water temperatures fluctuating between 82 degrees and 88 degrees.  After 90 days of this treatment, the corals exposed to variable temperatures were able to tolerate high heat for longer periods before bleaching.  This training regime is akin to an athlete preparing for a race.

The findings suggest a possible approach for restoring coral reefs.  Nursery-raised corals that are “trained” to tolerate heat could be planted onto reefs endangered by warming waters.  Reefs populated by corals with boosted stamina to heat stress could have a greater chance of surviving the warming waters of the oceans.

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Some Corals Can Be Conditioned to Tolerate Heat, Study Finds

Photo, posted December 16, 2015, courtesy of Big Cypress National Preserve via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Is It Really Getting Warmer? | Earth Wise

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The primary indicator of global climate change is the Global Mean Surface Temperature of the Earth and the world’s nations are trying to keep its increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial level.   That rise in temperature is called the Global Surface Temperature Anomaly and it actually reached an all-time high in 2016 at 1.02 degrees before going back down.

At this point, you might be saying, “hold on there…  it hasn’t gotten larger over the past 5 years?”  What’s going on?

The global climate is pretty complicated and there are many things that influence it.  One of the most significant factors is the El Niño Southern Oscillation or, more familiarly, the El Niño.  The El Niño is a periodic and irregular variation in the sea surface temperature of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean driven by persistent westerly winds.  When an El Niño is happening, currents move to the west coast of South America and warm the tropics and subtropics.  This causes a spike in the global mean temperature.  There was a strong El Niño in 2016.

On the other hand, when easterly winds dominate to form a La Niña, cool water comes up from the depths of the Pacific and cools the atmosphere.  In 2017 and 2018, there was a fairly strong La Niña, lowering the global mean temperature.  2020 had no El Niño or La Niña, and the global temperature went back up to its previous peak.  Last year, there was again a La Niña and the temperature dipped again.

The global mean surface temperature has been rising in the industrial era, but it also fluctuates with the complicated dynamics of the Pacific Ocean.

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Why Isn’t It Getting Warmer?

Photo, posted February 12, 2016, courtesy of Amit Patel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Antarctic Ice Collapse | Earth Wise

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In Antarctica, a huge chunk of the Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed suddenly and spectacularly in January.

The Larsen Ice Shelf is located on the northeastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula on the Weddell Sea.  It was formed over the course of more than 12,000 years.  The Weddell Sea used to be a completely frozen body of water.  The famous Ernest Shackleton expedition in 1915 was trapped in its ice.  But the Antarctic Peninsula has been steadily warming in recent decades.

The Larsen A Ice shelf collapsed in 1995 and the 1,250-square-mile Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed in 2002.  After that event, a portion of the detached ice shelf refroze in 2011 and was attached to the Scar Inlet Ice Shelf.  The refrozen ice was called the Larsen B embayment.

In January, the embayment broke apart, taking with it a portion of the Scar Inlet Ice Shelf.  It disintegrated within a matter of days.  The combined Larsen Ice Shelves – called A, B, C, and D – once extended along a 1000-mile stretch of the eastern Antarctic Peninsula.  Since 1995, it has shrunk from 33,000 square miles to 26,000 square miles.

These ice shelves float on the ocean, so their loss does not actually increase global sea levels.   However, the shelves act as dams that hold back glaciers located on the land behind them.  The loss of Antarctic ice shelves dramatically increases the rate at which glaciers flow into the sea, and that does increase global sea levels. 

Now that the sea ice from the Larsen B embayment is gone, it is likely that there will be additional inland ice losses from the newly exposed glaciers.

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Remnant of Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf Disintegrates

Photo, posted February 13, 2018, courtesy of NASA/Nathan Kurtz via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Offshore Wind For New York | Earth Wise

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In mid-January, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority announced that it had finalized contracts with BP and Equinor for the Empire Wind 2 and Beacon Wind offshore wind farms.

The agreements brought to fruition contracts that were awarded in January of 2021 and represent one of the largest clean energy procurements ever in the United States.

Under the finalized contracts, Equinor and BP will provide 1,260 megawatts of offshore wind power from Empire Wind 2 and another 1,230 megawatts from Beacon Wind 1.  Once completed, Empire Wind 1, Empire Wind 2, and Beacon Wind 1 will produce enough electricity to power about 2 million New York homes.

