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Ahihi-Kinau panel begins debating how best to manage reserve areas
May 04, 2004, Maui News

Discussion on the best way to manage South Maui's fragile coastal areas - where overuse has led to a recent state-ordered ban on all commercial activities - began in earnest Monday as the Ahihi-Kinau/Keoneoio Advisory Group held its first meeting.

Native Hawaiian cultural specialist Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr. wasted no time in setting the tone as he called for both of the reserve areas to be "closed off" for two years or until the group can come up with a management plan. Maxwell also told state Department of Land and Natural Resources officials that he hoped the committee's report would not just be paperwork that ends up in a drawer.

"Every task force I've been on, the outcome is completely different from what the members wanted," he said.

The group, appointed by DLNR, includes 12 residents, commercial operators and others who have been involved with the controversy that has exploded in the last year and focused mostly on the proliferation of kayak operations. A DLNR proposal that would have allowed limited kayak use in the Natural Area Reserve at Ahihi-Kinau was rejected by the Natural Area Reserve System (NARS) Commission a month ago.

About 30 members of the public attended the two-hour session at the Kihei Community Center.

Dan Davidson, deputy director of DLNR, assured Maxwell that the department was sincere in seeking the input of the Maui community, but said the plan must "fit into" the government structure to have any effect.

"I think we've demonstrated that we've been listening to you and that we will continue to listen," he said.

Davidson got an earful that - except for the rude behavior of one kayak operator - was offered with courtesy, respect and an apparent attempt to find a solution that would give priority to the care of the resources.

Perhaps the topic that generated the most talk was the job description of the two rangers who will be paid for three years by a grant from the Hawaii Tourism Authority. State officials expect the new hires to be on the job by September, but it was clear that what's expected of them remains up for debate.

While Davidson and others felt that the role of the rangers was educational in nature, like an ambassador or docent who would keep people in line simply by being present, there were those who wanted the workers to eventually have enforcement powers.

So a compromise was suggested: the two positions could include one docent and one enforcement officer, both of them trained in the cultural aspects of Ahihi-Kinau and Keoneoio.

Sumner Erdman, president of Ulupalakua Ranch, wondered if a portion of the HTA grant could be funneled directly to DLNR's Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement (DOCARE), so a qualified enforcement officer could be hired. Randy Awo, Maui County branch chief of DOCARE, said he only wished it could be that simple. Awo pointed out that the grant only funds the positions for three years and that anyone seriously interested in pursuing a career would be looking for something more permanent.

It was also mentioned that retired police officers might be good candidates, but they would no longer have the enforcement powers that went with their badges. DLNR officials said they would get information from the National Park Service about its law enforcement rangers to possibly use as a model.

Phil Ohta, Maui District State Parks Superintendent, said the long-awaited caretakers house at Makena State Park - where commercial activities are also banned - should be ready for occupancy soon, meaning that a DOCARE officer with enforcement capabilities might be only minutes away. Ohta said it was hoped the officer will be limited to patrolling the South Maui coastlines and not be required to respond to calls from all over the island like other DOCARE workers must do.

To prevent the rash of nighttime vandalism, Carrol Hall, owner of Maui Kayaks, said she agreed that a gate should be installed at the entrance to Keoneoio, with residents able to obtain access through the use of a slide card. Erdman said a lawyer from the Attorney General's office or the county's Corporation Counsel should be invited to a future meeting so the group doesn't wind up heading down an illegal path on the access issue.

To better educate visitors who often end up trampling the resources out of ignorance, Davidson said the state is in the process of preparing a brochure. Maxwell said it was important to direct tourists to other places more open to activities.

"If you tell them you can't go here, you need to tell them where they can go," said Maxwell.

Mark Nickerson, owner of Private Kayak Tours, reminded the crowd that at nearly every meeting held on the overuse of Ahihi-Kinau and Keoneoio, the public was singled out as the single biggest culprit. Kayak operators have said their tours actually prevent abuse of the resources because the tourists are kept in check.

The controversial guidebook, "Maui Revealed," - adored by visitors, but despised by many residents - was cited as the reason most independent travelers come to the area. According to Hall, the authors have finally agreed to meet with DLNR and others about revising their future edition to include better information.

Awo reported that since the ban on all commercial activities took effect two weeks ago, there has been only one kayak company that continues to violate the rules. Both civil and criminal investigations are being pursued against the operator, whom Awo declined to identify.

Makena Kayaks owner Dino Ventura, who has never taken his customers into the reserve, showed pictures of the area taken just days ago, a coastline at rest without the piles of kayaks and all the humans that come with them.

"You might not recognize that place, but it's Keoneoio," said Ventura.

But Davidson warned that some commercial operators on Oahu have tried to get around bans by having all their clients describe themselves as friends out for fun rather than paying clients.

There were other suggestions, too.

Mary Evanson, who has been pushing for more management of the area for years, held up the Makena-La Perouse State Park master plan from 1977 and said the document, never put into action, deserves another read.

Ann Fielding, a marine biologist who operates snorkel tours, asked that the Hawaiian names for such places known as "Aquarium," "Fishbowl" and "Dumps" be researched and used.

The only sour note of the morning came when Martin Kotz, owner of Pacific Coast Kayak, launched into an angry tirade that nearly got him escorted from the room.

"Everybody here is wrong!" cried Kotz. "Everything is the opposite of the truth!"

The next meeting will be held July 1 from 9 a.m. to noon, with the site to be announced later.

Global warming threatens isle species
Monday, May 3, 2004, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Whale Skate Island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands was a tiny dot of land in the vast Pacific, about 10 to 15 acres in size. It was covered with vegetation, nesting seabirds, Hawaiian monk seals and turtles laying eggs. It no longer exists.

"That island in the course of 20 years has completely disappeared" with rising sea levels, said Beth Flint, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist for the Pacific Remote Island Refuges. "It washed away."

And with it went habitat for the birds, seals and turtles, who had to find other islands or die, in one of the more dramatic illustrations of how global warming might be affecting Earth's species and their habitat.

Warming temperatures are melting away feeding grounds from polar bears, wiping out a small-animal population in the western United States and choking the world's coral reefs, some scientists suggest.

Millions of other species are at risk of succumbing to the elevated temperatures or being forced to search for cooler environments, they say.

"There are a lot of threats to biodiversity on a local scale, but global climate change is a very broad threat that's affecting ecosystems all around the world," said Lara Hansen, chief scientist for the climate change program at the Washington, D.C.-based World Wildlife Fund. "It's happening at rates that defy evolution and adaptation."

Hansen testified last month before the Senate Commerce Committee on the effects of climate change, and said climate change "is arguably the greatest threat to the world's biodiversity."

"Those numbers being impacted rival or exceed the only other major thing that we know that is this broad, and that's habitat destruction," she said in an interview.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the average global temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius in the past century. The group of 2,500 scientists is sponsored by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization.

Considering many species are already living at their thermal maximum, even the slightest temperature increase is significant, Hansen said.

The American pika, a distant relative of the rabbit, might become the first known North American mammal to fall victim to warming, she said.

Pikas, which resemble hamsters, live in cool and moist areas of Washington state, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, New Mexico and British Columbia.

A study published last year in the Journal of Mammalogy said climate change may have contributed to the extinction of the pika populations in the Great Basins over the past several decades.

Erik Beever, lead author of the study, said pikas have vanished in two more locations since the study was published. Now, pikas have vanished in nine of 25 sites where they were previously documented.

"That suggests to me that these losses are happening relatively quickly," he said. "I suspect these other populations are pretty vulnerable in the future."

