The Los Angeles Times has just run an excellent, if depressing, series called Altered Oceans. It details the tremendous environmental damage we have done to our oceans, some by greed, and some by carelessness, and some by accident. When I have a little more time I'd like to convert as much if the information as I can into a series of posts with placemarks. Until that time - at least until the LAT removes it from their website - you can find it at THIS LINK. There are excellent (flash presentation) photos, videos, and graphics.
The site may require (free) registration.

EDIT: The Los Angeles Times series Altered Oceans won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting on April 16, 2007 for this series.
EDIT: Here is a LINK to a post containing a graphic about Part 4 of this series.

Open the placemark to take a tour of the various trouble spots mentioned in the LAT article
Through overfishing, runoff from terrestrial farming, assuming that the ocean has an unlimited capacity to absorb and dilute waste, careless and cost-cutting and greed, we have changed the oceans. Great White sharks and mystical Krakins are not nearly as scary as the tiny, spineless creatures that are beginning to dominate the oceans. This post was principally derived from the first of a Los Angeles Times series of five articles by Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling, Times Staff Writers
Below are some photos from the LAT articles - lots more in the article.

Open the placemark to take a tour of the various trouble spots mentioned in the LAT article

In oceans polluted by run-off and purposely dumped sewage, depleted by overfishing and the mistaken belief that the ocean is limitless, the top of the food chain is being assaulted and replaced by microorganisms and simple algae. These plants have been in the oceans, basically unchanged, since before life climbed out onto land. But they now have an edge on the more complex forms of life again. The Los Angeles Times series "Altered Oceans" explores the changes and new hazards. This post and placemark folder are derived mostly from part 2 of the series, "Sentinals Under Attack". The series was written by By Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling, Times Staff Writers. LAT within the placemarks indicates direct or slightly altered material written by Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling. Images below are from the article.

Hey mate.

How about you get your facts right before you start putting pins all over the place indicating so called "bloom sites".

I am a frequent fisher of MoretonBay, Brisbane, Australia.

Have another look at the photos for that area. Your "bloom sites" for this area are actually mud flats. The photos were taken around low tide.

sO.. hOW MANY OTHERS ARE WRONG?


Get it right...

Thanks for the work in translating this. That it is global makes it tough. I would love to see just a regional focus, that would be scary enough for the California coast. The algae blooms in Australia look fine to me. They are where I would expect them to be, and you do have severe algae blooms in areas where there are low tide mud flats, the Hawaii picture even illustrates this. The science table was not readable as an overlay of bloom sites. I would rather you put this in a placemark box.

Bloom sites may not show evidence of toxic algal blooms at the time the imagery was acquired, but the LA Times article quoted sources indicating those marked locations had a history of blooms. Mud flats would be likely occurrence sites.

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The science table was not readable as an overlay of bloom sites. I would rather you put this in a placemark box.

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Good suggestion. Done.

2007 Update:

There have been many reports this year of the worst assault by domoic acid on marine life to date. The algal blooms which release the toxin are more widespread and more deadly than ever before.

Links and quotes are from several recent articles which appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

May 10, 2007

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The current outbreak of toxic algae off the Los Angeles Harbor is the most virulent on record, scientists say, so overburdening animal rehabilitation centers that some sickened sea lions are temporarily left to fend for themselves on Los Angeles County beaches.

"We just don't have the space to accommodate them all," said Lauren Palmer, staff veterinarian at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro. "We could have four or five centers and they would all be full like this one," she said, surveying the cages crammed with seals and sea lions � many of them lying listlessly in piles after suffering convulsions brought on by the algae's powerful neurotoxin.

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California sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, sea otters, pelicans, cormorants and other seabirds pick up the neurotoxin known as domoic acid by eating anchovies, sardines or shellfish that consume the algae that produce it.

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Although the algae, called Pseudo-nitzschia have long been in ocean waters in diluted concentrations, a shift occurred in 1998 when dense, virulent blooms were followed by waves of sick marine mammals and seabirds washing ashore in Central and Southern California. Similar episodes have recurred every year since, producing unusual growths of the algae that sometimes produce more of the toxin.

