Two bits here of Antarctic interest from a geological perspective. First, a good friend, Dr. Ian Dalziel, of the University of Texas at Austin, and colleagues has recently worked out that 1.1 billion years ago Texas and Antarctica were neighbors. Full article below.
Secondly, it appears that the Japanese tsunami caused a major calving on an Antarctic ice shelf. A short video from Nasa tells the story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPDuTzhNxvU&feature=player_embedded
http://www.geosociety.org/news/pr/11-48.htm
A Billion Year Old Piece of North America Traced Back to Antarctica
Boulder, CO, USA - An international team of researchers has found the strongest evidence yet that parts of North America and Antarctica were connected 1.1 billion years ago, long before the supercontinent Pangaea formed.
"I can go to the Franklin Mountains in West Texas and stand next to what was once part of Coats Land in Antarctica," said Staci Loewy, a geochemist at California State University, Bakersfield, who led the study. "That's so amazing."
Loewy and her colleagues discovered that rocks collected from both locations have the exact same composition of lead isotopes. Earlier analyses showed the rocks to be the exact same age and have the same chemical and geologic properties. The work, published online (ahead of print) in the September issue of the journal Geology, strengthens support for the so-called SWEAT hypothesis, which posits that ancestral North America and East Antarctica were joined in an earlier supercontinent called Rodinia.
The approximately 1.1 billion year old North American Mid-continent Rift System extends across the continent from the Great Lakes to Texas. Volcanic rocks associated with the rift, which appears to represent an aborted tectonic attempt to split the ancestral North American continent of Laurentia, are well exposed in the Keweenaw Peninsula of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from which they take their name, the Keweenawan large igneous province. The rift extends in the subsurface beneath Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma to the Franklin Mountains near El Paso, Texas where related rocks are exposed. In this latest report, Loewy, Ian Dalziel, research professor at The University of Texas at Austin, Richard Hanson of Texas Christian University and colleagues from several overseas institutions, find that rocks barely peeking through the ice in Coats Land, a remote part of the Antarctic continent south of the Atlantic Ocean basin, reflect a former continuation of the North American rift system. Loewy began her collaboration with Dalziel several years ago as a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.
Loewy et al. use new lead (Pb) isotopic data from the 1.1-billion-year-old rocks from Coats Land, to constrain the positions of Laurentia (ancestral North America) and Kalahari (ancestral southern Africa) in the 1-billion-year-old supercontinent, Rodinia. The Coats Land rocks are identical in age to both the Keweenawan large igneous province of the North American mid-continent rift and the contemporaneous Umkondo large igneous province of southern Africa. Comparison of the isotopic compositions, however, unequivocally links the Coats Land rocks with the Keweenawan province. Together with paleomagnetic data this suggests that the Coats Land block was a piece of Laurentia near west Texas 1.1 billion years ago. Furthermore, the Coats Land block collided with the Kalahari Precambrian craton of Africa during a 1-billion-year-old collision. Based on this reconstruction, Laurentia collided with Kalahari along Antarctica’s Maud mountain belt, which would represent a continuation of the 1-billion-year-old Grenville mountain belt of eastern and southern North America.
Thus the tiny Coats Land block of Antarctica is a ‘tectonic tracer’ providing critical clues to the geographic relationships between three of the major continents of the planet in the time interval 1.1 – 1.0 billion years ago, just prior to the opening of the Pacific Ocean basin, the hypothesized ‘Snowball Earth’ glaciations, and the rise of multi-cellular life.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Sex on the High Seas!
Fellow elephant seal lovers,
Isn't it wonderfully rare to be a biologist and get to use a catchy subject line like that?
I find this very interesting, that in one instance at one site at least many females are avoiding the big bull squashing scene. It surely sounds more romantic to find a Valentino bull in the waves than to mate with and be smothered by Brutus on the beach. But what do we really know? Does this happen everywhere and often? If a female mates with a smaller bull in the waves instead of big bad Brutus on the beach, is she as successful pupping the following season?
Let's not forget the value of the "double-mother-sucker-superweaner", the absolute best biological term on the planet. I'm sure you are dying to know what a 'double-mother-sucker-superweaner' is. First, a dominant, territory holding elephant seal bull is almost always a superweaner as a pup, which is to say a very large weaner. To be that very large weaner, one probably will have to be a double-mother-sucker, which is a pup that is both bold and stealthy enough to suckle from multiple mothers, both his own and parasitizing other mothers. So there you have the double-mother-sucker-superweaner :)
I hope I've put a smile on your face.
