Full Text Of News Articles

Reopening swordfish fishing will harm endangered species, say environmentalists
September 03, 2004, By Associated Press

Environmentalists have sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), saying the agency's decision to reopen commercial fishing for swordfish will harm albatross and endangered sea turtles.

The lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court contends the service violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act when it resumed allowing the Hawaii-based longline fishers to catch swordfish after a four-year hiatus.

Wende Goo, a spokeswoman with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the agency couldn't immediately comment because it hadn't had time to study the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed by the environmental law firm Earthjustice on behalf of two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Turtle Island Restoration Network, and Ka Iwa Kua Lele, a group of Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra ordered a ban on longline swordfishing across a vast swath of the Pacific in 2000 because of the lack of an environmental impact statement.

Longline fishers use lines up to 50 miles long that carry thousands of baited hooks to catch swordfish.

Earthjustice said longlining for swordfish will cause the deaths of black-footed albatrosses and Laysan albatrosses, as well as endangered sea turtles, who get caught on the hooks.

The Hawaii-based fishery was reopened by the fisheries service in April under guidelines that were relaxed after experiments in the Atlantic Ocean showed that longline fishers using "circle" hooks and mackerel-type bait were able to reduce the number of sea turtles they accidentally hooked.

Before the court-ordered ban, 112 leatherback turtles and 418 loggerhead turtles were accidentally caught between 1994 and 1999.

Under new rules, if a total of 16 leatherback turtles or 17 loggerhead turtles are hooked, swordfishing will be closed for the remainder of the year.

"Time and again, NMFS has turned its back on protected species, the health of the oceans, and our legacy to future generations and instead kowtows to the longline industry's demands for more fishing at any cost," Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff said.

Navy changes claim on sonar use
September 1, 2004, Honolulu Advertiser

The Navy now concedes that warships used active sonar off Kaua'i July 3, just before a pod of some 200 deepwater melon-headed whales appeared in Hanalei Bay shallows.

Marine mammal experts on the scene said the whales were behaving strangely and ultimately left a dead infant behind as they were coaxed out of the bay by beachgoers on canoes and kayaks.

Navy officials insist that the sonar was used too far away from Kaua'i — one ship about 30 miles and one 37 miles northwest of Hanalei Bay — to have affected the whales. But investigators say they're not ready to accept that conclusion as debate continues over the effect of sonar on marine mammals.

"I think that it's premature to make that determination until we have all the facts together," said Donna Wieting, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Protected Resources.

Authorities in several countries are probing links between high-volume sonar and whale injuries, a field that Wieting said was not even generally considered an issue as recently as five years ago.

"I think it's clear that we now know that certain intense incidences of man-made noise can injure or kill marine mammals," said Erin Heskett, senior program officer with the International Fund for Animal Welfare and a member of the U.S. Marine Mammal Advisory Committee on Acoustic Impacts on Marine Mammals.

He said he and others on the committee have been briefed by the Navy about the Kaua'i incident and have watched the Navy's position change over time. He said he is frustrated by the lack of consistency.

"They are now acknowledging that indeed the two ships turned on their sonar. From my perspective, we need to get the story straight. We need to get our facts right and try to come up with a solution," he said.

The Navy initially said that sonar could not have been responsible for the whale behavior because sonar was first employed at 8:33 a.m. on July 3, an hour after the deep-ocean whales were first spotted in a tight pod in the shallows of Hanalei Bay. The most consistent time for the first sighting of the whales in Hanalei is 7:30 a.m., although Navy officials say they are investigating a possible earlier sighting.

U.S. and Japanese navy ships were using the sub-finding sonar technology as part of a RIMPAC multi-national naval exercises off Kaua'i's Pacific Missile Range Facility. Six sonar-equipped ships were involved and all used their sonar during the exercise. Active sonar uses an intense burst of sound that travels through the water, and identifies the location of enemy submarines when the sound echoes off their hulls.

Two Japanese ships tested their sonar before the exercise began. Pearl Harbor-based Navy Pacific Fleet spokesman Jon Yoshishige yesterday said a review of the data from the exercise shows that one ship tested its active sonar at 6:45 a.m., and that a second ship tested its sonar at 7 a.m.

Navy spokesman Lt. David Benham yesterday said that, following standard procedures, every ship conducted a full 360-degree visual search of surrounding waters to make sure no whales or civilian boaters were in the region before turning on the sonar.

