MarineBuzz.com

In an unusual incident of mistaken identity, a Pelican wrongly landed on a woman who was swimming off Florida coast.

• 50 year old Debbie Shoemaker was swimming near St. Petersburg on May 08
• suddenly she realized that something has hit her face violently
• a Pelican on a diving course to catch a fish wrongly landed on the cheek of the woman with its large beak
• the woman was hospitalized and was given 25 stitches to close three inch gash on her face
• the pelican died

Here is the photograph of the woman and more details from myfoxtampabay.

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Fish Barcode of Life Initiative (FISH-BOL), is a global effort to create a valuable electronic database of all fish species containing DNA barcodes, images, and geospatial coordinates of examined specimens. The interesting features of FISH-BOL are:

• Works in partnership with Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) and Census of Marine Life (CoML)
• As per estimates there are 30,000 fish species available and need to be barcoded
• Globally there are ten Regional Working Groups to oversee collections, identifications and barcoding of the fish faunas in their region.

Here is the progress so far on Barcoding. Click the image below for the updated data.

Here are ten reasons to understand the necessity of Barcoding Life.

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Who is this ?

He is Australian Lungfish called Granddad at Chicago’s John G. Shedd Aquarium. Graddad has joined the aquarium in 1933 and has completed 75 years. Granddad is the world’s oldest living aquarium fish and age is possibly 80 plus.

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Image source:smh.com.au

Researchers at the University of Washington have found Zebra fish’s lateral line very useful to study hearing loss in humans. The sensory cells found in the lateral line of Zebra fish are functionally similar to those found in the inner ear of humans.

The research technique, which combines chemical screening with traditional genetic approaches, offers a fast and efficient way to identify potential drugs and drug targets that may one day provide therapies for people with hearing loss and balance disorders.

The study was funded in part by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health.

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Fishing is livelihood for some people. Fishing is also a hobby for some people.

But, Dynamite blast or Explosive Fishing is increasing as a means of earning quick money for some organised criminals.

Dynamite Fishing is a cruel method of fishing by triggering an underwater explosion. The resulting underwater noise or shock or pressure waves cause death of all marine life including fish and coral reef in the vicinity.

Dynamite blast fishing is practiced in more than 30 countries. The crime which was going on earlier in small scale has now become a dynamite mafia that has now perfected a system which they put into practice with assembly line precision.

Here you can see a photograph of dead fish after blasting.

Click here for more photographs and details about dynamite blast fishing in Sri Lanka.

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TREE Foundation was started in 2002 as a Registered Charitable Trust to focus on Environment Education, Sea Turtle Conservation and Community Development. Dr.Supraja Dharini, got inspiration to start the Foundation when she found large number of dead Olive Ridley turtles on the beach in Periya Neelankarai of Chennai, India.

TREE Foundation started its first campaign to conserve and protect the highly endangered Olive Ridley turtles along the East Coast (Neelangarai fishing village to another fishing village – approximately 13 km) by patrolling the beaches during the nesting season from December 2002 onwards. The nesting season extends up to May each year. The youth groups from the above villages are known as Kadal Aamai Padhukavalargall [KAP] (Sea Turtle Protection Force).

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Image Source:nceas; Click to enlarge

California based National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, has carried out a research to estimate and visualize, for the first time, the global impact humans are having on the ocean’s ecosystems. They have come out with a report on “A Global Map of Human Impacts to Marine Ecosystems”.

The findings in the report are startling:

• no part of the oceans is unaffected by human influence
• 41% of the oceans are strongly affected
• only oceans near the poles have relatively little human impact

The map shown above helps to assess the ocean area that require high to low priority attention to safeguard the oceans.

Click here for further reading.

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Year 1997 was last observed as International Year of Reef. IYOR 97 encouraged participation by 225 organizations in 50 countries and territories. More than 700 articles in papers and magazines were published. Further, scientific surveys were undertaken and numerous local and global organizations pledged their support to coral reef conservation.

Even after ten years of creating awareness about reefs and associated ecosystems, the desired results to conserve the reefs is not achieved. Hence, the International Coral Reef Initiative has designated year 2008 as the International Year of the Reef (IYOR 2008).

IYOR 2008 will:

• Strengthen awareness about the ecological, economic, social and cultural value of coral reefs and associated ecosystems
• Improve understanding of the critical threats to coral reefs and generate both practical and innovative solutions to reduce these threats
• Generate urgent action at all levels to develop and implement effective management strategies for conservation and sustainable use of these ecosystems.