Seals Mating at Sea Give Beachmaster the Slip
Some female elephant seals won't play opt to mate offshore instead of beachside
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/07/29/seals-mating-at-sea-give-beachmaster-the-slip
By Joel N. Shurkin, ISNS Contributor
(ISNS)—Life for elephant seals is nasty and brutish—but their sex lives are legendary.
Only the biggest and most brutish males are believed to reproduce. During the annual breeding season, huge males, called beachmasters, rule harems of much smaller females. The beachmaster drives off all male competitors until another big, aggressive male comes along and dethrones him. It is believed to be one of nature's purest examples of polygyny.
In this case, evolution favors the strongest and biggest.
It turns out those helpless females may not be so helpless, at least in one colony. Large numbers of female Southern elephant seals at the edge of Antarctica are ignoring the polygyny system in favor of sex in the high seas.
But evolution may also favor the wisest.
Researchers from Australia and South Africa have found that large numbers of female seals skip the yearly breeding interval at Marion Island, approximately located between the two continents of Africa and Antarctica. When they finally do show up, they are pregnant, and the beachmaster had nothing to do with it. Almost three-fourths of the males skip the violence and frustration as well.
955 miles off the African coast, Marion Island is a wildlife preserve full of seals, penguins and seabirds that is administered by South Africa. According to Nico de Bruyn, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Pretoria, the seals come to land twice a year: once to molt, the other to reproduce. Both tasks are much easier to do on solid land than in the tossing ocean.
Male bull elephant seals are enormous, some measuring 16 feet long and weighing more than 3 short tons.They have a proboscis, or trunk, almost a foot long, hence the elephant in their name. They are loud, smelly and mean-tempered.
Female elephant seals are one-fourth the weight and up to 6 feet shorter than males.
The seals employ delayed implantation, meaning the fertilized egg does not implant itself and begin development until the timing is exactly correct for the pup to be born on land, a 12-month gestation period including the delay. On Marion Island, that is in October, de Bruyn said. All the pups are born within days of each other.
Females nurse the young for only about three weeks and are then ready to reproduce again. The bulls, alpha males, are so large many females and pups are killed when an amorous or bellicose bull lands on them. On the crowded beach there is no place to escape.
But the researchers, reporting in Animal Behaviour, have found that as many as half the females refuse to play along, staying in the ocean and mating with whom they chose rather than joining the chaos on the beach.
"For a male, even if he is huge in comparison to the female—which they are—coercing a female is so much more difficult in the water because she has more options," de Bruyn said.
The researchers began their work of marking and capturing animals because of concern about a dramatic decline in Southern elephant seals noted in the 1980s. The population at Marion Island was down 80 percent for reasons unknown, although de Bruyn said that it has stabilized now and is even showing a slight increase.
De Bruyn does not think this evasion of is new behavior.
Oddly, that behavior is not seen in other elephant seal colonies. Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studies the Northern elephant seals that breed at Ano Nuevo on the California coast.He doesn't think that behavior is common.
"We have no evidence that it occurs in Northern elephant seals.I'm not even sure how prevalent the observation is for Southern elephant seals," Costa said. "We know that our females do not hang out in the water. I can say this because we track them onto the beach from sea, or at least the 300-plus females we have tracked don't spend a lot of time offshore. They just come in and land on the beach."
And then end up in some beachmaster's harem.
Isn't it wonderfully rare to be a biologist and get to use a catchy subject line like that?
I find this very interesting, that in one instance at one site at least many females are avoiding the big bull squashing scene. It surely sounds more romantic to find a Valentino bull in the waves than to mate with and be smothered by Brutus on the beach. But what do we really know? Does this happen everywhere and often? If a female mates with a smaller bull in the waves instead of big bad Brutus on the beach, is she as successful pupping the following season?
Let's not forget the value of the "double-mother-sucker-superweaner", the absolute best biological term on the planet. I'm sure you are dying to know what a 'double-mother-sucker-superweaner' is. First, a dominant, territory holding elephant seal bull is almost always a superweaner as a pup, which is to say a very large weaner. To be that very large weaner, one probably will have to be a double-mother-sucker, which is a pup that is both bold and stealthy enough to suckle from multiple mothers, both his own and parasitizing other mothers. So there you have the double-mother-sucker-superweaner :)
I hope I've put a smile on your face.
