Article #9: 10 Animals Most At Risk from Gulf Oil Spill

Back in 2010, the Gulf of Mexico experienced an oil spill that had affected many of the marine species that inhabit the Gulf. The oil spill was caused by the sinking of an oil rig and occurred over a long time span.  The timing of the event couldn't have been worse for the marine species that live in the Gulf of Mexico, that time period was the peak spawning and nesting time for many different species of fish, mammals, turtles and birds. Many of these animals have set breeding areas and they would see no reason to move away, even if they happened to be in danger.  The oil spill had long lasting affects on the animals as well as the people who harvest them.  Some of the different species that were affected during this oil spill were  the north Atlantic blue fin tuna, sea turtles, sharks, marine mammals and brown pelicans.  These are only a few of the animals that were affected, and losing them to this oil spill had affects on us as well.  The north Atlantic blue fin tuna is a very valuable food source for anybody who enjoys sea food, and the Gulf oil spill could have affected their spawning season in 2010 which normally occurs between April and June.  Sea turtles often migrate through the Gulf of Mexico where they will stop to breed, the oil spill put them in danger of losing their breeding and feeding grounds. The oil sitting on top of the water wasn't the only threat to certain marine mammals, it was the toxins that the oil put into the air that the marine mammals would eventually breathe in.  All of the marine mammals in that area of the Gulf were at potential danger of decreasing in number.    

Drapkin, Julia K. "10 Animals Most At Risk from Gulf Oil Spill." CBSNews. CBS Interactive. 15 Apr. 2013 http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20003738-503543.html.

The oil spill that occurred in 2010 was a major event of that year, everyone seemed to be concerned about gas prices but not so much with what it was causing to the ocean.  I think that the affect that the oil spill had on the ocean in that region was a big issue.  Now, after reading this article, I understand some of the many dangers that this oil spill caused to many of its inhabitants.  Since the Gulf of Mexico is a major breeding ground for many different marine species they were all at threat of losing their lives as well as their offspring, which could in a way really affect us as well (regarding sea food). 

Article #10: Marine Mammals in Captivity

This article, put out by the Humane Society of the United States, explains the life of marine mammals in the wild vs. in captivity and explains the many reasons why this act of capturing and presenting these animals for amusement (shows) shouldn’t be allowed. In the wild, marine mammals such as killer whales (orcas) and dolphins have plenty of room to live their lives.  These mammals spend the majority of their time swimming for miles at a time in the wild, but when placed in captivity they are limited to the small, enclosed pool that they are forced to live the rest of their lives in.  In the wild, these animals typically spend 80%-90% of their time underwater only coming up to the surface to breath. In captivity these animals spend the majority of their time at the surface since they don’t have room to dive down and spend their time under the surface.  Spending the majority of their time at the surface is unnatural and can cause many health complications such as skin problems and dorsal fin collapse.  Dorsal fin collapse is a huge problem that occurs to almost all captive orcas.  This condition occurs when the orca spends the majority of their time at the surface allowing gravity to pull the dorsal fin down.  Normally, the fin would be supported by water so it would stand straight up, but since the orca doesn’t spend the majority of its time under the surface dorsal fin collapse occurs. 
The method that these animals are captured with is another issue.  The process of capturing wild marine mammals is violent and disrupts social groups, splits up families, and snatches individual animals from the water.  It can also cause extreme stress to the animal which could potentially lead to death and once in captivity the deaths caused by stress are increased.  Capturing wild orcas and dolphins is the only way that they will be able to be seen in captivity since they don’t breed well in captivity and if they do give birth to offspring the offspring risk a high mortality rate. 

"Marine Mammals in Captivity : The Humane Society of the United States." RSS. The Humane Society of the United States, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2013 http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/captive_marine/facts/marine_captivity.html


I have never really seen the captivity of marine mammals to be a problem until I read this article.  Now, I understand some of the consequences that the events of capturing and putting these animals in captivity has on the animals health and wellbeing.  I have been to Sea World in Orlando, Florida and have watched the different dolphin, orca, and seal shows and I thought that the shows were really fun to sit and watch.  After reading this article, I can see how watching these shows and the animals in captivity can be fun for us but having the animals suffer for something that we enjoy isn't the nicest thing we could be doing.  I didn't realize how many health problems that these animals can suffer due to being in captivity, its just unnatural for them to be stuck in a small enclosed area when they should be out in the ocean where they belong.  I could understand having animals in captivity if that is where they have lived their entire lives but being taken from thier natural habitat and be thrown into an unknown environment being forced to put on a show isn't right.  If the animal has lived its entire life in captivity thats all it has ever known, it wouldn't know how to live out in its natural habitat. 

