200 pilot whales stranded at Farewell Spit

Whales stranded on Farewell Spit in
January last year. Photo / Jo Richards

The New Zealand Herald | Feb 13, 2015 | John Weekes

More stranded pilot whales are expected to die as weather conditions and nightfall hamper efforts to save 174 pilot whales that ran into trouble today.

The whales were stranded on Farewell Spit at Golden Bay, near Nelson.

Andrew Lamason of the Department of Conservation (DoC) said up to 500 volunteers could be needed to help get the whales back in the water tomorrow.

Initial estimates of 30 stranded pilot whales rose today to 60, then 143, and finally 198.

Mr Lamason said of those, two dozen had died by 6.30pm and he expected that number to rise.

The Department was scaling down the rescue operation as night approached.

"We can't have people overnight in the water with whales. It's just far too dangerous," Mr Lamason said.

To have a good chance of survival, stranded whales needed overcast or rainy conditions, but Farewell Spit had experienced dry, sunny conditions today.

"It hasn't been a great day to be a stranded whale," Mr Lamason said. "This is a big stranding. It's a real challenge."

He said people had to brace themselves for the unpleasant possibility the pilot whales would have to be euthanised, but rescuers were a long way from giving up on the animals.

"We'll just keep on trying."

The high tide tomorrow evening just before dusk would be a good chance to refloat the stranded pod, he said.

He said most pilot whales in the pod, which included adults and juveniles, were probably closely related.

"It's like a hapu or a village," he said. "It's a whole mixed family group."

Mr Lamason said the geography of Golden Bay meant it was often the site of strandings.

"It's a big, shallow hook. Things come in, they get disoriented, and unfortunately we end up with a lot of dead whales."

Mr Lamason said local iwi would perform karakia on the dead pilot whales.

After that, the creatures would be tethered at mid-tide and nature would "take its course" as happened when three stranded sperm whales were towed to another part of Farewell Spit to decay away from the public in November.

Darren Grover, Project Jonah general manager, was this evening arriving at the site of the stranding.

"We'll be mobilising our supporters from the South Island and ...hopefully from the Wellington region as well."

The whales were about 5-6km east of Triangle Flat at the Spit's western end.

The cause of strandings remained a mystery.

DoC said it was plausible pilot whales' echo-location was not well-suited to shallow, gently sloping waters as they usually preferred steep areas such as continental shelf edges.

"Another theory points to pilot whales' highly sociable behaviour - when one whale loses its way and strands, its pod mates may swim to its aid," the Department said on its website.

Pilot whales are oceanic dolphins and include two species -- long-finned and short-finned.

Mr Lamason said people who wanted to help the pilot whales should arrive at Triangle Flat from 8am to 3pm tomorrow.

He said people should bring wet weather gear, sunscreen, food and water. DoC was installing portable toilets at Triangle Flat.

Supernova mystery found at the bottom of the sea

© Discovery News

SOTT | Jan 20, 2015 | Ian O'Neill

One of the least likely places you might think astronomers would learn about ancient supernovae is at the bottom of the ocean, but in new research scientists have done just that.

Through the careful analysis of ocean sediment, tiny particles that originated from deep space have settled on the seabed, locking the chemical secrets to supernova processes that would have otherwise remained a mystery.

"Small amounts of debris from these distant explosions fall on the earth as it travels through the galaxy," said lead researcher Anton Wallner, of the Australian National University.

"We've analyzed galactic dust from the last 25 million years that has settled on the ocean and found there is much less of the heavy elements such as plutonium and uranium than we expected."

Supernovae are powerful explosions triggered when massive stars reach the ends of their lives. During these powerful events, many elements are forged, including elements that are essential for life to thrive - such as iron, potassium and iodine.

However, as pointed out by an Australian National University press release, even heavier elements like lead, gold and radioactive elements like uranium and plutonium can be created. But it appears that the formation processes for the heaviest elements are at odds with current astrophysical theory.

Wallner and his team studied samples of sediment from the bottom of a stable area at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But when measuring the quantities of plutonium-244, a radioisotope that is produced by supernovae, they found something strange in their results - there was 100 time less plutonium-244 than predicted.

Plutonium-244 has a half-life of 81 million years, making it an excellent indicator of the number of supernovae that have exploded nearby in recent galactic history. "So any plutonium-244 that we find on earth must have been created in explosive events that have occurred more recently, in the last few hundred million years," said Wallner.

But the fact that there is less recent deposition of the heaviest of elements, despite the fact that we know supernovae have erupted nearby, suggests a different formation mechanism may be responsible for plutonium-244 and elements like it.

"It seems that these heaviest elements may not be formed in standard supernovae after all," concludes Wallner. "It may require rarer and more explosive events such as the merging of two neutron stars to make them."

This research has been published in Nature Communications.

Source: Discovery News

Humans Have Brought World's Oceans to Brink of 'Major Extinction Event'

"Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans
than on land, our effects on marine animals are
increasing in pace and impact," the researchers write.
(Photo: Phil's 1stPix/flickr/cc)

Common Dreams | Jan 16, 2015 | Deirdre Fulton

But 'proactive intervention' could still avert marine disaster, researchers find

Marine wildlife at all levels of the food chain has been badly damaged by human activity, says a new report that urges immediate and "meaningful rehabilitation" if we are to avert mass extinction in the world's oceans.

"We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event," Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an author of the study, told the New York Times.

The report, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that habitat loss, mismanagement of oceanic resources, climate change, and the overall "footprint of human ocean use" have resulted in a phenomenon known as "defaunation"—a decline in animal species diversity and abundance.

"Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans than on land, our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact," reads the study abstract. "Humans have caused few complete extinctions in the sea, but we are responsible for many ecological, commercial, and local extinctions. Despite our late start, humans have already powerfully changed virtually all major marine ecosystems."

"Humans have profoundly decreased the abundance of both large (e.g., whales) and small (e.g., anchovies) marine fauna," it continues. "Such declines can generate waves of ecological change that travel both up and down ma­rine food webs and can alter ocean ecosystem functioning."

Just as the Industrial Revolution during the 1800s decimated the huge tracts of forests, driving many terrestrial species to extinction, industrial use of the oceans threatens to destroy marine habitats and in turn damage the health of marine wildlife populations.

Report co-author Steve Palumbi of Stanford University listed several emerging threats to the oceans: "There are factory farms in the sea and cattle-ranch-style feed lots for tuna. Shrimp farms are eating up mangroves with an appetite akin to that of terrestrial farming, which consumed native prairies and forest. Stakes for seafloor mining claims are being pursued with gold-rush-like fervor, and 300-ton ocean mining machines and 750-foot fishing boats are now rolling off the assembly line to do this work."

Timeline (log scale) of marine and terrestrial defaunation. If left unmanaged, the authors predict that marine habitat alteration, along with climate change (colored bar: IPCC warming), will exacerbate marine defaunation. (Credit: Science)

"Human activities are negatively impacting the ocean at an ever increasing and unsustainable rate, and we must freeze the footprints of industrial activities and commercial fishing," Oceana marine scientist Amanda Keledjian told Common Dreams. "Oceana applauds these researchers for their work, because assessing the oceans from a holistic perspective is the only way to understand the scope at which we must act to reverse collapsing fisheries and continued habitat degradation."

According to the Times:

Scientific assessments of the oceans’ health are dogged by uncertainty: It’s much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land. And changes that scientists observe in particular ocean ecosystems may not reflect trends across the planet.

Dr. [Malin L.] Pinsky, Dr. McCauley and their colleagues sought a clearer picture of the oceans’ health by pulling together data from an enormous range of sources, from discoveries in the fossil record to statistics on modern container shipping, fish catches and seabed mining. While many of the findings already existed, they had never been juxtaposed in such a way.

A number of experts said the result was a remarkable synthesis, along with a nuanced and encouraging prognosis.

"I see this as a call for action to close the gap between conservation on land and in the sea," said Loren McClenachan of Colby College, who was not involved in the study.

The report authors say the effects of human activity in the ocean are still reversible: "Proactive intervention can avert a marine defaunation disaster of the magnitude observed on land."

Oceana's Keledjian echoed that appeal. "This study reminds us that it is critical to do everything we can to protect vulnerable species and the ocean ecosystems on which they depend," she said. "While much remains unknown about the state of the oceans, we cannot wait to act until we know with 100 percent certainty that extinctions and devastation are upon us, because that will already be far too late.

Comment: The emphasis on humans leaves out the fact that humans are controlled by corporations and military interests, and these powers are the primary problem, not individuals.

Manatees moving out of Florida waters west along Gulf coast

© AP/ Wilfredo Lee
In this May 15, 2014 photo. a manatee sticks its head
out of the water at Miami Seaquarium in Miami. As
manatees recover in Florida, their U.S. home base,
more and more seem to be showing up
farther west along the Gulf of Mexico.

SOTT | Jan 11, 2015 | Janet McConnaughey

As manatees recover in Florida, their U.S. home base, more and more seem to be showing up farther west along the Gulf of Mexico.

A total of seven stranded manatees had been reported along the Alabama coast before 2007, when a network to report strandings and sightings was created. Since then, "we've responded to dozens" of strandings, said Ruth Carmichael, head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab's Manatee Sighting Network for Alabama and Mississippi.

"I think things are changing, in the manatee population and in the environment," she said Tuesday. She said scientists know there are more of the big, gentle marine mammals than there used to be. "But habitat is stable or declining. Animals are being forced to do something. The natural thing would be to spread out."

In hope of gathering enough data to learn whether her impression is accurate, she's now working with people in Louisiana and Texas to expand the network - "as far as I know, the only manatee sighting network in the country" - to those states.

"We see more animals coming here, staying longer, going farther west. We want to be prepared," Carmichael said.

Read more..

Ocean Snow in Florida Sets Record

News4Jax | Jan 9, 2015 | Blake Mathews

© New4Jax

 [...] According to meteorologist Jason Hess, only three snowfalls have actually accumulated officially in Jacksonville in 103 years (1956, 1986 and 1989) with the greatest 24 hour accumulation of 1.9 inches in February 1899 -- before records officially began.

Thursday's snowfall was a rare phenomenon known as 'ocean effect snow.' It's the same idea as lake-effect snow except it occurs over the ocean.  The idea here is that the water is warmer than the land this time of year allowing moisture to rise and condense to form clouds and rain or snow.

When our winds shifted to the northeast, the moisture began moving towards land. Even though the surface temperatures were above freezing near the surface, the air just above the boundary layer (basically the first few hundred feet above the surface) was below freezing allowing the snowflakes to make it to the ground before melting. Voila! Snow.

It nearly didn't happen though. A powerful arctic front pushed through Florida late Wednesday powered by a mega-high pressure system over the mid west. That high drove in a lot of dry air, evidence by our dew points (measure of moisture in the air) into the teens meaning any flakes would have evaporated before reaching the ground. Through the process of evaporative cooling (wet-bulbing), our atmosphere cooled and moistened just enough to allow for the flakes to hit the ground.

Snow was last observed officially, a trace, in Jacksonville the day after Christmas in 2010 with measurable snowfall in southeast Georgia.

Read more..

Full scale of plastic pollution in the world's oceans revealed for first time

SOTT | Dec 10, 2014 | Oliver Milman

Over five trillion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans says most comprehensive study to date on plastic pollution around the world

More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world's oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain, new research has found.

Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand suggests a minimum of 5.25tn plastic particles in the oceans, most of them "micro plastics" measuring less than 5mm.

The volume of plastic pieces, largely deriving from products such as food and drink packaging and clothing, was calculated from data taken from 24 expeditions over a six-year period to 2013. The research, published in the journal PLOS One, is the first study to look at plastics of all sizes in the world's oceans.

Large pieces of plastic can strangle animals such as seals, while smaller pieces are ingested by fish and then fed up the food chain, all the way to humans.