Seals Mating at Sea Give Beachmaster the Slip
Some female elephant seals won't play opt to mate offshore instead of beachside
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/07/29/seals-mating-at-sea-give-beachmaster-the-slip
By Joel N. Shurkin, ISNS Contributor
(ISNS)—Life for elephant seals is nasty and brutish—but their sex lives are legendary.
Only the biggest and most brutish males are believed to reproduce. During the annual breeding season, huge males, called beachmasters, rule harems of much smaller females. The beachmaster drives off all male competitors until another big, aggressive male comes along and dethrones him. It is believed to be one of nature's purest examples of polygyny.
In this case, evolution favors the strongest and biggest.
It turns out those helpless females may not be so helpless, at least in one colony. Large numbers of female Southern elephant seals at the edge of Antarctica are ignoring the polygyny system in favor of sex in the high seas.
But evolution may also favor the wisest.
Researchers from Australia and South Africa have found that large numbers of female seals skip the yearly breeding interval at Marion Island, approximately located between the two continents of Africa and Antarctica. When they finally do show up, they are pregnant, and the beachmaster had nothing to do with it. Almost three-fourths of the males skip the violence and frustration as well.
955 miles off the African coast, Marion Island is a wildlife preserve full of seals, penguins and seabirds that is administered by South Africa. According to Nico de Bruyn, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Pretoria, the seals come to land twice a year: once to molt, the other to reproduce. Both tasks are much easier to do on solid land than in the tossing ocean.
Male bull elephant seals are enormous, some measuring 16 feet long and weighing more than 3 short tons.They have a proboscis, or trunk, almost a foot long, hence the elephant in their name. They are loud, smelly and mean-tempered.
Female elephant seals are one-fourth the weight and up to 6 feet shorter than males.
The seals employ delayed implantation, meaning the fertilized egg does not implant itself and begin development until the timing is exactly correct for the pup to be born on land, a 12-month gestation period including the delay. On Marion Island, that is in October, de Bruyn said. All the pups are born within days of each other.
Females nurse the young for only about three weeks and are then ready to reproduce again. The bulls, alpha males, are so large many females and pups are killed when an amorous or bellicose bull lands on them. On the crowded beach there is no place to escape.
But the researchers, reporting in Animal Behaviour, have found that as many as half the females refuse to play along, staying in the ocean and mating with whom they chose rather than joining the chaos on the beach.
"For a male, even if he is huge in comparison to the female—which they are—coercing a female is so much more difficult in the water because she has more options," de Bruyn said.
The researchers began their work of marking and capturing animals because of concern about a dramatic decline in Southern elephant seals noted in the 1980s. The population at Marion Island was down 80 percent for reasons unknown, although de Bruyn said that it has stabilized now and is even showing a slight increase.
De Bruyn does not think this evasion of is new behavior.
Oddly, that behavior is not seen in other elephant seal colonies. Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studies the Northern elephant seals that breed at Ano Nuevo on the California coast.He doesn't think that behavior is common.
"We have no evidence that it occurs in Northern elephant seals.I'm not even sure how prevalent the observation is for Southern elephant seals," Costa said. "We know that our females do not hang out in the water. I can say this because we track them onto the beach from sea, or at least the 300-plus females we have tracked don't spend a lot of time offshore. They just come in and land on the beach."
And then end up in some beachmaster's harem.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Emperor Penguins and their orderly, civilized huddle
We all know and are amazed by the behavior and biology of the male Emperor Penguin, each prospective father incubating his one egg through the most brutal winter on this planet by protecting it atop his feet for months while not eating or drinking, only able to shuffle slowly as the winter ebbs and flows. It turns out that these elegant gentlemen are at the same time very polite and orderly as they stand incubating, rotating through huddles where each animal gets a turn amid a warming group of birds. This is so very civilized and orderly of these fine birds. I read somewhere some years ago that in the midst of the emperor penguin huddle temperatures can reach as high as 70°F. If so, the birds in the middle would need to rotate out just to not overheat. I suspect that as well they pack tighter or looser depending on how story, windy or cold it is.
There is a time lapse video of the huddle along with the article:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/penguins-shuffle-warm/
Emperor Penguins Rotate Through Giant Huddle for Warmth
Massive huddles of male Emperor penguins are crucial to keeping warm during Antarctica’s brutal winter while they incubate their eggs.
These tightly packed penguins shuffle en mass every 30 to 60 seconds, reordering themselves so every individual gets to cycle through the warm, central part of the huddle.
