Archaeopteryx, original dino-bird, was raven black, scientists discover

The first fossil of a bird, or a bird-dinosaur relative, the archaeopteryx, has fascinated scientists for 150 years since it was first discovered in a quarry in Germany. For all that time there has been a debate, was archaeopteryx, a bird or a dinosaur? Could it fly or were the wings, tipped with claws, helping it climb and glide?

Now scientists at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, have analyzed a single fossil feather from an archaeopteryx, and come to the conclusion that not only is it highly likely that it could fly, but the archaeopteryx, which was the size of a modern raven, was also as black as its distant descendent, the raven at home here in the northwest, sacred to the First Nations of British Columbia and  sacred or honoured in other cultures around the world.

The archaeopteryx feather used in the study was discovered in a limestone deposit in Germany in 1861, a few years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

archaeopetrex fossil
An archaeopteryx fossil, like this one discovered in Germany, placed the dinosaur at the base of the bird evolutionary tree. (Humboldt Museum für Naturkunde Berlin)

For most of that time, as paleontologists studied that feather fossil and other fossil specimens, popular science portrayed the archaeopteryx as the dinosaur at the base of the bird evolutionary tree. The traits that make archaeopteryx an evolutionary intermediate between dinosaurs and birds, scientists say, are the combination of reptilian features (teeth, clawed fingers, and a bony tail) and avian features (feathered wings and a wishbone).

The team examining the fossil feather not only determined that it was raven black but that the wing feathers were rigid and durable, traits that would have helped archaeopteryx fly.

Fit for flight from Brown University on Vimeo.

The fact that archaeopteryx’s feather structure is identical to that of living birds, shows that modern wing feathers had evolved as early as 150 million years ago in the Jurassic period.

“If archaeopteryx was flapping or gliding, the presence of melanosomes [pigment-producing parts of a cell] would have given the feathers additional structural support,” said Ryan Carney, an evolutionary biologist at Brown and the paper’s lead author. “This would have been advantageous during this early evolutionary stage of dinosaur flight.”

Carney, with researchers from Yale University, the University of Akron, used a powerful scanning electron microscope at the Carl Zeiss laboratory in Germany to analyze the feather. They discovered that it is a “covert,” so named because these feathers cover the primary and secondary wing feathers birds use in flight.

They were were looking for melanosomes, the organelle in living organisms that contain melanin, which help determine colour.

Using the high powered electron microscope, the team located patches of hundreds of the structures still encased in the fossilized feather.

“We finally found the keys to unlocking the feather’s original colour, hidden in the rock for the past 150 million years,” said Carney, a graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, studying with Stephen Gatesy.

Many artists’ conceptions over the years have shown archaeopteryx brightly coloured, often with brilliant blues like a tropical jungle bird today. Others show it with brownish camouflage like plumage.

The team measured the length and width of the sausage-shaped melanosomes, roughly 1 micron long and 250 nanometres wide. To determine the melanosome’s colour, Akron researchers Matthew Shawkey and Liliana D’Alba statistically compared Archaeopteryx’s melanosomes with those found in 87 species of living birds, representing four feather classes: black, gray, brown, and a type found in penguins. “What we found was that the feather was predicted to be black with 95 percent certainty,” Carney said.

archeopterx
Time to change the colour. An image of a blue archaeopteryx, as imagined by the Chicago Academy of Sciences as it appears on the Animal Planet website.

Next, the team sought to better define the melanosomes’ structure. For that, they examined the fossilized barbules — tiny, rib-like appendages that overlap and interlock like zippers to give a feather rigidity and strength. The barbules and the alignment of melanosomes within them, Carney said, are identical to those found in modern birds.

What the pigment was used for is less clear. The black colour of the Archaeopteryx wing feather may have served to regulate body temperature, act as camouflage or be employed for display. But it could have been for flight, too.

“We can’t say it’s proof that Archaeopteryx was a flier. But what we can say is that in modern bird feathers, these melanosomes provide additional strength and resistance to abrasion from flight, which is why wing feathers and their tips are the most likely areas to be pigmented,” Carney said. “With Archaeopteryx, as with birds today, the melanosomes we found would have provided similar structural advantages, regardless of whether the pigmentation initially evolved for another purpose.”

