Pelicans are my favorite birds and among my favorite animals.  Seeing them covered in oil really sucks.

I think these images are every bit as disturbing as those Chris Jorden took at Midway island last year of dead albatross chicks choked by plastic they were fed by their mothers (here).

Brown Pelicans were once greatly reduced in numbers and threatened by DDT spraying, which reduced the thickness of their egg shells.  The national DDT ban facilitated a largely successful recovery.

Before I went to grad school, I worked for the Conservancy in Naples Florida and mainly did pelican rehab; we rescued pelicans and other birds that were injured by fishing lines, hit by golf balls, etc.  We used to number their bills with nail polish to tell them apart.  I was always struck by how much their personality varied among individuals.  Some were cranky and aggressive, some were calm and mild.

Lisen to the NPR story about the effects of the spill on pelicans here.

This really is must see TV:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAa0gd7ClM&w=640&h=385]

Hat tip to Dr Elvira Poloczanska of CSIRO of Marine Climate Change Report Card for Australia fame (among other things).

From the BBC (here)

By Richard Black, ,Environment correspondent, BBC News, Bonn

Rich countries accused of carbon ‘cheating’

Russia, Australia, Canada and some EU countries are among the accused.

The rules relate to land-use change, which can either release or absorb carbon, depending mainly on whether forests are planted or chopped down.

Rich countries, apart from the US, could account for about 5% of their annual emissions through this loophole.

The US is not involved in these negotiations because the proposals fall under the Kyoto Protocol, of which it – alone among developed countries – is not a part.

By way of comparison, 5% is roughly equal to the total emissions reduction that developed countries pledged to make between 1990 and 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol.

The benefit for some countries, notably Russia, would be much greater.

“This would allow developed countries to circumvent their obligations on reducing emissions,” said Melanie Coath, climate change policy office with the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), who has conducted analytical work on the draft text currently being negotiated.

“These are double standards that make us question the legitimacy of the whole process,” added Kevin Conrad, lead negotiator for Papua New Guinea and chairman of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations.

“If rich states tell us we have to adopt robust standards (for REDD) and then use forestry as their biggest get-out clause – it’s double standards, it’s climate fraud.”

Diplomats from developing countries have also criticised the proposals, which are under discussion during a fortnight of talks in Bonn under the UN climate convention (UNFCCC).

Some have suggested that rich countries would operate their forestry sectors under looser accounting rules than developing nations would face under the REDD mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation).

‘Fudge’ packet

Several different “fudges” are up for discussion in the draft text that would create the 5% (or 500 megatonnes of CO2) loophole.

One would allow countries to measure emission reductions or increases against a “forward-looking baseline”.

In other words, a country would decide how its land-use carbon emission or absorption would be likely to change in future, and then to measure actual performance against that baseline.

By contrast, developed nations have to measure emissions from every other sector of their economies simply for what they are – against a zero baseline.

– A second proposal, from Russia, would mean that countries would not have to count emissions from land-use change until land-use changes across the entire country resulted in net emissions.

Currently, Russia’s land-use sector is a big net absorber.

In addition, each governments could decide which aspects of land use change to include in its emission reports – which it would then compile and submit to the UN.

Delegates from some EU countries have suggested that others with large areas of forest – such as Austria, Finland and Sweden – are pushing for lax regulation, along with Russia and Australia.

But the European Commission’s chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, said the EU favoured tighter rules.

“Certainly from the EU side, what we want to see is a system where we have the highest environmental integrity that is possible,” he told BBC News.

“And also we don’t want to have rules tighter for developing countries than for developed countries.”

The UN talks here are due to conclude on Friday, and to set out some goalposts as governments look to the next UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of the year.

Small island states and many of the world’s poorest nations are demanding that Cancun must see agreement of a legally binding global treaty, but many others are pushing for a “bottom-up” approach that would seek small but concrete agreements in key areas such as REDD.

Some rich countries are seeking new rules under the UN climate convention, which campaigners say would allow them to gain credit for “business as usual”.

