Climate Change Devastates Oceans

(Asia Sentinel) Even as warming seas trigger unprecedented species decline, policymakers avoid climate-change action Legislators, scientists and conservationists meet again in Nagoya, Japan, under the gathering clouds of species extinction to discuss the state of Earth's biodiversity at the Tenth Conference of Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity. It takes place amidst discouraging news. The convention's Global Biodiversity Outlook 3 reports that the target, set in 2002, to achieve significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 has failed. Underlying causes of continued loss of biodiversity include habitat loss, unsustainable use and overexploitation of biological resources, climate change, invasive species and pollution. There is some good news in this report on localized or partial success in stemming some of these pressures. However, while climate change is viewed as a threat of "increasing significance," it's remarkable that this document does not call for international agreement on an effective course of action to tackle climate change with utmost urgency. Without such an agreement, humankind will be the causative agent of a planetary extinction expected to rival the five great extinctions recorded in geological history. Coral reefs are the most species-rich marine ecosystems on Earth. Despite only comprising about 0.2 percent of the area of the oceans, coral reefs host a quarter of all marine fish species and perhaps 1 to 3 million marine species in total. In economic terms, they provide goods and services estimated up to $375 billion per annum. Around 500 million to 1 billion people rely on coral reefs for food, and 30 million of the world's poorest people in coastal communities depend entirely on reefs as their primary means of food production and livelihood. The impacts of climate change are already apparent on coral reefs. There's no need to resort to models that forecast the effects of increased global temperatures on coral-reef ecosystems and the species associated with them, the evidence is there. In the late 1970s the first mass coral-bleaching events were recorded. This phenomenon is associated with abnormally high sea-surface temperatures and results from the corals ejecting algal symbionts from their tissues. The symbionts, microscopic plants, produce energy from photosynthesis and provide corals with most of their nutrients. Once these are ejected from coral tissues, the corals change from various shades of brown to a bleached white color; if warm conditions are prolonged, the corals die. Mass coral bleaching has increased in frequency as sea-surface temperatures have steadily increased in response to global warming. In 1998, a single mass bleaching event reached across the tropics and killed 16 percent of all the world's shallow-water coral reefs. At the Nagoya conference, news that another large-scale mass coral bleaching event affecting the Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Caribbean has occurred in 2010, potentially rivaling that of 1998 in severity, is particularly unwelcome. By the middle of the century the steady increase in SSTs will make bleaching annual events, laying waste to corals reefs globally. However, global warming is not the whole story of CO2-induced climate change. The oceans have been absorbing a large proportion of the CO2 produced by humankind. When absorbed by seawater, CO2 forms carbonic acid and reduces pH, a measure of the acidity. So far a pH reduction of 0.1 units has been recorded by long-term ocean monitoring stations around the globe suggesting the oceans are becoming more acidic. This change may seem tiny, but in fact represents a major shift in the oceans' chemistry. A pH change of 0.1 represents 30 percent more hydrogen ions in surface waters. These hydrogen ions react with calcium carbonate, the raw material that corals use to build their skeletons, converting it to bicarbonate, a process known as ocean acidification. Reduction in the availability of calcium carbonate has profound implications for coral reefs. Both corals, and other organisms that build and connect intricate structures of a reef, grow shells or skeletons out of calcium carbonate. As concentrations of this mineral decline in seawater, the growth rates of corals and other organisms also decrease. Already growth of corals is slowing down in several major reef areas of the world, and acidification is thought to be at least partially responsible. Ocean acidification has been found to have other unexpected effects on the marine animals. For example, clown fish lose their ability to discriminate between the reef on which they were spawned and other reef habitats, possibly less favorable for their growth and survival. Ocean acidification not only affects the tropics. If CO2 emissions continue to increase at the present rate, parts of the polar-ocean surface become under-saturated with calcium carbonate by the middle of the century. This means they will actually become corrosive to calcium carbonate. The consequences on marine food webs in high latitudes are not understood. We know that careful management of coral-reef ecosystems helps them to recover from the impacts of a mass-bleaching event. Fishing has a profound influence on reef recovery because the removal of grazing fish species allows algae to smother a damaged reef and prevent re-colonization of the reef substrata by coral larvae. Sustainable management of fishing and prevention of destructive fishing practices maintain reef health and improve resilience to climate-change impacts. Likewise, the presence of sediments and pollutants can also damage reef health and inhibit reef recovery. The Global Biodiversity Outlook points out that careful management of the largest reef, the Great Barrier Reef, will give it "the best chance of adapting to and recovering from" serious threats, "especially those related to climate change." This statement is wholly misleading and underlies a fallacy that permeates current discussions on action to reduce CO2 emissions. Observations indicate that already, at an atmospheric CO2 concentration of ~380ppm, coral reefs are in decline as a result of climate-change effects combined with direct human impacts. At a CO2 level of 450ppm and beyond, which will be reached by the 2030s, mass coral bleaching will progressively destroy most coral reefs in shallow waters. Sometime in the third quarter of this century, CO2 levels will move beyond 560ppm, a point at which ocean acidification will adversely affect carbonate levels at the surface of most oceans. Coral reefs at this point will be in an uncontrolled decline from which recovery will be unlikely. Climate negotiations are currently discussing 450ppm atmospheric CO2 level as a target for stabilization, not peak emissions. This means that, at best, careful management of coral reef ecosystems will postpone demise by a few decades. This may give human populations some chance of adaptation to the destruction of these ecosystems, but it will not save the biodiversity associated with coral reefs. By the end of the century we will have lost the most beautiful, most diverse and in socioeconomic terms, one of the most valuable marine ecosystems on the planet. At the Tenth Conference of Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity, there will be calls for more protected areas, greater action to restore populations of threatened species, more efforts to reduce consumption of biological resources and destruction of habitats. But the elephant in the room that is climate change cannot be ignored. Beyond direct actions to protect biodiversity the message must be delivered clearly, without compromise, that failure to take action on climate change and curb CO2 emissions immediately and drastically will result in ecological catastrophe. The consequent loss of biodiversity and ecosystem goods and services will significantly impact the Earth and along with it humankind. Alex David Rogers is a professor with the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. This is reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal, the magazine of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