As part of the project, there will be substantial investments in New York infrastructure.  The South Brooklyn Marine Terminal will be transformed into a major staging and assembly facility for the offshore wind industry and will be an operations and maintenance base for the project.   (The project will also invest in the Port of Albany, making it America’s first offshore wind tower and transition piece manufacturing facility).

Empire Wind is located 15-30 miles southeast of Long Island and spans an area of 80,000 acres.  Its two phases will eventually have an installed capacity of more than 2,000 megawatts.

Beacon Wind is located more than 60 miles east of Montauk Point and 20 miles south of Nantucket.  It covers an area of 128,000 acres.  Its two phases will ultimately also have a total capacity of more than 2,000 megawatts.

The wind farms will help generate more than a billion dollars in economic output to New York State.  Empire Wind 1 is expected to begin commercial operation in 2026 and the other wind farms over the following couple of years.

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New York State just sealed a deal for 2.5 GW of offshore wind

Photo, posted March 24, 2016, courtesy of Andy Dingley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Threat From Thwaites | Earth Wise

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The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is the widest glacier in the world. It is about 80 miles across and in places extends to a depth of about 2,600 to 3,900 feet.  The glacier is roughly the size of Florida, and it currently contributes 4% of annual global sea level rise as it continues to retreat from a warming ocean.

The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration is a team of nearly 100 scientists dedicated to studying the glacier.  According to the scientists, Thwaites has doubled its outflow speed within the last 30 years.  The glacier in its entirety holds enough water to raise global sea levels by over two feet, which would be catastrophic.

A third of the glacier flows more slowly than the rest because it is braced by a floating ice shelf that is held in place by an underwater mountain.  The concern is that the brace of ice slowing the glacier may not last for long.

Beneath the surface, warmer ocean water is attacking the glacier from all angles.  The water is melting the ice directly beneath the glacier causing it to lose its grip on the underwater mountain.  Massive fractures have formed and are growing.

Warm water is also a threat for what is called the grounding zone, which is the area where the glacier lifts off the seabed. There are many possible scenarios under which there could be a major ice loss from the glacier.  It is unclear how quickly it could occur.  It might take decades, or it could be centuries.  The threat is large enough and real enough that continued observation and research is essential.

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The Threat from Thwaites: The Retreat of Antarctica’s Riskiest Glacier

Photo, posted October 16, 2012, courtesy of J. Yungel / NASA Ice via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Fire And Ice | Earth Wise

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In recent years, there have been countless stories about the effects of the changing climate.  Many of those stories have been about the dwindling sea ice in the Arctic and many others have been about the worsening wildfires in the western United States.   According to a recent study published by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, those two things are very much related.

As sea ice in the Arctic melts from July to October, sunlight warms the surrounding land and sea surfaces.  The resulting differences in air pressure create and strengthens a vortex in the atmosphere above the heated area which spins counterclockwise like a cyclone.

The powerful vortex pushes the polar jet stream out of its typical pattern and diverts moist air away from the western United States.  With the jet stream moved off its usual course, a second vortex, this time spinning clockwise, forms under the ridge of the polar jet stream above the Western U.S.  This second vortex brings with it clear skies and dry conditions:  fire-favorable weather.

Arctic sea ice has continually declined at least since the late 1970s.  It is predicted that there will be periods of entirely iceless Arctic waters before the 2050s.  In turn, conditions in the already fire-ravaged West are likely to be further exacerbated.  More than three million acres have burned across California alone during the 2021 wildfire season.

Climate conditions in one part of the world can, over time, influence climate outcomes thousands of miles away.  The research at Pacific Northwest Laboratory reveals how regional land and sea surface warming caused by Arctic ice melting can trigger hotter and drier conditions in the West later in the year.

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Fire and Ice: The Puzzling Link Between Western Wildfires and Arctic Sea Ice

Photo, posted July 28, 2018, courtesy of Bob Dass via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Hunt For Marine Plastic | Earth Wise

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Estimates are that about 10 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year.  This is equivalent to a truckload of plastic being dumped into the sea every minute and the stuff is not easy to keep track of.  Some of it ends up in the  infamous ocean garbage patches.  But overall, researchers only know what happens to about 1% of it.

The European Space Agency has decided to find out whether it might be possible to detect and track floating plastic in the oceans using satellite monitoring.  Researchers have a variety of ideas about how best to do this and now the agency is testing some of those ideas.