First go here for the PBS/NPR live stream. (it just keeps flowing out)

And then see this movie:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGX7krQYI_4&w=480&h=385]

As if the timing couldn’t be any worse, the Belize government has issued permits for oil exploration on the Belizean portion of the Meso-American reef in Central America.

See more on this here, here and here this press release just issued by WWF:

Potential Belize Offshore Oil Exploration threatens Coral Reef Health

BELIZE.- World Wildlife Fund (WWF) expressed great concern with news indicating that the Government of Belize has granted concessions to explore for oil and natural gas both offshore and on-shore.

Apparently, 18 concessions have been granted by the Belize Geology and Petroleum Department of which 8 are within the territorial waters of Belize. If true, this may generate potential risks for Belize’s barrier reef and the wider Mesoamerican Reef. WWF is particularly concerned that, apparently, concessions have been granted to carry out exploration within Belize’s marine protected areas including World Heritage Sites, and most of the terrestrial natural protected areas.

The Mesoamerican Reef covers nearly 115 million acres, from the northern end of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and the Caribbean coasts of Belize and Guatemala, to the Bay Islands in northern Honduras.

Belize is a well known tourist destination, with large numbers of tourists flocking to its mainland and insular coast each year to dive or snorkel on its coral reefs, among other activities. In 2009 only, Belize received a total of 937,468 tourists (overnight and cruise tourism combined). An independent World Resources Institute (WRI) study found that Belize’s shoreline mangrove and coral reef system contributes between US$150-196 million a year only in tourism and recreation activities and represent between 12 and 15% of total country GDP. Its contribution to coastal protection was estimated to be around US$ 231-347 million. Belize depends on tourism as the primary economic motor. Compromising the integrity of ecosystems, quality of environmental services and landscape values can seriously damage the sector and the nation’s economy.

In WWF’s view, promoting oil and natural gas exploration within the Belize portion of the Mesoamerican Reef significantly increases the risks this fragile system already faces due to anthropogenic factors such as unsustainable coastal development, unsustainable fisheries and pollution.

WWF invites the Government of Belize to engage all actors in reviewing the need of such concessions, the risks associated to Belize’s diverse and rich marine resources and consider other economic alternatives for sustainable development and economic growth. WWF has been productively working with the Government of Belize and many environmental partners for many years, is most willing to continue working with the relevant authorities and offers its support in building an open, participatory, and transparent and scientifically based strategy for the sustainable development of the Mesoamerican Reef and the benefit of all its people and ecosystems.

As our region lives through one of the worst oil-related catastrophes the world has ever witnessed, and around 800,000 gallons of oil drain daily into the Gulf of Mexico with no end in sight, the urgency to find alternatives other than oil and gas production in the Mesoamerican Reef region are more than ever evident.

From Futurity:

Almost half of the ocean’s carbon fixation is done by eukaryotic phytoplankton, despite the fact that their presence is significantly less than the more abundant blue-green algae known as cyanobacteria.

Cyanobacteria, that grow in vast numbers in the sunlit surface waters of the oceans (the photic zone),  use sunlight to “fix” carbon by converting carbon dioxide into sugars and other organic compounds through photosynthesis.

Cyanobacteria belong to the ‘picophytoplankton’, the tiniest phytoplankton. Until now they have been thought to dominate carbon fixation in the open ocean, with species belonging to the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus being particularly abundant.

“The eukaryotic phytoplankton community has long been a ‘black box’ in terms of its composition as well as contribution to carbon fixation,” says professor Dave Scanlan of the University of Warwick.

“Determining how much carbon different groups fix into biomass is required for a full understanding of the Earth’s carbon cycle,” adds professor Mikhail Zubkov of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.

Details of the research are published in the April 15 issue of theJournal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology.

Using samples collected from surface waters, scientists measured carbon fixation by dominant phytoplankton groups in the subtropical and tropical northeast Atlantic Ocean.  They discovered that eukaryotic phytoplankton actually fix significant amounts of carbon, contributing up to 44 percent of the total, despite being considerably less abundant than cyanobacteria.

