Pink sea slugs swarming northwards as ocean temperatures rise
The bright pink sea slugs are typically found in Southern California, but have been found moving farther and farther north as ocean temperatures increase, possible due to global warming.
Central and Northern California are beginning to take on a pink hue as Hopkins’ rose sea slugs take over — something that scientists say may be due to global warming.The increasing global temperatures have caused an explosion in the population of the Hopkins’ rose nudibranch beyond Southern California, where it is typically found. Usually, it is extremely uncommon north of San Francisco, but scientists are spotting them in tide pools far north of that, according to a Santa Cruz Sentinel report.Rare wind patterns that scientists have yet to explain have caused temperatures in West Coast oceans to rise, which has lured the sea slug far best its typical range.And it’s not the only unusual visitor to the area, with fisherman in San Francisco capturing a sea turtle back in September that in the past would have only been found off the coast of Mexico or the Galapagos far to the south. Meanwhile, humpback whales and dolphins are being spotted on a regular basis in the Monterey Bay, according to the report.Scientists say the waters off the coast are about 5 degrees higher than they normally are for most of 2014, and it has just been increasing in warmth, according to Logan Johnson, a National Weather Service forecaster in Monterey, who was quoted in the report.Currently, waters in the Monterey Bay are running in the high 50s, and it’s staying there.Typically, such temperatures would suggest that El Nino is on its way. The current warming is being created by what is known as upwelling, which is when Northwesterly winds blow away water at the surface, causing colder waters farther down to replace it — but scientists haven’t spotted those winds.John Pearse, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, said another warm phase is beginning, although scientists have no way of know if this is part of normal oscillation or if it’s global warming, according to the report.Colder currents could be causing the sea slug’s range to shrink because their prey — rose-colored encrusting bryozoan, a moss-like life form — can be found up and down the Pacific Coast as far north as British Columbia. Now that northward currents are carrying the species larvae to tide pools, upwelling isn’t washing them away.
Read original post: ScienceRecorder.com
California sea lions in trouble
In mid-December, when moms were raising pups down south, 700-pound males hauled out onto the Moss Landing Harbor visitor dock. One fell asleep with its face in the water. (Leslie Willoughby Contributed) right).
MOSS LANDING -- When baby sea lions are healthy, the curious and bright-eyed creatures sit up on their front flippers and take in the world around them. When humans approach, they skedaddle and leave nothing behind except a fishy, musky smell.But along the Central Coast, sea lion pups in recent years increasingly have been found stranded -- and they're down to skin and bones. "Sometimes they could barely lift their heads, and they were reluctant to move, even when approached," said Claire Simeone, a conservation medicine veterinarian at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. "I could see the outlines of their hipbones and their shoulders."Even in a good year, a sea lion pup has only a 70 percent chance of reaching its first birthday. But in 2013 only 30 percent survived. And by May of that year, almost 1,500 were stranded along the California coast -- up to 10 per day along the Monterey Bay shoreline.To marine biologists, the deaths were the clearest sign yet that California sea lions, whose numbers skyrocketed for decades, are now smacking up against the limits of their environment.The stranded pups should have been with their mothers, but the mothers apparently couldn't get enough nutrition to support them, said Sharon Melin, a researcher with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.One reason was that the California Current, which flows south along the coast, moved farther offshore, making sardines and anchovies less available. Working harder to find food, the moms ate more market squid and rockfish, Melin said, and this change in diet may have reduced the quality of their milk.The number of pups rescued from Sausalito to San Luis Obispo by the Marine Mammal Center, which has a facility in Moss Landing, jumped from 35 in 2012 to 111 in 2013. And last year that number increased to more than 239."We're seeing another year of low weight and small body size," Melin said. "We're telling everyone to brace for more sea lion pups on your beaches."Although California sea lions have never been considered endangered, they have been hunted throughout history. Early Californians killed them for food; in the mid-19th century the mammals were hunted for their oil and hides. And from the 1930s to 1950s, they were turned into pet food.According to UC Santa Cruz scientists, the Montrose Chemical Corp. from 1949 to 1970 manufactured DDT and dumped thousands of tons of the insecticide residue through sewage outfalls near the Channel Islands, the main sea lion breeding area in the U.S. During the late 1960s, scientists found hundreds of premature sea lion pups at the islands, and one year half of all pups died. Tests showed that moms that miscarried