Petrels, White Orca, large-billed reed-warbler, and a 6-Legged Octopus

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: environment, ocean
• Date: Sat, Mar 8, 2008

Here’s a few sitings of some unique animals noted in this week’s news:

• A bird species not seen for 80 years has been rediscovered near Papua New Guinea, experts said Friday. The Beck’s petrel, long thought to be extinct, was photographed last summer by an Israeli ornithologist in the Bismarck Archipelago, a group of islands northeast of New Guinea. MSNBC
• A white orca was recently spotted in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The whale was spotted last month while scientists aboard the Oscar Dyson—a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research ship—were conducting an acoustic survey of Pollock, a whitefish, near Steller sea lion haul-out sites. National Geographic
• A wetland bird that eluded scientists for nearly 130 years has been rediscovered at a wastewater treatment plant in Thailand, Birdlife International announced Wednesday. The large-billed reed-warbler had not been seen since its discovery in 1867 in the Sutlej Valley of India. Because it was so rare, scientists had long debated whether it represented a true species or was an aberrant individual of a more common species. That debate appears to be settled after Philip Round, an ornithologist at Bangkok’s Mahidol University, captured one of the birds on March 27, 2006, at a wastewater treatment center outside Bangkok. MSNBC.
• The world’s first 6-legged octopus was found by aquarium staffers. Worry not, this condition stems from a birth defect, and does not represent a new species. CNN

• Tags: beautiful earth, science

haiku: winter melts to spring

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: haiku
• Date: Fri, Mar 7, 2008

• Tags: beautiful earth, California, haiku, seasons changing

in love with my blooming fruit tree

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: gardening
• Date: Sat, Mar 1, 2008

• Tags: beautiful earth, garden

haiku: deers down the hill on the property we might buy

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: haiku
• Date: Fri, Feb 29, 2008

• Tags: beautiful earth, California, haiku, moving to lakeview

Bay Area Waterfalls

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: go play!
• Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2008

The Chronicle has a list of some choice Bay Area locations to see winter waterfalls.

image: photo of Canyon Creek Falls, Sierra Nevada Mtns, late summer/early fall 2007

• Tags: beautiful earth, California

New Map Highlights Most Impacted Ocean Areas

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: ocean
• Date: Fri, Feb 15, 2008

Researchers have published a new map highlighting the human impact on oceans worldwide. Their findings depict oceans in serious trouble, with multiple impacts including drastically declining fish stocks, dying coral reefs, pollution, and changing water chemistry.

The map, published in the journal Science, highlights ocean areas where human caused impacts such as overfishing and coastal pollution are having the heaviest toll. Pristine areas, shown in blue, are found in oceans near the poles. More-stressed ocean waters are yellow and orange. Trouble spots are red.

According to the map, the most heavily impacted ocean areas include Europe’s North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Persian Gulf, and parts of the Atlantic near the East Coast of the United States. The least impacted areas are largely near the poles, but also appear along the north coast of Australia, and small, scattered locations along the coasts of South America, Africa, Indonesia and in the tropical Pacific.

The researchers developed an ecosystem-specific, multiscale spatial model to synthesize 17 global data sets of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change for 20 marine ecosystems. Their analysis indicates that no area is unaffected by human influence and that a large fraction (41%) is strongly affected by multiple drivers

Data are available in graphical form, as well as Google Earth format, from the National Center of Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. Among the specific datasets are those highlighting areas of overfishing (including fisheries with high bycatch impact), pollution, invasive species, acidification, and climate change.

Listen to NPR’s Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered. Talk of the Nation featured guests Larry Crowder, professor of marine biology and director of the Center for Marine Conservation, Duke University; Ben Halpern, associate research biologist, University of California, Santa Barbara; Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine biology, professor of zoology, Oregon State University; and Carl Safina, co-founder and president of the Blue Ocean Institute at the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

• Tags: beautiful earth, climate, endangered species, environment, google earth, oceans, science