Dr Stefan Harzen Archives | Taras Oceanographic Foundation

The Face is Familiar, but …

2021-02-01 tarasfoundation Dolphins, Ocean Sentinels Club, Science

The casual identification of individual cetaceans probably started when humans began interacting with coastal species over a century ago, when whalers and fishermen could identify a few individual killer whales by the shape and coloration of the dorsal fin. This technique, much refined, is still used today.

Scientists, studying cetaceans have long understood and appreciated the need to track individual whales or dolphins. Identifying individuals can help in the collection of information on group composition, site fidelity, movement patterns, population size, as well social structure. Given that dolphins and whales are extremely social animals, understanding the social structure of the population is vital to understanding cetaceans.

Most cetacean studies are conducted from the surface, where the dorsal fin is often the only visible part of the dolphin and therefore the only part usable as an identifier. Luckily, the trailing edge of the dorsal fin, which consists of a thin sheet of flesh and connective tissue, is the most identifying feature of most dolphins and porpoises. Small nicks or larger notches in this area of the dorsal fin are consistent markings that can be used to track individuals over time. However the shading, coloration and overall shape of the dorsal fin can also be helpful.

Some cetaceans have other areas that are more useful as identifiers. The humpback whale has unique markings on the bottom of its flukes, the right whale has large crusty growths on its upper lip that grow in unique patterns and are used to identify individuals and the spotted dolphins have spots; clusters and constellations of spots which are great individual markings and very helpful in the identification process. These dolphins, however, get more and more spots as they develop from infants to adults, identifying spot clusters get covered by new spots, and so it is important to continuously track them over time. All of these identifiers are, in most cases, very subtle, and hard to track in the field. This is where capturing images with photo or video cameras becomes important.

In nearly all studies of cetaceans that track individuals, photo-identification techniques are used to some degree. Most researchers depend on their cameras and photo files a great deal. To get a usable id photo from the surface, it is important to get the dorsal fin on film from a 90-degree angle. This eliminates distortion from angle and helps prevent misidentifications. Any time, we can observe dolphins from underwater, we can use the entire body of the dolphin for identification purposes, which can be very useful, especially in the case of spotted dolphins where we use the spotting pattern across the entire body to identify individual dolphins.

As any field researcher will tell you, it takes a great number of photos to get usable shots. But then, experience does matter and now that we use digital photography, having to throw away bad shots does not hurt as much as it did when we used film.

***

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Quo Tendimus

2021-01-03 tarasfoundation Biodiversity, Global Warming, Health & Well-Being, Man's Future, Science, Sea level Rise, Sustainability

The scope of the problems we are currently facing can be illustrated with catchwords such as global warming, sea level rise, soil degradation, potable water shortages, and the loss of species and biotope diversity. It is obvious that an ecologically focused structural change is needed. The adaptive capacity of the economic and social systems, and the confined possibilities of using the environment, must be considered.

Too many people still believe that the future will be much like the past, with the task of avoiding disaster falling to markets and technologies. But think about this: the earth is stable; it does not grow. The input of the sun likewise remains constant. Much of the wealth, derived from that input and stored over tens of millions of years in fossil fuels, has already been consumed in less than two centuries. No technology in the world can alter this equation.

Obviously, our activities, especially all-harvesting of natural resources, has tremendous impact on the ecosystem. But there is also a widespread consensus that non-sustainable harvesting, and causing the extinction of species, is ethically unacceptable and unjustifiable. And we all need nature; for food, health and scientific innovation, the prevention of floods, droughts and epidemics, and of course we need wild places, animals and plants for recreation, renewal, and inspiration.

Our steadily narrowing spectrum of consumed products from agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and the concentration on a few economically valuable species, has resulted in a specialization of land and marine food harvesting systems. Combined with the conversion of habitats, these are prime causes of species loss within any particular ecosystem. The greatest problem may be the illusion that subtle changes in course direction could guide us towards a good life that will include both a ‘conserved’ nature and cozy shopping malls.

