Paul Watson - Captain Courageous

Captain Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,is a much-hated man, as the comments at the bottom of any article pertaining to his courageous activities prove. At least 60% of the commentaries are vicious and vitriolic, accusing him of being an 'eco-terrorist', a pirate, and an immoral outlaw.

When more than half of the general populace hates your guts, you know you're doing the right thing. Flying-Phil Gaglardi, B.C.'s Highway Minister, was much despised (and later revered) by the majority of British Columbians when he built the Province's amazing highway system up and down and across the Rocky Mountains in Canada, but he gave them all the vebal finger: "Call me anything you want. Just spell my name right...G A G L A R D I"

Far from being an eco-terrorist, Paul Watson is an 'eco-defender' -- putting himself in harms way constantly in defence of whales, seals, tuna, sharks, and any other creature threatened illegally by the real enemies of the marine ecology: greedy fishing corporations and their hired thugs. Certainly very few of his detractors, wouldn't expose themselves to jail time and bullets to defend anyone or anything in distress.

Paul Watson gets shot

Yes, he has been arrested - by people who share the same prejudices as his online critics - but he has never been tried or convicted, because he has never done anything illegal.

His rap sheet is an extensive testimony to his courage, not criminality. I wish I could boast such a record in defence of creatures whose lives were being taken by real criminals. His record reflects the typical response of the law when an innocent man seeks to defend himself or others who are being attacked by a potential murderer. You, not the criminal, will be charged with a crime.

1972 Iran - Paul Watson spends two weeks in jail. Espionage for want of any real offense.

1977 Seattle WA - Paul Watson spends one day in jail. Trespass. No charge laid. No conviction. You too could spend a day in jail while some malicious cop tried to drum up a real charge.

1980 Quebec Canada - Paul Watson spends ten days in jail. Breaking the Canadian Seal Protection Act. Can you imagine Paul Watson breaking any act that protects seals.

4/83 Quebec Canada - Paul Watson spends ten days in jail. Conspiracy to break the Canadian Seal Protection Act. The persecution of a Hero continues.

12/83 Quebec Canada - Paul Watson spends ten days in jail. Conviction for conspiracy to break the Canadian Seal Protection Act. The whole Canadian Government should be jailed!

1989 Iceland - Paul Watson spends one day in jail. Charges not laid. Another act of harassment.

6/1/92 Lofoten Islands Norway - Two activists claim guilt for sinking the Norwegian whaling vessel "Nybraena" while in port. Both are sentenced to 120 days in prison in absentia. Shipwrecking, other unclear charges. Not Paul this time - just two of his trainees destroying the vehicle that was being used to illegally slaughter whales. No more of a criminal act than U.S. customs seizing and disposing of a vehicle used to transport drug across the border. Although definitely a vigilante act, because Norwegian law enforcement agencies refused to take action.

1993 Newfoundland Canada - Paul Watson spends five days in jail. Mischief. The little devil!

3/31/94 Bremerhaven Germany - One activist arrested by harbor police for an incident related to the ramming of a Norwegian Navy vessel. Authorities fail to extradite him and the charges are dropped. Attempted Shipwrecking. Only one activist against the Norwegian Navy?

3/31/94 Amsterdam Holland - One activist arrested in Amsterdam and held in Lelystad penitentiary for extradition to Norway. Charges were related to the sinking of a Norwegian whaling vessel. Charges not clear.

1995 Newfoundland Canada - Paul Watson spends ten days in jail. Accessory to mischief. Only an accessory?

1997 Germany - Paul Watson spends one day in jail on Norwegian Interpol warrant. Sinking a ship.

1997 Netherlands - Paul Watson rearrested on Interpol warrant (see above) and spends 80 days in jail awaiting extradition hearing. Sinking a ship. Eighty days for a hearing? Since when did waiting for a hearing become an offence to be included on a rap sheet?

4/22/02 Puntarenas Costa Rica - Arrest warrant issued for an activist in relation to an altercation with the Costa Rican fishing vessel "Vacadero". Attempted murder, destruction of property. No trial. No conviction. Just accusations. A trial would have meant hearing both sides of the story.

5/10/02 Puntarenas Costa Rica - New charges leveled against one named activist and the crew of the "Farley Mowat" related to April 22 altercation. Attempted shipwrecking. Once again, no trial. No conviction. Just accusations and no revelation of the activities of the fishing vessel involved.

11/17/03 Taiji Japan - Two Sea Shepherd activists arrested after diving into a bay and releasing pilot whales before they could be killed by fishermen. Interfering with commerce. You have to admire the courage of the divers. They deserve medals, not arrests.

03/31/05 Charlottetown, PEI Canada - Ten "crew" of the ship Farley Mowat are arrested for interfering with the seal hunt. Violating Fisheries Act regulation regarding distance to be kept from seal hunt. At least this time, the stupid Canadian Government didn't accuse them of a "seal protection act" violation. No trial. No conviction.

Interview on British TV

As for being a pirate, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships fly their own special version of the skull and crossbones. Maybe they are pirates! Just don't try to slaughter defenceless sea creatures if you see their pennant.

