The Voracious and Invasive Lionfish Is Taking Over the Atlantic. Here's Why.

By Grant Currin - Live Science Contributor 2 days ago Animals

This is one hungry fish.

One of the most notorious invasive species around, the lionfish, is known for its voracious appetite and can literally eat its competitors out of an ecosystem. And that's what the striking fish is doing, feasting its way through waters that stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the Eastern Seaboard.

Now, scientists and startups are crafting methods for capturing and killing the hungry invaders. But while these new ideas show promise, tried-and-true spearfishing seems to be the most effective way to eradicate lionfish, scientists told Live Science.

"It's actually hard to describe how a lionfish eats because they do it in a split second," said Kristen Dahl, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida. Lionfish use a complex series of tactics that no other fish in the world is known to employ. In the blink of an eye, a lionfish goes from silently hovering above its prey to flaring its fins, firing a disorienting jet of water from its mouth, unhinging its jaw and swallowing its meal whole, scientists reported in a study published in 2012 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. The attacks happen so quickly that nearby fish don't seem to notice.

"It's actually nice when I'm looking at gut contents," Dahl said, "because if something has been freshly eaten, it's in immaculate condition."

Read on

Trump administration to allow seismic blasting harmful to marine creatures

Airgun testing in search for oil and gas could harm hundreds of mammals such as dolphins and whales off the Atlantic coast

Oliver Milman in New York

Fri 30 Nov 2018 17.35 GMTLast modified on Sat 1 Dec 2018 09.36 GMT

The Trump administration is to allow marine creatures such as whales and dolphins to be harmed by companies as they search for potential oil and gas reserves off the Atlantic coast.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) has granted five operators permission to “incidentally but not intentionally harass marine mammals” while conducting surveys for fossil fuels in the seabed.

The testing will involve the use of seismic air guns which fire continuous blasts to ascertain whether deposits of oil and gas are present. This procedure is a precursor to what could be the first drilling in federal waters off the US eastern seaboard in decades.

By the federal government’s own estimates, airgun testing could harm hundreds of thousands of marine mammals such as dolphins and whales. Of particular concern is the endangered North Atlantic right whale, with only around 440 individuals left, including less than 100 breeding females.

Scientists have warned that the extreme disruption caused by airguns can harm a wide range of aquatic life, including sea turtles, fish and zooplankton, a critical foundational plank of the ocean food web.

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Diverse and abundant megafauna documented at new Atlantic US Marine National Monument

Rare aerial survey of Northeast canyons and seamounts

Date:  May 16, 2018

Source:  New England Aquarium

Summary:

Airborne marine biologists were dazzled by the diversity and abundance of large, unusual and sometimes endangered marine wildlife on a recent trip to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Marine Monument, about 150 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

Airborne marine biologists were dazzled by the diversity and abundance of large, unusual and sometimes endangered marine wildlife on a recent trip to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Marine Monument, about 150 miles southeast of Cape Cod. Scientists with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium observed dozens of dolphins mixing with schools of pilot whales plus more than a dozen of the very rarely seen and mysterious Sowerby's beaked whales. The researchers, aboard a twin engine airplane, also spotted endangered, Moby Dick-like sperm whales as well as the second largest species of sharks in the world and the bizarre-looking giant ocean sunfish or mola mola.

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Warming Atlantic waters could see tropical species further north

Invasive tropical species such as the lionfish could be expanding into new areas due to warming water temperatures. This is bad news for Atlantic reefs, as lionfish (native to the Indo-Pacific) have been found to reduce coral cover on coral reefs.

Scientists from National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and University of North Carolina have analysed the bottom water temperature on the North Carolina continental shelf, and found that the fish in deeper, warmer water were mainly tropical, dominated by lionfish in depths of 122 to 150 feet. They found that tropical species that previously hadn’t been found in certain areas looked at in the study had since expanded into these areas. This hadn’t been possible previously, as water temperatures had been too cool.

Paul Whitfield, research ecologist at NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) and lead author of the study, explains, “Globally, fish communities are becoming more tropical as a result of warming temperatures, as fish move to follow their optimal temperature range.

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Whales under threat as US approves seismic oil prospecting in Atlantic

• Sonic cannons to be used in ocean from Delaware to Florida

• Study estimates 138,000 sea creatures could be affected

Associated Press in St Augustine Beach, Florida

theguardian.com, Saturday 19 July 2014 15.34 BST

The Obama administration is reopening the eastern seaboard to offshore oil and gas exploration, approving seismic surveys using sonic cannons that can pinpoint energy deposits deep beneath the ocean floor.

Friday's announcement was the first real step towards what could be a transformation in coastal states, creating thousands of jobs to support a new energy infrastructure. But it dismayed environmentalists and people who owe their livelihoods to fisheries and tourism.

The cannons create noise pollution in waters shared by whales, dolphins and turtles, sending sound waves many times louder than a jet engine reverberating through the deep every 10 seconds for weeks at a time. Arguing that endangered species could be harmed was the environmental groups' best hope for extending a decades-old ban against drilling off the US Atlantic coast.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management acknowledged that thousands of sea creatures will be harmed even as it approved opening the outer continental shelf from Delaware to Florida to exploration. Energy companies need the data as they prepare to apply for drilling leases in 2018, when current congressional limits expire.

"The bureau's decision reflects a carefully analysed and balanced approach that will allow us to increase our understanding of potential offshore resources while protecting the human, marine, and coastal environments," the acting BOEM director, Walter Cruickshank, said in a statement.

Sonic cannons are already used in the western Gulf of Mexico, off Alaska and in other offshore oil operations around the world. They are towed behind boats, sending down pulses of sound that reverberate beneath the sea floor and rebound to the surface. Hydrophones capture the results, which computers translate into high-resolution, three-dimensional images.

