Fishing ban proposed near Rockall after rare scientific finds

Fishing is expected to be banned near the Atlantic islet of Rockall after a rare methane gas vent in the seabed and two new shellfish species were discovered by British scientists.

The methane, which leaks through a so-called "cold seep" vent in the ocean floor, was found last year by scientists working with the government agency Marine Scotland. It is the first of its kind to be found near UK waters and only the third in the north-east Atlantic.

It was detected after Marine Scotland's Scotia survey ship trawled up two new species of deep-water clam that have a "chemosynthetic" relationship with the methane: the clams' food source is a bacteria that harvests the gas. That implies there may be a complex ecosystem around the mouth of the vent.

Francis Neat, the Marine Scotland scientist who oversaw the survey, said the site roughly four miles west of Rockall island was comparable to the complex habitats that build up around often exceptionally hot mineral-rich hydrothermal vents found on mid-ocean ridges.

The clams were "packed full" of polychaete worms that are also expected to be new to science, he said.

The International Convention on the Exploration of the Seas, an intergovernmental agency which polices fish stocks in the North Atlantic, has now recommended a fishing ban for the site (pdf), which is international waters, to protect it from highly damaging bottom trawling.

It has also requested additional fishing bans – adding to several already in place - at three other sites around Rockall to protect rare cold-water coral, sea sponge colonies, and sea fans or gorgonians which are being harmed by bottom-trawling.

The agency's surveys around Rockall also caught a frilled shark, an ancient "living fossil" species of shark that dates back at least 90m years and is rarely seen in northern waters. They found unusually large adult cod – known as "buffaloes" by fishermen, and large ling, saithe and haddock, suggesting Rockall's waters were very rich in food.

Two large areas around Rockall, the remote islet 230 miles west of the Outer Hebrides that adventurer Nick Hancock unsuccessfully tried to occupy this month, are already closed to fishing.

Continued: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/14/fishing-banned-rockall-new-species-found

3,000-year-old ‘Frankenstein’ mummies discovered in Scotland

Researchers say that a pair of 3,000-year-old mummified corpses that were recently discovered in Scotland are actually composed of body parts originating from six different people.

The mummified corpses were discovered in Cladh Hallan, an archaeological site on the island of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. It is the only location in Great Britain where prehistoric mummies have been discovered.

National Geographic reports that isotopic dating and DNA experiments revealed the unusual pairing of body parts. The tests also revealed that the body parts were assembled and buried together more than 600 years after death, meaning that the assemblage was almost certainly deliberate.

However, it remains unclear exactly why the Frankenstein-like pieces were put together. The merging of mummies and Frankenstein sounds like something out of an unproduced 1930s Universal horror film. But lead researcher and University of Manchester professor Terry Brown says the answer could be simple and somewhat morbid: The original body parts may have simply been plugged in as a convenience to replace missing pieces.

"Maybe the head dropped off and they got another head to stick on," he said.

Meanwhile, fellow researcher and University of Sheffield professor Mike Parker Pearson tellsLiveScience the parts could have been more specifically put together to show the connected lineage between families other time.

"Rights to land would have depended on ancestral claims, so perhaps having the ancestors around 'in the flesh' was their prehistoric equivalent of a legal document," Parker Pearson said.

"Merging different body parts of ancestors into a single person could represent the merging of different families and their lines of descent," Parker Pearson said. "Perhaps this was a prelude to building the row of houses in which numerous different families are likely to have lived."

Brown tells National Geographic he believes researchers will discover more composite-like bodies on the island. In fact, he said such mummified corpses may have already been discovered but can only be verified by comparing the DNA of various body parts.

"I think you'd have to go back to a time when the rituals were more bizarre," Brown said of finding similar corpses. "You'd have to go back to the mists of unrecorded time."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/3-000-old-frankenstein-mummies-discovered-scotland-182603496.html%3b_ylt=Ahk8jLnfRhp9reNarQNK3yrtiBIF%3b_ylu=X3oDMTNxNG9yNGsyBG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBPZGRVU1NGBHBrZwM2ODliNTc1My01MzFlLTNmNDYtYTAwYi0yYzc5Mzc5NWJhMDcEcG9zAzgEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9yeQR2ZXIDMDA1ZWZlYjEtY2FjMS0xMWUxLTk3ZWUtMmU0NTE4OWFmZmNi%3b_ylg=X3oDMTFtOW42ZDltBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lfG9kZARwdANzZWN0aW9ucw--%3b_ylv=3