Beever, of the U.S. Geological Survey's Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center in Corvallis, Ore., said while there is evidence showing that climate change "seems to be a strong driver" of the pika disappearance, other potential factors include changing habitat area, proximity to roads and presence of livestock grazing.

In the Arctic, polar bears are losing their sea ice, limiting their seal-hunting range, Hansen said. Since the ice season is also becoming shorter, polar bears are having longer periods of fasting, she said.

"As a result, we see them in worse condition," she said. "They are smaller and have less reproductive success."

Coral, a living creature of the sea, is among those affected by slightly warmer water temperatures. Warmer water can cause coral bleaching, or the death of the organism. The colorful tissue of the corals is stripped away, leaving behind the bone-white skeleton.

Jim Maragos, a coral reef biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Honolulu, has studied corals surrounding the Hawaiian Islands chain and U.S. territories in the Pacific.

"At all of our refuges in the remote Pacific Islands over the last 20 years, there's been at least some coral bleaching," he said. "These are places that have no people. There's no other excuses except for that there was warm temperatures. So we know that warm temperatures caused it. What we don't know is what's causing the warm temperatures."

Jeff Palovina, acting director of the NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Science Center, said it will take many years before scientists can say with confidence that global warming is the sole reason for the bleaching. It could be caused by El Nino-La Nina ocean currents, general variability, or it might have been happening for years before people noticed it.

"We know there's more observation going on now than there were 20 years ago in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands," he said. "So we don't know if we missed episodes of coral bleaching in the past. It'll take a lot longer to be able to say it's one cause or another."

From the pristine waters off Maui to the lush rain forests on the Big Island, Hawaii is home to thousands of rare plants and animals. Of more than 22,000 known species in Hawaii, 8,850 are found only on the islands, according to the Hawaii Audubon Society.

Many might be at risk. Warmer temperatures in Hawaii are believed to have allowed mosquitoes to climb higher on the islands' mountainsides, carrying avian malaria with them to attack native birds.

Mosquitoes "continue to plague Hawaiian honeycreepers, endemic species that have been crowded into high-elevation forests on the upper edge of their former range due to habitat destruction by humans and other introduced species," according to a study prepared by the Honolulu-based East-West Center for the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

"Climate change, therefore, has direct effects on Pacific island species and ecosystems, and it is very likely that its effects are multiplied" by other human activities that affect habitat, the study said.

Warming might expand the habitat and infectivity of disease-carrying insects, increasing the potential for transmission of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report, "Climate Change and Hawaii."

But some scientists are reluctant to place the blame on global warming and say any changes in biodiversity in the Pacific could be linked to the El Nino-Southern Oscillation cycle.

"To be very frank, no one can demonstrate that global warming has had any effect on our biodiversity here," said Fred Mackenzie, a University of Hawaii professor of oceanography, geology and geophysics. "It can have tremendous impact, but I would like to see the evidence that says it has had an impact."

Conferees settle on terms of bottle bill
April 30, 2004, Maui News

HONOLULU - Hawaii residents will start paying a nickel deposit on beverage containers Nov. 1 under the final draft of a bill fine-tuning the state's "bottle bill," with the program going into full swing on Jan. 1
House and Senate conferees made final adjustments Thursday to a bill authored by Maui Sen. J. Kalani English, who chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment, before approving it and sending it on for a final vote next week.

Although consumers will start paying the deposit in November if the full Legislature approves the bill and it is signed by Gov. Linda Lingle, they won't be able to get their nickels back until January, allowing funding to operate the program to build up.

The conference committee included rules for the program in the bill approved Thursday, answering a major objection of the beverage industry, which had asked for a delay in starting up the program because they said they had no idea what labeling requirements would be included in the law.

Advocates of the recycling program argued against a delay, saying that what the beverage industry really wanted was to derail the program during the legislative session next year.

English said he wanted the program implemented as quickly as possible.

"Retailers have had plenty of time to prepare for this," English said, noting that the Deposit Beverage Container Program was first approved in the 2002 legislative session.

The labeling issue is moot, the senator said, noting that some distributors have already started putting the "HI5Ç" on bottles.

Kauai Rep. Hermina Morita, who represented the House on the conference committee and has also worked for years to get the deposit bill enacted, said she was pleased with the outcome.

"People are very excited about the program," she said, adding that she does not expect anyone to object to having to start paying the deposit two months before they can redeem the containers.

The deposit law will add 60 cents to the cost of a 12-pack of soda, with the money returned when the cans are taken to a redemption center. There is another penny per container that is paid by dealers to the state to help fund the program. That additional cost can be absorbed by the dealer or added to the cost of the beverage being sold.

The bill gives beverage dealers until July of next year to put required redemption facilities into place. English said that recognizes the fact that building permits or other land-use issues may slow the process.

But he and Morita said they are confident that redemption centers will be established on all islands of the state by January.

Anyone can apply for a permit to run a center, English said, from an existing business interested in the extra traffic that would be generated by consumers bringing in their cans and bottles to an entity like a county promoting recycling as a way of keeping tons of solid waste out of its landfill.

The only reservations expressed during the conference committee hearing came from Oahu Sen. Fred Hemmings, who objected to the additional one-cent operational fee being charged.

He said that ultimately, that cost is going to be borne by the consumer, and he added that it was an increase in taxation and also a burden to business.

There is an exemption in the bill for redemption centers in rural or remote areas like Hana, where dealers will not be required to take back empty containers because of the cost of transporting them to an urban area for shipping.

But English said that there are many other possibilities for collecting the containers in those areas. For example, a school or other nonprofit group might serve as a collection point and transport the material, keeping the nickel as a fund-raising mechanism.

Another benefit of the law is that beaches, roadways and parks will be scoured by organizations and individuals interested in collecting the nickel deposit on containers discarded by those who aren't interested in getting their money back, the lawmakers said.

Currently, Hawaii recycles about 20 percent of the 800 million beverage containers discarded each year. States with bottle bills report an 80 percent recovery rate.

Both English and Morita said the deposit law has been needed for a long time in Hawaii.

"Bottle bills have been shown to be effective wherever they have been enacted, and Hawaii should be among the nation's leaders in promoting the recycling of waste materials," he said.

Morita noted that glass, aluminum and plastic containers holding up to 64 ounces are covered under the bill, including fruit drinks and water, but not milk.

"Now that recyclable aluminum containers are being phased out and the use of plastics is on the rise, our roadways are being littered and our landfills are being filled with plastic bottles," she said. "We cannot afford to wait any longer to address this pressing environmental issue."

Nearly half of extinct species were in Hawaii
Tuesday, April 27, 2004, Associated Press

Nearly half of the 114 species that have become extinct in the first 20 years of the federal Endangered Species Act were in Hawaii, according to a new report by an advocacy group.

The report by the Center for Biological Diversity says the federal government's failure to protect species "has been spectacular" and accuses the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of knowingly delaying listings "to avoid political controversy even when it knew the likely result would be the extinction of the species."

A statement from the Fish and Wildlife Service said the agency "denies the inflammatory claim" and challenged the accuracy of the report. It said recovery of species is a very long process and noted that at the time the act was passed in 1973 that some species were in such bad shape the agency couldn't recover them.

The agency said funding has been limited because of litigation over critical habitat and noted that fish and wildlife habitat has been declining for decades because of urbanization.

The report released Wednesday said "the number (of extinct species) is shocking and indicates a grave failure in federal management of the nation's most powerful environmental law." A co-author of the report said that with so many unique species, Hawaii faces the worst problem in the country.

