Countries that invest in the management and restoration of ecosystems are likely to see far higher rates of return and stronger economic growth in the 21st century, according to a study by 100 experts from science, economics and policy from across the globe.

"Some countries have already made the link to a limited extent and are glimpsing benefits in terms of jobs, livelihoods and economic returns that outstrip those wedded to older economic models of the previous century," says a statement accompanying the release today of a report prepared by The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB).

NGS stock photo by Michael Nichols

TEEB was launched by Germany and the European Commission in response to a proposal by the G8+5 Environment Ministers (Potsdam, Germany 2007) to develop a global study on the economics of biodiversity loss. It is an independent study, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme with financial support from European countries.

In its report released today, TEEB gave these examples of countries already reaping benefits from ecosystem projects:

• In Venezuela, investment in the national protected area system is preventing sedimentation that otherwise could reduce farm earnings by around U.S.$3.5 million a year.
• Planting and protecting nearly 12,000 hectares of mangroves in Vietnam costs just over $1 million but saved annual expenditures on dyke maintenance of well over $7 million.
• One in 40 jobs in Europe is now linked with the environment and ecosystem services ranging from clean tech "eco-industries" to organic agriculture, sustainable forestry and eco-tourism.
• Investment in the protection of Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve is generating an annual of income of close to $50 million a year, createed 7,000 jobs, and boosted local family incomes.

"Accelerate, scale-up and embed investments in the management and restoration of ecosystems."

The TEEB report, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, calls on policy-makers to "accelerate, scale-up and embed investments in the management and restoration of ecosystems."

It also calls for more sophisticated cost-benefit analysis before policy decisions are made.

The report cites a study on mangroves in south Thailand on the conversion of mangroves into shrimp farms, an example of cost-benefit analysis that was perhaps not very well thought-through.

"Subsidized commercial shrimp farms can generate returns of around $1,220 per hectare by clearing mangrove forests. But this does not take into account the losses to local communities totaling over $12,000 a hectare linked with wood and non-wood forest products, fisheries and coastal protection services," TEEB said.

"Nor does the profit to the commercial operators take into account the costs of rehabilitating the abandoned sites after five years of exploitation---estimated at over $9,000 a hectare." 

Ecosystem-savvy economy

TEEB's report outlines a plan to catalyze a transition to more ecosystem-savvy economies able to meet the multiple challenges and deliver the multiple opportunities on a planet of six billion people, rising to nine billion by 2050.

Said Pavan Sukhdev, TEEB's study leader, "Nature's multiple and complex values have direct economic impacts on human wellbeing and public and private spending. Recognizing and rewarding the value delivered to society by the natural environment must become a policy priority.

"The economic invisibility of ecosystems and biodiversity is increased by our dominant economic model, which is consumption-led, production-driven, and GDP-measured. This model is in need of significant reform. The multiple crises we are experiencing--fuel, food, finance, and the economy--serve as reminders of the need for change.

"It is now up to governments to provide fiscal or other incentives to move us from short-term opportunism to long-term stewardship. The right policies can help us move toward a resource efficient economy."

The report comes in advance of the United Nations climate convention meeting in Copenhagen where governments are expected to give the green light to funding developing countries to maintain forests, the statement says.

"Close to 20 per cent of current global greenhouse gas emissions are linked with deforestation. Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) aims to counter this while also generating financial flows from North to South.

"REDD and REDD-Plus, which includes not only maintaining forests but planting and recovering forest systems, secured the backing of close 15 presidents and prime ministers at a special meeting hosted last month by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon." (Read about this on Stuart Pimm's blog Better REDD than dead when it comes to climate change.) 

NGS stock photo by James P. Blair

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: "Paying developing countries under REDD marks a fundamental step forward in terms of bringing the huge financial importance of ecosystems and biodiversity into the centre of economic activity."

"It could open the door to more creative and forward looking funds and mechanisms covering other nature-based infrastructure such as peatlands and wetlands en route to support for the services generated by coastal and marine ecosystems such as coral reefs to mangroves," he said.

Read on for the key recommendations of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biovidersity:

The 2009 update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species shows that 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature said today.

Threatened with extinction are:

• 21 percent of all known mammals
• 30 percent of all known amphibians
• 12 percent of all known birds
• 28 percent of assessed reptiles
• 37 percent of assessed freshwater fishes
• 70 percent of assessed plants
• 35 percent of assessed invertebrates

"The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting," said Jane Smart, director of IUCN's Biodiversity Conservation Group, in a news statement accompanying the 2009 Red List.

This gorgeted puffleg (Eriocnemis isabellae) entered the IUCN Red List in 2009 as Critically Endangered. The species is known from southwest Colombia, where it occurs in a tiny area of the Serraníadel Pinche. The global population is not known but is presumably very small given that the area of suitable habitat available for this species is thought to be less than 2,500 acres, and it is suspected to be decreasing as elfin forest habitat is converted for agriculture and illegal coca plantations. The primary threat to this bird is the shifting of the agricultural border towards remaining primary forests, causing a loss of vegetation cover, contamination of watersheds and soil degradation. Illegal coca cultivation is a major threat due to the lack of governmental presence, with 8.3 percent of potentially suitable habitat reportedly damaged annually by coca cultivation.

Photo © Alex Cortes. Photo supplied by BirdLife International.

"It's time for governments to start getting serious about saving species and make sure it's high on their agendas for next year, as we're rapidly running out of time."

"January sees the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity," Jane Smart added in today's statement. "The latest analysis of the IUCN Red List shows the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss will not be met.

"It's time for governments to start getting serious about saving species and make sure it's high on their agendas for next year, as we're rapidly running out of time."

Tip of the iceberg

"This year's IUCN Red List makes for sobering reading," said Craig Hilton-Taylor, manager of the IUCN Red List Unit. "These results are just the tip of the iceberg. We have only managed to assess 47,663 species so far; there are many more millions out there which could be under serious threat. We do, however, know from experience that conservation action works so let's not wait until it's too late and start saving our species now."

Rabb's fringe-limbed treefrog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum) entered the IUCN Red List as Critically Endangered in 2009.

It is known only from central Panama, where it occurs in tropical forest canopy. In 2006, the chytrid fungus was reported in the area where this species is known to occur. Since then, only one individual has been heard calling. There is also some ongoing forest clearing within the species' range for the development of luxury holiday homes, although this potential threat has not yet reached critical levels. This treefrog is one of several species collected for captive breeding efforts, however so far attempts at captive breeding have not produced positive results.

Photo © Brad Wilson

Switzerland-based IUCN is a global environment organization that works on biodiversity, climate change, energy, human livelihoods and greening the world economy by supporting research, managing field projects, and bringing governments, NGOs, the United Nations and corporations together to develop policy, laws and best practice.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is a comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of plant and animal species. It is based on an objective system for assessing the risk of extinction of a species should no conservation action be taken. Species are assigned to one of eight categories of threat based on whether they meet criteria linked to population trend, population size and structure and geographic range. Species listed as Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable are collectively described as "Threatened."

Photo © Gerald Allen

Highlights from today's IUCN statement:

Mammals

Of the world's 5,490 mammals, 79 are Extinct or Extinct in the Wild, with 188 Critically Endangered, 449 Endangered and 505 Vulnerable.

The eastern voalavo (Voalavo antsahabensis) appears on the IUCN Red List for the first time in the Endangered category. This rodent, endemic to Madagascar, is confined to montane tropical forest and is under threat from slash-and-burn farming.

Reptiles

There are now 1,677 reptiles on the IUCN Red List, with 293 added this year. In total, 469 are threatened with extinction and 22 are already Extinct or Extinct in the Wild.

The 165 endemic Philippine species new to the IUCN Red List include the Panay monitor lizard (Varanus mabitang), which is Endangered. This highly-specialized monitor lizard is threatened by habitat loss due to agriculture and logging and is hunted by humans for food.

The rare Panay monitor lizard occurs in large trees in primary lowland tropical moist forest. The species is a highly specialized frugivorous monitor lizard (it feeds on fruit). The loss and degradation of lowland forest habitat through conversion of land for agricultural use and logging operations is a threat to this lizard. The species is also hunted by humans for food and overhunting is a serious threat to the remaining population.

Photo © Tim Laman 

The sail-fin water lizard (Hydrosaurus pustulatus) enters in the Vulnerable category and is also threatened by habitat loss. Hatchlings are heavily collected both for the pet trade and for local consumption.

"The world's reptiles are undoubtedly suffering, but the picture may be much worse than it currently looks," says Simon Stuart, chair of IUCN's Species Survival Commission. "We need an assessment of all reptiles to understand the severity of the situation, but we don't have the U.S.$2-3 million to carry it out."