This is problematic due to the chemicals contained within plastics, as well as the pollutants that plastic attract once they are in the marine environment.

"We saw turtles that ate plastic bags and fish that ingested fishing lines," said Julia Reisser, a researcher based at the University of Western Australia. "But there are also chemical impacts. When plastic gets into the water it acts like a magnet for oily pollutants.

"Bigger fish eat the little fish and then they end up on our plates. It's hard to tell how much pollution is being ingested but certainly plastics are providing some of it."

© Bryce Groark/Alamy
Plastic pieces in the ocean damage wildlife
and enter the food chain when ingested by fish.

The researchers collected small plastic fragments in nets, while larger pieces were observed from boats. The northern and southern sections of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans were surveyed, as well as the Indian ocean, the coast of Australia and the Bay of Bengal.

The vast amount of plastic, weighing 268,940 tonnes, includes everything from plastic bags to fishing gear debris.

While spread out around the globe, much of this rubbish accumulates in five large ocean gyres, which are circular currents that churn up plastics in a set area. Each of the major oceans have plastic-filled gyres, including the well-known 'great Pacific garbage patch' that covers an area roughly equivalent to Texas.

Reisser said traversing the large rubbish-strewn gyres in a boat was like sailing through "plastic soup."

"You put a net through it for half an hour and there's more plastic than marine life there," she said. "It's hard to visualise the sheer amount, but the weight of it is more than the entire biomass of humans. It's quite an alarming problem that's likely to get worse."

The research found that the gyres themselves are likely to contribute to the problem, acting as "shredders" to the plastic before dispersing it.

"Our findings show that the garbage patches in the middle of the five subtropical gyres are not the final resting places for the world's floating plastic trash," said Marcus Eriksen, another of the report's co-authors. "The endgame for micro-plastic is interactions with entire ocean ecosystems."

The research, the first of its kind to pull together data on floating plastic from around the world, will be used to chart future trends in the amount of debris in the oceans.

But researchers predict the volume will increase due to rising production of throwaway plastic, with only 5% of the world's plastic currently recycled.

"Lots of things are used once and then not recycled," Reisser said. "We need to improve our use of plastic and also monitor plastics in the oceans so we get a better understanding of the issue.

"I'm optimistic but we need to get policy makers to understand the problem. Some are doing that - Germany has changed the policy so that manufacturers are responsible for the waste they produce. If we put more responsibility on to the producer then that would be part of the solution."

Source: The Guardian

Finding Nemo monster is real: Rare black seadevil caught on video

RT | Nov 24, 2014

Still from YouTube video/MBARI

A nightmare-inducing sea creature made famous in ‘Finding Nemo’ was caught on video in the depths of the ocean for the first time. Scientists believe global warming is affecting its environment, bringing the rare anglerfish species to shallower waters.

As shown in Pixar’s famous fish film, anglers get their name from the built-in fishing rod attached to their foreheads. The black seadevil (scientific name Melanocetus) lives in the pitch-black depths of Monterey Canyon off California’s coast, and uses its luminescent orb to attract prey.

“In the darkness of deep water, they flash the light to attract prey and draw them near the angler's mouth. When a fish or a squid swims up, it is quickly inhaled by the angler's huge mouth and trapped by its long, sharp teeth,” senior scientist Bruce Robison said in a video of the seadevil released by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).

MBARI scientists spotted the secretive species 2,000 feet (600m) below Monterey Bay’s surface, but it also lives in the “freezing, crushing water four times deeper,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.


The footage captured at this depth by MBARI’s remotely operated vehicle, ROV Doc Ricketts, is believed to be the first video ever made of this species alive and at such a depth, the institute said in the video description. Fewer than half a dozen encounters with any type of deep-sea anglerfish have ever been recorded by deep-diving research vehicles, MBARI noted in a statement.

The ROV located the fish during a “midwater transect” last Monday, institute spokeswoman Kim Fulton-Bennett told CNN. "This means we 'fly' the robot through the water at a series of different depths (10 minutes at each depth), and count all the different types of animals we see."

The female seadevil is recognizable from ‘Finding Nemo,’ where it snuck up on fish Dory and Marlin as they search for Nemo. As scary as the anglerfish might be, it is only 9 cm (3.5 in) long. The male is even smaller, “like a tiny little baby,” a video called ‘True Facts about the Angler Fish’ says.

“He attaches himself to the female by biting her, and then digesting part of his face so he fuses with her flesh,” the description continues. “He then atrophies, losing his digestive organs, brain, heart and eyes, and winds up nothing more than a pair of gonads, which release sperm when needed.”


Finding a female ‒ no matter how ugly she may appear‒ is imperative for the male.

"If they don't find a female, they drown," Ted Pietsch, professor at the University of Washington and expert on the deep-sea anglerfish, told the Mercury News. "They're not even properly equipped to eat."

Females also collect males throughout their lifetimes. Robison told KSBW that he has seen up to 11 males attached to a single female.

Not much else is known about the elusive seadevil, however. "A video would tell us a lot about how it moves, swims, orients to gravity," Pietsch noted.

Robison and his international team of researchers didn’t just capture video of the angler; it captured the black seadevil to study. Unfortunately, they do not know how long it will survive.



The team is studying the possible impacts of rising water temperatures on deep-sea animals. Robison told KSBW the fish discovery was thanks to the mid-water rest barometer, the only one of its kind.

"What we're trying to do experimentally with instruments that we take down into the ocean is to learn what the range of capabilities of these animals are," he said. "Now that the temperature is rising, many species may not have the ability to adjust to the rising temperatures."

The temperature increase, he told the Mercury News, is "probably because of global warming. If the temperature continues to rise and the amount of oxygen continues to decrease, things are going to change."

The problem the black seadevil and other deep-sea creatures face from global warming is that oxygen ‒ which is already scarce at those depths ‒ will decrease even more.

"Animals that live in the oxygen minim zones are adapted to low oxygen, but they might be close to their limit," Brad Seibel, an assistant professor of marine biology at the University of Rhode Island, told the Mercury News. That could lead to stunted development, and possibly force the animals to head to shallower waters.

