I'd Like To Thank The Academy...

Aw, shucks. My fellow bloggers have been very kind enough to say embarrassingly nice things about me while tagging me with two separate peer awards. Mark over at blogfish slapped me with a Bloggers For Positive Change tag while Craig at Deep Sea News handed me a Thinking Blogger Award. I'm actually touched that people read this stuff, so it's nice to get the props. Thanks guys! Though don't for a moment think I can't see through the horrid chain-mail-in-disguise of these "awards."

So now I have to think of five other blogs in the ocean or conservation world who best typify "thinking" or "positive change." The blogs I love who would make my short list have either nominated me or have alternatively been nominated in kind. But I think there still might be a few I can pass this curse award along to:

1) The Saipan Blog: Think Perez Hilton but not gay, not morbidly obese, and not blogging about trite, mindless crap that doesn't matter. But he does get as much traffic. I almost hate to nominate Angelo, since I think he already is getting an over inflated ego, but I love what this man is doing on Saipan to stir the shit, wake people up to conservation in Micronesia, and score as many pictures with hot asian go-go girls as possible. Angelo Villagomez for President!

2) Climate Shifts: Your one stop shopping for climate change news and views and overall round-up of politics and the environment. Written and maintained by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from Down-Under, this site serves as my primary climate change information portal.

3) The Radula: Not always ocean related (despite the misleading title), but Dorid always has a daily dose of reality in her musings on topics ranging from evolution and atheism to mental health and love of nudibranchs. Plus she has the best T-shirt shop in the blogosphere.

Congrats, esteemed blogeagues! No prize, but you have my deep respect for what you do!

House Bill Proposes To Sacrifice Sea Lions For Salmon

Legislation that would make it easier for states in the Pacific Northwest to interfere with or kill protected sea lions in an effort to keep them from wiping out endangered salmon is on the move in the House.

Del. Madeline Bordallo's (D-Guam) Fisheries and Wildlife Subcommittee holds a hearing on, H.R. 1769, the "Endangered Salmon Predation Prevention Act," this week. The bill from Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) would lift some Marine Mammal Act protections for sea lions, allowing officials in California, Oregon and Washington to kill up to 10 sea lions or use "alternative measures" to keep them away from salmon.

The California sea lion population has increased six-fold over the past 30 years, and in recent years more than 1,000 sea lions have started to enter the lower part of the Columbia River during the peak spring salmon run. At the Bonneville Dam, along the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington, sea lions consumed almost 3 percent of the salmon passing the structure last year, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. It was seven times as many salmon as they ate five years ago. Officials at the dam have tried "hazing" the sea lions away from the salmon, but some have not been responsive.

Environmentalists say the real problem is not the sea lions, but the dams, since they create an artificial situation that groups the salmon. They want to eliminate four dams in the lower Snake River to help restore salmon runs. American Rivers and the Humane Society have come out against the bill.

The legislation would create an expedited permit process for parties interested in killing the sea lions. They could "lethally remove" no more than 10 animals a year. The bill includes a "sense of Congress" statement that non-lethal methods of controlling the predation are preferable to lethal methods.

Source: Allison Winter, E&E Daily reporter

The Complete Harvard Kronosaurus

A little Photoshop magic and voila... a complete 42-foot Kronosaurus queenslandicus from the collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. William E. Scheville, a graduate student on a Harvard collecting expedition to Queensland, Australia in 1931, discovered the specimen. Scheville found the fossilized bones in a limestone deposit on a sheep ranch. The limestone holding the Kronosaurus was dynamited out of the ground and shipped to Harvard, where it took 26 years to be removed from the rock, cleaned, assembled and put on display.

Kronosaurus is one of the group of plesiosaurs, flesh-eating marine reptiles which have no real equivalent today and, in their time, had no exact counterpart on land, either. The plesiosaurs represent one of evolution's fascinating about-faces: after it's ancestors made the transition from ocean to land, plesiosaurs returned to the ocean. Just as whales show their land ancestry by the bones within their fins, Kronosaurus had enormous paddles for locomotion. Each paddle-like fin holds elongated finger bones.

For years after it was collected, not enough money could be found to work on the specimen. That changed when the Kronosaurus came to the attention of Godfrey Lowell Cabot of Boston, Harvard Class of 1882, who was in his 90s and had been fascinated by sea serpents since his childhood. His great-grandfather, after going to investigate popular reports of a 60-foot sea creature, had observed what he described as a sea serpent - at longer than 40 feet - swimming in Gloucester Harbor in 1817. One can only presume Grandpa Cabot had one too many gin and tonics during happy hour.

The Cabot family, true Boston Brahmins, remain one of the legendary first families of Boston and major contributors to Harvard's early infrastructure. Together with the Adamses, Eliots, Emersons, Lowells, and Quincys they funded the enduring architecture of Harvard College and overall configuration of Harvard Yard. Strolling through the Yard you're reminded of this when passing Quincy House, Emerson Hall, and others. If you find Harvard folk insufferable today, one can only imagine what it was like during the heyday of these first families. My favorite bit of Boston doggerel from the era sort of sums it up:

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.

Good Eats, Sutured Lions, Stuffed Seals, And Other Highlights At Harvard

My plane leaves for San Francisco in a couple hours, but I wasn't about to leave Boston without revisiting some of my favorite Cambridge stomping grounds and checking-out how Harvard has changed since I lived here from 1987-1992. Harvard gets a lot of backlash when people start talking about "Best of," but even with just a whirlwind tour this morning, I recalled some fantastic memories. There are a lot of "Bests" about Harvard. Here's just a very personal list of my favorites:

Best Newstand: Out Of Town News in Harvard Square. Can literally find your hometown news and have it waiting for you.


Best Burgers: Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage on Mass. Ave. just outside Harvard Yard and behind the Wigglesworth freshman housing. Sometimes it's a long wait to get seated, but oh so worth it!


Best Quick Eats and Beer: Grendel's Den. A perennial fixture at Harvard. It's dark, usually quiet, and serve some fantastic kabobs with a pint.


Best Academic Library: Widener Library. Second only to the Library of Congress in sheer volume of holdings. For the serious scholar. Rumor has it that to be a true Harvard student, you must have sex at some time in your student career somewhere in the labyrinth-like stacks.


Best Old-School Natural History Museum: The Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). Founded in 1859 by that old, irascible creationist Louis Agassiz, it remains a monument to the Victorian principles of collect and document all you can. There's far more tucked away in shelves, bottles, and drawers than you see on display, but in total it represents some of the best comparative animal collections in the world. Some of my favorites:

The Kronosaur

The Slowly Decaying Coelacanth

The Sad Dodo

The Sutured Lion Cub

The Smiling Seal

And the ever so extinct Sea Cow

What I always liked about the MCZ is they realize that the science they have on display needs to attract and interest future scientists as well. But honestly, with collections this cool, how could it not interest the child in everyone.

Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, And Moonrises

Sometimes words are simply unnecessary.

Human Ecology, Pink Granite, Popovers, And Erratics: Stories From Mount Desert Island

My whacky schedule gives me only a single day on Mount Desert Island, Maine's largest island, but I managed to fit in all my work, proofed three grant reports, and still had time for some fun outdoors. My only complaint is that for the entire time I've been on the island, the temperature has been hovering in the 90's throughout the day. This is truly bizarre weather on an island in the North Atlantic where summer dress normally consists of wool sweaters and mittens.

My day started with an early meeting with Jill Barlow-Kelley, the Director of Internships at the College of the Atlantic (COA) in Bar Harbor. With a student body of 300 undergraduates, COA is a small school with a major difference - literally. All students major in Human Ecology. Human ecology integrates knowledge from all academic disciplines and from personal experience to investigate, and ultimately improve, the relationships between human beings and our social and natural communities. My meeting was to learn about the college's internship process and explore how COA students unique academic preparation might fit into my coral conservation projects around the world. I learned a lot from Jill and think the potential for internship collaboration would benefit both COA and CORAL. And thanks, Jill, for the great coffee!