their pups had at least eight times more DDT in their tissue than did moms that gave birth to fully developed pups.Two key events, however, soon improved the sea lions' fate.Montrose stopped releasing DDT into the breeding area in 1970, and two years later Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The number of pups, which had hovered around 11,000 during the mid-1970s, doubled by 1993 and exploded to 60,000 by 2009, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.But the population is now leveling off.Anticipating more starving pups this winter, the Marine Mammal Center has been ordering medications and training rescue volunteers, Simeone said.In addition to the pups, the center rescued 180 adult sea lions in 2013 and 420 last year. Some were afflicted by hookworm or another parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, which is carried by cats. Others had contracted diseases such as leptospirosis, a bacterial infection that affects their kidneys. And some were poisoned by a nerve toxin called domoic acid, which is found in increasingly widespread blooms of a particular type of algae, according to NOAA. Sea lions eat fish that eat the algae.Domoic acid also sickens humans if they eat shellfish that have eaten the toxic algae. When the Marine Mammal Center finds sea lions poisoned by domoic acid, the staff works with health departments to locate the algae and ban people from collecting shellfish nearby.Marine scientists say that sea lions are the ocean's canaries in a coal mine. "They tell us so much about the health of the ocean," Simeone said.Many fishermen and harbormasters, however, aren't as enamored with the species."If sea lions are around, a salmon sports fisherman doesn't stand a chance," said Roger Thomas, the president of the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association. "A sea lion will tear a fish right off the line and the angler is left with just a head."Thomas has been involved in recreational salmon fishing since he started in Monterey Bay in the 1950s. He has observed the sea lion population boom and wonders whether that may be contributing to pup strandings, he said.At Moss Landing Harbor, the 700-pound mammals cause roughly $100,000 damage each year, said Linda McIntyre, the harbor's general manager.Between 200 and 2,000 sea lions vie for dock space around Monterey Harbor, said Harbormaster Steve Scheiblauer. One year they sank five vessels.When someone tries to get to a boat, the animals usually move out of the way, but they leave vomit and excrement behind. And, he said, because there are so many of them, they are entering places they would ordinarily avoid."Most people love the sea lions and want to protect them," Scheiblauer said. But when he thinks about their future, he said, "I worry that nature will take its course through disease and famine. That would be a tragedy for the animals."
Read original post Contra Costa Times.
Hitch in North Coast marine sanctuary plans delays unveiling
Kamilah Motley of Washington, D.C., takes in the sweeping view of the Sonoma Coast, north of Bodega Bay, Monday Jan. 20, 2015. (Kent Porter / Press Democrat)
Last-minute details related to expansion plans for two adjoining marine sanctuaries off the North Coast were still being hammered out between federal agencies Tuesday, delaying publication of a final rule, officials said.There was no indication of a hitch significant enough to derail the expansion proposal, which was developed over the past two years under the direction of President Barack Obama.It was unclear, however, just what was holding up the process, representatives with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.A spokesman for the National Marine Sanctuaries program said last week that the legal consultations underway between various agencies are typically privileged, though there have been reports that some of the delay, at least, relates to discussions over U.S. Coast Guard operations within sanctuary boundaries.But most parties following developments said they doubted there was any cause for alarm.“I’m hearing that the very top brass at the Coast Guard and the NOAA are working on this, and there will be a good solution,” said retired Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, who championed coastal protections and sanctuary expansion legislation for two decades before her 2013 retirement.The current expansion proposal developed by the Obama administration would more than double the combined area of the two sanctuaries, putting an additional 2,769 square miles of ocean off-limits to oil, energy and mineral exploration or extraction. It would also extend wildlife protections and conservation efforts across a vast stretch of nutrient-rich habitat, from Bodega Head to Manchester Beach on the southwest Mendocino Coast.The additions would create a 350-mile band of protected coastal waters reaching north from the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary on the Central Coast.“We’re enthusiastic about expanding the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank (National Marine Sanctuaries) so we’re just trying to make sure we check everything off the list and make sure it can happen as quickly as we can,” NOAA spokeswoman Keeley Belva said.The final management plan was released in December, triggering its circulation among federal agencies for a 30-day period. That period has been extended by continued talks.
