New Caledonia bans shark fishing

Google – AFP, 24 April 2013 

An aerial view of the Mangrove of the French Pacific island territory of New

Caledonia, in September 2006 (AFP/File, Marc Le Chelard)

NOUMEA, New Caledonia — The government of the Pacific paradise of New Caledonia said Wednesday it had decided to ban fishing of sharks, which are being decimated to feed growing demand for luxury goods.

"New Caledonia took the decision to ban the fishing, capture, detention or commercialisation of all species of sharks" in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) -- an area roughly the size of South Africa, authorities in the French territory said.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), humans kill about 100 million sharks each year, mostly for their fins, which are used for expensive, luxury soups in China.

Conservationists warn that dozens of species are under threat. Over the past 100 years, 90 percent of the world's sharks have disappeared, mostly because of overfishing, the FAO says.

Shark-fin soup was once a luxury enjoyed just by China's elite, but as the country's 1.3 billion people have grown wealthier and incorporated it into their festivities, shark populations have been increasingly decimated.

The government of New Caledonia also banned so-called "shark-feeding", a popular adrenalin-fuelled tourist activity that consists in giving food to the animals to observe them from a close vantage point.

The territory joins other countries in the region to have created shark sanctuaries, including French Polynesia, Palau and Cook Islands.

"Asian flotillas don't come to New Caledonia's EEZ but this will stop any attempt to do so. It's a really good decision, as it affects all species," said Thea Jacob of the WWF.

New Caledonia's decision joins a growing trend of protecting shark species worldwide, despite opposition from countries such as Japan and China that support shark fishing.

Last month, a decision to restrict exports of the oceanic whitetip shark, the porbeagle, three types of hammerhead and the manta ray won final approval by the 178-member Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The species now join the great white shark, the whale shark and the basking shark, which already enjoy international trade controls.

Is climate change taking a break?

Deutsche Welle, 18 April 2013

The cold start into spring has made people in parts of Europe wonder if the climate is really warming. Global temperatures have not been rising in recent years. Is the earth cooling instead of warming?

Looking at the average temperature over five years during the last 15 years, global temperatures might appear to be flattening out.

"Over the last decade there has been very little new warming," says Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. The development is not unexpected, he told DW: "We are confident that human emissions of greenhouse gases have caused a large component of the warming over the last 150 years, but at the same time we do not expect every year to be warmer than the last. There are reasons why temperatures may remain flat for a decade and continue to warm later on." Hawkins cites periods in the 1960s and 1970s when temperatures were actually cooling.

The current flattening out of the temperature curve could be due to natural fluctuation:

"The earth's system undergoes variability on decadal time scales, which causes heat to be mixed into the deeper ocean. We think that's what's going on at the moment. Some of the heat is being mixed down into the deep ocean, where we do not observe it as well, so the surface is not heating up as much as it might have done."

Countries like China need power
for development

Another possible reason Hawkins mentions is the increased burning of coal in countries like China and India. The particulates produced help reflect solar radiation back into space, and so cool the planet. He stresses it is not yet possible to say whether the current slow-down in temperature rise is being caused by natural variability or is human-induced.

Too short a time to tell

Peter Lemke is head of Climate Science at Germany's Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine studies (AWI). He warns against taking a short five-year average as an indicator of how the climate is developing:

"When it comes to climate processes, we always look at 30 year periods", he told DW. "And for the last 30 years there is a clear upward trend." Using a shorter time span means that one single year can distort the picture. If, for instance, 1998, an exceptionally hot year, is taken as the start or end of a five-year period, the trend would appear to be rising or falling, accordingly. Lemke says temperatures have indeed risen in the last 15 years - if you look at the overall development and not at shorter intervals within the time span. "2010 was the warmest year from a global perspective," says Lemke. "2005 was not far behind it. Since 1978, temperatures have not been within the normal range but considerably above it." "Normal" means an average measured over a 30-year period.