Species lost from the islands include the large Kauai thrush, which once was the most common bird on the island; the Molokai thrush, which was endemic to Molokai, and 11 species of Oahu tree snails.

Only 19 percent of the extinctions involved species on the endangered list, showing that the 1973 law is working ? at least for species that make the list, said Kieran Suckling, the center's executive director and a co-author of the report.

"But species known to be endangered were stuck in bureaucratic delay and went extinct before they had a chance to be listed," Suckling said. "That should never have happened."

Nearly all the species could have been saved if the Endangered Species Act had been properly managed, fully funded and "shielded from political pressure," he said. "Instead they were sacrificed to bureaucratic inertia, political meddling, and lack of leadership."

The report lays much of the blame on the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"Listing delays and extinctions have plagued the Fish and Wildlife Service for 30 years, but the Bush administration has pushed the crisis to an unprecedented level," said Brian Nowicki, another co-author of the report.

The Bush administration has placed an average of only nine species on the list per year, while the Clinton administration averaged 65 listing per year, Nowicki said.

The statement from the Fish and Wildlife Service said part of the problem the agency faces in its listing backlog when a complete moratorium on listing took in effect.

"The funding for the Endangered Species listing program in which species are listed as threatened or endangered has shrunk to only a little more than $3 million per year.

"This is because litigation over critical habitat designations has forced almost all the service's funding to be directed toward critical habitat at the expense of listing."

Hawaii is unique not only because it has 52 species on the list, but because state law requires that every species placed on the list is automatically added to a state list, said Michael Buck, administrator of the Forestry and Wildlife division of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, which works in partnership with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

He acknowledged, however, that "just getting something on the list does not save endangered species." The No. 1 issue for Hawaii, Buck said, is "coming up with resources and public support."

California was the next highest state in the report with 11 extinctions. Guam had eight, while Alabama and Texas each had seven.
Fifteen of Hawaii's extinct species were terrestrial snails, 13 each were flowering plants and insects, eight were birds and three were moths. Birds accounted for all but two of the extinctions on the U.S. territory of Guam, where the bird population already had been devastated by the brown tree snake and other predators.

The four-angled pelea, a flowering plant endemic to Kauai, is an example of a species being lost by inaction, Suckling said.
The Fish and Wildlife Service became aware it was endangered in 1975 when the Smithsonian petitioned to have it listed, he said. The following year, the agency said it would propose adding it to the list, but when nothing happened, the Smithsonian re-petitioned in 1978, he said.

In 1980, the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed the plant was endangered but put it on the candidate list, Suckling said. In 1994, the agency listed it as endangered, but it had become extinct in 1991, he said.

"The extinction crisis in Hawaii is worse than anywhere else," Suckling said. "We believe the Fish and Wildlife Service should have no higher job than preventing species from going extinct."

Buck said extinctions have been occurring since Western sailors first visited the islands in 1778. The extinction rate probably has increased in the past 10 years, Suckling said. "There is no reason to believe it went down," he said.

Officials worry shrimp virus may spread (Kauai farmed white shrimp)
April 25, 2004, Associated Press

LIHU'E, Kaua'i — Despite measures taken to quarantine a virus at a Kaua'i shrimp farm, the disease could spread to native crustaceans and ultimately harm the reef ecosystem, state officials said.

The state Department of Agriculture quarantined Ceatech USA Inc.'s shrimp farm in Kekaha after white spot syndrome virus, which causes serious disease in crustaceans, was discovered earlier this month.

The virus is highly contagious and fatal to sea life, but poses no threat to humans, even if infected shrimp are eaten, the state said.

The disease has been reported in Japan, China, Thailand, the Korean Peninsula, the Philippines and in Central and South America, agriculture officials said, but never before in Hawai'i.

Ceatech workers have voluntarily begun draining all 48 ponds into Kinikini Ditch, and burying 20 million dead shrimp.

Some say that may not be enough to stop the virus.

"From what I've seen, their remediation efforts are like putting lipstick on a corpse," said Don Heacock, Kaua'i district aquatic biologist with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Dr. James Foppoli, the state's veterinarian, said the problem is that the virus lives in water, and Ceatech has been draining its effluent for years into Kinikini Ditch, which runs into various streamlets and rivers before reaching the ocean.

Recent drainings mean those discharges were at an all-time high before they stopped on Thursday, he said.

The virus could theoretically end up in Hawai'i waters and harm native crustacean populations here and, ultimately, reef ecosystems, Heacock said.

Ceatech officials have abided by all federal environmental regulations during the draining period, Foppoli said.

But Heacock says no one knows how long the shrimp have been infected.

"We did find shrimp in the detention basins, and there's nothing to prevent the tiny shrimp from escaping into the ditch and out to sea," he said.

State biologists are sending Kekaha-area crustacean samples to the University of Arizona to test whether local crustaceans have been infected with the virus.

"We can't jump to conclusions until we've done more tests," Heacock said. "We don't even know if the virus happens here naturally."

If the virus is detected in Kaua'i's native species, then tests will be done statewide to determine if species in other Hawaiian waters are infected.

If the virus isn't found anywhere else, "we'll have to look at Kekaha," Heacock said, suggesting that the infection could be traced back to Ceatech. Heacock said officials there have done everything possible to control and destroy the virus.

"The virus could potentially spread around the island and archipelago," Heacock said.

Scientists believe a bird might have eaten infected shrimp and spread the virus to Kaua'i with droppings.

"Every time you buy shrimp from the store, you're probably getting the white-spot virus," Heacock said. "Most shrimp from Asia are infected, but it's harmless to humans. Still, all you have to do is eat it. Human waste can carry the virus. Even just washing your hands could pass the virus."

Ceatech employs 40 people and runs the largest aquafarm shrimp operation in the state. The company has plans to expand its operations, but the virus is expected to cost $2 million in lost revenue over the next few months.

Meanwhile, people in the area are getting a nose-full of rotting shrimp.

"It's beyond stink," said Derek Pellin of Lawa'i, who surfs near Kekaha. "You just have to drive by there. It's unbelievable."

Web site offers data on Hawai'i sharks (check it out!)
April 22, 2004, Honolulu Advertiser

The state has launched a Web site that provides facts about sharks that live in Hawai'i's waters.

Hawaiisharks.com covers the biology, history and culture of the carnivores. There are also descriptions of the sharks, pages on safety, and data on shark bite incidents.

"I've had to do quite a bit of searching on the Web myself over the past few years looking for specific pieces of information," said Randy Honebrink, education coordinator for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Resources. "One of the things I noticed is there is not really very much out there on Hawaiian sharks. We get a lot of questions from the public and people intending to visit here from the Mainland. We felt if we could come up with a site that answered most of the questions we get, that would be a helpful reference for a lot of people."

Honebrink said there were 35 shark attacks in Hawai'i between 1990 and 2000 — fewer than four a year. During that time there were 220 attacks in Florida, 69 in South Africa, 50 in Brazil and 36 in Australia.

"That's why the whole point is to put everything in perspective," he said. "It's got the information people need to get an accurate picture of the shark biting side and there is an awful lot of other stuff up there as well that is worthwhile."

The site's home page has a blue-green background reminiscent of the ocean and shows a shark swimming against the current.

Honebrink said federal money paid for the $20,000 project. Teachers are encouraged to use the site, and a resources button provides information specifically for classroom use.

Local interest in shark attacks increased after 14-year-old Bethany Hamilton lost her left arm in an attack last Halloween on Kaua'i and surfer Willis "Will" McInnis, 57, was killed off Maui this month. He was Hawai'i's first confirmed shark-attack death in nearly 12 years.

