Well, it's my first post in four and a half years .... wow I can't believe it's been that long. Many things have changed since then. I completed my foundation degree in marine science, which was when I started this Blog as part of my coursework, I did a third year at Plymouth University studying environmental science and I then stayed at Plymouth Uni for an extra year and completed a Masters in sustainable environmental management. So enough about me except to say that I recently started blogging again, mostly about my addiction to gardening, crafts and general countryside ramblings and it was while I was writing a post last week, about the shifting position of the jet stream and the effect it's having on the UK weather, that I realised that I missed blogging about good old nerdy science stuff, hence, the resurrection of my Falmouth Marine School Blog. Since university, it's much harder for me to read stories about environmental catastrophes, depleted fish stocks, melting polar ice caps and wanton, man-made pollution without wanting to throw on a mask, cape and knee length super hero boots and go out there and try and put things right and I find it even more frustrating when I read stories in certain newspapers, who shall remain nameless....... Daily Mail ...... that highlight the apathy and ignorance of most human beings on this planet. Harsh word, you might think but the more I read, the more it seems to me that people seem to be looking out for themselves with little thought for the bigger picture It seems to me that most of the time environmental issues come way down the list of priorities both at governmental level right down to us as consumers and it also seems that, increasingly, it comes down to a few dedicated individuals, not policy makers, to address the problems.

Every day I scan the papers for news articles about the environment. Some, such as the ones I find in the Daily Mail, I have to cross check with newspapers that are more, shall we say, reputable, but for the most part, the majority of articles are based in science, even if only loosely. So the main aim of this blog will be to highlight these issues and to look in more depth at possible solutions to some of these problems. Kind of “putting the world to rights” as my mum would say J (Actually, my mum and I both agree that if women were in charge and men were used for more menial tasks, the world would be a much better place….. just a thought lol)

UK announces world's largest algal biofuel project

Algal fuel growing in open ponds in Israel

Well, hot on the heels of the seaweed story I posted yesterday, The Guardian published details of this lastest attempt at manufacturing biofuel from marine based resources.

The world's biggest publicly funded project to make transport fuels from algae will be launched today by a government agency which develops low-carbon technologies.

The Carbon Trust will today announce a project to make algal biofuels a commercial reality by 2020. The plan could see up to £26m spent on developing the technology and infrastructure to ensure that algal biofuels replace a signficant proportion of the fossil fuels used by UK drivers.

Mark Williamson, innovations director at the Carbon Trust, said: "We must find a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to oil for our cars and planes if we are to deliver the deep cuts in carbon emissions necessary to tackle climate change. Algae could provide a significant part of the answer and represents a multibillion-pound opportunity."

Transport accounts for one-quarter of the UK's carbon emissions and is the fastest growing sector. Finding carbon-neutral fuels will be crucial to the government meeting its target to reduce overall emissions by 80% by 2050.

To Read the rest of the story click here

Seaweed Could "Fuel" Future

An Interesting article appeared on the BBC news website this morning.

Scientists want to see pilot farms and research into the most energy-rich types of seaweed so they can assess Scotland's marine biomass potential.

The report was carried out by the Scottish Association for Marine Science for The Crown Estate and makes recommendations on using biomass for heating and fuel while avoiding the use of valuable agricultural land.

Prof Mike Cowling, science and research manager at The Crown Estate, said: "Given Scotland's rugged western coastline and island groups, and relatively clean seas, it is sensible to examine the farming of seaweeds and sustainable harvesting of natural supplies as a source of energy, to heat our homes and fuel our vehicles.

Extracting energy from seaweed is a particularly efficient and reliable method of producing green energy

Prof Cowling went on to say "Heating and transport make up around three quarters of our energy use so it's vital that we find new ways of meeting that demand.
"Extracting energy from seaweed is a particularly efficient and reliable method of producing green energy, and the growing of seaweed could have positive impact on local marine biodiversity."

One key advantage of using seaweed is that it avoids the problems associated with agricultural crop biofuels such as pressure on arable land and fresh water.

Dundee University professor of microbiology Geoffrey Codd has also been promoting the idea of using seaweed and other algae as fuel.

He feels the practice could help revive traditional UK industries such as harvesting seaweed and create viable and sustainable biofuel sources.

This follows an article published in July, also on the same website, in which Professor Codd says that using algae to produce biofuels would not compete for land use with food production.

He goes on the say "Algae can also grow better than the best land crops - producing a yield that can be five to 10 times higher".