Read original post: Press Democrat | You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.
Atlantic, Pacific Fish Face Mixing as Arctic Warms
The gradual warming of the Arctic Ocean over the next century will weaken a natural barrier that has separated fish from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for millions of years, leading to a mixing of species that could make life difficult in fishing communities from Alaska to Norway.A new study by scientists in Denmark combined current models of climate change, and the biological water temperature and food requirements for 520 fish species native to the two oceans. The report forecast changes in the range of these fish in five-year increments from now until 2100, when the world’s oceans are expected to heat up globally by an average 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit)."There will be an interchange of the fish communities between those two seas," beginning as soon as 2050, said Mary Wisz, lead author on the report in Nature Climate Change and a senior ecosystem scientist at Aarhaus University in Denmark. "We know from historical examples that this kind of interchange, when biotas have been separated over long evolutionary time scales, can have huge consequences."In this warmer future, fishermen based in Kodiak, Alaska, could be pulling up Atlantic cod, a prized species normally caught off New England and Northern Europe. A similar change has already started off the coast of Greenland, where fishermen in the last five years have been catching larger numbers of Atlantic mackerel, which prefers more temperate water.Wisz and colleagues say that by 2100, up to 41 species could enter the Pacific and 44 species could enter the Atlantic, through Arctic water passages over Canada or Russia. This interchange will have ecological and economic consequences to ecosystems that at present contribute 39 percent to global marine fish landings.While some fishermen may benefit from the new catches, scientists warn that it's hard to predict exactly what kind of fish will take over, and which will be driven away by the newcomers. It's also possible that several kinds of fish could compete for the same food source – smaller fish, marine shrimp or larvae, for example, leading to a big reshuffling of the existing marine food chain."Some species when they come together they get along," said Peter Moller, curator of fishes at the Natural History Museum of Denmark and another author on the new report. "But of course the Atlantic cod has the potential to become extremely numerous and dominating if it has the right conditions. There is speculation if it gets to a new place, it can be a real game-changer."Moller said the cod is an especially voracious predator of smaller fish, and could impact commercial landings of Alaska Pollock, for example. Around 3 million tons of Alaska pollock are caught each year in the North Pacific from Alaska to northern Japan. Alaska pollock is the world's second most important fish species in terms of total catch.Jason Link, senior scientist for ecosystem management at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, agreed that the mixing of species will cause changes in the food web in both oceans, but it's hard to predict exactly how it will shake out."Another issue not noted in this paper is what happens in the ecosystem that these fish move out of, do they remain there or do other species replace them from the south?" Link said via e-mail.Another thorny issue is how to manage fishing boats who will likely be plying the rugged Arctic Ocean once commercial harvests become feasible."This work raises important ramifications for fishes in response to changes in sea ice," Link said.Wisz and Moller say their next task is to look at realistic scenarios of predators and prey in the new warmer Arctic ecosystem.
Read original post here.