Origin of Life

One of the great unsolved mysteries of science is the origin of life. How did it happen? Everybody asks this question of themselves and when they can't figure it out they ask their priests, ustadz (muslim), philosphers, and scientists. And these learned people ask each other. The question, because even the smartest of people, can't see what is too close to their eyes, is then referred to God, or explained in terms of chemical formulae and DNA.

Francis Crick, a co-discoverer of the DNA structure thought that life could have been intentionally sent from elsewhere in the universe in an attempt to find a new home. But even if an intelligent life form had somehow survived an interstellar journey and gave birth to life on earth, it wouldn't explain the origin of life. We would then have the infinitely more complex problem of explaining how life originated in some distant, unknown place in the universe – or beyond.

Some scientists think that life began with a stupendous chemical fluke, unique in the observable universe. Others say that life is written into the laws of nature - easy to get started and therefore likely to be widespread in the universe.

The truth is, nobody has a clue. It could be either extreme, or somewhere in the middle."

Dr Charley Lineweaver of the Planetary Science Institute, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, at Australia's Mount Stromlo Observatory completely missed the point when he said: "If life really does form readily then we might expect it to have started many times over on Earth.....And the discovery that all life on Earth did not, after all, have a common origin would virtually prove that we are not alone in the universe."

Life does not form, Charlie – readily or otherwise. Like gravity, it has been an integral force in the Universe ever since the Big Bang and beyond. It is the essential force that creates everything. Without life, nothing can exist. It permeates the Universe. But, also like gravity, it can only be detected by its effects on certain physical bodies. But gravity only exerts it force (attraction) between masses, while life force requires certain complex combinations of atoms and molecules to be active. It is these combinations that scientists mistakenly believe are the origins of life. They aren't. Prokaryotes, Eukaryotes, and other simple life forms are just little life detectors, much the same as the combination of crystal and silicon wire (a crystal radio) detects electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.

Because life force fills the universe, as does gravity, both forces become weaker and weaker as the Universe expands and the elements in it grow farther apart until, at infinity, they become non-existent. At least that's what happens to gravitational pull. Life force on the other hand is alive and intelligent and increases its strength in direct proportion to the number and complexity of detectors (life forms) that exist in the universe. It's a great system, because all of the detectors not only react to the force (live), but amplify the energy they receive and transmit their greatly increased power back into the main life stream, much as a power station can increase the power in a national electrical grid.

Amplification is effected by one detector absorbing others, such as a jellyfish digesting a brine shrimp. The process produces an explosion of life force energy as one detector blasts its life into the grid and the other ratchets its output power up another notch from the energy it absorbs in the digestive process. The energy gain increases exponentially with the complexity of the absorbing detectors – commonly referred to as the 'food chain'.
 
copyright © 2009 by Cal Smith

Let's Do Something Concrete to Save the Oceans

With the populations of most large marine predators reduced to 90% of their pre-1970 numbers, conservation groups and responsible fisheries organizations need to quit talking and start doing something concrete to conserve and rebuild our dwindling marine resources.

In this regard, Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was on the right track last year when he did something concrete to put an end to bottom dragging off the coast of Newfoundland. He dropped concrete blocks onto the bottom to snag and destroy the cursed drag nets.

But the concrete blocks do much more than just create a fishing obstacle. They create a new safe habitat for the creatures that live in the area. A place where they can re-establish their numbers free from the terrors of bottom draggers.

Concrete disposal is a big problem in the US and many companies are capitalizing on it by offering costly removal and recycling services. The material is removed, broken up, separated from metal re-enforcement materials, and then crushed for recycling into clean land-fill and aggregate. It would be much simpler to load large sections of building foundations, road beds, septic tanks, and other material – concrete, metal, fiberglass, or wood – onto barges and scatter it onto ocean beds that have been decimated by draggers and trawlers.

The financing could come from 'bycatch' – the dead and dying creatures that longliners, seiners, trawlers, and draggers are required to throw back, dead or alive. Most of the bycatch could be sent to local government plants for processing into food for human consumption, or conversion into fish or animal food. A percentage of the profits could then be used to rebuild fish and crustacean populations.

It's not a new idea. Very successful artificial reefs have been constructed by sinking decommissioned ships and building concrete or rock breakwaters. There are a number of artificial reefs in some areas along New Jersey's 127-mile Atlantic coastline, tmade up of small sunken ships or piles of tires. And now engineers are preparing to install a concrete reef system off the coast of Cape May County to demonstrate how to counteract beach erosion. If successful, the project could be duplicated elsewhere and save taxpayers in the state millions of dollars a year in sand replenishment and beach restoration – and provide additional habitat for fish.

A concrete reef designed to make "fish ranches" off the west of Scotland has been an outstanding success. Scientists built 12 reefs in an area not previously been used for fishing said they were now teeming with fish and shellfish.

The Scottish Association for Marine Science, in Oban, began the experiment a year ago in an attempt to discover whether large-scale reefs would be viable for commercial fishing. Since then, 600 tons of concrete blocks have been sunk to the seabed. The reef provides sealife with shelter and and safe breeding areas in the blocks and already large numbers of juvenile cod and other cod species have taken up residence. They will only stay there the first year of their life but they have a chance to grow before they move away to other areas.

