A Tribe Called K2 Buhl-oog!

From 2003 to 2008, an international research team led by University of Alaska-Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov surveyed the waters of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which covers more than two million sq km of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean.

"This discovery reveals a large but overlooked source of methane gas escaping from permafrost underwater, rather than on land," the study says. "More widespread emissions could have dramatic effects on global warming."

Earlier studies in Siberia had focused on methane escaping from thawing permafrost on land.

Scientists have long thought the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf acted as an impermeable barrier that sealed in methane, a powerful greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

But the research team’s observations showed that the permafrost submerged on the shelf was perforated and leaking large amounts of methane.

More than 80 per cent of the deep water and more than half of the surface water had methane levels about eight times higher than found in normal seawater, according to the study published in the journal Science.

The release of even a fraction of the methane could trigger abrupt climate warming. Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years, said Dr Shakhova.

Reported by Bjarne Wildau

In Australia, where the danger of the deadly jellyfish is not ignored, beaches known to be infested have signs warning people when to swim and when not to.

The box jelly fish is clear as glass and prefers shallow water with sand bottoms – just like the millions of tourists coming to Thailand every year.

Nine year old Swedish girl Ida was nearly killed in yet another attack of the deadly box jellyfish in Thailand. Only the fast action of a Swedish fire-fighter likewise on vacation in Thailand, saved her life.
The incident took place on Koh Mak near Koh Chang. This is significant, because previously all attacks and deaths by box jellyfish have been in the Andaman sea. With this incident, the Gulf of Siam can obviously no longer be considered box jellyfish free waters.
The ordeal of Ida and her parents are described in detail in an article in Swedish language in Aftonbladet (http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article6723047.ab )
The Rosenberg family from Tyringe in the southern part of Sweden had just started their winter vacation in Thailand. Jenny, 36, and her husband Frederick Rosenberg, 35, were out snorkelling in the waters off Koh Mak Island. Their daughter Ida was splashing around in the water closer to the beach. Suddenly the parents heard her screaming in pain.
“We started swimming like mad towards the shore," the mother told Aftonbladet.
When they reached their daughter Ida, she was already unconscious on the beach. The fire fighter Anders Brunzell, 42, was fighting desperately to save her life. Ida’s heart had stopped beating by an allergic shock from the dangerous jellyfish.
The Swedish fire-fighter explains:
“I and my family were sunbathing a bit away. We ran to Ida and saw that her right leg was completely covered with long threads, like glass noodles. There was only one thing to do," says Anders who with his wife Marie began to rip off the tentacles with their bare hands.
Anders, who works as a fire-fighter in Stockholm, began heart massage and mouth-to-mouth first aid. He then ordered staff at the nearby hotel to get vinegar which will stop the tentacles of jellyfish from stinging more. He also borrowed oxygen from the hotels scuba diving school.
“The only problem was that the oxygen mask was made for diving, so it did not work, "says Anders.
But little Ida woke up thanks to the fire-fighter and his professional skills.
Then Ida was carried to a boat which brought her to the mainland, where an ambulance was waiting and brought her to a hospital.

Today, two days after the jellyfish attack, Ida is doing fine under the circumstances. She is conscious again, but is badly burned on the leg and other body parts. Over the next few days, she and her mother Jenny will stay at the hospital in Trat for observation.
“Because she was unconscious for so long, the hospital staff is worried that she has had brain damage. She is a bit groggy and still has a fever. But, everything else seems okay”, says Jenny.
Jenny is grateful for the Thai health care, and for Anders’s rapid action.
"What do you say to a man who has saved the life of one’s daughter? There are no words to describe my emotions. But one thing is clear, were it not for him, Ida had been dead today.”
But she is critical that the hotels did not warn tourists of the dangerous jellyfish, although several people have died earlier.
“No signs, no information. The day after Ida was burnt I was told that people were down there in the water at the same place swimming again. This should not be allowed to go on”.
“On the other hand, I myself have read in the newspaper back in Sweden about similar events in Thailand. But as with everything else one thinks that "it does not happen to me". Stupid really," Jenny admits.

What to do if you are attacked by the jellyfish?
Somchai Bussarawit, Chief of Reference Collection at the PMBC’s Phuket Aquarium, is working with the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Australia to identify the collected specimens. His advice to victims of the jellyfish is:
Any person who has suffered a possible box jellyfish sting should get out of the water as soon as possible, have his or her pulse rate monitored, and undergo cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the event of heart failure.
* The sting should immediately be treated with vinegar to stop further injection of the toxin, the PMBC advises.
* Do not rub or scratch the site of the sting or apply fresh water or alcohol to it, the PMBC advises.
* Dr Somchai reiterated that there have been no box jellyfish sightings on west coast beaches, where the seawater is generally too saline an environment for box jellies.
However, he advises seaside resorts to keep many bottles of vinegar as a standard part of their first aid kits as it is effective in treating stings from other kinds of less venomous jellyfish.
Not all attacks are deadly
The pdf file in this link informs scientifically and in depth about the life cycle and precautions one should take in relations to the box jellyfish. Some beaches extends nets from the shore into the water which will hold the grown jellyfish out. Click to read the full report: http://scandasia.com/upload_files/cubo_brochure.pdf

Study: Ocean Geoengineering Scheme No Easy Fix For Global Warming; ‘There Remain Many Uncertainties’

Editors Note:  infusing carbon dioxide into the ocean causes H2CO3  Carbonic Acid. . .we will acidify the ocean if the below occurs.