 Global temperatures continue to rise

But certainty that global warming is happening does not mean certainty over its effect, says Lemke: "The question is: how sensitive is our climate system to the rise in the CO2 concentration? And what will it mean in terms of precipitation, temperature rise or ice melt? That is a complicated issue."

But this very issue is the crucial one for those who have to take decisions about preparing for and adapting to climate change. A whole range of different models estimate the likely temperature rise in the next 100 years as somewhere between 1.5 and 6 degrees Celsius. The next IPPC report, due to be published in 2014, is unlikely to be able to solve the problem of this wide range of estimates and methods, says Lemke. Nevertheless, he says the current slow-down of the warming rate is no reason to stop worrying about climate change.

British scientist Hawkins thinks there may be a "slight downwards nudge" in the IPCC estimates of climate sensitivity. Nevertheless, he says, "we are still predicting a large warming over coming decades. It may be that we have slightly more time than we did before, which is obviously a good thing, but the impacts are still projected to occur. "

Climate warming = colder winters?

The long winter and cold spring which might give people in western Europe the impression the earth is cooling rather than warming have been caused by a stable area of high pressure over Scandinavia - a weather phenomenon rather than climate change. AWI climate chief Lemke stresses that seen from a global point of view, the winter was warmer than usual.

 It's a climate paradox that melting
ice could mean colder winters

"The interesting thing is that some climate studies indicate that a stable area of high pressure over Scandinavia like this one could occur more often when the pack ice in the Arctic has been significantly reduced in the previous summer and autumn", Lemke explains. This lack of ice means the ocean warms up and releases the warmth into the atmosphere in the autumn. That disturbs the usual circulation patterns, so that we get the area of high pressure, and that it is more stable than usual." In 2012, Arctic sea ice coverage reached a record low. The long period of cold spring weather would seem to confirm the theory expressed by Vladimir Petoukhov from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. When he published his paper in late 2010, his comment was "hard winters do not contradict our image of global warming. On the contrary, they complete the picture. "

Related Articles:

Antarctic summer ice melting 10 times faster: study

Is global warming causing harsher winters?

THE RELATIONSHIP TO GAIA - April 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

New Mini Ice Age

"The weather you have today, and all the alarming attributes of it, is a scenario of what was scheduled to happen on Earth anyway. I review again that the weather changes you are seeing prophesied by myself, 21 years ago, are not a surprise. The changes are not caused by the pollutants you put in the air. You call it global warming and that's a nice phrase, and perhaps that will get you to put less pollutants in the air – a very good thing. But what you are seeing in the weather shift today was not caused by Humans putting things into the air. It would have happened anyway in about 300 years."

"We've called this process the water cycle, since it's all about water, not about air. The water is the predominant attribute of Gaia and of the weather cycle you're seeing. More predominant is the temperature of it. The cycle is ice to water and water to ice, and has been repeated on this planet over and over and over. It is not new. It is not exceptional. It is not frightening. But it's a cycle that modern humanity has not seen before, and it's a long cycle that is beyond the life span of a Human Being. Therefore, it tends to be overlooked or not seen at all !"

"In the days of the Lemurians, the water level of the Pacific Ocean was almost 400 feet lower, and that's only 50,000 years ago. [Kryon invites science to check this out – the water level at that time.] That was a water cycle working, and the reason it was lower was due to so much of the water being stored as ice. Today you're going through another water cycle that will eventually lead to cooling. The last one was in the 1400s."

"Science sees that at about 1650. As mentioned, they are so slow there is no remembrance that a Human has of them except in past writings and in the rings of the trees. The time span of the changes is so great that environmental record keeping does not exist in the form that it does today. But you can still look at the rings of the trees and at the striations of the rocks and can generally figure out that a few hundred years ago, you had a mini-ice age. Now you're going to have another one." 

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

“… So now we've refreshed that which we have said before, a review. You are in the middle of a cycle that will bring cooling to the planet. It is not a heat cycle, but rather a cooling cycle. But it always starts with a short heat cycle. It has been here before. It will come again. It is a long cycle - one generation plus five years. That's how long it's going to last. It starts with the melting of the ice caps, which is far more than any of you have seen in your lifetime or those of your ancestors. It is a cycle whose repetition is thousands of years long, but one that has not yet been recorded to the books of Human record. But it's definitely been recorded in the cores of the ice and in the rings of the trees.