The study, which appears in Nature Communications, was funded by the National Geographic Society and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Oil spill caused “unexpected lethal impact” on herring, study shows

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Scientists from the University of California at Davis and NOAA studying herring spawning beds in San Francisco Bay after the Costco Busan oil spill. (UC Davis)

A 53,569 gallon  (202,780 litre) spill of bunker oil in San Francisco Bay in 2007 had an “unexpected lethal impact on embryonic fish,” according to scientists from the University of California  at Davis  and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who spent two years on follow-up research after the spill, looking at the effects of the spill on Pacific herring.

One significant finding from the study is that different oil compounds, for example crude or bunker oil, likely have different effects on vulnerable environments.

On November 7, 2007,  the container ship Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge, breaching two fuel tanks and sending the bunker oil into the bay.  Television images of the accident were seen around the world.

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Damage to the Cosco Busan.  ( PO 3 Melissa Hauck/US Coast Guard)

The oil spill polluted  the nearby North Central Bay shoreline spawning and rearing habitat for  herring, described  by the study as “the largest coastal population of  Pacific herring along the Continental United States.”   The spill happened a month before the herring spawning season.

The herring from the estuaries of San Francisco Bay  migrate in large schools up the Pacific Coast to the Bering sea, and are food for  whales, other mammals, salmon and birds.  After two years at sea they return to the spawning grounds.

The study also notes: “Herring are a keystone species in the pelagic food web and this population supports the last commercial finfish fishery in San Francisco Bay.” It adds: “Although visibly oiled shorelines were cleaned, some extensively, only 52% of the oil was recovered from surface waters and land  or lost to evaporation.  The amount of hidden or subsurface oil that may have remained near herring spawning areas  is unknown.”

The study, Unexpectedly high mortality in Pacific herring embryos exposed to the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay, was published Monday, Dec. 26,  in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study suggests that even small oil spills can have a large impact on marine life.  Gary Cherr, director  of the UC Davis Bodega Marine  Laboratory and lead author of the study says, “Our research  represents a change in the paradigm  for oil spill research  and detecting oil spill effects in an urbanized estuary.”

That’s because the study builds on research following the 1989 Exxon Valdez  disaster in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which released  32 million gallons (121 million litres) of crude. The Exxon Valdez spill also happened close to the herring spawning season and studies since then have shown mortality and   abnormalities in the fish in Prince William Sound.

The San Francisco study  shows that the bunker oil accumulated in naturally spawned herring embryos. At low tide, the oil then interacted with sunlight in the shallower regions of the estuary, killing the embryos.  A control group of herring, fertilized in a laboratory and place in cages in deeper water, were protected from the combination of oil and sunlight but still showed  “less severe” abnormalities.

“Based on our previous understanding  of the effects of oil on embryonic fish, we didn’t  think there was enough oil from the Cosco Busan spill  to cause this much damage,”  Cherr said. “We didn’t expect  that the ultraviolet light  would dramatically increase toxicity in the actual environment, as might observe in controlled laboratory experiments.”

One reason may be that crude oil, the kind spilled by the Exxon Valdez, is naturally occurring liquid petroleum. Bunker  oil is a thick fuel oil distilled  from crude oil and used as a fuel on ships. Bunker oil can be contaminated by other, unknown substances.  In the case of the Cosco Busan,  the bunker oil was relatively low in sulfur compared to some other bunker fuels but the embryos showed higher than expected levels of sulfur compounds.

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Scientists from the University of California at Davis and NOAA studying herring spawning beds in San Francisco Bay after the Costco Busan oil spill. (UC Davis)

The scientists  analyzed the levels of oil-based compounds in the caged herring embryos at four oiled and two-non oiled sub tidal sites, all at least one metre below  the surface.  Naturally spawned embryos from shallower areas were also studied.

In November, 2007, the spilled oil was visible in the areas chosen for the study.  By the time the herring eggs were incubating, oil was not visible in the contaminated areas, except for some tar balls found on shore.

