Protected Reef Offers Model for Conservation

By ERIK OLSEN

Published: April 26, 2010, New York Times

GLOVER’S REEF, Belize — As Alex Tilley powers his 15-foot skiff over the turquoise surface, a dark form slips across the white sand floor below. “Sting ray,” Mr. Tilley says.
Green

Gilbert Martinez, right, a reef ranger, confronted a local fisherman found with 24 illegal undersized conch.

For the next half mile, en route to the Wildlife Conservation Society research station here at Glover’s Reef in Belize, at least half a dozen rays are spotted movin g beneath the surface. To Mr. Tilley, the presence of so many rays says a lot about the state of the reef here.

“The fish populations at Glover’s are still very robust,” he said. “This is definitely one of the healthiest reefs in the region.”

Mr. Tilley is the station manager and resident scientist here on Middle Caye, one of six small islands within the Glover’s Reef atoll. A Ph.D. candidate in marine biology from Bangor University in North Wales, Mr. Tilley leads a reef monitoring program sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society, a Bronx-based organization that helped establish the reserve here in 1993.

While his British accent betrays his national origins, Mr. Tilley now lives here year-round managing the research station and conducting studies on the local sharks and rays. With its lush tropical setting and thriving reef, the caye is a kind of tropical paradise. “It beats working in a lab,” he said.

Glover’s Reef, about 28 miles from the coast of Belize, is one of the only true atolls in the Atlantic Ocean. It is also the site of Belize’s largest “no-take” marine reserve, a 17,500-acre zone where all types of fishing are prohibited. The no-take zone makes up about 20 percent of the wider 87,000-acre Marine Protected Area here. Within 75 percent of the reserve, some types of fishing are allowed, although there are restrictions on the type of gear that can be used.

According to scientists here, the marine reserve at Glover’s Reef offers a test case for the viability of similar reserves around the world. They are now hoping to apply some of the conservation strategies here to make other places succeed.

“I think Glover’s Reef is a model of hope,” says Ellen K. Pikitch, a marine biologist at the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Dr. Pikitch runs the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, an organization seeking wider protection for sharks worldwide. She said that the effort at Glover’s “shows that marine reserves, even small marine reserves, can work. I think it’s very transportable this concept.”

Dr. Pikitch, a self-professed “shark fanatic,” has other reasons to be hopeful. She leads the largest shark population study in the Caribbean here at Glover’s Reef, now in its 10th year. Shark populations here have remained stable, while others around the world are in severe decline.

The sharks are an integral part of a healthy reef. Along with other top predators they help keep barracuda populations in check, which is important because barracuda consume algae grazers like parrotfish that prevent runaway algae growth from choking the corals. Other research has shown that over the long term, protected areas can even have a restorative effect on coral populations.

John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Elizabeth Selig, a marine scientist with Conservation International, analyzed a global database of 8,534 live coral cover surveys conducted from 1969 to 2006. They reported their findings in February in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We found that marine protected areas have an indirect effect that seems to benefit corals,” Dr. Bruno said. But, he said, it takes time for these effects to be realized. “People put these parks out there and then run out to see them in five years, but the benefits show up later, sometimes it takes decades,” he said.

Dr. Pikitch credits the success of Glover’s Reef to the design of the protected area. The no-take zone helps fish stocks recover, and those fish then repopulate the nearby fisheries outside the zone. She calls this doing “double duty” and says that these strategies are of particular importance in places like Belize where fishing has been a key means of subsistence since Mayan times.

There are still significant challenges. Enforcement remains a problem. The Wildlife Conservation Society shares its home on Middle Caye with an outpost of the Belize Fisheries Department. The department employs four rangers here whose job is to patrol the reef and catch fishermen who violate the fishing ban or who poach undersized conch and spiny lobster outside the no-take zone.

Recent improvements have made enforcement somewhat easier. Last July, a 40-foot high observation tower was built at the station allowing for a 360-degree panoramic view of the atoll.

