Gadget Made up of Sophisticated Sensors & Camera to get a Sharks-Eye-View of the Ocean

Tagging sharks to monitor their movements is nothing new, in fact, through organizations like OCEARCH, it has helped us learn a lot more about the threatened species and their behavior. Now scientists have taken tagging a bit further by using a gadget made up of sophisticated sensors and a video camera to get a sharks-eye-view of the ocean.

Researchers at University of Hawaii and University of Tokyo created the rig to see where sharks are going, how they are getting there, and what they are doing once they reach their destinations.

“What we are doing is really trying to fill out the detail of what their role is in the ocean,” said Carl Meyer, an assistant researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. “It is all about getting a much deeper understanding of sharks’ ecological role in the ocean, which is important to the health of the ocean and, by extension, to our own well-being.”

The gadget has already disproved some misconceptions about the way sharks travel, for instance, they found that sharks used powered swimming more often than a gliding motion, which is contrary to what scientists previously thought. They also found that deep-sea sharks swim in slow motion compared to shallow water sharks.

“These instrument packages are like flight data recorders for sharks,” Meyer said. “They allow us to quantify a variety of different things that we haven’t been able to quantify before.”

“It has really drawn back the veil on what these animals do and answered some longstanding questions,” he added.

Next up for the research team is creating an ingestible device that would help them to understand the sharks’ diets and feeding patterns. The instruments track ingestion and digestion of prey and can help researchers understand where, when, what and how much sharks are eating.

Check out the video below to get a glimpse of that shark’s eye view:

Another great Green article from Green Halo
Track your recycling at www.greenhalosystems.com
Follow Green Halo on Twitter at http://twitter.com/greenhalousa

Fukushima Wash-Up Rises Fear in the U.S. – Radiation Risks

Seaborne radiation from Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant will wash up on the West Coast of the U.S. this year.

That’s raising concerns among some Americans including the residents of the San Francisco Bay Area city of Fairfax, which passed a resolution on Dec. 6 calling for more testing of coastal seafood.

At the same time, oceanographers and radio-logical scientists say such concerns are unwarranted given existing levels of radiation in the ocean.

The runoff from the Japanese plant will mingle with radiation released by other atomic stations, such as Diablo Canyon in California. Under normal operations, Diablo Canyon discharges more radiation into the sea, albeit of a less dangerous isotope, than the Fukushima station, which suffered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

“There’s a point to be made that we live in a radioactive world and the ocean just has radioactive isotopes in it,” said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution inMassachusetts, who forecasts the Fukushima plume will arrive in the U.S. early this year. “People have a limited knowledge of radioactivity.”

Leaking Groundwater

At Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi station, where three reactors melted down after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, about 300 metric tons of contaminated groundwater seep into the ocean each day, according to Japan’s government.

Between May 2011 and August 2013, as many as 20 trillion becquerels of cesium-137, 10 trillion becquerels of strontium-90 and 40 trillion becquerels of tritium entered the ocean via groundwater, according to Tokyo Electric.

Cesium isotopes, which emit flesh-penetrating gamma rays, are among the most dangerous radionuclides emitted by the plant, said Colin Hill, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.

Strontium-90, which mimics calcium, increases the exposure risk for humans by remaining in the bones of fish for extended periods. While tritium is less radiologically intense than cesium and passes through fish faster than strontium, it can also contaminate sea creatures that encounter the isotope in high levels, Hill said.

Not Happy

Water exposed to radiation from the Fukushima plant would reach the U.S. at levels at least 100 times lower than the U.S.’s drinking water threshold, Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Allison Macfarlane said at a Dec. 6 briefing in Tokyo.

The assurances haven’t eased concerns for some. “I’m terrified,” Doreen Jean Dempski, a children’s book author, said by phone from her home more than 5,000 miles across the Pacific from Fukushima in Carpinteria, California. “My boyfriend is a surfer and he spends hours a day in the water.”

Sharing Dempski’s worries are the Fairfax city council, which passed the coastal testingresolution, and more than 127,000 signatories to an online petition calling for a United Nations’

takeover of part of the Fukushima cleanup. South Korea has already banned imports of fish from Japan’s northern Pacific coast.

Fukushima radiation is being erroneously blamed for everything from sea-lion deaths to sickened polar bears, according to an editorial this week in Canada’s Times Colonist newspaper.

Risk Expectations

Part of the issue is general concern about radiation, and the startling amounts that are released into the environment by the 435 nuclear power plants operating worldwide as of Jan. 3. Measurements that puzzle the public — becquerels, rems, curies and sieverts — don’t aid transparency. And, worse, scientists disagree on the health risks from low-dose radiation exposure.

A report on the Fukushima disaster by the World Health Organization in February last year estimated increased cancer risk for those in the most contaminated areas around the plant, but not elsewhere in Japan. However, the report also notes that better understanding of the effects of low-dose radiation may alter risk expectations from the Fukushima accident.

Less than 100 miles up the coast from Dempski’s home, Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Diablo Canyon plant in San Luis Obispo discharged 323 million liters of water into the Pacific in 2012, or about 870 tons a day, according to data from the company on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s website. That’s equivalent to 130 Olympic swimming pools and more than twice the daily amount leaking from Fukushima.

