Giant Antarctic iceberg on the loose

The BBC is reporting that a 2,500 square kilometer iceberg estimated to weigh billions of tons, has broken off Antarctica and has the potential to disrupt important ocean currents. Check out the BBC for the podcast about the event and its implications. It will also affect local penguins and seals by changing the conditions of the water in which they typically feed.

CIA and Law of the Sea

It's not often that the U.S. is on the same side as Iran and North Korea. But on ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, they are. In an interesting essay, David Helvarg provides some background on the somewhat puzzling American refusal to sign a treaty they for the most part agree with, except for the provisions on deep-sea mining outside of EEZs. As it turns out, no U.S. companies really wanted to take on the probably unremunerative challenge of figuring out how to mine the deep seas. Helvarg notes that even with U.S.-initiated changes to the objectionable deep-sea mining provisions, and support for ratification from known liberal internationalists such as the U.S. Navy and the oil industry, a few die-hard anti-U.N. lawmakers are making sure we don't move forward.

Most of the oceans lie outside EEZs. Protecting them and their resources is a task for the whole world and U.S. intransigence on widely-accepted ocean policy like UNCLOS doesn't win us any friends. Ratification of UNCLOS is long overdue, and would demonstrate that the U.S. is a team player when it comes to ocean law.

Adorable penguins replaced by jellyfish?

The Census on Antarctic Marine Life (CAML), part of the Census on Marine Life (COML), is reporting that Antarctic krill populations are being "decimated" due to climate change. And unfortunately it looks like jellyfish are poised to take over as penguins and other krill predators decline. Jellyfish can better exploit the copepods that are taking over for krill. Huw Griffiths, a participant in CAML, says that he's already seeing jellyfish in the Southern Ocean. Check out a gallery of the amazing animals CAML discovered in the Antarctic.

Not to disrespect jellyfish, which are pretty interesting in their own right, but it would be a shame to lose this unique ecosystem. The CAML has identified many new species that we know barely anything about. So it's not just penguins that might suffer when the Antarctic environment changes. We could be losing out on species that look like aliens from another planet, species that produce compounds that could treat human beings, species whose determined waddling is never anything less than delightful. And in return we'd just get jellyfish.

New research demonstrates that MPAs work

A special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences features the latest research on the impacts of marine reserves. Surprise, it turns out that networks of marine reserves can boost conservation efforts and improve fishery profitability. Thanks to the awesome open-access policy of the NAS, you can read the articles here. One of the points stressed by the researchers is that networks designed based on science are absolutely key. Given that the process of designating these areas can get very politicized, I hope that as more marine reserves are created in the Southern Ocean, CCAMLR parties take heed of this research to ensure that they are creating reserves that make sense ecologically. Doing so requires solid scientific information and thus an investment in research, but will pay off in the long run.

Australia is getting tougher

Australia, as I've mentioned before, is a very anti-whaling nation. To the extent that leaders perceived to be soft on whaling come under considerable political pressure, which is likely why Kevin Rudd's government recently declared that if Southern Ocean whaling doesn't cease by November 2010, he'll follow through on promises to challenge Japan at the International Court of Justice. Japan for its part plans to reintroduce its plan to "scale back" SO whaling in exchange for the International Whaling Commission's sanctioning of commercial whaling in Japanese waters. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out - the IWC meeting is in June, so there probably won't be much official action on this until then. But behind the scenes there certainly will be some back and forth between Japanese and Australian diplomats.

"Whale Wars" Intensify

Sea Shepherd has been getting the fight it wants over Japanese scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean. After a recent second clash with the whaling fleet, now a Sea Shepherd activist has been arrested by Japan for boarding one of their ships and trying to arrest the captain for attempted murder. A Sea Shepherd ship was destroyed in January after being rammed by one of the Japanese whaling fleet's ships. Sea Shepherd believes that its tactics are valuable because they prevent the Japanese from catching as many whales as it could. But what is the effect for those countries trying to convince Japan to stop whaling via the International Whale Commission? I get the sense from news reports that the Japanese resent the pressure from other countries to stop whaling, even though many of them don't feel a strong urge to eat whale meat. Appearing to cave to the confrontational tactics of Sea Shepherd would probably also not be very popular.

Fair Trial for the Tokyo Two

Two years ago, two Greenpeace activists revealed that crew members working for the Japanese whaling fleet were illegally stealing whale meat and selling it. The activists found out about the illegal sales and managed to obtain some of the meat, which they promptly turned over to the authorities. Instead of being rewarded for exposing the crime, however, they were charged with trespassing and theft after being detained without charge for three weeks. And now the UN is condemning their detention. Greenpeace asked people to sign a petition to the Japanese government asking for assurances that the activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, will get a fair trial. Over 3000 people signed the petition, which notes that the defense has not had access to all the evidence obtained by the prosecution, which violates Sato and Suzuki's rights to a fair trial.

Let's hope this manner is resolved fairly. Japan may not care about what the international community thinks of its whaling program, but is it really so concerned with its image that it doesn't care that crew members might be stealing whale meat? Sato and Suzuki aren't the real criminals here. After all, it is alleged that the cuts of meat stolen were the more valuable ones, and with the Japanese government having to subsidize the whaling program (even though the meat is sold after the "research" is done), it seems they should be mad at the crew, not Greenpeace.

Shackleton's secret stash uncovered in Antarctica

About a hundred years ago, Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and his team packed away a couple of crates of whisky. And recently, researchers found them again and opened them up. The question "Is it still drinkable?" which I think is the first thing that comes to mind for most normal people, may not be answered, as the spokesman for the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust thinks it would be too disappointing should the whisky turn out to have spoiled. The company that originally made the whisky was bought out, and the new owners are interested in getting their hands on a bottle so they can perhaps recreate it - the particular blend is no longer made and the recipe is unknown.

It's not surprising that the crates are still around - other explorers' huts and supplies are still there, complete with canned goods. Antarctica's cold, dry environment can preserve things pretty well. It's why, even though there aren't very many people there, that it's important to take extra precautions to prevent pollutants and contaminants from entering the environment.

No good news on ocean acidification

An Antarctic marine biologist at the University of Alabama - Birmingham is talking up his research on how the increased levels of carbon dioxide that cause climate change are also bad for the oceans, specifically because of ocean acidification. One project showed that it took as little as five weeks in an acidified environment for the shells of some Antarctic invertebrates to start thinning out. Dr. McClintock warns that because the Southern Ocean is a large carbon dioxide sink, ocean acidification is a particularly serious problem for Antarctic organisms.

Below is a video about the research:

Oceans Reveal Further Impacts of Climate Change, Says UAB Expert from uabnews on Vimeo.

Antarctica - a year on ice

This video's been around a while, but it's worth watching. Through the magic of time lapse photography, you can get an idea of the changes Antarctica goes through over the course of a year.