http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ Fri, 18 May 2012 19:43:37 -0500 FeedCreator 1.8.0-nukeFEED (http://nukeSEO.com) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-407.html#407 http://thelocalcatch.weebly.com/index.html]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-407.html#407 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-405.html#405
This simulation of spinner dolphins circling prey illustrates the importance of "patchiness" in marine environments. credit: Alan Dennis

CORVALLIS, Oregon -- A new study has found that each step of the marine food chain is clearly controlled by the trophic level below it – and the driving factor influencing that relationship is not the abundance of prey, but how that prey is distributed.

The importance of the spatial pattern of resources – sometimes called "patchiness" – is gaining new appreciation from ecologists, who are finding the overall abundance of food less important than its density and ease of access to it.




Results of the study are being published this week in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Kelly Benoit-Bird, an Oregon State University oceanographer and lead author on the study, said patchiness is not a new concept, but one that has gained acceptance as sophisticated technologies have evolved to track relationships among marine species.

"The spatial patterns of the resource ultimately determine how the ecosystem functions," said Benoit-Bird, who received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2010. "In the past, ecologists primarily used biomass as the determining factor for understanding the food chain, and the story was always rather muddled. We used to think that the size and abundance of prey was what mattered most.

"But patchiness is not only ubiquitous in marine systems, it ultimately dictates the behavior of many animals and their relationships to the environment," she added.

Benoit-Bird specializes in the relationship of different species in marine ecosystems. In one study in the Bering Sea, she and her colleagues were estimating the abundance of krill, an important food resource for many species. Closer examination through the use of acoustics, however, found that the distribution of krill was not at all uniform – which the researchers say explained why two colonies of fur seals and seabirds were faring poorly, but a third was healthy.

"The amount of food near the third colony was not abundant," she said, "but what was there was sufficiently dense – and at the right depth – that made it more accessible for predation than the krill near the other two colonies."

The ability to use acoustics to track animal behavior underwater is opening new avenues to researchers. During their study in the Bering Sea, Benoit-Bird and her colleagues discovered that they could also use sonar to plot the dives of thick-billed murres, which would plunge up to 200 meters below the surface in search of the krill.

Although the krill were spread throughout the water column, the murres ended up focusing on areas where the patches of krill were the densest.

"The murres are amazingly good at diving right down to the best patches," Benoit-Bird pointed out. "We don't know just how they are able to identify them, but 10 years ago, we wouldn't have known that they had that ability. Now we can use high-frequency sound waves to look at krill, different frequencies to look at murres, and still others to look at squid, dolphins and other animals.

"And everywhere we've looked the same pattern occurs," she added. "It is the distribution of food, not the biomass, which is important."

An associate professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, Benoit-Bird has received young investigator or early career awards from the Office of Naval Research, the White House and the American Geophysical Union. She also has received honors from the Acoustical Society of America, which has used her as a model scientist in publications aimed at middle school students.

Her work has taken her around the world, including Hawaii where she has used acoustics to study the sophisticated feeding behavior of spinner dolphins. Those studies, she says, helped lead to new revelations about the importance of patchiness.

Ocean physics in the region results in long, thin layers of phytoplankton that may stretch for miles, but are only a few inches thick and a few meters below the surface. Benoit-Bird and her colleagues discovered a layer of zooplankton – tiny animals that feed on the plankton – treading water a meter below to be near the food source. Next up in the food chain were micronekton, larger pelagic fish and crustaceans that would spend the day 600 to 1,000 meters beneath the surface, then come up to the continental shelf at night to target the zooplankton. And the spinner dolphins would emerge at night, where they could reach the depth of the micronekton.

"The phytoplankton were responding to ocean physics," Benoit-Bird said, "but all of the others in the food chain were targeting their prey by focusing on the densest patches. We got to the point where we could predict with 70 percent accuracy where the dolphins would show up based just on the phytoplankton density – without even considering the zooplankton and micronekton distribution."

Ocean "patchiness" is not a new concept, Benoit-Bird says, but may have been under-appreciated in importance.