Dockside fish market lands Capitol ally
'Pacific to Plate' bill would help market grow by easing state rules - By Chris Nichols
August 2nd, 2014 San Diego, CA- Allison Roach prepares to bag a 16 lb. yellow fin tuna for a customer on the first day of San Diegos Tuna Harbor Dockside Market on Saturday downtown near Seaport Village. Photo by David Brooks/ U-T San Diego MANDATORY PHOTO CREDIT DAVID BROOKS / U-T SAN DIEGO; ZUMA Press. — David Brooks
SACRAMENTO — San Diego’s newest fish market has landed an ally at the state Capitol.Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, has announced a bill dubbed “Pacific to Plate,” to make it easier for the Tuna Harbor Dockside Market, and others like it, to operate and flourish.Located just north of Seaport Village on Harbor Lane, the venue offers an open-air seafood market that carries overtones of Pike’s Market in Seattle or Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Officials with the county and Port of San Diego worked with local fishers to get the market legally certified. It launched in August.“Since the market opened, thousands of San Diegans have enjoyed being able to walk down this pier and choose their next meal from the fresh catch brought ashore by our local fishermen,” Atkins said during a press conference at the market this past weekend, according to a news release from her office.“Though the market has been successful, there are still some barriers in state law that need to be overcome to ensure its ongoing operation. ‘Pacific to Plate,’ the legislation I am introducing in the Assembly, will help keep red tape from tangling up this boon to San Diego’s Blue Economy.”The legislation proposes to:• Allow Fishermen’s Markets to operate as food facilities.• Allow fresh fish to be cleaned for direct sale at Fishermen’s Markets.• Streamline the permitting process, so commercial fishermen can organize under a single permit — just like Certified Farmers’ Markets.Currently, Fishermen’s Markets are not defined in state law as food facilities, complicating the permit process. Also, an exemption is needed to allow vendors to clean fresh fish for customers.“San Diego was once the tuna capital of the world,” noted San Diego County Supervisor Cox, in the news release. “This bill can help us establish more fishermen’s markets, create more jobs for local fishermen and give San Diegans more fish caught fresh off our waters.”The bill has bipartisan support from San Diego County’s legislative delegation, including Assemblymembers Rocky Chávez, Brian Jones, Brian Maienschein, Marie Waldron and Shirley Weber and state Senators Joel Anderson, Patricia Bates, Marty Block and Ben Hueso, according to the release.Since it opened, San Diego’s Tuna Harbor market has drawn about 350 visitors a week, who together spend about $15,000 on fresh seafood brought directly to the pier by local fishermen, the release said.
Read original post here.
Monterey Bay Aquarium testing the waters with open source camera
Mercury News | By Samantha Clark, Santa Cruz Sentinel
Rockfish researchers recover a frame carrying a small SeeStar system and a larger, older camera system after a deployment in Monterey Bay. (Francois Cazanave -- MBARI)
MOSS LANDING -- Ocean research can be a costly voyage. Scientists often need expensive, high-tech, complex equipment, which some research institutions might lack the funds to build or buy.So engineers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute designed a simple underwater camera and lighting system that is made mostly of hardware store materials. And all for $3,000.Most oceanographic camera systems cost $5,000 to $20,000 and require ships and cranes to carry the heavy equipment.Any researcher can find the directions online to build the camera system themselves. It takes stills and video and operates as deep as 1,000 feet for months at a time."There is a movement to have open source oceanographic equipment," said Chad Kecy, lead designer and MBARI engineer. "Anyone could take our designs and modify them for specific needs they have. It's just a less expensive and easier way of getting cameras in the water."The project began in 2012 when MBARI marine biologist Steve Haddock wanted a cheap and easily deployable camera for researchers around the world to document jellyfish blooms. He also wanted versatility. A lightweight system needed to attach to a pier, be mounted on the seafloor and carried by a robotic submarine.The SeeStar's relatively simple design met Haddock's criteria. It's a GoPro camera with longer battery life and controllable lights all housed inside standard PVC pipe with commercially available electrical cables."We chose materials intentionally that people would be able to purchase at a local hardware store," Kecy said. "The mechanical parts, we tried to get them off the shelf. We were thinking about cost at every step of the way."Researchers have begun testing the waters with the SeeStar system. Instead of using their bulky and expensive cameras, scientists with the Nature Conservancy and Moss Landing Marine Laboratories opted for multiple SeeStar cameras to capture video in Rockfish Conservation Areas along the west coast and seafloor animals under the ice in Antarctica.The California Wetfish Producers Association used SeeStar to photograph the eggs and larvae of market squid. While the squid make up a large and economically important fishery in California, scientists don't know much about what they do when they're not spawning or the best conditions for spawning."If you were to charter at ROV (remotely operated vehicle), I've heard it's like $10,000 a day, which is outrageous and beyond our budgeting," said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the nonprofit. "Putting together our own SeeStar camera is going to give us a lot of opportunity to understand what's going on within their life cycle. Just by looking at a photograph, we were able to tell which eggs were about to hatch."However, the designers want camera to be even more accessible. The circuit board that controls the system is still complex enough leave non-engineers scratching their heads, so Kecy is looking to replace it with the popular Arduino microcontrollers this year."The camera system could have uses beyond marine research and could be used for monitoring anything long term," Kecy said. "Because it's open source, inexpensive and really easy, it just presents an opportunity for more researchers to cameras out in the water."