Thousands of years old, it is, and it happens in a cyclical way. It's about water. It starts with that which is the melting of the ice caps to a particular degree, which has a profound effect on the planet in all ways. You can't have that happen without seeing life change as well as Gaia change and you've seeing it already. What happens when you take that which is heavy on the poles [ice] and you melt it? It then becomes cold water added to that which is a very, very gentle and finite balance of temperature in the seas of the planet (1). The first thing that happens is a redistribution of the weight of water on the thin crust of the earth from ice at the poles to new water in the seas. The results become earthquakes and volcanoes, and you're seeing them, aren't you? You are having earthquakes in places that are not supposed to have earthquakes. Volcanoes are coming to life in a way that you've not seen before on a regular basis. There will be more. Expect them.

Is it too much to ask of a Human Being that if you live by a volcano that you know might erupt, maybe you ought to move? Yet there will be those who say, "It hasn't erupted in my lifetime or my parents' lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime; therefore, it won't." You may have a surprise, for all things are changing. That is what is happening to Gaia. ….“

"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version) 

"...The Weather... Again

My partner has been "against the grain" in the past years, giving you what I have channelled about the weather. Is it global warming? No. Is it going to get better? No. This is a two-generation cycle. There will continue to be earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and storms. This is a recalibration of life in the ocean, and humanity must go through this in any way they can. This is a cycle, a known and expected one, but since you haven't gone through it in modern times, it's not well understood yet. ..."

Sharks dive by the moon: study

Google – AFP, 16 April 2013 

Image taken on June 20, 2009 shows a Blue Corner shark off the coast of

 the Pacific island nation of Palau (Pew Environment Group/AFP/File, Todd

Essick)

SYDNEY — The moon and water temperature affect the diving behaviour of sharks, researchers reported Tuesday, in a discovery that could help prevent fishermen from catching the marine predators inadvertently.

A team from the University of Western Australia's Oceans Institute and the government-run Australian Institute of Marine Science spent nearly three years monitoring grey reef sharks off Palau in the Pacific.

They tagged 39 sharks -- common on coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific region -- and used acoustic telemetry to follow them, finding they stayed in deep water on full moon nights but rose to the shallows with the new moon.

Similar patterns have previously been recorded in species such as swordfish, yellowfin and big eye tuna, suggesting the reef shark behaviour was related to feeding.

Image taken on June 20, 2009 by the

Pew Environment Group shows a Blue

Corner shark off the coast of Palau

(Pew Environment Group/AFP/File,
Todd Essick)

The study also said it may be an anti-predator response where reef sharks seek to avoid increased light nearer the surface that may aid the hunting abilities of larger sharks.

"We also found that the diving behaviour of grey reef sharks was related to water temperature," said lead researcher Gabriel Vianna.

The sharks, mostly adult females, dived to an average depth of 35 metres (114 feet) in winter when deeper water was colder and 60 metres in spring when temperatures warmed up.

In summer, when the warmer layer of surface water expanded, the sharks tended to move in a broader range of depths.

The authors said that because sharks were cold-blooded, they may prefer warmer waters to conserve energy.

The research, published in the science journal PLOS ONE, also found that the time of day could affect how deeply sharks dive.

"We were surprised to see sharks going progressively deeper during the morning and the exact inverse pattern in the afternoon, gradually rising towards the surface," Vianna said.

"This matches how light changes on the reef during the day. To our knowledge, this is the first time such patterns have been observed in detail for reef sharks."

Vianna said the research had conservation implications with their diving behaviour potentially helping prevent sharks being inadvertently caught by fisherman at different times of the day.

"In places such as Palau, which relies heavily on marine tourism and where sharks are a major tourist attraction, the fishing of a few dozen sharks from popular dive sites could have a very negative impact on the national economy," she said.