"If you're a murre that is diving a hundred meters below the surface to find food, you want to maximize the payoff for all of the energy you're expending," Benoit-Bird said. "Now we need more research to determine how different species are able to determine where the best patches are."]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-405.html#405 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-404.html#404
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 ears fresh corn, husked and cut off the cob
4 ounces red onion, diced
1 red chile pepper, minced
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon cumin, ground
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon salt, kosher
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tsp. parsley

Heat olive oil in a small sauce pan, add the corn and cook for 5 minutes, add the remaining ingredients except parsley and cook for 5 more minutes, add parsley and remove from heat, cool and serve with cod cakes or store in a glass jar for up to two weeks.]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-404.html#404 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-403.html#403
2 pounds 8-oz cod fillets, fresh if available
4 ounces fresh bread crumbs
2 ounces onion, diced fine
1 ounces celery, diced fine
1 ounces red bell pepper, diced fine
1 ounces green bell pepper, diced fine
2 tablespoons Italian parsley, chopped
2 eggs
2 oz. heavy cream
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco
Cooking oil or clarified butter as needed

Heat oven 350. Sprinkle half the salt on cod fillets, place on a lightly greased pan and cook for 20 minutes, remove and cool slightly, drain any liquid and refrigerate until well chilled. This will help keep the fish flaky.

Chop bread crumbs with a knife but leave fairly coarse; use a food processor if you have one. Sauté the onions, celery, red and green bell peppers in a small amount of oil or clarified butter until slightly soft. Drain and cool.

In a bowl large enough for mixing, combine the cod fillet (do not break up first) bread crumbs, sautéed vegetables, parsley, eggs, heavy cream, lemon juice, Tabasco, salt, black pepper and mix well but still flaky. Cod is a very lean fish and the cream acts as a binder for the ingredients.

Form into eight 4-ounce balls and let set up for 10 minutes. In a sauté or fry pan, heat a small amount of cooking oil or clarified butter over medium heat, flatten and mold each ball into cake and gently place in the hot oil. Cook 3 to 4 minutes; turn gently and cook 3 to 4 more minutes until golden brown. The cakes firm up as they cook. Remove and drain on a paper towel. Serve with corn relish or tartar sauce.

Mixture will keep for several days refrigerated.]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-403.html#403 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-402.html#402
LPRC is beginning a new bluefin tagging project this year that we want to ask for your help with. We, in partnership with NMFS and ICCAT, are conducting an Atlantic-wide scientific conventional tagging program, called GBYP (Grande Bluefin Tuna Year Program). Under this program, researchers will aim to deploy 15,000 tags in the eastern Atlantic and 4,000 tags in the western Atlantic on age 1-3 bluefin. This study is aimed at determining more accurate estimates of mortality and east/west mixing rates.

BUT, THE SUCCESS OF THE PROGRAM IS DEPENDENT ON YOU!!!!

Since the tags we are deploying are conventional spaghetti tags, we only get the data we need if the tagged tunas are recaptured and reported. To encourage reporting, returned GBYP tags will earn you a t-shirt and from $50 TO $1000 IN REWARDS!!!! Please see the attached poster for all the details (or visit our website www.tunalab.org).

So please help with this valuable research and keep an extra sharp eye out for tagged fish this year! Also, visit our Facebook page regularly to see reports on recaptured tags – we will post all recaptures, as they come in, so everyone can see the movements of these amazing fish!



INTERESTED IN HELPING OUT EVEN MORE WITH THIS PROJECT?

HELP SPREAD THE WORD! Do you have a place you would like to post the reward flyer? Contact me and I will be happy to send you hard copies of the poster for putting up. We have them in both 8.5x11 and 11x17 sizes.

LET US KNOW WHEN YOU COME ACROSS SMALL FISH! As you can image, getting out 4,000 tags on 1-3 year olds will be tough, so we need to try to hit the small fish where ever and whenever they appear. We are looking for fish about 50 inches CFL and less. If you catch any this size, please send me a quick email or post on our Facebook Page – we don’t want to miss any big bite of these little guys!



Thanks so much for your continued support of our research!