------ (c)2015 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.) Visit the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.) at www.santacruzsentinel.com
Stanford Researchers Strap ‘Crittercam’ Onto Squid
Stanford Researchers Strap ‘Crittercam’ Onto Squid, Discover How They Speak, Hide Themselves
Camera strapped onto a Humboldt squid. (Stanford University)
STANFORD (CBS SF) – Researchers at Stanford University strapped cameras on squid off the coast of Mexico and found the sea creatures likely use visual patterns to communicate and to hide themselves from predators, according to a study released this week.Their study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, found Humboldt squid rapidly change their body colors from red to white to red again, in what researchers called “flashing.” They believe the behavior could be a way the squid speak with each other.“The frequency and phase relationships [synchronization] between squid during flashing can be changed and this suggests that there is some information being conveyed that makes minute control over these details important to the squid,” Stanford researcher Hannah Rosen told the journal.The researchers made their findings with the help of so-called “Crittercams” from National Geographic that were strapped onto the squid using Lycra-like “sweaters.”Another behavior found by researchers is called “flickering,” where the squid produce waves of red and white across their bodies, likely to camouflage themselves from predators near the surface. They also observed what could be mating behavior of the squid.Researchers plan to outfit more squid with cameras.
View original post here.
Thousands of fiery red crabs wash ashore in Newport Beach
A pelagic red crab encounters a seashell on Balboa Island on Wednesday morning after thousands of the tiny crustaceans came ashore with the high tide. (Don Leach / Daily Pilot)
Drawn north by warm ocean waters, thousands of candy-red crabs rarely seen in coastal Southern California have washed ashore in Newport Beach.The tiny red pelagic crabs came ashore with the high tide this week, scampering across the sands, bobbing in the shallow waters and adding a splash of color to the beachfront.“They look like baby lobsters,” said Kevin Kramp, a Balboa Island resident who spotted a cluster of the crustaceans relaxing in the shade of a dock. “Someone get the butter.”The crabs, known as Pleuroncodes planipes, are about 4 inches long, have three small legs on each side of their bodies and two pincers in front, much like a miniature lobster. Their tails are segmented, causing them to swim backward.The crabs more often inhabit the warm waters along the lower west coast of Baja California, experts say, and are believed to spend the majority of the year hiding on sandy ocean bottoms.However, during the spring, the crabs travel in dense schools and occasionally wash ashore, said Southern California Marine Institute director Daniel Pondella II.But this marks the first time in years that Pondella has heard of them being seen in Southern California."This is the first warm year we've had in quite awhile," he said. "It could just be a sign of the warm water we're currently experiencing."Some experts estimate that warm southern currents may distribute the crabs into Southern California every six to 10 years.A thick blanket of the fiery red crabs surfaced in the late '90s, and again several years later in the Channel Islands and oceanographers at the time saw them as a possible indicator of an advancing El Nino weather pattern.Their arrival puts them in league with other nonnative animals seen off the Southern California coast in recent years, such as blue marlin, whale sharks, wahoo, yellowfin tuna, manta rays and by-the-wind sailors – a blob-likejellyfish that skims along the surface of the ocean.Newport Beach resident Darren Zinter initially thought the crabs were tiny frogs because of how close they were swimming to the surface of the water. Zinter grabbed one to get a closer look before setting it free."I've never seen these things before," Zinter said. "It's incredible."
Original story: Hannah Fry | http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-red-crabs-newport-beach-20150122-story.html