“This is most likely because eukaryotic phytoplankton cells, although small, are bigger than cyanobacteria, allowing them to assimilate more fixed carbon,” explains Zubkov  “This suggests that they play a key role in oceanic carbon fixation, but this needs to be confirmed by widespread sampling from the world’s oceans.”

Oil from the BP oil spill has reached the coast of Louisiana and the first oiled bird was found. The most recent update from NOAA on the spill outlines the threat and projects the main slick will reach coastal wetlands in the region this weekend:

Today the Deepwater Horizon incident declared a Spill of National Significance (SONS).  A SONS is defined as, “a spill that, due to its severity, size, location, actual or potential impact on the public health and welfare or the environment, or the necessary response effort, is so complex that it requires extraordinary coordination of federal, state, local, and responsible party resources to contain and clean up the discharge” and allows greater federal involvement.

(see the full size trajectory map here)

—–

This is far from the first major oil spill in this region.

The largest oil spill in North America occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. The 200- foot-deep exploratory well, Ixtoc I, blew out on June 3, 1979, in the Bay of Campeche, Mexico, releasing 10,000 – 30, 000 barrels (0.4 – 1.2 million gallons) per day for nine months. Nearly 500 dispersant air sorties were flown in Mexico.

Manual cleanup in Texas was aided by storms. Though the blowout preventer (BOP, valve designed to seal off a wellhead) failed, injection of metal and concrete balls into the well slowed the release. By the time the well was brought under control in March 1980 by drilling two relief wells to relieve pressure, an estimated 113 million to over 300 million gallons of oil had spilled (10 times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez). Oil travelled 800 miles to the north, oiling more than 150 miles of shoreline in Texas and unknown miles of shoreline in Mexico.

And according to NOAA “more than 250 oil-related pollution incidents were reported in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, releasing an estimated total of 8 million gallons of oil directly into inland waterways and wetlands. Because many spills went unreported and others were never attributed to a specific source, the actual amount of oil released into the environment will never be known. Shallow nearshore areas, coastal and inland wetlands, and sand beaches were among the numerous habitats impacted by these spills.”

—–

Meanwhile, NOAA scientists now think the rate of oil flow out of the well could be five times higher than originally though:

Estimates of the release rate increased to 5000 barrels (210,000 gallons) per day based on surface observations and reports of a newly discovered leak in the damaged piping on the sea floor.

—–

The spill will at the very least, shut down the regions highly lucrative fisheries for months, possibly for years.  Fishermen are getting involved in cleanup efforts hoping to save their livelihoods and looking for new work.

About 1,000 angry and frustrated fishermen packed an elementary school gymnasium here Friday afternoon to receive training in how to clean up the oil spill that was creeping up on the nearby coastline. They were hoping to be hired by BP, the company blamed for the spill and responsible for response efforts.

Life in this coastal community centers on seafood — mullet, shark, shrimp and oysters. From May to September, dozens of boats haul shrimp here from the Gulf of Mexico. But the shrimp season was halted prematurely this week, only two days after the Louisiana Legislature had called for an early start to the season.

If the fishing jobs disappear this season, those who make their living on the water may be facing a cruel occupational twist: forced to seek employment with the company they blame for the spill.

—–

“Environmental President” Obama gave a slippery response to a question about the spills impact on his new initiative to expand offshore drilling:

“I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security,” Mr. Obama said on Friday, addressing concerns about whether the administration would continue with its plan to increase drilling in the Gulf.

Even so, he said, “the local economies and livelihoods of the people of the Gulf Coast as well as the ecology of the region are at stake.”

“Climate change is nothing less than a threat to our people, our nation and our planet.”

“It [climate change] is a threat that, if left unaddressed, has the capacity to permanently affect our way of life,”

“The incontestable truth of climate change is that a decision not to act is in fact an active decision; an active decision to place the next generation at grave risk.”

Kevin Rudd, 15th December, 2008

“When you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices ­– action or inaction.”

