SMM2015 Paradigm-Shift Thursday

Again just sampling some highlights here:

Here is David Mattila of the Secretariat of the International Whaling Commission talking about the IWC's big whale disentanglement initiative:

Today’s plenary featured a stunning and inspiring presentation by Claudio Campagna which looked at how language frames the debate around the biodiversity conservation and how, in particular, this important area of concern has been subverted by the concept of ‘sustainable development’. A few of the speaker’s key slides are copied 

. 

Claudio considered how the main internatuional treaties had moved over time
from a focus on environment to development

Another great point:

Here's Claudio.

Here's the final contribution.

Professor Orbach and his fine mustache

Among other things the good Professor contrasted the US law as it applies to terrestrial animals - you can shoot a bear in any US state - with that applying to marine mammals which are highly protected. He put the roots of this higher level of protection (enshrined in the US Marine Mammal Protection Act) in the media of the 1980's which included the 'flipper' series. He also made a few pithy comments on the International Whaling Commisson and the moratorium that it oversees.

SMM 2015 - Rare sightings Wednesday

Another day when there were hundreds of presentations and posters to be viewed…. Overwhelming really!

I am not entirely ancient but I can remember a time when the impacts of noise, chemical pollution and climate change were not legitimate issues for study (so, for reference, I am looking back only some 20 years and I anticipate that younger readers will find this difficult to accept as true), here there are dozens of high quality presentations touching on these issues, and much more besides.

I will sample just a few highlights here:

Firstly, Lindsay Porter speaking about ‘The Indo-Pacific [pink] humpback dolphin and the Hong Kong Zuhai-Macao Bridge: building bridges between science and management’.  

Lindsay Porter 

The situation of this small population is truly remarkable their habitat is full of human activities, ships, construction discharges and such and it is remarkable that the population continues to survive. The bridge is the latest major construction project.

An Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin in mid-flight (photo Lindsay Porter)

A rare lunch-time sighting of Naomi Rose here with a fan (Naomi is on the left).

 In the afternoon plenary - a very rare sighjting of Professor Frank Cipriano - the shy geneticist and conference workshop coordinator, rocking an organge bow-tie. Frank introduced two outstanding speakers.

Beth Shapiro’s excellent (and very funny) talk on ancient DNA focused on the lineages of walruses and grey whales and considered how the very distant past informed what is happening on our rapidly changing planet. The walrus which comes in 2-3 sub-species is rather unique lacking close relatives and ice-loss bodes ill for it. The grey whale, by contrast has previously moved from the Pacific into the Atlantic at times of low ice (where is, of course, where we are going)…. So further to a couple of grey whales that have been reported in recent years in the Atlantic region (indeed off the coast of Israel in one remarkable case), we might expect to see more of the same.

Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse spoke on Novel tools and technologies in health assessment – explaining again the relevant of this to rapidly changing ecosystems. Droids. Of course, featured and sampling the blow (breath) of whales.

Key signage at the meeting

That bow-tie in detail. 

SMM 2015 - How-the-whales-are-saving-the-planet-Tuesday

A giant skinny Nick Gales menaces his smaller brother.

 A stunning plenary session today. Introduced by President Nick Gales, three excellent speakers covered the positive role of whales in maintaining ocean ecosystems; how climate change is mediated via the jet stream and its implications; and climate change and the Arctic.

A giant smiley dolphin menaces Trish Lavery 

Trish Lavery, of the Department of the Environment, Australia, spoke with wonderful lucidity and enthusiasm on the topic of ‘Whales sustain fisheries: Blue whales stimulate primary production in the Southern Ocean’.

She started by noting that whales are not uniformly distributed across the oceans but associated with high productivity zones and that fertilisation of the oceans causes carbon to be drawn down from the atmosphere. Such fertilisation can be achieved by the defecation of whales – and she gave a clear example using sperms whales which feed at depth but defecate in the upper layers (in the photic/light zone) where the plant plankton (which underpin the productivity of the whole ecosystem grow). This movement of nutrients from the deeps means that sperm whales (at current population levels) contribute to the addition of some 200,000 tonnes of carbon more than they are using.  Whaling has hugely reduced the contribution that sperm whales now make.