Amphibians

The IUCN Red List shows that 1,895 of the planet's 6,285 amphibians are in danger of extinction, making them the most threatened group of species known to date. Of these, 39 are already Extinct or Extinct in the Wild, 484 are Critically Endangered, 754 are Endangered and 657 are Vulnerable.

Photo © Tim Herman

The fungus also affected the Rabb's fringe-limbed treefrog, which enters the Red List as Critically Endangered. (See photo and description higher on this page.)

Plants

Of the 12,151 plants on the IUCN Red List, 8,500 are threatened with extinction, with 114 already Extinct or Extinct in the Wild.

The Queen of the Andes (Puya raimondii) has been reassessed and remains in the Endangered category. Found in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, it only produces seeds once in 80 years before dying. Climate change may already be impairing its ability to flower and cattle roam freely among many colonies, trampling or eating young plants. Other threats include young plants being eaten or trampled by livestock, fires, and removal of pith from trunks.

Photo © Antonio Lambe (Acción Ambiental)

Toussaintia patriciae is an Endangered shrub species native to Tanzania. It is known from less than 30 trees in the Udzwunga Mountains National Park and West Kilombero Nature Reserve, and occurs in very low numbers where found, though it is cryptic when not flowering and may be more common that is currently known. It is considered relatively secure at present, as the population is present in protected areas and occurs above the altitude to which firewood collectors are allowed to operate. However, this species could become more threatened very quickly if the impacts of human activities, especially wood collection, were to increase.

Photo © Quentin Luke

Invertebrates

There are now 7,615 invertebrates on the IUCN Red List this year, 2,639 of which are threatened with extinction. Scientists added 1,360 dragonflies and damselflies, bringing the total to 1,989, of which 261 are threatened.

The giant jewel (Chlorocypha centripunctata) is known from the Obudu Plateau, Nigeria and from Mount Kupe and the Bakossi Mountains Cameroon. The species occurs in and around rain forest streams above 700-meter altitude. Habitat loss through selective logging and forest destruction for agricultural expansion is the main threat to this species. The species entered the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable in 2009.

Photo © Kai Schütte

Molluscs

Scientists also added 94 molluscs, bringing the total number assessed to 2,306, of which 1,036 are threatened.

All seven freshwater snails from Lake Dianchi in Yunnan Province, China, are new to the IUCN Red List and all are threatened. These join 13 freshwater fishes from the same area, 12 of which are threatened. The main threats are pollution, introduced fish species and overharvesting.

Freshwater Fishes

There are now 3,120 freshwater fishes on the IUCN Red List, up 510 species from last year. Although there is still a long way to go before the status all the world's freshwater fishes is known, 1,147 of those assessed so far are threatened with extinction.

Photo © Chavalit Vidthayanon

The brown mudfish (Neochanna apoda), found only in New Zealand, has been moved from Near Threatened to Vulnerable as it has disappeared from many areas in its range. Approximately 85-90 percent of New Zealand's wetlands have been lost or degraded through drainage schemes, irrigation and land development.

The status of the Australian grayling (Prototroctes maraena), a freshwater fish, has improved as a result of conservation efforts. Now classed as Near Threatened as opposed to Vulnerable, the population has recovered thanks to fish ladders which have been constructed over dams to allow migration, enhanced riverside vegetation and the education of fishermen, who now face heavy penalties if found with this species

"Creatures living in freshwater have long been neglected."

"Creatures living in freshwater have long been neglected. This year we have again added a large number of them to the IUCN Red List and are confirming the high levels of threat to many freshwater animals and plants. This reflects the state of our precious water resources. There is now an urgency to pursue our effort but most importantly to start using this information to move towards a wise use of water resources," said Jean-Christophe Vié, deputy head of the IUCN Species Programme.

Downlisted bird species

The Mauritius fody (Foudia rubra) was downlisted from Critically Endangered to Endangered because its extremely small population has been stable since the early 1990s and is now increasing following an island translocation. The species is restricted to southwest Mauritius, and suffered rapid population declines between 1975 and 1993. However, since 1993 the population has been stable, and there is evidence that dispersing juveniles are now setting up new breeding territories, expanding the range of the species. Historically, clearance of upland forest, particularly for plantations in the 1970s, catastrophically affected this species. Introduced predators (e.g. black rat (Rattus rattus) and crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis)) caused almost total breeding failure in most areas, and nest predation is still the major threat to the species.

Photo © Lucy Garrett (Rare Birds Yearbook). Photo supplied by BirdLife International.

Global figures for 2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:
Total species assessed = 47,677
Total Extinct or Extinct in the Wild = 875 (2%) [Extinct = 809; Extinct in the Wild = 66].
Total threatened = 17,291 (36%) [Critically Endangered = 3,325; Endangered = 4,891; Vulnerable = 9,075].
Total Near Threatened = 3,650 (8%).
Total Lower Risk/conservation dependent = 281 (<1%) [this is an old category that is gradually being phased out of the Red List]
Total Data Deficient = 6,557 (14%)
Total Least Concern = 19,023 (40%)

Global figures for 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:
Total assessed = 44,838
Total Extinct or Extinct in the Wild = 869 (2%) [Extinct = 804 ; Extinct in the Wild = 65]
Total threatened = 16,928 (38%) [Critically Endangered = 3,246; Endangered = 4,770; Vulnerable = 8,912]
Total Near Threatened = 3,513 (8%)
Total Lower Risk/conservation dependent = 283 (<1%) [this is an old category that is gradually being phased out of the Red List]
Total Data Deficient = 5,570 (12%)
Total Least Concern = 17,675 (39%)

Not all species on the IUCN Red List are threatened. There are now more species on the IUCN Red List. This means that the overall percentage of threatened species has gone down by two percent. This is not because the status of the world's biodiversity is improving, IUCN noted, but because we have assessed more species.

"In the past, Red List assessments often focused on species that were already thought to be threatened, but as the Red List grows to include more complete assessments across entire groups, we are beginning to have a better idea of the relative proportion of species which are threatened against those which are not threatened."

Fifty years ago representatives from twelve nations meeting in Washington signed the Antarctic Treaty "in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes."

Representatives of governments, nongovernmental organizations, commercial entities, academic institutions, and indigenous people's organizations will review the treaty as a remarkable accomplishment of international cooperation.

And they will ponder how the Antarctic Treaty shows the way to international management of not only other international spaces, such as the deep seas and outer space, but also shared responsibilities for the atmosphere, fisheries, and similar transboundary resources.

The Antarctic Treaty Summit: Science-Policy Interactions in International Governance will be convened in Washington, D.C. from November 30-December 3, 2009. The organizers invite broad participation in the Summit, "which is being convened with the sprit of balanced international, interdisciplinary and inclusive engagement."  Registration and other information can be found on the Antarctic Treaty Summit Web site. 

Forever Declaration

"We will use the Antarctic Treaty Summit to proclaim a 'Forever Declaration,' which everyone in the world can sign, elaborating on the concept of 'forever' from the preamble to the Antarctic Treaty," says Paul Berkman, chair of the International Board for the Antarctic Treaty Summit.

"The Antarctic Treaty is as an example of how different nations can cooperate for peaceful purposes in ways that are equitable, balanced, continuous, and offer hope to the world."

The Forever Declaration will be introduced on December 1, the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, and will be open for signature by anyone via the Internet.

Image of Antarctica courtesy NASA

"It is something which the entire world can make a shared statement about cooperation, using regions for peaceful purposes only, based on the notion of common interests," Berkman says. "That is the hope and aspiration of the Forever Declaration."

Berkman has a remarkable story to tell about the Antarctic Treaty, from its origins in the Cold War and the superpower race to acquire nuclear weaponry and dominate outer space, to the way the treaty was able to harness science as a framework for diplomacy.

In this three-part series, Berkman tells the story:

In this final part of a series on the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, Berkman describes the hopes for building on an international agreement that has been a road map for nations to collaborate on the basis of "common interests" to manage the 75 percent of the planet that does not fall under national jurisdictions.

 The Antarctic Treaty Summit: Science-Policy Interactions in International Governance will be convened in Washington, D.C. from November 30-December 3, 2009. The organizers invite broad participation in the Summit, "which is being convened with the sprit of balanced international, interdisciplinary and inclusive engagement."  Registration and other information can be found on the Antarctic Treaty Summit Web site. 

By Paul Berkman,
Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

Recognition by the U.S. Congress

The United States House of Representatives adopted House Concurrent Resolution 51 (Recognizing the 50th Anniversary of the Signing of the Antarctic Treaty) on September 30, 2009. (See full text below.)

The resolution was sponsored by Congressman Pat Tiberi from Ohio along with 33 co-sponsors, including the Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (Congressman Howard Berman from California) and Chair of the House Commitee on Science and Technology (Congressman Bart Gordon from Tennessee).