The group plans to have a million blocks of concrete, donated by a local firm, sunk to the bottom of the sea within two years. Dr Martin Sayer, Director of the project, said: "Reefs such as this are very widespread in places like the United States, Australia and Japan but they have never been attempted on this scale before. The overall objective is to see whether these reefs on a large scale will make any impact as a commercial fishery or if they could act as providers for commercial fisheries."

The thing is that artifical reefs can be made from everything from sunken cars or ships, concrete blocks, sandbags, culverts, railroad ties, light poles, and other large concrete objects -- even offshore oil platforms. Anything that can attract and provide shelter for marine life. The fact is that such structures don't just attract the fish that live in the area, they actually increase the amount of sea by providing safe breeding areas.

There's an old saying “one man's garbage is another man's treasure' and a concrete building that is condemned for human habit seem like a palace for thousands – even millions – of sea creatures. Instead of being a pollutant, much of what we think of as garbage would actually serve to enhance the environment.

What do you think? Instead of worrying about the disappearing reefs that we can't do anything about, let's build some reefs that are impervious to climate change and acidification. If you'd like to participate please contact me. Maybe together, we can do something worth while.

Will humans be the next dinosaurs?

Over the past two hundred years, eighty-nine species of animals have gone extinct, and another 140 are on the endangered lists and will be gone by the end of this century. The world is in the midst of the most devastating mass extinction period in history, including the one that wiped out all the dinosaurs.

The oceans have been particularly hard hit. The total biomass of the ocean's top level predators has decreased by 90% in the past 50 years, primarily because of overfishing and some of the destructive fishing methods employed by commercial fishermen. But Sports fishermen too, have taken a terrible toll.

In the US alone, there are more than 50 million sports fishermen, spending 125 billion dollars in pursuit of of fish. But most sports fishermen are careful not to injure anything they don't intend to eat. 'Catch and release' has become the order of the day on the streams, lakes, and coastal waters of North America. But it takes all kinds to make a world and there are still many people who are not only indifferent to the agonies they inflict on other creatures – animals or people – but are deliberately sadistic. When fishing, anything they catch that they can’t eat or sell, no matter what it is, from a dogfish to a seagull, is treated with sadistic cruelty. Some go out of their way to see the creatures die as painfully and as slowly as possible.

For these people, wherever the fish aren't biting, there are always seagulls or ducks to test their fishing skills. Live minnows or herring will always attract birds that will chase baited hooks into the water. It's not that the birds are 'stealing', although that's how the fishermen justify their cruelty, seagulls and ducks think that injured fish splashing on the surface of the water are their natural prey and aren't aware that these little fish were deliberately impaled on a hook in such a way that its dying agonies would attract an unsuspecting fish – or bird.

Sports fishermen kill an awful lot of little fish that way. Threading them on their hooks, carefully avoiding vital organs so they will live a long time, struggling frantically in pain and fear. This torture is not usually inflicted on them maliciously, only callously, without compassion. It's just an effective way to attract larger, unsuspecting predators. The longer the herring lives, the less frequently the fisherman has to re-bait his hook. The torture is just the price the little fish has to pay for being such an attractive bait. C'est la guerre.

Seagulls, as you probably know if you have ever tried feeding them, are very adept at catching food before it hits the water. Consequently, when a fisherman casts a herring-baited hook into the air, there is a very good chance it'll be taken by a gull before it hits the water. It's sort of like sky fishing, except there are no flying fish in North American waters.

Before I started diving, I used to join the throng of fishermen that gathered on the wharf in Comox, on Vancouver Island, each January and February, fishing for Spring (Chinook) salmon. In those days, a large run of the big fish always spent a few weeks in the bay, feeding voraciously on spawning herring in preparation for their own spawning run up the Puntledge River in March. Fishermen crowded the end of the dock during those weeks and most were quite successful. But the fish always quit feeding by mid-morning and the action slowed down until early evening, during which time only the real die-hards remained on the wharf.

While fishing was good, the fishermen were quick to get their lines into the water before a hungry gull could steal their bait. Not out of compassion, but because reeling the bird in and getting it off their hook consumed a lot of good fishing time, resulting in fewer salmon for their freezers. Often when a seagull was unfortunate enough to get caught during these times, the fisherman would simply cut his line leaving the seagull to fly away with the big salmon hook still in its beak or throat. During slack fishing times from 9am to 5pm though, there was always some sadist, bored by inaction, who would deliberately try to catch a bird for sport.

If I was on the dock, it invariably led to an altercation of some kind, often a fist fight, until the regulars got smart enough not to do it while “that self-appointed seagull protection officer” was on the scene. Don’t get me wrong, there were many who sided with me on the seagull issue. It was just too bad that they didn't also feel compassion for the bullheads, sea perch, and other ’trash’ fish they often left lying squirming and gasping their lives away for hours on the dock. Nor did many of them think twice about slicing a dogfish open and throwing it, still living, back into the water, just because it was a nuisance.

