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Parrotfish on Menu Puts Caribbean Coral at Risk
2007-11-02 11:07:00
LONDON - The delicate balance of the Caribbean 's coral reefs is in jeopardy as more parrotfish end up on dinner plates, international scientists said on Wednesday.The colourful grazing fish, named for their parrot-like beaks which are used to scrape up algae, play a vital role in stopping seaweed from smothering coral. But their numbers are now being threatened by over-fishing.New research based on computer modelling shows parrotfish are a key defence in preventing the vulnerable Caribbean reefs from becoming a very different ecosystem -- one dominated not by living coral but by blooms of algae or seaweed."The future of some Caribbean reefs is in the balance and if we carry on the way we are then reefs will change forever," said Peter Mumby, a marine biologist from Exeter University, England, who led the research."Things have a habit of spiralling out of control and if a reef is allowed to get into an unhealthy state, covered in seaweed, it is extremely difficult to turn that aroun...
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Oldest Known Jellyfish Fossils Found
2007-11-02 11:04:00
The oldest known fossils of jellyfish have been found in rocks in Utah that are more than 500 million years old, a new study reports। The fossils are an unusual discovery because soft-bodied creatures, such as jellyfish, rarely survive in the fossil record, unlike animals with hard shells or bones."The fossil record is biased against soft-bodied life forms such as jellyfish, because they leave little behind when they die," said study member Bruce Lieberman of the University of Kansas.These jellyfish left their lasting imprint because they were deposited in fine sediment, rather than coarse sand. The film that the jellyfish left behind shows a clear picture, or "fossil snapshot," of the animals."You can see a distinct bell-shape, tentacles, muscle scars and possibly even the gonads," said study team member Paulyn Cartwright, also of KU.The rich detail of the fossils allowed the team to compare the cnidarian (the phylum to which jellyfish, coral and sea anemones belong) fossils to m...
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Algae bloom causes problems for beachgoers
2007-11-02 10:13:00
The effects of a red tide that gave many beachgoers grief during the weekend continue. A red tide algae bloom near Bay County is probably what is causing local beachgoers problems as the wind carries it, said Sherman Wilhelm with the state Department of Consumer and Agricultural Services Division of Aquaculture. While it is likely getting airborne, the red tide found in the gulf near Bay County does not seem to be spreading far in the water, he said. The most recent water sampling results from last Friday show no evidence of red tide in the water in Walton or Okaloosa counties. "(The Bay County red tide) seems to be isolated," he said. Red tide is a toxic algae bloom that can kill fish and cause respiratory irritation, such as burning in the nose and throat, in humans. The scientific name for the organism is Karenia brevis. The red tide is not thought to cause any lasting health problems in most people, but it can be an annoyance for many.
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Tuna fishing quota violators targeted in report
2007-11-01 05:34:00
Italy, France, Japan and Spain are guilty of the biggest violations of international quotas for bluefin tuna fishing, a report claimed on Wednesday. Countries are assigned fishing quotas by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna s (ICCAT) to help avert the eventual extinction of the fish, which is highly prized for Japanese sushi and sashimi.Italy fished 7,500 tonnes more than allowed in 2006, followed by France with 3,770 more and Japan with 3,550 tonnes, said the report, titled "The Plunder of the BlueFin Tuna in the Mediterranean Sea."In 2007, Italy, Spain and France were the biggest offenders.The 708-page study was compiled by Roberto Mielgo Bregazzi, a consultant who has previously carried out research for the WWF. He cited official data and information from industry insiders."Given the unsustainable rates of capture, both legal and illegal, the species will disappear," warned the report.In September, the European Commission banned fishing of bluefin ...
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Unprecedented Global Measurement Network Achieves Full Coverage Of Oceans
2007-10-31 10:39:00
An array of instruments, many built at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, that allows scientists to observe the basic physical state of all world oceans simultaneously is approaching its coverage goal after eight years of deployments।The Argo network of sensor-bearing profiling floats measures ocean water temperature, salinity and velocity to a degree never before possible. The Argo Steering Committee, the international panel of scientists that manage the network, has designated Nov. 1 as the date on which it will reach its full deployment of 3,000 units. The deployment of these final floats will mean that data from every ocean region in the world will be available with average coverage of one sensor per 3 degrees latitude and longitude.The launch will culminate one phase of a project that has witnessed the participation of 41 countries in roles ranging from the subsidizing of instrument manufacture to the volunteering of ships to deploy floats in remote ocean re...