The Resolution was an interesting process from several different angles.

As a citizen of the United States, one individual among 300 million people, to be able to go and interact with the elected officials at the national level and to be able to suggest them a type of legislation and assist with the process of seeing this legislation emerge and finally get approved by one of the branches of the U.S. Congress, was in itself a humbling experience.

An individual in a great nation can contribute to the development and growth of that nation. There's a message of hope in that. Anyone, whoever they are, with the right motivation, insight and sincerity can create positive development and change in the world we live in.

"The idea is to look across the 50 years of international cooperation and identify those lessons that will have meaning and value to international governance into the future."

The full name of the Antarctic Treaty summit is The Antarctic Treaty: Science, Policy, Interactions, and International Governance. So it's not just a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty. The idea is to look across the 50 years of international cooperation and identify those lessons that will have meaning and value to international governance into the future.

Certainly science and policy are two of the ingredients that allowed the Antarctic Treaty system to emerge. The notions of science, policy, interactions are the focus of the Antarctic Treaty Summit.

In developing this Concurrent Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives, the original resolution was sponsored by Congressman Tiberi, and it was done in a nonpartisan way. Eventually there were 33 co-sponsors of the resolution, which was assigned to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The very last sponsor was Congressman Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Two of the co-sponsors are the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee and the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It's a mirror of the science policy theme. This makes it a special piece of legislation.

The Resolution is now in the U.S. Senate, where it has been assigned to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

The Antarctic Treaty Summit "Forever Declaration"

The intention of the summit is not just to have a meeting, where people get together, discuss things, and leave, and it was relevant only to the people in the room.

The idea is to begin a snowball, a level of momentum in a dialogue where various parties, governments, nongovernmental organizations, commercial entities, academic institutions, indigenous peoples organizations, are all talking together in neutral venues about strategies to manage regions that are beyond sovereign jurisdictions, as well as resources that are transboundary.

Fisheries migrate across boundaries, the atmosphere and oceans move across boundaries, so the issues that are relevant to international spaces are also relevant to things that move across boundaries.

The type of dialogue that is anticipated for the Antarctic Treaty Summit is a demonstration that it is possible to catalyze high-profile international, interdisciplinary and inclusive discussion.

The big difference between the Antarctic Treaty Summit and the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, which is an annual event, is that the consultative meeting is convened by governments, for governments, with government people, whereas the Antarctic Treaty Summit is open to anyone anywhere in the world.

The intention is to reach across all sectors of society internationally in an engaged and inclusive way, welcoming the insights and participation, the enthusiasm, even the questions from anyone, anywhere in the world. So the event itself is open and not restricted in any way.

The tangible outcome of the event, aside from books and things like that, will be discussions that carry over into future meetings.

But what's likely to be of most interest to the average person anywhere in the world is the "Forever Declaration."

The Forever Declaration embraces an interesting concept:

If you think of the eight centuries of perspective of the value of the Magna Carta, and imagine eight centuries into the future, for all intents and purposes that's forever. We know from the Magna Carta that we can see how a legal document can have meaning across centuries.

The idea of elaborating "Forever" from the Antarctic Treaty is not only for the relevance of the Antarctic but for the relevance of international spaces, for transboundary issues, for the elaboration of common interests, as an example of how different nations can cooperate for peaceful purposes in ways that are equitable, balanced, continuous, and offer hope to the world.

This declaration will be introduced on the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, which is on December 1. The declaration will be open for signature by anyone anywhere in the world. And it will be available for signature via the Internet.

It is something in which the entire world can make a shared statement about cooperation, using regions for peaceful purposes only, about the notion of common interests. That is the hope and aspiration of the Forever Declaration.

Special series on the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty by Paul Berkman

Part One: Antarctic Treaty at 50, a beacon for joint management of Earth

Part Two: How Antarctica facilitated science as a tool of diplomacy

Part Three: Antarctic Treaty lessons have enduring value for humankind (this page)

For more information, please visit the Antarctic Treaty Summit Web site.

Skin and tissue samples from more than 1,500 humpback whales have provided new insights into how different breeding populations of the whales interact with one another in the Southern Hemisphere.

"After 15 years of research in the waters of the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and an international coalition of organizations have unveiled the largest genetic study of humpback whale populations ever conducted in the Southern Hemisphere," the Wildlife Conservation Society said yesterday.

Credit: M. Leslie

So little is known about southern ocean basin humpbacks that researchers initially used old whaling records for insights into whale population boundaries.

"Humpback whales are perhaps the most studied species of great whale in the Northern Hemisphere, but many of the interactions among Southern Hemisphere populations are still poorly understood," said Howard Rosenbaum, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Ocean Giants Program and lead author of the study. "This research illustrates the vast potential of genetic analyses to uncover the mysteries of how humpbacks travel and form populations in the southern ocean basins."

Credit: T. Collins

Researchers collected skin samples from 1,527 whales from 14 sampling sites from the southwestern and southeastern Atlantic Ocean, and the southwestern and northern Indian Oceans.

"The scientists collected samples from living whales with biopsy darts fired from crossbows," WCS said. "The darts harmlessly bounce off the marine mammals as they surface to breathe. Samples came also from skin which is continually sloughed off by the animals and collected by the research teams."

The samples were analyzed by the AMNH Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, which focused on mitochondrial DNA, which is passed through maternal lines of a population, in order to measure interchange between groups.

The findings revealed:

• The highest rate of gene flow between populations is between whales that breed on either side of the African continent (Breeding Stocks B and C), with an estimated one or two reproductively active whales every year swimming from one ocean to join whales in another breeding ground. Authors of the current study previously identified the same individual whale in both Atlantic and Indian Ocean breeding grounds at different times, the first recorded instance of a humpback whale traveling between these two oceans.
• A lower rate of gene flow between humpbacks breeding on opposite sides of the Atlantic (one population along coastal Brazil and the other along the coast of Southern Africa). While no individual whales have been detected traveling across the Southern Atlantic to both breeding grounds, genetic similarities reveal a slight degree of populations interacting. "Interestingly, an examination of humpback whale songs between the two populations are similar, another hint at interchange between the two groups, most likely in the whales' feeding grounds in Antarctic waters," WCS said.
• Breeding Stock X, which inhabits the northern Indian Ocean off the Arabian Peninsula, numbers fewer than 200 whales and is the most distinct in terms of genetics and migratory behavior. Unlike the other humpback populations, it is non-migratory and only distantly related to the nearest group of humpbacks (which breed off Madagascar and the eastern coast of Southern Africa). As a small, insular group, the "X" population is unique and therefore a conservation priority.

"In addition to examining the population boundaries of humpbacks in the Southern Hemisphere, the study also gives scientists some insight into the mysterious and mercurial nature of marine ecosystems, with currents, water depth, and other unseen factors serving as shifting conduits and barriers between marine populations and ecosystems," WCS added.

Credit: Julie Larsen Maher (c) WCS

"Understanding the needs of humpbacks and other whale species can be challenging in terms of direct observations of these animals in the wild," Rosenbaum said. "Molecular technology gives us a window into the lives of whales that can help us understand the ecological forces shaping their movements and distribution. We can also use our findings to inform management decisions for a species that is only now beginning to recover from centuries of commercial whaling."

The humpback whale is a baleen whale that grows up to approximately 50 feet in length. The species has distinctively long pectoral fins and a head with knobs on the top and lower jaw.

"The humpback is also known for its acrobatics (such as full body breaching) and haunting songs, typically sung by males and possibly a mating behavior," WCS said. "The slow-swimming species was hunted commercially until the International Whaling Commission protected the species globally in 1966. Current estimates for humpback whale numbers are widely debated. While they are recovering, total population sizes may only perhaps be a small percent of the original global population."

The research was published in PLoS One, an interactive open-access journal for scientific and medical research. Other contributors to the study include: Columbia University; University of Pretoria; Environment Study of Oman; Instituto Baleia Jubarta and PURCS (Brazil); University of Cape Town; Marine and Coastal Management (South Africa); Faculdade de Biociências; Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (Gabon); Association Megaptera (France); Université de La Rochelle (France).

A powerful earthquake in the South Pacific hurled a massive tsunami at the shores of Samoa and American Samoa yesterday, flattening villages and sweeping cars and people out to sea, leaving at least 99 dead and dozens missing, the Associated Press reported.

Google Maps

The earthquake, which the Japanese Meteorological Agency measured as a magnitude 8.3 on the Richter scale, struck at 6:48 a.m. local time at a reported depth of 32 kilometers [20 miles] and a distance of 190 kilometers [120 miles] from the Samoan islands, Nature.com's The Great Beyond blog posted today. "But most of the damage came with the tsunami waves, measuring up to 6 meters [20 feet] in American Samoa, that hit shore shortly afterwards."