The researchers began the study in February 2008 .  At the time, three months after the spill,  the caged embryos showed non lethal heart defects, typical of exposure to oil spills.  The embryos in the shallower sub tidal zones showed the same heart defects but also had “surprisingly high rates of dead tissue  and mortality  unrelated to the heart defects.”

“The embryos were literally falling apart with high rates of mortality,” Cherr said.

Normal herring embryos are translucent and colourless when they hatch, except for the pigment around the eye  and melanophores (pigment cells) along the gut.  The  the brain, spinal cord and  axial muscle from embryos from the oiled sites were not as clear. Those embryos had no heart beat and the skin tissue was disintegrating.

No  toxicity was found in embryos in unoiled sites, even those close to major highways. The researchers concluded that the high death rates  did not seem to be caused by natural or man made causes unrelated to the spill.

In 2009, when the scientists concentrated on the role of sunlight, the study showed that the embryos had death rates characterized by  loss of tissue similar to the embryos from the year before,  but possibly caused by undetected compounds from the oil spill.

In 2010, the scientists again looked at embryos from the oiled and unoiled sites. By that time, the hatching rates from the oiled sites were similar  to the “relatively high hatching rates” for the unoiled areas.  However, there was a “significant incidence” of heart problems  among embryos from the oiled sites.

The scientists conclude that while the Exxon Valdez spill did show oil poisoning fish in the early stages of life,  they say  case wider research is needed beyond that done for in the case of the Exxon Valdez because the  Cosco Busan

1. Highlights the difference in effects on fish from exposure to oil of differing composition (i.e. Crude vs bunker)
2. Shows  the role of sunlight, interacting with local conditions (such as shallow water)  can have significant affects on toxicity.
3. Shows the need for more study of the toxic effects of different oil compounds
4. The study has shown the “exceptional vulnerability of fish early stages to spilled oil.”

The conclusion adds  “Although bunker oil typically accounts for only a small fraction of oil in ships,  so spills may be small relative to those of crude oil, it may carry a potential  for disproportionate impacts of in ecologically sensitive areas.”

Both Ellis Ross, Chief Counsellor of the Haisla Nation and April McLeod, president of the Kitimat Valley Naturalists expressed concern abut the findings of the study, especially with the Joint Review Hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline scheduled to begin a few days.

The numerous environmental critics of the Northern Gateway pipeline have pointed out that there is no way of knowing what would happen to an area like the Kitimat River, estuary and Douglas Channel is there was a bitumen spill.  Enbridge has filed documents with the Joint Review Panel that include simulations of a spill.  The new San Francisco study shows that any oil spill could have unforeseen effects.

Plans call for at least three new terminals to be built close to the Kitimat River estuary, not just the controversial Enbridge terminal for bitumen, but at least two for the liquified natural gas projects,  KM LNG and BC LNG and in all three cases ships would normally be fueled by bunker oil.

The Kitimat estuary has been industrialized for 60 years since the building of the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter, but still has large areas teeming with fish and wildlife, so the estuary is somewhat in the middle between the heavily urbanized estuaries of San Francisco Bay and the more pristine Prince William Sound.

Ross pointed to the collapse of the oolichan  in the Kitimat River as a strong indicator of potential problems.  He recalls that in the early stages of the Eurocan paper mill the Haisla Nation was told there would be no effect on the oolichan, but soon after the mill began operations, the oolichan population collapsed.  That is why, Ross said, the Haisla  are wary of the plans and want to see more and stronger studies done on the effects of bitumen and other oil compounds in the region.

Other comments were unavailable due to the holiday. They will added as received.

686-kitimatestuary.jpg Kitimat River estuary on Dec. 17, 2011, showing a Rio Tinto Alcan transmission tower. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

California Fish and Wildlife Cosco Busan spill web page.