Further, the wider Belize reef system is considered one of the most endangered in the world. The effects of pollution, overfishing and global warming, which can lead to coral bleaching, have all conspired to reduce coral cover here. One analysis rated 63 percent of Belize’s reefs as being threatened by human activities. Natural disasters have had a major impact as well. Still, because of what they see at places like Glover’s Reef, scientists like Dr. Pikitch have been pushing the government to expand the protected areas.

Dr. Pikitch acknowledges that the problems facing reefs here are significant, but she remains optimistic that new information, including data from her shark study, will increase awareness and prompt action to protect reefs. “We are losing coral reefs at an astounding rate,” she said. “It’s like death by a thousand cuts. So when you have a success like this in a coral ecosystem you say, ‘Wow this is great.’”

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ALSO: Watch this video

Hope for Sharks and Reefs in Belize

Glover's Reef in Belize is a Marine Protected Area where strict limits on fishing have helped shark populations.

New market access rules, economic crisis affecting seafood industry 26-04-2010 Developing countries struggle with new challenges getting fish to market 45 million people are employed in fisheries and aquaculture, mostly in the developing world. 26 April 2010, Rome/Buenos Aires - Used to be, seafood was largely something only folks on the coasts got to enjoy, while fresh fish was for those lucky enough to live near streams or lakes. Nowadays, though, fish is everywhere. And not just Lake Perch or Salmon. Odd, exotic fish from far-away places. Tilapia. Swai. Mahi Mahi. Kingclip. Fish have gone global. They are, in fact, one of the world's most hotly traded food commodities: some 37 percent of all fish production — 53 million tonnes — is traded internationally. Exports of fish in 2008 were valued at a cool $102 billion. Click here for more: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/41427/icode/

Calif.'s costly trout recovery effort criticized

Conservation gone wrong?

By NOAKI SCHWARTZ, Associated Press Writer Noaki Schwartz, Associated Press Writer – Sun Apr 25, 1:59 pm ET


