Heads up! Sharks are not known for popping their heads out of the water, but I have noticed that it is quite common for oceanic whitetips to do this.

Common behavior for oceanic whitetip sharks. Photo by Demian Chapman.

Is it akin to spy-hopping behavior of killer whales or great white sharks? Probably not, because these two apex predators use spy-hopping to see prey that spend part of their time or land or ice, such as seals. Oceanic whitetips feed on prey that live exclusively underwater, like fish and squid.

I remember reading a paper by a Russian scientist who speculated that oceanic whitetips pick up scents in the air and that they may spy-hop to pick up windborne scents of floating animal carcasses.  Who knows? We are free to speculate. One of the crew suggests the sharks are trying to startle us and make us fall in the water!

Oceanic whitetip sharks live in the open ocean, a beautiful blue “desert” where food is hard to find. As a result, these big sharks will even consume fish scraps no bigger than a tiny piece of sushi. Photo by Sean Williams

The oceanic whitetip—not a mellow species, by the way–is one of the 5 shark species that got increased protection in March of this year in Bangkok at the world conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES. Around 200 countries are members of this global wildlife treaty. Every four years they meet to discuss proposals to place threatened and endangered animals and plants on lists that restrict their trade across national boundaries.

Oceanic whitetip sharks, along with scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrma lewini), great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran), smooth hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zigaena) and the porbeagle shark (Lamna nasus) were put on a CITES list that will mean much closer attention to the their catch and trade.

Improved conservation requires both better understanding and action. Right now, though action on sharks is overdue, we still need better understanding of the sharks themselves and fishing patterns.

Demain and his crew are fitting the sharks with high-tech tags that store the shark’s location via signals from GPS satellites, then pop off and send their information to scientists. They’re called pop-off satellite archival tags (PSATs). The immediate goal: to track the sharks and learn their migratory patterns. Where do they go? Who fishes there? How long are they inside and outside protected waters? This will help scientists and conservation workers assess and conserve oceanic whitetip populations.

Stay tuned for more dispatches from The Bahamas!

Since the 1970’s/1980’s, Blue Catfish have spread into many other rivers in the Chesapeake Bay region. Now, they inhabit most major rivers in Virginia and Maryland that flow into the Bay. And they have even adapted to the Bay’s brackish waters (waters that contain a mix of fresh water and salt water). In addition, they have been increasing in numbers at rapid rates.

Today Blue Catfish are highly abundant. To give you an idea of just how abundant – Scientists have caught upwards of 6,000 Blue Catfish in one hour while conducting population surveys! The catch rates for Blue Catfish are ten times higher than catches rates for any other species in the region.  And in some rivers scientists estimate they make up 75% of total fish abundance.

The problem? The Chesapeake Bay system and its species were not designed to deal with Blue Catfish. Scientists now believe that the high abundance of Blue Catfish is negatively affecting many of the region’s native species.  Blue Catfish are causing harm because they are top-predators that consume large quantities of many different species – including important Bay species like blue crabs, American shad, menhaden, and herring. [In contrast there are very few species that eat Blue Catfish.] They may also out-compete native fish for food.

Managers have declared Blue Catfish an ‘invasive species’ – a species that lives in an environment where it doesn’t naturally belong and likely causes harm to the ecosystem.

To fix the problem, fisheries scientists and managers are trying to educate the public about Blue Catfish to help prevent further introductions into other areas. And they are developing strategies to reduce Blue Catfish abundance. One strategy is to increase fishing for Blue Catfish. Some commercial and recreational fishermen already catch Blue Catfish. However, scientists and managers say we need to catch even more [something we do not often hear]. In other words, Blue Catfish is one species we should catch and eat!

Credit: NOAA

So if you are looking for a sustainable seafood option, give this species a try. Blue Ocean Institute has rated Blue Catfish ‘green’.  And, when available, our partner Whole Foods Market will sell Blue Catfish in their stores. [One warning- You should not eat too many large Blue Catfish because they can contain high levels of PCBs. In Virginia, fishermen are not allowed to retain most large Blue Catfish because of these health concerns.]

Rather than continuing to catch and eat depleted tunas, groupers, and cod, which hurts our environment – Perhaps it is time to catch and eat more overly-abundant invasive species, like the Blue Catfish. Then we can have our seafood AND help our environment at the same time!

To learn more about the Blue Catfish check out our new Chesapeake Bay Blue Catfish seafood report. And to learn more about invasive species, visit Blue Ocean Institute’s Invasive Species page.

Elizabeth Brown is a research scientist at Blue Ocean Institute.

New England’s closed areas protect marine mammal habitats and provide them year-round protection from fishing. Fishing operations can incidentally entangle marine mammals in their fishing gear, often killing or severely harming them. Without these protected areas, fishing entanglements of marine mammals would likely occur more often.

Right whale sightings (purple circles) are concentrated within many of New England’s closed areas (outlined in yellow). Map credit: Dr. Caroline Good

For example, these protected areas provide a great deal of protection for the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale – sightings of this species show it often concentrates within several of New England’s closed areas (show in the map to the right).

Sightings of harbor porpoises also suggest some of the closed areas provide critical protection to them as well. This is good since New England’s gillnet fishermen for cod and haddock frequently catch harbor porpoises in their gear.

However, fisheries managers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are currently considering a proposed rule to reopen some of New England’s closed areas to fishing. Why? To give New England fishermen the opportunity to catch more fish and make up for the current lack of fish in the open fishing areas. Not only would opening up these closed areas put many of New England’s fish at risk (see previous post), it also puts endangered and protected marine mammals at risk! Is catching a few more fish really worth that risk?