Lavery also looked at blue whales – so like all baleen species – they feed and defecate in the upper levels. Hence no net gain might be expected and she commented on the advocacy from some to cull whales in favour of fisheries interests; a ‘bottom-up’ view. She noted that there has been a significant reduction in krill and that whilst this was typically linked to climate change, the removal of whales by whaling might have have played a part, noting that whaling selectively removed the older and bigger whales. Lavery was able to show a possible moderate stimulation of krill caused by the whales and she commented that whales being in balance with their ecosystem might explain why they have survived 30 million years ‘without eating all the fish’! She concluded by pondering about what other ‘ecosystem services’ the whale might be providing.    

Trish 

At the end of her talk and further to loud and prolonged applause, the president of the SMM, Nick Gales, commented that it was 'wonderful' that a paradigm shift in thinking was resulting from a student project.

You can link to Trish Levry's publications which will give a more fulsome and authoritative account of her work via Researchgate HERE  Incidentally in my blogs from meetings, I paraphrase what was said and strive for accuracy but welcome corrections.

It's all about the jet stream

Jenifer Francis of Rutgers University spoke on ‘Crazy Weather and the Arctic Meltdown’. She reminded us that CO2 in the atmosphere was at its highest level for 800,000 years; that the resulting warming was not evenly spread over the planet (with a particular focus in the Arctic).

She emphasised that weather was being driven by the Jet Stream - its strength and its location. A weak Jet Stream is being caused by sea-ices loss in the Arctic which allows major heat loss to the atmosphere in the winter. 

And a weak Jet Stream tends to stay in one place – hence, relative to what went before, weather systems tend to ‘get stuck’: this caused repeated storms (including in the Arctic and over the UK for example) and droughts in some places and enhanced precipitation elsewhere. The implications of this for marine mammals include those relating to sea-ice loss and changes in productivity - a theme picked up by the last speaker, Sue E Moore who spoke on ‘Marine Mammals as Sentinels to Impacts of Climate Change on Arctic Ecosystems’. She emphasised the likely movement of baleen whales north – so they may be net benefiters – and also the less positive implications for those species that are dependent on ice for resting and breeding (including walruses and polar bears).

   

SMM 2015 Communications Monday

Delegates at the Conference of the Society for Marine Mammalogy were menaced today by a giant fur seal pup.

Or .... Nancy Baron of  COMPASS moderates a session on
Communicating Science

 The 'How to make your Science Matter panel:

An impressive line-up of experts - from the right:
Jane Lubchenco, USA Marine Envoy for the Oceans (now there is a title!);
Nick Gales (President of the SMM - without his scarf);
Marcia McNutt, Science, Editor in Chief;
Charles Littnan, Haiwaiin Monk seal scientist;
David Malakoff, deputy editor, Science
Ken Wiess, Journalist

Some 2000 people attended the session and were asked if they -

1. believed communicating science was part of their job;
2. It was important to them that their marine mammal work had impact; and
3. Did they want to change the world.

(Everyone did - let's hope that we all want to change it for the better.)

Much good advice was dispensed and a question and answer session followed.

And here is Englishman-at-large, Andrew Wright poised to ask what would undoubtedly have been an excellent question... but time ran out
.

Elsewhere - there was accute competition for lunch at surrounding restaurants and cafes when delegates piled out in the lunchbreak an we learnt that exposure to oil is really bad for cetaceans in many many ways in an extensive report-back on many excellent investigations into the effects of the Deepwater Horizon Spill in the Gulf of Mexico - and also that this is not necessarily the official view of the relevant USA agencies (yet). These investigations should finally put the nails in the coffin of the old and much promulgated idea that cetaceans avoid oil spills and so are not affected by them!

SMM 15 San Francisco - Opening Ceremony

 Nick Gales (below) Society of Marine Mammalogy (SMM) President, resplendent in a particularly fetching scarf, gives the opening speech (these scarfs seem to be all the fashion here).

The president tells us that the 2,300 or so people gathered at the conference come from 80 countries and notes that the SMM was founded 34 years ago in San Francisco.... so it has come home.

Peter Tyack (above ) of the Sea Mammal Reseach Unit in St Andrews, Scotland,  gives an overview on where marine mammal science has come from - making a significant reference to whaling (and how it is now apparent that whaling data were significantly falsified). His conclusions focus on the future of marine mammal science and are summarised on this concluding slide below.