NOAA's Wieting said Navy officials have also reported they were using the sonar a day earlier.

"They actually were testing the sonar and using it starting at midday on the second (of July)," as they were in transit from Pearl Harbor to Kaua'i, she said. Yoshishige confirmed that Navy ships did test their active sonar in the Kaua'i Channel on July 2.

Wildlife officials worldwide have been studying the link between the use of active sonar gear and marine mammals, particularly after 17 whales were found dead in the Bahamas following a military sonar exercise. In that case, the Navy conceded that under certain conditions, loud mid-frequency sonar could damage marine mammals.

In the Kaua'i case, there is no evidence that sonar was directly or indirectly associated with the whales' activity. Marine mammal veterinarian Bob Braun said that while he could see no injured whales, the pod as a whole was behaving as if under stress on July 3.

The Navy halted its sonar use at 4:45 p.m. July 3, immediately after learning of the whales' behavior, Benham said. Sonar use continued to be prohibited off the Pacific Missile Range until July 7, he said.

Kayakers and canoe paddlers used a cable of twisted leafy vines to herd the melon-headed whale pod back out the sea on July 4. The next morning, a dead infant melon-headed whale was found washed up on Hanalei Bay's sand beach. Veterinarian Braun said the necropsy on the whale, performed on the Mainland, showed no obvious injuries. The newborn whale appeared to have died because it had not been feeding.

"Either the kid couldn't keep up, or the mom couldn't provide — something like that," Braun said.

Various working theories about the whales in Hanalei have been broached, including Navy sonar, some other ocean noise, whales following an injured pod-mate to shore, or some kind of toxic "red tide" bloom offshore.

Wieting said it is fully possible that no firm cause will be determined.

"It's unlikely that we will be able to know what caused these animals to almost strand. Maybe it was a disease. Maybe it was a noise. Maybe it was something else," she said.

Part of the problem, Wieting said, is that "we know very little about melon-headed whales. We don't know how fast they can swim. We don't know the frequency range of their vocalizations. We don't know the impact of this (sonar) frequency range on them."

Heskett's International Fund for Animal Welfare is one of several large environmental organizations calling on the Navy to employ measures to reduce sonar effects on marine mammals. Suggested techniques involve having trained marine mammal experts on all Navy ships using sonar in testing, gradually ramping up the sound level to give whales time to escape before the noise reaches damaging levels, and reducing the ultimate volume of the sonar.

"Hopefully what comes out of this is the identification of ways to mitigate or improve this situation," he said.

Monk seal on Kaua'i bites pushy tourist in the butt
August 27, 2004, Honolulu Advertiser

One monk seal bit a tourist on the buttock yesterday after being shoved.

Another pair of seals, a mother and her 3-week-old pup, kept hundreds of visitors and residents off the beach.

What's happening at Po'ipu Beach is an example of the challenges that remain in efforts to keep endangered Hawaiian monk seals and people apart.

The 64-year-old man who was bitten was not seriously hurt in the encounter, which took place in the water fronting the Sheraton Kaua'i Hotel. No stitches were required, but he got a tetanus shot and antibiotics.

"The individual got aggressive with the seal. He was trying to get to shore and he tried to push the seal away. I talked to him afterwards, and he was more embarrassed than anything," said Brad Ryon, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries marine biologist.

The biting incident was only the second known on Kaua'i. Three years ago, a nursing mother seal snapped at the hindquarters of a swimmer who got a little too close to her pup. The mother seal is the same one that had another pup on Po'ipu Beach this year.

The mom hasn't gone after any humans this year, but she wrestled aggressively yesterday morning with a young male seal that approached her 23-day-old pup. The male may have been the same one that bit the tourist.

For all of yesterday's activity, this year hasn't been a really big seal year. In some years, as many as five big seals have hauled out on the south Kaua'i beach at the same time.

Wildlife officials and a team of 86 trained volunteers keep a watch on the mother and pup, answering visitors' questions, and explaining why they've roped off the beach where the seals are present.

"The mothers don't take well to disturbance," said Jean Souza, Kaua'i manager of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.

Most of the folks viewing the seals about noon yesterday seemed happy to leave the beach to the animals.

"It's cool. It's an animal and we should take care of them," said Jim Goodrich of Palo Alto, Calif.