They already play an important role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and they produce a number of useful by-products.

Prof Codd said: "It [the algae] was around long before terrestrial crop plants appeared on the Earth - ranging from the single-celled plankton which grow in our seas, oceans and freshwaters, to the seaweeds on our shores.

"Algae can also grow in some of the harshest environments on Earth - in salt lakes and in desert environments where food crop plant production is not practised or even possible.

"Clearly there is no single fix in the search for sustainable biofuels and there are no quick fixes. However, algae are up there as viable and sustainable biofuel sources.
"We should give more attention to this in the current assessment of the future of biofuel production."

The Crown Estate owns almost all of the seabed out to 12 nautical miles and has rights on energy development out to 200 nautical miles.

It recently opened up the Pentland Firth seabed for leasing to developers, with interest shown in creating a massive underwater tidal farm.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/scotland/7690973.stm

Published: 2008/10/26 06:00:24 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

The World's Oil Suplies are Running Out.......... Which is Great News if You Are A Fish!!!

Trawlermen cling on as oceans empty of fish - and the ecosystem is gasping.


By George Monbiot - The Guardian
Tuesday July 8th 2008


All over the world, protesters are engaged in a heroic battle with reality. They block roads, picket fuel depots, throw missiles and turn over cars in an effort to hold it at bay. The oil is running out and governments, they insist, must do something about it. When they've sorted it out, what about the fact that the days are getting shorter? What do we pay our taxes for?

The latest people to join these surreal protests are the world's fishermen. They are on strike in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Japan, and demonstrating in scores of maritime countries. Last month in Brussels they threw rocks and flares at the police, who have been conspiring with the world's sedimentary basins to keep the price of oil high. The fishermen warn that if something isn't done to help them, thousands could be forced to scrap their boats and hang up their nets. It's an appalling prospect, which we should greet with heartfelt indifference.

Just as the oil price now seems to be all that stands between us and runaway climate change, it is also the only factor which offers a glimmer of hope to the world's marine ecosystems. No east Asian government was prepared to conserve the stocks of tuna; now one-third of the tuna boats in Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea will stay in dock for the next few months because they can't afford to sail. The unsustainable quotas set on the US Pacific seaboard won't be met this year, because the price of oil is rising faster than the price of fish. The indefinite strike called by Spanish fishermen is the best news European fisheries have had for years. Beam trawlermen - who trash the seafloor and scoop up a massive bycatch of unwanted species - warn that their industry could collapse within a year. Hurray to that too.

It would, of course, be better for everyone if these unsustainable practices could be shut down gently without the need for a crisis or the loss of jobs, but this seems to be more than human nature can bear. The EU has a programme for taking fishing boats out of service - the tonnage of the European fleet has fallen by 5% since 1999 - but the decline in boats is too slow to overtake the decline in stocks. Every year the EU, like every other fishery authority, tries to accommodate its surplus boats by setting quotas higher than those proposed by its scientific advisers, and every year the population of several species is pressed a little closer to extinction.

The fishermen make two demands, which are taken up by politicians in coastal regions all over the world: they must be allowed to destroy their own livelihoods, and the rest of us should pay for it. Over seven years, European taxpayers will be giving this industry €3.8bn. Some of this money is used to take boats out of service and to find other jobs for fishermen; but the rest is used to equip boats with new engines and new gear, to keep them on the water, to modernise ports and landing sites; and to promote and market the catch. Except for the funds used to re-train fishermen or help them into early retirement, there is no justification for this spending. At least farmers can argue - often falsely - that they are the "stewards of the countryside". But what possible argument is there for keeping more fishermen afloat than the fish population can bear?

The EU says its spending will reduce fishing pressure and help fishermen adopt greener methods. In reality, it is delaying the decline of the industry and allowing it to defy ecological limits for as long as possible. If the member states want to protect the ecosystem, it's a good deal cheaper to legislate than to pay. Our fishing policies, like those of almost all maritime nations, are a perfect parable of commercial stupidity and short-termism, helping an industry to destroy its long-term prospects for the sake of immediate profit.

But the fishermen only demand more. The headline on this week's Fishing News is "Thanks for Nothing!", bemoaning the British government's refusal to follow France, Spain and Italy in handing out fuel subsidies. But why the heck should it? The Scottish fishing secretary, Richard Lochhead, demands that the government in Westminster "open the purse strings". He also insists that new money is "not tied to decommissioning": in other words no more boats should be taken off the water. Is this really a service to the industry, or only to its most short-sighted members?

