Photo by one of my favorite photographers — Emily Carter Mitchell — of the Anne Arundel Bird Club (you can follow her on Facebook — also publishes stuff under the name Bella Remy), who took up birding and wildlife photography only three or four years ago — incredible eye, reflexes and technique — said this was a point-and-shoot camera shot (the best camera is the camera you’re carrying).

I could have stood in the same spot she took this shot for three hours and never even see the damn bird. . . .

bp

Bruce
bpotter

Ann Sutton of Jamaica (contact details at the bottom) called our attention on the Birds Caribbean e-mail group this article from the RESEARCH website of Cambridge University (UK) <http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/does-it-help-conservation-to-put-a-price-on-nature>. Readers may be reminded of the parallels between this drawback of the ecosystem services approach to valuing nature, and World Bank attempts to account for natural resources in national systems of accounts in order to avoid environmental damages from Bank investments.

Does it help conservation to put a price on nature?

Assigning an economic value to the benefits which nature provides might not always promote the conservation of biodiversity, and in some cases may lead to species loss and conflict, argues a University of Cambridge researcher.

There is a risk that traditional conservation strategies oriented toward biodiversity may not be effective at protecting the economic benefits of an ecosystem, and vice-versa

Bill Adams

Putting a price on the services which a particular ecosystem provides may encourage the adoption of greener policies, but it may come at the price of biodiversity conservation. Writing today (30 October) in the journal Science, Professor Bill Adams of the University’s Department of Geography argues that assigning a quantitative value to nature does not automatically lead to the conservation of biodiversity, and may in fact contribute to species loss and conflict.

While assigning a monetary value to the benefits of an ecosystem can be an essential tool in the environmental planning process, unequal access to those benefits, particularly where there are differences in wealth and power, can lead to poor trade-offs being made, both for the ecosystem itself and those who rely on it.

“Putting a price on what nature provides is not in itself a conservation measure,” said Adams. “There is a risk that traditional conservation strategies oriented toward biodiversity may not be effective at protecting the economic benefits of an ecosystem, and vice-versa.”

For example, when stream channels in the US state of Maryland were re-engineered to provide a means of natural flood control, it ended up causing the loss of trees which had been growing next to the water and were unable to adapt to their new, drier environment.

The ways in which we depend on our natural environment are increasingly expressed as ‘ecosystem services’, or the range of benefits we get from nature for free. These benefits include the provision of food and clean water, erosion control and carbon storage. Quantifying the value of nature in this way is meant to allow policymakers to consider the potential economic and social impacts of altering a particular habitat.

This approach does sometimes lead to win-win scenarios, where the value of ecosystem services is dependent upon a high level of biodiversity. One example is in the coffee plantations of Costa Rica, where the retention of forest habitat in areas around the plantations doubled the amount of pest control of coffee berry borer beetle provided by birds, which benefitted the coffee farmers while protecting biodiversity.

However, consideration of ecosystem services when making decisions does not automatically lead to retention of biodiversity. “In many cases, trade-offs are made,” said Adams.

Several factors cause tension between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. One problem is that the biological and physical processes that guarantee the supply of specific ecosystem services may be different from those that support valued species. An ecosystem that is managed to deliver particular services may not support particular elements of biodiversity.

A second problem is that there are often no markets for some vital services, such as soil formation and nutrient cycling, and while payment schemes can be created to create market-like structures, the value assigned to ecosystem services depends on market prices, which are subject to change.

A third problem arises from the institutional and political processes linking economic benefits from ecosystems and human wellbeing. “Unequal access to benefits, for example where there are differences in wealth and power among stakeholders, can lead to trade-offs being made, with negative impacts for the ecosystem itself and those who rely on it,” Adams comments “It’s not enough to identify the net benefits of ecosystem services; it also matters who gets them.”

For example, in Nepal, research has shown that forests managed by the local community, rather than by the state, yielded benefits of clean water, tourism and harvested wild goods. However, these forests restricted poorer people’s access to forest-derived products, creating hardship, illegal use and impacts on other areas.

“In a world run according to economic arguments, the survival of biotic diversity will depend on its price,” said Adams. “Sometimes economics will favour conservation and sometimes it won’t. But conservationists need to plan for both outcomes.”