Wailua resident Alejandro Hernandez brought his nephew, Alex Lopez of Makakilo, to the beach specifically to see the seals.

"It's good. It's time for humans to do something for endangered species. I feel sorry for the tourists who come so far to visit a safe beach, but I think it's worth it," Hernandez said.

Most visitors do manage to get to the beach, though, because of a new cooperation between wildlife officials, state and county governments, volunteers and the local visitor industry, said Margy Parker, executive director of the Po'ipu Beach Resort Association. The seal teams try to act quickly to open beaches when the seals have swum away from them.

"This year, there's a remarkable cooperation going on. Every time they change the part of the beach that's closed, they call me, and I blast e-mail to about 60 resort properties in the area, including every hotel and condominium project, vacation rentals, time shares and little inns," Parker said.

Yesterday, visitors could picnic on the grass at the beach park, and if they wanted to swim, they had only to walk a few dozen yards to the east, to the beach fronting the Marriott Waiohai Resort. And for most yesterday, that didn't seem too far to go.

$40,000 Fine for Falsely Labeled "Dolphin Safe" Tuna
Earth Island Institute, September 01, 2004

Earth Island Institute's International Marine Mammal Project applauds a San Diego federal court action against smugglers bringing Dolores tuna, canned in Mexico, into the US with a phony "Amigo de Delfin" (Dolphin Friendly) label. Salvador Garcia Sandoval, owner of TBA Mexican Trade Grocery of Chula Vista, CA, pleaded guilty to illegally importing more than 1600 cases of tuna. He agreed to pay the US government $40,000 to make up for lost tax duties and $1,975 to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries for administrative costs.

"This case sends a warning to all markets and grocers in the US," stated David Phillips, Director of Earth Island. "Falsely labeled tuna hurts dolphins, US consumers, and both US and foreign tuna companies that have adopted legitimate 'Dolphin Safe' tuna fishing practices. American consumers deserve to know whether the tuna they buy was caught by methods that kill dolphins."

Earth Island conducted an investigation of reports of illegal tuna being sold in US supermarkets. Earth Island documented that Dolores tuna, canned in Mazatlan, was being sold as "Dolphin Friendly" in many US stores. Dolores tuna is canned by PINSA, the largest cannery in Mexico, which has a fleet of purse seine boats which chase and net dolphins. More than 7 million dolphins have been killed in the tuna fishery since the late 1950's when the large purse seine nets were first introduced.

Earth Island contacted investigators with NOAA Fisheries, who, in concert with US Customs, caught a truckload of Dolores tuna at the border. The load of tuna was traced to Mexican Trade Grocery.

Sandoval will appear in court before Judge Anthony J. Battaglia for further sentencing on November 15, 2004. Maximum penalty for fraudulent importation of merchandise is up to 5 years in jail and up to $250,000 fine. (Criminal Case No. 04cr2293)

NOTE: We are saddened to learn that Brett Schneider, the NOAA Fisheries investigator who developed the case, has passed away. We appreciate his help and efforts to protect dolphins.

Wayward whale just won't leave N.S. power dam
CTV.ca News Staff

A young humpback whale trapped in a Nova Scotia power dam is still swimming around in the Annapolis River, despite attempts by fishery officials and biologists to lure it out.

Jerry Conway, a marine mammal specialist with the Fisheries Department, says the whale will be left alone for a few days.

There had been homes that the whale, nicknamed "Sluice", would find its own way out of the dam. Officials even tried to seduce Sluice with "whale music" to encourage him to head out to the Bay of Fundy.

The plan appeared to be working at first, but for some reason the whale turned and headed back into the dam.

Since the whale won't leave on its own, Conway said other options will have to considered, including making a lot of noise to frighten it, or trailing a net behind him to make him leave the power station.

There is no incentive for the whale to leave the dam, because high tides are bringing in meals of herring and mackerel twice a day.

Sluice entered the power dam more than a week ago. Ever since then, the Annapolis royal Tidal Generating Station has been shut down.

It's thought he was in search of dinner as he followed a school of fish through the gates and up the Annapolis River.

Sluice had come within metres of the gates a few times, but always seemed to change his mind at the last minute.

This is the second time in recent memory a whale has slipped through the gates of the 20-year-old Annapolis plant. The first whale to enter the head pond 10 years ago eventually left without a scrape after a few hours.