It may be useful to realize that we are dealing with the conservation of Man in nature, which requires us take Man’s cultural identity into consideration as well. If people are denied their culture, nature and the environment will also suffer. Cultural diversity must be considered part of biodiversity, and like other aspects of biodiversity, cultural diversity helps people adapt to changing conditions.

I believe, given the complexity of the challenges, only a cross-disciplinary approach with a very close and intense collaboration between science, business and all other stakeholders promises to fulfill our hopes for a better, common future. Corporations, being the dominant institutions on the planet, must squarely address the social and environmental problems that affect mankind. Science must provide the information needed to make sensible choices and decisions. Together they must rewrite economics texts and fine-tune the notion of sustainability, as only then can they create an enduring society with a system of commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sustainable and restorative. Where economics, biology, and human systems are integrated and profitable, and expandable companies created that do not destroy, directly or indirectly, the world around them.

A scientist is primarily concerned with understanding the world. That commitment must, in turn, lead to the scrutiny of some aspects of nature in great empirical detail. The reward comes at the split second of time when something new has been learned. The results need then to be communicated in a timely and comprehensible fashion, so that knowledge is expanded, and trust and confidence prevail.

A corporate leader is primarily concerned with quarterly earnings and shareholder equity, often forsaking the curiosity for new things and foresight of a long-term time line. As Dow Chemical manager Fussler said in an interview many years ago, corporate leaders have to re-direct their thinking, away from short-term costs arguments, into new directions, including the invention of products that are completely different from what we know today. In fact, we need to re-discover a horizon, one that goes beyond a single generation, one that ensures that our actions are based on knowledge and not on public opinion, polls or junk science. And we need to subordinate the present-day advantage under the long-term necessity of the future. In the words of Charles F. Kettering, ‘We should all be interested in the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there’.

***

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Marine Litter

2020-11-22 tarasfoundation Health & Well-Being, Ocean Litter, Oceans, Science, Sustainability, Threats, Waste and Litter

People create a lot of waste and even though it can be processed, recycled and properly disposed of a significant amount of it escapes into the environment. When we talk of marine debris, also known as marine litter, then we refer to human-created solid waste that deliberately or accidentally was released in a lake, river, waterway, sea or the ocean. By broad estimates, 10% of what will become marine litter is thrown away by people directly on the beach, but that 80% actually comes from inland sources, from it is transported by wind, rain and rivers into the oceans of the world.

Marine debris comes in all sizes: from wrecked vessels, large cargo containers and fishing nets, to plastic bags and soda bottles, cloth fibers and plastic beads. Similarly, the materials and substances vary across a broad spectrum: Glass, metal, cardboard, paper and textile make up about 25%, while 75% of all marine litter is composed of various forms of plastic polymers. The most common are plastic bags, beverage and food containers and the very tiny so-called mermaid spheres, which are very small plastic pellets that are used to manufacture all sorts of different plastics and shipped around the world in huge quantities. By all accounts, billions of them have found their way into the environment.

Most people are still wondering about why they should be concerned. After all, the ocean is vast, and it is hard to imagine any human activities could significantly disturb it. So let me point out some of the reasons why we should be concerned.

First, ocean litter negatively impact marine life and marine biodiversity and resilience. Litter moves with ocean currents, winds and tides. As a result what we find on our beaches constitutes only a tiny fraction while most of it stays at sea where in some areas we already find six times more micro plastics than plankton. Furthermore, the plastic accumulated through the food chain and poses significant health risk to many species who are unable to distinguish between plastic and their regular diet. As a consequence hundreds of thousands of marine animals, from sea birds, to sea turtles, dolphins and whales die every year, and when we study their stomach content, we find anything from tooth brushes and golf balls, to fishing nets. Some of these animals, such as fish, sea turtles and dolphins, get trapped by ghost nets, abandoned fishing gear that drift across the oceans. Other marine debris end of sinking to the sea floor where they can prevent the exchange between water and sediment, eventually suffocating the deep-sea environment and the life that depends on it. And if that was not bad enough, it turns out that marine litter is also a vector disease and invasive species. Algae or mollusks can attach themselves to floating pieces of plastic and then disrupt ecosystems in places far away from their geographical origin.