Marine mammal conservations, scientists, and Maine’s whale watching businesses have been ardently writing to  fisheries managers, expressing their deep concerns about the potential negative effects on marine mammals if some of the current protected areas are removed. They warn we need to fully evaluate these effects before any areas are reopened. The current marine mammal management plans, developed to reduce incidental fishing catches of marine mammals, assume these protected areas are in place. So if the protections are removed, it could affect the management plans for several marine mammal species.

Hopefully fisheries managers are listening to these concerns and taking them seriously. We must consider how opening these long-standing closed areas will affect ALL ocean wildlife.

Elizabeth Brown is a research scientist at Blue Ocean Institute.

In recent years, rising ocean temperatures have further threatened New England’s struggling fish populations. As a result of record high temperatures fish have moved northwards and offshore, retreating to cooler waters. In some cases this means they have moved out of US waters. As well, warming temperatures can affect fish growth, reproduction, and their overall survival.

Today with several fish species remaining at low abundances (like the iconic Atlantic cod), fishermen struggling to make a living, and now global warming’s added threat – Many are concerned about the future of New England’s fish and fisheries. Fisheries scientists and mangers face a tough challenge: How can we protect these fish and once again revitalize New England’s fisheries?

Well, scientists have put forth two very conflicting recommendations.

Fisheries scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently helped develop a strategy for helping wildlife adapt to global warming. The strategy: conserve habitat to support healthy fish and protect ecosystem functions. Specifically, NOAA scientists suggest reducing destructive catch methods, like bottom trawling, and protecting important fish habitats from destructive bottom gears. Hopefully, if we protect fish as best we can and minimize other human impacts, fish will find a way to adapt to climate change. This sounds like a good idea, right?

But disconcertingly, those same NOAA scientists who say we should protect fish habitat to help fish deal with climate change, are currently considering a proposal to un-do protection for 5,000 square miles of ocean habitat in New England’s waters. They are considering opening up more than half of New England’s current protected habitat areas to bottom trawl fishing – areas that have been closed to fishing for nearly two decades and that provide critical protection to numerous juvenile and adult fishes, as well as other wildlife. The reasoning: give fishermen more opportunities to catch fish to provide them economic relief during this difficult time [The US Department of Commerce recently declared a commercial fisheries disaster in New England].

Unfortunately, this idea lacks common sense. Opening up the closed habitat areas would un-do the protections scientists put in place to rebuild New England fishes in the first place. And it goes against the scientists own advice for combating global warming – a very real problem for New England fishes!

Hopefully, NOAA scientists will realize this before it is too late. Because opening up the closed areas could jeopardize these fishes’ ability to overcome global warming’s challenges and the future of New England’s fisheries.

Elizabeth Brown is a research scientist at Blue Ocean Institute.

But, these high profile expeditions are not alone in their ambitions to illustrate the ocean. Dr. Ward Appeltans, of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, stated that each year an increasing number of authors are describing more species than ever before. Dr. Appeltans counted approximately 20,000 new species named in the past ten years. Findings, such as the 2010 sighting of a new species of basket star, Gorgonocephalus sp., a bright orange brittle star with twisting tendril arms, inspire us and remind us how diverse the Earth is. They also remind us how little we have seen and how much we still have to learn about the marine habitat. Journal articles and news reports on newly named species call to the explorer in all of us, and whisper of unfamiliar places.

Photo from the British Antarctic Survey of the new brittle star.

However, we are currently starting a mass extinction. A mass extinction is when the standing number of species decreases by over 75% in less than two million years, a geologically short time period.  Mass extinctions are truly catastrophic events. The experts at the International Union for Conservation of Nature have shown that we are losing species at a rate 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the normal rate of extinction. A study published in Nature by Dr. Anthony Barnosky, of the University of California, Berkeley, states that we could see the full effects of a mass extinction in less than 240 years. There have been five previous known mass extinctions on Earth – all caused by natural forces. The current mass extinction stems from human impacts, such as pollution, habitat loss, ocean acidification, over-hunting, over-fishing, and climate change. In fact, in the last 500 years, human activity exterminated at least 869 species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

So what do our discoveries mean in a time of loss? What have we lost without even realizing it?

Even though, we have already forever altered Earth’s oceans, perhaps we can use the discovery of new species to highlight the need for conservation. With higher numbers of species, the oceans and other ecosystems, are more stable and provide more benefits for humans. And some benefits are still unknown. Every time we lose a species, we are losing millions of years of evolutionary adaptation. For all we know, hints to more effective medicines might be hidden in the genes of another undiscovered brittle star.

Conservation is not necessary just for practical reasons. The loss of wild beauty found in nature spurs many activists. Images of James Cameron’s deep-sea adventure will hopefully turn more attention towards the oceans’ bizarrely unique creatures. Perhaps we will ask ourselves, what will the world look like when we have 75% less species? And are we willing to live in a world where there is nothing left to be explored?

Lydia Ball is a senior Environmental Science major at Colby College.

In the early 1900’s, fishermen often caught very large fish. Today, truly big fish are very scarce. Did they all simply get caught? Or is something else also at work?

Scientists have found that over the last century growth rates and fish size have been declining in many heavily fished species. And fish have started to reproduce at an earlier age and smaller size. For instance, the age, length, and weight of first time reproducing cod in the Northeast Arctic has declined dramatically from the 1930’s to the 2000’s (depicted in the diagram below).