The plant generates electricity twice a day when the bay's tides fill the head pond. When the tide falls, the water flows through the turbine, producing more than 30 million kilowatt hours per year -- enough to power 4,000 homes.

Climate change takes its toll on Fiji's coral
04.09.2004, The New Zealand Herald

A marine biologist is alarmed at the deterioration of the Fijian coral reefs he has seen in the past 20 years.

Professor Leon Zann, head of the University of the South Pacific's marine studies programme, said Fiji's once large and robust reefs were failing.

Professor Zann, a former manager of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Australia, has been back in Fiji for six months after earlier work monitoring the Suva reef in the 1980s.

"When I arrived, I went out to the reef and the coral was covered with seaweed."

The reef, about 3.5km off Suva, had also been harmed by crown of thorns starfish that ate the coral.

"And there is a lot of alarm in Fiji that the sharks are disappearing ... they are a good indicator of a healthy reef."

Professor Zann said the biggest worry was the extent of coral bleaching, where the coral shed the microscopic algae which gave it its bright colours and turned white.

The algae were essential for the coral's growth, but it dumped them when it was stressed from changes in water temperature, salinity or oxygen levels.

Nothing could be immediately done about such global climate change that would make a difference to coral reefs.

Professor Zann said coral bleaching was a huge worldwide problem.

An outbreak in the late 1990s had not hurt Fiji reefs, but in 2000 a large body of warm water moving from the Cook Islands to Tahiti and Fiji, then Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, had triggered coral bleaching in those reefs.

Fiji's problem was exacerbated by land activity run-off into waterways, increasing population, and high commercial domestic demand for coral fish.

Jolts of electricity revive damaged coral reef
The Associated Press, Sept. 1, 2004

As the late-afternoon sun bathes the beach with a soft warmth, gentle waves lap quietly at the shore — and strollers occasionally stumble over a thick wad of white cables embedded in the fine, black sand.

The cables seem to disappear into the sea, where large blue plastic balls bob in the waves. And they seem to come out of nowhere, sprouting like a nasty growth on the face of this stretch of tropical paradise on Bali's northwestern coast.

The wires are part of highly original and ambitious underwater experiment: the use of low-voltage electrical current to stimulate regrowth in a badly damaged coral reef.

Conceived by coral expert Tom Goreau of the United States and German architecture professor Wolf Hilbertz, both members of the Global Coral Reef Alliance, the project began four years ago and has already achieved remarkable results.

Covering nearly 1,000 feet, the Karang Lestari Project — "coral preservation" in Indonesian — is the world's largest coral nursery ever built using this technology.

"You can really see the difference in the reef in just a short time," said Chris Brown, owner of Reef Seen Aquatics Dive Center, which co-sponsors the project along with local hotels and shops committed to preserving the reef.

Other areas adopt
The technique is also being used experimentally in other tropical locations, such as Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, but the project in Bali is the largest and most ambitious of its kind.

Indonesia is home to 581 of the world's 793 known coral reef-building species, and most thrive in Pemuteran Bay. The area has long been a favorite among scuba divers, who will go elsewhere, affecting tourism, if the reef dies.

On the sandy ocean floor 9 to 21 feet down are dozens of grids made from welded construction bars. Seen from above, they look like some underwater playground equipped with jungle gyms, monkey bars, upside-down cone and other climbing apparatus for kids. One looks like the ribcage of a whale.

Wires carrying the electrical current are secured to the bars and are plugged into onshore charging stations. Brown estimates the amount of electricity used in a week is equal to burning a single 60-watt bulb for a month.

Non-swimmers can follow the reef's renewal thanks to color photographs displayed at Taman Sari Bali Cottages, a sponsor that injected some $15,000 in seed money to get the project started in 2000.

New growth in days
Brown, an Australian who settled in this fishing village of 8,000 people in 1992 and a co-owner of the cottages, said that within days of receiving their first jolts of electricity, the bars grew a white limestone film. This covering provides the necessary substrate for coral growth.

The grids were then seeded with small fragments of live coral, which begin to grow "between five and 10 times faster than normal, with much brighter colors and more resilience to hot weather and pollution," said a co-owner of the Taman Sari Cottages, an American who goes by the single name Naryana.

Some corals have been transplanted directly onto the bars, attached by wires or wedged into specially designed spaces. Soft corals, sponges, tunicates and anemones were also transplanted.

