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2009, Oceanography 22(3):10–13, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2009.87
RIPPLE MARKS—The Story Behind the Story
Author | Stories and First Paragraphs | Full Article | Citation
Author
Cheryl Lyn Dybas is a marine scientist and policy analyst by training. She also writes about the seas for The Washington Post, BioScience, National Wildlife, The Scientist, Africa Geographic, and many other publications.
Stories and First Paragraphs
And Then There Were None: Shellfish Reefs Most At-Risk Marine Habitats
Tendrils of fog curl above the waters of Chesapeake Bay. Biting winds gusted out of the northwest yesterday, and an early snow is forecast for tomorrow. But for this one afternoon in mid-November, cold winds fetching across slate-gray waves have gone elsewhere. The Chesapeake is holding its breath, granting one last look at autumn on a day that seems suspended in time.
Every fall, the bay's watermen, as oystermen are called here, sail their skipjacks, dredging up Chesapeake oysters. But for how long?
"Once major features in temperate estuaries around the world, declining native oyster reefs are critically important ecologically and economically," states a 2009 report by The Nature Conservancy (TNC): Shellfish Reefs at Risk: A Global Analysis of Problems and Solutions. "Centuries of intensive fisheries extraction have put oyster reefs near or past the point of extinction globally, but solutions that could ensure conservation of remaining reefs and even reverse losses are possible."
Nightlights Point The Way to Threatened Ocean Regions: "Light Pollution" Affects Corals and Other Organisms
The Boston-to-Washington megalopolis. At night, a sea of lights easily visible by satellites.
Unfortunately, also readily seen in the ocean below—by the denizens of coral reefs and other habitats.
In a paper in the journal Geocarta International (December 2008), Christoph Aubrecht of the Austrian Research Centers in Vienna and co-authors report results of a study of the effects of night lights on reefs.
Ghosts of Oceans Past: Sea's Resources Began to Decline in the Stone Age
The ghosts of thousands of right whales are still sounding in the waters off New Zealand.
There, before oil hunters in the early 1800s harpooned whale after whale, the ocean teemed with some 27,000 southern right whales, 30 times as many as exist today.
That's just one of the startling conclusions reported at a Census of Marine Life (COML) conference—"Oceans Past, II"—held in Vancouver, BC, in late May. Scientists affiliated with COML's History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) project are reconstructing images of past sea life that boggle the imagination, they say.
Ocean News Coverage: Where Have All the Seagrasses Gone? Coral Reefs Darlings of the Media
Long floating grasses turned golden in an autumn sun.
Neon-bright fish darting in and out of tropical shoals.
Which most captures your interest?
If you're a journalist—or a member of the general public—in countries from the United States to Spain, it's the latter, fish in coral reefs, not the former, the seagrasses of the shallows.
Full Article
Citation
Dybas, C.L. 2009. Ripple marks—The story behind the story. Oceanography 22(3):10–13, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2009.87.