Secondly, marine litter impacts our economic activities, including fisheries, tourism, shipping and recreation. Data published by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) suggests that the costs associated with marine litter (fisheries, aquaculture, marine tourism and cleanups) amount to about 8 billion dollars a year.

Thirdly, we ought to be concerned because the situation will likely get worse in the coming decades. The worldwide, annual plastic production in the 1950s was about 1.5 million tolls. That figure climbed to 300 million tons by 2014 and is expected to reach 33 billion tons by the year 2050. Unless we drastically reduce the mismanagement and losses, hundreds of millions of tons of waste can be expected to escape into the oceans.

Dealing effectively with the marine litter problem requires a multi-pronged approach. Raising awareness and education people is something we have been doing all along but there is not a lot of data that suggests that these efforts have been successful, i.e. produced tangible outcomes.

Beach Clean-ups, while commendable, are not helping much to resolve the problem. For once, only about 10% of all the ocean litter is found on our beaches, and then it clearly does not tackle the actual source of the problem: our constant overconsumption and generation of waste. The idea that recycling and re-use will solve the marine litter issues is nothing more than illusion. It may buy us some time, but what is really needed is a change to our consumption habits.

In order to have clean seas, we need to make a difference on land. All of us.

***

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Spatial Dependency

2020-11-21 tarasfoundation Science, Sustainability

One of the concepts that helps us better understand the relationship between natural and man-made systems is Spatial Dependency; the idea that ‘everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things’ (Waldo Tobler). For instance, if beach erosion is found in one area then it is very likely that places close to this spot are also subject to erosion. If a coastal dune is destroyed, the impact is not only limited to the built or natural environment no longer being protected from storm surges, erosion and sea level rise, but it also compromises the water balance (dunes store fresh water), habitat and resources for animals and plants, possibly nearby coastal mangroves and coral reefs, and the ability for people to enjoy the coastal jewels.

But spatial dependency is not just about natural resources. It can also be applied to understanding many other issues, including the intrinsic, or indispensable properties of a place, without which it loses its identity. These attributes may include natural resources, existing land uses, people and their communities, and cultural heritage such as architecture, cuisine, music and arts. Analyzing, understanding and then articulating the essence of a particular place is critical no matter what we wish to preserve, restore and develop a particular site or area.

It is paramount to apply scientific site analysis methods to address environmental and natural resources issues. And it is equally important to analyze social, cultural, political, and economic conditions, and take into account the needs, wants and dreams of people.

If the results of recent studies are any indication, people are becoming increasingly interested in protecting the environment and respecting local culture. They want local government and developers to care for the future of the planet, all living things, and its people. There is an awakening to the need for organizations that protect the environment and our social well-being. The risks associated with a failure to meet the expectations of an increasingly conscientious and demanding public cannot be underestimated. Hence, it is important to work towards a better understanding of how everything is related and interconnected and create strategies and mechanism that allow us formulate solutions that advance resilience, sustainability and the human condition.

***

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Dolphins as Sentinels for Oceans and Human Health

2020-11-15 tarasfoundation Dolphins, Health & Well-Being, Ocean Sentinels Club, Science, Threats

Over the past 50 years, a great number of previously un-known human diseases emerged, while other well-known maladies, including cholera and tuberculosis, have seen a significant resurgence. Not surprisingly, dolphins and other marine mammals experience a similar trend, with various papillomaviruses, dolphin poxvirus, lobomycosis, various neoplastic diseases, and algal bloom bio-intoxication being among the better-understood disease agents or diseases. Our experience in human medicine should cause all of us to be concerned about the deterioration of aquatic eco-systems, coastal freshwater or marine, especially since they support more than half of the population in the U.S. alone.

