After Seven-year Moratorium, Indonesia’s Rainforests Continue to Disappear

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 16

In 2011, the Indonesian government, responding to the rampant deforestation of the archipelago’s tropical rainforests and peatlands, imposed a moratorium on the logging of any new concessions in undisturbed forest areas.

Yet recent satellite imagery monitoring Indonesia’s deforestation rate shows that the country has lost over 10,000 square miles of forested lands since the moratorium went into effect, an area slightly larger than the state of Maryland. This is in addition to the nearly 96,000 square miles of rainforest lost between 1990 and 2011, an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom.

The trend has awarded Indonesia, whose rainforest is the third largest globally and home to 17 percent of the planet’s species, the notorious distinction of being the world’s No. 1 deforester, eclipsing Brazil in 2014. Largely to blame are the land-hungry palm oil and paper pulp plantations that Indonesia has come to rely in recent decades in order to grow its economy.

“In fact, there was a marked increase of deforestation after 2010,” says Erik Meijaard, a conservation scientist and founder of Borneo Futures. “You get a very rapid expansion of the oil palm industry into forest areas, so if a moratorium was called in 2011, it didn’t seem to have an impact on the oil palm sector at least,” said Meijaard.

The plantations clear the land by burning the rainforests and peat bogs, not only destroying habitat for critically endangered species like the orangutan and the Sumatran rhino but also releasing vast volumes of smoke and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In 2015, due to dry conditions exacerbated by an El Niño event, the largest wildfire in Indonesian history, attributed to industrial burns, released 1,750 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, almost twice the annual emissions of Germany.

Even though emissions from forest and land disturbance only account for a quarter of total global emissions, Indonesia leads the world in forest-related emissions, releasing 240 to 447 million tons of CO2 annually from these activities.

Despite these trends, Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry states that the deforestation rate has been decreasing since 2015. “There has been a decline in deforestation in production forests, from 63% [of total deforestation] in 2014 to 44% in 2017,” said Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar.

Critically, this is because the Indonesian government views production forests, man-made industrial forests planted for timber harvesting, as reforestation. This is at odds with many research institutes and conservation think tanks, such as the World Resource Institute, that sees production forests as a form of deforestation because they are a human replacement of the natural forest cover.

The disagreement over definitions could impede Indonesia’s access to international funding for its reforestation efforts, such as the $1 billion Norway has pledged as a part of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, and the $100 billion the signers of the Paris Accords pledged to donate to the Green Climate Fund to assist developing counties in fighting climate change.

Yet at the moment, Indonesia has only received 12% of Norway’s promised contribution, and only $10 billion has thus far been given to the Green Climate Fund. This is compared to the nearly $30 billion Indonesia earns annually from paper pulp, palm oil, and coal industries, the very enterprises that are most destructive to the forests.

“The amount of money that’s on the table for conserving forests is not nearly enough to compete with the amount of money that is changing hands every day for clearing forests for palm oil and paper pulp,” says Jonah Busch, an environmental economist and fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Despite the problems with the moratorium and the muddled definition of “deforestation”, Busch thinks that, at least in the short term, something is better than nothing. “The very important steps in the right direction that Indonesia has taken are unfairly characterized as failures because the whole big ship has not turned around yet. If there hadn’t been a moratorium, deforestation might have been higher.”

Sources

  1. Coca, Nithin. “Despite Government Pledges, Ravaging of Indonesia’s Forests Continues”. Yale Environment 360. Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 22 March 2018. Web. 30 March 2018.
  2. Harball, Elizabeth. “Deforestation in Indonesia is Double the Government’s Rate.” E&E News Sustainability. Scientific American, 30 June 2014. Web. 30 March 2018.
  3. Jong, Hans Nicholas. “Is a plantation a forest? Indonesia says yes, as it touts a drop in deforestation.” Mongabay. Mongabay, 31 January 2018. Web. 1 April 2018.

The Importance of Vultures

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 15

Vultures, many things may come to mind upon hearing this word. You may think of someone particularly unpleasant, someone who takes but never gives. Perhaps an image of a particularly ugly looking bird sitting on the side of the road, towering over roadkill comes to mind. Whatever the image, when you hear the term “vultures,” you might want to hold it in higher regard than you used to.