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Colorful View For First Land Animals
2007-10-29 10:07:00
When prehistoric fish made their first forays onto land, what did they see? According to a study published in the online open access journal, BMC Evolutionary Biology, it's likely that creatures venturing out of the depths viewed their new environment in full colour। A team led by Helena Bailes at the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, analysed retinas from Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri), thought to be the closest living relative to the first terrestrial vertebrates. The researchers then compared these to other fish and amphibian retinas. The DNA of five visual pigment (opsin) genes in the retinas of lungfish reveals that these have more in common with four-legged vertebrates (tetrapods) than with fish retinas.Although lungfish mainly take in oxygen through their gills like most fish, they can also breathe air if water quality is poor. Lungfish were previously thought to have poor eyesight due to their small eyes, low spatia...
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New Light Trap Captures Larval Stage Of New Species; DNA Barcode Technology
2007-10-26 13:35:00
When David Jones, a fisheries oceanographer at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) located at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School, set out to design a better light trap to collect young reef fishes, he never imagined his invention would contribute to the discovery of a new species। But, after finding a goby that didn't quite fit any known description, his catch turned out to be the answer to another scientist's twenty-five-year-old research conundrum. The larval stage captured in Jones's new trap was matched to the adult form of a previously unknown species of reef fish by new DNA barcoding technology -- which confirmed both were members of a new species.Jones and his team deployed his new light traps in the deep tropical waters surrounding Banco Chinchorro, a remote coral reef atoll off Mexico's Costa Maya which was recently designated as a Marine Biosphere Reserve. The traps capture fish larvae in a manner similar to a fisherman's m...
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New Species Of Snapper Discovered In Brazil
2007-10-26 13:34:00
A popular game fish mistaken by scientists for a dog snapper is actually a new species discovered among the reefs of the Abrolhos region of the South Atlantic Ocean। The international science journal Zootaxa recently published the discovery of Lutjanus alexandrei, a new snapper species that belongs to the Lutjanidae family, by researchers Rodrigo Moura of Conservation International (CI) and Kenyon Lindeman of Environmental Defense. The study published in Zootaxa provides a revised key for identifying all Lutjanus species in the western Atlantic, along with evidence that the new species completes its life cycle in different but interdependent marine habitats, such as coral reefs and mangroves.“This discovery that a large, popular fish is a species new to science shows how little we know about the oceans that surround us,” Moura said. “It looks like other snapper species found in the Caribbean and eastern United States, as well as the dog snapper caught by fishermen here in Br...
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Oceanic Invasions Across Darwin's Impassable Barrier
2007-10-26 13:32:00
Reef fish share genetic connections across what Darwin termed an 'impassable barrier', 5000km of deep ocean separating the eastern and central Pacific, according to a report by Smithsonian scientists in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B।By sequencing mitochondrial DNA from 20 morphospecies of fairly sedentary shore fish on both sides of the divide, the study confirms close relationships between populations of the same fish species across the barrier and indicates that genes move in both directions across the barrier.Luck affects who makes it across and when"We didn't find genetic evidence for any oceanographic or geological events that separated populations such as a major change in currents or the sinking of an underwater platform that could have served as a stepping stone," Lessios points out। "If that were the case, several species would have shown coincident times of separation." Instead, the researchers consider that fish larvae cross the barrier often enough to mai...
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New Research Shows Larval Fish Use Smell To Return To Coral Reefs
2007-10-26 13:29:00
Tiny larval fish living among Australia's Great Barrier Reef spend the early days of their lives swept up in ocean currents that disperse them far from their places of birth। Given such a life history, one might assume that fish populations would be genetically homogeneous within the dispersal area. Yet the diversity of reef fish species is high and individual reefs contain different fish populations. For such rich biodiversity to have evolved, some form of population isolation is required. New research from MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory) Associate Scientist Gabriele Gerlach, MBL Adjunct Senior Scientist Jelle Atema, and their colleagues shows that some fish larvae can discriminate odors in ocean currents and use scent to return to the reefs where they were born. The olfactory imprinting of natal reefs sheds light on how such a wide diversity of species arose. The homing behavior of reef fishes, the researchers contend, could support population isolation and genetic divergenc...