Vibrant colors and growth up to half an inch in less than a month have been recorded. Grids that suffered power failures saw less vigorous development and duller colors.

"Today, the fish are back, including deep-water fish which come into the reef to rest during the daytime," Naryana said.

The regenerated reef has attracted mobiel squid, cuttle fish, sea urchins and starfish. Batfish, damsel fish and cleaning fish also have clustered in the area, along with dense schools of snappers.

Divers also have noted the presence of large groups of young fish — a good sign of future self-sustaining populations and the long-awaited return to a balanced ecosystem.

No longer a wasteland
Naryana, who was born Randall Dodge in Nebraska, described the reef as a "total wasteland" when the project began. He said the El Nino weather phenomenon bleached it in the early 1990s, killing most of the coral in shallow water, and the 1998 Asian economic crisis forced starving fishermen to adopt destructive fishing practices that caused further damage.

Another near-catastrophe came in the mid-'90s with the arrival of some 70,000 voracious Crown of Thorns starfish, most of which divers yanked from the water before they could devour the reef.

Concerned citizens like Brown and Naryana have long supported community programs to educate the locals about the long-term consequences of the reef's worst enemy: fishing with explosives.

"Fishermen from Pemuteran actually went out and stopped the bombers," Naryana said. "It took education, talking and demonstrations to convince them that ocean conservation is the future."

Naryana agrees with Goreau and Hilbertz that the reef project is not just about jump-starting an ecosystem but rather an investment in the preservation of rapidly disappearing coral species and the fish that breed there.

Brown hopes the technique will spread to countries that lack the money for more expensive methods to regenerate or improve their coral reefs.

"We find that electricity reinforces the coral that's already there, and has a profound effect on the condition of surrounding corals," he said. "It shows you can take good coral and make it better."

Additional background on reef restoration is online at www.coralreef.org.

Study sees far deeper species extinction
Team estimates thousands more vulnerable due to dependency
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 2:02 p.m. ET Sept. 9, 2004

Conservationists concerned about the extinction of plants and animals are overlooking the danger to thousands of other species that depend on the threatened ones and could themselves go extinct, researchers reported in the new issue of the journal Science.

Using a base of 12,200 plants and animals considered threatened or endangered, the researchers calculated what's been lost so far and what could be lost in the future.

"We estimate that at least 200 affiliate species have become extinct historically from the extinction of their hosts in these groups," the team wrote, "and another 6,300 affiliate species are currently 'co-endangered' — likely to go extinct if their currently endangered hosts in these groups become extinct."

Study co-author Heather Proctor, of Canada’s University of Alberta, said in a statement that "what we found is that with the extinction of a bird, or a mammal or a plant, you aren’t just necessarily wiping out just one, single species. We’re also allowing all these unsung dependent species to be wiped out as well.”

The team used a mathematical model to look at what's termed "coextinction," adding the study marked the first time the phenomenon had been quantitatively estimated.

Not just mites, lice
In many cases, species facing coextinction tend to be things like mites and lice. But some others are more likely to be missed by humans, such as a type of butterfly from Singapore that disappeared after the vines that had provided food for its larvae became extinct.

Overall, the researchers said, the loss of one species when a different one becomes extinct shows how interconnected the world is.

“What we wanted to learn was, if the host goes extinct, how many other species will go with it,” Proctor said.

“It would be easy if there were always a one-to-one relationship with a host and its affiliate; however, not all parasites, for example, are restricted to a single host species,” Proctor said. “The trick was in trying to determine how many other species could act as hosts and factoring that degree of dependence into the study.”

Beetles, butterflies at risk, too
Using their model the group calculated that extinction of the 6,279 plants listed as threatened or endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature would also result in the loss of 4,672 species of beetles and 136 types of butterfly.

Loss of the 1,194 threatened birds could also mean disappearance of 342 species of lice and 193 types of mites.

If the 114 endangered primates were to go extinct, they said, there could also be the loss of 20 types of nematodes, 12 lice and nine fungi to depend on the primates.

"While coextinction may not be the most important cause of species extinctions, " the researchers concluded, "it is certainly an insidious one."

Kon-Tiki Replica to Sail, Study Pacific in 2005
September 8, 2004, Reuters

A replica of the Kon-Tiki balsa raft will sail the Pacific in 2005 to study mounting environmental threats to the oceans since Thor Heyerdahl made his daredevil 1947 voyage, organizers said.