Article #8: Cleaning Up the Seas

Pollution has been a serious issue in our environment/society in recent years, affecting many species of animals and habitats both on land and in the ocean. It has been proven that there are over 70,000 substances used by industries that aid in the cause of pollution, and it is said that around 1,000 new chemicals get added to that list each year.  When it comes to marine life there are many pollutants that could cause a decrease in population of both species and habitats, one of those being oil spills.  It’s been estimated that about 25 million barrels of oil enter the ocean each year, causing many fatalities to marine animals.  One of the biggest threats to coastal regions is agricultural runoff of fertilizers, emissions from fossil fuel combustion, various land-use changes, and from the discharge of human and animal wastes.  These pollutants lead to an over-enrichment of certain nutrients in the ocean, one of the big ones being nitrogen. When coastal regions have an over-enrichment of one nutrient or have nutrient imbalances, this will cause the water to have less dissolved oxygen, resulting in higher mortality rates of marine species and decreased biodiversity. This increase in nutrient rich waters has also caused outbreaks in algae blooms and harmful species.  This is a potentially harmful/dangerous situation for both marine life and ourselves, higher marine mortality, human illness, and severe economic loss could result from these outbreaks.  Some of the marine mammals that have been associated with the toxic algae booms include the west Indian manatee, humpback whale, Hawaiian monk seal, and the brown pelican.  All of these marine mammals have had massive mortality rates when toxic algae had been present.

McKay, Bruce, and Kieran Mulvaney. "Cleaning up the Seas." SeaWeb. People & the Planet. 15 Apr. 2013 http://www.seaweb.org/resources/articles/writings/people.php.

I thought this article was interesting, it named numerous ways different pollutants affect the ocean and its inhabitants.  I never would have thought that there would be that many pollutants that we use and put out into the environment. 70,000 pollutants is a huge number and the thought that that number increases by 1,000 each year is insane.  Oil spills would probably be the pollutant that most people can associate with the ocean just because they are a huge concern and a big deal when they occur.  The oil spills also put out a physical and visible sign that the wildlife and the ocean are in trouble which in a way gets people to care more about the situation and may motivate them to jump in and help.  When these other pollutants come into play they don't necessarily show a visual sign that they are hurting marine life, making people care less about the situation.  I think most people need to visibly see the affects pollutants cause and in a  way it need to affect them in order for them to actually care about the situation.        

Article #7: New Research: Marine Reserves Can Stoke Local Economies

Many people don’t think about marine species as being all that important in our everyday lives but marine life makes a big difference in most people’s lives daily.  Many people who consume fish on a weekly/daily basis would be affected if the biodiversity of the oceans species was altered by just a little bit.  That is just one reason why marine reserves are helpful and that an increase in them would greatly help our economy and help improve the biodiversity of many marine species. In this article, a National Geographic team of researchers went out and analyzed data on whether or not marine reserves are helpful to marine life and to our overall economy.  What they concluded was that “marine reserves are an effective tool for protecting biodiversity locally, with potential economic benefits including enhancement of local fisheries, increased tourism, and maintenance of ecosystem services” (National Geographic).  Their researched helped to prove that there were many benefits for everyone if marine reserves were kept up and utilized.  One of the benefits of the marine reserves was that they provided an area for marine species to increase in population and overflow into non-marine reserve areas which will be beneficial to fishermen.  Tourism also increases in areas with these reserves helping the local towns nearby.  The researchers have concluded that in order for the reserves to be effective they need to be made at two different levels, big reserves run by the government and smaller reserves run by many smaller local communities.  As of now, only about 1.2% of the world’s ocean is protected by marine reserves that are located at many places around the world and the hope is that it will soon rise to 10% by the year 2020.  

Howard, Brian C. "New Research: Marine Reserves Can Stoke Local Economies." News Watch. 3 Apr. 2013. National Geographic. 15 Apr. 2013 http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/03/new-research-marine-reserves-can-stoke-local-economies/.

Overall, I think that increasing the quantity of marine reserves would be beneficial, not only for the marine life within the reserve but for our economy as a whole.  I think that the researchers and national geographic have put together a great hypothesis that increasing the number of reserves would help boost our economy and have many benefits to our economy and the marine world, and I think that it is an idea that isn’t that far out of our reach.  Developing more marine reserves, both on the small and large scale, doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult if more communities and governments would be willing to put aside some time and money to develop the reserves.  I think our societies think too much about what would benefit them most at the moment and don’t think enough about what would potentially benefit them in the long run.  Everyone wants change to occur instantly and they don’t want to spend the time to work up to it, but over time our actions to help make that change could benefit us greatly.  These reserves have benefits for everyone/everything involved in the picture, so why not make the step to improve and increase the amount of marine reserves. 

