This video is called Eelgrass (Zostera marina) underwater in Ireland.
Common eelgrass is a seagrass species. Till about 80 years ago, it was common in the Dutch Wadden Sea.
Then, it became extinct there, after a big dike separated the Ijsselmeer fresh water from the salt water Wadden Sea, and after a seagrass disease epidemic.
Now, the Dutch Wadden Sea Society reports that an attempt to bring the eelgrass back to the Dutch Wadden Sea has started successfully. Last year, volunteers collected 100,000 seagrass plants near the German island Sylt.
May 2012. Summer may just have arrived in Manx waters, if the survey with the Manx Whale & Dolphin Watch recently is anything to go by. It was a beautiful day & the sea was alive with wildlife.
There were thousands of sea birds, including diving gannets, guillemots, razorbills and Manx shearwaters. We also saw dozens of harbour porpoises. Then we saw a basking shark – the first of the season for the Manx Basking Shark Watch and Manx Whale & Dolphin Watch team, and the first ever for our volunteers.
Naughty Minke
We thought the day couldn’t get much better, until we had a truly amazing encounter with a Minke whale. This Minke was curious and came right up to the boat. It was circling us, surfacing right alongside us and swimming underneath us. We could see the white bands on its flippers and its triangular shaped head.
The fish-finder showed that we were right over a big ball of fish and it seemed like the Minke was using us to help feed on them. None of us had ever been that close to a Minke before, even our very experienced skippers on the boat. I can’t imagine that we will be that lucky again, but it was an incredible experience which will stay with all of us for a long time.
Hopefully, this is the start of a great summer for marine wildlife on the Island. Time spent at the coast or on the water should reward you with some fabulous sightings of sharks, whales, dolphins and porpoises. We look forward to getting your reports, hearing your stories and seeing your pictures. Sharks can be reported to www.manxbaskingsharkwatch.com and whales & dolphins to www.mwdw.net.
May 2012. Prior to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in July 2012, conservation groups have released a report calling for a change in Denmark’s policy on whaling which has caused conflict with fellow European Union members in recent years. There are serious questions about how the Danish presidency of the EU can be maintained, given that its whaling policy doesn’t mesh with EU law: here.
The arowana, which is named Scleropages inscriptus, comes from the Tenasserim or Tananthayi River basin on the Indian Ocean coast of peninsular Myanmar. According to Tyson Roberts, the ichthyologist who described the species, Scleropages inscriptus is distinguished from the closely-related Asian arowana (Scleropages formosus) by the maze-like markings on its scales and facial bones. Like zebra, each fish is believed to have a unique pattern.
Despite their large size and aggressive demeanor, arowana are popular aquarium fish. Asian species with distinctive coloration are particularly prized as “feng shui” fish believed to bring good luck. Some arowana may fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction.
Their popularity has lead to some species being overexploited. This, together with ongoing destruction of their rainforest habitat, has led conservationists to restrict the trade in some arowana species.
Tyson R. Roberts. Scleropages inscriptus, a new fish species from the Tananthayi or Tenasserim River basin, Malay Peninsula of Myanmar (Osteoglossidae: Osteoglossiformes), pp. 113-118
In the summer of 2009, the Horniman Museum and Gardens started work on a new Wildlife Garden which is now flourishing. It has been created as an outdoor classroom and an inspirational space containing lots of simple and fun ideas for attracting wildlife into green spaces. The minibeast hotel has proved the most popular feature and we have had lots of enquiries from people wanting to know how it was built.
We hope this video helps! The minibeast hotel is a one metre square structure made from old pallets and compost which we then packed with both living and non-living material to encourage bugs to visit for nectar, make their nests and spin their webs.
For more information about visiting the Wildlife Garden or taking part in any of our activities and events, visit our website http://www.horniman.ac.uk
On our way to the botanical garden today: in the canal, two young coots, fed by their parents. Close to where a coot nest was last year, in an old car tire.
Further in the canal, closer to the botanical garden. A beam floats in the water. On top of it, a big red-eared slider turtle. On the same beam, a smaller, younger turtle. Was it born here? Or is the climate too unlike the southern USA for that here?
Also on the beam, an adult coot drying its feathers. A young coot climbs on the beam as well. If the young coot approaches, sometimes the young turtle withdraws its head inside its shield. Soon, its head gets out again.
In the botanical garden since last year, a lot has changed. Now that the surroundings of the astronomical observatory, which had separated in the nineteenth century, are again part of the garden, several small biotopes for threatened Red List plants are around the observatory.
One of them is for plants, adapted to zinc in the earth. Zinc is poison for many plants, but not for plants adapted to it. One of them is the zinc violet; which flowers here.