One guy, who was far too big for me to tackle in a rough-and-tumble, liked to dare me by periodically kicking anything he caught as it lay writhing on the wharf. I had previously reported him to a Fisheries Officer friend of mine for trying to catch seagulls, which is illegal, and he had been warned not to do it again. He took revenge by torturing everything else he got his hands on.

One day he caught a rock cod about 15 inches long and very deep bodied. I estimated that it weighed six to eight pounds. My ‘friend’ tore the hook from its mouth, threw it on the deck of the wharf and kicked it. Happily, the dorsal fin of the flopping fish was fully extended with its long sharp spines pointed directly at the toe of the foot speeding toward it. Happily too, the foot was clad in a canvas running shoe which a couple of spines had no difficulty penetrating. Nor did the spines have any trouble embedding themselves deeply in the massive toe before they broke off.

The man howled in pain, I howled with joy, and the fish flopped over the 8” wharf bumper, back into the water from whence it had come – maybe for the sole purpose of retaliating for all the cruelties its fellow creatures had suffered at the hands and feet of the man monster? I have no idea what became of the man because he never came back to the wharf. C'est la guerre.

Jellyfish can grow new tentacles - and heads

In an ancient Greek myth, Her­cu­les encountered a many-headed marsh mon­ster called Hy­dra that could re­grow its heads if they were somehow cut off.

Now sci­en­tists from the university fo Veterinary Med­i­cine in Han­no­ver, Ger­ma­ny have found a way to cre­ate many-headed jel­ly­fish by de­ac­ti­vating cer­tain genes in the jelly class hydrozoa.

By shutting down a cer­tain Cnox gene, researchers Wolf­gang Ja­kob and Bernd Schier­wa­ter found that they can gen­er­ate hy­dro­zo­an jel­ly­fish with two heads, both of which func­tion normally and both take in food. De­ac­tiva­t­ion of a dif­fer­ent gene led to even more heads, they added.

The discovery isn't really so surprising. It's old hat to the jellyfish who have been generating multiple heads for 540 million years with without having scientists screwing around with their genes thank you.

The best part of the natural system is that the heads are dis-enjoined
so they don't compete and conflict with one another. Moreover, they can control the number of heads produced by the availability of food and other environmental conditions.

The head-generating process takes place in the early stages of the jellyfishes' development, when it is just a coral-like polyp attached to the ocean bottom. It grows the heads on its stalk, stacking them like dinner plates. When the top head (hydra) detatches itself and flips off like an errant frisbee, the next one grows and in time (determined by the availability of food) it follows the first head into the wild blue yonder.

Cal being interviewed on Vancouver television

Money Talks

It is helpful to remember the following facts, when considering why the National Marine Fisheries Service makes and enforces certain fishing regulations.

FACT 1: The scallop industry centered in New Bedford has about the same value as the entire Alaskan salmon industry.

FACT 2: The lobster industry in Maine and Massachusetts earns more money than the Alaska pollock industry.

Is it any wonder that East Coast fishing interests are building powerful alliances in Washington?

FACT 3: Endangered bluefin tuna sell for an average price of $100,000 each. One recently went for $178,000 in Tokyo.

It's why the Obama admistration directed the National Marine Fisheries Service to allow the fishing fleets in the Gulf of Mexico to keep even more endangered bluefin tuna as by-catch, even though it encourages swordfish fishers to use even longer lines in the hope of catching more of the highly prized tuna. Nearly 50% of the fish, fowl, and animals caught on long lines (which can be as long as 70 miles with as many as 2,500 hooks)are by-catch and must be returned to the water - usually dead or dying.

Money - not good, sustainable fishing practices - talks!

Jellyfish Swarming in the Gulf of Mexico

This swarm of jellyfish is the result of nirtogen and phosphate runoff into the Mississippi basin from agricultural fertilizors and animal waste. The nutrient-rich water creates massive explosions in algae bloom (phytoplankton) that attracts equally large blooms of zooplankton, which in turn invite jellyfish to join the feast. The invitation, however, reads " Fishermen are not welcome!"

Jellyfish Takeover of the Seas

Probably the most impressive jellyfish invasion began in 1982 when a few, small baseball-sized hermaphrodite jellyfish got into the Black Sea, probably in the ballast water of a visiting freighter, found conditions to their liking, and began to reproduce in a major way. By 1990, it was estimated that comb jelly (Mnemiopsis leidyi) numbers had skyrocketed to more than a billion tons, about equal to the total biomass of all fish caught in all oceans that year! That increase came at a huge cost as the number of anchovies in the sea declined by more than 400,000 tons and another 100,000 tons of Azov Sea kilka. It brought brought the Black Sea fishery to its knees. Not satisfied with their takeover of the Black Sea though, the comb jellies quickly spread to the Sea of Marmara and then in the late 1990s, to the Caspian Sea.