The ESA maintains something called the Atlantic Basin Facility which is a 7000 square-foot tank equipped to simulate various types of waves and tidal currents.  It is the largest facility of its kind in the world.

Researchers place plastic in the basin consisting of typical items found at sea, such as bags, bottles, marine nets and ropes, plastic cutlery, and Styrofoam balls.  The plastic used in the study included material previously recovered from the sea through ocean cleanup campaigns.  Multiple research groups from European universities used specialized instrumentation to monitor the basin from above.  Techniques included radar remote sensing, something called GNSS reflectometry, and specialized optical instrumentation.

Initial results look promising in that under some circumstances teams received useable signals.  It will take further analysis to determine the ultimate utility of space-based monitoring of plastic entering the ocean.  Marine litter is a large and growing problem.  Figuring out where it all is and where it is going is a necessary part of any solution.

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Hunting for marine plastic

Photo, posted March 24, 2017, courtesy of Holly Richards/USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Vineyard Wind Prepares For Construction | Earth Wise

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Vineyard Wind 1 will be the first utility-scale offshore wind energy project in the United States.  It will be located 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and will consist of an array of 62 wind turbines, spaced one nautical mile apart.  It will generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power over 400,000 homes.

The project has recently closed on $2.3 billion of senior debt financing, which sets the stage for construction to begin.  The joint venture between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure partners is one of the single largest investments in a renewable energy project in the U.S.  The financial close is basically the final milestone for launching the project following years of clearing regulatory and other hurdles.

With the financial closing, Vineyard Wind will be instructing its contractors to begin work.  Onshore work will start this fall and offshore work will begin in 2022.

The project will use Haliade-X wind turbine generators made by GE.  These are some of the largest and most powerful wind turbines currently available, each one capable of generating 13 megawatts of electricity.  The electricity generated by the turbines will be collected by an offshore substation and then transmitted to shore.  Two submarine cables will bring the electricity from the substation to a landing point in Barnstable.  The cables will be buried six feet below the seafloor.  Underground cables will then route the power to an onshore substation in the village of Hyannis where it will be connected to the New England Grid.

Vineyard Wind is the first of many offshore wind farms in the works for the Northeastern United States.

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U.S.’s first commercial-scale offshore wind project prepares for construction

Photo, posted March 24, 2016, courtesy of Andy Dingley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Offsetting Reef Acidification | Earth Wise

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The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system.  It is composed of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and 900 islands covering an area of more than 130,000 square miles.  In recent times, it has been under unprecedented stress from ocean warming, tropical cyclones, sediment and nutrient runoff, marine pests, and ocean acidification.

Among these stressors, ocean acidification is one of the most significant threats to the long-term viability of the reef because acidification affects the ability of corals to rebuild and repair their structures and recover from bleaching events.

New research from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, studied the impact of artificial ocean alkalinization on the acidity of the waters in the Great Barrier Reef.  The idea is to inject a source of alkalinity into the ocean, an accelerated version of a natural process that occurs from the chemical weathering of minerals under the sea.

The results of the study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, are that injecting an alkalinizing agent into the ocean along the length of the Reef would make it possible to offset ten years’ worth of ocean acidification based on the present rate of human-generated carbon emissions.  Such an effort could use an abundant mineral resource like olivine, which is already mined near the Great Barrier Reef.  Releasing 30,000 tons a day of the alkalinizing agent from an existing shipping line from a bulk carrier would reach almost the whole of the Great Barrier Reef.

In response to the declining health of coral reef ecosystems, many different intervention concepts and technologies are under consideration.  The goal of these would be to minimize environmental pressures and enhance the resilience of the ecosystems.

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Projected acidification of the Great Barrier Reef could be offset by ten years

Photo, posted August 4, 2019, courtesy of Larry Koester via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hardier Corals For Endangered Reefs | Earth Wise

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Mass coral bleaching events are getting increasingly frequent as the oceans continue to warm, endangering coral reefs all over the world. The damage to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been enormous and in 2015, nearly half of Hawaii’s coral reefs were affected by a severe bleaching event.

Not all coral bleaching is permanent.  Corals can sometimes recover.  Some corals even seem to resist bleaching altogether.  Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied these resilient corals to see just how effective they are in resisting the effects of climate change.