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Coral Reef Fish Make Their Way Home
2007-10-26 13:26:00
Coral reef fish hatchlings dispersed by ocean currents are able to make their way back to their home reefs again to spawn, says a groundbreaking study recently published in the journal Science। The study, whose findings are considered a major advance for fish conservation biology, was conducted by an international team of scientists from Australia, France, and the U.S. using a novel tagging method to track two populations of fish, including the endearing orange, black, and white reef-dwelling clownfish made famous in the movie “Finding Nemo.”The study took place on coral reefs in a marine protected area in Papua New Guinea. Scientists tested a new method to trace fish from birth to spawning and detect the percentage of fish hatched on one reef that return there to spawn. The techniques used in this study can reveal the extent to which fish populations on separate reefs are isolated breeding populations, or connected by fish movements (known as ‘connectivity’). Such informa...
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Maritime Security Enhanced With Ship And Satellite Data Integrated
2007-10-26 13:22:00
Data from ERS-2, ESA’s veteran spacecraft, is experiencing an increasing demand as the 12-year-old mission’s products and services are playing a vital role in the initial activities for Global Monitoring for Environment and Security , such as the MARitime Security Service project which addresses the European concern of illegal marine trafficking।The MARitime Security Service (MARISS) is a GMES Service Element (GSE) initiative that integrates near real time satellite Earth Observation (EO) data with conventional vessel tracking data to deliver an understanding of the maritime situation to coast guards, navies and border police forces in Europe.Within the MARISS partnership, service providers require Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery such as that provided by ERS-2 within 15 to 20 minutes in order to rapidly detect vessels and extract their positions. This data is integrated with coastal surveillance systems such as coastal radar, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and...
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Fossil Record Supports Evidence Of Impending Mass Extinction
2007-10-25 13:09:00
Global temperatures predicted for the coming centuries may trigger a new ‘mass extinction event’, where over 50 per cent of animal and plant species would be wiped out, warn scientists at the Universities of York and Leeds। The research team has, for the first time, discovered a close association between Earth climate and extinctions in a study that has examined the relationship over the past 520 million years — almost the entire fossil record available.Matching data sets of marine and terrestrial diversity against temperature estimates, evidence shows that global biodiversity is relatively low during warm ‘greenhouse’ phases and extinctions relatively high, while the reverse is true in cooler ‘icehouse’ phases.Moreover, future predicted temperatures are within the range of the warmest greenhouse phases that are associated with mass extinction events identified in the fossil record.The research, published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B., wa...
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New Way To Measure Ancient Ocean Temperatures Refined
2007-10-25 13:07:00
Spanish researcher Carme Huguet further refined the recently developed TEX86 paleothermometer during her doctoral research at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ)। The thermometer measures seawater temperature dependent changes in the cell wall composition of archeabacteria. Real thermometers have been available since the 17th century. For all periods before this, researchers depend on signs from nature. For such determinations, geochemists resort to molecules from microorganisms whose structure is well preserved in seabeds.The TEX86 index has recently been developed at Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). It is based on temperature-dependent changes in the lipid composition of the cell walls of certain types of archeabacteria. Their cell membranes are composed from special lipids of which the number of carbon rings in the molecule changes with the temperature of the surrounding seawater. These organisms therefore adjust the degree of fluidity of...
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New Way To Measure Ancient Ocean Temperatures Refined
2007-10-25 13:07:00
Spanish researcher Carme Huguet further refined the recently developed TEX86 paleothermometer during her doctoral research at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ)। The thermometer measures seawater temperature dependent changes in the cell wall composition of archeabacteria.Real thermometers have been available since the 17th century. For all periods before this, researchers depend on signs from nature. For such determinations, geochemists resort to molecules from microorganisms whose structure is well preserved in seabeds.The TEX86 index has recently been developed at Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). It is based on temperature-dependent changes in the lipid composition of the cell walls of certain types of archeabacteria. Their cell membranes are composed from special lipids of which the number of carbon rings in the molecule changes with the temperature of the surrounding seawater. These organisms therefore adjust the degree of fluidity of ...