Scientists cannot explain the change. Some theorize that unusual currents are bringing nutrients up from the seafloor. Others attribute the problem to the influx of nitrogen and nutrients that spew from sewer pipes and wash off the land.

Many experts believe that over-harvesting of fish that used to keep algae in check contributes to the problem, and many blame coastal development that has removed 95% of California shoreline wetlands that once filtered coastal waters.

David Caron, a USC biological oceanographer, has been trying to discover the cause of the outbreaks. This spring, he and his assistants found the Pseudo-nitzschia bloom so thick off the mouth of the Los Angeles Harbor that it formed scummy clumps of the brown-green algae on the surface.

Blooms have been reported all along the West Coast this spring, but at four sites just outside the Los Angeles Harbor breakwater the neurotoxin spiked to levels never before recorded, Caron said.

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April 27,2007

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Scientists are particularly concerned about the toxin's effect on brown pelicans, which declined precipitously in California after DDT entered their food chain and caused the large seabirds to lay eggs with shells too fragile to support their weight. The birds remain on the endangered species list, although they have made considerable gains in recent years.

In the past several weeks, dozens of sea lions, dolphins and even whales have also washed ashore dead or dying from Venice to San Luis Obispo. Earlier this month in Ventura, an 8-foot juvenile minke whale washed up dead near the end of San Pedro Street at San Buenaventura State Beach. Lifeguards buried it in the sand.

In Santa Barbara, a 29-foot sperm whale washed ashore April 9 near Isla Vista. In both instances involving whales, investigators collected tissue samples from the carcasses in an effort to pinpoint the cause of death, but the carcass of the sperm whale may have been too decomposed to yield a final answer.

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In humans, domoic acid poisoning can cause vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, headache, dizziness, confusion, disorientation, loss of short-term memory, weakness, seizures, cardiac arrhythmias, coma and possibly death, according to the bird rescue center. Humans can be affected after eating contaminated shellfish, but cannot be poisoned simply by swimming in the ocean.

"In my opinion, domoic acid is the new DDT," Holcomb said. "If the effects of DA poisoning are cumulative in the brain, and we don't know that yet, it could have serious consequences on the population of California brown pelicans."

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By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 15, 2008
NEWPORT, ORE. -- -- Peering into the murky depths, Jane Lubchenco searched for sea life, but all she saw were signs of death.

Video images scanned from the seafloor revealed a boneyard of crab skeletons, dead fish and other marine life smothered under a white mat of bacteria. At times, the camera's unblinking eye revealed nothing at all -- a barren undersea desert in waters renowned for their bounty of Dungeness crabs and fat rockfish.


"We couldn't believe our eyes," Lubchenco said, recalling her initial impression of the carnage brought about by oxygen-starved waters. "It was so overwhelming and depressing. It appeared that everything that couldn't swim or scuttle away had died."

Upon further study, Lubchenco and other marine ecologists at Oregon State University concluded that that the undersea plague appears to be a symptom of global warming. In a study released today in the journal Science, the researchers note how these low-oxygen waters have expanded north into Washington and crept south as far as the California state line. And, they appear to be as regular as the tides, a lethal cycle that has repeated itself every summer and fall since 2002.

"We seem to have crossed a tipping point," Lubchenco said. "Low-oxygen zones off the Northwest coast appear to be the new normal."

Although scientists continue to amass data and tease out the details, all signs in the search for a cause point to stronger winds associated with a warming planet.

If this theory holds up, it means that global warming and the build-up of heat-trapping gases are bringing about oceanic changes beyond those previously documented: a rise in sea level, more acidic ocean water and the bleaching of coral reefs.

Low-oxygen dead zones, which have doubled in number every decade and exist around the world, have a variety of causes.

A massive dead zone off Louisiana is created each spring by a slurry of nutrient-rich farm runoff and sewage that flows out the Mississippi River, causing algae to bloom riotously, die and drift to the bottom to decompose. Bacteria then take over. In the process of breaking down the plant matter, they suck the oxygen out of the seawater, making it unable to support most forms of sea life.