And animals near the surface would have to swim to colder waters. These mass migrations would alter ecosystems as food and predators might not shift in the same way, Seibel said.
 

Weather Warning: Historic Global Temperature Drop Predicted

© unknown

Space and Science | Nov 20, 2014

Press Release 4-2014

The Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) announces today an important set of climate change predictions dealing with the coming cold climate epoch that will dominate global temperatures for the next thirty years.

According to analysis of the most reliable solar activity trends and climate models based on the Relational Cycle Theory (RC Theory), the SSRC concludes the following:

1.      The Earth is about to begin a steep drop in global temperatures off its present global temperature plateau. This plateau has been caused by the absence of growth in global temperatures for 18 years, the start of global cooling in the atmosphere and the oceans, and the end of a short period of moderate solar heating from an unusually active secondary peak in solar cycle #24.

2.      Average global atmospheric and oceanic temperatures will drop significantly beginning between 2015 and 2016 and will continue with only temporary reversals until they stabilize during a long cold temperature base lasting most of the 2030's and 2040's. The bottom of the next global cold climate caused by a "solar hibernation" (a pronounced reduction in warming energy coming from the Sun) is expected to be reached by the year 2031.

3.      The predicted temperature decline will continue for the next fifteen years and will likely be the steepest ever recorded in human history, discounting past short-duration volcanic events.

4.      Global average temperatures during the 2030's will reach a level of at least 1.5° C lower than the peak temperature year of the past 100 years established in 1998. The temperatures during the 2030's will correspond roughly to that observed from 1793 to 1830, shortly after the founding of the United States of America. This average lower global temperature of 1.5° C on average, translates to declines in temperatures that will be devastating for crop growing regions in the mid latitudes of the planet.

(Download the complete Press Release with comments from other experts on the link below)

Click Here to Download a PDF File of this Press Release

Disturbing! The Gulf Stream now stalling in two broken areas

SOTT | Nov 20, 2014 | Gary Walton

Are we witnessing the Gulf Stream closing down? Is the cold November in the US just a precursor of what is to come?

A massive snowstorm has wreaked havoc in the north-eastern US and left seven people dead in upstate New York. After sweeping across the Great Lakes, the storm dumped 5ft (1.5m) of snow in the Buffalo area, with more forecast. The storm caused seven deaths there - one in a car crash, one trapped in a car and five from heart attacks.

Freezing temperatures were recorded across all 50 US states, including Florida and Hawaii, and there were more deaths elsewhere in the country.

New data from The Earth Wind Map and The NOAA Data Satellite both agree and are now showing the Gulf Stream is colder than average in not one area but two!

The huge section in the North Atlantic is still showing colder than average on both website's (see links above) but more alarming they are also both showing the Gulf itself is now colder than average and this was not the case last month.

Read more..

Hidden Undersea Mountains Uncovered with Satellites (Photos)

Live Science | Oct 2, 2014

Scientists have created some of the most vivid maps yet of the deepest and most mysterious spots beneath the ocean. Their effort, detailed in the Oct. 3, 2014, issue of the journal Science, has uncovered thousands of undersea mountains called seamounts that rise up from the seafloor. To create the seafloor map, which covers the world's oceans, the scientists relied on measurements taken from high-resolution altimeters onboard the European Space Agency's (ESA) CryoSat-2 satellite and NASA's Jason-1 satellite, along with information resulting from new data-processing methods. The results also shed light on seafloor tectonics, or the movements of massive oceanic plates that can shape the rifts, ridges and trenches decorating the ocean bottom. Here's a look at what the researchers uncovered.

The satellite altimeters worked by bouncing a radar signal or laser off the surface of the ocean being targeted and measuring how long it took the signal to return. That time can reveal the dips and peaks, or topography, of the ocean surface to within centimeters, scientists say. The sea-surface topography roughly mirrors changes in Earth's gravity. For instance, if an underwater volcano or mountain were hidden along the seafloor, the structure would push up against the sea surface and cause it to bulge. A trench, on the other hand, would cause the surface to sag.

Read more..

Monster mountain discovered lurking in depths of Pacific Ocean

RT | Sep 7, 2014

Credit: University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center.

Scientists have uncovered a giant mountain in the Pacific Ocean, with the summit of the seamount rising 1,100 meters from the 5,100-meter-deep ocean floor. The discovery was made around 2,600 kilometers south of Hawaii.

It was uncovered in mid-August by a research team, which was led by NOAA and University of New Hampshire scientist, James Gardner. The team was aiming to try and map the outer limits of the US continental shelf.

Gardner was surveying one of least known parts of the central Pacific Ocean, which was around 300 kilometers south east of uninhabited Jarvis Island. However, the seamount, which has yet to be named, appeared “out of the blue.”

Three-dimensional view of the southwest side of the seamount with 23-degree slopes (University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center)

“These seamounts are very common, but we don’t know about them because most of the places that we go out and map have never been mapped before,” the researcher said in a press release on September 2.

Since only low-resolution satellite data exists for most of the Earth’s seafloor, many seamounts of this size do not show up on satellite. However, advanced multibeam echosounder missions like this one can resolve them.

“Satellites just can’t see these features and we can,” Gardner added.

For now it isn’t known whether the seamount could have any human use. It is too deep (its summit lies nearly 4,000 meters beneath the surface of the ocean) to be a navigation hazard or to provide rich fisheries.

“It’s probably 100 million years old,” Gardner says, “and it might have something in it we may be interested in 100 years from now.”

Seamounts are formed due to volcanic activity and are normally found near plate boundaries. However, they can also be located in the middle of plates where there are particular hot spot areas.

While Mount Everest may hold the record for the highest elevation on land, the tallest mountain in the world is actually a seamount. Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano, is 10,200 meters tall when measured from base to peak; Everest is 8,850 meters. Only 4,000 meters of Mauna Kea is above sea level.

Credit: University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center.