According to Wikipedia, the US National Transportation Board found that the Cosco Busan accident was caused by
    1. the pilot’s degraded cognitive performance from his use of prescription medications, despite his completely clean post accident drug test,
    2. the absence of a comprehensive pre-departure master/pilot exchange and a lack of effective communication between Pilot John Cota and Master Mao Cai Sun during the accident voyage, and
    3. (COSCO Busan Master) Sun’s ineffective oversight of Cota’s piloting performance and the vessel’s progress.

Other contributing factors included:

  1. the failure of Fleet Management Ltd. to train the COSCO Busan crewmembers (which led to such acts of gross negligence as the bow lookout eating breakfast in the galley instead of being on watch) and Fleet Management’s failure to ensure that the crew understood and complied with the company’s safety management system;
  2. the failure of Caltrans to maintain foghorns on the bridge which were silent despite the heavy fog;
  3. the failure of Vessel Traffic Safety (VTS) to alert Cota and Sun that they were headed for the tower. VTS is legally required to alert a vessel if an accident appears imminent, yet they remained silent;
  4. the malfunctioning radar on the COSCO Busan, which led Captains Cota and Sun to use an electronic chart for the rest of the voyage. Although Coast Guard investigators found the radar to be in working order, they did not examine it until days after the accident (allowing time for faulty equipment to be fixed, which is not uncommon after a marine accident)
  5. Captain Sun’s incorrect identification of symbols on the electronic chart;
  6. the U.S. Coast Guard’s failure to provide adequate medical oversight of Cota, in view of the medical and medication information he had reported to the Coast Guard.

NTSB report on the Cosco Busan accident  (pdf)

Climate change decreases some mussel beds in Salish Sea by 51%: UBC study

A UBC study shows that some mussel beds  in the Salish Sea have decreased by 51 per cent over the past 52 years, a consequence of gradually rising temperatures off Vancouver Island, the Gulf and San Juan Islands and Washington’s Olympic peninsula.

The study shows that the climate change is already affecting species by not only causing stress but changing the complex relationship among the species in an ecosystem, as some species may become relatively stronger and others weaker.

 University of British Columbia associate professor of zoology Christopher Harley say climate change will  bring biodiversity loss caused by a combination of rising temperatures and predation – and may be more severe than currently predicted.

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Science, examined the response of rocky shore barnacles and mussels to the combined effects of warming and predation by sea stars.

Harley surveyed the upper and lower temperature limits of barnacles and mussels from the cool west coast of Vancouver Island to the warm shores of the San Juan Islands, where water temperature rose from the relatively cool of the1950s to the much warmer years of 2009 and 2010.

639-musselmap.jpgMap showing the area of the UBC climate change study. The squares show areas used for “spatial comparison of temperature and zonation.”  The circles  were used for comparison. (Science)

“Rocky intertidal communities are ideal test-beds for studying the effects of climatic warming,” Harley says. “Many intertidal organisms, like mussels, already live very close to their thermal tolerance limits, so the impacts can be easily studied.”

At cooler sites, mussels and rocky shore barnacles were able to live high on the shore and that is well beyond the range of their predators, including the sea star.  As temperatures rose, barnacles and mussels were forced to live at lower shore levels, the same level as predatory sea stars.

Daily high temperatures during the summer months have increased by almost 3.5 degrees Celsius in the last 60 years, causing the upper limits of barnacle and mussels habitats to retreat by 50 centimeters down the shore. However, the effects of predators, and therefore the position of the lower limit, have remained constant.

“That loss represents 51 per cent of the mussel bed. Some mussels have even gone extinct locally at three of the sites I surveyed,” says Harley.

“A mussel bed is kind of like an apartment complex – it provides critical habitat for a lot of little plants and animals,” says Harley. “The mussels make the habitat cooler and wetter, providing an environment for crabs and other small crustaceans, snails, worms and seaweed.”

The study says, “the loss of mussel beds over time has probably resulted  in declines of species richness.”

When pressure from sea star predation was reduced using exclusion cages, the prey species were able to occupy hotter sites where they don’t normally occur, and species richness at the sites more than doubled.

These findings provide a comprehensive look at the effects of warming and predation, while many previous studies on how species ranges will change due to warming assume that species will simply shift to stay in their current temperature range.