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Now South Korean Researchers have come out with details of how water striders move fast or bounce on water surface without sinking. The research reveals

• why water striders have extremely water repellent legs
• how they touch down at just the right speed not to sink
• some water striders can propel their bodies across the water surface at nearly 3.5 feet per second, which is 100 times their body length
• the insects are able to skim around on water because water molecules at the surface are strongly attracted to each other and those beneath, unlike the air above. This leads to surface tension, a skin-like effect that such insects exploit.
• the strider’s legs can support 15 times the insect’s weight without it sinking

The above findings would be helpful for fine tuning the development of robots that can move about on lakes and reservoirs to monitor water quality, spy or explore.

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How do a fish navigate at sea?

Well, the answer to this question helps researchers to make marine robots intelligent enough to navigate at sea.

Fish and many amphibian animals navigate at sea with their sensory system called as Lateral Line System. Research is in progress to apply this sensory system of the fish to Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) to make them intelligent to navigate at sea.

What is Lateral Line System?

Most of the fishes and aquatic amphibians, have a sensor called lateral line system to detect differences in water pressure. Fish senses this water pressure difference which may be caused due to varying depth of sea or turbulence/currents caused by other approaching fishes or objects. The lateral line system is made up of two water filled canals and number of nueromasts as shown in the sketch below.The nueromasts of the fish continuously transmit series of nerve impulses depending on the surrounding water pressure difference and the fish is able to identify or recognise nearby objects such as other fishes of different size, rocks, ship etc. The lateral line system is also able to detect very low-frequency sounds of 100 Hz or less as basically sound waves are pressure waves in water.

Lateral-line system of a fish. (A) Bodily location of lateral lines; (B) longitudinal section of a canal; (C) superficial neuromast.

Image Source:britannica

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Walruses prefer to live in icy weather in large groups of thousands. They are sighted in Arctic Ocean and sub Arctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. They can be easily identified by their unique tusks, whiskers and heavy built body.

Now due to Global Warming, the ice starts melting and the icy surface area starts reducing where walruses live. Unlike seals, walruses can not swim in water for longer time and they have to come to the icy surface for survival. When large number of walruses gather in a small area most of the old and very young walruses die due to stampede. Also panic stricken walruses due to the sound from low flying aircrafts or on sighting polar bear die due to stampede. Thousands of walruses have died so far this year.

How do we put an end to these man made disasters?

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Survival and freedom at what cost?

You will be surprised to see from the picture below how the Brown Trouts manage to escape to survive in a free world.

Click to enlarge (Image Source:environmentalgraffiti)

It is amazing to see how intelligent Brown Trouts in a fish farm managed to escape by jumping 3 feet upwards against the water flow to get in to the 8 inch dia metal pipe from where water was coming. They were successful in travelling 30 feet against the water flow inside the pipe to reach the river from where water was coming from.

Lessons learned

• Define your goal
• Plan and execute with zero error
• Freedom comes always at some cost

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Sea birds of the Rat Island in Alaska infested with rats, face the threat of mass extinction. The island was invaded by rats in mid 1700s, from a Japanese or Russian ship that was grounded nearby. Now other nearby islands are also infested with rats. The birds generally lay the eggs on the ground as there are hardly any trees in the island. Rats find it easy to survive on these eggs. Interestingly, one pair of rats can produce a population of more than 5,000 rats in a year. Puffins, auklets and storm petrels are almost at the risk of extinction. State and federal wildlife biologists are preparing to exterminate the rats by air dropping rat poison from helicopters. If they succeed, it will be the third-largest rat free island in the world.

Here is the map that shows the islands that are infested with rats.

click to enlarge, Image Source:stoprats

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Image Source:navy.mil

In June and July 2007, a team of scientific divers from the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, conducted 440 dives in the remote western Aleutian Islands. The dives were led by Stephen Jewett. The dives were carried out along 1000 miles of coastline from Attu to the Amila Islands.

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Human survival - We can not survive without the forests, the oceans, the coral reefs, the marine fish, the algae, the insects that make up the living world around us.

1.What is Global Warming ?

Temperatures on Earth are livable because of natural process called as “Greenhouse Effect”. When the sun’s radiation reaches our atmosphere,some is reflected back into space and some passes through and is absorbed by Earth.This causes the surface of the Earth to warm up.Heat from the Earth is radiated outward and absorbed by “Greenhouse Gases” in the atmosphere.This process prevents heat from disappearing into space and keeps the Earth warm enough to sustain life.Some human activities (primarily the burning of fossil fuels) intensify the warming effect by releasing additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

These gases include carbon dioxide,methane and nitrous oxide.They come from varying sources and have different heat trapping capacities.

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