One of Heyerdahl's grandsons will be among the six-strong crew for the trip from Peru aiming to reach Tahiti, about 310 miles west of the Raroia atoll where the Kon-Tiki ran aground after traveling 4,970 miles in 101 days.

Heyerdahl's original voyage defied many experts' predictions that the flimsy craft would break up and sink. He said it proved that ancient civilizations could have sailed the oceans with Stone Age technology.

"This time we want to highlight the environmental threats," expedition leader Torgeir Saeverud Higraff told a news conference of the trip sponsored in part by the U.N. Environment Program. "There have been many changes since the 1940s."

The forest in Ecuador where Norway's Heyerdahl found the balsa wood for the raft, for instance, has now been cut down by loggers. And global warming may be killing coral reefs and causing more frequent storms in the Pacific.

But not everything has got worse.

"We expect that oil pollution has been reduced because of tighter international laws," said biologist Dag Oppen-Berntsen. He would take water samples to study for traces of pesticides and other human chemicals that can damage marine life.

"People ask 'why don't you do this from a proper research ship?"' he said. "The reason is simply that we wouldn't get the same publicity for the research."

The new raft, called the Tangaroa after a Polynesian sea god, would be made of the same materials as the Kon-Tiki but include solar panels to help transmit pictures to the Internet. The Kon-Tiki was named after an Inca sun god.

The project would have a budget of $899,200 with the yet-to-be-built vessel due to leave the Peruvian port of Callao on April 28 - the same day as Heyerdahl set out in 1947. Heyerdahl died in 2002 aged 87.

The original crew were five Norwegians and a Swede. So far, the new crew are just five, including a Swede. "We're one short. We still need a good navigator," Saeverud Higraff said.

Pollution triggers bizarre behaviour in animals
03 September 04, New Scientist

Hyperactive fish, stupid frogs, fearless mice and seagulls that fall over. It sounds like a weird animal circus, but this is no freak show. Animals around the world are increasingly behaving in bizarre ways, and the cause is environmental pollution.

The chemicals to blame are known as endocrine disruptors, and range from heavy metals such as lead to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and additives such as bisphenol A.

For decades, biologists have known that these chemicals can alter the behaviour of wild animals. And in recent years it has become clear that pollutants can cause gender-bending effects by altering animals' physiology, particularly their sexual organs.

But now two major reviews have revealed that the chemicals are having a much greater impact on animal behaviour than anyone suspected. Low concentrations of these pollutants are changing both the social and mating behaviours of a raft of species. This potentially poses a far greater threat to survival than, for example, falling sperm counts caused by higher chemical concentrations.

Snails and quails

The two research teams have independently collected evidence revealing the effects on egrets and gulls, snails, quails, rats and macaques, minnows, mosquito fish, falcons and frogs. Behaviours altered include mating and parenting, nest building, learning, predator avoidance, foraging, activity levels and even balance.

In one study, for instance, male starlings exposed to dicrotophos insecticide decreased their singing, displaying, flying and foraging activities by 50%. And newts exposed to low levels of the pesticide endosulfan found it harder to sniff out the attractive pheromones of potential mates.

Researchers have also shown that increasing numbers of male western gulls hatched from eggs exposed to DDT attempt to mate with each other. In recent years, scientists have also found that lead affects the balance of gulls, while atrazine makes goldfish hyperactive and the chemical TCDD makes the play behaviour in macaques rougher.

Despite this wealth of evidence, these effects have gone largely unnoticed by toxicologists, says Ethan Clotfelter of Amherst College in Massachusetts, lead author of one of the reviews, published in August 2004 in Animal Behaviour(vol 68, p 465).

Missing a trick

Not only are we failing to acknowledge the scale of the problem caused by endocrine disruptors, but toxicologists may be missing a trick: changes in animal behaviour could be an early warning that certain chemicals are harmful. "You might see behavioural effects long before you see a population crash," Clotfelter says.

Dustin Penn and Sarah Zala of the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Comparative Ethology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna agree. They have just published a second review of the effects of endocrine disruptors in the same journal (DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2004.01.005). "The most important point is the incredible amount of evidence that this is a widespread problem," Penn says.

Both research groups say that biologists must wake up to the fact that endocrine disruptors might explain bizarre behaviour in wild animals. And both reviews reveal that different concentrations of chemicals can have unexpected effects.