Harley says the findings show that the combined effects of warming and predation could lead to more widespread extinction than are currently predicted, as animals or plants are unable to shift their habitat ranges.

“Warming is not just having direct effects on individual species,” says Harley. “This study shows that climate change can also alter interactions between species, and produce unexpected changes in where species can live, their community structure, and their diversity.”

He adds ecological change can only be anticipated if scientists understand the ways various factors “determine the distribution and abundance of species in space and time.”

Using northwest trees for buildings better for keeping carbon out of atmosphere, study says

A University of Washington study says that using trees from the northwest as a building material is good for carbon mitigation in the atmosphere, especially if the wood waste is also used as a biofuel to replace gasoline and other fossil fuels.

The article, published in the journal Forests, says that if timber from northwestern U.S. forests were harvested sustainably every 45 years and the wood used as a building material, where possible replacing substances like concrete or steel, which require greater amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture, that would both remove existing carbon dioxide from the air while the forest was growing and then keep the gas entering the atmosphere for years  as long as it is part of a building.

It says carbon savings can be increased by using the parts of the trees
not suitable for building materials such as slash, branches and debris
as biofuel, especially ethanol.

It also notes that some forest “residual” may be too
difficult to collect to be used a biofuel or should be left to maintain
the forest ecosystem.

The lead author of the study,  Bruce Lippke, professor emeritus of forest resources at the University of Washington, says, “When it comes  to keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, it makes more sense to use trees to recycle as much carbon  as we can and offset  the burning of fossil fuels than it does to store carbon in standing forests and continuing burning fossil fuels.”

The University of Washington says this is the first study to look at using biofuels in addition to  using wood from long living trees as a building material, as opposed to woody biofuels studied in isolation. 

The study also looked at forests in the U.S. Northeast and Southeast, and emphasized that different regions will produce different results.

It suggests that using fast growing species, such as willow, especially in the US Southeast, could have advantages.  Willow, while not usually a commercial building wood species, and with a lower carbon conversion efficiency, when used as biofuel can be both economically harvested for biofuel because of its high growth rate and that rapid growth would also be absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Lipke says that properly managed forests mean using wood for both building and bioenergy  is carbon neutral. That’s because the growing trees could absorb enough carbon dioxide to offset emissions from the rotting wood from used building materials after its useful life and from cars using ethanol produced from woody debris.

The biggest problem, the study suggests, is the still relatively low cost of fossil fuels,  and the low cost of  natural gas, which has made large scale conversion of wood biomass to ethanol, so far, uneconomic.

It also notes that the entire forest should be considered in any equations on carbon mitigation because it would include different lifecycles, quality of wood and different collection and manufacturing processes.

Carbon captured in building wood has a half life of 80 years  after harvest.  Then  there is a question of what should happen to that wood after its useful life, thus wood that is burned would add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, whereas it would be better to either put the wood into landfill so it can rot or that the wood  be processed in some kind of energy recapture process.

Combined use of good wood in building and waste for ethanol, while sustaining the forest, would mean that 4.6 tonnes of carbon are captured per year for each hectare of forest. The study says “this sustainable mitigation from using wood products  and biofuels has the potential to exceed  the growth rate in forest carbon  because of the high leverage  when wood substitutes for fossil intensive  products and their emissions.”

The study also looks at ways the sustainable forest and use of biofuels could increase American energy independence.

Others participating in the study were North Carolina State University, State University of New York at Syracuse, Leonard Johnson and Associates, Moscow, Idaho, Woodlife Environmental Consultants, Corvallis, Or and Mississippi State University.
 
Sustainable Biofuel Contributions to Carbon Mitigation and Energy Independence

Editor’s note: There should be a follow-up Canadian study that looks at the carbon cost of sending raw logs to China in ships burning high carbon bunker oils, rather than finding new ways of producing lumber here, and as the study suggests, using the lumber, where possible,  to replace steel and concrete.

Salmons’ extra large guts are a survival tactic

Coho salmon Based on the drawing from Silver o...

Image via Wikipedia

Environment Fishery Science

Salmon have extra large guts–up to three times larger than its body would suggest–that help it survive, scientists at the University of Washington say.   

