Parasites and pathogens infecting humans, pets and farm animals are increasingly being detected in marine mammals such as sea otters, porpoises, harbour seals and killer whales along the Pacific coast of the U.S. and Canada, and better surveillance is required to monitor public health implications, according to a panel of scientific experts from Canada and the United States.

UBC scientists Stephen Raverty, Michael Grigg and Andrew Trites and Melissa Miller from the California Department of Fish and Game, presented their research Feb 21 at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada.

They called for stronger collaboration among public health, coastal water policy and marine mammal health research sectors to reduce land-sea transfer of pathogens and toxins. These terrestrial sourced pollutants are killing coastal marine mammals and likely pose risks to human health.

Between 1998 and 2010, nearly 5,000 marine mammal carcasses were recovered and necropsied along the British Columbia and Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., including whales, dolphins and porpoises, sea lions and otters.

“Infectious diseases accounted for up to 40 per cent of mortalities of these marine animals,” says Stephen Raverty, a veterinary pathologist with the Animal Health…

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Last week, the head of the World Bank Robert B. Zoellick announced the establishment of a Global Partnership for Oceans to confront widely documented problems of over-fishing, marine degradation, and habitat loss. Speaking at the Economist World Oceans Summit in Singapore, Zoellick described the initiative:

This Partnership will bring together countries, scientific centers, NGOs, international organizations, foundations, and the private sector to pool knowledge, experience, expertise, and investment around a set of agreed upon goals. These goals can sharpen our focus, encourage common and reinforcing efforts, and compel us to measure performance. Together, we will build on the excellent work already being done to address the threats to oceans, identify workable solutions, and scale them.  We can also mobilize financing where there are gaps.

There are an estimated 350 million jobs worldwide that are linked in one way or another to the oceans, so it’s not surprising that the World Bank has taken an interest, bringing together major NGOs, regulatory bodies, and private funding to tackle these issues. But what about the specifics? The Partnership has identified four major goals for the next 10 years:

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Movements of the enigmatic ocean wanderer, the endangered oceanic whitetip shark - MAHMOOD SHIVJI, February 26, 2012

One of the most threatened shark species across its range may very well be the oceanic whitetip shark, Carcharhinus longimanus. Although once considered one of the most abundant sharks in the open ocean, this species has been subject to enormous bycatch fishing pressure in pelagic fisheries worldwide, and is now believed to have declined precipitously in much of its range. The IUCN lists the oceanic whitetip as Vulnerable globally, facing a high risk of extinction in the wild. Furthermore this species has been assessed as Critically Endangered in the Northwest and Western Central Atlantic Ocean. Despite its overfished status and once apparently high abundance in the open ocean, remarkably little is known about the general biology of this species to guide conservation and management efforts to prevent further declines and facilitate recovery of this species. Essential information needed about the stock structure and migration patterns of this species is almost non-existent.

To facilitate conservation and management efforts for oceanic whitetip sharks, the Save Our Seas Shark Center USA working in collaboration with the Guy Harvey Research Institute and Marine Conservation International are…

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Shark footage recorded from ROV onboard Stena DrillMAX at 9100 feet (2770 m) depth offshore Brazil, shot on February 11, 2012, showed a very deep diving shark. According to scientist Jeffrey Gallant of the Greenland Shark and Elasmobranch Education and Research Grouep / GEERG, this is probably a southern sleeper shark, but it could also be a Greenland shark or a Pacific sleeper shark. It is however still not known if the distribution of these species extends to the southern hemisphere. These species are virtually impossible to distinguish with images alone. Incidentally, this would be a new depth record for the Greenland shark. The deepest observation to date was 2,200 m (1988), so this could be a new record!

You can watch the shark on Youtube, at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P__-YVYdNmE

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As a CEO of Save Our Seas Foundation, we get some great opportunities. One of those was a visit to Professor Emerita Eugenie Clark, also known as the ‘Shark Lady’.

Genie, as she prefers to be callled, has an impressive career. In 1955, she was is the Founding Executive Director of Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota, Florida (formerly Cape Haze Marine Laboratory), where she is now Director Emerita. She was the Principal Investigator of 45 grants, contracts from government and private scientific organizations for the study of the behavior, ecology and taxonomy of fishes. Current research is on behavior of sand fishes, feeding behavior of whale sharks, the effects of human activities on coral reef environments, and behavior of deep sea sharks recorded from 71 deep submersible dives. In 1955, the Mote Marine Lab consisted of one small shed… The complex is now 10,5 acres and has 195 employees and a large aquarium, and is famous for its groundbreaking research and support to countless projects and researchers.

Genie wrote 165 articles in scientific journals and popular magazines.

Times photo: John Pendygraft

Just before her 90th birthday on May 4th this year, this amazing lady will make a month-long…

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Long before humans first appeared on Earth, sharks were swimming the seas. They predate dinosaurs by about 200 million years and were revered by ancient human societies as gods. Sharks come in all shapes and sizes. There are angel sharks, basking sharks, blues sharks, bull sharks, gray sharks, lemon sharks, sleeper sharks, and tiger sharks, among many other varieties. Not only are they found in every ocean of the world, but in many rivers and lakes as well. There will be a major exhihibition about sharks, organized by the Museum of Art in association with Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center. CEOs of Save Our Seas Foundation, Peter Verhoog and Georgina Wiersma, had a very interesting and exciting meeting at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale. This exhibition, for which famous shark painter Richard Ellis is the curator, will open on May 12th. It will cover sharks in art over the centuries and will display several famous works of ‘shark’ art.

There will also be an extensive educational and audiovisual component to this event, and after meeting the directors of the museum and Richard Ellis in May last year, Peter and Georgina were invited to discuss SOSF’s involvement. The exhibition…

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Jellyfish blooms have finding their way into the media recently – clogged nets for fishermen, stinging waters for tourists, even choked intake lines for power plants – creating a perception that the world’s oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overfishing.

A new study conducted at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and published in the latest issue of BioScience questions this view. The study’s authors note that while there have been jellyfish blooms in certain areas (notably Giant Jellyfish in Japan), other regions have seen jellyfish declines or fluctuations. As noted in the press release,

Increased speculation and discrepancies about current and future jellyfish blooms by the media and in climate and science reports formed the motivation for the study. “There are major consequences for getting the answer correct for tourism, fisheries and management decisions as they relate to climate change and changing ocean environments,” says Duarte. “The important aspect about our synthesis is that we will be able to support the current paradigm with hard scientific data rather than speculation.”

The study has also led to the formation of the improbably named JEDI (Jellyfish…

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