What is a vulture? Most people recognize this bird from while driving, seeing them on roadsides feasting on the carcasses of dead animals, but there is much more to a vulture. “Vulture” is actually a pretty general term, referring to a great many species of birds of prey that eat decomposing animals. Turkey vultures, black vultures, and California condors are just a few species of vultures that may be seen throughout the United States. Additionally, vultures have somewhat of a bad reputation. Not only do they eat dead, rotting animals, but they also have some pretty strange personal habits you may not be aware of. One of these habits is to vomit when feeling threatened and another is to urinate on themselves in order to clean themselves. Due to this bad reputation, vultures tend to be coined “vermin” or “pests.” Just type the word “vulture” into Google, and numerous sites will pop up concerned with how to get rid of vultures. Now, vultures may nest in inconvenient areas and cause damage, but the small amount of harm they may cause is more than offset by the greater good they bring to local environments.Vultures recycle many important nutrients into the environment. An ecosystem without vultures would be like a city without waste removal services. (Picture this in your mind.) Vultures do their work for the ecosystem very efficiently. They consume the meat of dead animals very quickly, which reduces the risk of large colonies of insects gathering around dead bodies. Give them a niche and they’ll take a mile! In doing so, vultures limit the risk of disease in ecosystems by keeping insect populations in check. Not only is this beneficial to us as humans, but also to the agricultural industry, since vultures also help prevent livestock from getting sick.

Although, this is not how everyone sees vultures. In Kenya, vultures are threatened due to livestock farmers poisoning the dead carcasses of the animals that predators have killed. When vultures feast on these carcasses, they also consume the poison, and this has led to the elimination of the Cinereous vulture in Africa, as well as the endangerment of more than seven other species of native African vultures. As noted above, the lack of carrion elimination has caused problems for ecosystems all over Africa. Darcy Ogada, assistant director of Africa programs at the Peregrine Fund, says African vultures “are the most threatened avian functional group in the world.” Species such as Egyptian vultures are nearly extinct.

When most people think of some of the important, endangered animals struggling to survive, they don’t often think of vultures. But vultures play a crucial role in our world and, in many places, are in danger of being eliminated. It is more important than ever to recognize not only how fascinating these birds are, from their strange behaviors to their monogamous mating patterns, but also how important they are to our world. Atticus Finch argued that it was a sin to kill a mockingbird, but perhaps it is an even greater sin to kill a vulture.

Sources:

Royte, Elizabeth. “Vultures are Revolting. Here’s Why We Need to Save Them.” National Geographic. National Geographic. January 2016. Web. March 27, 2018.

 

 

Border Wall Threatens Desert Wildlife

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 14

Despite its reputation as a barren wasteland, the desert regions of the American southwest are some of the most biologically rich areas in all of North America. Within 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, there are 25 million acres of protected public lands, including six national parks, six wildlife refuges and a number of wilderness areas.

Of this area, the Coronado National Forest, part of the ecologically rich Sky Island mountain range that extends from Sonora, Mexico, into southern Arizona and New Mexico, contains more threatened and endangered species than any other national forest in the country. Many of these threatened species are charismatic megafaunas, such as the Mexican gray wolf, ocelot, jaguarundi, and a lone jaguar that has reentered the region from Mexico after the species was driven to extinction in the U.S. during the 20th century.

Yet these species and many others are increasingly threatened by the expanding wall the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building on the border to deter unauthorized migration from Mexico. A 2011 study by Penn State biologist Jesse Lasky found that, of 369 animal species documented within 30 miles of the border, 50 were considered endangered.

The 654 miles of wall that already exist along the 2,000-mile long border has prevented at least 45 of those species from migrating, potentially reducing their gene pool and cutting them off from water sources and hunting grounds. “A lot of species do best in Northern Mexico, but with changes in precipitation patterns, they would need to disperse across the border,” says Lasky. “This is something we should be thinking about a lot more – how fast organisms are responding to climate change.”

Additionally, new roads created by the Border Patrol into more remote areas of Arizona’s southern desert have also disrupted desert habitat and destroyed many miles of cryptobiotic soil, clumps of fungus and algae that retain moisture and assist in plant growth that take many years to form.

In autumn of 2017, President Trump requested $1.6 billion for the construction of 74 miles of additional wall that would bisect the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas as well as reinforce an existing wall on the San Diego-Tijuana border in California. Environmentalists worry that apart from bisecting habitat and preventing animal migration, the wall could also exacerbate the risk of flooding to both ecosystems and human settlements.