“The resolve of the Australian Government is clear: we choose action, and we do so because Australia’s fundamental economic and environmental interests lie in action. Action now. Not action delayed.”

“It is time to be totally blunt about the agenda of the climate change skeptics in all their colours ­ some more sophisticated than others. It’s time to remove any polite veneer from this debate. The stakes are that high.”

“… by doing so, these do-nothing climate change skeptics are prepared to destroy our children’s future.”

“This brigade of do-nothing climate change skeptics are dangerous because if they succeed, then it is all of us who will suffer. Our children. And our grandchildren. If we fail, then it will be a failure that will echo through future generations.”

“No responsible government confronted with the evidence delivered by the 4,000 scientists associated with the international panel could then in conscience choose not to act. In any public company, it would represent a gross contempt of the most basic fiduciary duty.“

Kevin Rudd, 6th November, 2009

The recent minor oil spill on the GBR is really small potatoes compared to the growing threats to marine and coastal wildlife from the 42,000 gallons of crude pouring from an offshore oil well every day.  The oil platform exploded and sunk last week in the Gulf of Mexico. The well is 5000 ft. beneath the surface and could take weeks to months to cap.

So much for our “environmental president’s” brilliant idea to expand offshore oil exploration and drilling in southeastern states of the US.

From the Associated Press:

NEW ORLEANS (AP)– Coast Guard crews raced to protect the Gulf of Mexico coastline Monday as a remote sub tried to shut off an underwater oil well that’s gushing 42,000 gallons a day from the site of a wrecked drilling platform.

If crews cannot stop the leak quickly, they might need to drill another well to redirect the oil, a laborious process that could take weeks while oil washes up along a broad stretch of shore, from the white-sand beaches of Florida’s Panhandle to the swamps of Louisiana. The oil spill already stretches across more than 1,800 square miles of water in the Gulf Of Mexico, according to the Coast Guard.

The oil is escaping from two leaks in a drilling pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface. The leaks threaten hundreds of miles of coastline in four states, with waters that are home to dolphins, sea birds, and prime fishing and tourism areas.

The oil began gushing out of the sea floor after the rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and sank two days later about 40 miles off the Mississippi River delta. Eleven of the 126 workers aboard at the time are missing and presumed dead; the rest escaped. The cause of the explosion has not been determined.

As of Monday afternoon, an area 48 miles long and 39 miles wide was covered by oil that leaked from the site of the rig, which was owned by Transocean Ltd. and operated by BP PLC.

Crews used robot submarines to activate valves in hopes of stopping the leaks, but they may not know until Tuesday if that strategy will work. BP also mobilized two rigs to drill a relief well if needed. Such a well could help redirect the oil, though it could also take weeks to complete, especially at that depth.

George Crozier, oceanographer and executive director at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, said he was studying wind and ocean currents driving the oil.

He said Pensacola, Fla., is probably the eastern edge of the threatened area, though no one really knows what the effects will be.

“We’ve never seen anything like this magnitude,” he said. “The problems are going to be on the beaches themselves, that’s where it will be really visible.”

Aaron Viles, director for New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group, said he flew over the spill Sunday and saw what was likely a sperm whale in the oil sheen.

“There are going to be significant marine impacts,” he said.

Concern Monday focused on the Chandeleur and Breton barrier islands in Louisiana, where thousands of birds are nesting.

“It’s already a fragile system. It would be devastating to see anything happen to that system,” said Mark Kulp, a University of New Orleans geologist.

The spill also threatened oyster beds in Breton Sound on the eastern side of the Mississippi River. Harvesters could only watch and wait.

“That’s our main oyster-producing area,” said John Tesvich, a fourth-generation oyster farmer with Port Sulphur Fisheries Co. His company has about 4,000 acres of oyster grounds that could be affected if the spill worsens.

“Trying to move crops would be totally speculative,” Tesvich said. “You wouldn’t know where to move a crop. You might be moving a crop to a place that’s even worse.”

He said oil and oysters are not a good mix. If the oyster grounds are affected, thousands of fishermen, packers, processors might have to curtail operations.