From the Weather Underground weather site: <http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2852&cm_ven=tw-jm>

Typhoon Nuri Poised to Become an Alaskan Super Storm; TD Vance Hits Mexico

By: Dr. Jeff Masters , 4:22 PM GMT on November 05, 2014

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Typhoon Nuri is down to Category 1 strength as it steams to the northeast at 11 mph towards Alaska.Satellite loops show that Nuri has maintained a large area of heavy thunderstorms, but the eye is no longer visible, and high wind shear of 20 – 30 knots is significantly disrupting the storm. Nuri will lose its tropical characteristics on Thursday as it becomes embedded in a cold front. As the extratropical version of Nuri moves into the Bering Sea to the west of Alaska on Friday, a very powerful jet stream will interact with the storm and cause it to rapidly intensify into one of the strongest low pressure systems ever observed in the Pacific Ocean. Ex-Nuri’s central pressure is forecast to drop from around 970 mb late Thursday night to about 918 mb late Friday night. The 00Z Wednesday run of the European model predicted that ex-Nuri would bottom out near 918 mb at 03Z Saturday, about 300 miles west-northwest of the westernmost Aleutian Island, Attu. The 00Z Wednesday GFS model had the storm reaching 918 mb 300 miles north of Attu. The NWS in Anchorage is predicting that a large swath of hurricane force winds will be possible from Shemya eastward to Adak and Atka in the Aleutian Islands late Friday into Saturday, with seas building to 45 feet or higher. A storm surge of 2′ is predicted at St. Lawrence Island on Saturday morning, and over 1′ at Nome.

Figure 1. MODIS satellite image of Typhoon Nuri in the Pacific at 04:10 UTC November 5, 2014. At the time, Nuri was a weakening Category 2 storm with top sustained winds of 105 mph. Image credit: NASA.

The story linked below, from the [Chesapeake] Bay Journal, is an excellent discussion of how exports of oysters from the Chesapeake to Louisiana is an example of the rapid changes that can take place (and incidentally overtake resource managers and policy makers) in marine and coastal natural resources.

It is also a telling example of shifting baselines, in which the increase in the Bay’s oyster harvest from 10’s of thousands of bushels in the 1990’s to 440,000 bushels this year is reported (by an otherwise careful journalist) as the “recovery” of the Bay’s oyster industry, when the Bay was once capable of supporting sustainable catches of many millions of bushels of oysters. Just because the patient is out of the respirator doesn’t mean s/he is healthy, or capable of surviving to a ripe old age.

http://www.bayjournal.com/article/chesapeake_oysters_being_shipped_to_louisiana_shucking_houses

from the excellent IUU Fishing Blog at http://houseofocean.org/iuu-fishing-blog/ == probably not a problem in the Caribbean, eh?

AUGUST 4, 2014

Illegal Fishing Control: Why Europe Needs a Common Software Platform

Council Regulation 1005 / 2008 (the IUU Regulation) is a European Union (EU) legislative tool designed to reinforce and support pre-existing normative measures established by the international community to control illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Transhipment, Central Pacific (Image Credit: underwatertimes.com)

The potential of the IUU regulation to disincentivise IUU fishing practices gravitates around

• the indisputable power of the EU as port and market State, and
• on the ability of the EU to implement the IUU regulation in an even and watertight manner.

These are in fact like two sides of the same coin, since loopholes in implementation leading to IUU importation windows can de factogive rise to different standards within the common trade boundary and make coordination impossible.

A recent report offers an insight into progress made in implementing the Regulation, which came into force on the 1st of January 2010.[1] The report offers a useful overview of the different degrees of investment, reorganisation and resource reallocation in each of the Member States pursuant to the requirements of the IUU Regulation.

According to the authors, the catch certification system imposed by the Regulation has placed a heavy administrative burden on Member States. Implementation has been uneven and differences in approach cannot always be attributed to differences in patterns such as seafood trade volume, financial resilience or pre-existing know-how: Whilst large importers such as Denmark and Spain have developed interactive IU tools, others (including some with considerable importation volumes) have not done so. The same is true of intelligence data gathering processes.

For example, highly sophisticated IUU tracking software and data capture systems in Spain have not been replicated (and are not supported) in other Member States. This unevenness in the implementation of the Regulation leads to inefficiencies, penalises better implementation and causes potential diversions of legitimate trade.

Increased data and know-how sharing can address other weaknesses of the IUU Regulation such as the inability of the imports system to deter the duplication of catch certificates during processing operations in 3rd countries.[2] Increased knowledge and sharing of processing methodologies and conversion data could help address this issue.

As no common IT platform exists with the capability to cross-check import volumes, sources, fishing arts, time of capture and composition, States are rendered powerless to flag suspected IUU imports in a timely fashion.

This problem became manifest earlier this year when the Spanish government decided to suspend the importation of Vietnamese swordfish over IUU concerns.[3] According to Madrid sources, an audit identified a volume of 502 metric tonnes (mt) of swordfish captured in 2012 by Vietnamese vessels (according to catch certificate data) being imported into Spain despite Vietnam having declared to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries total capture volumes of only 372 mt for that time period. Vietnam exports swordfish to other European countries, but the capture declaration shortfall had not been identified in any other Member States.