All jellyfish reproduce explosively, and are usually both sexual and asexual. Adults release sperm and eggs in incredible number into the water every day until they die. The sea nettles of Chesapeake Bay each shed 40,000 eggs a day. But the comb jelly is king -- and queen at the same time -- of jellyfish multiplication. Actually, although it looks like a jellyfish, acts like a jellyfish, and has a jellyfish body, it isn't really a jellyfish at all. It belongs to a closely related jelly phylum ctenophora. The differences are the subject of another story, but one of them is in their armament. Although comb jellies may have several tentacles and are voracious carnivores, eating up to ten times their own weight every day , they don't sting. Instead., their tentacles are armed with sticky cells that act like fly-paper that catch and hold catch copepods and fish larvae unlucky enough to get tangled up in them.

And then, in 1999, in a horror story right out of a Steven Spielberg movie, the warty comb's cousin, Beroe ovata, came to visit. Unfortunately for the warty comb, Beroa is a little too fond of mnemiopsis. In fact, it likes its cousin so much that it eats nothing else, and because they share the same huge appetite, the marine environment of the Black Sea has begun to recover due to a rapid decline in the numbers of Mnemiopsis leidyi.

The big question now, is what will the Beroe ovata do when all the mnemiopsis are gone? Being hermaphrodite, will it just eat itself?

More than anything else, the explosive growth of jellyfish populations in the oceans and seas around the world are a clear sign of marine ecosystems being devastated by overfishing, nutrient pollution, carbon emissions and global warming, in that order. Of course, oceans packed as densely with jellyfish as they were at the fish farm in Northern Ireland would have a frightening downside. First of all, they don't just replace predators – they compete with them. Their diet consists of small fish as well as zooplankton, so there would be no chance for the fish to come back. Once established in an area, they are almost impossible to get rid of. Some people compare them with cockroaches in that their infestations are virtually permanent. Many jelly species spawn when threatened, and even while being killed. One species has the distinction of being the only creature known to be biologically immortal.

One thing is absolutely certain: jellyfish will still be around long after human beings have gone the way of the dinosaur, which many scientists predict will occur within the next 100 years. Jellies, sea anemones, and corals were the first multi-celled organisms to evolve some 540,000,000 years ago, predating the five calamitous mass extinctions of earth's history. There is no reason to think they won't live through a man-induced extinction.

The Arctic Ice Cap -- Is it getting smaller or expanding?

This story is in all science journals and newspapers today and is screaming over the internet: A NOAA report shows that arctic sea ice cover was the third lowest recorded this year, although it was more than in 2007 and 2008. There is some year to year variability, but over decades, the ice cover has been decreasing at the rate of around 11% per decade.


The actual fact is that the figures released by the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center show that Artic sea ice has grown a whopping 25% in the past two years. The big news stories saying that the ice cover has been decreasing at the rate of 11%per decade is exactly that: "has been"!



There's just too much manipulation of figures by scientists, politicians, and environmentalists. Everybody trying desperately to support the concept of global warming. Well, the earth may in fact be warming. But the temperature today is still below the 1945 record when it shifted and started hurtling us into an ice age. Then, in 1981 it started zooming beck up again. In 2007, when it had reached the 1940 level, it reversed itself again and started back down the slippery slope. The Artic ice cap has now regrown by 25%.

Hey Al, what is going on here? The world isn't a jungle, it's a roller coaster!

So maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. But here are the figures published by the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center. Check them for yourself. The Arctic sea ice extent in September 2007 was 1.66 million square miles and it increased to 1.83 million square miles in 2008. Now, in September 2009, it has gone up again to 2.07 million square miles – which is a whopping 25% increase in Arctic ice in two years. Could this be the start of another ice age?

Boulder doesn't put it quite so simply of course. They say: “The average ice extent during September, a standard measurement for climate studies, was 2.07 million square miles (5.36 million square kilometers). This was 409,000 square miles (1.06 million square kilometers) greater than the record low for the month in 2007, and 266,000 square miles (690,000 square kilometers) greater than the second-lowest extent recorded in September 2008.”

And, if you are still not confused, here comes the gobbledigook that compares apples with oranges and comes up with hot summer roses under six feet of water: “The 2009 Arctic sea ice extent was still 649,000 square miles (1.68 square kilometers) below the 1979-2000 September average. (???) Arctic sea ice in September is now declining at a rate of 11.2 percent per decade and in the winter months by about 3 percent per decade. The consensus of scientists is that the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth's atmosphere, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

It's all very confusing, but the fact remains. For the past two years the world is getting colder. At least the Arctic is. And no one knows which was the ball will bounce next year.

Cutting off the finger that plugged the hole in the dyke

In June of 1852 Her Majesty's steamer Jackal, on her outward passage to the African coast, sprung a leak. However, it managed to stay afloat and succeeded in reaching Sierra Leone. On examining the leak while at anchor in the harbour, a large jelly fish was discovered protruding through the hole, partially stopping the leak.

To stop the leak entirely, it became necessary to cut away the jellyfish piecemeal from inboard. With it's removal, however, the rush of water was so great that, although the steam pumps were kept working, the vessel had to be run ashore and grounded.

--Liverpool Albion.

Jellyfish swarms continue to grow

Records of jellyfish swarms over the past 200 years show that jelly populations rise naturally every 12 years, remain stable four or six years, and then subside again. Since the turn of the century, however, the pattern has been broken and their numbers have continued to escalate year after year.

