Tag: garbage

Why Jellyfish May Become the “Cockroaches of the Sea”

Other Marine Animals
jellyfish as cockroaches of the sea
Sea Nettle Jellies photo by Cherilyn Jose

While jellyfish (referred to as jellies for rest of this post since they are not “fish”) have been painted by public aquariums to be moving and floating masterpieces, the ocean itself has a different viewpoint on them. If the oceans keep getting polluted and overfished at their current rate, the ocean may soon teem with jellies and little else.

Pollution can be in the form of chemicals, like fertilizers and treated (or untreated in many parts of the world) sewage. Pollution can also be physical, like garbage. Plastic is particularly common, and all sorts of wildlife ingest it. The most well publicized plastic eaters include sea turtles who mistake not only plastic bags for jellies, but any plastic bits floating in the sea, and sea birds who have been found dead with enough plastic in their stomachs to die from starvation. With those predators dead, jellies take advantage of the increasing amount of plankton and they proliferate like crazy.

Plankton are the bottom layer of the food web. Overfishing takes out of the ocean the edible sized fish that eat plankton and other small bait fish. With their predator fish gone, plankton proliferate. Jellies love plankton, and they can easily outcompete any young fish for it. The young fish die without reproducing and therefore do not replace their parent’s generation. The seas would theoretically become empty of anything but jellies.

Off of Japan there has been a lot of overfishing, and Nomura’s jellyfish are increasing at an astonishing rate. They can grow to be 6.5 feet (2 meters) wide and weigh up to 450 pounds (220 kg)! Fishermen pull up nets with nothing but hundreds of jellyfish in them. Many nets break under the jellies massive collective weight, and one boat even capsized from them! The fishermen’s early strategy to get rid of them by slicing them up actually increased the jelly population due to the special asexual reproductive techniques of jellies. A future post will delve into this unique aspect of jellies.

Not all news relating to jellies is bad, as their tentacles have inspired scientists create a cancer detector. Scientists made a long DNA strand that mimics the sticky nature of jelly tentacles. In experiments, this long DNA strand was able to capture 80 percent of the leukemia cells (a kind cancer cell) in the blood used. For more on this, please visit “Jellyfish Inspire Cancer Detector” at the Huffington Post.

Please note that I was unable to write this post from the point-of-view of a jelly, as they do not have brains!

Endangered Animals of Finding Nemo: Marlin the Clownfish

Endangered Animals of Finding Nemo, Fish
”Marlin
Nemo the clownfish from Finding Nemo

Did you know that 1 in 6 animals featured in Finding Nemo is endangered? Marlin the clownfish and Nemo the clownfish may soon be listed as endangered:

Hi, I’m Nemo, and I’m a clownfish! In school today Mr. Ray told us that clownfish might become an endangered species. Unfortunately, humans have no idea how many of us there are in the ocean! Many divers have seen less clownfish in areas where there used to be a lot of us. This may be because humans are collecting us for pets, or because our coral reefs are sick. Marlin the clownfish told me that other clownfish pairs used to have to share anemones! But now where I live, there are plenty of anemones to go around.

Officially, the Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned to list clownfish under the Endangered Species Act. Surprisingly, that doesn’t mean that there are so few of us that we are endangered. What it does mean is that where we live, the coral reef, needs protection. The Endangered Species Act protects the places that endangered animals live.

Global warming warms the ocean and causes coral bleaching (see Ollie the Octopus’ post on coral bleaching). Global warming also causes the ocean to become more acidic (see Terry the Pteropod’s post on ocean acidification) . All ocean habitats are affected by pollution, especially from garbage like plastic (see Ollie the Octopus’ post on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). Marlin the clownfish, my dad, says plastic is everywhere now sadly.

You can help me and my friends by not buying clownfish for your home aquarium. If you do, please get help from an expert and only buy captive born and bred clownfish. Please just enjoy seeing us in the ocean, in public aquariums or in Finding Nemo!

Also see The Real Fish of Finding Nemo

Ollie the Octopus on International Cephalopod Awareness Days and the State of the Oceans

Cephalopods, Ollie the Octopus
Ollie the Octopus
Ollie the Octopus (photo by Cherilyn Chin)

Wow, it’s already International Cephalopod Awareness Days again! (see my post from last year’s Octopus Day about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Here are the Cephalopod Awareness Days we are celebrating: October 8 is Octopus Day (my favorite!), October 9 is (Chambered) Nautilus Day, October 10 is Squid and Cuttlefish Day, October 11 is Myths and Legends, and October 12 is Fossils and Extinct Species (Vampire Squid fit here as “living fossils”, they have been in the news lately, perhaps you have heard that they eat feces and corpses in the deep sea?)

In honor of Octopus Day, I thought I would go over the “State of the Oceans.” Since I’m no orator (I have no vocal cords), you’ll have to settle for my thoughts.