Male mice exposed to low doses of some pesticides increase their scent-marking behaviour, for instance, but decrease it when exposed to higher concentrations.

Damaging doses

"Pollutants that have been considered safe when tested at medium doses could have damaging effects at lower doses," Penn and Zala warn in their review. And conversely, toxicologists might exaggerate the risks posed by higher doses.

Other behavioural biologists back the authors' call for biologists and toxicologists to work more closely to determine the scale of the problem. "It's been decades since the first evidence appeared that chemicals in the environment can influence behaviour," says John McCarty of the University of Nebraska in Omaha, who researches the impact of pollutants on birds.

"It seems to me that this body of evidence was pushed to the background while most environmental scientists and regulators focused on mortality and cancer rates [caused by endocrine disruptors and other pollutants]."

The US Environmental Protection Agency says it cannot provide a detailed comment on the research, but promises it will investigate further. "We'll review these two scientific articles as we continue to develop an endocrine screening and testing programme," a spokeswoman told New Scientist.

Geoff Brighty, ecosytems science manager at the UK Environment Agency, agrees that studying the effects of chemicals on animal behaviour should be given a higher priority. "It is becoming recognised that behaviour is important to look at to make sure a chemical is safe, and we ignore it at our peril."

Toxic fire retardants turn up in orcas
August 27, 2004, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Toxic chemical flame-retardants used in manufacturing everything from car parts to computers are now turning up in Puget Sound orcas -- raising concern among scientists and environmentalists that a long-standing icon of robust Northwest wildlife is fast becoming one for an increasingly polluted region.

Killer whales tested by Canadian fisheries scientists found troubling levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs -- the chemical cousins to carcinogenic PCBs that were banned decades ago.

The study's findings, recently published in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology, raise concerns that the long-term health of area orcas is at risk, unless a host of steps are taken that include banning the use of PBDEs, which remain widespread in worldwide manufacturing.

"Killer whales may be one of the first species that really sounds the alarm to the risks that these types of chemicals may pose," said Peter Ross, a marine mammal toxicologist for Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans who co-wrote the study.

Because orcas are top-of-the-food-chain animals, Ross added, the detection of such chemicals indicates the utter pervasiveness such toxins have had in their environment -- and by extension, ours -- over a relatively short period.

"These chemicals really only started to be marketed in the 1980s," Ross said.

The findings come as Washington's Department of Ecology is in the midst of preparing recommendations seeking to curtail the use of PBDEs in this state.

In January, Gov. Gary Locke issued an executive order, later supported by the Legislature, directing the Ecology Department to develop an action plan in dealing with such toxic flame retardants -- making Washington one of the few states that now seek, or have sought, to address use of the chemicals.

A state advisory committee is about three weeks away from issuing a draft of recommendations that will be made public before the state decides which measures to ultimately adopt, said Sheryl Hutchison, an Ecology Department spokeswoman.

In terms of environmental health, PBDEs are a "cutting edge topic, with studies coming out virtually daily all over the world," Hutchison added.

What's consistent among such studies, she said, is that "wherever you look for PBDEs, you're finding them."

A study earlier this month, for example, found that wild Northwest chinook salmon -- a staple of killer whales' diet -- possessed high levels of the chemicals.

"What's less clear is the hazards at this point," Hutchison said. "But we know enough to be concerned."

The toxicity of PBDEs -- used as a flame retardant in computer casings, foam furniture cushions, synthetic fabrics and other everyday items -- is not fully understood.

But laboratory studies have found the chemicals can cause brain and thyroid problems in rodents. And some health officials say they can harm neurological development in infants and young children.

Studies also show levels of PBDEs are rising dramatically: doubling in humans every two to five years, with levels in North America 40 times higher than the rest of the world.

Although PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, have been banned for decades, PBDEs remain in production around the world. Bans in Europe, California and Maine will take effect during the next few years, and U.S. manufacturers voluntarily are stopping production of some forms of the fire retardant.

Ivy Sager-Rosenthal, policy adviser for the environmentalist group People for Puget Sound, said yesterday the latest study on orcas only underscores the need for Washington to take action "before it's too late."

"If we wait, the orca will be gone," she said.

