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Census of Marine Life

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Earlier this month, the first ever Census of Marine Life was published, a culmination of a decade of research. Nearly three thousand scientists from around the world worked together to establish an oceanic baseline for future study.

The census includes over 240,000 marine species (presumed to be 25% of the total number of species in the worlds oceans) and has three points of focus:
  1. diversity
  2. distribution
  3. abundance
“The census found life everywhere we looked,” Ian Poiner, chairman of the scientific steering committee, told Science, ” and it is much more complex and interconnected than we expected. Probably the other [key finding] is that we humans have had far more impact on the oceans than we had imagined.”
We look forward to further studies from this bottom-up approach to conservation science and will continue to empower citizen scientists and advance our own understanding of the marine ecosystems in the region where we work.

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De nuestros amigos de Parque Maritimo el Coco:

Nos es grato informarles que la madrugada del miercoles 1ro de Septiembre del 2010 inicio la primera arribada masiva de tortugas marinas de la variedad Paslama en playa La Flor. Por ser la primera arribada esperada desde el mes de Julio se estima que sera de entre 3,000 a 7,000 tortugas en un periodo de 4 a 5 noches.  

Las tortugas solamente salen por la noche cuando la temperatura de la arena es baja. Ellas caminan sobre la arena unos 30 a 40 metros e inician a cavar un hoyo donde después depositaran sus huevos. Una vez puesto los huevos, entre 90 a 100, cierran el hoyo o nido y lo apelmazan, luego regresan al mar. Todo el proceso dura aproximadamente 1 hora. No se permite el uso de luz blanca de ningun tipo de intensidad porque esto perturba a las tortugas. Solamente se permite luz roja y de ser posible solo una luz por grupo. La tortuga no debe ser tocada desde que sale de la playa hasta que inicia a depositar sus huevos. Cuando esta depositando puede ser tocada pero una persona a la ves y con aprobación de personal del MARENA que administra el refugio. Tampoco hay que colocarse frente a la tortuga en ningun momento del proceso, ya sea cuando sale del agua, pone los huevos o regresa al agua. Esto perturba a la tortuga y puede que no ponga los huevos o se pierda en su camino de regreso. 

Los huevos eclosionan entre 45 a 55 días después de ser puestos. Las tortugas pequeñas salen por la fuerza de la arena y se dirigen al mar inmediatamente. 

Esperamos puedan visitarnos en estos días ya que la arribada posiblemente termine entre el sabado y domingo por la noche.

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“A leatherback turtle has made a surprise return to a Malaysian beach after 32 years, a report said Friday, hailed as a ‘miracle’ by conservationists and renewing hopes for the endangered species.” Read more at Discovery News.

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Conservation begins and ends with education. Given the right tools to protect their environment, the next generation can give our world a cleaner, more sustainable future.

The importance of educating people, particularly children, has not gone overlooked by Paso Pacifico as we work to conserve natural resources and native wildlife species. In the past few weeks, Paso Pacifico launched its newest conservation and environmental education project. With generous support from the US Wildlife Service and the Private Reserve Network, we are taking steps to protect Neotropical Migratory Birds (NMB) and key habitats across private reserves located in the Paso del Istmo Corridor, Rivas Isthmus, Nicaragua. The area provides refuge to at least thirty-six NMB species of Conservation Concern and is an important land bridge for migrating swallows and raptors.

Paso Pacifico’s Nicaraguan Bird Coordinator and ornithologist Juana Isabel Matamoros has been hard at work providing training to over fifteen high school teachers who work at schools throughout the Paso del Istmo. U.S.-based ornithologist and science educator, Lynn Crew, recently joined Juana Isabelle to facilitate the new program. Together they are training teachers to educate their students about Neotropical Migratory Birds, partly in preparation for International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) and also in preparation for a long-term education program about native and migrating birds.

Paso Pacifico looks forward to the IMBD Celebration that will involve several local communities throughout the Paso del Istmo. It promises to be an exciting day both for Nicaraguan communities and for conservation on a large scale.

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Our friends at SeaTurtle.org remind us of the many resources they make available to people interested in studying and protecting sea turtles:

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We’ve already posted about the Changing Oceans special issue of Science, but we think it’s important to focus on how climate change is affecting marine wildlife habitat.

Marine ecosystems are centrally important to the biology of the planet, yet a comprehensive understanding of how anthropogenic climate change is affecting them has been poorly developed. Recent studies indicate that rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving ocean systems toward conditions not seen for millions of years, with an associated risk of fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation. The impacts of anthropogenic climate change so far include decreased ocean productivity, altered food web dynamics, reduced abundance of habitat-forming species, shifting species distributions, and a greater incidence of disease. Although there is considerable uncertainty about the spatial and temporal details, climate change is clearly and fundamentally altering ocean ecosystems. Further change will continue to create enormous challenges and costs for societies worldwide, particularly those in developing countries.