Inadvertent Contact

That water contained 3,670 curies of tritium, or 136 trillion becquerels, according to the company, almost three-and-a-half times the amount released from the Fukushima plant into the ocean in the period starting May 2011. The plant also discharged cesium-137, though at lower levels than Fukushima, while its output of strontium-90 is below detectable levels.

Diablo Canyon’s discharges are regulated by the NRC and the plant complies with its licensing requirements, PG&E spokesman Blair Jones said in an e-mail. Total liquid discharges from Diablo Canyon in 2012 were 0.0165 percent of what the NRC allows, Jones said.

The radioactivity in plant wastewater comes from inadvertent contact between the isotopes and cooling water pumped through nuclear plants.

“Tritium is produced when a reactor is operating,” Jones said. “Fukushima is not operating so naturally the tritium levels are lower when compared to Diablo Canyon.”

Rick Castello, a San Luis Obispo-based project manager for a technology company, said by phone that he was unaware of the discharges from the nearby nuclear plant. He also harbors concerns about the approaching radiation from Fukushima.

“It’s not like I think official sources would be intentionally hiding information from the people,” he said by phone. “But sometimes we just don’t know.”

Another great Green article from Green Halo
Track your recycling at www.greenhalosystems.com
Follow Green Halo on Twitter at http://twitter.com/greenhalousa

Mexican Castaway Lost at Sea for 13 Months

A Mexican castaway who says he survived more than a year drifting at sea pleaded on Sunday to be taken home as he was picked up from the remote Pacific island where he had washed ashore.

 “I want to get back to Mexico,” the castaway, who identified himself as Jose Ivan, told interpreter Magui Vaca as he was about to board a Marshall Islands patrol vessel to be taken from Ebon Atoll to the capital Majuro for a medical examination.

“I feel bad,” he told Vaca of his physical and mental state. “I am so far away. I don’t know where I am or what happened.”

An emaciated Jose Ivan was found last Thursday clad only in ragged underpants, when his 24-foot fibreglass boat with propellerless engines floated on to the reef at Ebon Atoll, the southernmost cluster of coral islands in the Marshalls.

He managed to communicate to his rescuers that he had drifted across a 12,500 kilometre (8,000 mile) expanse of Pacific Ocean north of the equator between southern Mexico and the Marshall Islands.

Jose Ivan told Vaca he left his home in Mexico to go shark fishing on December 24, 2012, putting his time at sea at 13 months, not the 16 months his rescuers initially believed.

“It’s been difficult trying to communicate with him,” said Ebon Mayor Ione deBrum who had only been able to communicate with the Mexican by drawing pictures.

“I’ve gotten to know him through pictures he’s drawing. He said he was on his way to El Salvador by boat when it started drifting.”

No details have yet emerged as to why he began drifting, or what happened to a companion he said had died a few months ago.

Vaca said Ivan was disorientated and did not know what had happened during his many months at sea.

“He feels a little desperate and he wants to get back to Mexico, but he doesn’t know how,” she said.

When Ebon islanders discovered Ivan on their remote atoll he was sporting a long beard and was unable to walk without assistance.

There was no fishing gear on the boat and Jose Ivan suggested he caught turtles and birds with his bare hands. There was a turtle on the boat when it landed at Ebon.He indicated that he survived by eating turtles, birds and fish and drinking turtle blood when there was no rain.

“We’ve been feeding him nutritious island food and he’s getting better,” deBrum said. “He has pain in both knees so he cannot stand up by himself. Otherwise, he’s OK.”

Vaca was on a yacht in Majuro Atoll — around 320 kilometres north of Ebon — when she was briefly able to speak to Jose Ivan via radio before he was ushered on to the patrol vessel for the estimated 18-hour trip to Majuro.

He is expected to arrive in Majuro late Monday morning, at the earliest.

His talk with Vaca is believed to be the first time in many months the Mexican has had a conversation he could understand.

However, Sunday’s brief interview organised by the Marshall Islands National Telecommunications Authority (NTA) working with Mieco Beach Yacht Club officials, proved difficult as the radio transmission was marred by static.

The single phone line to Ebon — population 700 — went out of service Saturday, leaving radio the only option for communication.

There is no Internet service on the remote atoll. Had the drifter not washed onto the reef at Ebon, there is another 1,000 or so miles of open ocean before he might have landed in Papua New Guinea or the Solomon Islands.

Stories of survival in the vast Pacific are not uncommon.

In 2006, three Mexicans made international headlines when they were discovered drifting, also in a small fibreglass boat near the Marshall Islands, nine months after setting out on a shark-fishing expedition.

They survived on a diet of rainwater, raw fish and seabirds, with their hope kept alive by reading the bible.

Castaways from Kiribati, to the south, frequently find land in the Marshall Islands after ordeals of weeks or months at sea in small boats.

The Marshall Islands, in the northern Pacific, are home to about 60,000 people spread over 24 low-lying atolls.

Another great Green article from Green Halo
Track your recycling at www.greenhalosystems.com
Follow Green Halo on Twitter at http://twitter.com/greenhalousa