The study “Excess digestive capacity in predators reflects a life of feast and famine”   is published in Nature.

A news release from the university calls the large gut a “previously unrecognized survival tactic.” Although fishers who gut a salmon may say that no one noticed how big the gut actually was as they threw it away, the same apparently applied to scientists as the article states:  “Despite …basic principle of quantitative evolutionary design, estimates of digestive load capacity ratios in wild animals are virtually non-existent.”

The study is by PhD student  Jonathan “Jonny” Armstrong, originally from  Ashland, Ore, who says he has been fascinated by salmon ever since he saw a Chinook leap out of the water when he was ten.

The study says that when the “foraging opportunities for animals are unpredictable, which should favour animals that maintain a capacity for food-processing that exceeds average levels of consumption (loads), The study  that piscine  [fish] predators typically maintain the physiological capacity to feed at daily rates two to three times higher than what they experience on average…”

“This much excess capacity suggests predator-prey encounters are far patchier – or random – than assumed in biology and that binge-feeding enables predators to survive despite regular periods of famine,” Armstrong said. Co-author and supervisor on the paper is Daniel Schindler, University of  Washington  professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.

“Guts are really expensive organs in terms of metabolism,” Armstrong said. For instance, maintaining a gut can require 30 to 40 per cent of the blood pumped by an animal’s heart.

Some animals have some capacity to grow or shrink their guts in response to changing conditions. For example, according to previous studies,  the digestive organs of birds that are about to migrate expand so they can eat more and fatten up. This is followed by a period when their guts atrophy and then, freed of the baggage of heavy guts, the birds take off. But this study shows  that many fish species maintain a huge gut, which enables them to capitalize on unpredictable pulses of food.

Ravens and crows, for example, are known to cache food far from where they find it. Fish can’t do that. “Unlike some other animals, fish can’t just hoard their food behind a rock in the stream and eat it later. They need to binge during the good times so that they can grow and build energy reserves to survive the bad times,” Armstrong says.

Armstrong is part of the university’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences  which has a field site at the Alaska Salmon Program’s Lake Aleknagik. Using a dry suit, Armstrong snorkeled the Aleknagik tributaries, swimming in waters as low as 5°C where he found out  the Aleknagik streams exhibited tremendous variation in water temperature, which inspired him to study how those temperatures affected the ecology of the streams.

In his initial studies, he looked at the effect of water temperature on juvenile coho’s ability to consume sockeye eggs. He says, “In cold streams, juvenile coho salmon were too small to fit the abundant sockeye eggs in their mouths. In warmer streams, the coho grew large enough to consume eggs, gorged themselves, and achieved rapid growth, and this suggested that small changes in temperature can have disproportionate affects on coho salmon production.”

 The “previously unrecognized survival tactic”  might apply to other top predators, such as wolves, lions and bears,  Armstrong says.

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Niger delta oil spills clean-up will take 30 years, says UN: Guardian

Energy Environment

The Guardian

Niger delta oil spills clean-up will take 30 years, says UN

The Guardian has obtained a copy of a special United Nations report on oil spills in the Niger River delta.

Devastating oil spills in the Niger delta over the past five decades will cost $1 billion to rectify and take up to 30 years to clean up, according to a UN report.

The UN Environment Programme (Unep) has announced that Shell and other oil firms systematically contaminated a 1,000 square kilometre (386 sq mile) area of Ogoniland, in the Niger delta, with disastrous consequences for human health and wildlife.

Nigerians had “paid a high price” for the economic growth brought by the oil industry, said Unep’s executive director.

Oysters, mussels threatened by ocean acidification from climate change

Environment-Science-Fishery

A study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is warning that mollusks, especially oysters and mussels, are increasingly vulnerable to the acidification of the oceans caused by rising carbon dioxide emissions.

A news release from the institute  on Aug. 2 notes

As CO2 levels driven by fossil fuel use have increased in the atmosphere
since the Industrial Revolution, so has the amount of CO2 absorbed by
the world’s oceans, leading to changes in the chemical make-up of
seawater. Known as ocean acidification, this decrease in pH creates a
corrosive environment for some marine organisms such as corals, marine
plankton, and shellfish that build carbonate shells or skeletons

.