Monitoring the overall health status of dolphins provides an excellent avenue to evaluate the wellbeing of entire aquatic systems, and identify possible environmental trends. Dolphins are the ocean canaries, warning us about existing and emerging threats not only to the aquatic eco-systems, but also to human health. But dolphins are also charismatic and instill the desire to be part of a solution in many people who otherwise may not care. No doubt, it is in our own best interest to closely observe any patterns that could affect us.

Let’s focus here on the most talked about water-related issue in the past two months in south Florida has been the catastrophic, harmful algae bloom that descended onto the Port St. Lucie River lagoon and associated waterways all the ay to the coastline. Algae blooms have become a regular occurrence in this area for years, but this year’s outbreak was larger by order of several magnitudes.

While some people may think that such algae blooms represent little, if any dangers, it is well established that such blooms produce neurotoxins that can kill dolphins and other marine life, as well as biotoxins that affect human health. Among those threats to our own wellbeing are brevetoxins and saxitoxins that cause poisoning, and okadaic acid, which causes diarrhea.

Some recent disease outbreaks (epizootics) among bottlenose dolphin populations in southeast Florida serve as prime examples of how studying dolphins can help us manage health risks. Several of these outbreaks were associated with brevetoxins, produced by a dinoflagellate called Karenia brevis. That is the same species causing the so-called red tides. Brevetoxins are known to kill and/or contaminate fish and shellfish. Once we consume those, or simply inhale toxic aerosols, we will fall ill. It is noteworthy to emphasize that the actual exposure may be delayed, meaning that the risk to human health continues long after, or far away, from the original dinoflagellate bloom.

In sum, any increase in toxins, whether due to natural or anthropogenic cause, in our coastal habitats must be of great concern to us. While we may not yet fully understand how these toxins are absorbed and travel through the entire food chain, there is no doubt that dolphins can serve as the sentinels for ocean and human health.

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Sustainable Coastal Development

2020-11-08 tarasfoundation Coastlines, Ocean Sentinels Club, Oceans, Sustainability

Coastlines are where the sea meets land. While they always played an important role in human history, they have increasingly become one of the most desirable living places on the planet. People chose to live near the water for various reasons: a fairly moderate climate influenced by coastal winds, and year-round access to leisure, fishing, and ports for navigation and transportation of goods. For many, the deciding factor evolves around the lifestyle coastal environments provide. In recent decades, affluent urbanites and retirees have begun to move to small existing coastal towns or newly created communities in their search for beautiful, natural surroundings. Recent research, suggesting that people who live closer to the coast are in better health, has only strengthened its appeal.

Sustainability and resilience are becoming increasingly relevant in coastal development. While the concept of sustainability has been around since the 1990s, resilience is a relatively new concept: it represents a holistic, anticipatory and proactive approach that values adaptability to change.

Change is constant and inevitable, and we are witnessing the beginnings of some dramatic changes related to temperature and sea level rise. In fact, we can observe the effects already, including an increase in daily temperatures, change in rainfall patterns and extreme weather events, sea level rise, increase in sea surface temperature, changes in hydrology, and loss of biodiversity. The associated impacts will be felt sooner than originally anticipated and will affect the return on the investments made in the coming years. Sea-level rise threatens low-lying shores, especially those in storm paths, but even rugged coasts may experience significant changes in weather patterns. Resulting economic costs and damages to resorts, airports, local tourism, etc. in the Caribbean alone are estimated to exceed 20 billion dollars (US) per year. By contrast, proactive adaptation is far less expensive, with $1 in adaptation preventing $4 in economic losses.

Adaptation means to create coastal built environments that can withstand higher seas and stronger storm surges through sensible choices in terms of siting, setbacks and elevations. With regard to infrastructure such as energy, water, and wastewater treatment, it appears advantageous to employ more decentralized, smaller and flexible systems that can be repeatedly adapted over time to the changing physical conditions of coastal environments. Research and education are useful tools to develop adaption measures related to land use, changes in hydrology, exposure to tropical vector diseases, seal level rise, extreme weather events, biodiversity and ecosystems (just to name a few) that will result in sustainable and resilient costal developments.