Honebrink said the first thing people want is information on shark attacks. The people, dates and severity of shark attacks in Hawai'i are listed along with maps of the locations.

The site also includes a game for younger viewers in which they can become a shark helping to keep the reef clean. But Honebrink is especially proud of the cultural information included on the site, with transcripts of interviews with Hawaiian kupuna Parley Kanaka'ole and Herb Kawainui Kane talking about how sharks are often seen as 'aumakua, or personal or family gods.

"The Hawai'i Sharks Web site is a natural extension of our work in the areas of outreach and safety," said DLNR chairman Peter Young. "People have a lot of questions about sharks, and the site provides a number of answers. But it also points out how much we still have to learn about these animals."

Angler turned concern into legislation (introduced "light pollution bill")
April 21, 2004, Honolulu Advertiser

Wayne Dang crammed into a State Capitol meeting room last year with other anglers to successfully fight a measure that would have severely limited where they fish.

Wayne Dang's concerns as a fisherman resulted in the so-called "light pollution bill."

The episode got Dang thinking that instead of fighting legislation he felt was bad, why not push for changes that would be good?

"I'm not going to sit back and grumble about things," Dang said. "If I want something done, I'm going to go out there and go do it, and try to make a difference."

Thus began the seemingly improbable rise of House Bill 1743, the so-called "light pollution bill."

Dang persuaded Rep. Ken Ito, D-48th (Kane'ohe), his former electronics teacher at Kalani High School, to introduce the bill which essentially prohibits artifical light from shining into the ocean unless authorized and required for public safety or ocean navigation.

House conference committee members yesterday agreed to changes in the bill made by the Senate, and it is now expected to be approved by the Legislature, then sent to Gov. Linda Lingle for her signature.

"It's been a lot of work, but it's been worth it," Dang said.

Dang, 44, a Kahala resident who works as a message service supervisor with the state Department of Accounting and General Services, is no stranger to the Capitol. He has lent his fisherman's expertise to the Department of Land and Natural Resources on catch-related issues. But the light pollution bill is the first time he's been involved in the legislative process.

Dang has fished with a pole along the Honolulu coastline since his father took him as a child. He said he knows from experience that fish and other marine life shy away from areas that are lit at night. Dang said he has also witnessed disoriented birds blinded by lights fly into objects.

"You kind of notice these things when you're fishing," he said. "You throw your line out, you're waiting for a bite, you kind of notice what your environment's like."

But it wasn't until Dang thought about pushing for the light pollution bill that he began gathering data on the Internet. He discovered that there was scientific evidence to support his points and other jurisdictions have started to enact light pollution legislation.

A friend of Dang's who is familiar with the environmental community contacted groups ranging from the Hawai'i Audubon Society to Kahea, the Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance. The groups testified that floodlights from the shoreline shining into the ocean negatively affect a variety of wildlife.

Lights can confuse turtle hatchlings, who sometimes end up inland instead of heading back into the ocean. They also can disorient birds, scare off sea life and hamper the growth of coral.

Dang recruited fellow fishing enthusiasts, including Brian Kimata, whose Brian's Fishing Supply is a hub for those with an affinity for hooks, lines and sinkers.

The bill met opposition. The city Department of Planning and Permitting called it unnecessary since existing laws allow the state to protect marine resources. The Hawai'i Hotel and Lodging Association, as well as the pro-development Land Use Research Foundation also opposed the bill.

Sen. Fred Hemmings, R-25th (Kailua, Waimanalo, Hawai'i Kai), who voted against the bill, said he worries the legislation will be hard to enforce and will not be enforced equally. "It's a laudable effort, but it creates more problems than it solves," he said.

But Rep. Hermina Morita, D-14th (Kapa'a, Hanalei), who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection, said she believes the concerns raised by hoteliers have been addressed with an exemption for hotels and hotel-condominiums if their outdoor lighting is under water or directed downward and illuminates out no more than 30 feet from the shoreline.

Morita said floodlights from shoreline homes always irritated her, but she never thought about introducing a bill herself. "Here was a fisherman that came forward who actually was seeing the effects of light pollution on fish in fishing areas," she said. "We're really grateful to him for bringing this bill forward."

Ito said he is proud of how his former student approached him with the bill and shepherded it through the process. "He made a difference," Ito said. "And hopefully now it will become law and he can get the credit for it."

Dang is shy about accepting accolades. "The truth is, I didn't expect it to go this far," he said. "But I guess people recognize it as being a good bill."

Study: 'Dolphin-Safe' Tuna Still Kills
Discovery News, May 4, 2004

Despite efforts by the tuna fishing industry over the past 20 years to protect dolphins, the inquisitive mammal's numbers have failed to recover because tuna boats can separate mothers from their babies, according to a new study on the swimming behavior of dolphins.

The research on dolphin swimming also helps to explain why bike and car racers travel in packs, why baby birds swim behind their mother, and why many birds fly in a v-shaped formation.
For the study, Daniel Weihs, a professor of aerospace engineering at the Israel Institute of Technology, used mathematical modeling and direct observation to determine how a baby dolphin swims with its mother.

The shape and motion of a dolphin is comparable to an ellipse, so Weihs calculated the most energy-efficient way two ellipses could move forward in a body of water. His calculations found that if a calf's center of mass is at around 2/3 of the mother's length, the mother can provide 60-90 percent of the thrust needed for the calf to swim at approximately 5.28 miles per hour.

Analysis of aerial photographs taken of swimming dolphins revealed that dolphin calves do swim in the manner predicted by the calculations.

Findings are published in the current Open Access Journal of Biology.

"As the mother (dolphin) moves through the water, she pushes the water in front of her forwards and to the sides, to make space for her body," Weihs told Discovery News. "As she moves, the space behind her is filled with water moving forward and inward. If the baby is (positioned to the right) obliquely behind, it gets dragged along by the forward-moving water."

The fast-moving water also reduces nearby pressure, which helps to pull the calf inward and close to mom.

Human swimmers thrash around too much, but schooling fish and baby birds that swim in formation behind their mothers hitch an almost free ride from the lead swimmers. Birds that fly in a v-shaped formation ride the first bird's airwave, instead of water.

"In bicycle and car racing, the lead cyclist produces a flow field similar to the dolphin mum, except there is no tail flapping, so the second cyclist (or car) riding directly behind the first, is 'sucked' forwards and uses less energy to move at the same speed," Weihs explained.

Without human or predator intrusion, the energy-saving technique helps baby dolphins to keep up with their mothers. Tuna fishing boats, however, chase dolphins at speeds above which the drafting, or water riding, works, according to Weihs.

Fishermen follow dolphins because tuna tend to gather beneath schools of dolphins. Purse-seine fisheries, for example, use a helicopter and a fast, main boat to track dolphins. Once dolphins are spotted, speedboats are launched to herd dolphins away, while the main boat drops a mile-long curtain of net.

Weihs said that after fisherman leave a site, lactating mother dolphins often are found without calves, and calves are found without mothers.

"The really young ones die of simple lack of nourishment, while for older calves, some may survive," he said.

R. McNeill Alexander, a biologist at the University of Leeds, agreed with the study in an accompanying Journal of Biology "Minireview," but said, "So far, no metabolic measurements are available to confirm (Weihs') conclusions, but it seems clear that mother dolphins give their calves substantial help."

Alexander added, "Just as baby monkeys could not keep up with their troop if their mothers did not carry them, dolphin calves might be unable to keep up with the adults if they did not keep close to their mothers."