Dead Zones: Devil in the Deep Blue Sea

NASA's Terra satellite captured this natural-color image
of phytoplankton blooms on May 4, 2013, in
France's Bay of Biscay.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Live Science | Aug 9, 2014 | Brian Palmer

Brian Palmer covers daily environmental news for OnEarth. His science writing has appeared in Slate, The Washington Post, the New York Times, and many other publications. This article first appeared in the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) publication OnEarth. Palmer contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

A stretch of the Gulf of Mexico spanning more than 5,000 square miles along the Louisiana coast is nearly devoid of marine life this summer, according to a study from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium released this week. Caused largely by nutrient runoff from farm fertilizer, this oxygen-deprived "dead zone" is approximately the size of Connecticut. Although slightly smaller than last summer's edition, the Gulf dead zone is still touted by some as the largest in the United States and costs $82 million annually in diminished tourism and fishing yield.

Which makes you wonder…

How many other dead zones are out there?

There are probably around 200 dead zones in U.S. waters, alone. After reviewing the academic literature on "hypoxic zones" in 2012, Robert Diaz, professor emeritus at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary, identified 166 reports of dead zones in the country. Coastal waters contain the vast majority, though some exist in inland waterways. A handful of the 166 dead zones have since bounced back through improved management of sewage and agricultural runoff, but as fertilizer use and factory farming increase, the United States is creating dead zones faster than nature can recover.

There are more than 400 known dead zones worldwide, covering about 1 percent of the area along the continental shelves. That number is almost certainly a vast undercount, however, since researchers have yet to adequately study large parts of Africa, South America and Asia. Diaz estimates that a more accurate count is 1,000-plus dead zones, globally.
 
What causes dead zones?

Agricultural practices are the biggest culprit for dead zones in the United States and Europe. Rains wash excess fertilizer from farms into interior waterways, which eventually empty into the ocean. At the mouths of rivers, such as the Mississippi, the glut of phosphorous and nitrogen intended for human crops instead feeds marine phytoplankton. A phytoplanktonic surge leads to a boom in bacteria, which feed on the plankton and consume oxygen as part of their respiration. That leaves very little dissolved oxygen in the subsurface waters. Without oxygen, most marine life cannot survive. [Mississippi Floods May Cause Record-Breaking Dead Zone in Gulf]

Sewage causes the majority of dead zones in Africa and South America. That's a good thing, in a way, because engineers have been working for hundreds of years on sewage management solutions. In the early 19th century, London built a sewer system to divert waste from newfangled flush toilets into the River Thames. With this influx of nutrients — one creature's sewage is another's sustenance — bacterial populations multiplied and depleted the river's oxygen. The circumstances chased off aquatic life and enveloped the city in a horrific stench, culminating in the Great Stink of 1858. Sewage treatment and managed releases remedied the situation back then, and similar infrastructure investments could likely alleviate the excrement-fueled dead zones of the modern world.

Airborne nitrogen also contributes to the world's dead zones. When cars, trucks and power plants burn fossil fuels, they emit nitrogen-laden particulates into the air. These particulates eventually settle into waterways and head for the sea. Nitrification is a special problem in Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake Bay, which have absorbed large amounts of nitrogen from coal-burning power plants in the Midwest.
 
Do I live near a dead zone?

The largest U.S. dead zones are in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Oregon. But, everyone in the eastern and southeastern United States lives close to a dead zone of some size.

There are two reasons for the density of dead zones along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. First, look at a heat map of U.S. population density. There is an astonishing concentration of people, as well as animals and farms to feed them, in the East.

Second, there simply aren't that many rivers draining into the Pacific Ocean. With fewer rivers to carry farm runoff to the sea, fewer dead zones form.

The eastern portion of Long Island Sound has suffered dead zones nearly every year for the last two decades. Even halfway across the Sound — more than 50 miles from the most densely populated parts of New York City — the waters have been hypoxic in at least 10 of the last 20 summers.

The Chesapeake Bay hosts several dead zones, each from the drainage of a different river. According to Diaz, agricultural runoff and sewage account for about three-quarters of the problem. The other quarter is the result of airborne nitrogen.

You needn't live near a coast to have a dead zone. Lake Erie is likely in for a serious case of hypoxia this summer. The cyanobacteria that recently contaminated Toledo's drinking water will soon die and sink to the bottom, where other bacteria will feast on their remains and consume large quantities of the lake's dissolved oxygen.
 
Are humans solely responsible for dead zones?

No, but we almost always play a role. Natural processes, such as the churning of ocean waters, can form dead zones on their own. The massive dead zone born in 2002 near the coast of Oregon — which rivals the Gulf of Mexico dead zone in area — is the result of the upwelling of nutrients that fed an algal bloom. As the algae died and settled, they created a hypoxic area. Not all scientists think the dead zone was entirely natural, though — many believe changes in wind circulation related to global warming played a part.
 
Can dead zones be brought back to life?

Absolutely. The Black Sea once hosted one of the largest hypoxic zones in the world, stretching 15,000 square miles. When agricultural subsidies from the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s, fertilizer runoff dropped by more than 50 percent. The waterways took three years to recover, and international support for runoff management has helped keep the Black Sea alive and well ever since.

There's no reason the United States can't adopt those practices, too — we simply need to implement the science that we already have. Agricultural researchers have made countless recommendations to minimize farm runoff, but the advice hasn't been heeded. Other property owners can help by taking it easy on the fertilizer and resisting the urge to install impermeable surfaces like concrete. And we already have plenty of other reasons to retire coal-fired power plants — dead zones are just one more. After all, it needn't take the fall of an empire to improve a nation's coastal areas.
 
This article is adapted from one that appeared in the NRDC publication OnEarth. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

‘Horrific’: Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Now the Size of Connecticut

Natural Society | Aug 8, 2014 | Christina Sarich

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is mostly to blame for the dead zone’s growing size in the Gulf. Scientists now say that the dead zone is the size of Connecticut – a startling 5,052 square miles. The dead zone started forming, though, in our own backyards.