Threatening the turtles

As If Earth Matters by Gan Pei Ling |The Nut Graph,

WHEN a friend said he wanted a photo of himself riding on a sea turtle’s back, it made me flinch.
And yet, I doubt I would have winced had I not heard stories about how divers and snorkelers have disturbed and distressed turtles in the sea. If not for my marine-biologist friends, I probably would not have given this friend’s casual remark a second thought. After all, humans ride on horses, cows and elephants. So why not sea turtles, too?

Green turtle

Putting humans on top
This friend and I were volunteering on a turtle conservation project for a week at Chagar Hutang, Redang Island in September this year. What he wanted to do was ironic, considering that we were there to help conserve turtles that have been swimming in our seas since the age of the dinosaur.
Underlying his desire to ride a sea turtle is a worldview that seeks to dominate nature. It is a view that places humans above all other species, and regards other creatures as existing solely to satisfy human needs, desires and greed.
I do not blame my friend for holding a prevalent worldview that has been passed on by previous generations. But I am troubled by a paradigm that considers humans separate from nature, when it is impossible to divorce humans from the environment that sustains us.
Isn’t it precisely this sort of worldview that leads to human exploitation of nature and her beings on Earth? Indeed, the major environmental crises confronting our generation – climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, to name just a few – are a result of this problematic worldview.
People who continue to hunt hawksbill turtles for their exquisite shells, who sell or consume sea turtle eggs and meat, and who destroy turtles’ nesting beaches in the name of “development” all hold the same worldview.
And whether it’s by throwing plastic bags that end up choking sea turtles, buying from fisherfolk who use methods that kill marine turtles indiscriminately, or by simply being apathetic, we are guilty of threatening these ancient beings into extinction.
Sea turtles in Malaysia

Green turtle hatchlings

Malaysia is blessed because four out of the seven living sea turtle species in the world can be found here. However, two of them – leatherback and olive ridley turtles – are effectively extinct in our country.
The leatherbacks, the largest among all, recorded over 10,000 annual nestings in Terengganu in the 1950s. However, over the past decade, the numbers have dwindled to just a handful. Once Terengganu’s star attraction, only one leatherback was reportedly seen in Rantau Abang this year.
As for the olive ridleys, nesting is only reported occasionally in Penang and Kelantan. None has been sighted in Terengganu since 2005. The numbers are probably insufficient to keep the population alive.
In comparison, hawksbill and green turtles are doing better. The Sabah Turtle Islands have the highest nesting concentration of hawksbill turtles in Southeast Asia, with an average of 500 to 600 annual nestings. Other nesting sites can also be found in Malacca and Terengganu.
Green turtles are the most widely distributed species in Malaysia. As with the leatherbacks, however, green turtle nesting has dropped dramatically since the 1950s, from 20,000 in the Sarawak Turtle Islands to a few thousand only in recent years. However, its population in the  Sabah Turtle Islands has increased, and nestings in both Sabah and Terengganu also number in the thousands.
Changing our attitudes
Millions of ringgit have been spent to conserve our sea turtles during the past few decades. Turtle sanctuaries can now be found in Terengganu, Sabah and Sarawak.
However, The Star highlighted in a June 2010 report that laws relating to sea turtle conservation are still inconsistent and inadequate. The sale and consumption of turtle eggs, for example, have yet to be banned across all states. Additionally, turtle killings are allowed for a fee of RM100 in Johor, Kelantan and Negri Sembilan.

