Pacific H2O

One hundred to one thousand times the normal atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas 25 times as powerful as CO2 at warming the earth, were found this summer over the Siberian shelf in the Arctic Ocean. The Siberian shelf contains enormous amounts of methane – 13 times the total carbon content of the earth’s atmosphere.

Much more here on this topic.

A vast shallow sea lies north of Siberia. One quarter of the world’s continental shelves are found in the Arctic. Seven great rivers pour carbon rich sediment onto the Arctic shelves. During the ice ages the very shallow and very vast east Siberian sea was above sea level causing deep permafrost to sequester the carbon at negative 17 Celsius. Enormous amounts of methane were trapped as methane hydrate ice.Rapid warming of the Arctic is now destabilizing the methane ice in parts of the east Siberian sea.

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Search continues for trapped quake victims – ABC News Australian Broadcasting Corporation

International rescue teams are continuing to arrive in the Indonesian town of Padang as the hopes of finding survivors from Wednesday's earthquake start to dim.The local government says 780 people have been killed in the disaster, but the death toll is expected to rise.

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Sailing special: Desert island bliss Ellie Fazan joins a new safari boat tour of The Philippines’ ‘last frontier’, an archipelago of hidden coves, coral reefs and empty white beaches

‘If you looked up “desert island” in an encyclopaedia,” said Eddie Brock, pointing to an island of sugary white sand fringed with palm trees as we sailed slowly past, “this is what you’d see.” I was sitting on the top deck of his boat, and before me lay nothing but turquoise sea, beautiful white sand islands, and more sea.

Eddie is a Filipino who moved to Britain aged 18, but rediscovered his birthplace on an extended trip home 10 years later. That’s when he fell in love with the remote islands of Palawan, the country’s westernmost province, often labelled its “last frontier”. Now he’s set up Tao Philippines, offering bespoke sailing trips to adventurous travellers, with his British best mate, Jack Foottit.

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Limit on dolphins’ human contact paid off – News – Starbulletin.com
Placing a limit on human contact with spinner dolphins in the Red Sea had a positive effect on maintaining the number of the marine mammals, an Italian scientist reports, carrying implications for marine mammal pods around Hawaii.

Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara said the population of spinner dolphins stabilized and slightly increased when the reef at Samadai in the Red Sea was partially closed to human activity in 2004.

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British man presumed dead after Thai sailing trip attack – Asia, World – The Independent
A British man sailing with his wife off the coast of southern Thailand was allegedly beaten to death and thrown overboard by men trying to steal their dinghy, Thai police said today.

Police arrested three migrant workers from neighbouring Myanmar whom they accused of attacking Malcolm Robertson and his wife, Linda, on Monday on their yacht anchored off the coast of Satun, a southern province bordering Malaysia.

“They tried to steal the dinghy and beat Mr Robertson with their fists and hammers until he died,” Police Colonel Virat Ohn-song, chief of the La-ngoo district police station, told Reuters.

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Tags: Add new tag, Thailand

Oil slick must be ‘cleaned by hand’ – ABC News Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Sunshine Coast Regional Council on the south-east Queensland coast has been ordered to stop the clean-up of 8.5 kilometres of beaches that have been coated in fuel oil that leaked from a cargo ship.

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Tags: environmental destruction, oil spill

The Highliner : Report: Crewman leaps to death in Bering | adn.com

U.S. Coast Guard, 17th District

Jan. 29, 2009

Coast Guard investigates report of man jumping from fishing vessel into Bering Sea

JUNEAU, Alaska – Coast Guard Marine Safety Detachment Unalaska is investigating a report of a 39-year old male jumping into the Bering Sea 11 miles northeast of Unalaska from the 58-foot fishing vessel Arctic Fox while en route to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, at 11:36 a.m. today.

Arctic Fox crewmembers reported the man, not wearing a survival suit, refused to swim toward a life ring thrown to him and swam away from a fellow crewman who donned a survival suit and went in to rescue him. The man then reportedly dove and was not seen again.

A Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak H-65 Dolphin helicopter, forward deployed in Cold Bay, launched at 1:22 p.m. and searched 16 square miles with visibility less than 1 mile in blowing snow and fog. The seas were 6 feet, winds at 16 mph and a water temperature of 37 degrees.

The search was suspended at 4:25 p.m. today.

The fisherman’s name has not been released pending next of kin notification.

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Tags: Aakaska, Alaska fisheries, fishermen, fishing, suicide

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News from the University of Hawaii 10-Campus System
Farming of fish in ocean cages is fundamentally harmful to wild fish, according to an essay in this week’s Conservation Biology.

Using basic physics, Professor Neil Frazer of the UHM Department of Geology and Geophysics explains how farm fish cause nearby wild fish to decline. The foundation of his paper is that higher density of fish promotes infection, and infection lowers the fitness of the fish.

For wild fish, lowered fitness means more difficulty finding food and escaping predators, causing higher death rates. But farmed fish are not only fed, they are also protected from predators by their cage, so infected farm fish live on, shedding pathogen into the water. The higher levels of pathogen in the water cause the death rates of wild fish to rise.

The above paradigm explains recently documented declines of wild fish in areas with sea-cage farm fish.

“Sea lice are an important example of disease transfer in ocean fish farming,” explains Frazer. “Sea lice are tiny crabs that attach to marine fishes, eating their skin and sometimes deeper tissue. Skin is important to fish because they need to keep their tissues less salty than the ocean. Also, when lice puncture the skin they create an entry point for other infections. So wild fish weakened by lice have more difficulty finding food and escaping predators.”

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We are trying a new feature on Pacific Tribune, free Business and Charitable and Government directory for all the Pacific area, including South America and Austrailia/Asia.

Please go here and fill out this form for your free Business Directory listing on Pacific Tribune. Any legitimate business in the geographic Pacific rim/basin area is welcome with the exception of pornographic and drug based businesses. Check out our first listing and take the time to fill out the form as it is a good way to enhance your traffic for free, nada, nothing. Well you get my point.
Aloha

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Tags: marketing the Pacfic