Their experiments sought to determine whether corals that seem to resist bleaching can be moved to other locations and used as the seed stock to repopulate degraded reefs.

The researchers identified coral colonies that resisted bleaching during the 2015 Hawaiian bleaching event and collected samples from them.  They transplanted some of them to a second reef as well as putting other samples in laboratory tanks and simulating a bleaching event by raising the water temperature over a period of several days.

Careful tracking of the corals’ health showed that the bleaching-resistant corals stayed that way even in a new environment and under additional stress.  They also studied how well the corals reproduced and found that the corals that spent time in a favorable new site before being subjected to stress demonstrated greater fitness and improved reproduction.

The study indicates that coral transplantation using colonies known to be resistant to bleaching may be an effective way to buy some time in preserving the world’s coral reefs.  But global action on climate change is essential because even bleaching-resistant corals aren’t going to survive forever if ocean warming keeps increasing.

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Climate change-resistant corals could provide lifeline to battered reefs

Photo, posted November 29, 2012, courtesy of Robert Linsdell via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Wind Farms Slowing Each Other Down | Earth Wise

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Offshore wind is booming in Europe.  The expansion of wind energy in the German Bight and Baltic Sea has been especially dramatic.  At this point, there are about 8 gigawatts of wind turbines in German waters, the equivalent of about 8 nuclear power plants.  But space in this region is limited so that wind farms are sometimes built very close to one another.

A team of researchers from the Helmholtz Center Hereon, a major German research institute, has found that wind speeds downstream from large windfarms are significantly slowed down.  In a study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, they found that this braking effect can result in astonishingly large-scale lowering of wind speeds.

On average, the regions of lowered wind can extend 20-30 miles and, under certain weather conditions, can even extend up to 60 miles.  As a result, the output of a neighboring wind farm located within this distance can be reduced by 20 to 25 percent.

These wake effects are weather dependent.  During stable weather conditions, which are typically the case in the spring in German waters, the effects can be especially large.  During stormy times, such as in November and December, the atmosphere is so mixed that the wind farm wake effects are relatively small.

Based on their modeling, it is clear that if wind farms are planned to be located close together, these wake effects need to be taken into account.  The researchers next want to investigate the effects that reduced wind speeds have on life in the sea.  Ocean winds affect salt and oxygen content, temperatures, and nutrients in the water.  It is important to find out how reduced winds might affect marine ecosystems.

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Are wind farms slowing each other down?

Photo, posted November 23, 2011, courtesy of David J Laporte via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Sea Turtles And The Sargasso Sea | Earth Wise

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The lifecycle of sea turtles includes a longstanding mystery, often called the “lost years”.  Turtles hatching from nests along Florida’s Atlantic coast head into the ocean and are generally not seen again for several years before they return in their adolescence. Very little is known about where they spend this time in the open ocean.

Researchers at the University of Central Florida have learned that green turtles as well as loggerhead turtles – both iconic species in conservation efforts – may be spending their youth in the legendary Sargasso Sea.  The Sargasso Sea is located off the east coast of the U.S. in the North Atlantic Ocean.  It has frequently been featured in popular culture, such as in the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, as a place where ships could be trapped in thick mats of floating, brown Sargassum seaweed for which the sea is named.

The researchers tracked the baby turtles by attaching advanced, solar-powered tracking devices, about an inch long, to their shells.  They used a special adhesive that held the devices to the turtle shells but would allow the devices to fall off after a few months causing no harm to the turtles or inhibiting shell growth or behavior.

It was previously thought that baby turtles would passively drift in sea currents and simply ride those currents until their later juvenile years.  The new research shows that the turtles actively orient to go into the Sargasso Sea.

Studies of where turtles go as they develop are fundamental to sound sea turtle conservation.  If we don’t know where turtles are and what parts of the ocean are important to them, we are doing conservation blindfolded.

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Legendary Sargasso Sea May be Sea Turtles’ Destination during Mysterious ‘Lost Years’

Photo, posted October 23, 2016, courtesy of Kris-Mikael Krister via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Green Light For Commercial-Scale Offshore Wind | Earth Wise

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The Biden administration has given final approval to a project it hopes will usher in a new era of wind energy in the United States.  The greenlight was announced by the Department of the Interior on May 11.

