Dr. Gerry Goeden’s Andaman Sea Gazette: August 2013

Sunday, 25 August 2013

World’s Largest Sea Turtle Slips toward Extinction. By Dr. Gerry Goeden

Gerry is a Malaysian based marine ecologist, Research Fellow and Advisor to the National University of Malaysia, and marine consultant to the Andaman Resort, Langkawi.

I saw my first Leatherback turtle in the Florida Keys long before that string of gorgeous islands became the foundation of endless high-rise buildings. It reminded me of a flattened car; it was huge!

Leatherback turtles can grow to over 3 m long and weigh nearly 1,000 kg. Its front flippers can reach an amazing 2.7 m. They dive to depths of more than 1,000 m and can make trans-Pacific migrations from Indonesia to the U.S. Pacific coast and back again. Surprisingly, they are no larger than other sea turtles at hatching weighing in at only 46 g.

More amazing is that these ancient giants that evolved about 110 million years ago feed almost exclusively on jellyfish. They follow their prey into deep water by day and shallow water by night. They range from the tropics to water as cold as 0.4 °C.

How can such an impressive animal get into trouble?

Recent estimates of global nesting populations are that 26,000 to 43,000 females nest annually, which is a dramatic decline from the 115,000 estimated in 1980. Now an international team led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has discovered a frightening 78 percent fall in the number of nests. The leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) is already critically endangered (IUCN) and the turtle's last stronghold in the Pacific Ocean is now collapsing according to this February 26 report in Ecosphere.

Leatherback nests at Jamursba Medi Beach in Papua Barat, Indonesia now account for 75 percent of the total Leatherback nesting in the western Pacific. Tragically, nesting has fallen from a peak of 14,455 in 1984 to a low of 1,532 in 2011. Less than 500 leatherbacks now nest at this site annually. A nearby ‘secondary’ nesting site at Wermon Beach, Papua Barat now supports less than 1,000 nests and is failing as well.

The team identified four major problems facing leatherback turtles: beach predators, such as pigs and dogs that were introduced to the island now eat the turtle eggs; rising sand temperatures kill the eggs or prevent the production of male hatchlings; the danger of being caught by fisheries during migrations; and harvesting of adults and eggs for food by islanders. It is this last factor that has the greatest impact on these gentle giants.

People around the world annually harvest sea turtle eggs. Asian exploitation of turtle nests has been cited as the most significant factor for the species' global population decline. In Southeast Asia, egg harvesting in countries such as Thailand and Malaysia has led to a total collapse of local nesting populations. In Malaysia, where the turtle is virtually locally extinct, the eggs are considered a delicacy. In the Caribbean, some cultures believe the eggs are aphrodisiacs.

"The leatherback is one of the most intriguing animals in nature, and we are watching it head towards extinction in front of our eyes," said Dr. Wibbels of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The Leatherback’s vulnerability lies in its extraordinary migrations. Travelling more than 7,000 km from Indonesia to California takes it through the territories of at least 20 countries. Many have different laws and varying enforcement.

Mr. Tapilatu, a native of western Papua, Indonesia, and research team member has studied Leatherback turtles and worked on their conservation since 2004. His work has been recognized by NOAA, and he will head the Leatherback conservation program in Indonesia.

Conservation will rely heavily on education of local people and be backed up by a Leatherback hatchery. The hatchery will relocate nested eggs to more suitable temperatures and predator-free locations. But more must be done to protect the giant Leatherbacks on their trans-oceanic migrations.

"Only one hatchling out of 1,000 makes it to adulthood, so taking out an adult makes a significant difference on the population," Dr. Wibbels said. "It is essentially the same as killing 1,000 hatchlings."

"If the decline continues, within 20 years it will be difficult if not impossible for the Leatherback to avoid extinction," said Dr. Wibbels. "That means the number of turtles would be so low that the species could not make a comeback.

Is it only coincidence that the approaching extinction of a jellyfish predator is reported among headlines from around the world describing the almost global jellyfish ‘plagues’ that now close beaches, foul nets, and block seawater intakes on a daily basis?

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Thursday, 1 August 2013

Discovering The Water Planet by Dr. Gerry Goeden

The following story about the collapse of fisheries and the change in the Ocean's chemistry was published in the Epoch Times on 9 April, 2013.