After my meeting, I decided to drive up to the highest point on MDI, Cadillac Mountain. At 1571 feet above sea level, it's hardly a mountain by western US standards. But Cadillac is in fact the tallest coastal geologic feature on the eastern continental coastline north of Sugarloaf Mountain in Brazil. Allegedly, anyone possessing the will to wake-up early enough to stand atop Cadillac's summit can claim the distinction of being among the first in the continental US to witness the sunrise that day. I wasn't eager to join that courageous cohort, so a midday visit would be perfectly adequate.

As you drive up Cadillac on the winding switch-backs of a road, you notice how the granite bedrock of the island appears sliced in places or how the rock is weathering in layers that appear to be sloughing away a layer at a time. This is the characteristic jointing that granite demonstrates as it weathers. The rock literally cleaves along planes nearly perpendicular to each other. This leads to the blocky appearance of the bedrock and the onion-like peeling away of layers. Mount Desert's granite is a peculiar pinkish orange color with large crystal size. This pinkish hue results from the particular chemical composition of feldspar in the island's granite recipe. Granite, an igneous rock, is a blend of minerals, typically quartz, feldspar, hornblende, and mica. Specific chemical variables within these minerals effect overall color of the rock. The rate of cooling of magma determines crystal size.

Up at the summit, you get a spectacular view of most of the east and south of the island. The summit is usually a place where you can find some relief from hot summer temperatures, but not today. All the island granite had been baking under a scorching sun for several days now, and the nighttime temps didn't offer much opportunity for cooling. As a result, the summit felt like I was standing in a convection oven. I strolled the summit trail and, as I always do when visiting the island, imagined the two mile thick layer of glacial ice that scraped across this summit during the last ice age. I'll say that again for full effect: two miles of ice covered and flowed across the rock I was now standing on. And like an enormous dirty ice cube, the ice picked-up rock, sand, and other abrasives and scoured the underlying bedrock. It smoothed the granite mountains into the rounded appearance we now see, gouged out deep valleys between the mountains (see the island diorama at top of post) and dug the deep fjord, Somes Sound, that almost bisects the island in half.

The plant life atop the summit has a tough existence. Looking around, you notice the same tree species as were growing near the base of the mountain. Except, where the spruce and cedars were 30 foot trees at the mountain base, here on the summit they were 2-3 foot dwarfs. It's not hard to see how this natural bonsai-effect results. The terrain is solid granite with very little ability to retain water. What soil that's there is thin and primitive. Lichen start the soil succession by eroding the durable granite into small particles.



This loose, rocky material (cryptogam) provides enough substrate for grasses to sprout. Over time, more organic material accumulates, bird poop provides occasional nitrogen (a fertilizer), and voila... a basic and harsh plant ecosystem evolves.

Now nearing high noon and thoroughly damp with sweat, I knew immediately how to cool down in a most civilized way: tea and popovers on the great lawn of the Jordan Pond House. The Jordan Pond House traces its history back to 1847. The original farm house was built by the Jordan family of Seal Harbor, for whom the adjacent pond and house were named. It was converted into a restaurant in the early 1870's. The house traded hands over the years until John D. Rockefeller, Jr. purchased the property in 1946 and gave it to the National Park Service to ensure its continuation. There's an indescribable joy of relaxation one experiences while enjoying a pot of Darjeeling tea and fresh-baked popovers while sitting under the shade of an umbrella in this incredibly beautiful place. Life is, indeed, good.

After this hedonistic diversion, it was unfortunately time to get back to my day job. I had a pile of grant reports to pour through and several needed to be submitted before close of business today. On my drive back to Bar Harbor along the park loop road, I paused briefly at Bubble Rock. I've seen this particular sight many times and have hiked the short trail up to this geologic wonder too many times to remember. Bubble Rock is known as a glacial erratic, a rock that was picked-up, transported, and deposited by the movement of glacial ice. In this case, the type of granite that comprises Bubble Rock matches rock from 30-40 miles north of Mount Desert Island. Understanding and appreciating geology requires an active imagination. I love to look at landforms like this and imagine what the process must have looked like as time progressed. This gigantic boulder, a mere speck of sand compared to the mass of a glacier, was snatched from its point of origin and moved south along the glacial conveyor belt. Here and there it may have scraped along the bedrock leaving behind glacial striations just like a chisel point under an artists hand might carve or shape rough rock. As glacial expansion stopped and global temperatures warmed, the erratic was deposited on this precarious ledge on South Bubble Mountain. It truly gives you an appreciation of deep time and the scale and pace of some geologic activity.

Sound As A Pound

You can't swing a cat in the state of Maine without hitting a lobster. As I mentioned before, next to tourism it's the backbone of Maine's economy. And boy, does Maine know how to market it. Here in lobster central you can find lobster shirts, lobster hats, lobster magnets, lobster aprons, lobster shot glasses, lobster holiday lights, lobster plush toys, lobster bottle openers, and lobster jewelry. I saw lobster serving dishes shaped like lobsters. You can even find lobster ice cream. I shit you not. Ben & Bill's in Bar Harbor (that's their ice cream flavor list in the picture below) serves up scoops of sweet butter-flavored ice cream with chunks of whole lobster meat.


And of course, there are lobsters themselves. I don't like the taste of lobster myself, but I love lobster culture. And I take it seriously. One of my favorite Maine institutions is the lobster pound. Lobster pounds hold fresh, live lobsters in tanks with water passing freely through them. The first lobster pounds were wooden box-like structures located in deep tidal creeks, but today they are more commonly seen attached to docks floating in a harbor. The pound allows lobster dealers to store lots of lobsters at once. As market prices fluctuate, dealers can sell their lobsters rapidly or wait for the price of lobster to increase. It also allows a newly-molted lobster time to harden its shell before going to market.

The Downeast coast of Maine is littered with lobster pounds, but not all are the real thing in my book. What do I look for in a genuine lobster pound? It should be located right on the water or near enough that they have easy access to fresh seawater through a direct pump system. The saltwater is not just to keep the lobsters happy, but real lobster pounds boil their lobsters in seawater.

I also look for family businesses that have been around for a while. Family businesses usually do their own fishing or have long standing relationships with lobster fishers in the area. It's worth noting that just because I look for family-owned businesses, this in no way guarantees that the person behind the register at the lobster pound is going to be folksy and pleasant. This is, after all, Maine and true Mainers only sort of tolerate tourists. It's part of the charm.

Anyway, if you ever want the real lobster pound experience, it doesn't get much better than the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound just before you cross the bridge onto Mount Desert Island. This family-owned business has been serving lobsters the right way for over 50 years and through three generations. They run their wood-fire heated saltwater kettles all day outside the shop. The smell of wood smoke mixed with lobster is intoxicating.



Despite the fact that I'm not a lobster-eating fan, I love this place and others like it for its history and connection to the ocean as a resource. It's iconic of a longstanding family connection and dependence on a healthy sea. Sadly, this sort of connection, deep history, and value is lost upon the Red Lobster crowd and other megacorporate seafood chains.

You Can Get There From Here

I'm headed further north now to Mount Desert Island, Maine, for a meeting with the College of the Atlantic (COA). I'm hoping to explore the potential for incorporating COA students as interns in our conservation work. COA is a unique college that grants degrees in only one field: Human Ecology, the study of our relationship with our environment. I'm particularly impressed with COA's focus on collaboration and community and think there may be some exciting possibilities for synergy. I'll also have the added bonus of visiting one of my favorite places, Acadia National Park, which is essentially in the college's back yard.