Antarctic summer ice melting 10 times faster: study

Google – AFP, 15 April 2013

A peguin lands on the ice in Antarctica, November 1, 2011 (Antarctic

Ocean Alliance/AFP/File)

SYDNEY — Summer ice in the Antarctic is melting 10 times quicker than it was 600 years ago, with the most rapid melt occurring in the last 50 years, a joint Australian-British study showed Monday.

A research team from the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey drilled a 364-metre (1,194 feet) long ice core from James Ross Island in the continent's north to measure past temperatures in the area.

Visible layers in the ice core indicated periods when summer snow on the ice cap thawed and then refroze.

A helicopter from the Royal Navy vessel HMS

 Endurance brings scientists and equipment

 to James Ross Island in 2008 (Australian

National University/AFP/File, Jack Treist)

By measuring the thickness of these melt layers, the scientists were able to examine how the history of melting compared with changes in temperature at the ice core site over the last 1,000 years.

"We found that the coolest conditions on the Antarctic peninsula and the lowest amount of summer melt occurred around 600 years ago," said lead author Nerilie Abram of the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences.

"At that time, temperatures were around 1.6 Celsius lower than those recorded in the late 20th century and the amount of annual snowfall that melted and refroze was about 0.5 percent.

"Today, we see almost 10 times as much of the annual snowfall melting each year.

"Whilst temperatures at this site increased gradually in phases over many hundreds of years, most of the intensification of melting has happened since the mid-20th century," she added.

The research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, is only the second reconstruction of past ice melt on the Antarctic continent.

Abram said it helped scientists gain more accurate projections about the direct and indirect contribution of Antarctica's ice shelves and glaciers to global sea level rise.

"What it means is that the Antarctic peninsula has warmed to a level where even small increases in temperature can now lead to a big increase in summer ice melt," she said.

Summer ice in the Antarctic is melting

 10 times quicker than it was 600 years ago,

 survey shows (Antarctic Ocean Alliance/

AFP/File)

"This has important implications for ice instability and sea level rise in a warming climate."

Robert Mulvaney, from the British Antarctic Survey, led the ice core drilling expedition and co-authored the paper.

"Having a record of previous melt intensity for the peninsula is particularly important because of the glacier retreat and ice shelf loss we are now seeing in the area," he said.

"Summer ice melt is a key process that is thought to have weakened ice shelves along the Antarctic peninsula leading to a succession of dramatic collapses, as well as speeding up glacier ice loss across the region over the last 50 years."

Related Articles:

Is global warming causing harsher winters?

THE RELATIONSHIP TO GAIA - April 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

New Mini Ice Age

"The weather you have today, and all the alarming attributes of it, is a scenario of what was scheduled to happen on Earth anyway. I review again that the weather changes you are seeing prophesied by myself, 21 years ago, are not a surprise. The changes are not caused by the pollutants you put in the air. You call it global warming and that's a nice phrase, and perhaps that will get you to put less pollutants in the air – a very good thing. But what you are seeing in the weather shift today was not caused by Humans putting things into the air. It would have happened anyway in about 300 years."

"We've called this process the water cycle, since it's all about water, not about air. The water is the predominant attribute of Gaia and of the weather cycle you're seeing. More predominant is the temperature of it. The cycle is ice to water and water to ice, and has been repeated on this planet over and over and over. It is not new. It is not exceptional. It is not frightening. But it's a cycle that modern humanity has not seen before, and it's a long cycle that is beyond the life span of a Human Being. Therefore, it tends to be overlooked or not seen at all !"

"In the days of the Lemurians, the water level of the Pacific Ocean was almost 400 feet lower, and that's only 50,000 years ago. [Kryon invites science to check this out – the water level at that time.] That was a water cycle working, and the reason it was lower was due to so much of the water being stored as ice. Today you're going through another water cycle that will eventually lead to cooling. The last one was in the 1400s."