Severe jellyfish stings, and deaths, have become such a serious problem in the last thirty years, that the University of Maryland created a 'Consortium of Jellyfish Stings' in 1988 to compile and distribute information about these injuries, to help doctors around the world become more famililiar with the incidence of stings, their manifestations, complications, and treatment.

Currently there are more than 10 species under large scale study. The box jellyfish, which is considered by many to be the world's most venomous animal, with a venom capable of killing a human in less than 15 minutes of excruciating pain, is subject to the most intense scrutiny for obvious reasons. It is found in Australian estuaries and inshore waters of the seven seas between norther Australian, Singapore and the Philipines. It is responsible for at least one Australian death per year, on average, and an estimated 40 or more in the rest of its range.

Nike is Hopping Mad too!

Nike doesn't make a shoe especially for hopping. If it did, it would be wearing them tooday. The company is hopping mad at the US Chamber of Commerce and has announced that it is leaving its position on the Chamber board of directors because of the chamber's opposition to climate action.

Nike says it "believes US businesses must advocate for aggressive climate change legislation, and that the country needs to move quickly into a sustainable economy."
It isn't the first major company to take action against the U.S. Chamber either. A number of the nation’s largest utility companies recently resigned over the same environmental issue. Maybe Corporate America is finally getting the message.

The sports company was especially upset by the Chamber’s recent challenges to the EPA on the issue of climate change. “Their recent action challenging the EPA is inconsistent with our view that climate change is an issue in need of urgent action.”

Nike may leave the powerful National organization altogether, but is still not sure if it wants to try to continue pushing for action within the organization’s committee structure.

Hopping Mad!

One hundred and forty eastern grey kangaroos were shot on Saturday, a week before race car drivers take off during Australia’s annual "V8 Supercar Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000". The race takes place October 8 through 11, 2009, at the Mount Panorama race track in Bathhurst.

Why? Because, according to Bathhurst mayor Paul Toole: "Several years ago, a kangaroo hopped onto the track and was filmed weaving in and out of the cars before escaping. Three years ago, a kangaroo was struck and killed in the race."

Many of the kangaroos would have carried their young in their pouches. They were likely slaughtered too. Eastern grey kangaroos are the heaviest marsupials in the world.

How's that for being ecologically sensitive?

Jellyfish Skirmish with devilled eggs

This is a story by Deep End chef, Eddie Lin. You just have to visit his website.
http://www.deependdining.com/

THE INVADERS ARRIVE

“Take us (slooorp) to your leader,” ordered the Commandant of the Jellyfish Army.

With his troops massed behind him, Commandant Jellyfish stood upright, bell-shaped, muculent and dripping. The Jellies all stood upright, some on shore and others filed into the sea like a string of alien mushrooms. By some freak acceleration in evolution caused by global climate change or “The Warming”, jellyfish now possessed sensory organs, brains and leg-like tentacles with deadly stingers.

Oh, and they could speak perfect English too.

“Barack Obama?” I replied.

“No,” the massive, menacing yet squishy jellyfish snorted.

“Vice President Hillary Rodham Clinton?”

“No, the guy who (slllooorp) screwed up the environment and (sloorp) made it possible for us to take over the seas,”

“Oh, him. He hasn’t been our leader for years.”

“We just wanted to thank him for The Warming (sloorp). He didn’t invent it but he sure didn’t do anything to stop it. Now, I must ask you to surrender. (sssloorp) The mass stingings will commence in fifteen minutes.”

At that moment I wiggled around like a merman out of water — this was my signal to attack.

From seemingly nowhere my band of resistance fighters popped out of the sand, propelled down from the cliffs and charged the Jellies. All of my fighters were of Asian descent and wielded Global 8-inch chef knives and carried pots of freshly boiled water.

Tears welled up in my eyes. It was a magnificent sight. Like a culinary cavalry.

The Jellies shrieked at an octave just outside of human hearing range. “Holy Okara! Chinese foodies!!” the Jellyfish Commandant bellowed.

It was too late for the Jellies. With the element of surprise to our advantage, their army was brutally and mercilessly sliced, boiled and whipped into jellyfish appetizers. Our victory was exhausting and, unfortunately, not without cost. We lost a dozen comrades to suicide stingers.

But there were still blooms upon blooms of Jellies out in the wide-open seas numbering in the billions. With no predators or competition to speak of due to overfishing and warming waters, jellyfish have thrived and multiplied. Warmer waters are the ideal climate for them so not everything opposes global warming. The Jellies love it.

Although what they didn’t count on was a whole lot of Chinese with a taste for nicely marinated invertebrates.

The War of the Jellies had just begun.

This was my peek into a dark future. However horrific, I saw it as a gift. So I’m sharing it with you and telling you all — it’s not too late to avoid this future shock scenario. There are many, many things you can do, like:

1) Vote for environmentally friendly leaders.
2) Live your life green.
3) Diversify your diet so you don’t eat as much of the really popular fish like certain tuna, red snapper and Chilean seabass.
4) And learn to love, I mean really love, eating jellyfish because there are plenty of them.