Any parting thoughts of Portland, Maine? Well, as it was when I lived here 10 years ago, Portland is a place of little pretense. It's just people going about their lives without the rush and drama of most urban areas. By the looks of most of the downtown area, there's been a sort of zero sum game that's played-out over the past 10 years I've been gone. Some areas have improved, others have decayed. Where there appears to be capital investments in infrastructure building, you can point to areas that display neglect. I suppose you can say this of any metropolitan district, but Portland isn't New York City. The standard of living in Maine is modest. People aren't making enormous salaries and many here (myself included when I called Portland home) live check to check. I suppose many still wait for a boom in the local economy, but from what I see things have just sort of maintained.

Regardless, I love this town. I love that it's unpretentious yet hip in its own way. I love (and miss) Granny's Burritos. I love old pal and now local celebrity writer Liz Peavey whose entire oeuvre I picked-up at the local bookstore. I love the pseudo-arts district, the not so Old Port, and the local coffee shops that flip the middle finger to the many Starbucks. I love its close proximity and connection to the ocean and that the city has not forgotten its coastal heritage. And I love the fact that someone can walk down the street wearing the T-shirt below yet not have it be considered sarcastic or ironic.

Furry Crabs And Traditional Knowledge: A Wednesday Catch-Up

Sorry about this retrospective posting, but such is the nature of finding time to blog that corresponds with finding internet access. Anyway, yesterday (Wednesday) was my last full day to spend at the NMEA conference and I want to be sure to mention the highlights.

I finally got my circadian to match the timezone and had an all too restful night's sleep. So much so that I woke up with only 15 minutes to splash some water on my face, dress, and then dash to the conference center. This mornings guest speaker was Ron O'Dor who is with the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE) in Washington DC. He's also a senior scientist with the Census of Marine Life, a growing global network of researchers in more than 70 nations engaged in a ten-year initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the ocean and explain how it changes over time. Say that five times fast. Their unofficial motto (which I love) is, We can't tell you what we will find... We don't even know what we're looking for! You've probably already either seen or heard news about the census. It's made quite a splash, in no small part due to a very savvy and well thought out media campaign and an on-staff cadre of communication and PR specialists. The Census is not wasting time leveraging the amazing images of bizarro marine critters their teams are discovering. For instance, the image above of the now famous Yeti Crab (Kiwa hirsuta) discovered living in a deep sea trench near Chile's Easter island has received almost as much press as Lindsay Lohan.

O'Dor is primarily involved with the Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (POST) Project. POST was created to monitor the movement of marine animals along the west coast of North America. POST is also part of a larger Census initiative called the Ocean Tracking Network. The idea here is to tag and assign bar codes to marine animals, from small invertebrates to enormous whales. Then, by setting up an enormous array of "listening stations," the researchers can monitor the movements and behaviors of these individuals. If I didn't explain that clearly enough, this short Quicktime video does a great job of summarizing the methodology.

The bulk of my last day at the conference was spent in a very exciting meeting (the very first meeting in fact) of the Traditional Knowledge Committee of the National Marine Educators Association. A little back story is in order first. The National Marine Educators Association (NMEA) is a 100% voluntary educational association of informal and formal educators and miscellaneous schools, agencies, and organizations that are involved in marine education. None of the board or associated officers draw any salary. While marine education is the main focus, NMEA has allowed itself to expand and incorporate all aspects of aquatic educational needs. It's somewhat inelegant motto reflects this: Making known the world of water, both fresh and salt.

A big objective of NMEA has been to ensure that students learn about and gain an appreciation for the role of the ocean in human lives. Since ocean awareness and explicit ocean science does not appear in the national science education standards (and with teachers hard pressed to teach to standardized tests and other restrictions due to No Child Left Behind) many students complete 12 years of public education in the United States with very little appreciation and content knowledge about ocean processes. To try to address this gap, a few years back a very motivated core group of NMEA members in collaboration with the National Geographic Society and others began the challenging process of defining those core principles that all students should know to be ocean literate. This movement, called the Ocean Literacy Network, is now rolling and gaining momentum.

The Ocean Literacy Principles focus heavily upon science, geography, and history. However, it became apparent that the principles omitted any recognition of traditional knowledge and the learning of native or indigenous people. Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and African American populations whose cultures have had close connection to marine habitats hold millenia of traditions and traditional ways of knowing. This isn't just a politically correct concern. Western science certainly represents the best way be have to explain our natural world, but traditional knowledge also provides context and depth of understanding of the human connections to the ocean. As such, they should not be excluded from student's ocean education, particularly in places where such local, traditional knowledge may still be practiced.

Which brings us back to the committee meeting. Since NMEA is not just promoting ocean science but is an interdisciplinary effort, the new Traditional Knowledge Committee will be charged with ensuring that local traditions become included in the core ocean principles in locations such as Hawaii, Alaska, and wherever Native American coastal traditions are represented. Since CORAL works in so many areas internationally and incorporates traditional knowledge into our approach to MPA support, I had the honor of being invited to this important meeting. I joined indigenous representatives from Hawaii, representatives from the local Penobscot Nation, and others from around the country who have close ties to indigenous people.

I'm particularly proud to be a part of this movement that can perhaps serve as a model for not just the marine education world but beyond. And since ocean awareness and appreciation can come from many different entry points, not just science, it's heartening to think we are building a truly inclusive community.

Scarborough Marsh

I managed to capture this picture yesterday of Scarborough Marsh in all its summer glory. Scarborough Marsh is Maine's largest contiguous salt marsh. The 3,100 acre Scarborough Marsh Wildlife Management Area, owned and managed by the State of Maine and Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, includes approximately 2,700 acres of salt marsh, five tidal rivers, several smaller streams, some coastal freshwater marsh, tidal flats, and less than 200 acres of upland habitat. It's a birder's paradise and a great place to take your canoe or kayak.

It's nice to see that stands of the invasive reed Phragmites that populates the northwest edges of the marsh have not expanded into the main marsh area. Phragmites is commonly called the "marsh muncher" as it grows rapidly and can quickly fill wetlands.

Tuesday Catch-Up

Well, I awoke to find the internet up in my hotel, so I thought I'd mention one of the highlights from yesterdays sessions. We had a terrific keynote address delivered by Prof. Bob Steneck from the Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine. Bob studies ecological processes in the benthic marine realm and focuses on the food webs, structure, and keystone organisms of coastal marine communities. While he works in Maine, he's not just a cold water marine ecologist but dabbles in tropical coral reef ecosystems as well. I've had the pleasure of interacting with Bob down in Tulum, Mexico, with our Mesoamerican Barrier Reef project.

Bob's keynote address was focused on the shifting baseline of Maine's coastal fisheries. He looked at the conundrum of how lobsters, the biggest cash crop for Maine's fisheries, are thriving in the face of intensive fishing effort. It's peculiar that such an intensely fished species would be experiencing a historic population explosion. Looking deeper at fishing records over time, Bob correlated the lobster, crab, and sea urchin booms in Maine to the cod and other big fish busts of the past few decades. In the absence of big predatory fish like cod, lobsters and other key invertebrate populations explode. Bob isn't just an excellent scientist, but a gifted speaker who can make an hour of charts, graphs, and other data sets absolutely gripping. We need more Bob Steneck's.

Following the keynote, I attended a session by Ben Namakin (in the image to the left) with the Conservation Society of Pohnpei. The presentation was on networking marine educators internationally through the International Pacific Marine Educators Network (IPMEN). This is a relatively new effort to link the marine education world throughout the Pacific Rim. It's also follow-up from the first ever IPMEN conference that was originally slated last January in Fiji. Thanks to the coup however, the meeting was moved at the last minute to Honolulu. CORAL Program Managers Bryan and Liz both attended and Liz presented during that conference.