A joint NOAA-EPA statement announced that scientists supported by the agencies have mapped the oxygen-poor dead zone between July 27 and August 2, 2014. This is within the predicted area that was forecast of between 4,633 and 5,708 square miles based on NOAA models.

How do we contribute to the dead zone? Phosphorous and nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals that we use to encourage plant growth wash into rivers and streams. Streams and rivers drain into the Mississippi River, and then flow into the Gulf of Mexico. The freshwater of the Mississippi then floats on top of the sea-water, keeping oxygen from the atmosphere from getting into the deeper sea waters.

Add to this the fact that BP never cleaned up their mess from 2010, even though both the company and the Feds were applauded for their ‘quick response.’ The oxygen deprivation caused by the spill is vast, with the Gulf’s coral community suffering especially.

“This study very clearly shows that multiple coral communities, up to 13.7 miles from the spill site and at depths over 5,905 feet, were impacted by the spill,” said Charles Fisher, co-author of the study and professor of biology at Penn State. “One of the keys to coral’s usefulness as an indicator species is that the coral skeleton retains evidence of damage long after the oil that originally caused the damage is gone.”

The ‘footprint’ of the 2010 oil spill involving the oil giant BP, TransOcean, which operated the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, and Halliburton, is likely much worse than anyone guessed. Of course BP wants to downplay the bad press, saying that, “PSU researchers ‘prematurely linked’ the oil found on the coral reefs to the 2010 oil spill, when it could have come from other sources including underwater landslides or natural oil and gas seeps.”

Solar and wind energy accompanied by organic food, anyone?

Why Millions of 'Sailing' Creatures Are Invading West Coast Beaches

The tiny sea creatures, called "by-the-wind sailors," washed
ashore in Humboldt, California (above) and other
beaches along the West Coast.
Credit: M. Sid Kelly, YouTube screenshot

Live Science | Aug 4, 2014 | Tanya Lewis

An invasion is afoot along beaches from Oregon to California: Millions of glassy purple, jellyfish-like sea creatures that look like sailboats have been washing ashore.

Known as "by-the-wind sailors," they typically live in the open ocean, but when warm water and storms draw them near shore, the wind blows them onto beaches, where they die in stinking piles.

These creatures, whose scientific name is Velella velella, aren't actually jellyfish, but hydrozoans, related to the Portuguese man-of-war. Yet unlike man-of-war, they don't sting humans, though authorities don't recommend touching your face or eyes after handling them.

Each little sailboat, measuring about 2.75 inches (7 centimeters) long, is in fact a colony of hundreds of smaller organisms, each with a specialized function such as feeding or reproduction, researchers say. [See Amazing Photos of Jellyfish Swarms]

"They sit at the surface of the ocean and have little sails," and their movement depends on which way the wind is blowing, said Richard Brodeur, a fishery biologist at NOAA Fisheries' Newport, Oregon, research station.

Most of the time off the coast of Oregon and California, the winds are blowing toward the South, into the open ocean, Peterson said. But when big storms sweep out of the southwest — like one that hit California two weeks ago — it blows these living flotillas onto the beaches, he said. There, they usually die, giving off a bad smell as they rot, he added.

Tons of the nautical creatures can be found at sea, but they don't always come ashore, Brodeur told Live Science. But recently, huge numbers of them have been washing up on land.

"This happens every few years, where they get blown onto the beaches," said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer also stationed at NOAA Fisheries' Newport lab. In 2009 or 2010, the beach had piles of the creatures 2-feet to 3-feet (60 to 90 cm) thick, and "it stunk like heaven," Peterson told Live Science.

The animals can be found all over the world, but they mostly live in tropical or subtropical waters, Peterson said. They like warm water, which has recently been pooling off the Oregon and California coasts, he said. When you get warm water combined with storms, that's when the creatures blow ashore.

Peterson said these beach invasions don't happen every year, but there's nothing unusual about the one this year.

Editor's Note: If you have an amazing marine animal photo you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Jeanna Bryner at LSphotos@livescience.com.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Why are massive numbers of sea creatures dying along the west coast right now?

End of the American Dream | Jul 30, 2014 | Michael Snyder

Never before have we seen so much death along the west coast of North America.  Massive numbers of sea stars, bluefin tuna, sardines, anchovies, herring, oysters, salmon, marine mammals and marine birds are dying, and experts are puzzled.  We are being told that we could even see “local extinctions” of some of these sea creatures.  So are all of these deaths related?  If so, what in the world could be causing this to happen?  What has changed so dramatically that it would cause massive numbers of sea creatures to die along the west coast?

The following are 15 examples of this phenomenon.  Most scientists do not believe that these incidents are related.  But when you put them all together, it paints quite a disturbing picture…

#1 A “mystery plague” is turning sea stars all along the west coast of the United States and Canada into piles of goo…

Sea stars, commonly referred to as starfish, have been dying off in alarming numbers along the entire West Coast, from Baja, Mexico, to Alaska. According to reports from the Seattle Aquarium, some parts of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands have seen population declines of up to 80 percent.

On the Oregon coast, according to CoastWatch Volunteer Coordinator Fawn Custer, “Last December, we had less than 1 percent of sea star wasting. By May 1, more than 5 percent of sea stars were affected. Now, I would say, in some areas, it is up to 90 percent.”

A marine epidemiologist at Cornell University says that this is “the largest mortality event for marine diseases we’ve seen“.

#2 The population of bluefin tuna in the Pacific Ocean has declined by 95 percent.  Mexico has already banned fishing for bluefin tuna for the rest of the year, and the U.S. government is considering doing the same thing.

#3 Sardine, anchovy and herring populations have dropped dramatically along the west coast in recent years…

Pacific sardine populations have shown an alarming decline in recent years, and some evidence suggests anchovy and herring populations may be dropping as well.

The declines could push fishermen toward other currently unmanaged “forage fish,” such as saury, smelt and sand lance, stealing a critical food source relied on by salmon and other economically important predators.

