Why we should be worried about 'Frankenfish' in south-east Asia

Unlike GM salmon, hybrid grouper gets little attention but they potentially pose a greater threat to marine ecosystems 

The fast-growing super salmon produced by American biotech company Aquabounty Technologies are poised to become the first genetically modified animals to hit food markets in the US, with approval from authorities widely expected later this year. But AquAdvantage® salmonhas made headlines because of the potential risks to wild stocks in the Atlantic should they escape and breed.

Hybrid grouper, on the other hand, gets almost no media attention, yet they potentially pose a greater threat to marine ecosystems because they’re farmed at sea, not inland like salmon. Hybridisation through in-vitro fertilisation is big in south east Asia, where aquaculture businesses are interbreeding valuable grouper species in a bid to create a fast-growing super fish.

Live grouper and other reef predators are highly-prized food in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan and other parts of south-east Asia. They crowd tanks in seafood restaurants and are ubiquitous at Chinese wedding banquets and other formal occasions, where tradition demands they are served. Grouper can sell for well over US$100 (£59) a kilo, with very large or rare specimens selling for much more.

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Scientists Focusing on the Wrong Sharks in the Wrong Places (Op-Ed)

By Paolo Momigliano and Rob Harcourt | May 16, 2014 01:51am ET

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Sharks are in danger in most parts of the world, with a quarter of all sharks and rays now threatened with extinction. This ongoing collapse of shark populations has already had far-reaching effects on marine ecosystems. To arrest this trend we desperately need scientific data that effectively inform conservation management. But are we focusing our research effort in the right areas?

We looked at 20 years' worth of scientific papers on shark conservation to see if shark science is meeting the needs of conservation. Our results, included in a forthcoming book, suggest that the species most in need, and the places where most damage is done, aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

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Changing food source bodes ill for whales, cod

By Doug Fraser

dfraser@capecodonline.com

November 25, 2013

WOODS HOLE — A marine ecosystem expert is warning that the effect of changes in water temperature and plankton blooms may have ripple effects up the food chain.

"We believe that the changes in the timing of warming events have affected plant and animal reproduction," wrote oceanographer Kevin Friedland of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole in an ecosystem advisory released last week.

Read more ...

How Much Protection Is Enough?

Feb. 28, 2013 — Protection of marine areas from fishing increases density and biomass of fish and invertebrates (such as lobster and scallops) finds a systematic review published in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Evidence. The success of a protected area was also dependent on its size and on how it was managed, however even partial protection provides significant ecological benefits.

Marine ecosystems worldwide are suffering from a loss of biodiversity due to destruction of food chains and habitats. Increasingly areas are being set aside to protect sensitive environments and species, or to provide a safe pocket from which fish and larvae can re-seed over-exploited seas.

By performing a meta-analysis, the Centre for Evidence-Based Conservation and School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University and the National Oceanography Centre Southampton found that protection of marine areas increased fish density and that even partial protection increased fish biomass by almost 50%, while fully protected 'no take' areas had double the biomass. This effect was most noticeable for target species, which were the reason the protection areas were set up. In particular lobsters and scallops showed a positive response to partial protection. None of the styles of protection increased the number of fish species.

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Freeing Loggerhead Turtles Comes at a Price

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2012) — A team of scientists from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands has studied loggerhead turtles' re-adaptation to the environment. The results show that after a lengthy recovery in rehabilitation centres these animals display changes in behaviour and may not adapt well to being free.

When loggerhead turtles are accidentally captured by humans, a recovery process follows, the complexity of which varies according to the turtle's injuries. Spanish researchers have analysed the process of reintegrating these animals into the environment and they have discovered that there are changes in the behaviour of the turtles that have a complicated recovery process.

The study, which has been published in Aquatic Conservation-Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, involved placing satellite transmitters on the shell of 12 healthy, wild loggerhead turtles' (Caretta caretta), and on 6 more that had spent a few months in a rehabilitation centre in the Balearic Islands.

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Jellyfish On the Rise in World's Coastal Ecosytems

ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2012) — Jellyfish are increasing in the majority of the world's coastal ecosystems, according to the first global study of jellyfish abundance by University of British Columbia researchers.

In a study published in this month's edition of the journal Hydrobiologia,UBC scientists examined data for numerous species of jellyfish for 45 of the world's 66 Large Marine Ecosystems. They found increasing jellyfish populations in 62 per cent of the regions analyzed, including East Asia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, Hawaii, and Antarctica.

"There has been anecdotal evidence that jellyfish were on the rise in recent decades, but there hasn't been a global study that gathered together all the existing data until now," says Lucas Brotz, a PhD student with the Sea Around UsProject at UBC and lead author of the study.


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