"It's like a sonogram of the Earth," said Andy Radford, a petroleum engineer at the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association in Washington DC. "You can't see the oil and gas, but you can see the structures in the Earth that might hold oil and gas."

The surveys can also map marine habitats and identify solid undersea flooring for wind energy turbines. But fossil fuel mostly funds this research, and corporations keep the data secret, disclosing it only to the government.

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Sperm Whales Form Clans to Fight Off Orcas

The threat of killer whales could be why societies of sperm whales in the Atlantic and Pacific differ so much, researchers say.

The sperm whale, the largest toothed whale, possesses the largest brain of any organism on Earth. These leviathans mostly live on giant squid and other creatures of the deep, pursuing them with the most powerful natural sonar known.

The sexes lead very different lives in sperm whales. Males leave their mothers to form ephemeral bachelor groups or to live alone, while females can develop complex societies with multiple levels of organization. At the most basic level of these societies are nearly permanent units of about 10 females that care for and suckle each other's progeny and defend their companions from attack.

Mysteriously, although the female sperm whale societies of the north Atlantic and the east Pacific are genetically similar, their social structures are substantially different. In the Pacific, units of females often temporarily gather with other units of the same clan — groups composed of thousands of females that share distinct patterns of vocal clicks known as codas. On the other hand, in the Atlantic, there is no evidence of clans, with units of females rarely grouping with others. Also, unit members in the Atlantic are more likely to be related on their mother's side than ones in the Pacific.

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/19632-sperm-whales-clans-orcas.html

Atlantic herring population trends linked to egg predation by haddock

In a study to be published online August 8, 2011 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) looked at the role of egg predation by haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) in the decline of the Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) population off the northeast United States.


Atlantic herring spawn eggs that settle and attach to the seafloor. After two to three weeks these eggs hatch and the larvae enter the water column. Haddock feed on a variety of benthic organisms, including sand dollars, brittle stars, and polychaetes or marine worms, but also prey on herring eggs during the herring spawning season.

NEFSC researchers have been monitoring the abundance of larval herring annually since 1971. Historically, changes in larval herring abundance were thought to track changes in adult herring abundance. This study suggests that the mortality rate of herring eggs can vary substantially year to year, with most of that variability driven by haddock preying on herring eggs.

"The premise of our study is that the success of the herring spawning strategy is dependent on overwhelming egg predators, and in particular haddock," said David Richardson, a fishery biologist at the NEFSC's Narragansett, Rhode Island, Laboratory and lead author of the study. "When adult herring are abundant and haddock are at low population levels, a majority of herring eggs hatch, and enough larvae are produced to sustain the herring population at high levels. However, when the herring population is low or the haddock population reaches very high levels, a majority of the herring eggs are consumed before they can hatch into larvae."

The population model they developed, incorporating egg predation by haddock and fishing effort on herring, explains the major population trends of Georges Bank herring over the past four decades. The model predicts that when the haddock population is high, seemingly conservative levels of fishing can still trigger a severe decline in the herring population because of predation on herring eggs by haddock.

"There is a threshold herring population size that is dependent on the population size of haddock. When the herring population is pushed below this threshold population size by fishing, it will experience negative population growth until it reaches low levels and at which point it stabilizes. When this happens, reducing fishing on herring may not be sufficient to allow for a recovery of the herring population," said Richardson. Long established in theoretical studies, there has previously been limited evidence that predation-driven alternate stable population levels exist in exploited marine fish populations.


Traditional single-species fishery models assume there is only one equilibrium population size, and that this equilibrium population size is dependent on the level of fishing mortality on that population. Predictions from this type of model don't agree with the observed trends in Atlantic herring. Richardson and NEFSC co-authors Jon Hare, Michael Fogarty and Jason Link developed a new population model. They compared the predictions of this model to a compilation of 17 different fisheries-independent time-series for Atlantic herring in the region, including standard bottom trawl and acoustic survey data and food web studies that detail the percentage of herring in the diets of predator fish. This composite time-series declined from 2005 to 2008, matching the predictions of the population model.

"Our model explains how a population can experience decade-scale periods of low productivity and then rapidly switch to a period of high productivity," Richardson said. "This study also illustrates how efforts to rebuild fisheries can be undermined by not incorporating ecological interactions into fisheries models and management plans."

"The upcoming stock assessment for herring in 2012 will provide a more rigorous and integrated evaluation of the predictions from our model, particularly with respect to the recent trends in Atlantic herring population levels. On the flip-side, our model suggests some future directions for the herring assessment, including the potential for incorporating predation into the assessment model," Richardson said.


Provided by NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-atlantic-herring-population-trends-linked.html

Giant Squid, 23 Feet Long, Found By Florida Fishermen

Three fishermen in Stuart, Florida were in for a huge surprise when searching for a catch off Jensen Beach this past weekend. "It was just something that we'd never seen in our lives before," Robert Benz told WPTV.

The three men found a 23-foot-long, 200-pound giant squid floating dead in the Atlantic. Giant squid are known for being an extremely elusive and mysterious creature, and WPTV claims the find was very rare for those waters.

The fishermen took the massive creature to the local commercial docks to see if anyone there had ever seen one. Not surprisingly, they hadn't

While the massive creature was quite the shock, giant squids are actually known to grow much larger. Ellie Van Os, director of education and exhibits for the Florida Oceanographic Society, told TCPalm that they can grow up to 45 feet long and weigh up to a ton.

See video here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/01/giant-squid-florida-fishermen-video_n_888905.html?ir=Weird News