- Animals

Unprecedented: Cold Snap Kills Millions of Aquatic Animals in South America

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:21:26 -0600

Source: Nature News

With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But during the Southern Hemisphere's recent winter, unusually low temperatures in part of the country's tropical region hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.

Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known, and, as an example of a sudden climatic change wreaking havoc on wildlife, it is unprecedented in recorded history.

"There's just a huge number of dead fish," says Michel Jégu, a researcher from the Institute for Developmental Research in Marseilles, France, who is currently working at the Noel Kempff Mercado Natural History Museum in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. "In the rivers near Santa Cruz there's about 1,000 dead fish for every 100 metres of river."

With such extreme climatic events potentially becoming more common due to climate change, scientists are hurrying to coordinate research into the impact, and how quickly the ecosystem is likely to recover.

The extraordinary quantity of decomposing fish flesh has polluted the waters of the Grande, Pirai and Ichilo rivers to the extent that local authorities have had to provide alternative sources of drinking water for towns along the rivers' banks. Many fishermen have lost their main source of income, having been banned from removing any more fish from populations that will probably struggle to recover.

The blame lies, at least indirectly, with a mass of Antarctic air that settled over the Southern Cone of South America for most of July. The prolonged cold snap has also been linked to the deaths of at least 550 penguins along the coasts of Brazil and thousands of cattle in Paraguay and Brazil, as well as hundreds of people in the region.

Water temperatures in Bolivian rivers that normally register about 15 ˚C during the day fell to as low as 4 ˚C.

Hundreds of Thousands of Dead Fish on New Jersey Shore

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:09:55 -0600

A Little Monkey Business

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:05:06 -0600

Hundreds of Dead Penguins Wash Up on Brazil Beaches

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:19:58 -0600

Source: The Telegraph

Hundreds of penguins that apparently starved to death are washing up on the beaches of Brazil, worrying scientists who are still investigating what is causing them to die:

About 500 of the black-and-white birds have been found dead just in the last 10 days on Peruibe, Praia Grande and Itanhaem beaches in Sao Paulo state, said Thiago do Nascimento, a biologist at the Peruibe Aquarium.

Most were Magellan penguins migrating north from Argentina, Chile and the Falkland Islands in search of food in warmer waters.

Many are not finding it: Autopsies done on several birds revealed their stomachs were entirely empty - indicating they likely starved to death, Mr Nascimento said.

Scientists are investigating whether strong currents and colder-than-normal waters have hurt populations of the species that make up the penguins' diet, or whether human activity may be playing a role.

"Overfishing may have made the fish and squid scarcer," Mr Nascimento said.

He said it was common for penguins to swim north this time of year. Inevitably, some get lost along the way or die from hunger or exhaustion, and end up on the Brazilian coast far from home.

But not in such numbers - Mr Nascimento said about 100 to 150 live penguins show up on the beach in an average year, and only 10 or so are dead.

"What worries us this year," he said, "is the absurdly high number of penguins that have appeared dead in a short period of time."

The Starlings on Otmoor

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:26:48 -0600

Damian Aspinall’s Extraordinary Gorilla Encounter

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:17:08 -0600

Killing the Gulf

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:19:08 -0600

Genetically Altered Salmon Get Closer to the Table

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:59:53 -0600

Source: New York Times

The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.

AquaBounty, developer of the AquAdvantage Atlantic salmon, would sell fish eggs to fish farms, not salmon to supermarkets.

The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade. But the company now seems to have submitted most or all of the data the F.D.A. needs to analyze whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held as early as this fall.

Some consumer and environmental groups are likely to raise objections to approval. Even within the F.D.A., there has been a debate about whether the salmon should be labeled as genetically engineered (genetically engineered crops are not labeled).

The salmon’s approval would help open a path for companies and academic scientists developing other genetically engineered animals, like cattle resistant to mad cow disease or pigs that could supply healthier bacon. Next in line behind the salmon for possible approval would probably be the “enviropig,” developed at a Canadian university, which has less phosphorus pollution in its manure.

The salmon was developed by a company called AquaBounty Technologies and would be raised in fish farms. It is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon as well as a genetic on-switch from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the salmon.

Toxic Gulf

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:08:54 -0600

Source: VBS.TV

Corexit/Oil Eats Through Boat Hulls

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:52:22 -0600

Video Games - E3 2010 - AOTS Exclusive

Obsessives: Honey

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:20:35 -0600

Mutant Cows Die in GM Trial

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 23:09:42 -0600

Source: NZ Herald

Genetically modified cows were born with ovaries that grew so large they caused ruptures and killed the animals.