Elizabeth Edwards, a marine biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service in San Diego, hopes future research on the limits of drafting will help to determine if the separation of mothers and babies is to blame for dolphin deaths observed in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, where tuna fishing takes place.

U.S. Senate Moves Closer to Condemning Canadian Seal Hunt
Monday, May 03, 2004, International Fund for Animal Welfare

The U.S. Senate moved one step closer to an official condemnation of Canada's seal hunt when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended the Levin-Collins Resolution to the full Senate. The resolution, which was introduced in November 2003, urges "the Government of Canada to end the commercial seal hunt... Whereas the persistence of this cruel and needless commercial hunt is inconsistent with the well-earned international reputation of Canada..." 15 senators have already signed on as co-sponsors to the resolution, the next step for the bipartisan resolution will be consideration by the full Senate.

"This move illustrates that the international opposition to the Canadian seal hunt is not a fringe opinion, but a worldwide consensus that ranges from the halls of government to the man on the street," said IFAW President Fred O'Regan. "The issues are the same as they were when IFAW began, 35 years ago, to stop the hunt. Killing baby seals doesn't make sense economically, ecologically or in regard to the humane treatment of animals."

The move by the U.S. Senate parallels similar responses around the world to this year's hunt, the largest in several decades. The Committee for Foreign Affairs of the Italian Parliament recently adopted a resolution to ban the import of sealskins and seal products. All four Dutch political parties support a move by the EU to ban sealskins and Austria's Green Party has brought forward a motion in parliament to consider a ban.

Despite global opposition, Canada's hunt for baby seals continues. Seals as young as 12 days old are killed legally between November 15 and May 15. This year's hunt will continue until the industry reaches its quota of 350,000 seals - the largest in history. So far, 321,199 harp seals have been killed this year.

IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare - www.ifaw.org) consistently observes and documents the hunt each year, bringing media and parliamentarians from around the world to witness the cruelty of the slaughter. IFAW has submitted video evidence of more than 660 probable violations of Canada's marine mammal regulations to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). To date, no charges have been placed. These abuses include skinning live seals, dragging live seals across the ice with hooks and shooting seals and leaving them to suffer.

Orcas boost calls amid boat noise (WA state)
BBC News Online science staff, April 28, 2004

Killer whales living off the west coast of the US are extending the length of their calls to each other to be heard above the din of heavy boat traffic.

The findings come from an analysis of killer whale, or orca, calls by British and US researchers which has been published in the journal Nature.

The orcas make longer calls when boats are present in an apparent attempt to be heard above the engine noise.

But the orcas only take this action when noise reaches a critical level.

The killer whales observed in the study came from a population that lives close to the shore in waters off Washington state.

There has been a sharp increase in the number of boats in the area over the past decade. A major commercial shipping lane cuts through the waters, while tourism and whale-watching have become increasingly popular.

Numbers of killer whales have been dropping here since 1996.

Researchers from the University of Durham, UK, and the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, US, compared recordings of calls made by orcas over the periods 1977-81, 1989-92 and 2001-03 in waters made in the absence and presence of boats.

Although no significant difference was found in the length of calls over the 1977-81 and 1989-92 period, the team found a 10-15% increase in the duration of calls made by the orcas during the 2001-03 period.

Long calls

This would appear to suggest that the whales are altering the length of their calls to be heard above the din of background noise from boats.

"The whale-watching vessels quite often act as a beacon attracting the tourist boats," co-author Andrew Foote of the University of Durham told BBC News Online.

"This increases the amount of traffic around the whales even more. While the whale-watching vessels behave responsibly - try not to start their engines up when they're on top of the whales and so on - the tourists aren't always aware of quite how to behave with the whales."

If the growth in boat traffic continues apace, it could start interfering with the orcas' ability to find food, says Mr Foote. The animals partly make calls to keep in touch, but also to co-ordinate foraging.

However, the researchers suggest that because the number of boats increased about fivefold between 1990 and 2000, the orcas only start making longer calls once boat noise reaches a threshold.

Numbers of boats following the killer whales, including registered whale-watching boats and private tourist boats, increased roughly fivefold from 1990 to 2000.

Whale Songs Hint That Mating's Not Just for Mating Season (humpbacks)
National Geographic News, April 20, 2004

Humpback whales regularly break into "song" much later in the year than expected, according to a new study. The finding contradicts the idea that the songs are only associated with breeding—and that the species' mating and feeding activities take place in completely separate time periods.

Humpback males were thought to sing mostly during the winter breeding season (October to March, in the Northern Hemisphere), when the up to 40-ton beasts migrate to tropical waters near Hawaii, the West Indies, and elsewhere.

The animals' haunting moans and long complex songs—emitted only by males—are apparently used to woo females and to competitively display to rival males.

But now inadvertent recordings—taken off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, during May and June—reveal that humpback males also serenade potential lovers throughout spring, as they migrate to polar and other high-latitude feeding grounds.

As a result, humpback calves may sometimes be conceived and born outside of tropical waters, write researchers behind the chance discovery.

"Wall-to-Wall" Chorus

"It was a real surprise to find animals singing wall-to-wall, 24 hours a day through several weeks of spring monitoring," said Phil Clapham, a whale biologist behind the discovery. Clapham works at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

"Although it's clear that most mating takes place in winter in the tropics, the activity apparently doesnt end there," he said.

Humpback whale (Megaptera novangliae) song has rarely been recorded in high-latitude feeding areas. When it has, most recordings were made during early spring or late autumn.

In contrast, whale singing can be recorded endlessly throughout the species's entire winter breeding season in tropical waters. "Once in a while people had recorded song on feeding grounds," Clapham said. "But most experts thought it was very sporadic."

Clapham and Cornell University whale biologist Chris Clark, based in Ithaca, New York, made the discovery while collecting data for a study on the occurrence of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis). Clapham and Clark's results will be published in an upcoming print edition of the science journal Proceedings: Biological Sciences.

Clark deployed self-surfacing recording devices three kilometers (five miles) apart from one another, 150 to 200 meters (500 to 650 feet) deep on the seafloor. (An acoustic signal from a nearby boat would trigger the 1-meter-diameter/3.2-foot-diameter glass orbs to automatically detach from the seafloor and float to the surface for retrieval.)

The devices are capable of detecting the vocalizations of right whales up to 30 kilometers (19 miles) distant.

For 25 days in May and June 2000, the pop-up recorders automatically detected sounds for a handful of minutes in every hour and stored the information on a hard drive.

When Clapham and Clark analyzed the data, they were in for a surprise. Alongside some recordings of right whales, Clark said, "mostly what we found was [one or more] humpback whale [songs], 24 hours a day for almost the entire spring."

The recording devices had been deployed in an important humpback feeding ground east of Cape Cod. "This was the first time that anyone had continuously monitored one of these areas for a period of several weeks, using devices of this range," Clark said.

Whaling Records

The biologists believe that the consistent nature of the whale song indicates that mating continues long into the spring migration, even after humpbacks have arrived in summer feeding grounds. Clapham said the recordings hinted "that the humpback's mating system is rather more flexible than we thought."

At the time, the pair knew they would need more evidence to back up that claim. Since whale pregnancies last approximately 12 months, most calves are born in the same tropical breeding grounds in which they were conceived the prior year. Matings outside of the winter season should therefore result in later births.

To find the proof they required, Clapham and Clark examined whaling records from the 20th century. Whalers had collected demographic data on slaughtered whales, including the size—and, by extrapolation, the developmental stage—of fetuses.

"By looking at data on the size of fetuses … you can get a pretty good idea of how births are distributed across the year," Clapham said.