This map displays simulated additional surface warming for the year 2100 caused by the temporary use of artificial upwelling GEOMAR

SOUTHAMPTON, UK — Pumping nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to boost algal growth in sunlit surface waters and draw carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere has been touted as a way of ameliorating global warming. However, a new study led by Professor Andreas Oschlies of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, pours cold water on the idea.

"Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential to exacerbate global warming should it fail," said study co-author Dr Andrew Yool of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

If international governmental policies fail to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to levels needed to keep the impacts of human-induced climate change within acceptable limits it may necessary to move to ‘Plan B’. This could involve the implementation of one or more large-scale geo-engineering schemes proposed for reducing the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere.

One possible approach is to engineer the oceans to facilitate the long-term sequestration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It has been suggested that this could be done by pumping of nutrient-rich water from a depth of several hundred metres to fertilize the growth of phytoplankton, the tiny marine algae that dominate biological production in surface waters.

The aim would be to mimic the effects of natural ocean upwelling and increase drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide by phytoplankton through the process of photosynthesis. Some of the sequestered carbon would be exported to the deep ocean when phytoplankton die and sink, effectively removing it from the system for hundreds or thousands of years.

A previous study, of which Yool was lead author, used an ocean general circulation model to conclude that literally hundreds of millions of pipes would be required to make a significant impact on global warming. But even if the technical and logistical difficulties of deploying the vast numbers of pipes could be overcome, exactly how much carbon dioxide could in principle be sequestered, and at what risk?

In the new study, the researchers address such questions using a more integrated model of the whole Earth system. The simulations show that, under most optimistic assumptions, three gigatons of carbon dioxide per year could be captured. This is under a tenth of the annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, which currently stand at 36 gigatons per year. A gigaton is a million million kilograms.

One surprising feature of the simulations was that the main effect occurred on land rather than the ocean. Cold water pumped to the surface cooled the atmosphere and the land surface, slowing the decomposition of organic material in soil, and ultimately resulting in about 80 per cent of the carbon dioxide sequestered being stored on land. "This remote and distributed carbon sequestration would make monitoring and verification particularly challenging," write the researchers.

More significantly, when the simulated pumps were turned off, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and surface temperatures rose rapidly to levels even higher than in the control simulation without artificial pumps. This finding suggests that there would be extra environmental costs to the scheme should it ever need to be turned off for unanticipated reasons.

"All models make assumptions and there remain many uncertainties, but based on our findings it is hard to see the use of artificial pumps to boost surface production as being a viable way of tackling global warming," said Yool.

Editor’s Note:  this is a baaad idea, its about the environment, stoopid?

By Victoria Gill

Science reporter, BBC News, Portland

Whales store carbon by the tonne

A century of whaling may have released more than 100 million tonnes – or a large forest’s worth – of carbon into the atmosphere, scientists say.

Whales store carbon within their huge bodies and when they are killed, much of this carbon can be released.

US scientists revealed their estimate of carbon released by whaling at a major ocean sciences meeting in the US.

Dr Andrew Pershing from the University of Maine described whales as the "forests of the ocean".

Dr Pershing and his colleagues from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute calculated the annual carbon-storing capacity of whales as they grew.

"Whales, like any animal or plant on the planet, are made out of a lot of carbon," he said.

"And when you kill and remove a whale from the ocean, that’s removing carbon from this storage system and possibly sending it into the atmosphere."

He pointed out that, particularly in the early days of whaling, the animals were a source of lamp oil, which was burned, releasing the carbon directly into the air.

"And this marine system is unique because when whales die [naturally], their bodies sink, so they take that carbon down to the bottom of the ocean.

"If they die where it’s deep enough, it will be [stored] out of the atmosphere perhaps for hundreds of years."

Ocean trees

In their initial calculations, the team worked out that 100 years of whaling had released an amount of carbon equivalent to burning 130,000 sq km of temperate forests, or to driving 128,000 Humvees continuously for 100 years.

The idea would be to do a full accounting of how much carbon you could store in a fully populated stock of fish or whales

Dr Andrew Pershing, University of Maine

Guide to the great whales

Dr Pershing stressed that this was still a relatively tiny amount when compared to the billions of tonnes produced by human activity every year.