The new study, which was published online July 7, 2011, by the journal Fish and Fisheries, assesses each country’s vulnerability to decreases in mollusk harvests caused by ocean acidification.

It appears, that the higher latitudes, which would include the northwest coast, are, for the moment, at lower risk than tropical regions.

The news release goes on to say:

In order to assess each nation’s vulnerability, researchers examined several dependence factors: current mollusk production, consumption and export; the percentage of the population that depends on mollusks for their protein; projected population growth; and current and future aquaculture capacity.

Using surface ocean chemistry forecasts from a coupled climate-ocean model, researchers also identified each nation’s “transition decade,” or when future ocean chemistry will distinctly differ from that of 2010, and current mollusk harvest levels cannot be guaranteed. These changes are expected to occur during the next 10 to 50 years, with lower latitude countries seeing impacts sooner. Higher latitude regions have more variability, and organisms there may be more tolerant to changing conditions.

The author of the study, Sarah Cooley, says, “”Mollusks are the clearest link we have at this point,” Cooley said. “As ocean acidification responses of fin fish become more apparent, and as we learn more about the biological relationships between mollusks and other animals, then we can start zeroing in on how non-mollusk fisheries can also be affected.”

Harper government muzzles scientist who studied salmon collapse, noted possible virus as cause

Environment
Post Media News

Feds silence scientist over West Coast salmon study

Post Media News reports that the Privy Council Office, part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office, is refusing to allow a prominent scientist speak to the media and the public about her study on the collapse of salmon stocks on the west coast, suggesting a virus may be involved in salmon deaths, despite the fact her scientific findings have already been published in the journal Science.

Top bureaucrats in Ottawa have muzzled a leading fisheries scientist whose discovery could help explain why salmon stocks have been crashing off Canada’s West Coast, according to documents obtained by Postmedia News.

The documents show the Privy Council Office, which supports the Prime Minister’s Office, stopped Kristi Miller from talking about one of the most significant discoveries to come out of a federal fisheries lab in years….

Science, one of the world’s top research journals, published Miller’s findings in January. The journal considered the work so significant it notified “over 7,400” journalists worldwide about Miller’s “Suffering Salmon” study…

Miller heads a $6-million salmon-genetics project at the federal Pacific Biological Station on Vancouver Island.

Abstract of Miller’s paper in Science. (Subscription required for full text), Jan 14, 2011.

Long-term population viability of Fraser River sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) is threatened by unusually high levels of mortality as they swim to their spawning areas before they spawn. Functional genomic studies on biopsied gill tissue from tagged wild adults that were tracked through ocean and river environments revealed physiological profiles predictive of successful migration and spawning. We identified a common genomic profile that was correlated with survival in each study. In ocean-tagged fish, a mortality-related genomic signature was associated with a 13.5-fold greater chance of dying en route. In river-tagged fish, the same genomic signature was associated with a 50% increase in mortality before reaching the spawning grounds in one of three stocks tested. At the spawning grounds, the same signature was associated with 3.7-fold greater odds of dying without spawning. Functional analysis raises the possibility that the mortality-related signature reflects a viral infection.

Enbridge to improve risk assessment on proposed Northern Gateway pipeline

Vancouver Sun 

Enbridge to improve risk assessment on proposed Northern Gateway pipeline 

 

Enbridge acknowledged Thursday it needs to improve its risk assessment of potential accidents along the route of a controversial proposed pipeline that would deliver crude oil to the west coast of British Columbia. 

A company spokesman made the comments in response to a new analysis to be submitted Friday to a government review panel that raises questions about potential impacts of the Northern Gateway project.

“There are major sources of uncertainty that are not adequately acknowledged and/or incorporated into the analysis,” said the review, prepared by Stella Swanson, a Calgarybased aquatic biologist.

The review analyzed the company’s public submissions to the government panel that is assessing the environmental impacts of the $5.5-billion Northern Gateway project.