By Daniel de la Calle
» Williams College, in Williamstown, Mass. is hosting an Oceans Symposium and next Monday, Feb. 27, at 7 p.m., Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer at The New Yorker, will lead a discussion following a showing of A Sea Change, Imagine a World Without Fish.
» Beautiful new documentary on the oceans is out this year: The Last Reef, Cities Beneath The Sea. Go to their website (www.thelastreef.co.uk) and read how this project, that started out as a 3D “macro movie based in Palau”, turned into an alarm call on the biggest threat to coral reefs worldwide: Ocean Acidification.
» Reconsider your shrimp. A one pound bag of frozen shrimp raised on a typical Asian fish farm produces an astounding one ton of CO2. At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science biologist J. Boone Kauffman (Oregon State University) developed the comparison to help the public understand the environmental impact of land use decisions. “The carbon footprint of the shrimp from this land use is about 10-fold greater than the land use carbon footprint of an equivalent amount of beef produced from a pasture formed from a tropical rainforest.”
Mr. Kauffman said 50 to 60 percent of shrimp farms are located in tidal zones in Asian countries, mostly on cleared mangrove forests. The farms are inefficient, producing just one kilogram of shrimp for 13.4 square meters of mangrove, while the ponds created are abandoned in just three to nine years because disease, soil acidification and contamination destroy them. After abandonment, the soil takes 35 to 40 years to recover.
LINK to the original article, from Agence France Presse.
» Lecture on Ocean Acidification and the Future of Native Oysters in California Estuaries taking place tomorrow, February 24, at noon at Stanford University. It is sponsored by Hopkins Marine Station. More info HERE.
» And from the other side of the Atlantic, “Analyses of the effects of Ocean Acidification on the larval development of Crassostrea gigas”, AKA Pacific oyster on Ms. Patrícia Barros Masters Theses. Info HERE.
» New video filled with European flair on Ocean Acidification, the EPOCA program and the public’s awareness on the issue.
» Post Doctoral position at IMR. The Institute of Marine Research has a 3 year position as postdoctoral researcher on the effects of Ocean Acidification on marine zoooplankton, with special emphasis on krill. The position is located in Bergen, Norway. Find out about qualifications and further details HERE.
» The Second UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme annual science meeting will take place at the University of Exeter from Monday, April 16th to Wednesday, April 18th. If you are a UKOARP particiant you can register online HERE. For further reading, click HERE.
