Loggerhead sea turtles keep declining in numbers

NEW SMYRNA BEACH - Found deep in the bottom of their nest, the 13 loggerhead sea turtles had just hatched from their eggs, so fresh they still had the yolk sac attached to their bellies.
Amber Bridges, a field biologist in Volusia's sea-turtle program, kept them for a day, rather than let them head out prematurely.
The next night, she waited until a flock of pelicans flew away, then released the 2-inch-long turtles on the beach, sending them off to their new lives at sea.
These young sea turtles, released nine days ago, are among the last hatchlings of a nesting season that ended with mixed outcomes.
Green and leatherback sea turtles, both endangered species, had a record-high nest count, continuing an upward climb in the tallies.
But loggerhead sea turtles, the only sea turtle in Florida not classified as endangered, had a dismal season. Wildlife officials said this year's count of 28,074 was the lowest ever reported for Florida's core nesting beaches since the state started detailed monitoring in 1989. It continues a downward spiral that has many turtle experts concerned.
The poor season might fuel one effort by environmentalists to have these loggerhead turtles, the group that nests from North Carolina to Florida, reclassified from threatened to endangered.
"It's a sign the loggerheads are in trouble," said Elizabeth Griffin, a marine wildlife scientist with Oceana, one of the environmental groups that petitioned the federal government last week to have this group of loggerhead turtles reclassified. "We're seeing a significant decline, and we need to make an effort to turn it around."
Some experts aren't sure loggerheads should be reclassified yet, though many link the nesting decline to turtle deaths from long-line fisheries.
Conservation efforts on Florida beaches have helped sea turtles make a comeback, after they faced an extinction risk from human harvesting of their eggs. Nests are monitored and coastal counties restrict beachfront lighting, which can disorient the egg-laying females and the hatchlings.
Those efforts have paid off for green and leatherback sea turtles, which are now nesting in numbers higher than during the 1990s.
"We've been conserving turtles very hard for three decades," said Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, an arm of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "With all this effort, time and money spent, we would expect those populations to be increasing."
Loggerheads enjoyed an upward swing in their nesting tallies during the 1990s, peaking in 1998 with nearly 60,000 nests on Florida's core beaches. However, during the past decade, the nesting has dropped off nearly 50 percent.
This year's season shows a continued decline, including at Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in Brevard County, the state's top loggerhead-nesting beach. The refuge had its lowest nest number ever recorded, 6,405 loggerhead nests, said Lew Ehrhart, a senior research fellow at Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute.
Volusia beaches offered one of the few bright points to the loggerhead season, with 503 loggerhead nests this year -- a record for the county. "It may just be an anomaly," said Bob Ernest, president of Ecological Associates, Volusia's turtle-consulting firm.
Some biologists think loggerheads are in decline because of a threat that affects them more than the other species: high mortality from long-line fisheries.
Fisheries officials already know thousands of loggerhead turtles have been killed by long-line hooks meant to catch shark, tuna and swordfish.
New rules on the types of hooks used have reduced deaths.
However, those rules may have been too late to save some juvenile turtles, which would be nesting in Florida by now. Witherington noted that long-line fisheries intersect with migration patterns for loggerheads, but not for green sea turtles.
Other fisheries also may be contributing to the toll, including trawling, especially since the trawls have only recently been readjusted with larger "escape" hatches to prevent larger loggerhead sea turtles from drowning in the nets.
Federal officials must prevent other loggerhead deaths not addressed in the regulations, Griffin said. For example, she said, the trawl nets for the summer flounder fisheries don't include the larger escape hatches.
It will take several months before any action is taken on the petition to reclassify the loggerhead sea turtle.
Ehrhart is more cautious about linking fisheries deaths and nesting drop-offs.
"I am concerned about the trend, but I'm not ready to say the sky is falling," he said. "We have to be careful about using the phrase 'steep and serious decline' when we still have 30,000 to 40,000 nests in Florida."
He adds that some of his research, which involves tracking the young loggerheads as they feed in Indian River Lagoon, doesn't show a decline in the numbers, and that some of the trawling done to track loggerhead numbers reflects the same.
"We are concerned, we need to be vigilant, and we need to study it as thoroughly as we can," Ehrhart said. "There could be a whole lot of reasons to this, including natural ones. We need to be objective."