The trick with these groups is to get the packing just right. If the penguins are too loosely arranged, they won’t stay warm enough, said Daniel Zitterbart, Barbara Wienecke, James Butler and Ben Fabry in a June 1 study in PloS One. But if they’re too tightly jammed together, they can’t rearrange themselves, and animals on the edge of the huddle won’t get a chance to warm up.
By taking small, 2- to 4-inch steps every minute or so, the penguins achieve maximum packing density. It’s like tapping on a can of flour to jiggle everything into the bottom.
But the shuffling also results in a wave of movement that rolls through the group and rotates every bird through the warmest parts of the huddle. Penguins can join the group on one end, cycle through the huddle and exit on the other end.
This creeping movement also means that different groups can merge into larger huddles.
The international team of researchers kept track of emperor penguin groups near a German research station in Antarctica using time-lapse photography. While charting the path of individuals over a four-hour period, the authors found that when the huddles remained still, they were tightly jammed. But once the shuffling wave started through the group, individuals ended up creeping their way through the huddle.
The authors found that individual penguins don’t change their position relative to their neighbors, nor do they force their way into or out of a huddle. The small steps the birds take are sufficient to move everyone around in a coordinated fashion.
The scientists still don’t know if one or more penguins start these waves of movement, or whether they follow any kind of hierarchy among individuals.
There is a time lapse video of the huddle along with the article:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/penguins-shuffle-warm/
Emperor Penguins Rotate Through Giant Huddle for Warmth
Massive huddles of male Emperor penguins are crucial to keeping warm during Antarctica’s brutal winter while they incubate their eggs.
These tightly packed penguins shuffle en mass every 30 to 60 seconds, reordering themselves so every individual gets to cycle through the warm, central part of the huddle.
The trick with these groups is to get the packing just right. If the penguins are too loosely arranged, they won’t stay warm enough, said Daniel Zitterbart, Barbara Wienecke, James Butler and Ben Fabry in a June 1 study in PloS One. But if they’re too tightly jammed together, they can’t rearrange themselves, and animals on the edge of the huddle won’t get a chance to warm up.
By taking small, 2- to 4-inch steps every minute or so, the penguins achieve maximum packing density. It’s like tapping on a can of flour to jiggle everything into the bottom.
But the shuffling also results in a wave of movement that rolls through the group and rotates every bird through the warmest parts of the huddle. Penguins can join the group on one end, cycle through the huddle and exit on the other end.
This creeping movement also means that different groups can merge into larger huddles.
The international team of researchers kept track of emperor penguin groups near a German research station in Antarctica using time-lapse photography. While charting the path of individuals over a four-hour period, the authors found that when the huddles remained still, they were tightly jammed. But once the shuffling wave started through the group, individuals ended up creeping their way through the huddle.
The authors found that individual penguins don’t change their position relative to their neighbors, nor do they force their way into or out of a huddle. The small steps the birds take are sufficient to move everyone around in a coordinated fashion.
The scientists still don’t know if one or more penguins start these waves of movement, or whether they follow any kind of hierarchy among individuals.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Penguins manage muscle oxygen supplies while diving
Penguins are clever creatures --- turns out they adjust their oxygen consumption based on how they are diving. Great stuff!
Penguins' Oxygen Trick: How They Survive Deep Dives
Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer ~ 12 May 2011
http://www.livescience.com/14117-penguin-diving-feat-oxygen-trick.html
And a very nifty graphic:
http://www.livescience.com/14125-deepest-divers-emperor-penguins-ocean-life.html
Penguins are the acrobatic athletes of the seas, and they can keep diving for long periods of time because they have exquisite control over how and when their muscles use oxygen, new research indicates.
The penguins can switch between two modes of oxygen use — either starving their muscles or giving them an extra shot of oxygen to keep them working — to achieve their amazing dives.
"It appears that there's a little bit of plasticity or variability in what they do when they are diving," said study researcher Cassondra Williams of the University of California in San Diego. "It's much more complicated than we thought."
To figure out how penguins survive deep dives on a single breath of air, the researchers designed special probes to monitor the levels of oxygen in the penguins' muscles during their dives off McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. The results are based on three emperor penguins and 50 dives, which ranged from 23 to 210 feet (7 to 64 meters) in depth, which lasted from 2.3 to 11.4 minutes.
"They have two different patterns they can opt for while they are diving," Williams told LiveScience. "In one, they appear to cut off blood flow completely to the muscle, leaving it to rely on its own supplies, which leaves the blood oxygen for the rest of the body, like the brain and the heart."