Authors Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno acknowledge that “change has been the norm as Earth has swung through a variety of states in which life has prospered, dwindled, or experienced calamitous declines” as well as the fact that “long-term studies of climate change in the oceans are rare by comparison to those on land.” They go on to cite study after study indicating that there is plenty of evidence that change is rapid and driven, at least in part, by human activity. Changing ocean temperatures and composition mean changing currents and nutrient cycles.

Especially visible are the effects of climate change on “habitat-forming species such as corals, sea grass, mangroves, salt marsh grasses, and oysters.” When these species are at risk, so are the many species dependent on them. Of course, warmer oceans expands the potential habitat for some. We see warm-water species ranging from sea turtles to sea urchins expanding beyond their normal ranges, but the expansion of warm waters also means the expansion of marine-based diseases and parasites.

Over all, it’s important that the conservation community to continue its research as we try to understand more about our changing oceans. We remain committed to playing our role in contributing to scientific understanding. We also continue to take cutting-edge science to the field as we work to mitigate climate change and restore and conserve wildlife habitat from ridge to reef.

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Felicitaciones to our friends at Fauna & Flora International. Their Leatherback Conservation project was named Eco-Index Eco-Initiative of the Month:

Through this project, Fauna and Flora International (FFI) aims to contribute to the conservation of the critically endangered leatherback turtles on the three most important nesting beaches of Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast. This goal builds on FFI’s progress in beach monitoring and capacity building since 2002, and implements critical elements of the Pacific Marine Turtle Strategy in Nicaragua. In addition, FFI will extend its successful protection and monitoring programs at Juan Venado beach and Chacocente Wildlife Refuge to the newly discovered Salamina beach, which could potentially become Nicaragua’s most important leatherback marine turtle nesting beach, and central to ongoing efforts to conserve this species.

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This week only, you can support Paso Pacífico by participating in this e-Bay auction for one of eight solar powered, designer handbags. Proceeds will go to supporting Paso Pacífico’s program in partnership with Portable Light, which distributes solar-powered lights to women and children in energy-poor Nicaraguan communities. For the many families without electricity, simple nightly tasks like finishing homework or cooking dinner become possible for the first time. Additionally, Paso Pacífico and Portable Light worked together to develop a prototype suitable for use in the field, which includes a soft red light that allows our sea turtle rangers in Nicaragua to monitor these light-sensitive animals without disturbing them.

Elle Magazine, Portable Light, and eight acclaimed fashion designers, such as Tommy Hilfiger and Diane von Furstenberg, collaborated to create the handbags, each outfitted with flexible solar panels that power HBLED lights, USB ports, and a battery pack which allows you to charge your iPod, camera, or phone. These one-of-a-kind bags are on auction THIS WEEK only, until July 15th. All proceeds from the auction will go to Paso Pacífico and Portable Light’s other partners, giving us the resources to continue our mission to protect the environment while empowering local communities. Place your bid today, and be one of the first to join in a new era for fashion and sustainable energy!

For more information about Paso Pacífico and this project, visit our website or watch a Flickr slideshow to see photos of the Portable Lights in action.

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“The ocean is a dynamic and rapidly evolving environment, a long-appreciated truth which becomes increasingly apparent as we observe it ever more carefully.”

Last month, Science magazine ran a special issue on ocean science and ocean conservation. We especially liked the updates on new technologies for studying the ocean. Two such examples are buoys and fiber-optic cables.

  • Buoys: There are now over 4000 science buoys in the world’s oceans, gathering temperatures, wave heights, wind speeds, water conductivity profiles, and helping scientists understand ocean dynamics better than ever before.
  • Fiber-Optic Cables: Strung from shore and across the ocean floor, fiber-optic cables are gathering data on crustal dynamics and deep-sea ecosystems.

We were also interested in the piece on ocean garbage patches:

Chances are you’ve heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the vast mass of floating debris midway between Hawaii and California that is twice the size of Texas. Although many media stories conjure up a chunky soup of bottles and tires, it is mostly an unstrained consommé of small bits of floating plastic. And it isn’t the only one. A similar accumulation of plastic particles—which include weathered fishing line, Styrofoam, wrappers, and raw resin pellets—has shown up in the North Atlantic Ocean. But the potential harm to marine life is far from clear.

Most of the floating debris is small enough that it’s difficult to determine what happens to it. It’s also small enough to be ingested by marine life low on the food chain. Further study is necessary to understand what is happening to plastic particulate and how much of its chemicals are absorbed into animal tissue.

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Paso Pacífico’s sea turtle program is made possible through collaboration and information sharing with scientists around the world. Our work with the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative (ICAPO) focuses on the Hawksbill turtle, one of the rarest, most endangered sea turtles in the Eastern Pacific. Last year, Paso Pacífico and scientists from this network successfully placed the first satellite tag on a Hawksbill Sea Turtle in Nicaragua, allowing us to track the path of two Hawksbill turtles through the ocean and learn more about their migration patterns and foraging habits.

This month, the network is holding its “2nd Workshop on Hawksbill Sea Turtles of the Eastern Pacific” in Nicaragua. This meeting will bring together conservation scientists across the region to discuss innovative conservation tools for saving this beautiful turtle from extinction.

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