Gerry is a Malaysian based marine ecologist, Research Fellow and Advisor to the National University of Malaysia, and marine consultant to the Andaman Resort, Langkawi.

“There has long been a belief that the sea, at least, was inviolate, beyond man’s ability to change and to despoil. But this belief, unfortunately, has proved to be naïve”

(Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us 1951)

I had the immense pleasure of meeting the lady that changed the world and launched the conservation movement through her books when I was only 16. Rachel Carson had already written Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us when I was at my most impressionable. My career in marine science was her fault; and each day I thank her.

I have often said to my students that because I couldn’t be an astronaut, I set out to explore ‘inner-space’ and was going to discover the water planet. All I needed to do this was some diving gear and a lot of enthusiasm. Travelling there was simple! Had humans evolved on the Moon and decided to settle here they would have called this “Water” and not “Earth”.

There is about 1.4 billion cubic kilometres of water spread across 70.8% of the planet’s surface and 97.2% of that water is ocean. The blood that flows through our veins is little more than seawater and we refer to it as “life blood” for good reason. About 70% of the oxygen we breathe is produced by the tiny plants that float in the sea (phytoplankton).

Our climate is driven by ocean currents and recent (2009) studies suggest that these may now change due to global warming, melting the Arctic, and causing flooding that will effect a quarter of the world’s population.

Ecologists talk about biodiversity; about the richness of species in a given area. More kinds of living things make a healthier planet. The sea supports an incredible variety of life; an estimated 80% of all the known life on Earth. And yet, we spend much more money on outer space research than we do on understanding the ‘inner-space’ just offshore.

Why are we so disinterested in rising sea level when 60% of the world’s humans live within 60 km of the ocean? Why do we dump 450 billion cubic metres of poisonous and non-biodegradable waste in the sea each year?

Most of the world’s fisheries are food fisheries supplying roughly 40% of the protein consumed by nearly two-thirds of the world’s population. Some 38 million people make all or most of their living from fishing, landing about 90 million tonnes of fish per year.

But our oceans are in crisis! The FAO estimates that 70% of commercial fisheries have already collapsed or are now collapsing. Sadly, many of these will never recover and will be lost forever. Top predators like tuna, shark, and swordfish have been reduced to a mere 10% of their original numbers and some species are facing probable extinction. I have been told that Malaysian fisheries have removed about 95% of their stocks. Each year we kill and discard globally 30 million tonnes of accidentally caught (bycatch) marine life including dolphins, turtles, crabs, and juvenile fish. In

Australia

’s north 92% of the catch is of no use to fishermen. As we remove these animals from the food-web we drive down biodiversity and strangle the ocean’s ecological processes.

Coral reefs are now the world’s most endangered ecosystem. These tiny underwater ‘islands of life’ are under threat from human activities and especially from acidification. As we burn more and more fossil fuels we add to the growing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and change the pH (acidity) of the sea.

The acid threshold for coral is reached when the atmosphere exceeds 350 parts per million of CO2. Tragically that happened about 1988 and by October, 2012 was 391 ppm. The present levels are higher than any time in the last 800 thousand years and probably in the last 20 million years.

Growing acidity in the oceans has a disastrous effect on marine life. It is predicted to fall from pH 8.1 (now) to below pH 7.3 in the year 2300. A long way off? No need to be concerned?

At pH 7.7 we will reach the lethal limit for all shell forming molluscs and reef corals; their shells and skeletons will simply dissolve and they will die. That’s right coral reefs and marine life with shells will die! When will this happen? The shocking answer is that scientific studies are all pointing to 2065. Between now and then there will be huge disruptions of the ecological food web as species begin to drop out. From about 2065 on we can expect the rapid and catastrophic collapse of most stocks of marine life. The ecosystem will simply fail.

This situation is now the most pressing environmental issue we face and as a marine scientist I believe it is the most pressing issue on the planet. I am not alone and have been joined in my concerns by 155 senior marine scientists from 26 countries who recently signed the Monaco Declaration (The Royal Society, 6 July 2009), highlighting the twin threat of growing ocean acidification and global warming.

What astonishing creatures we are! The warning bells have been ringing since Rachel Carson published her wonderful book in 1951. During the last 60 years there have been more scientists alive and doing research than all the scientists that have lived before. And still we race blindly down the road to the ocean’s destruction and possibly our own.