The Nature blog went on to say that residents in Samoa complained of having little or no warning, "some saying they only had three minutes."

"Had it happened in darkness, there could have been more disaster in terms of the number of those who died or are missing."

"Had it happened in darkness, there could have been more disaster in terms of the number of those who died or are missing," the BBC reported the prime minister of Samoa, Tuila'epe Sailele Malielegaoi, said.

Other news organizations quoted the prime minister as saying it all happened "like lightning."

Some media coverage focused on whether the lessons of the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Indian Ocean had been heeded. Others wondered if the Pacific tsunami-warning system, that was supposed to have been extended to the Indian Ocean after the 2004 tsunami, had been effective.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii sent out a "tsunami watch" warning three minutes after the earthquake was detected to islands in the vicinity, including Samoa, American Samoa, the Cook Islands and Fiji, predicting that an earthquake of this size was likely to result in a tsunami, TimesOnline reported.

"Computer modeling allowed the center to predict arrival times and the likely height of incoming waves. It warned that American Samoa, which is around 200 kilometers [125 miles] from the epicenter, was likely to be hit by 3-meter [10-feet] waves within ten minutes and Samoa within 20 minutes of the quake," TimesOnline said.

The earthquake is the warning.

Jonathan Bathgate, a seismologist from government agency Geoscience Australia. said that in a case like yesterday's tsunami that struck Samoa, the earthquake was the warning, according to Time.com. "In an island nation, he said, 'Once the earth shakes residents should take that as the warning and immediately find higher ground. Residents had roughly an hour to do so, as waves started to hit Samoa's coast at 8 a.m.," Time reported.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured a magnitude of 8.0 for the earthquake, posting this illustration on its Web site:

The purple lines show major tectonic boundaries of subduction zones. A subduction zone is the place where two tectonic plates come together, one riding over the other, according to the USGS.

You can read more about the forces that cause these seismic events on the National Geographic Web site Earthquakes.

National Geographic News coverage:

Tsunami Warning Signs, Facts in Wake of Samoa Quake

TSUNAMI PICTURES: Samoa, Tonga Hit by Deadly Waves

VIDEO: Samoa Tsunami Flattens Villages

By James G. Robertson, National Geographic Digital Media

Imagine having to wait for a whale to drop from the sky before you could eat.

At least nine new species of bristleworms that have adapted to feed from the unpredictable food source of dead whales have been discovered by Swedish scientists, according to a release from the University of Gothenburg.

Photo of submerged whale remains: Craig R Smith, courtesy University of Gothenburg, Sweden

The researchers say that some of these previously-undiscovered species are so highly specialized they would have trouble surviving anywhere else. For example, the Osedax worm uses a root system to burrow into the bones and search for food there. Others eat the bacteria that congregate on the surface of the bones.

One whale cadaver "offers the same amount of nutrients that normally sinks from the surface to the seafloor in 2,000 years."

"A dead whale is an enormous source of nutrients," the University of Gothenburg says in its statement. "In fact, one cadaver offers the same amount of nutrients that normally sinks from the surface to the seafloor in 2,000 years, and this is of great benefit to innumerable species: First the meat is eaten by for example sharks and hagfish, then tremendous amounts of various organisms come to feast on the skeleton."

Researchers discovered the new worms, which are related to the earthworm, by placing underwater cameras near whale carcasses they planted on the seafloor 125 meters (410 feet) deep off the coasts of Sweden and California. They retrieved samples and compared the DNA of the worms, and made another discovery: although some worms looked similar, their DNA varied widely.

The difference in DNA suggests that the highly-specialized worms developed from different ancestors and at different times, say the researchers.

Combined with the worms' similar appearances, the DNA also suggests that there may be other wide-ranging species of undersea animals that look similar but in fact are separate species, perhaps making the ocean a more diverse place than previously thought.

You might also like:

Seahorses are familiar and loved as the peculiar upright fish that graces bathroom tiles, beach towels, cartoon movies, children's books, and even jewelry. That's when we're not grinding them into powder for traditional medicines.

Pregnant seahorse males, bellies big with embryos, rest in seagrass.

NGS photo by Paul Zahl

Although some people own seahorses in private aquariums, the great bulk of humanity has never seen a live one in the wild. For the most part they're tiny, solitary, and adept at hiding in coral reefs or seagrass. Yet they live in many parts of the world, and can be found even in fairly close proximity to popular beaches.

Marine biologist Helen Scales, a regular contributor to National Geographic News, has written a compelling book about seahorses that makes the case not only for these odd fish but also for the entire ocean.

"Increasingly, seahorses are being used as catalysts for conservation initiatives; they are being held aloft as poster species to help muster support for protecting the oceans.

"They are touchstones to remind people of the vulnerable, beautiful creatures that live there, giving us a reason to care."

Scales describes in absorbing detail the prehensile tail seahorses use to tie themselves to a perch, a pair of chameleon eyes capable of moving independently of each other, a coat that can change colors to blend invisibly into the background, and a long tube of a snout to suck in passing plankton like a powerful vacuum cleaner.

The seahorse is the only fish with a neck and the only species on Earth in which the male gives birth.

A dwarf seahorse mimics plumes of hydroids on turtle grass.

NGS photo by Robert Sisson

Seahorses, one might imagine, are masterpieces of evolution, reaching their unique morphology and niche in the web of life through many twists and turns over millions of years.

But she really comes into her own when she delves into the mythology based on the seahorse (the title of the book is a reference to ancient art of the Greek god Poseidon's chariot being pulled by seahorses) and to the thousand-year tradition of using seahorses in Chinese medicine as cures for flagging libido and a variety of other ailments.

It's the booming trade in traditional medicine that is the biggest threat to seahorses. Some 25 million seahorses are pulled from the oceans every year, according to Scales.

Much of the harvest is bycatch in the shrimp fisheries, which use trawl nets to scrape all living things from the seafloor. Seahorses are picked out of the writhing heaps of shrimp, sponges, and other marine animals gathered by the nets, then set aside for sale to the traditional healing trade. It can be a lucrative sideline for fishers.

Five pygmy sea horses range in color from dull brown to golden yellow.

NGS photo of seahorses by Paul Zahl

Scales provides a nuanced and thoughtful analysis of traditional medicine in general, branching her analysis into the pros and cons of farming endangered species (yes, there are seahorse farms, and 18 seahorse species now live in aquariums) and she gives a fair hearing to those who argue that a billion users of Chinese traditional medicine cannot all be wrong about its efficacy.

But it's clear that irresponsible fishing practices, and an insatiable appetite for rare wild species as traditional medicine, are the biggest threats to seahorses and countless other marine animals.

Sea horses, one yellow and one green, suck plankton via their snouts.

NGS photo by Paul Zahl

Other threats to seahorses include habitat destruction because of coastal development and runoff.

A warming world could raise ocean temperatures, and also raise sea levels that could make what are now shallow seas deeper and darker. The changes could come too rapidly for many species to adapt, especially animals like seahorses which may not be able to relocate to cooler latitudes fast enough.

A pygmy sea horse pops out of its father's pouch tail first at birth.

NGS photo of seahorse by Paul Zahl

One of the rarest seahorses is the Cape seahorse, also known as the Knysna seahorse. They occur in only a small part of the coast of South Africa and are vulnerable to a major natural disaster. Watch this National Geographic video about them:

There is some good news for seahorses.

Scales reports on Project Seahorse in the Philippines as an example of artisinal fishers taking the initiative to zone off and protect ocean sanctuaries where species, including seahorses, can recover and restock adjacent fishing areas.

Cleaning up rivers has also had an important impact on seahorses. An example of this is the Thames River in England, which has recovered to the point where seahorses are being seen again as far upriver as London for the first time in many years. (Read the about this in the National Geographic News report Rare Seahorses Found in River Thames.) 

An Australian male sea horse grasps a stalk of algae with its tail.

NGS photo of seahorse by Paul Zahl

One of the most enjoyable features of "Poseidon's Steed" are the many digressions. There can be few, if any, aspects of seahorses in mythology, history, or the popular culture that Scales does not investigate.

Thorny cirri, skin branchings, sprout from a pygmy sea horse's head.

NGS photo by Paul Zahl

Everything Scales writes about is well researched and explained, and the additional details in the book's comprehensive footnotes speak not only to her academic diligence but also her journalistic professionalism to provide context and explanation.

The bibliography runs for an impressive number of pages.  I've never read a book devoted entirely to seahorses before, and I may never read another one. But I am very glad I read this one. It feels like a lucid distillation of a lot of research and careful thought.