The bungled experiment happened during a study by AgResearch scientists at Ruakura, Hamilton, to find human fertility treatments through GM cows' milk.

AgResearch is studying tissue from one of three dead calves to try to find out what made the ovaries grow up to the size of tennis balls rather than the usual thumbnail-size.

Details of the deaths - in veterinary reports released to the Weekend Herald under the Official Information Act - have reignited debate over the ethics of GM trials on animals.

AgResearch's applied technologies group manager, Dr Jimmy Suttie, said he did not see the deaths as a "big deal", and they were part of the learning process for scientists.

...

The calves died last year, aged six months. They were formed when human genetic code injected into a cow cell was added to an egg from a cow's ovary and put into a cow's uterus.

The scientists hoped that the genetic code, a human follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), would enable the cows that were produced to produce milk containing compounds that could be used as a human fertility treatment.

Under permits issued by the Environmental Risk Management Authority last month, AgResearch can put human genes into goats, sheep and cows for 20 years to see if the animals produce human proteins in their milk.

The proteins could eventually be used to treat human disorders.

...

The Official Information Act documents show a Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) investigation found deformities and respiratory problems among animals at the facility - something AgResearch had been open about - but said that was a foreseeable by-product of the project.

...

Scientists noticed that four calves carrying the FSH gene grew more quickly than their clone sister, which did not have the gene.

The FSH calves had bigger abdomens and thicker necks but seemed otherwise healthy, apart from one that easily grew short of breath, said a vet's report.

Dr Suttie said the abnormalities were reported to the animal ethics committee, which told the company to monitor the calves.

Tests five months later found three of the four calves had abnormally large ovaries.

When the calves were six months old, one died suddenly of a haemorrhage to her uterine artery, probably because of stretching and distortion caused by her deformed ovaries.

Five days later, a second calf died, after her ovary became twisted and separated from her uterus.

The third calf with over-sized ovaries was killed the same day so scientists could study her tissue.

Dr Suttie said the root of the trouble was that the human FSH genes had affected the whole calf and not the mammary glands only, as was intended - a problem that did not show up in trials on mice.

"This was not intended to happen. But, bluntly, this is what research is all about."

Caviar Poaching Kills Russia's Noble "Tsar Fish"

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:53:32 -0600

The death of the seas is the harbinger of death everywhere.

The destruction of marine life through extensive and pervasive forms of pollution, the use of underwater radar, and over fishing, especially by the most impoverished of nations, has reached a critical point. The very real situation of food insecurity that the world now faces, and the spiral this induces as more hunger leads to ever greater acts of desperation, is burdening the environment beyond its ability to provide sustenance to meet the needs of a world population in excess of six billion. As the impoverished attempt to harvest ever more from their surrounding environments to meet their most basic need, they engage in a tragic dance to ecological destitution. Starving people will do what best meets their most dire need at the moment, hence a world of increasing poverty means a world of increasing chaos.

The tragedy that is unfolding, however dark it seems, is the only message humanity is capable of collectively understanding at this point. The ongoing and still largely understated oil blowout in the Gulf is one example that this type of ecological degradation will not be confined to the rural areas of some GDP defined 'poor' nation, but that this type of devastation will occur everywhere.

The 'civilized mind' is in a crisis of awareness, and humanity is therefore collectively dreaming a fabricated reality, one so out of touch with natural law that even while our support systems fail one by one, we can't comprehend the meaning, we can't make the translation across the divide of our fragmented attention.

In only takes a small group here, and a small group there, to build energy and food system resilience, those that are working towards this goal right now are those who really 'get it' as far as practical matters are concerned.

Source: Reuters

As glum Russian fishermen haul in their net, just two small sturgeon are splashing about among the daily catch.

The scene on the Volga River has become commonplace in modern Russia, where caviar poaching has decimated the species considered a national pride.

"In the old days, we would catch sturgeon each weighing 40 to 50 kg, or 60 kg (132 lb)," sighed Pavel Syzranov, the head of the once thriving Lenin fishery in southern Russia.

"Now there are no sturgeon left of that size," he said after the two immature fish, known as sterlets, were released back into the Volga.

The relentless hunt for the so-called "Czar fish" and its precious eggs has acquired such huge proportions in post-Soviet Russia that the prehistoric creature, which outlived the dinosaurs, has itself now been pushed to the edge of extinction.

Russia's wild capitalism and murky reforms of the 1990s dealt a severe blow to fisheries like the one in Zelenga, a tiny, once-flourishing town in the Volga Delta, where sturgeon come to spawn after maturing in the Caspian Sea.