Most of the presentation focused on the history of IPMEN, and the technology that's making connectivity across the Pacific possible. But Ben also had a presentation on Pohnpei's conservation efforts. Ben is an old friend of CORAL and worked with us several years ago in Pohnpei when we assisted in developing a user fee for marine recreation to help offset marine protected area management costs. Ben informed me that the user fee is having some difficulties at the moment, getting all snarled-up in political red tape. Hopefully we can identify a funding source to return to Pohnpei soon to assist in getting the process moving again.

Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunrises

Out my hotel window this morning.

Putting The "Oh!" In Oregon

Bryan finally shot me a heads-up from Portland, Oregon where he is attending the Coastal Zone 07 conference. He claims almost Florida-esque humidity in Portland, which would put it on a par with the muggy heat here in Portland, Maine. Bryan also provided this image from what he says was a Saturday market in downtown. No other explanation was provided for what is going on in this picture, but I'm almost tempted to run a caption contest. Feel free to suggest a caption if you are so inclined. In the mean time, I'll presume the figure with the pink hair is not Bryan testing out a bold career change.

Salt Marshes, Fried Clams, LL Bean, and Unsustainable Development: Dispatches From Southern Maine

Who knew finding an internet connection in Maine would be such a pain in the ass! First the "free" hotel connection goes down. Then the "free" conference connection crashes. So while I hoped to do my blogging in as real time as possible, I'm resorting to writing a flurry and then uploading when I find the random free connections.

So I'm in between sessions on Day 2 of the National Marine Educators Association conference and uploading yesterday's escapades. Monday was all about registration in the morning. After that, I was free until 4PM when the Conservation Committee met. With my relatively free day, I decided to visit some of my favorite haunts in Southern Maine.

I cruised down Highway 1 through South Portland, Scarborough, and through Ocean Beach to Ferry Beach and Camp Ellis. These two points are directly north of the Saco River, one of the major freshwater sources draining into this part of the Gulf of Maine. I formerly taught environmental ed. here and wanted to see the shore and marshlands that were such a big part of my early environmental career. Camp Ellis (in the image looking north at top of post) is a textbook example of uninformed coastal development. Early homeowners and builders in the 1970's decided that the sea view was so lovely that they just had to have their backyards on the primary dune. Having thus killed most of the beach grass--destabilized the shoreline--by the late 80's homeowners had more than just a sea view... they were part of the view.

The story is more complex and also involved the badly-planned construction of a breakwater for the Saco harbor that had the unintended effect of pulling sand away from the up-current beaches but that's just the juicy details. In all, Camp Ellis and parts of Ferry Beach just to the north are lessons in how not to develop sustainably.

Heading back north, I stopped at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Ocean Park. This is a spectacular saltmarsh fed by a small tributary off the mighty Saco River. It's one of my favorite protected natural areas named after one of my favorite environmental defenders. Getting close for a few pics reminded my, however, of the many bouts of poison ivy I endured here. Poison ivy, the east coast treat!

I continued through Ocean Park along Route 1 through the horror that is Old Orchard Beach. No need to go into detail here about OOB other than saying that it deserves skipping on any tour of Maine. My mind was focused on the real reason for this little daytrip: LUNCH! And I had my tastebuds set for the joy of fried Maine clams from The Clambake Restaurant. Oh baby, no trip to Southern Maine is complete without a visit to this mecca of grease. The formula for success is simple.

Pull into here:


Select something from here:


Wait anxiously for your number to be called out:


Then tuck into this heart attack on a plate:


I'll need to double-dose my fish oil following this week (or schedule bypass surgery when I get home). As I was leaving The Clambake, I caught sight of the most bizarre coin game I've ever seen. It was a classic crane game. But instead of the plush toys, the prize was a living Maine lobster. The game appears to be designed to dip into the water, grab a moving target, and (if successful) drop your crustacean down a chute that delivers it to you dripping wet (and presumably angry). I was simultaneously fascinated and appalled. I wondered what someone was supposed to do if and when they grabbed one of the sad lobsters in the tank. Do you rush home to boil water or tuck it into the glove compartment?

After waddling back to the car, I made my way back to the conference to attend a meeting of the NMEA Conservation Committee. This committee reports to the larger Board of Director's on matters related to broader conservation issues relevant to the marine education community. At least this is what the mission statement says. Unfortunately, we spent a whole lot of meeting time discussing how to make meetings more environmentally conscious. There was talk of recycling, sustainable food sourcing, and other meeting specific needs. Certainly important stuff, but I was under the impression that the Conservation Committee was also charged with providing the organization with expertise on conservation issue or positions. Instead, I seemed to hear that the committee's charge was to help NMEA members feel good about attending "green" conferences. I'm hoping that perception will change.

With jet lag quickly catching-up with me, I decided to end my day with one last road trip up the coast to Freeport... home of blue-blood Mainers and the flagship store of LL Bean. While I wouldn't say I've got that New England, rumpled elegance look made popular by LL Bean (I'm more rumpled than elegant), I do appreciate a company that has made it easier and more comfortable for people to enjoy the outdoors. As a young, poor environmental educator in Maine, I also appreciated their gear recycling program. Every few months at the distribution factory, LL Bean gave away camping gear and outerwear either free or at significant savings to employees of non profits or local schools. What a great program!

Well, that's all I wrote last night (Monday). With the final session of today (Tuesday) about to start, I need to grab some coffee and run. I'll try to post about today's proceedings later at the hotel (internet willing). And hopefully by then I'll hear a squeak from Oregon. Otherwise, this is turning into all Maine all the time!

Maine: The Way Life Should Be

Note to self... Next time I need to be in Maine, fly into Portland airport not Logan International. After a 3AM airport shuttle pick-up in Oakland, 2 hours of hurry-up and wait at SFO, close to 6 hours of no sleep on the plane, I arrived in Boston only to load into a rental car for the 2 hour drive to Portland, Maine. All that to save some money. Lesson learned.

I was excited to finally cross state lines into Maine. I do love this state and it's incredible coastline. You want miles of sandy beach? They've got it! Rocky tidepools? Check! Expansive salt marsh habitat? Yup! Working fishing communities? Shrinking, but still here. And how happy was I to rediscover one of my favorite pieces of Portland public art: The Maine Lobsterman. Check out those hands! You know the old saying... Big hands, big lobsters!

Aside from some cosmetic changes to the downtown, Portland looks the same. A few more boarded-up store fronts than I remember. And way to many Starbucks now! I strolled from my hotel down to The Old Port where I used to live. Still a commercial and retail mecca, though I noticed with sadness that my beloved Java Joes on Exchange Street is gone. I popped my head into Gritty McDuffs to see if I recognized any of the regulars. It was a pretty quiet Sunday night. Jebus, the memories I was recalling of good times in Gritty's, or 3 Dollar Deweys, and then midnight hot slices at Bill's Pizza or sobering breakfasts of corned beef hash and eggs at Becky's Diner on Commercial Street.

Business starts fresh tomorrow morning for the National Marine Educators Association conference with registration, board meeting, and then committee meetings. Concurrent sessions start-up on Tuesday morning. I'll be sure to pass along the highlights. No word from Bryan in Oregon yet, but the poor boy is probably still recovering from the brutal hour and a half flight from SF to Portland, OR.

A Tale Of Two Ports

Well, it's conference season so I'm hitting the road again this week and heading for Portland, Maine to attend the National Marine Educators Association annual conference. It's been 10 years since I've set foot in Portland town, so I'm looking forward to seeing how things have changed. The conference is always fun since the marine ed crowd is a fairly close-knit group who have no qualms about mixing beer with business. My kind of meeting. I hope to stir up some excitement around International Year of the Reef 2008 while catching-up with colleagues.