The development of coastal areas will continue to be a desirable undertaking simply by virtue of location, but it is imperative for the future of the planet and our own sake as people to create coastal environments that are resilient, sustainable and economically viable.

And remember:

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Without Music, Life would be a Mistake

2020-11-01 tarasfoundation Music and Science, Ocean Sentinels Club

These words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, uttered more than 100 years ago, expressed an intuitive understanding of the importance of music for the human existence. While many people may have had a general sense of this to be true, it has been only in recent years that researchers have been able to provide evidence as to the power and influence of music.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) revealed that music it is the only human activity that involves each and every region of our brains. Listening to music, in a nutshell, can make you smarter, but play an instrument and you are on your way to being remarkable. No doubt, music enriches people’s lives on the molecular, intellectual, and emotional levels.

Music training and learning an instrument can significantly improve our motor and reasoning skills. Music also helps us exercise. More than 90 years ago, American researcher Leonard Ayres found that cyclists pedaled faster when listening to music than without it. The reason being, music can override the signals of fatigue our body is sending to our brain and so instead of stopping exercising, we continue on. Not only can we push through the pain to exercise longer and harder when we listen to music, but it can actually help us to use our energy more efficiently. Some studies have shown that cyclists who listened to music required 7% less oxygen to do the same work as those who cycled in silence. It is interesting to note that this is mostly beneficial for low- and moderate-intensity exercise. The same is true for ambient noise, which at moderate levels, has shown to promote abstract processing, leading to higher creativity.

But maybe you just like to listen to music and give in to the emotions that come with it. But be aware that the music we listen to influence how we perceive the world around us. For instance, the way we interpret a neutral expression as happy or sad, matches the tone of the music we just heard. And being able to distinguish between perceived emotions and felt emotions, i.e. allowing us to understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, is the reason why we can enjoy listening to sad music, rather than feeling depressed.

No doubt music is not only enjoyable, it is also good for you. It is part of humanity and represents some of the greatest accomplishments of our species. Without it, life would indeed be a mistake.

***

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

The Waste Crisis

2020-10-26 tarasfoundation Health & Well-Being, Ocean Sentinels Club, Waste and Litter

According to the EPA, Americans generated about 254 million tons of trash, of which 87 million tons, or about 34%, was recycled and composted. Waste generation has increased to about 4.4 pounds a day per person with 1.5 pounds being composted or recycled. Most of that waste ends up in a landfill, in essence a relatively inexpensive, earth moving operation. The downside of using landfills is that they remove valuable lands from other uses for generations to come, and because decomposition generates explosive methane gas, and waste settles over time, it is impossible to build any structure over landfills once they are closed. The situation is exacerbated since most landfills are located close to urban centers where development pressure is greatest.

But let’s have a look what happens inside a landfill. As it turns out, the waste is not as dormant as it may appear, but has a life of its own instead. Deep inside microbes are feeding on organic materials and produce chemical changes. Settlement takes place as the lower parts of the landfill are compressed by the weight above.

Infiltrating rainwater leaches heavy metals, PCBs, lead, solvents, dioxin, DDT, benzene, CFCs, furans from the myriad of products and substances dumped in the landfill, forming a contaminated liquid that sooner or later percolates downward and – unless we install some barriers – pollutes the underlying ground water. Today, around 45,000 different chemicals are produced and about 1,000 new ones are added each year. Unfortunately, many of these substances are toxic and can damage parts of the complex and fragile environmental web. And equally disconcerting, many of chemicals find their way into our landfills. Even modern landfills with liners and leachate collection systems are a problem. If they are not leaking now, they will probably start leaking within a few decades of their closure. The use of modern technology simply postpones the inevitable.