Next, the SMM has instigated a new conservation award and this is awarded jointly to group of people from Mexico, including scientists, administrators and fishermen, have been working to save the critically endangered vaquita (Gulf of California porpoise).

Mexicans to the left - to the right in red Dr Barb Taylor (in red) and Nick Gales looking at something off stage. 

Among those honoured is the redoubtable Lorenzo Roja-Bracho (below)  - the world authority on the species.

Lorenzo with award

Thanks extend to the Mexican President and the Sectary of the Environment.

The representative of the Mexican government thanks everyone and among other things notes that whilst Mexico has only 1% of the world's land area it has 10% of its biodiversity.

Issues at the Society of Marine Mammalogy Biennial Conference (SMM15)

Holding up the Golden Gate Bridge

We love Drones!

So, this is the most enormous conference and a gathering of the marine mammal science superstars (and some other people). Over 2,300 have registered to attend and more are expected to sign up on the door.

We have already had two days of associated workshops. The three most popular were reported to be Unmanned Aerial Systems (drones), the Sirenian Syposium and Baleen Whale Migration. 

The important workshop on sea pens (retirement homes) for orcas was also very well attended and evidently very lively!

(I attended an IWC workshop on investigations into mass strandings and, yesterday, World Animal Protection's excellent 'Loose the Loop' workshop, which was focused on seal entanglement).

As we enter the main conference week, I am daunted as much of it will run in no less than five consecutive sessions. There will also be plenary sessions.

Some of the focuses here (from a review of the agenda) include trying to help the world;s most critically endangered cetacean, the vaquita. More about this HERE; there are also a number of sessions and presentations on Climate Change; and marine noise (more about this issue HERE) might be another major topic. Interestingly and by contrast there is very little about marine debris.

Other things to look out for here might include trying to spot Naomi Rose (the Erin Brockovich of the cetacean captivity issue) among all her fans (the Rosettes); whether Chris (ECM) Parsons will finally break the Guinness Book of Records record for the most tweets ever sent from a conference;how many scientists will sneak off to the Golden Gate bridge to view the harbour porpoise aerial sex show that is reported there (I have to say that I am quite surprised at the porpoises which I have always regraded as particularly undemonstrative animals, but then this is San Francisco) ; will shy conference workshop organising super-hero Frank Cipriano be forced onto a stage to accept the conference's thanks; and will we all get home for Christmas?

I'll do a little light reporting on this mega-event here.

The ear-breaking Icebreaker at the SMM - noise levels reached 95db

A banded plover in the mud near the Golden Gate Bridge

Concerning Japanese Whaling

Just a very short update here....

So, one Black Friday, Japan quietly confirms to the other members of the International Whaling Commission, that they will indeed take 'research whaling' back to Antarctica. A few short days later the fleet takes off.

I try to document and explain this in this piece on the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mark-simmonds-obe/what-japan-has-decided-to_b_8686194.html


In response to Japan's action, a few days later (December 7th), many countries, led by New Zealand present a demache (a high level diplomatic protest) to Japan.

That's all.

The sea lions at Pier 39

So, some years ago some Californian sea lions moved onto the sea front in San Francisco. They established a little colony at Pier 39. 

At first they were greeted with concern as a nuisance but before long it became apparent that they were in fact a new and welcome tourist attraction on the seafront,  Now the end of the pier where opposite the pontoons where the sea lions haul-out has a nice viewing area with raised seats and a new viewing centre is being built on the pier to tell their story. 

Here is some pictures of them on a wet Thursday afternoon.

A western grebe overwintering near Pier 39

And here is a bonus view from Leavenworth Street of the infamous Alcatraz Island.

Christmas Crowds!

The lovely little Georgian town of Bath is packed with Christmas shoppers. Lines of coaches from far away are parked up on the surrounding hills having disgorged their happy travelers down in the main town. Many have come to see the German-style Christmas market which fills Abbey square and the narrow adjacent streets.

Here are a few images.

Bath Abbey and Christmas tree

A packed street of people and stalls

Bath Abbey with a fringe of stalls

The Empire building - illuminated by the lights from the Bath rugby ground

A photobomber!

The 2am Fox

Its interesting what goes on in the garden when we are asleep. Here a red fox visits.

(Sorry but you may not be able to view the films on a tablet or smart-phone.)