There are also many new nest boxes in the garden. A big one for tawny owls. Others for great spotted woodpeckers (which I saw today). And for great tits, blue tits, nuthatches, short-toed treecreepers, spotted flycatchers, robins, wrens.
There are also boxes for bats, and one for hedgehogs.
Finally, there are many small boxes for solitary bees. A bigger one, called “insect hotel”. And a box for butterflies.
In the garden pond today: carp, which are supposed to be there. And roach; not supposed to be there, but which keep coming back, because roach eggs get attached to ducks’ feet etc.
This is a reticulated dragonet, a new species in Sweden, well-camouflaged against the seabed in the Väderöarna. Credit: Photo: Lars-Ove Loo.
Reticulated dragonet have been found in Väderöarna – “Weather Islands” – off the west coast of Sweden. It is not often that a new species of fish is discovered in Sweden.
Lars-Ove Loo is the underwater photographer who has captured the fish on film. He saw it while making an inventory ahead of the creation of a new nature reserve in the islands. This was in August 2010, 19 meters below the surface of the sea south of Lyngö in the southern Väderöarna (58° 32.554′ N, 11° 05.373′ E).
Reticulated dragonet (Callionymus reticulatus) is similar to its more common Swedish relatives the common dragonet and spotted dragonet. The male reticulated dragonet is just 11 cm long and the female 6.5 cm long. It has three spines on its gill cover, whereas the other two species have four. Its snout – the distance from mouth to eye – is somewhat longer than its eye is wide.
Reticulated dragonet is found from the Weather Islands in the north down the coasts of the southern North Sea, in the Irish Sea, from southwestern Ireland down to Portugal, and in the western Mediterranean. It has been found both in shallow waters and at depths of up to 110 metres.
It is unusual for a new species of fish to be discovered in Sweden. There are now an estimated 265 species of fish in the country, of which just over 200 dwell in the sea.
Taiwan‘s Buddhist rites “killing millions” of animals
Channel News Asia, 13 May 2012
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Tens of millions of animals, mostly fish and birds, are dying every year in Taiwan because of so-called “mercy releases” by Buddhists trying to improve their karma, according to animal welfare activists.
The government is now planning to ban the practice, saying it damages the environment and that a large proportion of the 200 million or so creatures released each year die or are injured due to a lack of food and habitat.
Around 750 such ceremonies are carried out in Taiwan each year, according to the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan.
Negotiations have seen some groups agreeing to halt the practice, but others have yet to accept a ban, Lin Kuo-chang, an official from the government’s Council of Agriculture, told AFP on Sunday.
Proposed amendments to current wildlife protection laws would see offenders facing up to two years in jail or fined up to 2.5 million Taiwan dollars (US$85,000) for such unauthorised releases, he said.
he Environment and Animal Society Taiwan said some native species are under threat because of foreign species released into the wild by religious groups: here.
At ZSL London Zoo we are celebrating the arrival of some baby ma[n]grove killifish, that hatched out very recently in the Aquarium.
Mangrove killifish are an astounding species of fish, for a number of reasons:
Natural populations are self-fertilizing hermaphrodites, the only natural example of cloning among vertebrates.
Has been observed to “flip” out of water to escape predation. It has also been observed moving amphibiously between ponds or burrows and can survive for prolonged periods out [of] water living on the forest floor.
In addition to tolerating extremes in salinity and temperature, it also tolerates high sulfide levels. As such, it is generally found in areas lacking other fish species, such as crab burrows, stagnant pools and impounded ditches.
its distribution closely parallels that of the red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle)
You can come and visit the new arrivals at ZSL London Zoo Aquarium, where we are also breeding several species of extremely rare or extinct in the wild species of killifish, as part of our collaborative project, Fish Net.
Sociedad Ornitológica Puertorriqueña Inc. (SOPI, BirdLife in Puerto Rico) has been awarded funds by the Mangrove Alliance Small Grants Program (SGP) to perform the first comprehensive study of the mangrove community at Caño Tiburones. SOPI will document past and present distribution of mangroves from both scientific research (including the use of aerial photographs) and local knowledge, and will be involving the local community, groups, students, and the general public in their actions: here.
Groupers, a family of fishes often found in coral reefs and prized for their quality of flesh, are facing critical threats to their survival. As part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, a team of scientists has spent the past ten years assessing the status of 163 grouper species worldwide. They report that 20 species (12%) are at risk of extinction if current overfishing trends continue, and an additional 22 species (13%) are Near Threatened. These findings were published online on April 28 in the journal Fish and Fisheries.
“Fish are one of the last animal resources commercially harvested from the wild by humans, and groupers are among the most desirable fishes,” said Dr. Luiz Rocha, Curator of Ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences, and one of the paper’s authors. “Unfortunately, the false perception that marine resources are infinite is still common in our society, and in order to preserve groupers and other marine resources we need to reverse this old mentality.”