In other dives, the researchers saw a plateau after the initial oxygen drop. They believe that the penguin is selectively sending extra oxygen from the blood into the muscles, so they don't get tired. They can only do this for a limited time, though, until blood oxygen levels become too low for the rest of the body. Eventually the penguins need to come up for air.
Cutting off the oxygen supply to the muscles forces them to start making energy using "anaerobic" respiration, which is done without oxygen. It has a downfall, though; it produces abyproduct called lactic acid that can be toxic in high doses.
If the penguins let the lactic acid accumulate in their muscles, it takes longer to recuperate after a long dive, the researchers believe. This may be why on some dives the penguins send extra oxygen. For example, an extra oxygen shot might be beneficial if the penguins are taking several dives during a short stint to, say, chase down a school of fish and don't want to lose the feeding opportunity while they spend additional time on the ice recuperating.
"They don't want to hit their aerobic limit and accumulate lactic acid, but it's not clear how or why they do that," Williams said.
The study was published May 12 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Penguins' Oxygen Trick: How They Survive Deep Dives
Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer ~ 12 May 2011
http://www.livescience.com/14117-penguin-diving-feat-oxygen-trick.html
And a very nifty graphic:
http://www.livescience.com/14125-deepest-divers-emperor-penguins-ocean-life.html
Penguins are the acrobatic athletes of the seas, and they can keep diving for long periods of time because they have exquisite control over how and when their muscles use oxygen, new research indicates.
The penguins can switch between two modes of oxygen use — either starving their muscles or giving them an extra shot of oxygen to keep them working — to achieve their amazing dives.
"It appears that there's a little bit of plasticity or variability in what they do when they are diving," said study researcher Cassondra Williams of the University of California in San Diego. "It's much more complicated than we thought."
To figure out how penguins survive deep dives on a single breath of air, the researchers designed special probes to monitor the levels of oxygen in the penguins' muscles during their dives off McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. The results are based on three emperor penguins and 50 dives, which ranged from 23 to 210 feet (7 to 64 meters) in depth, which lasted from 2.3 to 11.4 minutes.
"They have two different patterns they can opt for while they are diving," Williams told LiveScience. "In one, they appear to cut off blood flow completely to the muscle, leaving it to rely on its own supplies, which leaves the blood oxygen for the rest of the body, like the brain and the heart."
In other dives, the researchers saw a plateau after the initial oxygen drop. They believe that the penguin is selectively sending extra oxygen from the blood into the muscles, so they don't get tired. They can only do this for a limited time, though, until blood oxygen levels become too low for the rest of the body. Eventually the penguins need to come up for air.
Cutting off the oxygen supply to the muscles forces them to start making energy using "anaerobic" respiration, which is done without oxygen. It has a downfall, though; it produces abyproduct called lactic acid that can be toxic in high doses.
If the penguins let the lactic acid accumulate in their muscles, it takes longer to recuperate after a long dive, the researchers believe. This may be why on some dives the penguins send extra oxygen. For example, an extra oxygen shot might be beneficial if the penguins are taking several dives during a short stint to, say, chase down a school of fish and don't want to lose the feeding opportunity while they spend additional time on the ice recuperating.
"They don't want to hit their aerobic limit and accumulate lactic acid, but it's not clear how or why they do that," Williams said.
The study was published May 12 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Whale wars in the courts and on the Seas --- Australia is suing Japan over Antarctic Whaling
Australia is upping the ante here; with the recent 'failed' Antarctic whaling season that Japan ended early due to Sea Shepherd's efforts, plus legal action against them, it hasn't looked better to be a cetacean since humans started using tools.
Australia Takes Case To Stop Japan Whaling To International Court
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201105082137dowjonesdjonline000099&title=australia-takes-case-to-stop-japan-whaling-to-international-court
SYDNEY - Australia's government Monday will lodge a written submission at the International Court of Justice calling for an end to Japan's whaling program in the Antarctic ocean and setting the Pacific allies up for a prolonged legal spat.
Japan says it engages in whaling for scientific research and rejects Canberra's charges that the country is breaching the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling and a ban on whaling inthe Southern Ocean Sanctuary.
Legal action between the two countries became a reality in 2010 after years of agitation failed to win a breakthrough, prompting Australia's then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to opt for the Hague-based ICJ in an effort to end Japan's Southern Ocean whaling program and win support for a global ban on whaling.
"Despite Australia repeatedly calling on Japan to cease its illegal whaling activities, Japan has refused to do so. That is why the Australian Government has taken this case in the ICJ," the Australian government said in a statement.