In Nogales and the adjacent Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, debris has been known to pile up behind the border fence, damming water behind it until it bursts through in a flash flood event that drowns out habitat and occasionally kills people. “Flood water always has debris in it,” says Dan Millis of the Sierra Club Borderlands project. “That’s how you get these damming events that blew out chunks of the wall. Damming also causes erosion – it creates the situation we saw in Arizona where debris backs up the water and then the sediment building upstream created a waterfall that causes more erosion. This is liable to happen in Texas.”

Due to a law passed in 2005 called the Real ID Act, the DHS has the right to waive most environmental regulations in the name of national security, depriving environmental advocacy groups of the power to litigate against the federal government. Yet as the Trump administration makes plans to build 700 to 900 additional miles of concrete wall along the border to the tune of at least $12 billion, environmentalists, scientists, and regional stakeholders are coming up with alternative solutions that promote border security while also enhancing the health of borderland ecosystems.

One such proposal is to create a large international nature reserve on the Rio Grande that is co-owned and operated by the U.S. and Mexican governments. The Rio Grande’s volume is currently on the decline due to climate change as well as diversions by both countries for municipal, agricultural and industrial uses. It also suffers from excessive pollution from raw sewage and fertilizer runoff, possibly contributing to the loss of half a dozen of its native fish species. By restoring the riparian areas on both sides through the planting of trees, reducing water diversions and cleaning up pollution, the river’s water volume and velocity will likely increase, deterring people from crossing while also providing more robust habitat for wildlife.

Yet another option is to rely more heavily on advanced surveillance technology to monitor the border and reduce the environmental damages associated with a physical wall and terrestrial Border Patrol vehicles. The Department of Homeland Security already employs predator drone aircraft, high-elevation blimps, and helicopters equipped with video cameras and infrared sensors used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to monitor border activity. “Technology is definitely first,” said David Aguilar, principal of the Washington D.C.-based Global Security and innovative Strategies consulting firm. “These are things that can be used on any part of the border. There are places where you just can’t put a wall.”

Despite insistence from some that security concerns trump environmental ones, this is a false choice. While no solution is 100% effective, it is possible to secure our border without sacrificing the species and ecosystems that make the borderlands beautiful and worth protecting.

Sources:

  1. Barclay, Eliza and Sarah Frostenson. “The ecological disaster that is Trump’s border wall: a visual guide.” Vox. Vox, 29 October 2017. Web. 9 February 2018.
  2. Goldfarb, Ben. “Where wildlife is up against the wall.” High Country News. High Country News, 10 February 2017. Web. 9 February 2018.
  3. Lasky, Jesse R. et. al. “Conservation biogeography of the US-Mexico border: a transcontinental risk assessment of barriers to animal dispersal.” Wiley Online Library. Diversity and Distribution: A Journal of Conservation Biogeography, 3 May 2011. Web. 9 February 2018.
  4. Montemayor, Gabriel Diaz. “There’s a better alternative to building a border wall: restoring the Rio Grande.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 28 August 2017. Web. 19 February 2018.
  5. Nixon, Ron. “On the Mexican Border, a Case for Technology Over Concrete.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 June 2017. Web. 19 February 2018.
  6. Ray Ring. “Border out of control.” High Country News. High Country News, 16 June 2014. Web. 9 February 2018.

Penguins: Windows to the Past

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 13

Penguins have captured the hearts of many of us, long before March of the Penguins debuted in movie theaters. They are one of the most unique birds on our planet, from their habit of mating for life to their ability to “fly” not in the air, but through the water. For many years, scientists have used penguin populations to study the effects of a changing climate on the home of the penguins, the Antarctic. Recently though, large amounts of valuable new data have been collected and not just from penguin population numbers.  The data demonstrates not only the effects of a changing climate but many other environmental changes, created by humans, that need to be prevented in order to preserve the Antarctic.

At the American Geophysical Union’s 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting held on February 12, 2018, researchers discussed the growing importance of penguins in the fight to preserve the Antarctic. As the “heart of the Antarctic food web,” researchers have found that penguins’ feathers and eggshells tell the story of the changing Antarctic environment. Penguin tissue cells capture important details concerning the food they take in. These particular tissues contain different amounts of certain chemicals that are specifically found in the fish and other sea life the penguins consume. For instance, krill may be high in the nitrogen-14 isotope and a fish may be high in nitrogen-15. If a penguin consumes a lot of krill, its eggshells and feathers will contain more nitrogen-14 than nitrogen-15.

