All Rivers Lead To The Sea - And They Take Their Plastic With Them

Continuing with the recent themes of our oceans there is an upcoming conference I’d like to bring to your attention.

A meeting of a UN Climate Change conference is planning to attempt to tackle plastic pollution in the sea.  Currently it is prohibited for a vessel to dump waste plastic overboard in any waters, both national and international waters. However there are presently no laws to make countries monitor and control the plastics entering the sea from land, through either rivers or being blown and dumped on beaches.  

This is a major issue as a 2015 study estimated that around eight million tons of  the 275 million tons of plastic generated annually enters the oceans from the land every year. It is also believed that this number is likely to increase tenfold by 2020. To put 8 tons in another way it’s the equivalent of five carrier bags per square foot of coastline globally, which is a staggering idea.

Hopefully when they meet some agreement can be reached in order to control this source of pollution at least to some degree. Unfortunately passing international laws is extremely difficult with countries such as the US not officially agreeing to them but sometimes volunteer to consider the option of abiding by them with not legal commitment which is at least a step in the right direction. 

All of this is continuing the UN commitment to significantly reducing plastic pollution by 2025. We can only hope that they achieve their goals in time.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from United Nation

Christmas Is Round The Corner - This Is An Ideal Gift!

With Christmas just round the corner and the idea of Christmas shopping in the front of most people’s minds, even though I’m sure most of you like me has only thought about it so far and has not actually bought anything yet.

I’ve come across this company through Facebook and from a look into it they look like an idea gift to give in this festive season.

4Ocean is a company which has been set up by a couple of surfaces who wanted to make a difference. They are attempting to reduce the 1.4 billion pounds of rubbish which enters the world’s oceans each year. They achieve this by selling bracelets, with the proceeds from each sale guaranteeing the removal of one pound of rubbish from the oceans.

So far their website (at time of publishing) says they have managed to remove 200,115 pounds from the oceans across the globe targeting both coastal beach clean ups and offshore regions at the same time.

So go check out their website at the link below and maybe give your friends and family a gift that also benefits the planet. 

4Ocean - get your Christmas shopping done here

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from 4Ocean

Check out this video from Primitive Technology

It's More Than Just A Fish - Whale Sharks

If you live in the UK I’m sure you’ll know that currently the BBC is airing a new series of Blue Planet II which is well worth watching if for some unknown reason you aren’t already. It was last nights episode on the open ocean and featured the animal I’ll be writing about today.

The Whale Shark as stated in the program is a little understood creature, we are yet to unravel the complex stages and behaviours of these creatures. Saying this we do know some interesting information on whale sharks.

As a species they are mainly found within the Indo-Pacific region with 75% of their population being present there whilst the other 25% can be found in the Atlantic Ocean. This being said studying these population reductions has led to scientist believing that Whale Shark numbers have fallen by over 50% in the last 75 years and they are currently categorised as endangered on the IUCN red list. These declines have been related to three main reasons. Fisheries are making up a large part for this decline, fishing for Whale Sharks is mainly undertaken in the South China Sea. Another cause is due to bycatch as it is believed that the presence of Whale Sharks indicate that there are Tuna around and so upon sighting, nets are set and inevitably Whale Sharks gets caught a

s well. A final reason is from vessel strikes, with the trade routes becoming increasingly busy as the need to transport goods intensifies more and more Whale Sharks are being found in shipping lanes. This is exacerbated as Whale Sharks regularly feed at the surface making them more vulnerable to collisions.

Whale Sharks can grow up to 20m long and reach a weight in excess of 34,000kg, and all of this mass is sustained by microscopic creatures. As it is well known Whale Sharks are filter feeders and filter out plankton and krill from suspension. They are capable of processing 6,000L an hour which passes over many thousands of teeth like structures. Whilst most of this feeding takes place at the surface where blooms are frequently found they can also dive over 700m to feed where blooms have gathered due to nutrient rich upwelling providing suitable conditions for their food sources.

It is possible to be able to identify individuals from their unique pattern of white spots on their backs. Thanks to this and tracking tags more and more has been learnt about Whale Shark behaviour in recent years. However we currently still don’t know all that much about their life whilst they are young this is because we are yet to find a Whale Shark nursery. It was suggested in Blue Planet however that as hundreds of Whale Sharks gather round the Galapagos Islands whilst pregnant that they could be giving birth in the depths around these islands so as to allow their young to avoid predation from there sharks.