In addition to the leachate, landfills also cause atmospheric pollution. The decomposition processes release gases such as methane, carbon, dioxide, vinyl chloride and hydrogen sulphide, which slowly seep into the air around the landfill. This impairs air quality in the immediate vicinity and, on a larger scale, contributes to greenhouse effect and global warming.

The production of consumer goods and their distribution to the customer make full use of the latest technological development, while the disposal of the remains is still carried out on stone-age-level. Landfills do not only represent an unproductive land use but also fail to meet the sustainability principle.

In the production and consumption of the myriad of products few seem to care what happens at the end of their utility range. Never before and by no previous society have comparable large amounts of products and such dangerous substances been converted in such a short time into waste. In order to avoid a total waste crisis, the engineering in production must be complemented by an efficient and non-polluting waste management, which aims to minimize waste at the source, in the production process, and transforms the inevitable remaining wastes into relatively harmless substances that can be safely absorbed in soil, water and air.

When considering the costs, decision makers more often than not, focus on the short-term cost of landfills when compared to incineration or waste-to-energy conversion plants. What is frequently omitted is the fact that landfills are effectively permanent facilities, which, unlike incineration or conversion plants, can not be easily after 30-50 years to make room for more advanced technologies or entirely different uses. In fact, while the land used for an incinerator/conversion plant could be sold and used for other purposes, landfills will need to be monitored and maintained for centuries after they close.

The most crucial factor is however, that the costs of damage to the environment, the value of Earth’s natural ecosystems and the services they provide are not fully captured in commercial markets in the way economic services and manufactured commodities are valued. To properly reflect the value of Earth’s ecosystems, additional cost factors should be included in the financial analysis of waste management facilities. For example, landfill costs should be increased to account for the permanent loss of land resources, the exposure of groundwater to leachate, and the atmospheric pollution caused by gas emissions.

Many of the processes and technologies needed to create a circular economy are available today or within reach. What’s lacking is our resolve and determination to change course.

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power.

2020-10-18 tarasfoundation Ocean Sentinels Club, Science

Today we face an increasing chorus of anti-science voices rampant in politics, schools, the doctor’s office and the public. It seems an increasing number of people don’t appreciate science’s relevance; they think it’s a bad word, that it ruins things, that it’s for someone else to do. Many never met a scientist.

For us scientists, our research pursuits are incredibly important. We don’t consider it a job, it’s our life, and we invest everything into it. We are passionate, purposeful and relentless in the pursuit of our objectives. We like questions. We like answers. We like knowledge. We like to understand.

But science permeates your lives, too. It is much more than an intellectual exercise because it leads to a deeper understanding of the world and its basic mechanisms, and function. Science also teaches us to care about the world. Generally, understanding begets caring.

Most of science consists of answering very small questions. Each one may not have much value in and of itself, but when the whole picture is to be seen, the importance of each of those small pixels of knowledge quickly become evident. Research aimed only at solving a specific, well-understood short-term problem is not going to provide us with the answers we need ten or twenty years from now. We need to commit some fraction of our resources, our dollars, to basic science, understanding that it is a risk taking investment; not all science hunches pay off, but when they pay off they pay off big.

Seems straightforward, and yet many believe their lives are not touched by science at all. Perhaps herein lies the fundamental challenge: how to get people enthused about a subject if they don’t see any value or connection to themselves.

Take solid waste for example. Most people do not spend a second thought on what happens to all the stuff they throw away and yet science is once again standing ready to figure out how to best deal with its generation, prevention, characterization, monitoring, treatment, handling, reuse and ultimate residual disposition.

By linking worldwide data on solid waste, population density, and economic status, scientists figured out that of the 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste was generated in 192 coastal countries in 2010, 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons entering the ocean. Without waste management infrastructure improvements, the cumulative quantity of plastic waste entering the ocean is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025.

Science has already played a major role in reducing waste, recycle precious raw materials, develop waste to energy conversions, and use bioremediation to prevent toxic substances from entering natural cycles.