Over-fishing has been a persistent problem in the Southern Ocean for many years. By observing the food penguins ingest, scientists can discover just how much over-fishing has affected the Antarctic environment, especially in regards to the declining krill population.

Kelton McMahon, an oceanic ecogeochemist at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston,  is using this information to track the changes in the environment. McMahon and his team compare penguins from the wild to captive penguins at the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska to observe how much wild penguins’ diets have changed. They use different amino acids, as well as the different types of nitrogen isotopes, to study dietary changes. From this information, it has been determined that penguins’ diets consisted primarily of fish approximately 80 years ago, then krill, and now fish once again with the declining krill population. This information is extremely valuable in determining food web changes that may have resulted from over-fishing or climate change. Once scientists have determined what these changes are, they can take the best action needed in order to fix potentially negative effects.

Recently, scientists have found yet another characteristic that makes penguins even more fascinating. From eggshells preserved by vast sheets of ice and collected by researchers, scientists believe that they can determine what the Antarctic food web looked like as long as 10,000 years ago. Just as geologists use radioactive decay of certain isotopes to date the earth, scientists can now use the fossil remains of penguins to see into the past, and give us a new image of a time long ago, another chapter in the history of the home we call Earth.

 

Sources:

Gramling, Carolyn. “Look to Penguins to Track Antarctic Changes.” Science News. Science News. February 14, 2018. Web. March 20, 2018.

The Mysterious Case of Shelly Island

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 12

As spring draws nearer, the weather is supposed to gradually become warmer and warmer, until walking outside without a jacket is no longer outrageous. However, if you happen to live in North Carolina, the weather cannot seem to decide whether it wants to welcome spring or desperately hold on to winter. Today, snow falls, but tomorrow could bring temperatures in the high 70s or 80s. However, this is not the only phenomenon that North Carolina cannot seem to make up its mind about. Enter Shelly Island.

Shelly Island appeared overnight in July 2017. It is located in the famous Outer Banks off the coast of Cape Point, which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Scientists are not completely sure how the island originally formed, but they think it has something to do with the weather conditions of July 2017. Last summer, the winds, and currents appeared to be just right to bring sands from the northern barrier islands to the southern tip of Cape Point to form Shelly Island. This island became a new attraction for tourists interested in snorkeling and kayaking, and it grew to be about 27 acres in area. However, do not start planning your trip to Shelly Island for the summer of 2018. New photos from NASA show that Shelly Island disappeared just as quickly as it came. Moreover, the island is now beneath the waves once again.

How did this happen? The blame can be thrust upon the many hurricanes of the fall of 2017: Hurricanes Irma, Jose, and Maria. The erosion created by these storms first split the island in two and have now completely erased what was once Shelly Island. By October 2017, Shelly Island was “ninety percent gone,” according to Virginia businessman Ken Barlow who was one of many seeking ownership of the new island. Only a small crescent, about 100 acres in area, was left after the fall, and by February 2018 the island was no more.

Could Shelly Island return? Possibly. Again, scientists are not positive how Shelly Island came to be in the first place. However, people such as Barlow suspect the formation of the island had to do with nearby dredging operations, which are resuming. So hold on to your kayaks and your snorkeling equipment: Shelly Island could come back. This would be good news for local businesspeople interested in buying parts of the island and for the local economy that could benefit from growing interest from tourists. Shelly Island may be a mystery, but it is a mystery that comes with positive outcomes.

Sources:

Ghose, Tia. “Mysterious Sandbar Island that Formed Last Summer is Gone Once Again.” Live Science. Live Science. March 8, 2018. Web. March 12, 2018.

Price, Mark. “The strange new NC island mystifies the world yet again.” Charlotte Observer. Charlotte Observer. October 1, 2017. Web. March 12, 2018.

King Penguins Face Habitat Loss in Warming Southern Ocean

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 11

The king penguins of the Antarctic sea may be the next charismatic species faced with the daunting challenge of moving to escape the impacts of climate change. A study recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that, unless warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are reduced, up to 70% of the king penguin population will have to move or face starvation by the end of the century.

Due to warming ocean temperatures, the Antarctic polar front, a nutrient-rich band of water in the Southern Ocean from whence king penguins derive 80% of their diet, is migrating closer to Antarctica and farther away from the southern archipelagos where the penguins roost. While the penguins can swim up to 400 miles round trip from the southern islands to the polar front, if the band moves much farther south, it will be out of reach for most of the penguin colonies.

