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Our Oceans are Under Attack

Discussion in 'YachtForums Yacht Club' started by brian eiland, May 19, 2009.

  1. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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  2. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    Corral Can Sense What's Coming

    Australian scientists have thrown new light on the mechanism behind the mass death of corals worldwide as the Earth’s climate warms.

    Coral bleaching, one of the most devastating events affecting coral reefs around the planet, is triggered by rising water temperatures. It occurs when the corals and their symbiotic algae become heat-stressed, and the algae which feed the corals either die or are expelled by the coral.



    ...story with photos
    http://www.sail-world.com/index.cfm?Nid=91002&refre=y&ntid=30&rid=4
  3. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    North West Passage Alarm - totally ice free by 2015

    It might be appealing to think of sailing through the dreaded North West Passage above Canada, but most cruising sailors would gladly give it a miss if it meant we could reduce the apparently irreversible (if you go by the feeble reactions of many nations) effects of the global warming which is producing it.

    The International Energy Agency has just warned that climate change is irreversible by 2017. Arctic Sea ice is shrinking so rapidly that by the summer in as little as four years’ time it could vanish altogether at the top of the globe

    'Polar bears depend completely on ice for hunting'


    ...story with photos
    http://www.sail-world.com/cruising/index.cfm?nid=90925&rid=11
  4. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    International Team to drill beneath glacier in Antarctica

    NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded researchers will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea.

    The international team undertaking this science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to Pine Island Glacier. It is the area of the ice-covered continent that concerns scientists most because of its potential to cause a rapid rise in sea level. Satellite measurements have shown this area is losing ice and surrounding glaciers are thinning, raising the possibility the ice could flow rapidly out to sea.

    http://www.sail-world.com/index.cfm?Nid=90804&refre=y&ntid=30&rid=4
  5. AMG

    AMG YF Moderator

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    Brian, you know there is a Climate Conference in Durban starting now. This is the reason a lot of reports are distributed the weeks before. Like the IPCC report on Extreme Weather which was quoted in mainstream media recently.

    As well as the second release of e-mails between leading climate scientists, called Climategate 2.0.

    Luckily there are no alarming alarms, our climate is surprisingly stable...
  6. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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  7. Old Phart

    Old Phart Senior Member

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    I dunno
  8. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    I was not really trying to bring up the old 'global warming' arguments, but rather:

    Anoxic events

    ...and a possible drilling accident under the Artic Ice Cap like we saw in the Gulf of Mexico.
  9. AMG

    AMG YF Moderator

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    Is there anybody drilling there now?
  10. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    Shell was getting ready to deploy a rig up there a year or so ago, but it got washed ashore in a storm.
    Salvage crews await weather as Shell's grounded Arctic drill rig sways in place | Alaska Dispatch

    I believe they are repairing that rig and getting ready to deploy it and several others soon. Sorry I have not been keeping up with the most recent news,...that I am sure they (the oil companies) do not want to draw any attention to. And we have lots of other subjects clogging up the news channels that suppress news of this.
  11. AMG

    AMG YF Moderator

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    OK, but this is south of Alaska, in fact south of the Latitude I am sitting on. I think the more risky area is if they start drilling in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska.

    Attached Files:

  12. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    I'm not saying that the area it went aground in was its intended destination, but rather it was in-route to the arctic ocean,...I believe?
  13. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    Excerpted from that article....
  14. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    ....a recent posting to this same subject on another forum

    The 'Blue Heart' of the planet is home to about 97% of life on Earth. The ocean generates the oxygen we breathe, regulates our climate, forms clouds that give us rain, and provides habitat for some of the most incredible creatures in the world. It's our life support system, yet less than 1% of
    it is protected.

    Meet oceanographer Sylvia Earle. She has been exploring the depths for over 40 years and has spent more than 6,000 hours under the waves. She wants us to know why we should all be concerned about sustaining the health of the ocean.
    With 90% of the oceans' large fish now gone, is the answer just to stop eating fish? Not exactly. As Captain Paul Watson has pointed out, the largest predatory ocean bird is now chicken, which eat more fish than puffins and albatross together. The biggest threat to fish populations, wild and farmed, is livestock. Factory farmed animals consume more fish than all humans on the planet.