That's Life

Most scientists looking for the origin of life seem blinded by the fact that the answer is so obvious. Life originated in the universe at exactly the same time and in indentical fashion to gravity - with the big bang.

As matter vaporised in the explosion and travelled outward in the form of hydrogen atoms that rapidly flew apart from each other, neither the gravitational force or the life force had any significant intensity.

However, as the atoms slowed and their weak gravitational forces began to pull them together into clouds (nebulae) their gravity fields strengthened, lumping them into huge masses with such an extreme gravitational pull on each other that they all tried to be in the center. The result, of course, is that they began to fuse with each other releasing some of their protons with the immense power of a hundren million hydrogen bombs.

In the meantime, the life force remained weak as the universe expanded. Nothing yet existed for it to act upon. Unlike gravity, which is a 'brute' force, acting in one direction on anything with mass, life is a sophisticed, vibrant force that requires a combination of elements in close proximity to each other, 'tuned' to its unique frequency - something like a crystal radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio.

Crystal radios require no battery or power source except the power received from radio waves themselves. They need only a crystal and a special thin wire that contacts it. They are so simple that even children made them at home in the early days of radio. Scientists can make simple life detectors - let's call them ancestors - the same way, using a bit of RNA or DNA, and amino acid.

When I was in training to become a radio technician in the Canadian airforce, our instructor told of a man who had a new tooth filling hearing radio programs playing in his mouth. The silver filling in contact with some impurity in the enamel of his tooth acted as a crystal set. I didn't believe it, but it was a good story and I told it many times when I too became an instructor.

The challenge of receiving weak radio or life force signals is not in combining the elements. In the case of radio, almost any crystal or metal whisker (wire) will work to some degree, as will any RNA, DNA, and amino acid for detection of life. The key is in tuning the wire of the radio, or the elements of the the life detector.

That's a big job, of course, but we are only talking about the principle here. Nucleotides and DNA are much too small and fragile for children of electronics technicians to put together with a soldering gun.

Sheref Mansy, a scientist with the University of Trento, in Italy, is closest to the secret. Last year, he was able to create a protocell that replicated its DNA using only four components: fatty acids to make the membrane, and DNA template, primer and activated nucleotides. That's basically what it took the trial and error methods of nature to accomplish in the first billion years earth's existence.

Even Mansy is missing the point though. You can't create life no matter how hard you try. Life already exists. The best you can do is create a life detector. Everybody knows how to do that!

This jelly doesn't have to be refrigerated

Once thought to embody the souls of drowned sailors, Jellies live in every ocean from the equator to the poles, from the surface of the sea to the deepest darkness. Jellyfish are estimated to have been around for over 500 million years old - surviving crashing comets, mass extinctions, global warming, Ice Ages, and continental drift. While the Jellyfish is just about the simplest forms of animal, the species has immense diversity. Some pulse peacefully like living lava lamps; others beat like a heart going fast enough to burst; some forever throb upside-down.

As Jellyfish travel the tides and currents with languid ease, these long term survivors show the value and survival ability of simplicity. When the creator of life set about producing his first multi-celled animal, he said to himself, "keep it simple, stupid" and thus created the the utimate survivor. The simple jellyfish will last until all of earth's water is drained into the infinite void and the sea bed is dried out with some cosmic dishcloth.

Thanks to http://www.etsy.com/index.php

Dangerous Drifters

From New York to Namibia, to Ireland, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines, jellyfish numbers are exploding, closing beaches, shutting down nuclear plants, invading floating fish farms, ruining fishing nets, and injuring swimmers. The biomass of jellyfish is now greater than that of fish in some of the seas that were once considered the best commercial fishing zones in the world .

The Black Sea is one of those 'used-to-be', important commercial fish producers, with great economic value for the people of the countries bordering its shores: Turkey, The Ukraine, Georgia, Russian and Bulgaria. However, in the 1980s, the carnivorous jellyfish Mnemiopsis, arrived via ocean tanker ballast water. Finding conditions ideally suited for their wants and desires, they immediately set up housekeeping and began to take over the the polluted waters. Within a few years, there wasn't enough space left for the sturgeon and other fish species, and the fishing industry collapsed.

Similarly, the fishing grounds off the Namibian coast, which used to be gorged with sardines, anchovies, and pilchards now contain a fish biomass of less than 3.6 million metric tons, while the number of jellyfish has grown to over 12.2 million tons. Meanwhile, the Sea of Japan has become plagued with a steady steady stream of five million, giant 450 pound Nomura's jellyfish, pouring in from the China Sea every day during the months of September and October. In America, the Gulf of Mexico hosts large swarms of jellyfish that are often so dense they contain more jelly than water.

One of the most bizarre incidents occurred off the north coast of Ireland in November 2007, when a swarm of jellyfish 10 miles square and 35 feet deep, invaded Ireland's only fish farm In Glenarm Bay, Cushendun, off the County Antrim coast. Billions of fist-sized mauve stingers drifted over the cages like some thick red tide, stinging to death or suffocating the entire stock of more than 120,000 adult salmon.