Additionally, the lack of sea ice, which allows penguins to rest while hunting in the open ocean, may further threaten the species capacity to feed itself as warming continues. “They will need to either move somewhere else or they will just disappear,” said Dr. Emiliano Trucchi, an evolutionary biologist at Italy’s University of Ferrara and one of the study’s senior authors. “The largest colonies are on islands that will be too far from the source of food.”

The largest colonies of king penguins, home to a full half of the species population, are located on Prince Edwards and the Crozet Islands, south of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. According to the researchers’ “business as usual” climate change model, the populations on these islands would likely lose their habitat entirely by the end of the century. Another 21% that live on the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean and the Falkland Islands off the South American coast will likely find themselves far enough away from their food source that they may be incentivized to relocate to islands farther south.

Yet, relocation may not be as simple as moving farther south to islands closer to the new Antarctic polar front. Unlike the larger emperor penguins, king penguins require ice-free islands with sandy beaches, leaving the species with few additional islands closer to Antarctica to move to as many are rocky, covered in ice, or have other species of penguins already living there. “We are talking about one million individuals that need to find a new place to live,” says Trucchi, noting that “the endpoint of this massive relocation is hard to predict.”

Despite the grim finding, the researchers suggested that some islands, such as Bouvet Island in the Southern Ocean, may be able to be colonized by king penguins as temperatures warm if humans take steps to protect them. “If there are some islands that are likely to be relatively safe, like those in the south, then we know about that now, and we can potentially protect those from other threats like fishing and tourism – to give animals the best chance of survival,” says Dr. Jane Younger, evolutionary ecologist at Loyola University Chicago.

The researchers ultimately argue that mitigating climate change is the best chance we have at saving king penguin habitat; using a model in which greenhouse gases were reduced enough to prevent global temperature from rising more than 2-degrees Celsius, they found that the majority of the population would not need to migrate.

“These are kind of poster children for what’s going to happen with climate change,” said Dr. Ceriden Fraser, a marine molecular ecologist at the Australian National University in Canberra. “People wouldn’t care as much if it were a slug or a slime mold, but the same sorts of impacts will happen to many different species. In a way, it’s good for us to see these impacts happening to animals we love, because it might spur a little bit of action.”

Sources:

  1. Harvey, Chelsea. “Antarctica’s Iconic King Penguins May Have to Move South: But suitable islands for breeding may be harder to find.” Scientific American. E&E News, 27 February 2018. Web. 4 March 2018.
  2. Kennedy, Merrit. “Scientists Predict King Penguins Face Major Threats Due to Climate Change.” North Carolina Public Radio. National Public Radio, Inc., 26 February 2018. Web. 5 March 2018.
  3. Winetraub, Karen. “King Penguins Are Endangered by Warmer Seas.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 February 2018. Web. 5 March 2018.

The Birds and the Coffee Beans

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 10

Coffee. To anyone who regularly has early mornings, this single drink can be a lifesaver. Coffee is more than just a drink. It gets people up in the morning when they least want to leave their beds. But according to a relatively recent study, it may be even more than that.

In addition to providing people with the ability to go to school or work, coffee is also a very valuable commodity. This is true globally. Coffee is consumed on every continent (except, perhaps, Antarctica), so it is very important to the human economy. However, humans are not the only ones who enjoy their coffee.

Although we often think of coffee as a delicious beverage, it is first a plant. There are many different species of this plant, but two of these species include Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora. (The second species is often referred to as C. robusta.) These species are very important to an often-overlooked group of coffee connoisseurs: birds. Moreover, because there are so many species of coffee and because birds value the plants as homes, a group of conservation biologists decided to determine the effects of the different species on biodiversity.

In this study conducted in India, researchers compared the diversity of birds who made their homes in C. arabica farms versus C. robusta farms. There were some differences in habitat preferences, but overall, these researchers came to a more generic conclusion. Within coffee farms in general, there is a great abundance of birds. This is a very important conclusion, as coffee as a commodity is constantly growing in demand.

So what does this mean for birds and the future of coffee? Past studies tended to not focus on the differences between coffee species, but on the differences between different types of tropical plants. This allowed conservationists to focus their attention on helping support the ecosystems of certain plants. This study made it known that across coffee species, these plants are important in terms of avian conservation. In other words, if we want to protect the birds, we need to take care of the coffee properly. For farmers, this could mean focusing management efforts towards making coffee plants safer for birds by, for example, limiting pesticide usage. However, this could mean finding a balance between protecting birds from toxins and protecting plants from the birds.