As expected, the whaling records revealed that most calves were born between December and April. However, there were rare examples of unseasonably large or small calves that would have been born in spring or even summer, Clapham noted.

John Calambokidis, a whale expert with Cascadia Research in Olympia, Washington, commented that while occasional whale singing in feeding grounds in autumn and spring was known to researchers, "there has not been good documentation of to what degree this occurs, how late or early it extends, and the possible explanations for this."

Calambokidis said the "important contribution" by Clapham and Clark does a good job addressing such questions.

Clark and Clapham said they plan to monitor whale feeding grounds throughout the summer to see if song tapers off after spring.

Container ship drags whale carcass into port (CA)
April 16, 2004, The Daily Breeze

The carcass of a 47-foot-long fin whale, wrapped around the bow of a container ship, was brought into the Port of Los Angeles this week, apparently after it had been struck and killed at sea by the vessel.

The crew of the California Mercury was unaware the ship hit the animal until it came into port about 6 p.m. Wednesday. The carcass initially was taken to Berth 214 at Terminal Island and then was hauled Thursday to Berth 194.

It will be towed out to sea in the next day or two.

"What happens is that the whale is hit (by the vessel) at high speed and then it rests on the bow," said Dave Janiger, a curatorial assistant with the county Natural History Museum. The animal was either killed by the impact or drowned when it was trapped on the bow by water pressure as the ship moved through the ocean.

Aside from losing a knot or two of speed, the ship's crew would not necessarily realize a whale had been hit until the ship slowed to enter port, he said. The California Mercury, a container carrier from Japan, is 800 feet long and travels about 30 mph.

Janiger examined the whale on Thursday, taking DNA and other samples for research purposes.

He said the whale was a mature male. It is not clear how far out at sea the animal was struck.

It was likely sleeping when it was struck, said one of those investigating the accident.

Joe Cordaro, wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Services, said he is awaiting a letter from the ship's company about the incident.

Two similar incidents occurred in 1980 and 1987 with blue whales off Los Angeles, Janiger said.

The fin whale, also known as the finback whale, is the second largest whale. It's part of the family that includes the humpback whale and blue whale, according to the American Cetacean Society. It is among the fastest of the great whales and has been dubbed the "greyhound of the sea."

They are found in all oceans of the world.

Adult males can grow up to 78 feet in the Northern Hemisphere and up to 88 feet in the Southern Hemisphere. They weigh 50 to 70 tons.

Too fast for early whalers, they became targets as technology improved and the population of the preferred blue whales was depleted. As many as 30,000 fin whales were slaughtered by whalers each year from 1935 to 1965.

The International Whaling Commission placed them under full protection in 1966. Present populations are estimated at about 40,000 in the Northern Hemisphere and 15,000 to 20,000 in the Southern Hemisphere, a small percentage of the original population levels.

Fin whales feed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, Janiger said.

"For the last several years, for some reason, there have been a large number of them in the Catalina Channel," he said.

Anti-bycatch competition launched
05 May 2004, Green consumer guide

A competition to find the best new technology to reduce bycatch deaths of dolphins, birds and other sealife has been launched in Vancouver this week. Created by a coalition of conservation groups, fishermen and scientists, the ‘International Smart Gear Competition’ will award $25,000 to the most practical invention, and assist the creator in bringing the technology to market.

"We're looking for real-world solutions that allow fishermen to better target their catch and that reduce the economic and ecological costs of using inefficient gear," said Wally Pereyra of the National Fisheries Institute. "This unusual collaboration is an effort to address the limitations of gear technology."

Recent research by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and Greenpeace found that up to 10,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed annually in waters around the UK through accidental bycatching.

"Bycatch is one of the biggest threats to healthy marine ecosystems and results in large economic losses to fishermen," added WWF’s Tom Grasso. "We hope this competition is able to harness the creativity and ingenuity of fishermen, students and the public to reduce the waste caused by inefficient gear."

Sea turtles have inner map, study finds
April 30, 2004, Newsday

Seafaring captains of old probably could have learned a thing or two from the sure-fire navigation sense of Atlantic green sea turtles, whose pinpoint accuracy across vast ocean distances has now been attributed not only to an inner compass but also to an inner map.

The finding, reported Thursday in the journal Nature, helps to explain a major enigma in the field of animal behavior: how juvenile and adult sea turtles can return year after year to the same exact feeding grounds after their extensive voyages.

University of North Carolina biologist Kenneth Lohmann, the study's lead author, said prior knowledge of green sea turtle navigation had been limited primarily to understanding how hatchlings use wave direction as a cue and an inner magnetic compass as a simple guide to reach the sea after birth. But a straight-line crawl to deeper water is a far different matter than swimming hundreds of miles across the open ocean.

"This study shows for the first time that the older turtles acquire the ability to use magnetism in a far more sophisticated way than the hatchlings do," he said. "It's as if these older turtles have their own GPS based on the Earth's magnetic field."

Lohmann and his colleagues assessed their study subjects' navigational sense by successively placing about 25 captured Atlantic green sea turtles in cloth harnesses and tethering them to a computerized tracking system within a tub resembling an over-sized backyard wading pool. An elaborate coil system surrounding the tub controlled the magnetic field.

When exposed to a magnetic field equivalent to one existing about 210 miles north of the test site in Melbourne Beach, Fla., the turtles oriented themselves roughly southward, as if trying to swim back to Melbourne Beach. When the researchers reconfigured the magnetic field so it was equivalent to an area about 210 miles to the south, the tethered turtles instead swam northward.

The results suggest that the sea turtles can distinguish among magnetic fields of different geographic locations and use this inner magnetic map to navigate toward a specific target. Intriguingly, particles of the mineral magnetite have been found in the heads of both birds and turtles. Magnetite particles align in response to magnetic fields, although researchers haven't yet established a definitive link between the contained particles and signal processing by the animals' central nervous systems.

"It's possible that the turtles literally have little compass needles somewhere in their brains or central nervous systems," Lohmann said.

The new research may impinge upon conservation practices, he added, since underwater electric cables, offshore oilrigs, and seawalls reinforced with iron beams can all distort the local magnetic field and potentially interfere with turtle navigation. On the other hand, if sea turtles rely on such a magnetic field, their inner navigational map could eventually provide conservationists with a new tool for turtle re-introductions.

"One possibility is that young turtles imprint on the magnetic field that exists in their birthplace," he said. If such a hypothesis is borne out, "turtle eggs could be permitted to develop in the magnetic field that exists in whatever location that you want the turtles to return to years later."

Kim Durham, the rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, said more research is needed to understand how many Atlantic green sea turtles use New York's coastal waters as feeding areas, she said, but preliminary findings suggest the bays may be important areas for juvenile development. Foundation researchers also are hoping to determine the length and route of typical Atlantic green sea turtle odysseys by affixing satellite tags, but observations already have demonstrated that the turtles can travel from New York to North Carolina within a single month.

US Rule Change Could Weaken Salmon Protections
May 3, 2004, Reuters

SEATTLE - A Bush administration plan to revise protections for endangered Northwest U.S. salmon drew praise from farmers and industry groups, but environmentalists and fishing advocates said future salmon runs would be gutted.

Under the plan, the National Marine Fisheries Service would count salmon raised in hatchery tanks as well as wild fish when determining a species' population, according to excerpts of a draft report of the agency's plan.

A final version is due in June. The plan could alter the fate of some of the 27 species of protected migratory fish if the change in the counting procedure raises population levels beyond thresholds for protection.