    But it's not too late to act. Simple yet critical decisions we each can make will help restore the balance to Earth's precious life support system. Here's how...
    1. Eat for tomorrow
    Reducing or eliminating animal products from your diet is the single most powerful thing you can do as a consumer to ease the stress on our oceans. Fish have feelings too and suffer just as much as animals on factory farms. Not only that, fish are fed to pigs, chickens — even other fish in fish farms — in numbers that are wiping out ocean ecosystems.
    2. Say NO to plastic bags
    Every piece of plastic ever made still exists. There are approximately 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in each square mile of the world's oceans. Think of the marine animals next time you shop.
    3. Step up for sharks
    Don't support restaurants that serve Shark Fin Soup, and help end cruel shark netting and baiting in Australia by taking action here.
    4. Eat organic
    It's better for you, and the planet. There are 146 dead zones identified in the world's oceans that are primarily caused by chemical fertilizers in run off.
    5. Spread the word
    Share this story with your friends.
  15. Opcn

    Opcn Senior Member

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    Anoxic events are one of the most fascinating things in nature. Flat out they are more important to the carbon cycle than anything that happens on land. People talk about the Amazon being the lungs of the world, while cutting huge swaths of it down to grow crops in Brazil has no doubt released CO2 the amazon was net carbon neutral before that started happening. While all those trees were busy capturing carbon the fungi were busy releasing it. The carboniferous era is over and tropical forests aren't just going to lay around and wait to be covered over anymore.

    Anoxic zones, or oceanic deadzones, are a result of the ability of carbondioxide (CO2) to form carbonic acid(CO(OH)2) an an aqueous environment. The phytoplankton are under extreme evolutionary pressure to be absolutely the best photosynthesizers. Being in salt water gives them tremendous access to all of the elemental building blocks that they could want (save those that there is great competition for). CO2 and O2 both dissolve into the water as a gas, but CO2 goes a step further to carbonic acid so far more CO2 can be dissolved than O2 in any given set of circumstances. The phytoplankton use the CO2 and evolve O2 gas which dissolves into the water until it hits saturation point, and then it starts forming bubbles and fleeing from the ocean at amazing speed. As the O2 is lost carbon builds up in the bodies of the phytoplankton. When nighttime comes around they try to burn the carbon back to CO2 to survive but soon the O2 runs out because the phytoplankton is so thick, and all the O2 they banked during the day escaped into the air and is only available to the plankton on the very surface. With this crunch many plankton die, but they cannot be decomposed easily because oxidizers are in very short supply. These undecomposed plankton sink to the bottom and in very still water form deposits that will eventually become oil shale. At pretty much every step along the way the concentration of CO2 in the ocean water is lower than the equilibrium with the air would leave it (because remember, they get rid of far more O2 during the day than they make CO2 at night) and CO2 is just pouring into the water in these places.

    It's an amazing and elegant carbon pump that takes it from the air and locks it into what will eventually become fossil fuels.
  16. NEO56

    NEO56 Member

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    I have been trying to avoid this thread as it's something I'm very passionate about, but since it's resurfaced once again, I'm forced to throw my two cents in. First of all, one of the reasons I quit tournament fishing for Pelagic species (Marlin, Sailfish) was due to Calcutta's (side bets within the teams), they were killing smaller fish just to collect up to 100 grand for biggest White, Blue, Black Marlin, each day. Bisbee's Black and Blue Marlin tournament was one of the biggest offenders. I am happy that while I no longer fish those tournaments, most have gone to catch and release tournaments with an official on board each boat to photograph each fish with measurements to determine the winners.

    Secondly, Long liner fisherman, especially "factory ships" bring aboard Marlin, Sailfish, Sharks, which arrive dead at the stern are thrown overboard as by-catch. There was an article in Marlin magazine several years ago, that stated even if commercial fishing of Blue fin Tuna were to cease back then, the the Blue fin population was not large enough to be revived. I like Sushi just as much as the other guy...but I will no longer order Tuna. A 17 year old kid caught a 475 lb. Swordfish off the coast of Florida (it may have been larger...can't remember the exact weight) but supposed to be a Florida record. I had several friends who begged me to write a protest letter. My reply was "He's a 17 year old kid who might have a record that will probably stand for ever..the fish is already dead...what possible good could I do?"