Meanwhile, one of my Program Managers, Bryan Dias, will be in the other Portland of Oregon attending the Coastal Zone 2007 conference, the largest international gathering of ocean and coastal management professionals in the world. Bryan will be representing CORAL and sharing our work in supporting marine protected areas around the world. I suspect he will also be sampling some of Oregon's best coffee and microbrews as well.

So, game on! Bryan and I will be tag team blogging over the next week and engage in a little dueling Portland's. We hope to bring you news from the world of marine education, coastal zone management, and some of the best that Maine and Oregon have to offer. Enjoy!

When Rights Are Wrong

Anyone who has spent time in Hawaii's waters over the past few decades will recognize a change is occurring. First there are the statistics. For example from 1955 to 2002, the Hawaii commercial mullet catch dropped 91 percent from 104,000 pounds to 9,210 pounds. Papio and ulua catches dropped by two-thirds during the same period, from 286,488 pounds to 98,734 pounds. 'O'io, prized for fishcakes, dropped from 36,171 to 4,416 pounds, an 88 percent drop.

Then there are the everyday, anecdotal perceptions. Liz Foote, our Hawaii Field Manager, recently forwarded me this email from a disappointed Maui visitor,

We have a concern, a disappointment and a question all concerning the "Fish Preserve" called Molokini. We noted the obvious disappearance of fish in the Molokini bowl. We just returned from a trip to Maui while celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary and made the snorkeling trip out to Molokini which we had always enjoyed but NOT THIS TIME. We were very disappointed in how few fish there really were out there in comparison to the last few times we were out there (about 9 years ago was our last previous). That is our disappointment. Our concern and question is "WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE FISH?" It is very disturbing to put it mildly!

Is it the use of gillnets, the night divers, the killing of too many sexually mature fish, the lack of adequate no-fishing seasons, the lack of no-fishing sanctuaries, the muddy sediment flowing off the land or the physical damage to reefs from indiscriminate anchoring? Likely, it's all of them. Death by a thousand cuts.

And fisheries management news from this week isn't offering a band aid for these cuts. Quite the opposite, it seems as though salt is being sprinkled into the wounds. A news piece in this weeks journal Science describes the nasty confrontation looming in Hawaii between conservationists and fishers. Alan Friedlander of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sums things up succinctly: The main Hawaiian Islands' reserves, which protect only 0.3% of the coastline, are too small. If you want to rebuild fish stocks, you need to stop fishing in at least 20% of Hawaii's waters and regulate fishing in the rest, Friedlander says. Increasing the protected areas, therefore, would result in a larger fish catch.

But there is one pesky problem. Hawaii residents and visitors love to fish. Certainly this is closely linked to indigenous Hawaiian culture and traditional fishing rights. But those rights are extended to anyone. As a result, and with just a few exceptions, you can pretty much fish where you like. No permit required. To fully grasp the sometimes ridiculous nature of this, you really have to experience it in person. Take Kahalu'u Beach for example (picture to the left from Kahalu'u) along the Kailua-Kona coast of the Big Island. I was snorkeling along the near-shore reef area with Liz last year. Though overcrowded, it was lovely. Right up until someone almost tossed their gillnet right on my head. I'm not quite sure what this fellow was trying to catch since all I was seeing were yellow tangs and moorish idols. It really didn't matter to me what he was targeting. I was pissed that this alleged fishery management area was someone's private fishing pond. But there you have it: multiple resource users interpreting for themselves how the resource should be used.

Clearly, some restrictions or more no-take marine protected areas would be a good thing at this point, right? Not to special interest groups such as the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (Wespac). Wespac is the policy-making organization for the management of fisheries in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ, generally 3 to 200 miles offshore) around the Territory of American Samoa, Territory of Guam, State of Hawaii, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and US Pacific island possessions--an area of nearly 1.5 million square miles. The main task of the Council is to protect fishery resources while maintaining opportunities for domestic fishing at sustainable levels of effort and yield. But Wespac has garnered more of a reputation for ensuring fisheries profits than ensuring sustainability.

And Wespac is not afraid to stir-up indigenous Hawaiian communities when those voices serve their fisheries objectives. Case in point, last March Hawaii's House of Representatives approved a "right-to-fish" bill that would require the state to provide unattainable data, such as stock assessments throughout species' entire ranges, before any new protected area is created. The whole idea is to keep scientists busy (and quiet) chasing the chimera of "complete data" while fishers continue to empty the oceans.

Let's be honest, shoreline recreational or subsistence fishing is not what is causing the collapse of fisheries. I love to fish as well and I understand the importance of subsistence fishing in Hawaii and elsewhere. But it is those local unregulated fishing rights that are being leveraged to seemingly unscrupulous ends to satisfy greed. Should traditional rights trump the future health of our oceans and ultimately the future lives and experiences of our children? Apparently, Wespac is willing to gamble on that future for all of Hawaii.

Coral And The Goldilocks Effect

For as much as I love coral reefs, I've gotta admit that coral polyps are the prima donnas of the ocean. Most coral reefs are located between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn--not much more than 30 degrees north and south of the equator. Not too far north nor too far south, but just right. Corals are also found farther from the equator in places where warm currents flow out of the tropics, such as Florida and southern Japan. Reef building corals grow best in waters with a temperature of between 21 and 29 degrees Celsius (70 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit). It is possible for soft corals to grow in hotter and colder places, but growth rates under these conditions are very slow. Again, they like it just right.

Tropical coral species are particularly fussy about temperature. As I've described before, when sea surface temperatures start to climb more than 2-4 degrees Celsius for an extended period of time, coral polyps get stressed and can expel their algal symbionts. Once the algae (zooxanthellae) are evicted, the translucent coral polyp appears white (or bleached). If temperatures remain elevated and the coral cannot reacquire new heat-tolerant algae, the coral may die.

But bleaching can result not just when conditions are too warm, but also when conditions are too cold. Some recent news from Heron Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef describes how unusually cold weather has resulted in a winter bleaching event. Just the other day I described how the relatively rare phenomenon of sun-dried tides can cause mass coral bleaching and mortality. In a twist on that theme, if unusually low tides are coupled with chilly, windy (conditions that are just wrong for coral) a similar mass mortality can result. These images of bleaching are courtesy of Ove Hoegh-Guldberg's fantastic website Climate Shifts.

Let's See... Go Surfing Or Swim With Dolphins? How About Both?

This is an amazing image. It's a pod of about 20 bottlenose dolphins photographed surfing about 300 miles north of Perth in Western Australia. Check out the full story for more info. Makes me want to head to the beach!

We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us

A letter in the current issue of Science caught my attention today. Norman Karin with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory writes to vent his spleen over a comment in the journal's May 4 News Focus that implicates diver damage as a contributing factor in coral reef decline.

I must take exception to a comment and its implications in Richard Stone's otherwise excellent article "A world without corals?" Stone introduces the human toll on reefs by citing damage inflicted by "divers clumsily breaking off chunks of coral." It is undeniable that recreational divers will, on occasion, inadvertently injure corals. However, I have been a certified SCUBA diver since 1992 and have logged over 150 ocean dives all over the world, and in that time I have seen only sporadic instances of divers impacting corals. Formal dive training by all major certification agencies includes instruction on reef protection, and the vast majority of dive tour operators repeatedly lecture divers about avoiding contact with coral and other marine life. It is undeniable that our coral reefs are threatened by human activities, but it is unfair to imply that sport divers at all popular reefs contribute significantly to this plight. Rather than a threat, I would argue that the growth of recreational diving is a major benefit to the future of our reefs: Divers are among the most environmentally conscious individuals I have met.

