Articles by Andrew Sharpless
Andrew Sharpless is the CEO of Oceana, the world's largest international nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation. Visit www.oceana.org.
All Articles
-
Duplicitous sand dollars and tenacious sea worms
A federal appeals court ruled that a Hong Kong company should not have been forced to give up the proceeds from 32 tons of shark fins seized by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2002 from the vessel King Diamond II. The 64,695 pounds of shark fins were valued at $618,956 ...
... a three-year study found a thriving reef fish community around three freighters sunk off the coast of Florida ...
... a graduate student discovered that sand dollar larvae can clone themselves in an effort to escape predation ...
-
Not anytime soon, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals
The brutal practice of shark finning got a boost this week as the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a Hong Kong company should not have lost the proceeds from 64,695 pounds of shark fins seized by the Coast Guard in 2002.
Let me repeat that figure: 64,695 pounds of shark fins alone were on that boat. That's the weight of more than eleven Cadillac Escalades. Or eight female African elephants. Or 470 Oxford dictionaries.
-
Friendly cetaceans and smelly algae
A federal advisory panel weighed a ban on salmon fishing in California after a dramatic decline in the fishery. "The situation now is unprecedented and off the charts," said the executive director of the Pacific Fishery Management Council ...
... a University of Tasmania scientist discovered two new types of toxic algae in the Southern Ocean, which he believes must be calculated into fishing quotas to prevent further overfishing ...
... ocean acidification caused the ears of baby damselfish to develop incorrectly ...
... it was discovered that fish that feed on plankton can smell an odor released by algae, and congregate near the source of the scent, since plankton feed on algae ...
-
Even more numbers to illuminate the vast ocean
Perhaps because it was released the same week as Ben Halpern and colleagues' excellent human impacts map, the new U.N. report "In Dead Water" has been met with little fanfare. It's too bad, because the report is a natural complement to the scientists' graphic illustration of the intersection between humans and the seas.
"In Dead Water" takes a big-picture look at the five primary threats facing the oceans: pollution, climate change, overfishing, invasive species, and habitat loss. You can download the report here (PDF); I plucked out some of its major findings in an oceanic ode to the Harper's Index. With apologies to Lewis Lapham:
