Saving Seafood

Despite recovery, humpback whales still suffer from ship strikes

April 27, 2017 — Decades after most countries retired their harpoons, whales still face threats from fishermen, ships, and coastal pollution. But one species that seemed to have overcome these challenges was Megaptera novaeangliae, better known as the humpback whale.

Heavily hunted by the early 20th century, an international whaling moratorium and protection under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) gave humpbacks the breathing space they needed to recover.

From 1986 to 2008, the whales’ numbers rose to 60,000 worldwide, and their status on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” improved from “Endangered” to “Least Concern.” By last September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that nine of the 14 distinct humpback populations no longer warranted ESA protection. Last year, one was even spotted in the Hudson River.

But a study published Tuesday in the journal Marine Mammal Science puts an asterisk on this progress. Close to shore, ship collisions threaten several species of whales, and these strikes may be greatly underreported for one humpback population in the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at the Christian Science Monitor

5,000-year-old corals are now threatened

December 1, 2016 — Coral genotypes can survive for thousands of years, possibly making them the longest-living animals in the world.

Researchers have determined the ages of elkhorn corals, Acropora palmata, in Florida and the Caribbean and estimated the oldest genotypes to be more than 5,000 years old. The results are useful for understanding how corals will respond to current and future environmental change.

“Our study shows, on the one hand, that some Acropora palmata genotypes have been around for a long time and have survived many environmental changes, including sea-level changes, storms, sedimentation events, and so on,” says Iliana Baums, associate professor of biology at Penn State.

“This is good news because it indicates that they can be very resilient. On the other hand, the species we studied is now listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act because it has suffered such sharp population declines, indicating that there are limits to how much change even these very resilient corals can handle.”

Many people mistake corals for plants or even non-living rocks, but corals actually consist of colonies of individual invertebrate animals living symbiotically with photosynthetic algae.

Read the full story at Futurity