The Antarctic Ocean, also known as the Southern Ocean, stretches from the continent of Antarctica in the south but does not have a clearly defined northern limit.
Killed for their oils, five whale species in Australian waters are listed for protection by the government, including the humpback and blue whales.
Australia has been monitoring Japan's activity in the waters in recent years and there have been frequent clashes between anti-whaling protesters such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Japanese whaling boats.
Australia's submission will not be publicly released until the International Court of Justice decides on it. Japan has until March 2012 to respond. "The Government believes the whaling carried out by Japan is commercial, not scientific, and does not fall within that narrow exception," the Australian statement said.
-By Enda Curran, Dow Jones Newswires; 61-2-8272-4687; enda.curran@dowjones.com
Australia Takes Case To Stop Japan Whaling To International Court
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201105082137dowjonesdjonline000099&title=australia-takes-case-to-stop-japan-whaling-to-international-court
SYDNEY - Australia's government Monday will lodge a written submission at the International Court of Justice calling for an end to Japan's whaling program in the Antarctic ocean and setting the Pacific allies up for a prolonged legal spat.
Japan says it engages in whaling for scientific research and rejects Canberra's charges that the country is breaching the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling and a ban on whaling inthe Southern Ocean Sanctuary.
Legal action between the two countries became a reality in 2010 after years of agitation failed to win a breakthrough, prompting Australia's then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to opt for the Hague-based ICJ in an effort to end Japan's Southern Ocean whaling program and win support for a global ban on whaling.
"Despite Australia repeatedly calling on Japan to cease its illegal whaling activities, Japan has refused to do so. That is why the Australian Government has taken this case in the ICJ," the Australian government said in a statement.
The Antarctic Ocean, also known as the Southern Ocean, stretches from the continent of Antarctica in the south but does not have a clearly defined northern limit.
Killed for their oils, five whale species in Australian waters are listed for protection by the government, including the humpback and blue whales.
Australia has been monitoring Japan's activity in the waters in recent years and there have been frequent clashes between anti-whaling protesters such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Japanese whaling boats.
Australia's submission will not be publicly released until the International Court of Justice decides on it. Japan has until March 2012 to respond. "The Government believes the whaling carried out by Japan is commercial, not scientific, and does not fall within that narrow exception," the Australian statement said.
-By Enda Curran, Dow Jones Newswires; 61-2-8272-4687; enda.curran@dowjones.com
Saturday, April 30, 2011
This is why we wash our boots when going to Antarctica
Invasive species aren't necessarily the stuff of banners and headlines but for Antarctica, keeping them at bay is critical to keeping the continent pristine. For anyone who wonders why we make such a big deal about vacuuming bags, washing boots and not taking food ashore in Antarctica, here's why: http://www.livescience.com/13945-antarctica-invasive-species-food-transport.html
Antarctica Threatened by Invasion of Alien Species
Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
29 April 2011
It's unforgivingly cold and isolated, but stowaways are arriving in Antarctica in a steady stream. Seeds, fungi and insects go where people -- in this case researchers and tourists -- take them. These arrivals all create the potential for invasive species to establish themselves in the world's most pristine continent and its islands.
"We are still at the stage when Antarctica has fewer than 10 non-native species, none of which have become invasive," said Kevin Hughes, an environmental scientist with the British Antarctic Survey. "Unless we take steps now to minimize the risk of introduction, who knows what will happen."
Invasive species are non-native species that flourish in a new habitat, where they often kick out native organisms and harm human interests by disrupting crops, clogging waterways and causing a myriad of other problems.
Hughes and other researchers have set out to determine just what is being carried unintentionally into some of the international research stations in the Antarctic. In one study, he and others examined more than 11,250 pieces of fresh produce arriving at nine research stations in the Antarctic and the sub-Antarctic islands located farther north in the Southern Ocean to see what came along with it.
The produce, which included everything from apples to pawpaw trees to turnips, was shipped from around the world. Its stowaways were similarly diverse, and included at least 56 invertebrates -- slugs, butterflies, aphids and so on. Twelve percent of the produce carried soil, and 28 percent had rot caused by microbial infection. [Taking a Bite Out of Invasive Species]
"Are these numbers surprising, or does it mean this is likely to be a problem? It’s pretty hard to say," said Daniel Simberloff, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who was not involved with the research. "The upshot is that there's just enough people going to some parts of Antarctica nowadays that lots of organisms are carried there. I have to think this isn't good, and some subset of them are going to pose environmental problems."