In response, the Pacific Fishery Management Council is considering an ecosystem-based management approach that recognizes the fundamental role of forage fish in the Pacific marine food web. Tiny, but abundant, these small schooling fish feed on plankton and, in turn, fill the bellies of Oregon’s iconic marine species, including salmon, sharks, whales, sea lions and sea birds.

#4 “Record numbers of distressed sea lions have washed ashore in California” for the second year in a row.  One news report described these distressed sea lions as “malnourished and dehydrated, too weak to find food on their own“.

#5 Marine birds are “disappearing” in the Pacific northwest…

From white-winged scoters and surf scoters to long-tailed ducks, murres, loons and some seagulls, the number of everyday marine birds here has plummeted dramatically in recent decades.

Scoters are down more than 75 percent from what they were in the late 1970s. Murres have dropped even more. Western grebes have mostly vanished, falling from several hundred thousand birds to about 20,000.

#6 Those that work in the seafood industry on the west coast are noticing some very “unusual” mutations.  For example, a red king crab that was recently caught in Alaska was colored bright blue.

#7 Pelicans along the California coastline are “refusing to mate“.  This is being blamed on a lack of fish for the pelicans to eat.  As a result, we are seeing less than one percent of the usual number of baby pelicans.

#8 The oyster population in the Pacific is falling so fast that it is being called “the great American oyster collapse“.

#9 The population of sockeye salmon along the coast of Alaska is at a “historic low“.

#10 Something is causing herring off the coast of British Columbia to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.

#11 Scientists have discovered very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.

#12 Back in May, more than six tons of anchovies died in Marina Del Ray over a single weekend.

#13 Just a few days ago, thousands of dead fish were found on Capitola Beach.  Authorities are trying to figure out what caused this.

#14 Earlier this month, thousands of dead fish were found on Manresa Beach.

#15 According to a study conducted by researchers at Oregon State University, radiation levels in tuna caught off the coast of Oregon approximately tripled in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Could it be possible that at least some of these deaths are related to what has been happening at Fukushima?

We do know that fish caught just off the shore from Fukushima have been tested to have radioactive cesium that is up to 124 times above the level that is considered to be safe.

And we also know that a study conducted at the University of South Wales concluded that the main radioactive plume of water from Fukushima would reach our shores at some point during 2014.

Is it so unreasonable to think that the greatest nuclear disaster in human history could have something to do with the death of all of these sea creatures?

Just consider what one very experienced Australian boat captain discovered when he crossed the Pacific last year.  According to him, it felt as though “the ocean itself was dead“…

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.

“After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead,” Macfadyen said.

“We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

“I’ve done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I’m used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen.”

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

“Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it’s still out there, everywhere you look.”

What do you think?

Is Fukushima to blame, or do you think that something else is causing massive numbers of sea creatures to die?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

10 MINUTES TO REMEMBER (Planet Under Pressure)

Last Messages | Jul 23, 2014

• Ocean health depends more on whales than we thought
• Team of Ecologists Estimate That We Could See Salt-Water Fish Extinction In Just Over 30 Years
• A Nuclear Waste Dump on the Shore of the Great Lakes?
• The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: We Are Literally Filling Up The Pacific Ocean With Plastic
• The largest disease outbreak that we know of ever in the oceans” now hitting West Coast — Potential for “global extinction
• Report: World's Oceans on Brink of Collapse

Three Million Underwater Volcanoes Can’t be Wrong

Underwater eruption

Ice Age Now | Jul 17, 2014

“This paper totally blows the man-made CO2 hype out of the water and underscores your own predictions of the amount if underwater volcanic activity,” says analytical chemist Hans Schreuder.

---

Most estimates of volcanogenic carbon dioxide emission are woefully low, says consulting geologist Timothy Casey.

An enormous and unmeasured amount of carbon dioxide degases from volcanoes, mostly submarine.

Lava contains a surprising amount of carbon dioxide, says Casey in his new paper, “Volcanic Carbon Dioxide.”  (Principia Scientific International, 16 June 2014). In fact, CO2 is the second most abundantly emitted volcanic gas next to steam.

Carbon dioxide emissions from volcanoes – especially from underwater volcanoes – dwarf anthropogenic contributions (man-made) sources, says Casey. Unfortunately, some researchers dismiss not only mid-oceanic-ridge emissions, but all other forms of submarine volcanism altogether, which is a major oversight.

According to one study, Pacific mid-plate seamounts number between 22,000 and 55,000, of which 2,000 are active volcanoes, says Casey. One researcher even dismisses those few, justifying the omission by claiming that mid oceanic ridges discharge less CO2 than is consumed by hydrothermal carbonate systems.

Submarine lakes of liquid carbon dioxide

In point of fact, says Casey, carbon dioxide escapes these hydrothermal vent systems in such quantities that it sometimes accumulates in submarine lakes of liquid carbon dioxide. There is nothing to prevent that superheated carbon dioxide from dissolving into the seawater or otherwise making its way to the surface.

Since seawater in the vicinity of hydrothermal vent systems is saturated with carbon dioxide, and since seawater elsewhere is not saturated with CO2, it stands to reason that this saturation came from the hydrothermal vent system, Casey argues. If the vent system consumed more carbon dioxide than it emitted, the seawater in the vicinity of hydrothermal vent systems would be CO2 depleted.

Because the oceans occupy twice the surface area of land, it would be easy to believe that one the oceans would contain twice the number of volcanoes as exist on land. But the number of submarine volcanoes is far, far higher than that.

3,477,403 submarine volcanoes exist worldwide

As Casey points out, after surveying 201,055 submarine volcanoes, Hillier & Watts estimated that a total of 3,477,403 submarine volcanoes exist worldwide, of which, Casey estimates, 139,096 are active.

Casey’s conclusion? Three Million Volcanoes Can’t be Wrong.

---

I’m including the four references that I think are most relevant.