As part of the study, Canadian researchers between 1993 and 1996 took skin and blubber samples from about 40 living killer whales from three distinct populations:

Transients, which migrate up and down the Pacific Coast; Northern residents, which travel between north Vancouver Island and southeast Alaska; and Southern residents, which occupy waters between south Vancouver Island, coastal Washington and Puget Sound.

Scientists measured levels of three types of chemicals never before studied in orcas, Ross said. They found only trace amounts of two chemicals, while finding PBDEs in about 1 part per million milligrams of fat, he said.

Of interest to scientists, Ross added, is that levels of the chemicals were found to be relatively constant among all three groups. That's unlike a study conducted four years ago that found transients and Southern resident orcas had alarmingly higher PCB levels than Northern residents, leading scientists to dub Puget Sound orcas "the most contaminated marine mammals in the world," Ross said.

The consistency among all three groups leads Ross to believe that because PBDEs are relatively new, concentrations in each killer whale population had yet to change much at the time samples were taken.

"But remember, the samples we tested were collected 10 years ago," he said, adding killer whales today probably have much higher concentrations of the chemicals.

Because generally, orcas cannot naturally eliminate such toxins, Ross added, "over a lifetime, we'll see higher and higher concentrations of these chemicals in killer whales."

Along with seeking to increase salmon and fish populations that orcas subsist upon, and reducing human disturbances to their environment, Ross said, mitigating such toxic chemicals is the best solution for orca survival.

"It's not going to be easy," he said. "But protecting killer whale habitat will benefit not only them, but all wildlife and people, too."

Acid oceans spell doom for coral
29 August, 2004

The increasing acidity of the world's oceans could banish all coral by 2065, a leading marine expert has warned.

Professor Katherine Richardson said sea organisms that produced calcareous structures would struggle to function in the coming decades as pH levels fell

The expert, based in Denmark, told the EuroScience Open Forum 2004 that human-produced carbon dioxide was radically changing the marine environment.

CO2 levels are now said to be at their highest level for 55 million years.

Most of it will eventually be absorbed by seawater, where it will react to form carbonic acid.

The oceans currently have a pH of about 8, but experts predict this could drop to pH 7.4.

Scientists fear this increasing acidification could have a particularly detrimental effect on corals and other marine organisms, because it reduces the availability of carbonate ions in the water for them to make their hard parts.

Record readings

As climate change research has primarily concentrated on the impacts on land and in the atmosphere, our knowledge of what the rise will mean is uncertain.

However, as there are 78,000,000 gigatonnes of carbon locked up in ocean sediments compared with 750 gigatonnes of carbon in the atmosphere, the rise could have very serious implications for the carbon cycle, Professor Richardson believes.

"It makes sense that the component of the Earth's system we need to understand the most is the biggest," said the researcher from the Department of Marine Ecology in Aarhus, Denmark. "But it just happens to be the one that's most difficult for us humans to explore."

CO2 levels in the atmosphere, driven up by the burning of fossil fuels, currently stand at about 380 parts per million (ppm) - up from their pre-industrial mark of around 280 ppm.

Carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by microscopic ocean-dwelling plants called phytoplankton, through photosynthesis. But one group, called the coccolithophorids, also produce calcium carbonate platelets, called liths.

Each lith is only about 2.5 micrometres (millionths of a metre) across but a very great many are produced each year.

It is estimated that blooms of the dominant species,Emiliania Huxleyi, annually cover about 1.4 million sq km of the ocean.

When they die, they rain down to the ocean floor, in the process locking carbon away in a vast sediment store. This biological pump helps to control the exchange of carbon between the oceans and atmosphere.

Knowledge search

"E. Huxleyi has dominated the world's oceans since the Holocene, but prior to that a different species was responsible for moving all the carbon to the bottom," explained Professor Richardson.

"It's anyone's guess if another species would step in ifE. Huxleyi can't tolerate the more acidic conditions."

Scientists are beginning to address the gaping holes in our knowledge. Last week, the UK's academy of science, the Royal Society, announced a study concentrating on the impact of increased acidity on marine life.

An extra reason for the concern is that scientists have considered exploiting ocean processes to help mitigate rising CO2 levels.

The idea is that by artificially "fertilising" phytoplankton at the ocean surface, it might be possible to stimulate the take-up of CO2 - locking away some of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere that is believed to be forcing global temperatures to rise.

If increased acidity begins to hinder the natural removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, however, then we may lose one opportunity to reverse any damage induced by human activity.