As a diver since 1985 with over 500 dive hours logged on tropical reefs and now a coral reef conservationist working directly with the marine tourism sector, I have to ask: Mr. Karin, are you talking about the same dive community I know?

I'm not about to pretend that recreational use and overuse ranks up there with climate change, coastal development, or unsustainable and destructive fishing practices as the most significant global threats to coral reef health. And certainly I've had the honor to dive with stellar dive businesses around the world who are ambassadors for sustainability. But to suggest that the dive community as a whole has had some sort of collective come to jesus moment around sustainable behavior and best practices just because divers are certified by PADI, NAUI or any other agency is just uninformed.

Consider Hawaii as one example. According to The 2002 State of Coral Reef Ecosystems of the United States and Pacific Freely Associated States, marine tourism is a major factor contributing to reef decline at no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Hawaii. A seminal 2003 study found that between 28,000 and 100,000 people visited just four sites per year, with diving and snorkeling being the most popular marine recreation activity. Tourism numbers have increased steadily over the years. For example, a 1999 survey showed that tiny Honolua Bay on Maui averaged 250 tourists per day and up to 700 per day during peak season. This volume has certainly increased. Due to the shallow nature of the reefs, physical damage from trampling has become a persistent problem. Moreover, research shows that 45% of certified SCUBA divers who visit dive sites break coral colonies. Most of this damage appears to be from fin kicks.

Certainly, education is highly effective in modifying environmentally destructive tourist behavior (i.e. finning, fish-feeding, collecting, etc.) and reducing coral damage. Pre-dive/snorkel environmental briefings are the best and most effective form of interpretation and education in a boat diving environment. Another key study similarly recommends one mandatory pre-dive/snorkel briefing given by marine recreation providers to all their clients. They recommend that marine recreation providers also deliver shore-based briefings to tourists and that this could greatly reduce impact on corals at MPA sites. Despite these recommendations, my personal experience world-wide is that environmental briefings are sporadically delivered. In many instances they are delivered seconds before dropping into the water as last minute reminders which studies also show is as effective as saying nothing.

Conventional educational outreach to the marine recreation community has limitations based on simple arithmetic. Back to my original Hawaiian example, within Hawaii’s recreational dive industry alone, there are hundreds of coral reef dive destinations, over 100 dive operations, and close to 1,000 full and part-time dive employees. These totals grow significantly when factoring in all other marine recreation operations (snorkel, SNUBA, kayak, boating, nature tours, etc.) The situation becomes even more complex when one considers the disproportionately high personnel turnover rate within the marine tourism industry. As most marine recreation operations lack an infrastructure for maintaining an institutional memory of collective wisdom and lessons learned, motivation and knowledge gained from conventional outreach opportunities is lost as staff departs.

A final important consideration that Mr. Karin also forgets is the mistaken notion that education alone will result in behavioral change. Decades of social marketing have proven that there is a significant gap between what people know and what people do. Why do smokers informed of the risks of lung cancer still smoke and dieters aware of heart disease still binge eat? Successful educational outreach programs that target behavioral change must move beyond the “silver bullet” mentality and create sustained and layered opportunities for learning, reflection, evaluation, and implementation.

It should be stressed that not all recreational impacts to reef ecosystems involves coral breakage. Take a recent example I found in the blogosphere. A rather interesting exchange is playing out on the island of Saipan between a seasoned diver and a local conservationist. Seems the diver decided he fancied a couple of shells being carried on the back of two hermit crabs he discovered. The trouble was that the crabs weren't finished with the shells yet. No worries, the diver just "coaxed" the crabs out.

I actually thought about it for a couple minutes before deciding to try evicting this guy too. I don't find Tritan (sic) Trumpet shells very often, so these were very good finds for me, and they were both dead already, just inhabited by crabs who could find another home if I took this one. He put up quite a fight, but I was persistant (sic) and wasn't about to be pushed around by a crab, no matter how pretty it looked.

These are the actions of a diver who admits over 30 years of experience and considers himself to be informed?

With all this alleged awareness and enlightenment in the dive community, I must admit some confusion as to the incorporation of a focus on Recreational Use and Misuse to the Local Action Strategies to the States of Hawaii, Florida, and all US territories. If divers and other reef recreationists are informed and we conservationists are just preaching to the choir, I would imagine that MPA managers can think of more effective use of limited federal conservation funding.

Finally, Mr. Karin points to a shining example of how divers have demonstrated stewardship of a resource so valuable to them,

As proof of this view, one need only visit Bonaire, a popular dive destination and the site of some of the world's healthiest coral reefs. Bonaire instituted strong legislation, including laws enacted in 1975 that made it illegal to break or sell coral. Subsequent efforts in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund established a vast marine park that completely encompasses the island.

Here I agree with Karin. Bonaire is spectacular and a model that should be emulated and exported world-wide. But to hold up the well-funded, relatively affluent, politically stable and uncorrupt Netherlands Antilles as somehow representative of most coral reef destinations and MPA systems is just disingenuous. MPA's are our best defense against coral reef destruction. Yet most MPAs are not reaching their conservation goals due to a variety of causes. Bridging management gaps takes time, money, and local community buy-in as well as local political will. Crushing poverty and competing resource use can often derail the best conservation efforts.

Denial or special pleading to displace tourism's contribution and responsibility certainly doesn't help either.

ScienceBloggers Eat Their Young

It sort of starts here. Then goes to here. Later comes this. Then this. And now this.

And around and around it goes. After about the first seven comments for any of these "arguments" you just don't see anything original or value-additive to the dialogue. Throw in the whole "science framing" thingie and you can get a migraine. Though I must remind myself that if and when I get a hankerin' for some traffic trolling, all I need do is blatantly (or cryptically) announce my belief in a sky fairy.

But I also have to say there's a certain delicious spectator quality to the whole kerfuffle. A ScienceBlog author drops the F-bomb (faith in this case), either for or against, then sits back and lets their hounds rip it to shreds. Brilliant. But I'm hoping that we can get past blog posts where personal positions on the science-religion continuum are staked-out so that some real dialogue can happen.

Maybe it's coming from my vantage point as a queer scientist (throw that into the mix, right?) that I don't see a lot of value to people simply posting their belief either way. I mean, what would be the value to a dialogue on queer rights where the only contributions were "I'm gay." or "I'm straight, leaning towards bisexual." Other than the curiousity factor that's appeased, how does it further the process of moving rights forward?

Which sort of has me wondering if this is what's behind the brouhaha unfolding in ScienceBlogs? I dunno. It's hard to tell, but don't you imagine there has got to be a natural curiosity among the SciBlings over who believes what? Given that PZ and others have drawn their lines in the sand, there's the unspoken challenge to put up or shut up. Again, I dunno. I just hope we can get back to cephalopod commentary again soon.

Scientists Confirm Most Of Global Warming Due To Chris Mooney Being Such A Hottie

Another payday, another trip to the bookstore. And today I made a beeline for Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, Chris Mooney's latest analysis of the intersection of science and politics and his journey to understand the relationship between climate change and hurricanes. After Hurricane Katrina devastated his hometown of New Orleans, Mooney pursued leading scientists on either side of the climate argument through the 2006 hurricane season to try to explore the question of whether global warming will strengthen or otherwise change hurricanes.

I'm already half-way through the first section and it's a ripping good read thus far. But I suspected as much given what I've read on The Intersection, Mooney's blog that he co-writes with Sheril Kirshenbaum over on ScienceBlogs. And of course his bestselling The Republican War on Science was just amazing. That is, I think he's an excellent writer. I wouldn't actually know for sure since it's kind of difficult to stay focused on the narrative when I keep skipping to the back cover flap to stare at his photo. Wired magazine named Mooney one of 2005's ten "sexiest geeks." We all know smart is sexy, but damn you Mooney! Did you have to fall out of the sexy tree and hit every branch on the way down?