My one disappointment with the book is that it lacks great color photography. I know from our news coverage that seahorses can make gorgeous photos. For an example of this, look at the images in SEA LIFE PHOTOS: Five New Pygmy Seahorse Species Found (captions written by Helen Scales).

I was expecting a book that dealt with many aspects of a delightful and enigmatic fish. I found all that and so much more.

Scales has provided much useful information and context for the wider issues of the long relationship we have had--and continue to have--with our oceans and the animals that live in them.

"Poseidon's Steed" takes a look at the oceans from the point of view of the seahorse, and in doing so gives us a profound appreciation of what's a stake for everything that lives in or depends on the sea, ourselves included.

Horses of Neptune by Walter Crane (1892)

You might also like these National Geographic News stories:

SEA LIFE PHOTOS: Five New Pygmy Seahorse Species Found
The Walea pygmy seahorse is one of five species named in a flurry of recent seahorse discoveries from coral reefs in the Red Sea and Indonesia. All five are less than an inch tall (2.5 centimeters) and are among the tiniest known vertebrates.

PHOTOS: Oldest Seahorses Found; Help Solve Mystery
The oldest seahorse fossils discovered to date have been uncovered in Slovenia, including a two-inch-long (five-centimeter-long) adult female Hippocampus sarmaticus fossil.

How Seahorses Evolved to Swim "Standing Up"

Seahorse in a Sea Fan (Best Photo Contest)
This exquisitely camouflaged pygmy seahorse on a sea fan in the Malaysian section of the South Pacific island of Borneo won first place prize in an amateur underwater-photography contest.

National Geographic News stories by Helen Scales:

Sharks Repelled by Metal That Creates Electric Field

Coral Reefs Vanishing Faster Than Rain Forests

SEA LIFE PHOTOS: Five New Pygmy Seahorse Species Found

Giant Shark Mystery Solved: Unexpected Hideout Found

Oceans Becoming Acidic Ten Times Faster Than Thought

Antarctic Fish "Hibernate" in Winter

Gardening Fish "Domesticate" Crops of Algae

More than a mile of ice core was pulled from the Greenland ice sheet by scientists this summer, setting a new record for single-season deep ice-core drilling.

The researchers, from 14 countries and led by the University of Copenhagen, are on a quest to recover ice formed 120,000 years ago, the last time our planet was in a period of warm climate such as the one many scientists think we are now entering.

Pushing an ice core out of the drill.

Photo courtesy NEEM ice core drilling project

"Evidence from ancient ice cores tell us that when greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere, the climate warms," says University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Jim White, who is leading the U.S. research contingent. "And when the climate warms, ice sheets melt and sea levels rise.

"If we see comparable rises in sea level in the future like we have seen in the ice-core record, we can pretty much say good-bye to American coastal cities like Miami, Houston, Norfolk, New Orleans and Oakland."

"If we see comparable rises in sea level in the future like we have seen in the ice-core record, we can pretty much say good-bye to American coastal cities like Miami, Houston, Norfolk, New Orleans and Oakland."

This year's drilling operation reached a depth of 1,758 meters (5,767 feet) in early August, where ice layers date to 38,500 years ago during cold glacial period preceding the present interglacial, or warm period.

"The team hopes to hit bedrock at 2,545 meters (8,350 feet) at the end of next summer, reaching ice deposited during warm Eemian period that lasted from roughly 130,000 to 120,000 years ago before the planet began to cool and ice up once again," says a statement about the project released by the National Science Foundation yesterday.

The goal of the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project is to retrieve ice from the the Eemian Period.

Annual ice layers formed over millennia in Greenland by compressed snow reveal information on past temperatures and precipitation levels and the contents of ancient atmospheres, said White, who directs CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. "Ice cores exhumed during previous drilling efforts have revealed abrupt temperature spikes of more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit in just 50 years in the Northern Hemisphere."

The period was warmer than today, with less ice in Greenland. That led to 15-foot (5-meter) higher sea levels than present--conditions similar to those Earth faces as it warms in the coming century and beyond, White says.

This MODIS Terra image, acquired August 23, 2006, shows the southern portion of Greenland. The Greenlandic ice cap covers about 80 percent of the island's surface. Photo courtesy NASA

While three previous Greenland ice cores drilled in the past 20 years covered the last ice age and the period of warming to the present, the deeper ice layers representing the warm Eemian, and the period of transition to the ice age were compressed and folded, making them difficult to interpret, he says.

"Radar measurements through the ice sheet from above the NEEM site have indicated the Eemian ice layers below are thicker, more intact and likely contain more accurate, specific information.

"Every time we drill a new ice core, we learn a lot more about how Earth's climate functions," White said. "The Eemian period is the best analog we have for future warming on Earth."

Increased warming on Earth has a host of potentially deleterious effects, including changes in ecosystems, wildlife extinctions, the growing spread of disease, potentially catastrophic heat waves and increases in severe weather events, according to scientists.

While ice cores pinpoint abrupt climate change events as Earth has passed in and out of glacial periods, the warming trend during the present interglacial period is caused primarily by human activities like fossil fuel burning, White says.

"What makes this warming trend fundamentally different from past warming events is that this one is driven by human activity and involves human responsibility, morals and ethics."

The NEEM project is led by the University of Copenhagen's Centre of Ice and Climate directed by Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen. The U.S. and Denmark are the two leading partners in this project. The U.S. effort is funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs.

The project began in 2008 with the construction of a state of the art facility, including a large dome, the drilling rig for extracting three-inch in-diameter ice cores, drilling trenches, laboratories and living quarters. The official drilling started in June 2009.

The United States is leading the laboratory analysis of atmospheric gases trapped in bubbles within the NEEM ice cores, including greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

Other nations involved in the project include the United States Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Mangrove forests thrive in the salty tidal zone between ocean and land. They play an immensely important role in stabilizing the coastline against erosion, moderating storm surges, and as a nursery and sanctuary for hundreds of species of fish, birds, and other animals.

It's too bad then that in many parts of the world mangrove forests are disappearing faster than they can be surveyed and appreciated for the life-giving services they provide.

Mangroves in Africa have been particularly impacted by human development and many countries may be in danger of losing these vital shoreline woodlands completely, which could threaten food security and expose coastal communities to natural disasters.

"Impoverished fishermen along the coast of tropical African countries like Mozambique and Madagascar may have only a few more years to eke out a profit from one of their nations' biggest agricultural exports," says NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in a recent news release.

"Within a few decades, they may no longer have a livelihood at all."

"Mangrove forests--essential breeding grounds for fish and shellfish in these countries--are being destroyed by worsening pollution, encroaching real estate development, and deforestation necessary to sustain large-scale commercial shrimp farming."

That's because swampy mangrove forests--essential breeding grounds for fish and shellfish in these countries--are being destroyed by worsening pollution, encroaching real estate development, and deforestation necessary to sustain large-scale commercial shrimp farming, NASA explains.

"The decline of these forests threatens much of Africa's coastal food supply and economy. The destruction of mangroves--one of Earth's richest natural resources - also has implications for everything from climate change to biodiversity to the quality of life on Earth."

But help may be on the way.

Lola Fatoyinbo, an evironmental scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has helped develop a tool that will help African countries manage their dwindling mangroves.

Growing up in Cotonou, Benin, West Africa, Fatoyinbo passed polluted mangroves daily, NASA says. "Inspired to help save the forests, she began a mission as a graduate student in the United States to gain more insight about African mangroves."

Her studies have brought Fatoyinbo back to Africa, where she has journeyed along the coastlines to test a new satellite technique for measuring the area, height, and biomass of mangrove forests.

"She developed and employed a method that can be used across the continent, overcoming expensive, ad hoc, and inconsistent modes of ground-based measurement," NASA says.

Fatoyinbo's approach recently produced what she believes is the first full assessment of the continent's mangrove forests.

"We've lost more than 50 percent of the world's mangrove forests in a little over half a century; a third of them have disappeared in the last 20 years alone," said Fatoyinbo, whose earlier study of Mozambique's coastal forests laid the groundwork for the continent-wide study.

"Hopefully this technique will offer scientists and officials a method of estimating change in this special type of forest."

Photo courtesy NASA/Temilola Fatoyinbo

Mangroves are the most common ecosystem in coastal areas of the tropics and sub-tropics, NASA says. "The swampy forests are essential--especially in densely-populated developing countries--for rice farming, fishing and aquaculture (freshwater and saltwater farming), timber, and firewood. Some governments also increasingly depend on them for ecotourism."

The large, dense root systems are a natural obstacle that helps protect shorelines against debris and erosion, NASA explains. "Mangroves are often the first line of defense against severe storms, tempering the impact of strong winds and floods."

Mangroves also have a direct link to climate, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere at a rate of about 100 pounds per acre per day--comparable to the per acre intake by tropical rainforests (though rainforests cover more of Earth's surface), NASA adds.