Conservation projects, educational campaigns. and strict laws regulating turtle conservation aside, what needs to change is the fundamental attitude humans hold towards other creatures.
As long as we continue to hold on to the worldview that treats nature as inferior and something to be dominated, we are unlikely to learn to respect it and its creatures, be it sea turtles, tigers or pandas. If we truly want to conserve the environment, our generation needs to re-learn that being top of the heap doesn’t mean those at the bottom can be exploited without repercussions for our species.

The price of palm oil

Study links bee decline to cell phones

London, England (CNN) -- A new study has suggested that cell phone radiation may be contributing to declines in bee populations in some areas of the world.

Bee populations dropped 17 percent in the UK last year, according to the British Bee Association, and nearly 30 percent in the United States says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Parasitic mites called varroa, agricultural pesticides and the effects of climate change have all been implicated in what has been dubbed "colony collapse disorder" (CCD).

But researchers in India believe cell phones could also be to blame for some of the losses.

In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India, researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day.

After three months, they found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced.

It's not just the honey that will be lost if populations plummet further. Bees are estimated to pollinate 90 commercial crops worldwide. Their economic value in the UK is estimated to be $290 million per year and around $12 billion in the U.S.

Andrew Goldsworthy, a biologist from the UK's Imperial College, London, has studied the biological effects of electromagnetic fields. He thinks it's possible bees could be affected by cell phone radiation.

The reason, Goldsworthy says, could hinge on a pigment in bees called cryptochrome.

"Animals, including insects, use cryptochrome for navigation," Goldsworthy told CNN.

"They use it to sense the direction of the earth's magnetic field and their ability to do this is compromised by radiation from [cell] phones and their base stations. So basically bees do not find their way back to the hive."

Goldsworthy has written to the UK communications regulator OFCOM suggesting a change of phone frequencies would stop the bees being confused.

"It's possible to modify the signal coming from the [cell] phones and the base station in such a way that it doesn't produce the frequencies that disturb the cryptochrome molecules," Goldsworthy said.

"So they could do this without the signal losing its ability to transmit information."

But the UK's Mobile Operators Association -- which represents the UK's five mobile network operators -- told CNN: "Research scientists have already considered possible factors involved in CCD and have identified the areas for research into the causes of CCD which do not include exposure to radio waves."

Norman Carreck, Scientific director of the International Bee research Association at the UK's University of Sussex says it's still not clear how much radio waves affect bees.

"We know they are sensitive to magnetic fields. What we don't know is what use they actually make of them. And no one has yet demonstrated that honey bees use the earth's magnetic field when navigating," Carreck said.

Protest over animal testing facility

By Patrick Lee

KUALA LUMPUR : A group of animal rights activists gathered outside the Indian High Commission here to protest against a proposed Indian-based animal testing facility in Malacca.

Consisting of members from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) Selangor, the group handed over a memorandum to Indian High Commissioner Vijay Gokhale.

Some of the concerns laid out in the memorandum highlighted the alleged mistreatment of animals in research laboratories, as well the lack of scientific validity involving animal testing.

SPCA Selangor suggested alternatives such as studying post-mortem tissues.

Owned by Indian company Vivo Bio Tech Ltd, the RM500 million facility is expected to use Malaysian long-tailed macauques and Beagles for testing purposes upon completion.

'Subject to mutilation'

“If the Indian people knew what was going on in Malaysia, they would be shocked,” said Rochelle Regodon, a spokesperson for PETA.

“The animals would be subject to mutilation, testing without anesthesia and other forms of painful mistreatment. Since these monkeys were not allowed to be exported, they were instead going to be used for experimentation,” she added.

Regodon also told FMT that the planned facility was part of a worrying trend in “weaker” countries such as Malaysia.

According to the PETA spokesperson, corporations that were based in countries with more stringent laws tend to set up their operations in countries where there was no applicable animal rights law.

“Last year, a French company wanted to come to Johor to do the same thing. We then went to meet several EU ministers in the country, and this project was stalled,” she said.

Asked where most of the test animals came from, Regodon said that she did not know.

Also present was DAP Senator S Ramakrishnan, who explained that while Pakatan Rakyat was not aware of animal testing as a whole, he was personally following the issue.

In a statement to the media, Ramakrishnan said that tests on animals did not equate to successful usage on humans.

He also said Malaysian laws should be amended so that it would be legal to test on humans, so long as they wanted to use the products in question.

SPCA Selangor's chair Christine Chin also said it had gathered over 6,000 signatures in an online petition.

It will be submitted to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak as soon as it reaches the 10,000-mark.

At the moment, PETA does not have a branch in Malaysia. Its nearest branch is located in the Philippines.