"The result will be delisting of some species of salmon from the Endangered Species Act," said Jan Hasselman, Seattle counsel for the National Wildlife Federation. "The protections provided for those species and the funding devoted to their protection and recovery evaporates immediately."

Salmon protection has triggered broad changes in Washington state, Oregon and Idaho, including reduced irrigation to farmers, restrictions on logging and mining and higher hydroelectric rates from dams forced to reserve water to help fish migrate.

The region's iconic fish is prized for food, sport fishing and the sheer spectacle of its annual return to native streams from the Pacific Ocean. The salmon also support dwindling populations of orcas, or killer whales, and other predators and scavengers.

But plenty of people consider the salmon's endangered status a major nuisance.

"I applaud the people that are trying to save species that are endangered," said Gretchen Borck, a lobbyist with the Washington Association of Wheat Growers. "But it might be good that we don't have dinosaurs now. We've gotten oil from the dinosaurs. If we had preserved the dinosaur, we wouldn't have that oil."

The 5,000 farmers WAWG represents often feel they are an endangered species, Borck says, much like Northwest loggers felt they were sacrificed to protect the threatened Northern Spotted Owl in 1990.

"Hopefully this will get us a breather from environmental lawsuits," Borck said. "We have compromised a lot. We have given up acreage, established habitat and stream buffers. We've spent our own money trying to find new best practices."

Builders have also complained about restrictions on home building near salmon habitat and other industrial polluters, including mining companies, have had to adjust.

But salmon also support thousands of jobs in commercial and sport fishing. "How about the shattered tens of thousands of families that used to rely on salmon fishing," Hasselman said. "Their livelihoods are just as important as the farmers'."

Salmon advocates argue that hatchery fish, though bred from wild stocks, are less able to survive in the wild and may produce offspring more adapted to living in concrete tanks than the Pacific Ocean.

Hatchery fish also mask damage to rivers and wildlife conditions in general, environmentalists argue, the same way pandas in zoos give no indication of the health of their natural habitat.

"As the fish disappear, it shows the ecosystem is increasingly threatened," Hasselman said.

Critics of salmon protection see no genetic distinction between wild and fishery salmon and little benefit to costly measures needed to restore truly wild salmon runs.

"Will we continue to use hatchery fish? I think we will," said Borck. "Will we ever have the salmon that Lewis and Clark described, being able to walk across the river on their backs? Probably not."

Bush Hails His Environmental Record on Earth Day
April 23, 2004, Reuters

WELLS, Maine - President Bush, who withdrew from the Kyoto environment accord, sought in an Earth Day appearance on Thursday at a wetlands area near his family's Maine estate to counter critics who accuse him of trying to reverse decades of environmental progress.

After donning a navy windbreaker and hiking boots to trudge through a coastal salt marsh, the Republican president claimed credit for what he called "some of the most important anti-pollution policies in a decade."

"Since 2001, the condition of America's land, air and water has improved," he told an audience of about 200 people.

But even as Bush announced a goal of creating or preserving 3 million wetland acres over five years, alumni of the first Earth Day in 1970 criticized him for ignoring basic environmental issues such as economic sustainability and the growing world dependence on fossil fuels, including Middle Eastern oil.

"There's a disaster coming," warned Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, 85, a former U.S. senator from Wisconsin. "The president and Congress should lead us toward a goal of environmental and economic sustainability. But the exploiters dominate opinion. I've never seen anything like it."

"The environment is a cutting issue for a lot of people, and that's going to hurt Bush," said Sandy Maisel, political science professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

As a political issue, wetlands appeals to a key Republican constituency of sportsmen who have met Bush twice since last November to register concerns about the loss of hunting and fishing areas to development.

A recent Gallup poll showed a 46 percent disapproval rating for Bush on the environment compared to a 41 percent approval rating. The poll had a three percent margin of error.

After Bush spoke, former Environmental Protection Agency head Carol Browner told CNN that the president had redefined wetlands so that nearly half of U.S. wetland areas were no longer protected by the EPA, which was created in response to the first Earth Day.

Environmentalists and Democrats, including presidential candidate John Kerry, say Bush has damaged air, water and land quality by relaxing EPA enforcement of pollutants such as mercury emissions from power plants.

In February, scientists including 20 Nobel laureates issued a statement accusing the Bush administration of deliberately distorting scientific findings to further its political aims.

Critics also said Bush's wetlands message allowed the president, a former Texas oil man, to skirt the weightier issue of rising energy consumption.

"If we had a president who wanted to solve environmental problems, and he brought in advisers and said: 'What requires my help to fix?' The answer would be energy," said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope, whose group has battled the White House to the Supreme Court in hopes of identifying members of the secret task force that formulated Bush's energy policy.

What many environmentalists want is a major national initiative akin to the Apollo space project of the 1960s to drive development of new fuels and technologies and solve a range of problems from air and water quality to health.

Bush administration officials defended the president's environmental record, citing proposed tax incentives for solar energy and hybrid-fuel vehicles. An official said the president had also tightened fuel efficiency standards for gas-guzzling SUVs from 20.7 mpg to 22.2 mpg .

"At least they can say that's more than the Democrats proposed under Clinton," said independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

Ailing oceans need help, panel says
April 21, 2004, Knight Ridder News Service

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy released a massive and dismal report yesterday detailing the degradation of the world's oceans, saying they're polluted, overfished and inattentively managed. The report offered more than 200 recommendations for improvement.

"Our oceans and our coasts are in trouble, and we as a nation have a historic opportunity to make a positive and lasting change in the way we manage them before it's too late," said retired Adm. James D. Watkins, the commission's chairman. Congress created the panel in 2000 to focus attention on ocean issues and management.

The study, the most comprehensive ocean survey in 35 years, notes that more than 37 million people and 19 million homes have been added to U.S. coastlines since the late 1960s. More than 40,000 acres of U.S. coastal wetlands a year are lost to development, according to the report, and more than half of the world's coral reefs may be gone in the next three decades.

Among their major recommendations, the commissioners call for:

* Doubling federal investment in oceans research, which now stands at $650 million annually.
* Creating measurable water pollution reduction goals, particularly for pollution that doesn't come from a concentrated source such as a sewage pipe or factory smokestack. The most troublesome source is storm water run-off that picks up fertilizers, lawn chemicals and other contaminants as it flows toward the ocean.
* Improving oceans education for elementary, secondary, college and graduate students.
* Establishing a National Ocean Council in the Executive Office of the President.

To pay for ocean protection and enhancement, the panel proposes creating an Ocean Policy Trust Fund modeled after the Highway Trust Fund for transportation projects. It would be fed from royalties and other fees paid to the U.S. Treasury for offshore oil and gas drilling and "new uses of offshore waters." Fish farming and deep-sea mining, both unpopular with environmentalists, are among the possibilities.

Speak out
To send comments on the report:
• E-mail:
comments@oceancommission.gov
• Mail:
Public Comment on Preliminary Report, U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy
1120 20th Street, NW
Suite 200 North
Washington, D.C. 20036
• Fax: (202) 418-3475

Please note the words "Public Comment on Preliminary Report" on the fax cover sheet. "Will it be tough to sell? You better believe it. But we're going to go for it," said Watkins.

Members of Congress already are preparing legislation related to the report.

This week, the Senate Commerce and Appropriations committees will begin a series of hearings on the commission's findings. In the House, the bipartisan Oceans Caucus plans to stitch the newly released recommendations into legislation it has been drafting since June, when the Pew Oceans Commission, a private panel financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts, issued similar findings.