America 1000th Rare Whale Shark Found

The 1000th specimen of the world's largest and most cryptic fish, the whale shark, has been identified thanks to global efforts by hundreds of 'citizen scientists' and eco-tourists.

ECOCEAN, the group behind a unique, award-winning* conservation effort to save the world's threatened whale sharks, today announced the identification of the 1000th identified whale shark in its online Library which shares data from scientists and ecotourists worldwide.

"Its a major milestone, for science and for conservation," says ECOCEAN project leader Brad Norman, of Perth WA. "And it was achieved with the help of ordinary people worldwide who want to study and protect this wonderful creature."

ECOCEAN tracks individual whale sharks throughout the world's oceans using a web-based photo-ID library of the unique spots that pattern the animals' skins. Researchers and eco-tourists submit images, which are logged to reveal a picture of whale shark movements and behaviour over time.

The 1000th shark was reported by a major contributor to the ECOCEAN Photo-ID Library, Simon Pierce, a marine biologist studying the sharks that visit Mozambique. It was a 6.5m male. Simon has contributed more than 100 sharks from his three year study in Mozambique.

"We can expect there to be substantially more than 1000 sharks alive in the world today. But, even so it is still a very tiny global population that needs close monitoring to ensure its survival.

Participation in the ECOCEAN Library has increased dramatically in recent years. It took three years to reach the 500th shark milestone but only one additional year to reach 1000. This is evidence of willingness by people worldwide to use the Library to study this cryptic giant.

Brad Norman notes: "We're calling on the public worldwide to become 'citizen scientists' and help us study this wonderful animal by logging their images and sighting details on www.whaleshark.org

"This will build a better understanding of this threatened species and help save the largest fish in the ocean from extinction"

The power games that threaten world’s last pristine wilderness

 

Rival nations are extending their territorial claims as retreating glaciers make Antarctic oil exploration feasible

James Bone in Eduardo Frei Montalva Base, Antarctica

The children who live on Chile's Eduardo Frei Montalva Air Force Base are pawns in a great game in the Antarctic that they can but dimly understand.

The cluster of snowbound cabins, a 2½hour flight from the tip of South America to the bottom of the world, is home to a permanent population of eighty that includes ten married couples with a total of 12 children, aged 1 to 17. Residents describe the remote outpost as a colonia.

"It's strange and difficult but it's super-beautiful," said Alumna Jofré, 12, whose father is chief of operations at the ice-covered airfield. "We have had amazingly beautiful experiences. We ski and snowboard and sledge."

There are downsides: "It's always the same. We go to the gym or to school. We always see the same people. It's a little complicated."

 

Antarctica, once the torment of explorers such as Scott and Shackleton, is slowly being settled by mankind as rival nations make overlapping claims to the vast expanse that is a tenth of the total landmass of the Earth. Global warming, shrinking ice and soaring oil prices all conspire to fuel competition for the world's final frontier. Britain has rattled its rivals by signalling that it intends effectively to extend its Antarctic territory by more than 50 per cent by claiming an additional 386,000 sq miles (100,000sq km) of the adjoining seabed.

The Frei base sits on King George Island, off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula on territory claimed by Britain and Argentina as well as Chile. Once a remote whaling station, the island is now known as the unofficial "capital of Antarctica".

The first surprise on landing in a Chilean military C130 transport aircraft is that my BlackBerry works. I check my e-mail and call my startled wife in New York to tell her that I am surrounded by luminous turquoise-tinted icebergs.

As well as its own mobile phone signal, the Frei base boasts a bank, a post office, a hospital, a supermarket, a bar, a chapel, a school and an FM radio station, provocatively called Sovereignty.

At Russia's nearby Bellingshausen base, staff have reconstructed a wooden Orthdox church with a decorative spire that was first built in Siberia. At the Great Wall base beyond that, the Chinese operate a gift shop selling penguin statuettes to tourists who come ashore from cruise ships.