Right now there are 3 major issues facing the ocean today:

1. Global Warming
2. Pollution
3. Overfishing

Whether or not you believe global warming is currently happening, or that it is humans that are causing it, the effects of global warming have been shown over geologic time (i.e. longer than humans have inhabited the earth). Global warming causes seawater temperatures to rise, which can have devastating effects on all wildlife, especially on corals. For more on coral bleaching see my last post.

Due to global warming, sea level rises faster than usual due to the melting of the polar ice caps. Ocean acidification occurs because of all the extra carbon dioxide that the ocean absorbs, and it causes seawater to become more acidic (like soda or orange juice). It mainly affects those animals that have calcium carbonate skeletons, especially the plankton at the bottom of the food chain. For more on that read Terry the Pteropod’s post on ocean acidification.

Pollution comes in many forms, including chemical (like fertilizer runoff and industrial waste), and physical (like garbage or silt). Garbage is the most insidious form of pollution in the oceans. It consists mainly of plastic in all shapes and forms. Plastic never biodegrades, and all the plastic that has ever been produced is still around today (unless it was incinerated). For more, read my previous post on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Overfishing is happening all around the world in all the world’s oceans. Every single country that fishes is catching more fish than can be replaced by the birth rate of new fish. This means that most marine animals eaten as seafood are being fished unsustainably! For more information on overfishing, please watch the documentary The End of the Line.

Once again, I’m out of time. I’ll be back soon to discuss more pressing ocean issues. Please hug a cephalopod today! Or at least abstain from eating us or buying our shells (see Shelley the chambered nautilus’ post), thank you!!

Alby the Albatross and Plastic, Plastic Everywhere in the Ocean

Seabirds
albatross fledgling & plastic
Albatross chick stomach contents

That picture is not me, thank goodness. My name is Alby the Albatross, and it is nice to meet you. That was an albatross chick who most likely died from eating too much plastic. Hundreds of thousands of dead albatross chicks have been found with at least a third of their stomach full of plastic. Why would an albatross eat plastic? Unfortunately plastic is everywhere in the ocean now, not just in garbage patches. Every type of garbage imaginable makes it to the ocean. Remember what Gill tells Nemo in Finding Nemo? “All drains lead to the ocean, kid,” he said. There is so much garbage in general that remote tropical islands whose sand has only been touched by scuttling crabs and wayward seabirds have garbage engulfing their shores. Plastic is a threat to all ocean life, but the most insidious are the tiny plastic particles that microscopic plankton consume. Small fish eat the plankton and then successively larger fish eat each other until a predator like a shark nabs them. The shark then bioaccumulates, that is stores, all those plastic pieces in its body over time. Even humans carry a few pounds of plastic around in their bodies without knowing it!

The single most important thing you can do to relieve me and my oceanic friends from plastic in the ocean is to:
NOT BUY BOTTLED WATER! Use a reusable water bottle that you fill yourself with tap water, or filtered tap water. We thank you for helping us!

Ollie the Octopus on Octopus Day and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Cephalopods, Ollie the Octopus
Ollie the Octopus
Ollie the Octopus (photo by Cherilyn Chin)

Hi, my name is Ollie and I’m an octopus.  I am excited to hear that October 8 is Octopus Day during International Cephalopod Awareness Days (October 8-10).  I’m glad we’re getting the recognition we deserve, as we’re usually portrayed as villains (or villainesses) or as cute baby toys with our mouths underneath our eyes. Our mouth is actually underneath our head, and in the center of our circle of 8 arms.

I wish I could have compassion (like humans!) for the other life forms in the sea, but in order to survive I only think about myself.  I need avoid being eaten, find enough food to eat every day, and defend my den.  Since I don’t know my birthday and a calendar doesn’t fit inside my modest sized lair, I think Octopus Day is a good time for me to reflect on my life, or rather the state of the oceans.

It’s looking pretty bleak out there because due to global warming there is a rise in seawater temperature, rising sea levels, ocean acidification (see previous post from me and Terry the Pteropod), and coral bleaching.  There is pollution from land runoff, overfishing (see post Great White Shark’s Adventure), oil spills, and growing garbage patches in all the world’s oceans.

The most well known is called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” which is a fancy name for a whole lot of crap thrown into the ocean by humans. Most of this garbage is plastic, which will never biodegrade. In fact, all the plastic ever manufactured is still around today, unless it was incinerated. I do know an octopus who lives in a glass beer bottle, but plastic isn’t useful to any denizen of the ocean I know of.  In fact, most sea life ingest tiny bits of plastic, as well as plastic chemical by-products, which bioaccumulate on up the food chain until you (or the 10% of sharks, large predatory fish or marine mammals left in the oceans) eat us.  Yuck!  Sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jellies, and albatrosses and other sea birds become entangled in plastic when they try to dive for fish.

So my wish this Octopus Day is that you reduce the amount of plastic you buy, recycle what you do buy, and use a reusable water bottle.  Unless you’re one of the one billion persons on this planet who do not have access to clean drinking water (my guess you wouldn’t be reading this if you are), tap water or filtered tap water is fine!!  I wish I could filter the water I live in…