Pink Salmon Numbers May Threaten Other North Pacific Species. According to E&E News, “Biological oceanographer Sonia Batten experienced her lightbulb moment on the perils of too many salmon three years ago as she prepared a talk on the most important North Pacific seafood you’ll never see on a plate: zooplankton. Zooplankton nourish everything from juvenile salmon to seabirds to giant whales. But as Batten examined 15 years of data collected by instruments on container ships near the Aleutian Islands, she noticed a trend: Zooplankton were abundant in even-number years and less abundant in odd-number years. Something was stripping a basic building block in the food web every other year. And just one predator fit that profile. ‘The only thing that we have in this whole area with an up and down, alternating-year pattern is pink salmon,’ said Batten of Canada’s Marine Biological Association. Pink salmon are wildly abundant in odd-number years and less abundant in even-number years. They constitute nearly 70% of what’s now the largest number of salmon populating the North Pacific since last century. But an increasing number of marine researchers say the voracious eaters are thriving at the expense of higher-value sockeye salmon, seabirds and other species with which their diet overlaps. In addition to the flourishing wild populations of pink salmon, Alaska hatcheries release 1.8 billion pink salmon fry annually. And hatcheries in Asian countries contribute an additional 3-billion-plus fish.” [E&E News, 8/12/19 (=)]

 

Cigarette Butts Pose Big Microplastic Hazard In The Oceans. According to Phys.org, “For over 20 years, cigarette butts have been the No. 1 debris item reported in Virginia during coastal cleanups, according to Katie Register, executive director of Clean Virginia Waterways of Longwood University. Register wrote the 2016 Virginia Marine Debris Reduction Plan for the Coastal Zone Management Program at the Department of Environmental Quality. That finding bears out whenever VIMS faculty and student volunteers conduct a beach cleanup. In less than a mile of shoreline over less than an hour, volunteers can pick up more than 3,000 cigarette butts—far outpacing the number of plastic food wrappers from a recent cleanup (981), fast food containers (15), foam packaging (60) and bottles (6). ‘I would imagine many people are working under the assumption that cigarette butts are biodegradable,’ said Meredith Evans Seeley, a doctoral student studying plastics in Hale’s lab. ‘I think many people believe that they break down into the environment and break down fully, so that they’re not causing any harm.’ Plastics can last seemingly forever, and they’re everywhere.” [Phys.org, 8/12/19 (=)]

 

Op-Ed: The UN Should Protect The Ocean's Twilight Zone. According to The Hill, “United Nations delegates will gather in New York next week to discuss the future of the global ocean. This will be the UN’s third session in less than a year aimed at developing a new international agreement governing how to sustainably manage marine life in the open ocean, beyond coastal waters managed by individual member States. So far, these negotiations have had a critical omission: the vast stretch of ocean known as the twilight zone. Initial discussions in 2018 and 2019 about ‘Biodiversity in areas Beyond National Jurisdiction’ have focused on regions for which we have the most scientific data: surface waters and the deep seabed. We believe it is equally imperative for delegates to include the ocean’s midwater — the twilight zone — and to recognize its vital role in supporting ocean food webs and regulating global climate. Well below the sunlit surface, the twilight zone extends throughout the ocean in an immense, globe-spanning layer from 200 to 1,000 meters (660 to 3,300 feet) deep. Its life forms are fascinating and diverse. They range from tiny bristlemouth fish — most smaller than your little finger — with gaping, tooth-filled jaws (the most numerous vertebrates on the planet), to giant siphonophores, whose gelatinous, tentacled chains can extend as much as 40 meters (130 feet) — approximately the length of three school busses — making them the longest animals on the planet.” [The Hill, 8/12/19 (+)]

 

 

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