Articles 5 & 6: Endangered Marine Life

Threatened Species: a species that may become extinct if measures aren’t taken to protect it

Endangered Species: a species that has a very small population and at a greater risk of becoming extinct

List of endangered marine mammals: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/esa/mammals.htm

Endangered Marine Species

When people hear the words endangered species there seem to be many different reactions.  Some people think about the situation as “whatever, who cares” and others view it as “we need to do something to prevent the species from becoming extinct”.  When it comes to marine life, many of our actions regarding the environment have a major effect on marine ecosystems, habitats and species.  The ocean is a vast environment with many resources that we have access to and utilize; it never appeared to become vulnerable to overexploitation.  It’s hard for most to understand the effect that human actions have on the environment of the ocean and its inhabitants because many of us don’t have the ability to see these animals on a daily basis so there is no way for us to compare and see the threats that are pointed toward these species.  Many marine species that utilize coastal regions are in danger of getting caught in fishing nets and many that utilize the beaches for laying their eggs (such as turtles) lose them to coastal development. There are many different species of corals and fish that are a big part of many ecosystems and the ecosystems wouldn’t be able to flourish without them.   It is harder for biologists to gather information about these crucial species because they are much smaller and harder to gather data for unlike the larger species, such as whales.  Many species have been slowly vanishing from places that they once greatly inhabited due to our actions, affecting their way of life, their ecosystems, and their habitats.  

" Threatened and Endangered Species - MarineBio.org". MarineBio Conservation Society, 14 Jan. 2013. Web. Monday, April 15, 2013. http://marinebio.org/oceans/threatened-endangered-species.asp.

Science Daily : Marine Species at Risk Unless Drastic Protection Policies Put in Place      

In this article the author focuses on the actions that we must begin to take in order to prevent the loss of many of our endangered marine species.  In the articles, a group of researchers lead by the University of California has concluded that we must begin to enforce better protection policies regarding marine life if we want the ecosystems and species inhabiting them to survive.  One of the major problems that the oceans have been experiencing is a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels which thermally and chemically impacts the oceans.  These rising temperatures and rising carbon dioxide levels will lead the ocean to increase in its acidity.  “Earlier research has shown that ocean acidification can cause exoskeletal components to decay, retard growth and reproduction, reduce activity and threaten the survival of marine life including coral reefs” (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).  The protection policies that are currently in place to help prevent marine species from being harmed by ocean acidity are to begin to stabilize and reduce atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, further evaluate the oceans reaction to the increase in carbon dioxide and by reducing the carbon dioxide threats of many different ecosystems.  Overall, the team hopes that the policy makers will evaluate all of their potential options for marine management and choose new and improved policies to meet the goals of decreasing the carbon dioxide and the acidity of ocean waters.

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "Marine species at risk unless drastic protection policies put in place." ScienceDaily, 20 Aug. 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2013. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120821094454.htm

I thought that both of these articles were very informational, many different marine species are affected by different things that cause them to be put onto the endangered species list.  It’s interesting how many different species are actually on the endangered species list most that I have never heard of before.  Our actions are a big factor in the cause of marine animals to become endangered and I think it is because we use more than what’s available and we don’t care about the environment when it comes to pollution.  We tend to use way more than what we have available to us, and we don’t understand what the effects of our actions will be until the consequences are visibly present. I think that overfishing could be a big problem when it comes to endangered animals, and we have a high demand for sea food so nothing would be stopping fisherman from gathering all they can.  Also, our contribution of pollution is greatly affecting those animals, making the ocean water more acidic, and I think if we all tried to help we could find a solution to this problem. 
 

 

Article #2: Marine Biodiversity Strongly Linked to Ocean Temperature

Biodiversity is a word used to describe the variety of life in genes, species and habitats.  Biodiversity can be used to describe any environment, but in terms of marine biology, biodiversity would refer to the variety of species and habitats within the ocean.  This would also include diversity within and between species and ecosystems.
In recent years species diversity has been extremely low and a group of scientists might have found out why.  According to the article “Marine Biodiversity Strongly Linked to Ocean Temperature” put out by Science Daily in July of 2010, a group of scientists have concluded that marine species biodiversity for over 11,000 groups of species could be strongly associated with ocean temperature. The scientists took many samples of species ranging from the smallest species to some of the largest species that inhabit the ocean, they found that corals and coastal fish had a higher diversity off the shores of Asia and open-water fish diversity was broader across the mid-latitude oceans.  They then researched if there was a similar factor contributing to the different diversities, and concluded that the temperature in the ocean could rearrange the diversity of different species of marine life.  Along with that, they found that human impacts on the ocean were found to be in places with high biodiversity which could threaten many of the species in those areas.  Human impacts can really affect marine environments ‘Says co-author Camilo Mora of Dalhousie University, "the combined effects of exploitation, habitat alteration, pollution and climate change are threatening the diversity of life in the global ocean. Our research provides further evidence that limiting ocean warming and other human impacts will be particularly important in securing these hotspots of marine biodiversity into the future."’ (Science Daily). 