Moreover, what this study proved was that conservation efforts need to be more focused on the effects of coffee farming on biodiversity. As the demand for coffee rises, so does the need for these efforts. Birds are just as valuable to ecosystems as coffee is to economies. Without coffee, economies may rupture, and without birds, ecosystems may rupture. At this point, there is an unknown, delicate balance between protecting the environment and protecting the crop, but with the cooperation of conservationists and coffee farmers, this balance can be achieved for the benefit of economies and ecosystems.

Source:
Chang, C.H. Karanth, K.K, and Robbins, P. Birds and beans: Comparing avian richness and endemism in arabica and robusta agroforests in India’s Western Ghats. Scientific Reports [Internet] .16 February 2018. [cited 2018 February 2018]; 8: 3143. Available from doi:10.1038/s41598-018-21401-1.

The Microbead Dilemma

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 9

The UK has recently taken steps to protect the oceans from further pollution, and these steps involve tiny pieces of plastic called “microbeads.” If you have been in the cosmetics aisle at Target or your local grocery stores in the last year, you have run into these small but very impactful pieces of plastic. They are the shiny flecks in exfoliating scrubs and other gel products. But they are also in other places, including cleaning products and synthetic clothing.

The problem with microbeads exists just in what might seem to make them unimportant: their size. Imagine you have just taken a shower, and the shampoo and body wash that you use just happens to contain these tiny, probably meaningless microbeads. You turn the shower off, and the remnants of your soaps wash down the drain, microbeads and all. This water eventually finds itself at a wastewater treatment plant, so the microbeads should be taken care of here. Right? Wrong. Microbeads are so small that they cannot be filtered: they slip through the cracks. And these cracks lead to local waterways, the rivers you drive along on your way to work, which lead to the oceans. And the microbeads begin to build up in the ocean, tiny pieces of plastic unable to be broken down.

But how much impact can these microbeads really have? According to a report conducted in 2016 by the Environmental Audit Committee of the British House of Commons, just one shower can involve over 100,000 microbeads down the drain. Multiply 100,000 by the number of people in the world and you will get a gigantic number. Furthermore, this results in an enormous amount of plastic entering our oceans every single day. And for what reason? So that our shampoos are more aesthetically appealing?

The massive amount of microbeads building up in the oceans have deadly effects on marine life. When microbeads make their journey from the shampoo bottle to the ocean, they tend to absorb chemicals along the way. These chemicals could be anything from motor oil to industrial chemicals that have found their way into local waterways. So, when a fish ingests a microbead, it is ingesting any number of chemicals. Not only is this bad news for the fish, but it is also bad news for any other living thing connected to that fish through their ecosystems. In short, microbeads are killing an unknown amount of marine life.

The good news is that the UK has decided to join a (hopefully) growing list of countries that have decided to outlaw microbeads. The United States passed the Microbeads-Free Waters Act of 2015, which outlawed microbeads beginning in July 2017, and Canada and New Zealand imposed bans which are beginning this year. Microbeads are still alive and well, but more countries in the European Union are starting to join in the outlawing. Moreover, eight million tons of plastic may be entering the oceans every year, but, perhaps, these new laws will start to really make a difference in that number.

 

Sources:

Shoe, Des. “The U.K. Has Banned Microbeads, Why?” New York Times. New York Times. 9 January 2018. Web. 11 February 2018.

 

Sea Snakes Visit California

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 8

The world is made up of two types of people: people who like snakes and people who do not like snakes. This first class of people see snakes as captivating, multi-colored animals that serve as a good friend, ready to curl around your fingers as soon as your familiar, loving hand draws near to their equally loving reptilian bodies. On the other side, the latter class of people are repelled at even a pixelated image of a snake living hundreds of miles away, seeing these cold-blooded reptiles as just the device through which Satan tricked Eve. And unfortunately, if you happen to belong to this latter class of people, there is some bad news: rare sea snakes have continued to wash up unexpectedly on the beaches of California. Moreover, the range of the uncommon yellow-bellied sea snake (Pelamus platurus) is beginning to expand.