"To my knowledge, this study is the first complete mapping of Africa's mangroves, a comprehensive, historic baseline enabling us to truly begin monitoring the welfare of these forests," said Assaf Anyamba, a University of Maryland expert on vegetation mapping, based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Fatoyinbo's research combines multiple satellite observations of tree height and land cover, mathematical formulas, and ground-truthing data from the field to measure the full expanse and makeup of the coastal forests.

Her measurements yielded three new kinds of maps of mangroves: continental maps of how much land the mangroves cover; a three-dimensional map of the height of forest canopies across the continent; and biomass maps that allow researchers to assess how much carbon the forests store.

Fatoyinbo and colleague Marc Simard of JPL used satellite images from the NASA-built Landsat and a complex software-based color classification system to distinguish areas of coastal forests from other types of forests, urban areas or agricultural fields.

They also integrated data from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) to create relief maps of the height of the forest canopy.

Finally, they merged the broad radar maps with high-accuracy observations from a light detection and ranging (commonly called lidar) instrument aboard NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to obtain accurate height estimates.

"Fatoyinbo double-checked the accuracy of her satellite measurements at the ground level in the only way possible: She went to Africa to measure tree heights and trunk diameters in person," NASA says.

This satellite image of Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in Russia's Arctic, launches a new ad hoc series on this blog I will call Earth from Space.

Look out for regular updates for unusual, beautiful, educational, newsworthy images released by public and commercial space agencies. I will be looking particularly for images that highlight the special geographic features of our planet.

Novaya Zemlya consists of two major islands, Severny in the north and Yuzhny in the south, separated by a narrow strait, Matochkin Shar.

An extension of the Ural Mountains, this mountainous archipelago has an average altitude of roughly 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) above sea level, and glaciers cover much of the northern island, according to the original NASA caption.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Novaya Zemlya was used as a nuclear test site.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured this true-color image of Novaya Zemlya on July 27, 2009. (This image focuses primarily on the northern island. See an image for the entire archipelago on NASA's Web site.)

The sparsely vegetated land appears in shades of beige and icy white, NASA says. "Hints of turquoise along the northwestern coast likely result from sediments running off the island, or getting churned up by currents from the ocean floor, A narrow band of sea ice hugs the southeastern coast, and smaller pieces of sea ice float off the northern island's northeastern tip."

Before the turn of the twentieth century, Arctic sea ice used to linger along the coast of Novaya Zemlya's larger island each July. After the turn of the century, however, increased summertime melt made open ocean more common, NASA says.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Original NASA caption by Michon Scott based on interpretation by Walt Meier, National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Efforts to rebuild fisheries are starting to pay off in some places around the world, an international team of scientists with divergent views on ocean ecosystems has determined.

The study "puts into perspective recent reports predicting a total collapse of global fisheries within 40 years," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency responsible for administration of U.S. fisheries, said in a statement about the research.

Photo courtesy NEFSC/NOAA

In a paper published in the July 31 issue of the journal Science, study co-author Mike Fogarty of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) of NOAA's Fisheries Service in Woods Hole, Masachusetts. and 20 co-authors say that efforts made to reduce overfishing are succeeding in five of ten large marine ecosystems studied. Some of the successes are in U.S. fisheries.

It's good news for several regions in the U.S., Iceland and New Zealand.

"These highly managed ecosystems are improving" says Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, another author of the paper. "Yet there is still a long way to go: of all fish stocks we examined, 63 percent remained below target and still needed to be rebuilt."

But in spite of this good news, the researchers found that two thirds (68 percent) of the worldwide fisheries examined by the team "need rebuilding and that even lower rates of fish removals are needed to reverse the collapse of vulnerable species."

The researchers estimated that lightly fished and rebuilding ecosystems account for less than 10 percent of world fisheries area and catch, but represent examples of opportunities for successfully rebuilding marine resources elsewhere.

"Finding a balance between fishing and conservation, while difficult, is possible and has been accomplished in a number of fisheries."

Fogarty, head of the NEFSC's Ecosystems Assessment Program and a specialist in ecosystem based management, says finding a balance between fishing and conservation, while difficult, is possible and has been accomplished in a number of fisheries.

"Sometimes small changes have a big effect. It is not a 'one size fits all' management approach since each fishery has its own unique circumstances," Fogarty said.

"Many of the world's fisheries have a long history of overexploitation.

"Different management tools are needed, depending on the situation, to restore marine ecosystems and rebuild fisheries. It takes time. There have been successes in New Zealand and on the U.S. West Coast, and there are promising solutions in other areas, but rebuilding efforts have to be done on an ecosystem basis and from a global perspective."

The first integrated analysis for all coastal areas of the world has ranked hotspots of human impact.

The hottest hotspot is at the mouth of the Mississippi River, says Benjamin S. Halpern, lead author of the study, with the other top 10 in Asia and the Mediterranean.

Nutrient runoff from farms draining into the Mississippi has caused a persistent "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, where the river runs into the ocean. The dead zone is caused by an overgrowth of algae that feeds on the nutrients and takes up most of the oxygen in the water.

Image by NASA

The Mississippi mouth and the other hotspots are areas where conservation efforts will almost certainly fail if they don't directly address what people are doing on land upstream from these locations, said Halpern, who is based at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB).

The study was published in the Journal of Conservation Letters.

Global hotspots where human activities on land are impacting coastal marine ecosystems. The numbers show the rank order of the hottest hotspots (red dots). The blue and green dots are land-based activities that are having an important effect on marine systems but not as much as those areas marked by the red dots.

Illustration courtesy B. Halpern and colleagues, NCEAS

"Resource management and conservation in coastal waters must address a litany of impacts from human activities, from the land, such as urban runoff and other types of pollution, and from the sea," Halpern said.

"One of the great challenges is to decide where and how much to allocate limited resources to tackling these problems."

"One of the great challenges is to decide where and how much to allocate limited resources to tackling these problems," he said. "Our results identify where it is absolutely imperative that land-based threats are addressed--so-called hotspots of land-based impact--and where these land-based sources of impact are minimal or can be ignored."

The study surveyed four key land-based drivers of ecological change:

• nutrient input from agriculture in urban settings
• organic pollutants derived from pesticides
• inorganic pollutants from urban runoff
• direct impact of human populations on coastal marine habitats.

Not All Coastal Waters Fully Impacted

A large portion of the world's coastlines experience very little effect of what happens on land, nearly half of the coastline and more than 90 percent of all coastal waters, Halpern said.

"This is because a vast majority of the planet's landscape drains into relatively few very large rivers, that in turn affect a small amount of coastal area.

"In these places with little impact from human activities on land, marine conservation can and needs to focus primarily on what is happening in the ocean. For example: fishing, climate change, invasive species, and commercial shipping."

Coauthors from NCEAS are Colin M. Ebert, Carrie V. Kappel, Matthew Perry, Kimberly A. Selkoe, and Shaun Walbridge. Fiorenza Micheli of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station and Elizabeth M. P. Madin of UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology are also co-authors. Selkoe is also affiliated with the University of Hawaii's Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

NCEAS is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the National Marine Sanctuaries, and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship provided additional support for this research.

Norway's fisheries regulators have cut the 2009 catch quota for the endangered European eel by 80 percent and banned fishing of the eel completely starting next year, WWF announced today.

Will the endangered European eel be able to slip through the net of extinction, thanks to Norway's ban on catching it?

Photo copyright WWF-Canon/Rudolf Svensen.

The Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs also announced that all recreational fishing of European eels would stop tomorrow, July 1, as stock of the eels hit historically low levels and continue to decline. "The decision represents a major conservation decision that is a model for proper fisheries management," WWF-Norway said.

"This protection should have been implemented many years ago, and we are hoping that the long-overdue protection is not too late."

"A total fishing ban is the strongest measure the fisheries management can use, and when a species is critically endangered one must use the strongest and most efficient measures. This protection should have been implemented many years ago, and we are hoping that the long-overdue protection is not too late," said Norway-WWF CEO Rasmus Hansson.

Staff from Slapton Ley Field Centre & National Nature Reserve in the UK check the elver traps to see how many 'glass' eels have survived the two-year migration across the Atlantic from the Sargasso Sea.

As early as 1999, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) stated that the eel stock was outside safe biological limits, and that the fishery was unsustainable. Yet, fishing has been ongoing for decades, despite scientific advice, WWF said in a statement.

"A successful rebuilding strategy for the eel, both in Norway and the EU, will have a substantial impact on eel numbers in Norwegian waters.

"Consequently, Norway has a great responsibility in influencing both the management and the research that is being undertaken in Europe. In Europe, fishing for eel continues, despite the very severe and depleted state of the stock," the statement added.