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Oceans are soaking up less carbondioxide
2007-10-24 10:34:00
The world's oceans appear to be soaking up less carbon dioxide, new environmental research has shown, a development that could speed up global warming. A 10-year study by researchers from the University of East Anglia has shown that the uptake of CO2 by the North Atlantic ocean halved between the mid-1990s and 2002-2005. "Such large changes are a tremendous surprise," said Dr Ute Schuster, who will publish the findings with professor Andrew Watson in the Journal of Geophysical Research next month. "We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean's great mass." There is also evidence of a slowdown in the uptake of CO2 by the Southern ocean, although it is not as great or as sudden as in the North Atlantic. The scientists based their findings on data collected by merchant ships fitted out with equipment to automatically measure the levels of carbon dioxide in the water. One ship that sailed between Britain and the West Indies made more than 90,000 measureme...
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Sea Cucumbers Fast Track Organ Regrowth By Healing Their Wounds
2007-10-23 13:27:00
Sea cucumbers are the champions of organ regrowth because they direct their wound healing abilities towards restoring their organs, according to research published in the online open access journal, BMC Developmental Biology। The discovery that Holothuria glaberrima uses similar cellular mechanisms during wound healing and organ regeneration gives us the opportunity to discover how to repair our own wounds and, perhaps eventually, how to regenerate body parts.The research was carried out by the investigators José San Miguel-Ruiz and José García-Arrarás, at the University of Puerto Rico. "Sea cucumbers should be viewed as the tissue regeneration equivalent of the squid for our knowledge of nerves and Drosophila for genes and the genome. They can help us learn to fix ourselves," commented Professor Garcia-Arraras.He continued, "Many people, including scientists, regard sea cucumbers and other echinoderms like star fish and brittle stars as bizarre, exceptional outcasts because o...
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Large Iceberg Breaks Off Pine Island, Antarctica
2007-10-23 13:20:00
A large iceberg has just broken off from Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica । Several different processes can cause an iceberg to form, or ‘calve’, such as action from winds and waves, the ice shelf grows too large to support part of itself or a collision with an older iceberg. Since Pine Island Glacier was already floating before it calved, it will not cause any rise in the world sea level. Iceberg calving like this occurs in Antarctica each year and is part of the natural lifecycle of the ice sheet. A 34-year long study of the glacier has shown that a large iceberg breaks off roughly every 5-10 years. The last event was in 2001.Pine Island – the largest glacier in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) – is of great interest to scientists because it transports ice from the deep interior of the WAIS to the ocean and its flow rate has accelerated over the past 15 years.The Pine Island Glacier is up to 2500 m thick with a bedrock over 1500 m below sea level and comprises 10 perc...
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Coral Reefs On Brink Of Disaster, Scientists Urge Action Now
2007-10-23 13:17:00
The world has a narrow window of opportunity to save coral reefs from the destruction caused by extreme climate change, according to a unanimous statement issued today by leading Australian scientists। The call for action is the outcome of a National Forum on Coral Reef Futures, held at the Australian Academy of Sciences, in Canberra.Local action can help to re-build the resilience of reefs, and promote their recovery. It is critically important to prevent the replacement of corals by algal blooms, by reducing runoff from land and by protecting stocks of herbivorous fishes,” says Prof Hughes.“When corals die from pollution, disease or climate change, it affects all the other species on reefs that depend on corals. Without corals, the habitat is destroyed. Many reef fisheries are collapsing because of coral bleaching,” says Dr Morgan Pratchett, an Australian Research Fellow at James Cook University.“Reefs cannot be climate-proofed except via reduced emissions of greenhouse ...
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Key Found To Moonlight Romance On The Reef
2007-10-23 13:14:00
An international team of Australian and Israeli researchers has discovered what could be the aphrodisiac for the biggest moonlight sex event on Earth।An ancient light-sensitive gene has been isolated by researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) that appears to act as a trigger for the annual mass spawning of corals across a third of a million square kilometres of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, shortly after a full moon.The genes, known as a cryptochromes, occur in corals, insects, fish and mammals - including humans - and are primitive light-sensing pigment mechanisms which predate the evolution of eyes.In a new paper published in Science, the team, headed by Marie Curie Scholar Dr Oren Levy of CoECRS and the University of Queensland, reports its discovery that the Cry2 gene, stimulated by the faint blue light of the full moon, appears to play a central role in triggering the mass coral spawning event, one of nature’s wonders.Professor Ove ...