MALIBU, Calif. – In hopes of luring the endangered steelhead trout into the Santa Monica Mountains, California's transportation agency is planning to spend $935,000 to pave over part of a popular beach with cement and boulders to build a freeway of sorts for fish.
The project is the latest, yet far from the most unusual, steelhead recovery attempt by government agencies that have spent millions of dollars on concrete fish ladders, cameras, fishways and other contraptions to allow seagoing trout to spawn in Southern California streams.
The problem, even some conservationists say, is that there is little evidence construction efforts since the 1980s have done anything except absorb taxpayer dollars. The work to save the species has led to about a dozen concrete fishways at a cost of more than $16.7 million.
A $1 million fish ladder — a structure designed to allow fish to migrate upstream over a barrier — may cost $7.5 million in stimulus funds to rebuild. Another fish ladder would require fish to leap 8 feet to reach it. Studies alone for replacing a third ladder have cost an estimated $3 million.
"If we do a series of crappy projects like fish ladders to nowhere ... then the public trust for giving money for these types of projects is going to go away," said conservationist Mark Abramson of the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Foundation.
Now the California Department of Transportation wants to build a passage for steelhead here across Dan Blocker State Beach, named for the actor who played Hoss on TV's Bonanaza. The artificial streambed, up to 60 feet wide and extending 102 feet onto the beach, would create pools allowing the fish to swim under the Pacific Coast Highway, then upstream.
The plan makes no sense to restaurant owner Daniel Forge, who decided to sell a patch of property to CalTrans after the agency threatened to use eminent domain.
"They decided we were going to bring back steelhead to the stream but I don't think there were ever any steelhead along there," Forge said.
Steelhead were once teeming in Southern California waters. Over the years, however, development encroached and waterways were channelized, cutting off their pathways to spawning grounds.
When the fish were listed as endangered in 1997, only an estimated 500 adults were left from Santa Barbara to Mexico. Many believe southern steelhead are worth saving because they are more adaptable than steelhead elsewhere and could be key to the survival of the species.
While there are no hard numbers to show steelhead are rebounding from these construction efforts, wildlife officials say anecdotal evidence suggests more adult fish are spawning.
Unconventional methods are necessary sometimes, they say, because ripping out dams and other obstructions to spawning is not realistic.
"Nobody really wants (construction) as a solution," said Mary Larson, who oversees steelhead recovery for Fish and Game in Southern California. But she believes the CalTrans proposal to build a fishway in Malibu could work. "Frogs just need good, quiet waters, birds need good tall trees to nest but my fish need to travel."
Conservationists believe that federal and state agencies should push more for restoring the species' natural environment, such as projects that have successfully cleared waterways of debris and crossings from miles of waterways.
National Marine Fisheries Service has created a recovery plan for the species that is expected to be finalized later this year. That plan would coordinate recovery efforts and would emphasize restoration of historic habitat.
Exasperation over getting the fish where they need to go has led to some imaginative proposals over the years, such as trucking the fish to spawning grounds or building fish elevators to get them over dams.
But government agencies have footed the bill for many projects including the concrete fish ladders and fishways to help the steelhead get around dams and other structures. The ladders are expensive, short-lived, require maintenance and have even been known to harm fish.
"Fish ladders don't work like the engineers have them work on paper," said Matt Stoecker, a biological consultant who has spent years working on steelhead recovery.
Even when ladders are successful, recovery is a slow process and sometimes upgrades are necessary.
For example, the United Conservation District in Ventura needs to replace a 20-year-old $1.5 million ladder at a cost of up to $25 million, according to general manager Michael Solomon.
The agency has already installed lights, sonar equipment, special trash grates and video equipment. The district is looking at hiring a third full-time staffer to do nothing but deal with the fish.
"We're a public agency and we need to keep reminding folks people are not going to spend endless money," said Solomon, adding the district rejected one suggestion to build a rock ramp across a dam for the fish at an estimated cost of $60 million.
Mark Capelli, the steelhead recovery coordinator with the fisheries service, called the recovery one of the more ambitious in the agency's history.
"We have a complicated situation we're dealing with and I don't think we've ever taken a position that there's only one way," he said. "There may be circumstances where artificial methods are appropriate and necessary."



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Endangered Eels!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1009_031009_endangeredeels.html

representation of the amounts of pharmaceutical drugs found in fish

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/04/pollution/fish-pharm

Experts Fear 'Walking' Fish Migration

March 26, 2010

Release from: ABC News (Australia)

Researchers are concerned an invasive fish species could reach the Australian mainland from the Torres Strait.

The fish can survive for long periods out of water and researchers are concerned it may spread to Cape York rivers in far north Queensland.

Climbing perch, a native of southern Asia, have been found on Saibai Island.

The head of the Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research, Dr Damien Burrows, says the perch were found in a freshwater reservoir on the island after a surprise encounter.

He says it is believed the fish reached the island from southern Papua New Guinea rivers.

"Someone landed at the airstrip on Saibai Island and got out of the plane and there was a fish walking across the tarmac and we took a photograph of it and sent it to the Queensland Museum and they identified it as a climbing perch, so we then did a trip to find the population where it was living on the island which we were successfully able to do," he said.

He says the perch could easily reach Cape York aboard dinghies.

"They're physiologically capable of surviving in the bottom of a boat, so if they were accidentally caught in a net or something, the net was pulled into the boat and they dropped off into the bottom and the boat then drove to another island or the mainland then they should be able to survive that trip," he said.

He says regional surveillance is the best defence against the pest fish.

Dr Burrows says the reservoir cannot be poisoned because it is the main water supply on the island.

"I think it's really important that people who may be working out there around the Torres Strait or northern Cape York Peninsula familiarise themselves with this fish and what to do if they encounter one and we've produced some fact sheets which if you did an internet search should pop up as well," he said.