But he said that whales played an important role in storing and transporting carbon in the marine ecosystem.

Simply leaving large groups of whales to grow, he said, could "sequester" the greenhouse gas, in amounts that were comparable to some of the reforestation schemes that earn and sell carbon credits.

He suggested that a similar system of carbon credits could be applied to whales in order to protect and rebuild their stocks.

"The idea would be to do a full accounting of how much carbon you could store in a fully populated stock of fish or whales, and allow countries to sell their fish quota as carbon credits," he explained.

"You could use those credits as an incentive to reduce the fishing pressure or to promote the conservation of some of these species."

Is bigger better?

Other scientists said that he had raised an exciting and interesting problem.

Professor Daniel Costa, a marine animal researcher from the University of California, Santa Cruz, told BBC News: "So many more groups are looking at the importance of these large animals in the carbon cycle.

"And it’s one of those things that, when you look at it, you think: ‘ This is so obvious, why didn’t we think of this before?’."

Dr Pershing pointed out that whales, with their huge size, were more efficient than smaller animals at storing carbon.

He used the analogy of a small dog compared to a large dog.

"My wife’s 6lb (2.7kg) toy poodle eats one cup of food per day and my dog – a 60lb standard poodle – eats five cups of food per day," he said.

"That’s only five times as much food but my dog weighs ten times as much."

He said that the marine carbon credit idea could be applied to other very large marine animals, including endangered bluefin tuna and white sharks.

Dr Pershing said: "These are huge and they are top predators, so unless they’re fished they would be likely to take their biomass to the bottom of the ocean [when they die]."

The American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences meeting has been taking place this week in Portland, Oregon.

By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 11:57 PM on 20th February 2010

They are known as one of the deadliest creatures on Earth.

But according to a shocking new study, great white sharks are also one of the most endangered.

Wildlife experts say there are now fewer than 3,500 great whites left in the oceans, making them rarer than tigers.

Yesterday, marine biologists called for an end to mankind’s long battle with sharks and demanded urgent action to prevent them going extinct.

Great White Sharks were made infamous by the film Jaws, but they rarely attack people and usually do by accident

Great white sharks have a deserved reputation as ruthless and efficient killers, who use ambush techniques to attack  fish, dolphins and seals from below.

They can grow 20 feet in length, weigh up to 5,000 lb and are found in any warm coastal waters – from the Mediterranean to New Zealand. Most, however, live off the coasts of California, Mexico, Australia  and South Africa.

The new estimates of their population are due to published later this year by scientists at Stanford University who have been studying the migration of sharks tagged with radio transmitters.

They found that great whites are incredible long distance swimmers, capable of travelling 12,000 miles in nine months.

To their astonishment, the researchers found that sharks seen swimming around Hawaii were the same individuals seen off the coast of California just six months later.

Dr Ronald O’Dor, senior scientist at the Washington based Census of Marine life who has seen the findings of the unpublished report, said the number of great whites in the wild was far smaller than scientists realised.

‘The estimated total population of great white sharks in the world’s oceans is actually less than the number of tigers,’ he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, California.

‘We hear an awful lot about how endangered tigers are but apparently great white sharks are pretty close to the same level.  Some people say they don’t care because they eat people, but I think we have to give them a little space to live in.

‘The Australians have now got a system where they put tags on great white sharks and they have receivers on the beaches so when a great white comes into the bay the receiver automatically  makes a cell phone call and tells the guy in charge to close the beach. So we can coexist with marine life.’

Great Sharks can mistake humans for seals in the water

Last year, Stanford researchers revealed that California sharks migrated thousands of miles across the Pacific, while others swam from South Africa to Australia and back in nine months.

They also discovered that the sharks congregated in an area dubbed the “White Shark Café” for 100 days each year halfway between the Baja Peninsula of California and the Hawaiian Islands .

‘People see a great white shark on the South California coast – and another hundreds of miles away,’ said Dr O’Dor.

‘We are now understanding that they are more mobile than we thought -  and actually it’s the same shark appearing in different places.

‘Until recently, people thought sharks were bad and there was no urge to save great whites. Now people are beginning to understand that they are rare and that they are a wonderful species.’

Although they were once thought to be "eating machines", recent research has also shown they are skilled and canny ambush hunters, taking their prey from below.

Despite their grisly public image from the movie Jaws, great whites rarely eat people, finding them too bony for their digestive systems.

Each year they are responsible for five to 10 attacks on people.Some shark experts say attacks on people are usually accidental – with the creatures mistaking people for seals.

They have grey bodies – and get their name from their white bellies.They are streamlined swimmers, capable of swimming up to 15mph.  Their mouths are lined with up to 300 serrated teeth lined in several rows.

They have organs that detect prey by the tiny electromagnetic fields generated by all animals. Great whites are victims of overfishing and hunting.