Mooney is currently on a reading tour to promote Storm World, and I was hoping I would get the chance to hear him in the Bay Area on this book tour. But his schedule so far seems to only bring him as close as Pasadena. So Chris if you're reading this, please note that I will personally guarantee a standing room only crowd in San Francisco for a reading. Plus we're a foodie town so I can line-up some good eats and fine local brews. Don't make me cough-up the $5001 to get you in town! And what's up with the $5001? Does that mean $5000 is a nonstarter?

Some Like It Hot

There's been a bit of a buzz in the news the past few days over a recent report from Australia. A study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville used DNA analysis to show that many coral species along the Great Barrier Reef stored several types of algae in their tissue that kicked-in in times of thermal stress to continue providing important nutrients for the coral. The study indicates that some coral species are suited to climate change and that these species have survived temperature changes in the past.

While this seems to be front page news for the mass media, coral scientists have realized for some time now that not all coral symbiosis is the same. Reef-building, or hermatypic, corals owe their success to the fact that most have symbiotic, photosynthetic dinoflagellate algae living inside their tissues (the image to the right shows round algal cells inside the coral tentacle). Dinoflagellates are generally free-swimming microscopic protists, but some have evolved this symbiotic lifestyles and make their living within the tissue of a variety of animal hosts such as corals, giant clams, and jellyfish jellies (strikethrough to appease invertephile Kevin at The Other 95%). Think of the coral as a landlord and the algae as tenants. This endosymbiotic habit isn't that difficult to fathom considering that dinoflagellates are a sister group to the Apicomplexa, a group of parasitic and disease-causing protists of which the malaria Plasmodium is most familiar.

The presence of photosynthetic symbionts within the tissues of the coral host results in high levels of primary productivity as well as rapid deposition of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) that builds up to form the rock substrate of the coral reef. Recalling the landlord-tenant metaphor, the coral provides a living space, carbon dioxide, and some fertilizer. In return, the algae pays "rent" in the form of sugars, other nutrients, and oxygen. This symbiosis allows some coral species to be up to 17% more productive in their metabolism and reef building than would be possible without the algal contribution.

These single-celled algae all belong to the single genus Symbiodinium (seen in the photomicrograph image at the top of this post). Coral polyps also use their tentacles and nematocysts (stinging cells) to feed, but Symbiodinium may actually produce most of a coral's food. The phenomenon of coral bleaching, caused by the loss of the endosymbiotic dinoflagellate, results in dramatic declines in coral cover and health of the reef. Up till about the mid 1980's, the assumption was that all symbiotic dinoflagellates belonged to a single pandemic species Symbiodinium microadriaticum.

Thanks to the growing field of coral genomics, we now know that the genus Symbiodinium is exceptionally diverse. Research over the past three decades demonstrates that different symbionts show considerable behavioral, morphological, biochemical, physiological, and genetic variation. The genus Symbiodinium is currently recognized from molecular evidence as consisting of at least seven principle clades (imaginatively referred to as Clades A-G), all of which contain multiple taxa (the phylogeny shown here depicts just some of the diversity present in Clades A-D). What is perhaps most exciting (well, exciting to us coral ecologists) is that this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the diversity in Symbiodinium has yet to be discovered. The rate of discovery of novel molecular types continues to increase and researchers such as Professor Mónica Medina of the UC Merced School of Natural Sciences is part of the new wave of coral scientists driving these new discoveries.

A byproduct of such diversity within Symbiodinium zooxanthellae is the remarkable variation in thermal tolerance across clades. While some clades cannot photosynthesize effectively in warmer sea surface temteratures, other clades thrive. The implication is that coral can "evict" poorly performing algal symbionts and selectively uptake more thermally adapted strains. How they do this and the specific cues and triggers are not clear yet, but the upshot is that coral are not beholden to a single algal species for all climatic conditions.

What makes the recent Australian researchers news to intriguing is their study shows that most common corals on the Great Barrier Reef actually harbor more than one type of algae, and that conventional genetic methods have failed to detect some types which occur in low abundance. The potential for this hidden back-up type (algae) to step in and provide nutrition to coral during heat stress is far greater than currently thought,reports research team member Jos Mieog and principal investigator Dr. Madeleine van Oppen. This flexibility discovered in our research is important in understanding the past evolutionary success of these coral species and their future survival capacity in the face of a changing climate.

A Blog Around The Bay

I had the pleasure of sharing a ferry ride and a beer with Bora Zivkovic tonight. In case you live under a rock, Bora (AKA Coturnix) pens A Blog Around The Clock over on ScienceBlogs and, at three years and running, has the distinction of authoring one of the best and most consistent science blogs out there. A Blog Around The Clock is a self-described amalgam of science, politics, personal ruminations, blogging-about-blogging, chronobiology, academia and science education, and miscellaneous stuff.

Meeting up with me, I suppose, gets filed under miscellaneous stuff.

Bora is spending a month in San Francisco getting quickly up-to-speed on his new job at the Public Library of Science (PLoS). PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. It's all about open access, baby. With a proven knack for building and nurturing online communities, Bora recently was hired by PLoS to help drive users to log into PLoS to review scientific papers. A very cool job, made even cooler considering he applied for it through a post on his blog. I wanna be Bora! If his persuasive explanation of PLoS' potential is as effective online as it was in person, he should have no problem populating the site with reviews. Ten minutes with Bora and you too will feel like you drank the PLoS Kool Aid.

Bora met me at my office, then we headed for the Alameda-Oakland Ferry down at Embarcadero. I had plans to bring Bora over to Jack London Square in Oaktown. Turns out Bora is a big Jack London fan and I think he and Prof. Steve Steve were delighted to get the chance to pose with Jack on arrival.


Before you start to cast aspersions on Prof. Steve Steve, allow me to introduce you to my own international travel partner, Mr. Buns:

Here's Mr. Buns in Belize
Mr. Buns in Fiji
And Mr. Buns in Bali
But I digress. A tiny hole-in-the-wall of a bar on the waterfront, Heinhold's First and Last Chance, was our destination. Armed with a Guiness and a Hefeweizen, we parked ourselves outside on a warm evening and chatted all over the map. There are so many who are quick to write-off bloggers and the blogging community as insular and fragmented or a cohort of oddballs. Okay, the oddball category has some truth. But my short history with blogging has most certainly uncovered a collection of people more interested in connections than isolation. Maybe I've just been lucky in the other bloggers I've reached out to (and who have reached out to me). But it's very cool that blogs can create physical as well as intellectual connections. Thanks for spending some time, Bora!

Bora and Prof. Steve Steve share a beer

Hawaii Reef Etiquette Made Easy

This is quite possibly one of the best PSAs for coral reef conservation outreach and awareness I've ever seen. It was produced a few years ago by Ziggy Livnat at For The Sea Productions and involved the support and participation of dozens of Hawaiian businesses, agencies, conservation groups, and local community supporters.

The PSA is distributed with the aid of all the partners to hotels, airlines, cruise ships, dive centers, local television stations and public libraries and targets the 7 million tourists visiting the Hawaiian Islands each year. If you've spent any time flipping through the TV while at your hotel, chances are you've seen this PSA on one of the island hospitality and information channels. For the most part, tourists to Hawaii aren't maliciously trying to damage coral or interfere in natural reef processes. They just don't know any better. This video fills an important gap. I particularly like how it doesn't beat people up while on vacation, but invites them to learn and protect.

Confidence, Certainty, Error Bars, and Modeling: My New Blog?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is under attack again, however this time it's not from special interest groups or partisan spin doctors but from a group of mainstream climate scientists. This new challenge, however, is not questioning the fact that the Earth is warming. That part is clear.