The team estimates that at least 90,000,000 groupers were captured in 2009. This represents more than 275,000 metric tonnes of fish, an increase of 25% from 1999, and 1600% greater than 1950 figures. The Caribbean Sea, coastal Brazil, and Southeast Asia are home to a disproportionately high number of the 20 Threatened grouper species. (A species is considered “Threatened” if it is Critically Endangered, Endangered, or Vulnerable under IUCN criteria.)
Groupers are among the highest priced market reef species (estimated to be a multi-billion dollar per year industry), are highly regarded for the quality of their flesh, and are often among the first reef fishes to be overexploited. Their disappearance from coral reefs could upset the ecological balance of these threatened ecosystems, since they are ubiquitous predators and may play a large role in controlling the abundance of animals farther down the food chain.
Unfortunately, groupers take many years (typically 5-10) to become sexually mature, making them vulnerable for a relatively long time before they can reproduce and replenish their populations. In addition, fisheries have exploited their natural behavior of gathering in great numbers during the breeding season. The scientists also conclude that grouper farming (mariculture) has not mitigated overfishing in the wild.
Although the prognosis is poor for the restoration and successful conservation of Threatened grouper species, the authors do recommend some courses of action, including optimizing the size and location of Marine Protected Areas, minimum size limits for individual fish, quotas on the amount of catch, limits on the number of fishers, and seasonal protection during the breeding season. However, the scientists stress that “community awareness and acceptance, and effective enforcement are paramount” for successful implementation, as well as “action at the consumer end of the supply chain by empowering customers to make better seafood choices.”
Above normal radioactive cesium levels were detected in wild eel caught in Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo, resulting in the government suspending shipments from the area for the first time.
Ibaraki prefecture catches the most wild eel in the entire country, and the Kasumigaura area is especially well known for producing eel.
Lately, eel from Kasumigaura in Ibaraki prefecture were found to have radioactive cesium levels of 180 becquerel (Bq) per kilogram, while eels from the Nakagawa river system and surrounding ponds were found with 110 Bq per kilogram.
Because these numbers are above the new standards implemented in April, the government issued a suspension on shipments of eel from the Ibaraki area.
Tuna carry Fukushima radiation to California: here.
A new ancient killer fish fossil found in Canada has been described for the first time. The extinct species of ‘rebel coelacanths’ is thought to have been a quick-swimming predator with a forked tail like that of a tuna. Coelacanths were dubbed ‘living fossils’ after they were thought to be extinct, but one was discovered in 1938 in South Africa.
The living coelacanths are slow swimmers with strange triple-lobed broad tails, unlike the shark-like three-foot fish, which lived around 240 million years ago.
Dr John Long, from the Natural History Museum of LA County, Los Angeles, who is a fish fossil expert, but did not contribute to the study, says, “This is an amazing discovery which overturns the age old image of coelacanths as slow moving fishes and shows the resilience of the group to come back in true fighting form after surviving the world’s most devastating mass extinction.
The fossil species, named Rebellatrix or ‘rebel coelacanth’, was discovered by collectors from Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre, at Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.
The fossil, which is the most complete so far found of the species, have been outlined by two scientists from the University of Alberta in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The species, which had a huge symmetrical tail, which is very different to any other coelacanths, has been placed in its own family. The fossil was found on the sloped of the Hart Ranges of the Canadian Rockies, in Wapiti Lake Provincial Park, British Columbia. The fish swam to the west of the Pangaea supercontinent.
The report’s, lead author Andrew Wendruff, of the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, says its distinctive shape could be due to two options.
The skeleton of Rebellatrix
The first is that the fossil record is still largely undiscovered and the second is that the fish’s shape is a result of the evolution to fill an empty niche in the mass-extinction towards the end of the Permian Period around 250 million years ago.
Fellow author, Dr. Mark Wilson, points out that the rigidity and shape of the tail fin is not found in other coelacanth species, but can be seen in predators such as the tuna and barracuda.
The characteristics indicate that Rebellatrix pursued and preyed on other fish. Coelacanths peaked during the dinosaur age, but only two species are thought to exist today. It fills the evolutionary stage between many bony fish and tetrapods, four-legged land creatures.
Coelacanth is adapted from the Latin for ‘hollow spine’ and is named after to the hollow caudal fin rays of the first fossil specimen found in 1839. They belong to the subclass Actinistia, which are relations of lungfish and some extinct Devonian fish.
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — In a new paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists propose that the bony structures in the skin of many early four-legged creatures might have been there to relieve acid buildup in bodily fluids. Analysis of their anatomy suggests that as they ventured out of water, the animals would have had trouble getting rid of enough CO2 to prevent acid buildup: here.