I have a leaked copy of the draft proposal that European states will discuss on Thursday. It's a disaster. Some of the boats which, under existing agreements, will be scrapped and turned into artificial reefs, permanently reducing the size of the fleet, can now be replaced with smaller vessels. The EU will pay costs and salaries for crews stranded by the fuel crisis, so that they stay in business and can start fishing again when the price falls. Member states will be able to shell out more money (€100,000 instead of €30,000 per boat) without breaking state aid rules. They can hand out new grants for replacing old equipment with more fuel-efficient gear. The proposal seems to be aimed at ensuring that the industry collapses through lack of fish rather than lack of fuel. The fishermen won't go down without taking the ecosystem with them.

What makes the draft document so dumb is that in some regions, especially in British waters, the industry is just beginning to turn. While Spanish, French and Italian fishermen clamour for a resumption of bluefin tuna fishing - knowing that if they are allowed to fish now this will be the last season ever - around the UK it has begun to dawn on some fishermen that there might be an association between the survival of the fish and the survival of the fishing.

Prompted by Young's seafood and some of the supermarkets, who in turn have been harried by environmental groups, some of the biggest British fisheries have applied for eco-labels from the Marine Stewardship Council, which sets standards for how fish are caught. Fishermen around the UK also seem to be taking the law more seriously, and at last to be showing some interest in obscure issues such as spawning grounds and juvenile fish (which, believe it or not, turn out to have a connection to future fish stocks). By ensuring that far too many boats, and far too many desperate fishermen, stay on the water, and that the remaining quotas are stretched too thinly, the EU will slow down or even reverse the greening of the industry.

Why is this issue so hard to resolve? Why does every representative of a fishing region believe he must defend his constituents' right to ensure that their children have nothing to inherit? Why do the leaders of the fishermen's associations feel the need always to denounce the scientists who say that fish stocks decline if they are hit too hard? If this is a microcosm of how human beings engage with the environment, the prospect for humanity is not a happy one.

Deep-sea carbon storage must be tested, says leading scientist

"Scientists must start dumping carbon dioxide into the deep ocean to see whether it provides a safe way of tackling global warming", a leading expert on climate change has said.

An article in the Guardian today suggested that in order to test the theory that carbon dioxide stripped from the exhaust gases of power stations and dumped in deep water would stay there for hundreds of years, large quantities, a series of experiments of around 1 tonne each, of CO2 should simply be "dumped" in to the ocean.

Wallace Broecker, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at New York's Columbia University, says experiments must be carried out "promptly" and has called on environmental campaigners to drop their opposition to such schemes.

Writing for the Guardian, Broecker says: "While we know enough to say with confidence that deep ocean disposal of CO2 is certainly feasible, unless small-scale pilot experiments are conducted, information necessary to assess the impact [on sea life] will remain obscure. It is my view that a series of experiments involving one-tonne quantities of CO2 should be conducted."

He goes on to say "480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide could be safely dumped directly into the waters of the deep Pacific, equivalent to the carbon pollution from about 16 years of the world's current fossil fuel use".

Well to this statement all I can say is........ How do we know? Who says that it will stay there for hundreds of years and what happens when, at some point in the future the CO2 is re-released from the depths of the oceans into the atmosphere? If the situation in 300 years time is as critical as it is now.... and there is no reason to believe that politicians and world leaders will have been any more successful at combating climate change or curbing CO2 emissions then than they are now, the result of 480 billion Tonnes of CO2 being re-emitted into the atmosphere could be catastrophic. 

Broecker then goes on to say "Worms and other organisms on the sea bed directly beneath the storage site would be killed"  and says that the impact would be "trivial" compared to that of the fishing industry.

I am amazed at this cavalier attitude to the destruction of benthic life from someone of Broecker's standing and although I appreciate that research is vital to address the issues of climate change and CO2 emissions more research needs to be carried out on the long term effects of what amounts to the mass destruction of benthic communities and the effects of increased ocean acidity as a result.

Dumping CO2 into the oceans  merely a stop-gap, a short term solution to a long term problem. If the general public believs that dumping excess CO2 into the oceans solves the problem, they will simply continue churning out CO2 in the belief that it can be just dumped and the problem will go away.