"Science sees that at about 1650. As mentioned, they are so slow there is no remembrance that a Human has of them except in past writings and in the rings of the trees. The time span of the changes is so great that environmental record keeping does not exist in the form that it does today. But you can still look at the rings of the trees and at the striations of the rocks and can generally figure out that a few hundred years ago, you had a mini-ice age. Now you're going to have another one." 

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

“… So now we've refreshed that which we have said before, a review. You are in the middle of a cycle that will bring cooling to the planet. It is not a heat cycle, but rather a cooling cycle. But it always starts with a short heat cycle. It has been here before. It will come again. It is a long cycle - one generation plus five years. That's how long it's going to last. It starts with the melting of the ice caps, which is far more than any of you have seen in your lifetime or those of your ancestors. It is a cycle whose repetition is thousands of years long, but one that has not yet been recorded to the books of Human record. But it's definitely been recorded in the cores of the ice and in the rings of the trees.

Thousands of years old, it is, and it happens in a cyclical way. It's about water. It starts with that which is the melting of the ice caps to a particular degree, which has a profound effect on the planet in all ways. You can't have that happen without seeing life change as well as Gaia change and you've seeing it already. What happens when you take that which is heavy on the poles [ice] and you melt it? It then becomes cold water added to that which is a very, very gentle and finite balance of temperature in the seas of the planet (1). The first thing that happens is a redistribution of the weight of water on the thin crust of the earth from ice at the poles to new water in the seas. The results become earthquakes and volcanoes, and you're seeing them, aren't you? You are having earthquakes in places that are not supposed to have earthquakes. Volcanoes are coming to life in a way that you've not seen before on a regular basis. There will be more. Expect them.

Is it too much to ask of a Human Being that if you live by a volcano that you know might erupt, maybe you ought to move? Yet there will be those who say, "It hasn't erupted in my lifetime or my parents' lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime; therefore, it won't." You may have a surprise, for all things are changing. That is what is happening to Gaia. ….“

"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version) 

"...The Weather... Again

My partner has been "against the grain" in the past years, giving you what I have channelled about the weather. Is it global warming? No. Is it going to get better? No. This is a two-generation cycle. There will continue to be earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and storms. This is a recalibration of life in the ocean, and humanity must go through this in any way they can. This is a cycle, a known and expected one, but since you haven't gone through it in modern times, it's not well understood yet. ..."

Greenpeace 'polar bears' protest Arctic oil drilling

Google – AFP, 10 April 2013 

An activist dressed as a polar bear prepares to climb onto the drilling rig

 West Hercules, in a photo by Greenpeace (Greenpeace/AFP, Nick Cobbing)

OSLO — Two Greenpeace activists dressed as polar bears boarded an oil platform in Norway on Wednesday to protest against Norwegian oil and gas group Statoil's planned drilling in the Arctic.

"No oil company in the world is prepared for Arctic conditions," said the head of Greenpeace Norway, Truls Gulowsen, one of the two activists who boarded the West Hercules platform currently stationed in Oelen in southwestern Norway.

"It is unacceptable that Statoil wants to gamble with safety and the environment in the vulnerable Arctic regions," he added in a statement.

Greenpeace sent two "polar bears" to "inspect" the platform and to raise public awareness about the dangers of oil activities in the Arctic, a region with extreme climate conditions and located far from mainland infrastructures.

The West Hercules is scheduled to be sent this month to the Norwegian waters of the Barents Sea, which is normally ice free, to conduct a prospecting campaign that is expected to last into 2014.

The campaign, which calls for up to nine drilling operations including some in zones very far north, is already several months behind schedule.

"Preparing the platform took longer than expected," Statoil spokesman Ola Anders Skauby said.

After changes to the West Hercules' route, ope3 rations in the northernmost zones have been postponed but are still planned.

"We are always evaluating the pace of our drilling in light of our resources and our priorities and there is nothing dramatic" about the changes, Skauby said.

After Shell and Statoil both postponed their respective drilling campaigns in Alaska, Greenpeace said it believes the major oil companies are realising how difficult it is to operate in the Arctic.

"The oil industry is beginning to understand that drilling in the Arctic is much more difficult than it had us believe," Gulowsen told AFP.