The Vineyard Wind project intends to install up to 84 huge wind turbines about 12 nautical miles off the cost of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.  In total, Vineyard Wind could generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 400,000 homes.  The construction project will create about 3,600 jobs.  The $2.8 billion project is a joint venture of the energy firms Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

The idea of a wind farm off the Massachusetts coast was conceived 20 years ago but ran into repeated setbacks, delays, and well-funded opposition from waterfront property owners concerned about what will ultimately be the barely discernable sight of tiny blips on the distant horizon.  The Trump administration moved to cancel the permitting process for Vineyard Wind, but the Biden administration revived the project in March as part of its greater efforts to tackle climate change.

Electricity generated by Vineyard Wind will travel via cables buried six feet below the ocean floor to Cape Cod, where they will connect to a substation and feed into the New England grid.  The project is expected to begin delivering wind-powered electricity in 2023.

The Biden administration says that it intends to fast-track permits for other wind projects off the Atlantic Coast and that it will offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects and invest in upgrades to ports across the United States to support wind turbine construction.

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Biden Administration Approves Nation’s First Major Offshore Wind Farm

Photo, posted February 8, 2007, courtesy of mmatsuura via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Giant Breakaway Iceberg | Earth Wise

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Scientists have been closely monitoring multiple cracks and chasms that have formed in the 500-foot-thick Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica over the past few years.  In late 2019, a new crack was spotted in a portion of the shelf north of an area known as the McDonald Ice Rumples.  The rift was monitored by satellite imaging and was seen by February as moving about 15 feet a day.

In the early hours of February 26th, the crack widened rapidly before finally breaking free from the rest of the floating ice shelf.  News reports around the world have described the massive 500-square-mile iceberg by comparing it to the size of well-known cities:  1.5 times the size of greater Paris, 10 times the size of San Francisco, twice the size of Chicago, nearly the size of Greater London, and so on.

Antarctica is known for churning out some enormous bergs.  The new iceberg, which has been named A-74, is huge, but doesn’t compare to the iceberg A-68 that calved from the Larson C Ice Shelf in 2017.  That one was almost five times larger.

The calving of A-74 does not pose a threat to the presently unmanned British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI Research Station, which was repositioned in 2017 to a more secure location after the ice shelf was deemed to be unsafe.  The section where the station now sits is still holding on, but when it eventually breaks, it will likely create a berg nearly 700 square miles in size.

It remains to be seen what will become of the new iceberg.  Most likely, it will eventually get caught up in the Weddell Gyre, a clockwise-rotating ocean flow in the Southern Ocean that covers an area more than half the size of the US.

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Breakup at Brunt

Photo, posted October 27, 2016, courtesy of NASA/Nathan Kurtz via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving The Queen Conch | Earth Wise

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Queen conchs are large sea snails belonging to the same taxonomic group as clams, oysters, and squid.  They live on coral reefs or seagrass meadows in warm, shallow waters.  Queen conchs are found throughout the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, ranging as far north as Bermuda and as far south as Brazil.

Reaching up to 12” long and living up to 40 years, the queen conch is prized as a delicacy and revered for its shell.  It’s the second most important sea-bottom fishery in the Caribbean region, trailing only the spiny lobster. 

But queen conchs face a challenge.  Their populations are in a steady rate of decline as a result of overfishing, habitat degradation, and hurricane damage.  In some places, the numbers are so low that remaining conchs cannot find breeding partners.  The situation is urgent from both an ecological and economical perspective. 

As a result, Megan Davis, a scientist from Florida Atlantic University who spent more than four decades researching queen conch, has released an 80-page, step-by-step user manual about how to care for the species. Her work was recently published in the National Shellfisheries Association’s Journal of Shellfish Research.

According to Davis, aquaculture, along with conservation of breeding populations and fishery management, are ways to help ensure longevity of the queen conch.  With requests for mariculture guidance pouring in from communities throughout the Caribbean, Davis and her collaborators are expanding their queen conch conservation, education, and restorative mariculture program.

Their desired outcomes include creating protected breeding areas, establishing sustainable hatcheries, and repopulating protected habitats.

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‘Hail to the queen’: Saving the Caribbean queen conch

Photo, posted June 3, 2012, courtesy of Christopher Gonzalez via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Return Of The Blue Whales | Earth Wise

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An international research team has revealed that critically endangered Antarctic blue whales have returned to the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, 50 years after whaling just about wiped them out.  Other recent research has found that humpback whales are also returning to the region.