There has understandably been opposition to this proposal. Bill Hare of Greenpeace said: "The urgency of reducing emissions of CO2 has never been greater. But just as with an emergency in a heavy passenger jet, the crew should never rush in to hasty actions that will ultimately make a very bad situation a lot worse. Ocean disposal of CO2 is one such option. The position of Greenpeace and of other groups opposed to this option was based on research into the effects of ocean disposal of CO2."

Bacteria Threatens Oyster Farming in the US Pacific

In his years working in the oyster business, Mark Wiegardt had never seen anything like it.

"It scared the bejeezus out of us," he said, speaking from the Whiskey Creek Hatchery in Netarts Bay, Oregon.

The thing that so frightened Wiegardt is invisible to the human eye. But its presence in the waters of the US Pacific coast has oyster farmers and scientists baffled, and threatens a shortage of the delicacy in oyster bars and delicatessens from Mexico to Canada, from Portland to Miami.

Vibrio tubiashii is a bacterium that kills shellfish at the larval stage. While it has come and gone sporadically since the 1960s, it took up residence on the US Pacific shoreline two years ago and has not gone away. Its presence led to the temporary closure of Whiskey Creek, one of the largest oyster hatcheries in the US, and has placed in jeopardy the business of others involved in the $111m (£57m) industry.

Mark Camara is a geneticist who works for the US department of agriculture in Newport, Oregon. He, like many in the tightknit scientific community in the Pacific northwest, has worked with Wiegardt to resolve the problems facing the industry.

Thanks to their efforts, including the introduction of a $180,000 filtration system, Whiskey Creek is now at 30-50% of its normal annual production of around 10bn oyster larvae.

"But between August and October we virtually produced zero larvae," said Wiegardt. "There's definitely going to be a ripple effect with this thing. We've told our customers, if you can find it somewhere else, get it."

Robin Downey, executive director of the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers' Association, said the industry was confident that it would find a solution.

"We don't have a broad geographical picture," she said. "We don't know if this is a blip or a trend. It may be something that happens every 100 years."

Claudia Hase, an assistant professor at Oregon State University's college of veterinary medicine, said the problem seemed to be affecting not just oysters but other shellfish, including clams, geoducks - popular in sushi - fin fish and possibly shrimp. And it is spreading, with instances noted in Florida.

"It seems like it could be a huge problem," she said.

As for the cause, Hase hints at something that few want to articulate. "No one wants to admit it," she said. "It's very political." The suggestion is that climate change is a factor in the enduring presence of the bacterium.

Whiskey Creek Hatchery hopes to be back close to normal by next spring, if it can extend its filtration system, and if the system continues to produce results. But Wiegardt is concerned that the problems are merely a symptom of a larger malaise.

"We're pretty concerned about what is going on with the dead zones," he said. "Is that a connection to global warming? That's the consensus."

Portion of Lyme Bay is Permanently Closed toScallop Dredgers and Bottom Trawling

A ban on fishing in one of Britain's "richest" marine environments is to be implemented to protect its wildlife and seascape.

About 10% of Lyme Bay off Dorset and East Devon is to be permanently closed to scallop dredging and bottom trawling from July, Defra has announced.

The bay's reefs are home to an abundance of sea life including rare sponges, corals and starfish.

Conservation groups have welcomed the ban but some local fishermen are angry.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said: "Lyme Bay is one of Britain's richest environments, and the measures we have announced today will protect the reefs and the wildlife that depends on them from the most damaging fishing methods." It's catastrophic for inshore fishing, we feel let down, disappointed and disgusted
Nick Prust, South West Inshore Fishing Association


The fishing ban will cover 60 square nautical miles of Lyme Bay, from West Bay in Dorset to Beer Head in Devon.

The area will be off-limits to fishing boats which drag nets along the seabed. Wildlife groups had argued this was damaging the environment.


Dr Jean-Luc Solandt of the Marine Conservation Society said: "In the end, most fishermen and conservationists want the same thing - sustainable fishing which has limited impact on the marine environment."

Fishing organisations said they were furious and felt betrayed that a gentleman's agreement to allow them to fish in certain parts of the bay and leave others alone had been rescinded by the Government.

Nick Prust from the South West Inshore Fishing Association said: "It's catastrophic for inshore fishing. We feel let down, disappointed and disgusted."

Jim Portus from the South West Fish Producer Organisation said: "I'm devastated, it will mean a £3m annual loss for the local economy. It's not a happy day for inshore fishing."

More marine reserves are likely to be announced in the forthcoming marine bill.