According to a 2008 study by the US Geological Survey, the Arctic could hold up to 22 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves, resources which have become more accessible in recent years as the Arctic ice melts.

Norway's oil production has been in steady decline for more than a decade. But the country recently raised its estimates for its oil and gas reserves, due to the Barents Sea reserves.

Related Articles:

The word is out: Shell 'screwed up' in 2012

Experts cautious as oil giant BP cracks the Arctic

US Navy readies 'laser attack' weapon in 2014

Google – AFP, 9 April 2013

A MH53E helicopter takes off from the USS Ponce to conduct a mine 

clearance exercise in the Gulf on September 24, 2012 (US Navy/AFP/File,

Jumar T. Balacy)

WASHINGTON — The US Navy said it is preparing to roll out a sea-based laser weapon capable of disabling small enemy vessels and shooting down surveillance drones.

The laser system will be deployed in 2014, two years ahead of schedule, aboard the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport ship retrofitted as a waterborne staging base, the Navy said Monday.

Chief of Naval Research Admiral Matthew Klunder said the cost of one blast of "directed energy" could be less than $1.

"Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to fire a missile, and you can begin to see the merits of this capability," he said in a US Navy statement.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Naval Sea Systems Command successfully tested high-energy lasers against a moving target ship and a remotely piloted drone.

"The future is here," ONR official Peter Morrision said.

"The solid-state laser is a big step forward to revolutionizing modern warfare with directed energy, just as gunpowder did in the era of knives and swords."

The laser runs on electricity, so the weapon "can be fired as long as there is power," and is a lot safer than carrying explosives aboard ships.

The Navy released a video of a laser test and posted it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmoldX1wKYQ&feature=youtu.be .

The New York Times, which said the USS Ponce would deploy to the Gulf, noted the Pentagon had a "long history of grossly inflating" claims for experimental weapons.

Navy officials had acknowledged that the prototype laser was not yet strong enough to bring down a jet fighter or a missile, although those remained the long-term targets, The Times reported.

A March 14 report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Center said the new weapon was a potential game-changer in naval warfare.

"Compared to existing ship self-defense systems, such as missiles and guns, lasers could provide Navy surface ships with a more cost effective means of countering certain surface, air, and ballistic missile targets," the report read.

Equipping Navy ships with lasers "could lead to changes in naval tactics, ship design and procurement plans for ship-based weapons, bringing about a technological shift for the Navy - a 'game changer' - comparable to the advent of shipboard missiles in the 1950s," it added.

Deepwater Horizon: Gulf of Mexico 'deep-cleaned' itself

BBC News, Jason Palmer, New Orleans, 9 april 2013

The explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig led to one of the worst oil
disasters in history

US Oil Spill

• Louisiana ruin remains
• Counting the cost
• Eco-impact still unclear
• Timeline: BP oil spill

New details have emerged about "self-cleaning" effects in the Gulf of Mexico witnessed in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Researchers reporting at the American Chemical Society conference revealed details of a cascade of micro-organisms that spring into action to degrade oil.

Research has also outlined how chemical "dispersants" used in clean-up efforts actually frustrate these processes.

However, the long-term effects of the weeks of oil exposure remain unknown.

And concern was expressed about the ultimate resilience of the Gulf.

Terry Hazen of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has been studying oil-degrading microbes in greater and greater detail since the disaster, even discovering some that had never been seen before.

They can break down the long-chain carbon-based "alkane" molecules present in oil - and in isolated conditions will even move towards oil.

"They're really oil-seeking missiles," he told the meeting.

'Deep cleaning'

In a sense, it is no surprise that the seas should host oil-hungry microbes; natural seeps from the ocean floor have been releasing oil into the world's waters for millions of years.

A 2003 US National Academy of Sciences report put the annual average of this seepage in the Gulf at 140,000 tonnes.

But Prof Hazen's research has revealed more of the complex web of microbes that feed on oil - and are in turn fed on.