Worse, he said, it’s spawning season, and contamination could affect young oysters. But even if the spill is mostly contained, he said oil residue could get sucked in by the oysters.

“You will have off-flavors that would be a concern,” Tesvich said.

If the oil continues oozing north, the white-sand beaches in Mississipi, Alabama and west Florida could be fouled.

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal asked the Coast Guard to use containment booms, which float like a string of fat sausage links to hold back oil until it can be skimmed off the surface. Crews were trying to keep oil out of the Pass A Loutre wildlife area, a 115,000-acre preserve that is home to alligators, birds and fish near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour said he has spoken with the Coast Guard mission commander, Rear Adm. Mary Landry but was uncertain what steps his state might take to protect its beaches.

“It’s a real difficulty in trying to determine what defenses will be effective,” he said.

A fleet of boats and containment equipment was working to skim oil from the surface of the Gulf late last week. But a weather system that spawned deadly tornadoes in Louisiana and Mississippi and stirred up heavy seas over the weekend forced crews to suspend their efforts.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Connie Terrell said 32 vessels are waiting for conditions to improve to resume the cleanup. She could not say when they will be back at work, but she said 23,000 feet of containment boom had been deployed, 70,000 more were ready to go when the effort resumes, and another 50,000 feet were on order.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Emily Wagster Pettus in Yazoo City, Miss., and Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge contributed to this story.

From the BBC

Scientists in Australia have designed a cane toad “sausage” that could help protect vulnerable predators from the poisonous toads.

The researchers developed the sausage as a bait that could help train animals to avoid eating the large toads.

They employed “taste aversion learning” – adding a nausea-inducing drug to cane toad meat.

This, the scientists say, caused animals to associate the smell of the toads with feeling sick.

Jonathan Webb from the University of Sydney, the senior member of the research team, explained: “It’s a really powerful form of learning.

“Many people might have experienced it when they get food poisoning and then associate the taste or the smell of whatever food it was that made them ill with feeling sick.”

His team focused on quolls – small carnivorous marsupials that used to be very abundant in northern Australia.

Their numbers have seriously declined in the last 20 years.

“These animals are a real icon in northern Australia,” said Dr Webb. “They’re very cute and have lots of personality.

It is not entirely clear why the quolls’ numbers have declined so much, but the arrival of the invasive cane toads seemed rapidly to make their situation even worse.

“When the toads came along, suddenly the quolls became extinct in Kakadu National Park,” said Dr Webb.

“What we were interested in doing was coming up with a practical solution to deal with this population crash when the toads invade.”

The challenge, explained Dr Webb, was that the toads have very large toxin glands in their shoulders, primarily containing chemicals called bufadienolides, which can very quickly induce a cardiac arrest.

“The quolls see the toad as a big frog,” he explained.

“It looks good to eat, so they just pounce on it and get a fatal dose of toxin. There’s no chance they can learn from the encounter.”

Catch and release

During the time when he was puzzling over this, he read a story to his children.

“It was a modern version of Little Red Riding Hood,” Dr Webb recalled. “And at the end, the grandma, to get her own back, puts a bag of onions in the wolf’s tummy so that he wakes up feeling sick.

“At that point I thought: what if we added a nausea inducing chemical to the toads?”

This unusual approach seems to work.

Cane toads have large toxin glands in their shoulders

Dr Webb’s University of Sydney colleague, Stephanie O’Donnell, trained 30 quolls – feeding them pieces of dead toad that were laced with a nausea-inducing drug.

“After they ate it, they started to get a little bit crook (ill),” he said.

“The animals didn’t vomit – just pawed at their faces for a while and then got back to normal. But the next time they were offered a toad they ignored it.”

Dr Webb and his colleagues then released the quolls into the wild with radio collars so they could monitor them.

“In the wild, they did encounter big toads and they ignored them,” said Dr Webb.

“You could see they were interested in the toads because they were big and they were hopping around. Some of them followed the toad for a while. But most of them just sniffed it, and then thought – yuck, you’re no good to eat – and walked away.”