State of the Oceans — Log 65
YOUR WEEKLY BRIEFING FROM PARLEY
Above photo by Wojtek Meczynski. Header photo by David Robinson.
MARINE LIFE
The oceans are full of animals that ‘see’ in completely different ways. Sharks, for instance, inhabit a black and white underwater world – a bit like our friend Christian Vizl. Last week, we reported on new research about red brittle stars, only the second known creature to have extraocular vision: the ability to see without eyes. Now researchers studying cuttlefish have added another insight, but getting there wasn’t easy.
To investigate whether cuttlefish perceive depth like we do, they attached tiny 3D glasses to them, which most cuttlefish promptly removed. Some were happy to wear them, however, and revealed to researchers that their brains can work out how far away objects are by comparing the slightly divergent images perceived by each of their eyes. It is an ability that humans and a few other animals share too, making cuttlefish members of a pretty exclusive club.
READ MORE AND SEE CUTTLEFISH WEARING 3D GLASSES
CLIMATE ACTIVISM
A week on from Greta Thunberg’s 17th birthday, some good news on the climate front from her homeland. Passenger numbers at Swedish airports declined 4% last year, to around 40 million, from an all-time high the previous year. Airports operator Swedavia acknowledges that concern around climate change and the local anti-air-travel “flygskam” or “flight shame” movement as factors in the demand reduction. The trend originated in Sweden in 2017, when Swedish singer Staffan Lingberg pledged to give up flying. A number of people, most famously Thunberg, then decided to take on the challenge and now more than 22,500 people signed a pledge to go flight-free in 2020. The last occasions where air passenger numbers dropped had distinct reasons: the 9/11 terror attacks and the financial crash.
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WHALES
Researchers are benefiting from an every-increasing array of methods to study some of the most important creatures on our planet: whales. Parley x SnotBot® expeditions use drones to collect samples, other projects rely on sonar listening devices, and now a new project is turning to outer space. Called simply Counting Whales From Space, the work will involve gathering data from sources ranging from European space agencies to amateur radio operators, in order to create a probability map of where in the ocean the whales might be. Project members said their goal is to develop new technology that uses specially designed algorithms to process data and monitor whales. Exactly what the final product could look like is a work in progress, they say, but the goal is a “global watch on whale movement”.
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GLOBAL HEATING
New research suggests the world has already slowed global warming more successfully than the Kyoto Agreement – and we kind of did it by accident. The Montreal Protocol was an international agreement signed in 1987 to stop chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) destroying the ozone layer, but it now appears to be the first international treaty to successfully slow the rate of global warming too. The findings were made inadvertently when scientists set out to quantify how the original Protocol had affected atmospheric circulation around Antarctica. Remarkably, they found it has had a far greater impact on global warming than the Kyoto Agreement, which was specifically designed to reduce greenhouse gases. That deal will only reduce temperatures by 0.12°C by the middle of the century – compared to a full 1°C of mitigation from the Montreal Protocol.
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OCEAN ACIDIFICATION
Rising ocean acidity threatens to cause billions of dollars in damage to the U.S. economy, harming everything from crabs in Alaska to coral reefs in Florida and the Caribbean, NOAA researchers have announced in a new report. Carbon dioxide emissions and ocean acidification are occurring at an "unprecedented" rate, deteriorating valuable fisheries and tourist destinations across the United States and its territories, the agency says. Implicating human activities such as burning fossil fuels, the plan said that ocean acidification "is driven by the growing amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide absorbed and dissolved in the upper ocean." Ocean acidification makes it hard for some marine organisms such as lobsters, oysters and coral to build shells and skeletons. Researchers found that Alaska and US parts of the Caribbean will be hardest hit.
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