Blue whales were commonplace off South Georgia before 20th century industrial whaling taking place between 1904 and 1971 killed over 42,000 of them there.  Most of that number were killed before the mid-1930s.  As a result, blue whales essentially vanished from the region.  Whale survey ships sighted only a single blue whale between 1998 and 2018.

But things have changed in recent years.  A survey this past February resulted in 58 blue whale sightings and numerous acoustic detections.  Although commercial whaling was banned in the area in the 1960s, it has taken a long time for the whales to make a comeback.

Researchers are not sure why blue whales have taken so long to return to the area.  It may be that so many were killed over the years that the remaining population had little or no cultural memory of South Georgia Island as a foraging ground, and that it is only now being rediscovered.

In total, 41 individual blue whales have been photo-identified from South Georgia over the past 10 years, although none of those matched the 517 whales in the current Antarctic blue whale photographic catalogue.  Dedicated whale surveys are difficult in a region known for its harsh weather and inaccessibility but are crucial to the future management of South Georgia’s seas.  In any case, researchers see the recent sightings as a very positive step forward for conservation of the Antarctic blue whale. 

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Blue whales return to South Georgia after near extinction

Photo, posted September 7, 2007, courtesy of the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries via Flickr. Photo credit: NOAA.

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.

Artificial Reefs As Havens For Marine Predators | Earth Wise

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Climate change, pollution, development and other stresses have accelerated the decline of reef ecosystems across much of the world’s oceans in recent years.  Large predators such as sharks, mackerels, barracudas, jacks and others that formerly fed around reefs have had to venture outside their normal migratory routes in search of suitable alternatives.

According to a new study by Duke University, marine predators have taken up residence at shipwrecks and other artificial reefs.  The study surveyed 30 sites along the North Carolina coast and found that predator densities were up to five times larger at the 14 artificial reefs surveyed than at the 16 natural reefs in the survey.

Shipwrecks, particularly those that rose between 4 and 10 meters up into the water column, were a big favorite of the fishes.  Some of those sites supported predator densities up to 11 times larger than natural reefs or low-profile artificial reefs.  The shipwrecks are basically high-rise timeshares in the sea.

The findings of the survey show that artificial reefs can support large predators, supplementing natural reefs if the design and placement of the artificial reefs are appropriate.  In addition, when it comes to designing artificial reefs, there appears to be a height advantage.  So, reefs either made from sunken ships or at least made to resemble them would be desirable.

Because undersea predators help maintain healthy and sustainable populations of species lower in the food web, providing suitable habitat for the predators is extremely important.  Based on the study, it appears that the strategic use of artificial reefs can be an effective way to help counter the increasing loss of natural habitat on the ocean bottom.

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Artificial Reefs Take on a Towering Presence as Havens for Marine Predators

Photo, posted July 29, 2014, courtesy of NOAA Photo Library via Flickr. Photo credit: Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Shrinking Ice In The Bering Sea | Earth Wise

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The Bering Sea forms the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth:  Eurasia and the Americas.  Recent analysis of vegetation from a Bering Sea island has determined that the extent of sea ice in the region is the lowest it has been for over 5,000 years.

St. Matthew Island, a small island in the middle of the Bering Sea, has essentially been recording what is happening in the ocean and atmosphere around it, in the form of the composition of peat layers on the island.  By analyzing the chemical composition of peat core samples, scientists can estimate how sea ice in the region has changed over the course of time.

Changes in the relative amounts of two oxygen isotopes in the sediment and plant debris trapped in the peat on the island reflect the nature of precipitation during the period when the peat layers formed.  That ratio is correlated with the amount of sea ice in the region.  Satellite data acquired over the past 40 years confirms this correlation.

Analysis of the data shows that the current ice levels are unprecedented in the last 5,500 years.  These long-term findings affirm that reductions in Bering Sea ice are due to more than recent higher temperatures associated with global warming.  Atmospheric and ocean currents, which have also been altered by climate change, play a large role in the presence of sea ice.

Summertime sea ice in the Arctic was expected to reach its second-lowest extent in September in 40 years of observation.  Sea ice typically builds up again each winter, but the changes in ice extents actually lag behind changes in greenhouse gas level by decades.  Future ice loss is already built into the system.

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Bering Sea ice extent is at most reduced state in last 5,500 years

Photo, posted December 2, 2012, courtesy of Bering Land Bridge National Preserve via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)