In an attempt to protect Whale Sharks for future generations many larger fisheries have ceased target based fishing. As well as key coastal feeding areas such as Ningaloo reef (Australia), Gladden Spit (Belize) and many others in an attempt to provide suitable conditions to encourage population growth.  Hopefully these steps and an increased knowledge of these amazing creatures will result in the stabilisation of Whale Shark populations, leading to population growth in the future.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from BBCWorldwide

 Check out this video from KayakSessionTV 

Mass Factory Shutdown - Breath That Fresh (ish) Air

An announcement from China earlier this week may mark the first of many steps which need to be taken to help improve the mess we’ve made of this planet. A crackdown by Chinese officials has led to the temporarily closure of more than 80,000 factors. These factories and some of their managing directors have also been charged with criminal offences for breaches in emissions over the last year which effect air quality. This is all part of China’s Communist party attempting to hit it’s 2017 pollution target, and so with that in mind they have shut forty percent of their factories.

There are currently two significant environmental targets China is hoping to reach within set time frames which are related to air quality. The first of which being to reduce the concentration of hazardous fine particulate matter such as soot, smoke and liquid droplets produced from industry to 35 micrograms per cubic meter by 2035. Whilst the other target is to reduce their overall emissions from manufacturing by 30% as of the end of 2017, a target which was announced in 2013.

China is yet hit their target of the 30% reduction by the end of 2017 and so may have been a contributing factor for these mass closures of factories, and although they have left it till almost the very end of 2017 it is a good sign that they have started to take action.

These closures have clearly had effects on companies as they have been forced to stop production and can’t complete orders, and people are having their jobs affected. However it is believe by the masses to be a good thing. This is because air pollution in China is believed to be attributing to somewhere between 700,000 -2.2million deaths a year, so increased air quality will have a significant effect of life expectancy of the Chinese people, especially in urban areas.  In places such as Beijing the PM2.5 scale which is used to measure the concentration of hazardous fine particulate matter reached as high as 976 micrograms in early October. This occurs when weather conditions result in static air so without the aid of wind dispersal the particulates build up rapidly. This is a concern as the World Health Organization puts the maximum healthy exposure at 25 micrograms.

Annual median concentration of PM2.5

China unfortunately is not the only country known for having extremely poor air quality within its urban areas but it is not on its own. Other cities, mainly across the developing world have similarly poor air quality. A 2016 study claimed that 80% of cities have air quality which did not fall within the World Health Organizations guidelines. This included cities such as Delhi (India) at 122 micrograms, Al Jubail (Saudi Arabia) 152 micrograms, and Zabol (Iran) 217 micrograms.

So hopefully this is the first of many steps for China to manage to improve their air quality, and once these temporary closures are sorted the overall outcome is a more positive one.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this link which gives real time global air quality

https://waqi.info/

Check out this video from

Need To Find Some Explosives - Are Rats The Answer

So as a species I’m sure that most of you will consider what I’ll be writing about today a pest or vermin which spread disease. The reason I’m going to be discussing this species today is actually because of a program I was watching on Netflix the other day.

Rats are an amazing group and there are actually 51 different species within the group Rattus, some of which are endemic to certain areas such as the Polynesian rat whilst others have been transported across the world mainly through human activities such as the brown rat. The brown rat has a range which covers nearly the entire world and this is due to them stowing away on ships during the age of expansion.

There is however a certain species I was planning on writing about today and that is African giant muroid rodents. This species as the name suggests can originally be found across Africa and is currently causing all sorts of problems as an invasive species in the Florida Keys were a private breeder allowed several to escape and are believe to be the source of the 2003 monkeypox outbreak in the area. Usually however they are found in colonies made up of around twenty individuals in forests or thickets. They feed on vegetables, insects, crabs and invertebrate and use their pouches to carry large amount of food back to their burrows.  They have rather poor eyes sight and so usually depend on an excellent sense of smell.

pouched rat, which isn’t actually a true rat but are from a branch of

It is in fact its sense of smell which has brought them to my attention.

What does a dog; bee and pouched rat have in common? 

There are all used as search animals to smell things which have been hidden such as money, drugs and in the case of the pouched rat explosives. That’s right pouched rats are being used in different areas of the world to sniff out landmines. For instance in Cambodia there are teams of them attempting to clear the millions of lost mines due to years of conflict. This is important work as in 2013 there were 3,308 casualties worldwide from landmines and most of these casualties were made up of children or farms.

Rats are an ideal animal for this jobs as they are highly intelligent as well as being light enough to be able to walk over the mines without setting them of by accident. An individual is able to search over 200 square meters in 20 minutes. This is achieved by the rat being on two ropes to guide it in a grid like pattern to efficiently search the area.

Since 1997 APOPO (the Belgium non-profit organisation) has helped clear 13,200 mines in Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola and Cambodia (2015), which has opened up a vast area of land which was previously too dangerous to enter.