This study was part of a larger effort to assess what is actually arriving. In another project, Hughes and colleagues looked at dirt carried in by construction vehicles and found a menagerie of tiny non-natives that included about 40,000 seeds.
"To be quite honest, the only way we are going to stop the introduction of nonnative species is to stop going to Antarctica, to cut off all the pathways," Hughes said. "What we can do is try and minimize the risk of introduction and we can do that by relatively simple steps."
The study includes recommendations that begin with considering where the food comes from, all the way to how to dispose of food waste.
So far, alien species have made little headway on the continent itself. A rare, but limited success came for a tiny fly, the black fungus midge, which has managed to keep a toehold inside Casey Research Station, a British station located on mainland Antarctica. And Kentucky blue grass has also been established on the Antarctic Peninsula, Simberloff said.
The Antarctic islands have received more non-natives than the continent. For instance, another alien grass has been spreading on King George Island, which is just off the peninsula.
But further north, the sub-Antarctic islands have fared much worse, receiving approximately one new species every year since humans began visiting them 200 years ago, according to Hughes.
Invaders may get a helping hand from global warming, which is lessening the severity of the climate, possibly making conditions less harsh.
Antarctica Threatened by Invasion of Alien Species
Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
29 April 2011
It's unforgivingly cold and isolated, but stowaways are arriving in Antarctica in a steady stream. Seeds, fungi and insects go where people -- in this case researchers and tourists -- take them. These arrivals all create the potential for invasive species to establish themselves in the world's most pristine continent and its islands.
"We are still at the stage when Antarctica has fewer than 10 non-native species, none of which have become invasive," said Kevin Hughes, an environmental scientist with the British Antarctic Survey. "Unless we take steps now to minimize the risk of introduction, who knows what will happen."
Invasive species are non-native species that flourish in a new habitat, where they often kick out native organisms and harm human interests by disrupting crops, clogging waterways and causing a myriad of other problems.
Hughes and other researchers have set out to determine just what is being carried unintentionally into some of the international research stations in the Antarctic. In one study, he and others examined more than 11,250 pieces of fresh produce arriving at nine research stations in the Antarctic and the sub-Antarctic islands located farther north in the Southern Ocean to see what came along with it.
The produce, which included everything from apples to pawpaw trees to turnips, was shipped from around the world. Its stowaways were similarly diverse, and included at least 56 invertebrates -- slugs, butterflies, aphids and so on. Twelve percent of the produce carried soil, and 28 percent had rot caused by microbial infection. [Taking a Bite Out of Invasive Species]
"Are these numbers surprising, or does it mean this is likely to be a problem? It’s pretty hard to say," said Daniel Simberloff, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who was not involved with the research. "The upshot is that there's just enough people going to some parts of Antarctica nowadays that lots of organisms are carried there. I have to think this isn't good, and some subset of them are going to pose environmental problems."
This study was part of a larger effort to assess what is actually arriving. In another project, Hughes and colleagues looked at dirt carried in by construction vehicles and found a menagerie of tiny non-natives that included about 40,000 seeds.
"To be quite honest, the only way we are going to stop the introduction of nonnative species is to stop going to Antarctica, to cut off all the pathways," Hughes said. "What we can do is try and minimize the risk of introduction and we can do that by relatively simple steps."
The study includes recommendations that begin with considering where the food comes from, all the way to how to dispose of food waste.
So far, alien species have made little headway on the continent itself. A rare, but limited success came for a tiny fly, the black fungus midge, which has managed to keep a toehold inside Casey Research Station, a British station located on mainland Antarctica. And Kentucky blue grass has also been established on the Antarctic Peninsula, Simberloff said.
The Antarctic islands have received more non-natives than the continent. For instance, another alien grass has been spreading on King George Island, which is just off the peninsula.
But further north, the sub-Antarctic islands have fared much worse, receiving approximately one new species every year since humans began visiting them 200 years ago, according to Hughes.
Invaders may get a helping hand from global warming, which is lessening the severity of the climate, possibly making conditions less harsh.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Chinstrap Penguins suffering at the hands of global warming
We've been watching Adelie Penguin populations crash along the western Antarctic Peninsula, down something like 50 to 90% at the colonies I know the best. This is pretty clearly due to disappearing ice cover...... but now, apparently, Chinstrap Penguins are following the same course. I haven't seen this myself.... anyone have access to the original paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to see where the documented Chinstrap decline is happening?
Not happy news. Thanks to Mary for brining this to my attention.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/11/penguin-decline-linked-warming-antarctic/
Penguin decline linked to warming in Antarctica
BY MIKE LEE ~ MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2011 AT 1:25 P.M.
Climate change appears to be harming a population of penguins that some researchers figured would benefit from warming temperatures, according to a new study by scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service in La Jolla.
Instead of enjoying a reduction of sea ice, the ice-avoiding chinstrap penguins may be among the most vulnerable to temperature changes that threaten their staple food source, said a paper published online Monday in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The findings may indicate more profound changes in the Antarctic ecosystem than previously thought. Antarctica is among the fastest-warming spots on the planet and a focus of studies by local researchers for decades.
One hypothesis about global warming is that it will create a variety of "winners" and "losers" in Antarctica. Under that scenario, ice-loving Adélie penguins would suffer but chinstrap penguins would benefit as the temperatures moderate and sea ice shrinks.
Adélie populations in the study area have fallen by an average of 2.9 percent per year for 10 years or more, while chinstrap numbers have decreased by even more -- an average of 4.3 percent per year over the same period, the study authors said.
“When we see steep declines in populations, as we have been documenting with both chinstrap and Adélie penguins, we know there’s a much larger ecological problem,” said Wayne Trivelpiece, the lead author of the study a seabird expert for the fisheries service.
“Penguins are excellent indicators of changes to the biological and environmental health of the broader ecosystem because they are easily accessible while breeding on land, yet they depend entirely on food resources from the sea," he said. "In addition, unlike many other krill-eating top predators in the Antarctic, such as whales and fur seals, they were not hunted by humans."
The La Jolla scientists link the shrinking penguin population to the decline of shrimp-like food source called krill, which penguins rely on heavily. Sea ice is a necessary part of the krill reproductive cycle and warming temperatures have undermined the population. The researchers said krill fishing also may play a role in krill numbers, which have plummeted by as much as 80 percent since the 1970s.
Adélie penguins are hampered by shrinking habitat and food shortages, but they have more breeding populations than chinstrap penquins and therefore researchers said they may not be as threatened by environmental changes.
"Long thought to be ecological winners in the climate-warming scenario, the chinstrap penguin instead may be among the most vulnerable species affected by a warming climate," the paper said.
Not happy news. Thanks to Mary for brining this to my attention.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/11/penguin-decline-linked-warming-antarctic/
Penguin decline linked to warming in Antarctica
BY MIKE LEE ~ MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2011 AT 1:25 P.M.
Climate change appears to be harming a population of penguins that some researchers figured would benefit from warming temperatures, according to a new study by scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service in La Jolla.
Instead of enjoying a reduction of sea ice, the ice-avoiding chinstrap penguins may be among the most vulnerable to temperature changes that threaten their staple food source, said a paper published online Monday in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The findings may indicate more profound changes in the Antarctic ecosystem than previously thought. Antarctica is among the fastest-warming spots on the planet and a focus of studies by local researchers for decades.
One hypothesis about global warming is that it will create a variety of "winners" and "losers" in Antarctica. Under that scenario, ice-loving Adélie penguins would suffer but chinstrap penguins would benefit as the temperatures moderate and sea ice shrinks.
Adélie populations in the study area have fallen by an average of 2.9 percent per year for 10 years or more, while chinstrap numbers have decreased by even more -- an average of 4.3 percent per year over the same period, the study authors said.
“When we see steep declines in populations, as we have been documenting with both chinstrap and Adélie penguins, we know there’s a much larger ecological problem,” said Wayne Trivelpiece, the lead author of the study a seabird expert for the fisheries service.
“Penguins are excellent indicators of changes to the biological and environmental health of the broader ecosystem because they are easily accessible while breeding on land, yet they depend entirely on food resources from the sea," he said. "In addition, unlike many other krill-eating top predators in the Antarctic, such as whales and fur seals, they were not hunted by humans."
The La Jolla scientists link the shrinking penguin population to the decline of shrimp-like food source called krill, which penguins rely on heavily. Sea ice is a necessary part of the krill reproductive cycle and warming temperatures have undermined the population. The researchers said krill fishing also may play a role in krill numbers, which have plummeted by as much as 80 percent since the 1970s.
Adélie penguins are hampered by shrinking habitat and food shortages, but they have more breeding populations than chinstrap penquins and therefore researchers said they may not be as threatened by environmental changes.
"Long thought to be ecological winners in the climate-warming scenario, the chinstrap penguin instead may be among the most vulnerable species affected by a warming climate," the paper said.
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