Emily Chandler

www.tunalab.org

www.facebook.com/LPRCtunalab]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-402.html#402 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-401.html#401


Redefinition Of 'Seawater' To Aid Climate Research; 'A More Accurate Calculation Of Salinity

CLAYTON SOUTH, Victoria -- A clear change in salinity has been detected in the world's oceans, signaling shifts and an acceleration in the global rainfall and evaporation cycle.

In a paper published today in the journal Science, Australian scientists from CSIRO and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, reported changing patterns of salinity in the global ocean during the past 50 years, marking a clear fingerprint of climate change.




Lead author, Dr Paul Durack, said that by looking at observed ocean salinity changes and the relationship between salinity, rainfall and evaporation in climate models, they determined the water cycle has strengthened by four percent from 1950-2000. This is twice the response projected by current generation global climate models.

"Salinity shifts in the ocean confirm climate and the global water cycle have changed.

"These changes suggest that arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions have become wetter in response to observed global warming," said Dr Durack, a post-doctoral fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

With a projected temperature rise of 3ºC by the end of the century, the researchers estimate a 24 per cent acceleration of the water cycle is possible.

Scientists have struggled to determine coherent estimates of water cycle changes from land-based data because surface observations of rainfall and evaporation are sparse. However, according to the team, global oceans provide a much clearer picture.

"The ocean matters to climate – it stores 97 per cent of the world's water; receives 80 per cent of the all surface rainfall and; it has absorbed 90 per cent of the Earth's energy increase associated with past atmospheric warming," said co-author, Dr Richard Matear of CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans Flagship.

"Warming of the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere is expected to strengthen the water cycle largely driven by the ability of warmer air to hold and redistribute more moisture."

He said the intensification is an enhancement in the patterns of exchange between evaporation and rainfall and with oceans accounting for 71 per cent of the global surface area the change is clearly represented in ocean surface salinity patterns.

In the study, the scientists combined 50-year observed global surface salinity changes with changes from global climate models and found "robust evidence of an intensified global water cycle at a rate of about eight percent per degree of surface warming."

Dr Durack said the patterns are not uniform, with regional variations agreeing with the 'rich get richer' mechanism, where wet regions get wetter and dry regions drier.

He said a change in freshwater availability in response to climate change poses a more significant risk to human societies and ecosystems than warming alone.

"Changes to the global water cycle and the corresponding redistribution of rainfall will affect food availability, stability, access and utilization," Dr Durack said.

Dr Susan Wijffels, co-Chair of the global Argo project and a co-author on the study, said maintenance of the present fleet of around 3,500 profilers is critical to observing continuing changes to salinity in the upper oceans.

The work was funded through the Australian Climate Change Science Program, a joint initiative of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. Dr Durack is a graduate of the CSIRO-University of Tasmania Quantitative Marine Science program and he received additional support from CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans Flagship. Work undertaken at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-401.html#401 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-400.html#400 fishing regulations for winter flounder, adding Potter Pond to the
closed areas.

The regulation reads:

7.8.1-2 Recreational Seasons, Possession Limits, and Closed Areas –
(a) Beginning on the fourth Saturday in April and continuing for 30
days, and beginning on the last Saturday in September and
continuing for 30 days, fishermen may take and possess not more
than two (2) winter flounder per person per calendar day in Rhode
Island waters, except in Narragansett Bay north of the Colregs line,
and in Potter Pond, Point Judith Pond and the Harbor of Refuge,
where the harvest or possession of winter flounder is prohibited.

The season is open:

2 fish - 12 inch minimum
Season: 1
April 28 to May 27

Season: 2
September 29 to October 28]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-400.html#400 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-399.html#399 Don
Jim L
Carlos S
Roger S
Jim
Dan S
Matt Z
Don N
Mike L
Patrick
I have a bunch more to add that is all I can remember.
If your coming I only have 30 color handouts the rest are black n white.]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-399.html#399 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-398.html#398 http://www.nero.noaa.gov/nero/regs/frdoc/12/12MulRecAccountMeasures.pdf]]> no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-398.html#398 http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-397.html#397 no_email@example.com (ubettcha) http://rhodeisland-offshore.com/ftopicp-397.html#397