A short flight over King George Island in a 12-seat Twin Otter ski-plane reveals not only majestic icebergs sculpted into extraordinary geometric forms and colonies of sea lions and penguins but also groups of corrugated-iron cabins and Anderson shelters that make up the international bases. Argentina, Brazil, Poland, South Korea and Uruguay all maintain year-round research stations near the Chilean, Russian and Chinese bases.

Preventing a new Falklands-style conflict is the fact that Britain, Argentina and Chile are all signatories to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which voluntarily freezes the overlapping sovereignty claims. Nevertheless, Chile treats the aircraft ride from the southern city of Punta Arenas on the South American mainland to the Frei base in Antarctica as an internal flight that does not require a passport.

A travel agency in Punta Arenas even offers flights for tourists at $2,500 (£1,200) for a day-trip and $3,500 for an overnight stay at the Chilean base. Once they are there, Chilean soldiers will sell them a souvenir T-shirt emblazoned with a penguin and the words "Chilean Antarctica".

All three countries continue to affirm sovereignty by deliberately asserting their presence on the icy continent. Linda Capper, a spokeswoman for the British Antarctic Survey, which runs British research stations in the Antarctic, said that Britain performs administrative acts in the territory - a traditional test of sovereignty.

The British Antarctic Territory issues its own postage stamps and all British research stations have their own post office. British base commanders are sworn in as magistrates and conduct official duties such as stamping visitors' passports. But Britain is lagging in the "baby race" in Antarctica that its rivals Chile and Argentina seem bent on pursuing.

Argentina, intent on establishing sovereignty by having its citizens born in the disputed territory, resorted to flying SÍlvia Morella de Palma, the seven-months pregnant wife of an Argentine army captain, to the Esperanza base that her husband commanded. When she gave birth to Emilio Marcos de Palma on January 7, 1978, he became the first "native-born" Antarctican. Chile responded in kind when Juan Pablo Camacho was born at the Frei base to become the first Chilean born in Antarctica. Residents say that two more Chilean babies have since been born at Frei. No British baby has been born at a British Antarctic research station, Ms Capper said.

The 1991 Madrid Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty declares the icy continent "a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science" and outlaws mining or oil-drilling for 50 years.

But polar experts fear that the rival national claims could lead to conflict as global warming makes it increasingly tempting to exploit mineral resources, such as oil and gas, in the Antarctic, particularly on the more accessible Antarctic Peninsula.

Gazing out over the unspoilt waters, Gino Casassa, a Chilean scientist and member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that he is afraid that there will be oil platforms off King George Island in 50 years' time.

"This is a big threat," he said. "I would not like to see that happen but it will be inevitable. There will be a big fight over these competing issues: keeping it pristine for scientific work and the exploitation of resources. Especially with deglacierisation, it can become commercially viable."

Jack Child, the author of Antarctica and South American Geopolitics, said: "Looking ahead 20, 30, 40, 50 years, with new technologies and depletion of oil there might be an attempt to undermine the treaty to get at that oil."

He said that finding oil on the Antarctic Peninsula was "the worst possible scenario, but also the most possible".

Britain made diplomatic waves by confirming last month that it may soon file a claim to 386,000 square miles of seabed with the UN, based on the continental shelf extending out from British Antarctic Territory. Chile and Argentina announced that they would lodge similar claims. Chile said that it would reopen its Arturo Prat naval base next year. And China dispatched 91 scientists yesterday to expand its two research stations and build a third station near Dome A, a forbidding inland plateau at an altitude of 4,000 metres (13,000ft).

"Our big concern is that everyone says it's simply to file their claim, yet it's clear there is this domino response from the Antarctic claimants," said Karen Sack, head of oceans for the environmentalist group Greenpeace.

Chile scored a diplomatic coup on Friday by hosting Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, on a visit to Antarctica. Although the UN chief toured bases belonging to Chile, Uruguay and his native South Korea, he flew on board a Chilean military aircraft sitting beside the Chilean Environment Minister and UN Ambassador.

But Mr Ban, perhaps unwittingly, appeared to endorse an idea originally proposed by Malaysia and other developing nations in the late 1980s to declare Antarctica the "common heritage of mankind" – a proposal opposed by Antarctic claimants such as Britain, Argentina and Chile. Mr Ban declared: "This is a common heritage. We must preserve all this continent in an environmentally responsible way."