Through recent studies, most recently in Frontiers of Microbiology, he and collaborators have begun to map the genomes of these microbes and determine which genes contribute to oil-degrading properties when oil concentrations rise.

A release like that of Deepwater Horizon contains a rich mix of carbon-containing molecules - alkanes, methane and what are called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), each presenting its own risks to the environment.

The new finding is about methanotrophs, which feed on methane - among the last compounds to be degraded.

Prof Hazen said that the sudden release of methane, rather than slow seeps, created a lucky effect.

"All of a sudden the [methanotroph populations] go up to really high densities and they're fat and happy - and then [the methane is] gone." he told BBC News.

"At that point, they degrade anything else that's there fortuitously, and they'll degrade it down below what would be usable as a carbon and energy source - so it's really sort of a 'deep-cleaning' effect.

The jury is still out on the long-term
effects

"That's why I think the Gulf of Mexico is cleaner than you would expect, not only from the oil but from everything else that goes into it."

'Dramatic traumas'

Back on shore, Gabriel Kasozi, now of the Makerere University of Kampala in Uganda, studied the sediments in coastal areas of Louisiana after the disaster.

"We took samples 3m and 15m from the shores… followed that for about a year and did some modelling. We found that the half-life of the half-lives of the alkanes was about 70 days and PAHs was 100 days," he told the meeting.

"After a year, the concentrations had pretty much reduced to background levels."

What is becoming clearer with time is that the chemical dispersants typically used in clean-up efforts to break masses of oil up into small droplets does more harm than good.

A study in Environmental Pollution in February found that the toxicity of the oil-dispersant mix was 52 times more toxic to bacteria that are important to the ecosystem than either component alone.

But Dongye Zhao from Auburn University in the US said that the dispersants also caused sediments to absorb more of the harmful compounds, lengthening their effects on the environment.

"Preliminary results show us that adding dispersants induces a series of hystereses," he told the meeting.

"That means it's really going to… increase absorption, which is quite counterintuitive."

Chemical dispersants probably held back many self-cleaning processes

The group's work presented here also showed that dispersants interfered with other natural processes that degrade oil, including effects from sunlight and ground-level ozone.

Prof Hazen said that while the Gulf was cleaner, faster than was once assumed, the effects of spills are yet to be fully quantified.

"There was a lot of oil out there for 84 days," he told BBC News.

"Fish and bacteria and plankton and everything else were swimming through that oil, and we don't know what long-term effects that'll have.

"I am quite worried about how resilient the Gulf of Mexico is," Prof Hazen said.

"She's had some pretty dramatic traumas, and I'm worried how much the ecosystem can actually tolerate."

Related Articles:

'Super' salmon resist climate change better: study

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

"....Let us just talk about the ocean for a moment. We won't even get to what's happening in the air and what mammals might experience. Let's just speak of the ocean. Have you heard about the salmon? What has your science warned you against? You're overfishing! The sea is dying. The coral is dying. The reefs are going away. You're not seeing the food chain that used to be there. You've overfished everything. Fishing quotas have been set up to help this. Oh, all those little people in the red room - they don't know about the purple. Red people only know about the red paradigm.

Did you hear about the salmon recently? There's too many of them! In the very place where quotas are in place so you won't overfish, they're jumping in the boats! Against all odds and any projections from environmentalists or biologists, they're overrunning the oceans in Alaska - way too many fish.

What does that tell you? Is it possible that Gaia takes care of itself? That's what it tells you! Perhaps this alignment is going to keep humanity fed. Did anybody think of this? What if Gaia is in alliance with you? What if the increase in consciousness that raised your DNA vibration has alerted Gaia to change the weather cycle and get ready to feed humanity? Are you looking at the ocean where the oil spill occurred? It's recovering in a way that was not predicted. What's happening?

The life cycle itself is being altered by the temperature change of the ocean and much of what you have believed is the paradigm of life in the sea is slowly changing. A new system of life is appearing, as it has before, and is upon you in your lifetime. It will compliment what you know and expose you to a new concept: Gaia regularly refreshes the life cycle on Earth. ...."