Hillier, J. K., & Watts, A. B., 2007, “Global distribution of seamounts from ship- track bathymetry data”, Geophysical. Research. Letters, Vol. 34, L13304, doi:10.1029/2007GL029874

Plimer, I. R., 2001, a short history of planet earth, 250 pp., ISBN13: 978-0-7333-1004- 0

Plimer, I. R., 2009, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science, 503 pp., ISBN13: 978-1-9214-2114-3

Wishart, I., 2009, Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth about Global Warming, ISBN13: 978-0-9582-4014-7

See entire paper:
http://www.principia-scientific.org/volcanic-carbon-dioxide.html

Thanks to Hans Schreuder for this link

“To those of us who can see through the official mist, the CO2 issue is nothing more than a political ruse, eagerly underwritten by academics who have never thought for themselves and only regurgitate what was written in their textbooks,” says Hans. “No critical thought, no acceptance that the old “masters” might have been wrong, such as Kirchoff, Arrhenius et al.”

---

Note:  In an attempt to make it readable for the layman, I’ve taken great liberties with Casey’s paper, simplifying, simplifying, simplifying. If you think I went too far, you’re welcome to point out your disagreements in the comments section.

I think the original paper – 20 pages long, quite technical, with more than 60 entries in the bibliography – would have made the average reader’s eyes cross very quickly.

Team of Ecologists Estimate That We Could See Salt-Water Fish Extinction In Just Over 30 Years

Waking Times | Jul 8, 2014 | Marco Torres

After analyzing several different kinds of data relating to biodiversity, researchers have stated that overfishing, pollution, and habitat loss will be responsible for a loss of most ocean species by 2048.

That’s when the world’s oceans will be empty of most fish, predicted an international team of ecologists and economists.

The study by Boris Worm, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, — with colleagues in the U.K., U.S., Sweden, and Panama — was an effort to understand what this loss of ocean species might mean to the world.

Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise.

“I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are — beyond anything we suspected,” Worm says in a news release.

“This isn’t predicted to happen. This is happening now,” study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release.

“If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life. Indeed, it may not be able to sustain our lives at all,” Beaumont adds.



Large Fishery Operations Depopulate Species and... by PreventDisease
Large Fisheries Are a Contributor

Fisheries directly or indirectly affect the livelihood of over 500 million people all over the world. However, overfishing including the taking of fish beyond sustainable levels is reducing fish stock and employment in
many world regions.

This will continue globally until sufficient species depopulation curbs human behavior to feed mass markets for profits.

Few people realize how efficient these freezer trawlers are at fully processing fish to customer specifications. They process fish into fillets within hours of being caught. Some can process more than 300 tonnes of fish a day and can store more than 6,000 tons of graded and frozen catch.

Operations such as this facilitate species depopulation due to overfishing and encouraging habitat loss. This is the mass market fishing industry which serves 90% of the major grocery retail sector.

NOAA oversees marine (or saltwater) fishing activities, but freshwater fisheries and fish hatcheries are another story entirely. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in charge of authorizing fish hatcheries in the U.S. The department oversees 70 national fish hatcheries in the United States. Every state has its own fishery office to oversee and regulate fishing in that state’s lakes and rivers.

Wild fisheries around the world are in danger of deteriorating for many reasons, including damage from pollution, environmental disasters and climate change. But the biggest threat to many fisheries comes from overfishing.

According to the NOAA’s report to Congress, the organization had enough data to determine the overfishing status of 244 different fish stocks. Of those, the NOAA said 41 are being overfished and 203 are fished responsibly. But the NOAA doesn’t have enough data to determine the status of 284 other fish stocks.

It’s important to remember that most commercial fishermen want to avoid overfishing as much as environmentalists do. They rely upon fish stocks to make their living. But the cycle of overfishing is self-perpetuating.
  
Edible Fish Declining In Mass Numbers

With increasing pollution and radiation levels off the charts in our oceans, wild fish are becoming as hazardous to our health as factory farmed meat.

Many species are so high in contaminants like mercury that their health benefits are outweighed by their health risks. Others are flown in from halfway around the world, but given labels that make you think they were caught fresh earlier that morning.

Just two years ago a Purdue University scientist urged federal officials to decide favorably on allowing genetically engineered salmon into the food supply arguing that not doing so may set back scientific efforts to increase food production. The argument came in direct contradiction to statements made by the same scientist who found that releasing a transgenic fish to the wild could damage native populations even to the point of extinction.

Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% — a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries.

But the issue isn’t just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide.

“A large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; thus the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences,” Worm and colleagues say.

Researchers Analyzed Data From Large Marine Ecosystems

The researchers analyzed data from 32 experiments on different marine environments.

They then analyzed the 1,000-year history of 12 coastal regions around the world, including San Francisco and Chesapeake bays in the U.S., and the Adriatic, Baltic, and North seas in Europe.

Next, they analyzed fishery data from 64 large marine ecosystems.

And finally, they looked at the recovery of 48 protected ocean areas.

Their bottom line: Everything that lives in the ocean is important. The diversity of ocean life is the key to its survival. The areas of the ocean with the most different kinds of life are the healthiest.

But the loss of species isn’t gradual. It’s happening fast — and getting faster, the researchers say.

Worm and colleagues call for sustainable fisheries management, pollution control, habitat maintenance, and the creation of more ocean reserves.

This, they say, isn’t a cost; it’s an investment that will pay off in lower insurance costs, a sustainable fish industry, fewer natural disasters, human health, and more.

“It’s not too late. We can turn this around,” Worm says. “But less than 1% of the global ocean is effectively protected right now.”

If you must eat fish, buy line caught to encourage that fish have been caught using sustainable traditional fishing methods using hook and line. This method has minimal environmental impact and as all fish are caught live it ensures the fish are in top condition before being stored in ice.

Marco Torres is a research specialist, writer and consumer advocate for healthy lifestyles. He holds degrees in Public Health and Environmental Science and is a professional speaker on topics such as disease prevention, environmental toxins and health policy.

Sources:
gpo.gov
cbsnews.com
oceana.org
preventdisease.com

Source article: Prevent Disease