So, what is a sea snake? And, further, what is a yellow-bellied sea snake? These reptiles are exactly what they sound like: they are snakes that live in the sea. In fact, their bodies are not suitable for living and slithering on land. Spending their lives in the tropical warmth of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, sea snakes feed on small fish and drink rainwater that collects on the surface of the ocean. Sea snakes also are very venomous. Possessing a neurotoxin that stops communication between muscles and nerve cells, the bite of a sea snake can cause respiratory, heart, or nerve failure. But don’t worry too much because Greg Pauly, herpetological curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, says, “Their fangs are tiny, and they can barely open their mouths wide enough to bite a person.” And until recently, sea snakes lived far, far away from humans.

Since 1972, five sea snakes have washed up in California, hundreds of miles north of their typical range. Why? Until the most recent sea snake washed up on southern California’s Newport Beach, all the snakes had arrived during El Nino years. Because sea snakes tend to follow where the currents lead them, it was strange to see sea snakes in California, but the presence of El Nino made it make sense that these snakes would be so far outside their range. However, on January 10, 2018, when the fifth sea snake arrived, El Nino could not be blamed.

University of Florida biologist and sea snake expert Harvey B. Lillywhite suspects the mysterious arrival of the snakes has to do with the Davidson Current. Rising toward the surface from October through February, the Davidson Current may pick up sea snakes floating near Baja and take them places like Newport Beach. But, historically, not many sea snakes dwell near Baja. Thus, both Pauly and Lillywhite state that warming waters may have something to do with the expanding of sea snakes’ range. However, Pauly admits, “This is all speculation.”

The yellow-bellied sea snake that arrived this past week in California did not survive the colder waters of California. But her death may not be in vain: herpetologists like Lillywhite and Pauly are using her tissue samples and other data to hopefully determine how these sea snakes came to be in California. But until then, California may be seeing a few more sea snakes in their future.

 

Sources:

Goldman, Jason G. “Venomous Sea Snake Found Off California-How did it Get There?” National Geographic. National Geographic, 17 January 2018. Web. 19 January 2018.

Kaplan, Sarah. “Rare venomous sea snakes keep washing up on California beaches.” Washington Post. Washington Post, 14 January 2016. Web. 19 January 2018.

Ritchie, Erika I. “Discovery of rare, venomous sea snake in California could mean trouble for sea lions.” Mercury News. Mercury News, 11 January 2018. Web. 19 January 2018.

Gray Dolphin Die-Offs Puzzle Scientists

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 7

From their powerful swimming techniques to their mysteriously intelligent brains, dolphins have enchanted the public for generations. These marine mammals swam their ways into popular culture from Flipper to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy over the course of the last 100 years. Dolphins have once again captured the public eye, but, unfortunately, in a much more gruesome way.

Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, gray dolphins have been washing up dead since November 2017. Scientists in Brazil have concluded that these deaths are a result of a virus known as the “cetacean morbillivirus.” However, the origin of the virus is still unknown. The virus is an immune system pathogen that causes skin lesions and pneumonia in dolphins, as well as in porpoises and whales. Because dolphins are such social animals, living in pods consisting of up to 200 dolphins, this virus is easily spread, having potentially catastrophic results on the gray dolphin population.

But gray dolphins are not the first victims of morbillivirus. Bottlenose dolphins and harbor seals were victims of different strains of morbillivirus in 1988 and 2006, respectively, in the northeastern United States. And in 2014, at least 1,441 bottlenose dolphins were found dead along the East Coast of the United States from New York to Florida, also due to morbillivirus.

So, what is there to do? Leonardo Flach, a biologist and the chief coordinator of the Boto Cinza Institute in Mangaratiba, Brazil told ABC News, “The only solution would be to create a marine refuge to allow the dolphins to survive.” Dolphin conservation has never been a priority in Brazil, but Flach hopes the die-offs will draw more attention to the need to protect the gray dolphin population, which he calls “an endangered species.” Brazilian scientists are working hard to determine the cause of this deadly virus, but without more attention given to this issue, gray dolphin populations could experience growing numbers of fatalities.

Sources:

El Hammar, Aicha. “Over 80 Dolphins Die in Brazil, Confounding Environmentalists.” ABC News. ABC News. 4 January 2018, Web. 13 January 2018.

Fine Maron, Dina. “Massive Dolphin Die-off Eludes Final Explanation.” Scientific American. Scientific American. 6 August 2014, Web. 13 January 2018.

Zachos, Elaina. “Scores of Dolphin Deaths Have Scientists Baffled.” National Geographic. National Geographic. 12 January 2018, Web. 13 January 2018.