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Ocean Life Fading: What Can Be Done?
2007-10-23 13:10:00
Creating “national parks of the sea” may be the only effective way to reverse trends that have left 76 percent of world fish stocks fully- or over-exploited and marine biodiversity at severe risk, according to the new report, Ocean s in Peril: Protecting Marine Biodiversity, released by the Worldwatch Institute।Marine reserves are essential to protect the biodiversity that maintains ecosystem integrity, say the report’s authors, Michelle Allsopp, Richard Page, Paul Johnston, and David Santillo. The four environmental experts call for a radical change in fisheries management, from a single-species approach to one that is ecosystem based and also includes the use of precautionary measures to tackle pollution and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are changing the temperature and chemistry of the oceans.“The oceans cannot save themselves,” says Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute. “Collective commitments to thriving ecosystems are needed to save ...
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Dolphin Bay To Be Rescue Centre
2007-10-23 09:22:00
Kerzner International, international developer and operator of destination resorts and luxury hotel properties and their partner, Istithmar PJSC, a Dubai World company, announced the completion of Dolphin Bay, one of the largest man-made dolphin habitats in the world at Atlantis, The Palm. Dolphin Bay will provide care of the dolphins by an international team of veterinarians, marine mammal specialists and laboratory technicians, said the company is a press release. The new facility will be home to 28 bottlenose dolphins and is designed to provide extraordinary care for the dolphins. It has an 11-acre lagoon featuring three interaction coves complete with sandy beaches and a tropical setting with medical and quarantine pools. There will also be a marine mammal hospital and a variety of dolphin interaction programs. According to the developers, the habitat provides the dolphins with seven interconnected resident pools, shelter from inclement weather and almost seven million gallons o...
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Greenland Ice Study: Could Higher Sea Level Come Sooner Than Expected?
2007-10-22 12:57:00
By studying 120,000-year-old layers in the ice of Greenland, researchers have determined that the ice cover seems to be able to survive a warmer climate better than was previously believed। But at the same time they have found signs that the changes that are nevertheless happening will occur at an unexpectedly rapid rate. The level of the global seas may therefore rise faster than was previously thought. One example of rapid change was found by scientists who were studying a so-called ice stream, ice that moves like a river through the rest of the inland ice and often forms icebergs at the mouth, so-called calving.“In just two-three years the speed of a large ice stream nearly doubled. This means that we have underestimated the rapid changes that may ensue from the amounts of ice leaving the ice each year,” says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, a professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is taking part in the climate conference “Global Environment...
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Coastal Habitats Are The Biosphere's Most Imperiled Ecosystems
2007-10-22 12:54:00
The BBVA Foundation’s Third Debate on Conservation Biology allowed leading international experts to present findings of their latest research into the scale, causes and consequences of global loss of coastal habitats। The disappearance of these ecosystems, which include coral reefs, mangrove forests, wetlands and seagrass meadows, has serious consequences like loss of biodiversity, depletion of exploitable living resources, impaired capacity of the oceans to sequester CO2 and loss of the leisure value of the coastal zone. Not only that, the coastline becomes more vulnerable to the increased erosion associated with rising sea levels.Carlos Duarte, researcher at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research and coordinator of the debate, informed the public that “coastal habitats are disappearing at a rate of between 1.2% and 9% a year and are now the biosphere’s most imperiled systems, with rates of loss 4 to 10 ten times faster than those of the tropical rainforest.”The caus...
More About: Ecosystems , Abit , Stem , Habitats , Habitat

New Wastewater Treatment System Removes Heavy Metals
2007-10-22 12:53:00
The presence in the environment of large quantities of toxic metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, zinc or others, poses serious health risks to humans, and this threat puts the scientific community under pressure to develop new methods to detect and eliminate toxic contaminants from wastewaters in efficient and economically viable ways। Resulting from the combination of water treatment investigations with the latest in material science, a new type of nanomaterial called nanostructured silica has been found to fulfil the requisites necessary for these applications.With its large surface area and regular pores, it is an ideal material that after a functionalization process that links to its surface diverse organic ligands has the capability of being able to extract heavy metals from wastewaters. This capacity also allows its use as a high sensitivity detection tool for these toxic metals, and considering that the contamination levels permitted in drinking water are increasingly r...