Swordfish (xiphias gladius). Image Credit: fisherynation.com

If this is alarming, the potential discrepancy between the volumes of West & Central Pacific swordfish declared for 2012 and those actually captured is even more so.

A common software audit platform would enable European Fisheries authorities to identify IUU fishing importation trends as well as to ascertain species under-declaration volumes – such IUU trade-flows could then be used as solid, objective data upon which the Commission could identify third countries for potential inclusion in the EU non-cooperating third country list.

Perhaps this could even be integrated with the public EU alert system once it is operational, so that awareness of IUU fishing trade flows and vessel data and activity could be integrated, shared and uniformly acted upon.

Footnotes:

[1] To access the full MRAG report, click here:http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/documentation/studies/iuu-regulation-application/doc/final-report_en.pdf

[2] This weakness was also highlighted in a 2013 report published in April by Sasama and FMP Consulting. To access, click here http://sasama.info/en/pdf/reports_17.pdf)

[3] http://www.undercurrentnews.com/2014/06/30/spain-seeks-eu-wide-suspension-of-vietnamese-swordfish-imports/

Posted in Illegal Fishing | Tagged European Commission, fisheries, fisheries governance, illegal fishing, IUU, IUU fishing, IUU Regulation, overfishing, sustainability, trade measures

The Sea Level Rise Foundation was an early partner in the establishment of GLISPA —

The two articles copied below suggest that newest scientific studies may indicate that Sea Level Rise will exceed earlier (IPCC) estimates because apparently more of the total global temperature rise is being sequester in the oceans than previously thought.

Global Warming: Ocean Temperatures Rising ‘Up to 152% Faster than Thought’

• 
  By Lydia Smith
  October 6, 2014 12:11 BST

Inaccurate temperature readings of Southern Hemisphere oceans have led to global warming being underestimated(Getty)

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Scientists may have underestimated the extent of global warming because of inaccurate temperature readings from oceans in the southern hemisphere.

Californian researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology measured temperatures directly from the ocean, as well as using satellite data and climate modelling.

They compared the data to sea-level rises and upper-ocean warming in the northern hemisphere, to map warming trends. The results show the seas have been absorbing more than twice as much of the heat trapped by excess greenhouse gases as previously thought.

The team studied rising temperatures of the southern hemisphere over the decades between 1970 and 2004, and recommended increasing estimates of the rate of ocean warming by between 48% and 152%.

“One could say that global warming is ocean warming”
– Gregory Johnson and John Lyman

Paul Durack, who led the study, said this was the first time scientists have been able to work out how big the gap is between previous estimates and the reality of rising ocean temperatures.

“There has been a general acknowledgement in the literature, that southern-hemisphere estimates of ocean warming are likely biased low,” he said. “Our study is the first to attempt to quantify the magnitude of what this generally acknowledged underestimate is, using as much information as is available.”

Sea temperatures are a fundamental way of measuring global warming, as the ocean stores more than 90% of human-induced excess heat.

Gregory Johnson and John Lyman at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote in a commentary on the research: “One could say that global warming is ocean warming.”

“Quantifying how fast, and where, the ocean is warming is vital to understanding how much and how fast the atmosphere will warm, and seas will rise,” they added.

Higher sea temperatures are also connected to rising sea levels, because water expands as it warms.

Wenju Cai, from the CSIRO in Melbourne, told New Scientist that the findings have a great impact on our understanding of global warming.

“The implication is that the energy imbalance – the net heating of the earth – would have to be bigger,” he said.

Buoys called Argo floats have been collecting ocean data from around 2004, increasing the information available to scientists.

“Prior to 2004, ocean change research was limited by very sparse temperature measurements,” Durack told ABC Science Online.

The research was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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Study: Recent sea level rise is highest in 6,000 years

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY6:10 p.m. EDT October 14, 2014

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

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Melting glacial ice and ice sheets have driven seas to levels unmatched in the past 6,000 years, says a study out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers studied examples of past sediments in Australia and Asia that dated back 35,000 years and found that overall, the planet’s sea level was fairly stable for most of the past 6,000 years.

Things began to go haywire about 150 years ago, the same time humanity began to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

“There’s something going on today that wasn’t going on before,” said Kurt Lambeck of the Australian National University, who was lead author of the study, in an interview with the Australia Broadcasting Corp. He said the sea level rise is affected by increasing temperatures.

As the Earth’s temperature warms, so do the seas. Heat-trapping greenhouse gases cause more land ice (glaciers and ice sheets) to melt and water to expand.