Two hours by boat from the regional capital Astrakhan, dust swirls in the hot wind, and streets dotted mainly with decrepit wood huts look almost deserted. A drunken man sleeps right by the side of a potholed road.

Poverty and rampant unemployment push many people to try their luck at poaching. Some of their fellow-villagers still cannot believe it has taken the sturgeon so little time to disappear.

"This place was once teeming with fish. There were fisheries there and up there, and there -- virtually everywhere," said Alexander Kuznetsov, 76, pointing to the river.

"You wouldn't be able to walk (in the water) -- the fish would knock you down ... Where has it all gone now? I don't know."

LOST BATTLE?

In a bid to stem poaching, Russia banned black caviar exports in 2002, when it declared the situation critical, and allows just nine tonnes of the delicacy to be sold on the home market each year.

But a vast decline in sturgeon stocks has already hit the Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland body of water and the source of four-fifths of the world's black caviar.

During the Soviet era, experts estimated the annual sturgeon catch at 20,000 metric tonnes and caviar output at 2,000 tonnes.

According to the Federal Fishery Agency (Rosrybolovstvo), poaching has reduced the sturgeon population by 90 percent since 1970. Stocks are down about 40 percent since the start of the millennium.

The Russian tsars created a monopoly for the sale of caviar, and ordinary people paid no less homage to the noble fish.

Before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, churches and monasteries on the Volga were not allowed to ring their bells when giant sturgeon came upriver from the Caspian, for fear of disturbing their spawning.

In Soviet times, the authorities kept tight controls over the business. But as a rule, a Soviet worker kept a tin of the cherished roe in a fridge for the New Year holiday or the May celebration of World War Two Victory Day. Though affordable, the delicacy was often in short supply.

Today, criminals bring black caviar to wealthy capitals around the world. In Moscow, prices for beluga -- considered to be the finest caviar -- reach $2,000 or more per kilogram.

Andrei Vodopyanov, head of the Astrakhan regional fishing control authority, is charged with fighting the grassroots of the illegal business -- local poachers. But he also understands what pushes many to break the law.

"Bad ecology and dwindling (fishing) quotas mean that people just ditch their jobs, being unable to earn a living by legal means. To feed their families, they are often forced to take to poaching instead," he said.

His team of "river police" faces an uphill task, often setting free suspected poachers who throw into the water their fishing nets and catch, usually the only available evidence.

"I know the law, I know court cases," one such suspect said defiantly, having only been fined for lacking a proper license for his motorboat. "But what would they bring me to court for?

"For going to the river to find food for my child? Should I go to prison for that? Give me a job. The whole village is without work. There is no single enterprise working."

Meanwhile, Vodopyanov's men dragged out a rope with dangling razor-sharp hooks placed across one of the channels where the sturgeon come for spawning. Even a minor scratch means imminent death for a sturgeon after its exhausting migration.

PRIDE OF MUSEUM EXHIBIT?

In 2000 Russia banned commercial catching of beluga, a predator known for its longevity and size: the largest of the sturgeon, it reaches more than 5 meters (16 ft) long and weighs up to a tonne (2,200 lb).

In 2005 Moscow slapped a ban on commercial catching of the Russian sturgeon -- the most populous variety in the Caspian basin -- and stellate sturgeon.

But scientists say this is not enough and call for joint action by all five Caspian states, which also include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran.

Raisa Khodorevskaya, a leading specialist in sturgeon and a department chief at the Caspian Fisheries Research Institute, said it didn't make sense for Russia to abstain from commercial fishing while some other littoral states continued catching.

Catching at sea must be banned, she argued, because in this case fishermen and poachers alike catch sturgeon that often do not reach maturity for spawning. Depending on the variety and gender of sturgeon, it may take them up to 18 years to mature.

A few decades ago, shops in Volga cities were packed with tins of affordable black caviar and giant chunks of sturgeon.

By bitter irony, today's Astrakhan hosts a unique sturgeon museum -- a grim hint that it may become a mere exhibit one day.

Khodorevskaya, whose institute releases millions of young sturgeons into the wild each year, said Russia was probably 10 years late to start fighting for the noble fish.

Garbage Warrior - (Film Trailer)

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:47:37 -0600

This film is an absolute must see. If you're even remotely like myself you'll laugh your a$% off, you'll get angry, and you might even shed a tear of humor and joy. The production value is very good, better than the trailer lets on.

Purchase the DVD here.

The Photographic Chimp And The Elephant Artisan

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:17:45 -0700