Off Oregon, the dead zone appears to form because of changes in atmospheric conditions that create the oceanic river of nutrient-rich waters known as the California Current.

The California Current along the West Coast and the similar Humboldt Current off Peru and Benguela Current off South Africa are rarities. These powerful currents account for only about 1% of the world's oceans but produce 20% of the world's fisheries.

Their productivity comes from wind-driven upwelling of nutrient-rich waters from the deep. When those waters reach the surface and hit sunlight, tiny ocean plants known as phytoplankton bloom, creating food for small fish and shellfish that in turn feed larger marine animals up the food chain.

What's happening off Oregon, scientists believe, is that as land heats up, winds grow stronger and more persistent. Because the winds don't go slack as they used to do, the upwelling is prolonged, producing a surplus of phytoplankton that isn't consumed and ultimately dies, drifts down to the seafloor and rots.

"It fits a pattern that we're seeing in the Benguela Current," said Andrew Bakun, a professor at the University of Miami's Pew Institute for Ocean Science who wasn't part of the Oregon study. "It's reasonable to think these hypoxic and anoxic zones will increase as more greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere."

The Benguela Current has seen sporadic dead zones. There, rotting clumps of algae have also released clouds of hydrogen sulfide gas that smell like rotten eggs and poison sea life. Residents along the coast of South Africa and Namibia have witnessed waves of rock lobsters crawl onto shore to escape the noxious gases.

Bakun considers the Benguela, the world's most powerful current, to be a harbinger of changes in other currents. His theory is that warm, rising air over the land makes upwelling more frequent and more intense. The phenomenon, he said, is complicated by decades of heavy fishing that has reduced schools of sardines to a tiny fraction of their former abundance.

Not enough fish remain to consume phytoplankton before it dies and settles on the bottom, creating an anoxic dead zone.

Crab fisherman were the first to take note of Oregon's dead zone. Al Pazar recalls his alarm in 2002 when he pulled up his traps and found something seriously amiss.

"It was a good amount of crabs," Pazar said. "But they were dead, or dying or very, very weak. Those that we managed to keep alive didn't survive for long."

The fishermen called Oregon State, which dispatched a boat of researchers to investigate.

"It was a big mystery," Lubchenco said. "We didn't know what was killing them."

Fishermen found other oddities. As they pulled up their crab traps, they found baby octopuses, about the size of silver dollars, inching their way up the lines toward the buoys floating on the surface.

"I'd tell my crewmen, be careful with these cute little things," said Dennis Krulich, a longtime fishermen in Newport. "Peel them off the rope, and we'll put them back."

Only later did he realize that these babies were coming up from oxygen-depleted waters that hover near the seafloor, climbing to save their lives. "In 30 years of crabbing, I'd never seen anything like it before, Krulich said. "It's spooky, this dead-zone thing."

The size of the zone has fluctuated over the years. In 2006, it was the largest ever measured, covering an expanse slightly larger than Rhode Island.

Last year, it was smaller but detected over a longer stretch of coastline.

To make sure the phenomenon was actually new, Oregon State marine ecologist Francis Chan reconstructed data from water sampling at 3,100 stations dating to 1950.

He found that low-oxygen areas have long existed in deeper waters, but there was virtually no evidence until recently of hypoxic waters in prime fishing waters, which extend down to 165 feet.

"It's pretty clear this is unprecedented," Chan said. "It's never been detected since we began to measure oxygen levels."

So far, the seasonal dead zones, which begin as early as June and wrap up in September, have not hurt the crab fishery, which mostly operates in the winter. Many crabs and fish manage to flee the low-oxygen area. And fishermen have learned to set their traps in the wasteland of the previous year's dead zones, to catch crabs that return to feed on the detritus of all the suffocated animals.

Scientists say seafood caught in low-oxygen zones is not harmful to eat.

ken.weiss@latimes.com

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Superb post Hill

and a deserved Prize for the LA Times series