What these scientists are claiming in a newly published article in Science is that the IPCC may have invested undue confidence in their climate model. The authors suggest that future warming events could be more disastrous than the IPCC modeling suggests. Or it may be more moderate. That is the nature of uncertainty when creating models.

For its part, the IPCC modelers say they never meant to suggest they have a better handle on uncertainty than their critics do. Yet while all this represents how the scientific enterprise should work--that is, claims are tested and corroborated through peer review--I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that this will only fuel more climate change denial. Fingers will be pointed, assertions will be made that the scientific community remains divided as to the reality of global warming, and the pesky detail that no one is denying that the Earth is warming will be conveniently buried.

Which also speaks to the greater scientific illiteracy among the American public on the use and limitations of models in science. Models only approximate natural phenomenon. And because they are approximations, most models are inherently inexact because the mathematical description is imperfect and/or our understanding of a phenomenon is incomplete. The mathematical parameters used in models to represent real processes are often uncertain because these parameters are empirically determined or represent multiple processes. Additionally, the initial or starting conditions and/or the boundary conditions in a model may not be well known.

All of this is true in climate modeling, which makes the modeling process so tricky. But we all agree the house is on fire, right? So while I think it's an interesting academic exercise to calculate how fast or how hot the house will burn, shouldn't we also be focused on alerting the neighbors that there's a fire? And searching for a bucket of water or a hose might be a good idea too.

Sundried Tides: Timing Is Everything

While predictable, extreme high and low tide events are a naturally occurring disturbance in coastal marine ecosystems. In fact, tidal variation is the driving force behind most marine coastal zonation. Extreme high and low tides, or spring tides, on coral reefs have rarely been recorded as the cause of mass mortality. However, in years when extremely low tides coincide with high mid-day sun exposure--an event referred to as sundried tides--they have the potential to cause widespread damage.

A group of Australian researchers working on the Great Barrier Reef have studied and documented this effect that can silently wipe out coral reefs. Their analyses, published in the journal Marine Biology, have revealed for the first time that these highly predictable events can seriously impact the state of coral reefs at a time when they are preparing for the thermal stresses of summer as well as storing precious energy needed for spawning. During a sun-dried tide, 40-75% of the major coral taxa were either bleached or partially destroyed.

Ken Anthony and Ailsa Kerswell, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies have revealed that extreme low tides on clear sunny days can lead to widespread damage of coastal coral colonies. Dr. Anthony explains,

Really low tides, where the local sea level gets to its extreme low for the year, can occur at different times of the day. In years where this occurs during the middle of the day when the sunlight is at its most intense and the reefs are almost fully exposed, there is a real risk of severe coral stress and death in the shallow reef zone. Just like cyclones and other natural disasters, these severe ‘sun-dry tides' rarely occurred since they relied on the alignment of numerous natural extremes. However, when these factors all aligned, by a combination of sun, moon and chance weather, an extreme event occurred which could leave coral colonies bleached and devastated.

So what can be done to protect already threatened reef areas that are vulnerable to inevitable sundried tides? Not a lot. Tour operators on Australia's Great Barrier Reef may be encouraged to help shade coral from the sun when the reef is exposed at extremely low tides, Dr. Anthony says. Temporary sunshades for small parts of the reef could help coral fight the effects of a sun-dried tide. It's not such a silly idea, Anthony says. There is no real way you can prevent corals coming out of the water and the Sun shining. But tour operators could provide shade; if you can shade out light you can save the coral.

Dr Anthony hopes that their predictable nature will also lead to improved warning systems and better models for predicting stress and mortality in corals. Dr Anthony elaborated, If we better understand the timing and severity of natural stressors on reefs, we will be able to better predict the risks of human-induced stressors, and hopefully better manage for healthy reefs.

Source: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

World's Largest Cold Water Reef Explored

I was absolutely in awe watching this amazing video of the most extensive deep water reef system yet discovered. A team of UK scientists made history on the first ever submersible exploration of this spectacular ecosystem located in approximately 350 meters of water off the coast of Norway.

Bottom-water sea temperatures were recorded at minus two degrees Celsius, yet the reef lives in a plankton-rich zone that is home to an abundance of corals and other marine life that have flourished since bottom-trawl fishing was banned in the area by the Norwegian government in 2002. This footage gives a clear indication of what healthy deep water reef systems can look like. I was also impressed with how similar this extensive cold water reef system is to it's tropical, shallow-water analogues.

07.07.07

On my last day in the Capital, I had a fun surprise to find that Washington DC was added as a last minute, free Live Earth concert venue. A stage and tents were set up on the The Mall in front of the National Museum of the American Indian.

It was already almost 90 degrees by 10:30 AM when festivities were scheduled to begin. Although I needed to be at the airport in a few hours, I did the long, hot walk from Dupont Circle down Connecticut Avenue to 17th Street to the Mall. The place was already packed and DC police were scrambling with National Park officers to handle crowd control and traffic flow (apparently they found out about this concert last minute as well). Water vendors were probably the most popular attraction. The poignancy of a global concert to raise awareness of climate change in the middle of a sweltering coast-to-coast heat wave was not lost on me.

A welcoming ceremony and opening remarks were made by Tim Johnson, acting director of the museum and a member of the Mohawk nation. A big jumbo-tron type screen was set up for live links to the other Live Earth venues around the globe. After the opening, Al Gore (surprisingly un-sweaty for a big, overdressed man) took the stage to describe what he hoped to accomplish. His idea was a day to grab the attention of the planet's population for a wake-up to the reality of climate change. There was An Inconvenient Truthiness to his opening remarks as a high tech slide show was being projected behind him. Gore then charged the crowd not to wait for governments to lead, but threw down the challenge to make changes in our everyday lives to help avert the climate crisis.

Then Garth Brooks took the stage and I high-tailed it outta there!

The brainchild of Al Gore, Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent, 11 city concert series taking place on July 7, 2007, bringing together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis. The concert was certainly not without its controversy. First, concert bigwig Sir Bob Geldof (of Band Aid fame) criticized Gore's early Live earth PR calling it a wasteful effort with vague goals.

More recently, US Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) vowed to stall Gore’s plans to stage the main US concert in the Capitol. Despite all the posturing and claims of a "partisan protest disguised as a concert," it was the American Indians who rode in to save the day and welcomed Gore's concert under their already planned "Mother Earth" celebration.

Quintessential Beltway Outsider

I'm in DC this week for a meeting with other coral reef conservation and outreach/awareness folks to assist in formulating a unified domestic theme and message for the 2008 International Year of the Reef. The meeting is being hosted by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). And since this is a federally funded gathering, I'm wondering if we'll be allowed to mention any of The Three C's: climate, carbon, or caps.

Now, now... mustn't bite the hand that feeds me. But I'm hoping we can actually get to a unified agreement on messaging for the US states and territories. Getting the coral conservation community to move in the same direction can be like herding cats, which is nuts given our limited collective resources and urgency of assorted coral threats. You'd think that avoiding duplication of effort and maximizing collaboration would be the SOP. You'd think, huh?

Founding Fish

Happy Fourth of July! I'm off to eat hot dogs and not think about our scoundrel of a president. Though I'll leave you with some timely reading,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Bigger, Better, Bluer!

Head on over to blogfish for Carnival of the Blue II. A collection of some of the best ocean writing on the blogosphere. Mark's done another amazing job of collecting great ocean posts from all over our blue planet. And stay tuned for Carnival of the Blue III on August 6, right here on Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets.

We Know Who You Are And We Know What You're Doing

Fascinating chart I discovered on Sea Change Strategies blog that highlights what people are doing online across demographic groups. Very interesting (though not surprising) correlations of activity by age.

Source: Business Week, June 11, 2007