Not only are the pouched rats able to smell explosives they can also be trained to sniff out tuberculosis which has a how other load of benefits for humans. So although rats can spread disease (not as much as you might think though) there are some out there working to help humanity correct its mistakes.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this link from BBC Earth

A Second Failed breeding Season - Adelie Penguins

For the second time in three years the Adelie penguin colony found in the east of the Antarctic has failed to successfully raise a single chick from an estimated 36,000 chicks. This is a tragic event.

The Adelie penguin is the known for being one of the most southerly breeding bird in the world and can be found along the Antarctic coast from October to February. They are easily identifiable as their entire heads are covered in black plumage with the adult penguins also having a thin circle of white around each of their eyes. Currently the Adelie penguin is marked as least concern on the IUCN red list as of a 2016 survey by BirdLife International.  This assessment is actually an improvement compared to the 2012 study where as a species they were defined as near threatened but with the recent failed breeding season the jury is out their current classification. Luckily as the Adelie penguin has a lifespan unto 16 years so as long as the adults survive a failed breeding season can easily be overcome but if their frequency increase that’s when populations can fall.

So it is mainly believed that the failure of this breeding season was down to reduced number krill which Adelie penguin’s primary food source is making up to 98% of their food during certain times of the year. The penguins have been seen to feed at depths of 150m under the surface.  Currently the WWF is calling for a ban on krill fishing in the area around the colony which would at least help to relieve this particular pressure on the Adelie penguins. Ideally there would be the creation of a new marine protected area where no or at least very limited fishing would take place and so benefit not only the Adelie penguins but other species in the area.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from the BBC

Help The Planet - From Your Sofa!

So I actually found out about this while sitting in my lounge on youtube. It was one of those thirty second adverts which you can skip after five seconds, however unlike almost all the other adverts I watched it to completion for once.

The product which was being advertised was a new search engine called Ecosia. It functions exactly the same as google except the advertising revenue which it generates as you use the search engine is put towards planting trees across the world.  A cool feature of it is that the is a real time counter of how many trees they have managed to fund as a collective but also a personal count of how many searches you have undertaken in the top right. According to Ecosia it takes on average 45 searches for you to create enough funds to plant a tree.

So a few facts about Ecosia as a search engine, they claim to currently process 56 searches a second with over 5.5 million active users. Which are some big numbers and at the current time of writing this they have planted 14,606,959 trees which is amazing. Now as a search engine it is never going to replace Google in most people eyes as they currently have 1.17 billion users with 40,000 searches a second but is they could achieve even a 1/20 of these numbers it would create something massive. 

So if everyone was to use this search engine in conjunction with Google it would start to make a real difference.

So go check it out and get planting those trees (through proxy)

https://www.ecosia.org/

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from Ecosia

Amur leopard - A Zoo Where You Never See The Exhibit

I’M BACK!!!

So it’s been a while but here’s another post I hope you’ll enjoy.

I recently saw this post about the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park and thought I'd bring it here. They are about to receive a pair of Amur leopards which they hope to be able to breed from, and in turn release these cubs into the wild in Russia.

This article in particular caught my eye as the article went on to say that the society was planning on keeping these animals off show in a specially designed enclosure. The aim of this isolation is to be able to rear the cubs wild so as not to familiarise them with humans, making it possible for reintroduction into Russia to be an option. This is a brilliant concept and isn’t the first time a strategy such as this has been employed but it does help to signify the commitment the society has to conservation. As although many Zoos do focus on conservation and education they are business and so need to make money and receive charitable donations to remain open. Restricting access to exhibits particularly large carnivores which are usually attract large crowds will reduce the revenue. So it does help to reinforce a zoos commitment to conservation as well as getting them a lot of good advertisement through it.

So a bit of information on the Amur leopard and the reasons why the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park has taken these step in an attempt to help in the survival of the species.

Currently there are believed to be fewer than 70 wild leopards. This is an extremely low number but believe it or not the population has actually doubled in the last seven or so years , with the estimated population in 2007 being 30. As a species they were driven to almost extinction due to human activities putting them under pressure through, unsustainable logging, forest fires, farming, and industrial developments. Along with being hunted mercilessly for many years for many products such as highly prized fur, and to make up parts of traditional Asian medicines.

Amur leopards mainly inhabit mature forests in the far east of Russia and north-east china, it is also possibly that a few animals might also exist in North Korea but clearly due to diplomatic issues its hard to conduct surveys to confirm this.

They feed mostly on roe deer and sika deer but will also take other mammals such as badgers and hares.  To feed on their prey carcasses they have evolved specially adapted tongue which has been covered in denticles. These are tiny hook shaped structures which are used to help the leopard scrape meat from bones and so effectively making the most out of every kill.

Thanks for reading!

The news article from BBC 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-39666713

Check out this video from northkiteboarding