REPORT: Scientists warn sea levels could swamp coasts

Lambeck told the Guardian that the sea level increase of the past 100 years is “beyond dispute.”

Sea level has risen nearly 8 inches worldwide since 1880, but it doesn’t rise at the same level. In the past century or so, it has climbed about a foot or more in some U.S. cities such as Charleston, Norfolk and Galveston because of the added influence of ocean currents and land subsidence.

Global sea level will rise 1 to 3 feet around the world by the end of this century, according to this year’s Fifth Assessment Report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Contributing: Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

A well-deserved rave endorsement for Chris Trumbauer for Anne Arundel County Council, District 6, by the Annapolis Capital-Gazette, 20 October 2014:

Excerpt:

DISTRICT 6

The candidates in this Annapolis-area district live within a few doors of each other in Bay Ridge. Democrat Chris Trumbauer, a former Riverkeeper who now works on natural resources issues for a public relations firm, is trying for a second term, going up against Republican Dean D’Camera, who runs a business insurance company.

Trumbauer is not just the council’s staunchest environmentalist, but one of its best-informed and most diligent members, attentive to his constituents’ concerns and ready to cross party lines to get legislation passed. He more than deserves another term, and has our endorsement.

– See more at: http://www.capitalgazette.com/opinion/our_say/ph-ac-ce-our-say-1020-20141020,0,7665224.story#sthash.vNQfe4B0.dpuf

from the blog of NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration <http://usresponserestoration.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/pcbs-why-are-banned-chemicals-still-hurting-the-environment-today/>

PCBs: Why Are Banned Chemicals Still Hurting the Environment Today?

February 7, 2014 by Office of Response and Restoration 1 Comment
PCB contamination is high in the Housatonic River and New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts. How high? The “highest concentrations of PCBs ever documented in a marine environment.” (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

For the United States, the 20th century was an exciting time of innovation in industry and advances in technology. We were manufacturing items such as cars, refrigerators, and televisions, along with the many oils, dyes, and widgets that went with them. Sometimes, however, technology races ahead of responsibility, and human health and the environment can suffer as a result.
This is certainly the case for the toxic compounds known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. From the 1920s until they were banned in 1979, the U.S. produced an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of these industrial chemicals. They were used in a variety of manufacturing processes, particularly for electrical parts, across the country. Wastes containing PCBs were often improperly stored or disposed of or even directly discharged into soils, rivers, wetlands, and the ocean.
Unfortunately, the legacy of PCBs for humans, birds, fish, wildlife, and habitat has been a lasting one. As NOAA’s National Ocean Service notes:

Even with discontinued use, PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are still present in the environment today because they do not breakdown quickly. The amount of time that it takes chemicals such as PCBs to breakdown naturally depends on their size, structure, and chemical composition. It can take years to remove these chemicals from the environment and that is why they are still present decades after they have been banned.

According to a NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and State of New York report on the Hudson River, “Fish not only absorb PCBs directly from the river water but are also exposed through the ingestion of contaminated prey, such as insects, crayfish, and smaller fish…New York State’s “eat none” advisory and the restriction on taking fish for this section of the Upper Hudson has been in place for 36 years.” (NOAA)

PCBs are hazardous even at very low levels. When fish and wildlife are exposed to them, this group of highly toxic compounds can travel up the food chain, eventually accumulating in their tissues, becoming a threat to human health if eaten. What happens after animals are exposed to PCBs? According to a NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and State of New York report [PDF], PCBs are known to cause:

• Cancer
• Birth defects
• Reproductive dysfunction
• Growth impairment
• Behavioral changes
• Hormonal imbalances
• Damage to the developing brain
• Increased susceptibility to disease

Because of these impacts, NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program (DARRP) works on a number of damage assessment cases to restore the environmental injuries of PCBs. Some notable examples include:

• New York’s Hudson River. Its waters and sediments, as well as the fish, birds, mink, and other wildlife that live in and around the Hudson River have been contaminated by the approximately 30 years of PCB discharges whichcame from two General Electric manufacturing plants on the river.
• Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia River. Over the decades, hazardous waste sites and chemical runoff have polluted this urban river, and PCBs are one of the top contaminants, having built up in the river sediments and also the fish.According to a study that NOAA helped fund, an estimated 17,000 people living near the Anacostia could be eating these polluted fish and are at risk of the resulting health effects.
• The Atlas Tack Superfund Site in Fairhaven, Mass. At one time, this company in a historic coastal town was one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of wire tacks, bottle caps, and other small hardware. But its activities left PCBs along with cyanide, heavy metals, pesticides, and other pollutants in the soils, waters, and surrounding marsh. NOAA, U.S. EPA, Army Corps, and Massachusetts worked together to restore the marshes at Atlas Tack and today continue to observe and monitor this restoration success.
• The St. Lawrence River in Massena, N.Y. After years of manufacturing aluminum and hydraulic fluids at three plants in Massena, N.Y., PCBs from the facilities made their way into the St. Lawrence River, its tributaries the Grasse and Raquette Rivers, and the surrounding area. In 2013, NOAA worked to help secure approximately $20.3 million for projects to restore access to recreational fishing, fish and wildlife, and traditional practices and language for the nearby St. Regis Mohawk Tribe.

Yet the list could go on—fish and birds off the southern California coast, fish and waterfowl in Wisconsin’s Sheboygan River, a harbor in Massachusetts with the “highest concentrations of PCBs ever documented in a marine environment.”
These and other chemical pollutants remain a challenge but also a lesson for taking care of the resources we have now. While PCBs will continue to be a threat to human and environmental health, NOAA and our partners are working hard to restore the damage done and protect people and nature from future impacts.

An article from Islands Business (of Port Moresby, PNG) forwarded by Franklin McDonald <franklin.jmcd> — couldn’t say it better myself . . . .

http://www.islandsbusiness.com/news/usa/6083/why-island-wisdom-is-crucial-to-help-adapt-and-pre/

Why Island Wisdom Is Crucial to Help Adapt and Prepare for the Impacts of Climate Change

By Han Seung-soo
From HUFFINGTON POST/PACNEWS

News
Wed 27 Aug 2014

TopicsUSAShare this articleEmailFacebookTwitter
NEW YORK, USA —-For decades, small island countries have been warning the world about the consequences of climate change. While many countries have been debating whether climate change is even happening or who is to blame, small islands have just had to deal with its impact, from extreme weather to rising sea levels and increasing environmental vulnerability.

Major storms have always been a fact of life for small islands. But in recent years they have intensified in their destructive capabilities. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan struck the Caribbean island of Grenada, causing widespread destruction. The financial cost of the disaster was estimated at more than $900 million – more than twice the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Only 10 months later, the country was hit again, this time by Hurricane Emily, which caused another $50 million in damage.

In the Caribbean, changes in hurricane intensity and frequency could eventually result in additional annual losses of $450 million, largely due to disruption of a key source of revenue and jobs: tourism. Limited diversification and small market size means that small island economies are not resilient to disaster loss. This is true not just in the Caribbean, but the world over.

According to global risk models developed by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), six of the top 10 countries with the greatest proportion of resources at risk during hurricanes or cyclones are small islands. These losses will only increase due to sea-level rise, water scarcity, drought, and other factors.

The 38 small island developing states, which spread across the Caribbean, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, are not sitting and waiting for the next storm to hit. They have been taking measures to adapt to and manage the risks posed by climate change.

Several Caribbean islands came together seven years ago to create an insurance pool of easy-to-access disaster funding. Spreading the risk across countries reduces premiums and provides contributors with a safety net which can fund vital services when disaster strikes. Since 2007, more than $30 million has been paid out by the 16 participating countries. A similar initiative is under way in the Pacific region where the memories of the massive human toll and devastation due to Typhoon Haiyan that claimed more than 6,000 lives in the Philippines last November are still all too vivid.

Ideas and actions for reducing the risk from disasters will be at the forefront of the United Nations Conference on Small Island Developing States, to be held in Samoa from 1-4 September. The Conference will be a showcase for those living on the frontlines of climate change and could have a lasting and positive influence on the post-2015 development agenda.

The Conference is an acknowledgement by all the countries of the world of the unique circumstances that small island developing countries face. Their size, combined with their remoteness, and economies of scale, have made it that much more difficult for small islands to implement measures to become resilient. This is compounded by the impacts of climate change, a problem that is hardly of their own making as they collectively contribute less than 1 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, many are striving to become carbon neutral by using renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, and offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions.

Next week’s conference in Samoa is the first of two critical global gatherings. Just a few weeks later, on 23 September in New York, UN Secretary-General will host heads of State, CEOs and civil society leaders at the Climate Summit. The Summit aims to spur accelerated and ambitious actions to reduce emissions and build resilience to climate change worldwide, from the largest countries to the smallest island States. It’s about turning promises into performance.

With international attention on small islands, climate change and the post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction, there has never been a better chance to turn the tide. Now is the time to listen, support and partner with those who have seen first-hand what climate change can do to your economy and your community. It would be one of the greatest tragedies of our time to continue to ignore the warnings from small islands; their issues will soon become our own.