"WWF urges Ms Pedersen to fight for the EU taking similar bold measures in their fisheries management, and WWF will fight to stop the eel fishery in the EU," Hansson said.

Related National Geographic News stories:

Europe's Eels Are Slipping Away, Scientists Warn

One in Three European Freshwater Fish Face Extinction

Additional information:

Eel stocks dangerously close to collapse (ICES)

European Eel (USGS)

Are pollutants causing a surge in cancers in wildlife, threatening the conservation and even survival of some species? And is their fate a flashing light for the health of humans?"

"Cancer is one of the leading health concerns for humans, accounting for more than 10 percent of human deaths," said Denise McAloose, chief pathologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society's Global Health Program.

"But we now understand that cancer can kill wild animals at similar rates."

Photo by Sharon Deem

McAloose is the lead author of an article published in the July issue the journal Nature Reviews Cancer, which makes the point that some wild animal species suffer from cancer at the same rates that humans and some species serve as early-warning sentinels for animal and human health.

Many species living within polluted aquatic environments suffer high rates of cancerous tumors, and studies strongly suggest links between wildlife cancers and human pollutants, says the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, in a statement about the research.

"These whales have an extraordinarily high rate of intestinal cancer, which is their second leading cause of death.

"One type of pollutant in these waters--polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAHs)--is a well-known carcinogen in humans, and PAHs are suspected carcinogens for beluga whales as well."

A beluga whale in New York Aquarium. Wild belugas in the nearby St. Lawrence River system suffer from intestinal cancer.

NGS photo by Winfield Parks

Fish in other industrialized waterways, including brown bullhead catfish and English sole, also exhibit high levels of cancer.

Virus-induced cancers can affect the ability of some wildlife populations to reproduce.

"Genital tumors in California sea lions on North America's western coast occur at much higher rates than previously documented. Oceanic dolphin species, such as the dusky dolphin and Burmeister's porpoise (both found in the coastal waters of South America), are also showing higher rates of genital carcinomas."

Other virus-induced cancers can affect the feeding ability or eyesight of wildlife.

"Green sea turtles--a migratory species in oceans across the globe--suffer from fibropapillomatosis, a disease that causes skin and internal organ tumors. A virus is suspected as the cause these tumors, and environmental factors such as human-manufactured carcinogens might exacerbate their severity or prevalence."

Green turtle with a tumor.

Photo by Cynthia Lagueux

In certain situations, cancer threatens the survival of entire species.

"The Tasmanian devil, the world's largest carnivorous marsupial, is at risk of extinction due to a cancer known as devil facial tumor disease. This form of contagious cancer spreads between individual Tasmanian devils through direct contact (primarily fighting and biting).

The authors highlight the critical need to protect both animals and people through increased health monitoring.

"Monitoring the health of wildlife can illuminate the causes of cancer in animal populations; thereby, better safeguarding animals and humans against possible disease.

"Evaluating cancer threats in wildlife populations requires the collaborative efforts of biologists, veterinarians, and pathologists as well as the earnest engagement of governments and international agencies."

The paper concludes that more resources are necessary to support wildlife health monitoring.

"Examining the impact of cancer in wildlife, in particular those instances when human activities are identified as the cause, can contribute to more effective conservation and fits within the One World-One Health approach of reducing threats to both human and animal health," said William Karesh, vice president and director of WCS's Global Health Program.

Good news for polar bears, walruses, caribou:

Russia will create a new 3.7 million-acre (1.5 million-hectare) park in the Arctic, a central area for the Barents and Kara Sea polar bear populations, WWF said today.

NGS photo of polar bear in the Russian Arctic by Gordon Wiltsie

Announcing the park, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he hoped it would be a major attraction for tourism, and announced that he personally plans to vacation there, WWF said.

The new Russian Arctic park is located on the northern part of Novaya Zemlya, a long island that arcs out into the Arctic Ocean between the Barents and Kara Seas, WWF said. It also includes some adjacent marine areas.

"WWF has long been lobbying for the park, which is also a key area for walrus, wild reindeer and bird population," the conservation charity said.

Industrial activities are prohibited in the new park.

NGS photo of walruses swimming in Arctic waters by Bruce Dale

"This is exactly the sort of thing we need to see from Arctic governments," said Neil Hamilton, director of WWF International's Arctic Programme.

"The only way these Arctic populations are going to survive the ecological havoc caused by global warming is by providing them with enough breathing room."

"If industrial activity is kept far enough from key habitat, the animals have a chance."

"We also need urgent global action on climate change to ensure that the parks stay cold enough."

The United Nations has declared today, June 8, as World Oceans Day. Are you ready to take part in it?

"While official U.N. designation is not going to change things overnight it is an important step in improving the health of our world's ocean," says The Ocean Project, a network in 75 countries of more than 900 partner zoos, aquariums, and museums, plus conservation and education organizations, agencies, and institutions.

The Ocean Project worked closely with the World Ocean Network for the last six years to promote and coordinate World Ocean Day events and activities with aquariums, zoos, museums, conservation organizations and agencies, universities, schools, and businesses. "Each year an increasing number of countries and organizations have been marking June 8 as opportunity to celebrate our world ocean and our personal connection to the sea," says The Ocean Project's Web site.

With the World Ocean Network, The Ocean Project also developed and widely circulated a petition to the United Nations urging the U.N. to recognize World Ocean Day officially .

World Oceans Day was declared by the United Nations as June 8 each year beginning in 2009. The official theme for 2009 is: "Our Oceans, Our Responsibility."

Here is the official message for World Oceans Day 2009 from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

"The first observance of World Oceans Day allows us to highlight the many ways in which oceans contribute to society. It is also an opportunity to recognize the considerable challenges we face in maintaining their capacity to regulate the global climate, supply essential ecosystem services and provide sustainable livelihoods and safe recreation.

"Indeed, human activities are taking a terrible toll on the world's oceans and seas. Vulnerable marine ecosystems, such as corals, and important fisheries are being damaged by over-exploitation, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, destructive fishing practices, invasive alien species and marine pollution, especially from land-based sources. Increased sea temperatures, sea-level rise and ocean acidification caused by climate change pose a further threat to marine life, coastal and island communities and national economies.

NGS illustrations by Else Bostelmann

"Oceans are also affected by criminal activity. Piracy and armed robbery against ships threaten the lives of seafarers and the safety of international shipping, which transports 90 per cent of the world's goods. Smuggling of illegal drugs and the trafficking of persons by sea are further examples of how criminal activities threaten lives and the peace and security of the oceans.

"Several international instruments drawn up under the auspices of the United Nations address these numerous challenges. At their centre lies the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It provides the legal framework within which all activities in the oceans and seas must be carried out, and is the basis for international cooperation at all levels. In addition to aiming at universal participation, the world must do more to implement this Convention and to uphold the rule of law on the seas and oceans.

"The theme of World Oceans Day, "Our oceans, our responsibility", emphasizes our individual and collective duty to protect the marine environment and carefully manage its resources. Safe, healthy and productive seas and oceans are integral to human well-being, economic security and sustainable development."

Dolphins can stay sharp and alert, monitoring their environment for days on end without getting the least bit tired because they send half their brains to sleep while the other half remains conscious, researchers have learned.

Not only do dolphins have this clever trick for overcoming sleep deprivation, Sam Ridgway from the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program explained in a news statement, but they seem to be able to remain continually vigilant for sounds.

Ridgway and colleagues from San Diego and Tel Aviv wondered whether the dolphins' unrelenting auditory vigilance tired them and took a toll on the animals' other senses, according to the statement released by The Company of Biologists, a UK-based charity that promotes research in biology.

NGS picture of dolphins by Else Bostelmann

Ridgway and his team set about testing two dolphins' acoustic and visual vigilance over a five-day period to find out how well they functioned after days without a break. The team publish their results on May 1, 2009 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

First Ridgway and his colleagues, Mandy Keogh, Mark Todd and Tricia Kamolnick, trained two dolphins to respond to a 1.5-second beep sounded randomly against a background of 0.5 second beeps every 30 seconds, the news release said.

Ridgway explained that the sounds were low enough for the dolphins to barely notice them as they swam through their enclosure, but the animals sprung into action every time they heard the 1.5-second tone, even after listening to the sounds for five days without a break. Their auditory vigilance remained as sharp as it had been five days earlier.

"Next Allen Goldblatt and Don Carder designed a visual stimulus to test the dolphins' vigilance while they continued listening to the repetitive beeps," the statement added.

"Knowing that the dolphins' binocular vision is limited because their eyes are situated on opposite sides of their heads, Kamolnick trained one of the dolphins, SAY, to recognise two shapes (either three horizontal red bars or one vertical green bar) with her right eye before training her to recognise the same shapes with the left eye, reasoning that if half of her brain was asleep during testing, the dolphin would only see the shapes through the eye connected to the conscious half of the brain.