John Russell, head of the Northern Salmon Company farm, said the fish were destined for Christmas sales to high-end caterers in Britain. The loss was estimated at $2 million, wiping out the company's cash flow until the following fall, when young fish at their Red Bay site were big enough for market. However, the stingers popped that bubble a couple of days later, when they drifted into Red Bay killed those fish too.

Russell said he ordered three 35-foot boats into the area in attempt to salvage some of the fish, but they were unable to get through the jelly. “We were absolutely helpless to do anything,” he said.

"One of the difficulties with the Glenarm site is the strength of the tide," a fisheries officer told reporters. "The tide pulled in the jellyfish and the water cannot move through the cages. The fish were asphyxiated because they have no water moving through the cages to bring oxygen."

It is hard to imagine a mass of jellyfish packed together so tightly that they act like a single monstrous creature ten miles in diameter (twice the size of the city of Vancouver, Canada) and thirty-five feet deep.

Unusual concentrations of the mauve stinger jellyfish, Pelagia noctiluca, are common off Spain's Balearic Islands, as well as elsewhere in the Mediterranean. In fact, they show up on most of Europe's popular beach resorts in August every year, stinging thousands of bathers. While not lethal, the stings are extremely painful. Peppering the burning area with meat tenderizer seems to ease the pain somewhat. Urine, which is an oft-recommended home remedy, can actually heighten the pain.

Pelagia noctiluca grows up to 10 centimeters wide, and is sometimes also called the nightlight jellyfish because it produces a blue-green luminescent mucus, most often seen as a glow in ships' wakes at night. But its more common name, mauve stinger, reflects the species' most noticeable effect on people.

Passive Predators? They're deadlier than sharks!

In January 2006, 21-year-old Sarah Whiley died after being savaged by three huge bull sharks at a protected beach near the Amity (coincidentally the same name as the village in “Jaws”) Point fishing village in south-east Queensland. They bit both of her arms off at the elbows and tore chunks of flesh out of her torso and legs. Blood poured from her body as she was carried to shore by friends. Although an Emergency Services helicopter was on the scene quickly, and she was admitted to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane within an hour of the attack, she had lost too much blood. Surgeons were unable to save her.

The following day, a seven year old girl was killed by a jellyfish at a beach near the north tip of Queensland. The jelly tentacles wrapped around her waist as she played in the water, causing a mild itching sensation that quickly elevated to an intense, shocking agony that sent her screaming to shore where she collapsed at her mother's feet within a minute of being attacked, unconscious and no longer breathing. She never recovered.

Both incidents were terrible tragedies, but the shark attack generated much more blood and horror than the box jellyfish encounter, even though both victims suffered equal agony and terror. The main significance of the two tragedies is that the shark attack was a rarity where the jellyfish killing is a common occurrence in the seas between Northern Australia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In fact, jellies kill forty times the number of people than do all species of sharks everywhere in the world. The non-fatal injury ratio is even higher – thousands of times higher. There have been less than 2,000 shark attacks off the coasts of United States in the last fifty years, while more than 500,000 swimmers were stung by jellyfish in the beach waters of America in 2009 alone. The statistics world wide are in the millions.

Sixty years ago, hardly anybody had ever seen or heard of jellyfish, although the pretty pale blue Portugese man of war – which isn't really a jellyfish –sometimes washed ashore on the beaches of Florida, Hawaii, and the Mediterranean. The man o war was known to be dangerous, but few people ever experienced the excruciating pain inflicted by the thousands of tiny poisonous spears arming its tentacles. Even in places like Australia and Indonesia where more than forty people are now killed each year by another deadly species, the box jelly, incidents were rare in the first half of the 1900's. It wasn't until 1958 that the number of fatalities became high enough to warrant recording. Today, beaches around the world are routinely closed periodically during “jellyfish seasons” to prevent injury to bathers.

An incident in New York Harbor on July 22nd this year highlights the problem. Argentine triathlete Esteban Neira, 32, died of a heart attack in the Hudson River during the swimming leg of the New York City Triathlon. Because he was in top physical shape and had no previous record of heart problems previously it is suspected that Neira's heart attack may have been triggered by a jelly encounter. Many of the other athletes were stung by jellyfish during the event, Until that time, few of New York's 16 million residents had any idea that dangerous jellyfish lurked in the polluted waters of the Harbor.

Passive Predators is an urgent wake up call to the millions of people around the world who are unaware that jellyfish are rapidly taking over the seas, filling in for the 90% loss of fish and mammals that has occurred over the last fifty years. Not only do they pose a serious threat to anyone hoping to enjoy a pleasant visit to any of the world's sea-side beaches, they are a serious problem for millions of fishermen the world over.

Still, jellies may also be the last hope for saving the countless marine animals endangered by today's overly efficient fish-factory ships, and habitat destructive bottom-draggers, that are creating the most devastating mass extinction in the history of multi-celled life in the oceans.

My new book, entitled 'Passive Predators - the Jellyfish Invasions'is ready for publication and looking for a home with a major publisher. Come back often for more exciting information about the amazing jellyfish.