"We are putting together the BOB — the Big Oceans Bill," said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., an Ocean Caucus co-chairman. "It will put together the recommendations of the Pew Commission with those from this commission."

Environmental groups seized on the report as an opportunity to promote ocean awareness. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association, for example, said it would launch an education campaign June 8 in member institutions nationwide.

Commissioners noted that this was the first presidential panel to examine America's oceans since the Stratton Commission in 1969 made recommendations to Congress that led to creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post contributed to this report.

Mantis shrimp may have swiftest kick in the animal kingdom
21-Apr-2004, University of California – Berkeley

Berkeley - Forget boxers Oscar de la Hoya and Shane Mosley. The fastest punches are delivered by a lowly crustacean - the stomatopod, or mantis shrimp.

With the help of a BBC camera crew and the loan of a high-speed video camera, University of California, Berkeley, scientists have recorded the swiftest kick, and perhaps most brutal attack, of any predator. The shrimp flail their club-shaped front leg at peak speeds of 23 meters per second to shatter the hard shells of their prey.

"The speed of this strike exceeds most animal movements by far," said biologist Sheila Patek, a Miller Post-doctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. "It's insanely fast, but important for generating the forces necessary to crush its preferred food - snails."

When slowed down by a factor of 330, the video shows the mantis shrimp's fist pummeling the shell of a snail like a slow-motion glove smashing into the face of a boxer. Patek is currently conducting experiments which show that the blow yields a tremendous amount of force - well over a hundred times the mantis shrimp's body weight.

In a short note appearing in the April 22 issue of the journal Nature, Patek and her colleagues, graduate student Wyatt Korff and professor of integrative biology Roy Caldwell, report the record-setting strike and the unusual saddle-shaped spring in the hinge of the shrimp's striking appendage that makes it all possible.

This spring is technically a hyperbolic paraboloid, a structure similar to a Pringles potato chip. Very strong, especially when compressed, hyperbolic paraboloids have been used by architects to create structures that don't easily buckle. The nautilus employs this structural element to build a sturdier shell. In mantis shrimp, however, the saddle-shaped structure can also function as a spring, the UC Berkeley researchers found. It stores energy until a quick release propels the shrimp's club in a shell-crushing blow.

"We know of no other biological example where this saddle-shaped structure is used as a spring," Patek said.

Mantis shrimp are distant relatives of the shrimp and lobster, common around the world and major invertebrate predators around coral reefs. Some hide in burrows and dart out to spear fish with their sharp appendages. Others roam the ocean floor in search of other crustaceans - crabs, clams and snails - and smash them open with their club-shaped front appendages. In captivity, these club-equipped stomatopods have been known to break the glass walls of their tank.

Patek, who studies communication in crustaceans and related organisms, has previously looked at the sounds made by the spiny lobster. Three years ago, she discovered that the spiny lobster makes noise in the same stick-and-slip manner of a violin.

Since coming to UC Berkeley, Patek has investigated other animals, including the mantis shrimp, Caldwell's main interest. She and her colleagues attempted to videotape the shrimp's feeding strikes, but they found that the animals moved faster than their video system could capture.

Last spring, however, the BBC rented a new high-speed camera for the team as part of a series on how new technology contributes to biological research. With this camera, the researchers were finally able to visualize the extremely fast strikes. The BBC television crew spent a week in Caldwell's laboratory helping to set up scenes with peacock mantis shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus) as the aggressors and local Tegula snails as the victims.

Though the rented $60,000 high-speed camera could shoot at 100,000 frames per second, what Patek valued was its ability to obtain high-resolution video at 5,000 frames per second in hard-to-light situations.

"We got absolutely spectacular images," she said, crediting the nonstop work of the TV crew. The video they obtained was broadcast in the United Kingdom in February as part of the series, Animal Camera. The series is scheduled to air in the United States this spring on Animal Planet.

As the researchers analyzed the video, however, they discovered that the previous estimate of the speed of another mantis shrimp species' strike - 10 meters per second - was much lower than the speeds observed in this particular species. Instead, the peak speeds of the striking appendage were 14 to 23 meters per second, with peak accelerations ranging from 6,300 to 8,000 times that of gravity.

Other animals with fast feeding strikes are the trap-jaw ant, at 17 meters per second, and the much smaller nematocysts of the hydra, which accelerate four times faster but achieve much lower speeds.

The shrimp's speed and acceleration were thought to be created solely by a click mechanism: the shrimp cocks and latches its appendage, the muscles contract, and when the latch is released, the energy stored in the muscles is released in a swift kick. This description, however, could not explain the extreme acceleration of the videotaped strike, so the researchers looked elsewhere.

The answer turned out to be a largely ignored piece of the shrimp's exoskeleton - the flexible, saddle-shaped structure in the striking appendage. They showed that it acted like a spring, storing elastic energy when the appendage is cocked, and releasing it when the shrimp strikes.

"All mantis shrimp have the saddle-shaped structure, though there is a lot of variation," said Patek, who is looking for other creatures that employ hyperbolic paraboloid structures as springs. "Using as few structures as possible with the least amount of energetic investment is a fundamental principle in many biological systems."

The high-speed video revealed other interesting aspects of the strike, including bubbles generated at the point of impact. The researchers suggest that the shrimp is taking advantage of a physical process called cavitation - the destructive effect of exploding bubbles - to break snail shells. The bubbles are created by negative pressure near the point of impact, either during the swift strike or as the heel of the appendage pulls back afterward. The popping bubbles also generate sound, and perhaps even light.

The smashing impacts and cavitation also eat away at the heel of the shrimp's appendage. Some shrimp develop holes completely through the exoskeleton to the flesh below, though periodic molting renews the hard mineralized heel surface.

Stomatopods are unique in many other ways. Caldwell discovered last year that these animals are the only known sea creature to use fluorescence to signal one another. The creatures also have the most sophisticated eyes of any animal on Earth. Some species have more than 10 pigments sensitive to different wavelengths of light, compared to only three pigments in humans. And at least one stomatopod is known to move by curling up and rolling like a wheel - downhill only, of course.

Gay penguins devoted to each other
22.04.2004, The Aucklander

They live together, flirt together and provide for each other.

They've been a couple for 10 years and it's just like any loving relationship - they've even tried to raise a family together. What makes this partnership so special, however, is that the lovers are King penguins - and both are male.

Julio and Fabio (known as Fatboy to his friends) are 16 years old and live at Kelly Tarlton's aquarium in Auckland. The couple have been together ever since they came to Kelly Tarlton's from San Diego in 1994.

Bird curator Rochelle Deane says King penguins are usually quite promiscuous, but Julio and Fatboy are an exclusive couple. They may flirt with the other males a little - Julio tends to get quite jealous of Fatboy's gregarious nature - but they have remained faithful for a decade.

"Fatboy and Julio have never shown any interest in females," Rochelle says. "They have eyes only for each other."

The two spend their days swimming and playing together. They trumpet and bow and regurgitate food for each other, just like the straight couples.

"They don't actually bonk," says Rochelle. "But they're totally out there."

Six years ago they even attempted to start a family when they were given another couple's egg to care for. The egg turned out to be infertile, but Rochelle says she wouldn't hesitate to give them another.

King penguins are the second-largest penguin species. They can live for up to 22 years and grow up to 1m tall. Fatboy is the heavyweight of the Kelly Kings, at 22kg.

Kings don't establish nests. Instead they incubate their eggs by balancing them on one foot to keep them warm. Both parents help to raise chicks.

Kelly Tarlton's has 29 Kings and 58 Gentoos - the world's third-smallest species of penguin.