"But the team were in for a surprise when they began training SAY's left eye. She already recognised the shapes, even though her left eye had not seen them previously."

Visual Information Is Transferred

The information must be transferred between the two brain hemispheres, Ridgway said. He suspects that the dolphin's inter-hemispheric commissures, which connects the two halves, may transfer the visual information.

"Having trained both dolphins to recognise the shapes, the hard part began: monitoring and rewarding the dolphins continually over a five-day period while the team tested the animals' responses to both the sound and visual stimuli," the news statement continued.

"Amazingly, even after five days of listening out for 1.5-second beeps amongst the 0.5-second beep background, the dolphins were still responding as accurately as they had done at the beginning of the experiment.

"The team also enticed the dolphins into a bay at night where they could be shown the horizontal and vertical bar shapes, and found that the dolphins were as sharp at the end of the 120-hour experiment as they had been at the beginning.

"And when the team checked the dolphins' blood for physical signs of sleep deprivation, they couldn't find any.

"After five days of unbroken vigilance the dolphins were in much better shape than the scientists."

© David Hall/seaphotos.com

This newly discovered species of frogfish doesn't so much swim as hop, bouncing like a ball along the seafloor, scientists said this week.

"Each time they strike the seafloor they use their fins to push off and they expel water from tiny gill openings on their sides to jettison themselves forward. With tails curled tightly to one side -- which surely limits their ability to steer -- they look like inflated rubber balls bouncing hither and thither," said a University of Washington news release.

The frogfish, a type of anglerfish, has been named Psychedelica, "the perfect name for a fish that is a wild swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes and behaves in ways contrary to its brethren, including bouncing like a ball along the seafloor," says the University of Washington's Ted Pietsch, who is the first to describe the new species in the scientific literature and thus the one to select the name.

"Psychedelica is perhaps even more apt given the cockamamie way the fish swim, some with so little control they look intoxicated and should be cited for DUI," Pietsch says.

See a QuickTime video of a juvenile hopping along.

While other anglerfish and similar species are known to jettison themselves up off the bottom before they begin swimming, none have been observed hopping. It's just one of the behaviors of H. psychedelica never observed in any other fish, says Pietsch, UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and curator of fishes at the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

© David Hall/seaphotos.com

The ice fish is sometimes called a bloodless or white-blooded fish, because it lost its ability to make hemoglobin during its evolution.This makes the fish a medical curiosity.

This finger-length juvenile was photographed during a 2008 expedition to the Antarctic. The photo was released by the Census of Marine Life along with pictures of many other marine species that scientists say are found at both poles, even though their cold-water habitat is separated by thousands of miles and the tropics.

Read about this at

How Did Polar Species Find Their Way to Opposite Ends of Earth?

Photo Credit: Russ Hopcroft, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life.

NASA

We hear a lot about how carbon dioxide emissions are warming the atmosphere and changing climate in ways that are damaging, if not catastrophic, for life on Earth.

Increasingly we are also learning about the impact of carbon dioxide on the oceans. As the sea absorbs carbon from the air its chemistry is changing, becoming more acidic. This also is likely to have a profound impact on life, experts warn.

Ocean acidification could affect marine food webs and lead to substantial changes in commercial fish stocks, threatening protein supply and food security for millions of people as well as the multi-billion dollar fishing industry, the Monaco Declaration says.

"Coral reefs provide fish habitat, generate billions of dollars annually in tourism, protect shorelines from erosion and flooding, and provide the foundation for tremendous biodiversity, equivalent to that found in tropical rain forests," the Declaration says.

"Yet by mid-century, ocean acidification may render most regions chemically inhospitable to coral reefs. These and other acidification related changes could affect a wealth of marine goods and services, such as our ability to use the ocean to manage waste, to provide chemicals to make new medicines, and to benefit from its natural capacity to regulate climate.

"For instance, ocean acidification will reduce the ocean's capacity to absorb anthropogenic CO2, which will exacerbate climate change."

Mississippi Dead Zone image courtesy NASA

This prediction is made by Danish scientists in a paper "Long-term ocean oxygen depletion in response to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels," published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Also known as "dead zones," low-oxygen areas in the ocean are where fish, crabs and clams are not able to live. In shallow coastal regions, these zones can be caused by runoff of human waste or excess fertilizers from farming.

Oxygen-starved areas in bays and coastal waters have been expanding since the 1960s, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (see sidebar). There are now more than 400 known dead zones in coastal waters worldwide, compared to 305 in the 1990s, National Geographic News reported in August last year.

Gary Shaffer, of the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who is the leader of the research team at the Danish Center for Earth System Science (DCESS), says in a news release about the paper published in Nature Geoscience today that expansion of low-oxygen zones "would lead to increased frequency and severity of fish and shellfish mortality events, for example off the west coasts of the continents, like off Oregon and Chile."

Photo by James L. Stanfield/NGS

For Enric Sala, saving the oceans is personal.

By personal he doesn't mean only himself. He means me, and you, and every one of our six billion fellow humans.

"If we all did something it would be huge," he said at a lunchtime forum at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., today.

Sala is a marine ecologist and a National Geographic Fellow. His research was used to justify scientifically the proclamation of vast new marine monuments in the Pacific Ocean, announced by President Bush earlier this month.

Photo by James L. Stanfield/NGS

Sala also has been educating National Geographic employees about the consequences of eating certain types of seafood.

Magellanic penguin colony photo by Graham Harris/Wildlife Conservation Society.

Good news in the last few hours of a year that will not be remembered for good news: Argentina has proclaimed a new coastal marine park that will offer a sanctuary to a great many species, including half a million penguins.

"The park protects one of the most productive and extraordinary marine ecosystems on the planet," said Guillermo Harris, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Argentina Program. "The creation of this park comes in the nick of time for many species that are threatened by the region's fishing and energy industries."

New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced the news today.

Porbeagle shark Lamna nasus (Global Red List Assessment: Vulnerable;

Sub-population Red List assessment for the Northeast Atlantic: Critically Endangered)

Joining the long list of species heading toward extinction are 26 percent of northeast Atlantic sharks, rays and chimaeras, according to an assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Another 20 percent are in the Near Threatened category.

"The total number of threatened species may well be higher as there was insufficient information to assess more than a quarter (27 percent) of the species," according to a report released today by the IUCN Shark Specialist Group (SSG).

Photo by Leslie Babonis/UF Department of Zoology

Some species of sea snake need freshwater to survive, a University of Florida zoologist has discovered.

Harvey Lillywhite says it has been the "long-standing dogma" that the roughly 60 species of venomous sea snakes worldwide slake their thirst by drinking seawater, with internal salt glands filtering and excreting the salt.

"Experiments with three species of captive sea kraits captured near Taiwan, however, found that the snakes refused to drink saltwater even if thirsty -- and then would drink only freshwater or heavily diluted saltwater," he says.

"In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering," said James Balsiger, acting assistant administrator for NOAA's Fisheries Service.

Photo courtesy NOAA

Illustration courtesy National Snow and Ice Data Center

The giant ice cube bobbing on the top of the planet just got smaller.

Warming sea and air probably caused the Arctic sea ice to melt to its lowest volume on record this summer, the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center reported today. 

Photograph of the newly discovered Australian reticulate swell shark Cephaloscyllium hiscosellum courtesy CSIRO

Marine biologist Sylvia Earle is fond of saying that a teaspoon of ocean water brims with life. She once told me that the sea is full of animals yet to be discovered. That we know less about the ocean floor than we do about the solar system.

I'm mindful of these words whenever we publish news about discoveries in the oceans. Finds seem to be announced almost every week. Some of the most popular stories we have published have been about giant squid or strange new species of fish.

"These are some of the largest and rarest animals on this planet trying to make a living just a few miles from New York's shores," he said in a statement released today. "It just goes to show us that there are many important and wonderful discoveries to be made about the living world right here, right in our backyards."

Photo of North Atlantic right whale and calf courtesy NOAA

While looking for whales in Alaska's Chukchi Sea last week, U.S. government officials noticed an unusually high number of polar bears swimming in the open sea. Some were apparently heading for shore and some were heading toward ice. Several of them were 15 to 20 miles from either destination.

Polar bears are good swimmers, of course, and they do cross water to get out to the ice, which they use as a platform to hunt marine life.

Biologists have predicted that polar bears might be in trouble as global warming causes the Arctic ice to retreat.

Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, in the photo on the right, believes that overfishing, pollution, and climate change must be addressed to halt the spiral of the world's oceans into catastrophe.

"Only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing," he said in a paper published by the science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.