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Turtle Deaths
2007-10-22 08:09:00
Small-scale Fishing In Mexico Rivals Industrial Fisheries In Accidental Turtle Deaths Industrial fishing operations take plenty of blame for both depleting fish stocks and inadvertently catching innocent bystanders such as dolphins, sharks, seabirds, and sea turtles--a phenomenon known as "bycatch."But new research shows that a small-scale Mexican fishery--operated by hand from small open boats--can kill as many critically endangered loggerhead sea turtles as all of the industrial fishing fleets in the North Pacific Ocean put together. On a per-hook or per-net basis, the Mexican fishery is 10 to 100 times as deadly, the study found. The research has already resulted in a voluntary turnaround in the fleet's fishing practices and the declaration of an offshore turtle refuge."The impacts of small-scale fisheries have been overlooked because they are inherently difficult to study," said lead author Hoyt Peckham, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of ...

Acid Oceans From Carbon Dioxide Will Endanger One Third Of Marine Life
2007-10-22 08:05:00
Acid Oceans From Carbon Dioxide Will Endanger One Third Of Marine Life , Scientists PredictThe world's oceans are becoming more acid, with potentially devastating consequences for corals and the marine organisms that build reefs and provide much of the Earth's breathable oxygen.The acidity is caused by the gradual buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, dissolving into the oceans. Scientists fear it could be lethal for animals with chalky skeletons which make up more than a third of the planet's marine life."Recent research into corals using boron isotopes indicates the ocean has become about one third of a pH unit more acid over the past fifty years. This is still early days for the research, and the trend is not uniform, but it certainly looks as if marine acidity is building up," says Professor Malcolm McCulloch of CoECRS and the Australian National University."It appears this acidification is now taking place over decades, rather than centuries as originally predict...
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Coastal Habitats Are The Biosphere's Most Imperiled Ecosystems
2007-10-22 08:01:00
The BBVA Foundation's Third Debate on Conservation Biology allowed leading international experts to present findings of their latest research into the scale, causes and consequences of global loss of coastal habitats.The disappearance of these ecosystems, which include coral reefs, mangrove forests, wetlands and seagrass meadows, has serious consequences like loss of biodiversity, depletion of exploitable living resources, impaired capacity of the oceans to sequester CO2 and loss of the leisure value of the coastal zone. Not only that, the coastline becomes more vulnerable to the increased erosion associated with rising sea levels.Duarte, researcher at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research and coordinator of the debate, informed the public that "coastal habitats are disappearing at a rate of between 1.2% and 9% a year and are now the biosphere's most imperiled systems, with rates of loss 4 to 10 ten times faster than those of the tropical rainforest."The causes of these loss...
More About: Ecosystems , Abit , Stem , Habitats , Habitat

Killer Whale at SeaWorld in Texas dies
2007-10-22 08:00:00
A Killer Whale at the SeaWorld in San Antonio has died unexpectedly. SeaWorld spokesman Fran Stephenson says Taku (tah-KU'), a 14-year-old male Killer Whale, died Wednesday night. Taku had been showing signs of infection for the three days before his death, but he was responding to treatment, Stephenson said.A cause of death has not been determined. Results of an examination will be available in six weeks.Stephenson said there is a wide disparity on estimates for the life expectancy of Killer Whales.
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Trout return to once-contaminated creek
2007-10-22 07:58:00
Silver Bow Cree k, contaminated for more than a century by tailings and other mine waste, appears to be responding to environmental cleanup. Recently, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks' employees found populations of live trout in the creek, once considered a dead stream.The inventory revealed a larger presence of trout — including westslope cutthroat — than has been in Silver Bow Creek for about 120 years, Joel Chavez, who is managing the creek restoration project for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality."We have a long way to go before we have a viable trout population, but the presence of these fish is evidence that the cleanup effort is showing positive results," he said in a news release.FWP, on behalf of the DEQ and the Department of Justice Natural Resource Damage Program, used electrofishing to survey fish populations along portions of the creek during the inventory. Officials found 54 brook trout and four westslope cutthroat trout. All fish caugh...
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