Dalhousie University. "Marine biodiversity strongly linked to ocean temperature." ScienceDaily, 29 Jul. 2010. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728131707.htm

I thought this article was really interesting but I feel like I already knew the information that was presented in it.  Marine biodiversity is important in keeping the ocean at a stable level for all life, there has to be a certain number of every species to make each ecosystem run correctly.  The impact that global warming is having on the biodiversity of different marine species was an interesting aspect of this article.  I think that marine biodiversity is an important part of marine biology because in order to understand life in the ocean you need to have proper levels of each species/ a healthy level of each species that help the ocean thrive with abundance of life.        

Articles 3 & 4: Coral Reef Conservaton

Coral Conservation overview

When it comes to marine conservation, most people start to think about coral reefs as being the biggest ecosystem being affected by pollutants and other human made products/interaction.  Coral reefs are abundant around the world providing marine life with food, places to hide from predators, and areas for reproduction, but they are slowly dying out and it is essential for them to be conserved.  Since corals are slow developing organisms, it is beneficial that they don’t get disturbed by anything such as disease, stress, or storm damage.  Global warming has also contributed greatly to the loss of this marine species/ecosystem.  Global warming has been increasing the earths average temperature resulting in warmer oceanic water, corals are sensitive to changes in water temperature and if  the earth’s temperature increases to much in a little amount of time the coral may not have time to adapt and live in the warmer environment. These little disturbances could contribute to the decrease in abundance of coral reefs and it could take years for them to recover.

"SeaWeb - Coral Conservation." SeaWeb - Coral Conservation. SeaWeb, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. http://www.seaweb.org/markets/coral.php.

   

Article about coral conservation: Improving water quality can help save coral reefs

In this article, research conducted by the University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Center, Southampton concluded that coral reefs could be greatly affected by imbalances of nutrients in ocean waters.  Corals depend on certain algae to maintain life; these algae help the corals with photosynthetic reactions.  If these algae die off because of high toxins, the coral has no way of conducting these photosynthetic reactions resulting in the coral to become white or bleached.  Eventually the bleached coral will die off if its environment doesn’t return to its normal state.  The concluded research states that an increase in nutrient rich water could be the cause of the devastating bleaching effect on corals.  In other words, if the water surrounding the coral is richer in one nutrient than another that could make the algae growth to become unbalanced, for example the research stated that “an increased supply of dissolved nitrogen compounds in combination with a restricted availability of phosphate results in phosphate starvation of the algae. This condition is associated with a reduction in photosynthetic efficiency and increases the susceptibility of corals to temperature and light-induced bleaching” (University of Southampton).  Overall, they concluded that the results of bleached coral may be greatly affected by the deficiency of a certain group of nutrients rather than an overabundance of another.  The solution to this problem, concluded from their research, was to have more coastal management/conservation and to decrease the nutrient input into coastal waters.  The overall solution would be to decrease the warming of the ocean waters to prevent the coral bleaching all together. 

University of Southampton. "Improving water quality can help save coral reefs." ScienceDaily, 16 Aug. 2012. Web. 12 Apr. 2013 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120819153617.htm

 

I think that this article is a very informational article and explains why we need to conserve the coral reefs.  Many different species of fish and sea life utilized these coral reefs as their homes and if their home disappears they might too.  Everything in life is connected somehow, if the coral reefs die out the fish that live there might die out resulting in the loss of a food source for some other species, and the domino affect will continue until eventually we might be out of one of our major food sources. Even though this is a very extreme and unrealistic idea it could occur if the conditions for it to occur became really bad.  I think that the coral reefs should also be conserved because it is a main tourist attraction for many people.  It provides a lot of recreational activities to do when one is on vacation near a coral reef, like snorkeling.  After knowing the effect that our actions are having on the oceans (global warming) it should be a red flag to a lot of people to change some of their actions.  Sadly, I think people, including me, think that this is a small problem that is occurring in the world and could be dealt with later on.  But when is later on? Later on when it’s actually a huge problem and it will be harder to restore and resolve? I think we should start making improving the situation, even if it is only by little steps we can work up to a goal.