One big old lady badger is still visiting. She must be thinking about the semi-hibernation that badgers do when the weather gets cold. Now she arrives very late (after 3am) and does not stay very long. We have had a few frosts and it is only going to get colder. At some point she will probably hide away for the winter.

Recent Key Posts on Whaling

As we approach the time when the Japanese whaling fleet is expected to set sail for Antarctica, there have been a number of interesting blogs on whaling.

Jess Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Temple University recently wrote this in the Japan Times:

Thus, the decision to resume whaling in the Southern Ocean is a major blunder on Japan’s part because it undermines its rule-of-law diplomacy. Japan’s defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ruled that its whaling-for-research program in Antarctic waters violates the 1986 moratorium of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), is a major setback because, in doing so, Japan is exempting itself from the same rule of law it otherwise assiduously upholds.

You can see the rest of what he had to say HERE.

These key recent posts include this one from the Humane Society's Mike Markarian focused on the win by HSI-Australia in the Australian courts against Japan and the wider context to whaling.

And here WDC's Chris Butler-Stroud comments on support from some quarters for making a deal with the whaling nations

Considering how whales are portrayed...

... From Moby Dick to the very latest Hollywood blockbuster!

In this new article for the Huffington Post HERE I consider the real nature of whales and their enduring portrayal as monsters!

A monster sperm whale attacks a whale boat - the whale is surfacing upside down with its smaller lower jaw (complete with teeth) to the left.

In the background are whaling mother vessels from the 'yankee whaling period'. This image was an illustration for an article about whaling in a popular magazine (Harper's New Monthly) published in 1874.

Beauty in the Mud

The sun finally chased the rain away down on the canal today.

However, the canal water is still mainly missing and we (the boat and me) are still somewhat in the mud... but as the sun comes out from behind the storm clouds, some magic happens and some unexpectedly complex biology pops up. Here are some images.

First the rain

Then the rainbow

Then the sun picks out glinting in the mud:

something shiny

The shine is provided by the mother of pearl insides of the Swan Mussels 

The swan mussels have a remarkable life cycle. They release their larvae into the water where they latch onto certain fish. They live attached as external blood-sucking parasites before falling to the bottom after a few weeks and then growing into these adult mud-dwelling shell-fish. But the story does not end here. 

Swan mussels normally live buried in the mud apart from their inhalent and exhalent siphon tubes. They are filter feeders and the siphons are used for sucking water in and pushing it back out again so the animal can remove food particles from the water stream, 

Now, one main host for mussel babies is a little fish called the bitterling and the bitterlings females push their eggs into the swan mussel via the inhalent siphon. The male bitterling then does likewise with his sperm and the eggs are fertilised. The eggs  develop inside the swan mussel where they are protected until small fishes hatch and swim away. A remarkably complex little bit of biology and something of a two-way street for the big mollusc and the little fish where both benefit. And all this has been going on down in the mud below the murky canal waters where we cannot see it!.

But something else has also been lurking in the deep....

Zebra mussels in the cracks in the old canal walls

And returning to the 'mystery in the mud'..... the other smaller bivalved molluscs attached to the walls and other hard structures in the canal (and now exposed by the absent water) are zebra mussels (see above and below). 

Unlike the swan mussels these are invaders that arrived in the UK some 180 years ago from the Caspian Sea and sometimes cause problems when they block pipes or conduits. Many are now gaping open - they have died - but they are remarkably tenacious and can survive for some seven days out of water. The female produces a million eggs a year - there is a mass die-off now in my little bit of canal but they will be back. . 

Fat Badgers at Halloween

What happens when a fat badger meets a Halloween Pumpkin?

Night 1:
(I have to admit that I set this up and there are a few tasty morsels inside the pumpkin).

The pumpkin is in the foreground in front of mid-lawn sculpture and if you cannot see the film below you may be trying to view on a hand-held devise and need to use a lap top.

The tentative rolling knocks the lid off and lets the snacks out. In the second piece of film the badger plants herself between the camera and the pumpkin as she hoovers up the snacks - but note the bright eyes watching from the hedgerow behind.

Night 2:

I moved the camera a little closer for a better look at this tubby lady badger:

So, she makes easy work of the first pumpkin. A few minutes later she does the same with the second pumpkin (but she rolls it out of shot).

Interesting how delicate she is in this. She does not rip the pumpkin apart - although she could easily do this, and this seems typical of their foraging. Despite the strong claws they seem to employ a delicate touch.