    And last but not least, I was fortunate enough to catch a program on Nat Geo, about something so serious, I got physically sick. Turns out that Glaciers melting in the Arctic and Iceland, primarily the "pups" that break off and melt, and due the the fresh water content of this melting, sink down to the bottom of the water column and begin their journey down and across to Spain, then come back across the top of South America, back up the Gulf, and eventually round the Florida Straits, and create the Gulf Stream! Can you begin to imagine what would happen to our fisheries on the East Coast of the Country if all of a sudden we lost the Engine that powers the Gulf Stream??? Fish populations would cease to exist. Plankton, Shrimp, Baitfish, require current to reproduce, and flourish. Without the Gulf Stream flowing, hundreds of thousands, of people would be out of work, our Seafood industry would collapse, and Florida would suffer a depression never experienced in our History. We are fortunate that those of us who are 50+ years....MIGHT be lucky enough to die before this becomes a reality...but it is happening, and apparently we're are powerless to stop it. O.K. I've said my peace, and once again made myself sick.

    Oh and I have another fact for you to ponder...last year South Florida, especially the Keys had a non existent Stone Crab season, I called my source in Marathon, on Thursday to check on this years catch...not quite non existent, but very, very slow. I inquired about making a trip down there to stock up on some Stone Crab, and was told that Jumbo's claws, while frozen were $30 per pound! Three years ago, I bought Jumbo claws (about 1 lb per claw) for $8.99/ lb. right off the boat. Regardless of it being a temperature inversion, or Red Tide, makes no difference...this is two years now without any decent crop. To me this constitutes a trend. It's time for us Boater's who love the water and being on the Ocean, figure out a way to raise our voices, and somehow get heard. Otherwise we're going to end up boating in a cesspool of some type of liquid.
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2014
  17. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    So how was that stone crab season this past season ?
  18. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    VERY interesting response NEO56. I'm glad you have become so aware. I'm afraid we are not going to take this science serious until it 'bits us', and that might be a little too late.
  19. brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    NASA found a way to track ocean currents from space. What they saw is troubling


    There has been growing concern, of late, that one predicted consequence of a changing climate — the slowing of the great “overturning” circulation in the Atlantic Ocean — is already starting to happen.

    Some scientists have already suggested that the odd cold “blob” pattern on the map above, featuring record cold North Atlantic temperatures on an otherwise quite hot planet, may be attributable to this development. The gigantic circulation, technically termed the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC, carries warm water northward even as it also sends cold salty water back south at depth. Thus, changes here can reverberate around the globe — one recent study even found that a full AMOC shutdown could trigger a temporary period of global cooling.

    Now, in a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Texas at Austin use a new and sophisticated tool — the “Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment” satellites, or GRACE — to confirm some pretty odd behavior in the circulation in 2009 and 2010 that has also been linked to a sudden and extreme 4-inch sea-level rise on the East Coast.

    The new satellite technique, the researchers say, holds great promise to determine if — as feared — the circulation is indeed slowing down. “A lot of the evidence that has been amassed is indirect, and what we’re trying to do is provide a way to really observe the AMOC across all latitudes,” says Felix Landerer, a researcher with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is lead author of the study.

    To understand how the researchers achieved this, it’s first important to describe — and profusely praise — the GRACE satellites that made it all possible. These satellites are not only a fascinating tool but, frankly, a testament to the stunning power of science — and they’re already responsible for a huge number of new insights into the workings of our planet.

    ....more here:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...orrying-ocean-circulation-changes-from-space/
  20. AMG

    AMG YF Moderator

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    And as usual, the buzz words "climate change" are used to get attention and perhaps more funding, while the article concludes; "Granted, the current study does not claim to have detected a long-term, downward trend in the strength of the AMOC. The point was more to prove that the technique works. And now that it does, the researchers say they are preparing to do more long-term analyses."