Or take sea level rise, which is likely to cause mass migrations that will affect not just the United States’ East Coast, but reshape communities deep in the heart of the country, according to research published in the journal Nature Climate Change. People leaving heavily populated coastal communities inundated by flooding will relocate across the U.S. by 2100, including to landlocked states such as Arizona and Wyoming that are unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants. We do not exactly know what is going to happen but the important point is that only through research will we find out and can then develop tools and strategies to accommodate all those people who will be displaced from their homes due to sea level rise.

Modern science not only builds spaceships and manipulates atoms, but it also helps people to live and work in a more satisfying and healthy manner. It is not only present when a doctor prescribes a new medicine, but also when you eat potato chips, use a cell phone, or when you asked to wear a mask to help limit there spread of the corona virus.

Science is both fascinating and mysterious. Science is for everyone, everybody uses science, and everyone needs science! It is our collective responsibility to illustrate the very large role scientific research plays in the daily life of every person!

So let’s stand up for Science together. March for Science. Support Science. Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power. Always.

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

A Short History of Solid Waste Management

2020-10-10 tarasfoundation Ocean Sentinels Club, Waste and Litter

No question, we are a wasteful species on planet Earth.

The explosive population growth combined with an increasing appetite for consumer goods, has led to an explosion in the amount of garbage we produce. Virtually every aspect of our daily lives generates waste, and it is impossible to think of any man-made process that does not create some waste. The spectrum ranges from refuse produced by all of us in our daily lives, to highly toxic industrial wastes from the production of specialized goods such as cars, electronics computers, cell phones and plastics. What happens to all this waste?

Some is recycled and re-introduced into the production cycle. Some is incinerated, and when this leads to the generation of electricity, useful steam or heat, it can be considered a form of recycling, or more appropriately, a conversion of waste to energy. The remaining waste winds up, as it has over the last three millennia, in a landfill. This basic method of placing garbage in large pits and cover it, at intervals, with layers of earth as remained relatively unchanged.

In Athens (500 B.C.) it was it was the responsibility of each household to taking their garbage to the disposal site located at a minimum of 1.5 kilometers from the city walls. With the Roman Empire, came the first garbage collection service. People threw their refuse into the streets from where it transported to an open pit, often located within the community, by horse-pulled carts. Centuries with no organized waste collection followed. Land was plentiful and people were few, and so garbage was simply dumped in convenient places and forgotten. By the 1700s, refuse had become a major problem: waste was still dumped in the streets and open burning of garbage was a common practice. And yet, it took another 150 years before scientific reports linking disease to filthy environmental conditions finally helped launch the ‘age of sanitation’.

In the United States, the modern concept of solid waste management first emerged in the 1890s. By the turn of the 20^th century, a growing number of American cities provided at least a rudimentary level of solid waste collection and disposal, and around 1930 virtually all cities offered garbage collection services. Once removed from urban centers, the wastes were disposed of in a variety of ways, including landfills, incineration, water and, ocean disposal. The latter was outlawed 1933, however industrial and commercial wastes were exempted.

The post World War II era led to a significant escalation of the waste management problem for two reasons: consumerism (over-consumption) and the rise of the chemical age, which, together, resulted in dramatic changes in waste volumes, composition and toxicity.

The 1950s also brought us the so-called Sanitary Landfill, typically defined as an engineered method of disposing solid wastes on land by spreading the waste in thin layers, compacting it to the smallest practical volume and covering it with soil at the end of each working day. But despite the new terminology, it remained in essence an earth moving operation.

That only changed in the 1970s and 1980s, when people recognized that landfills were causing significant contamination of groundwater. The problem was compounded by the fact that once groundwater becomes contaminated it is exceedingly difficult to remediate.

As a result, a number of features were added. Bottom liners made of clays or synthetic materials such as impermeable high-density polyethylene were introduced to stop leachate from leaving the landfill. Caps made of similar materials were placed over the landfill to decrease the infiltration of precipitation. In addition, engineered collection systems were installed to capture leachate and gas. Monitoring of groundwater, surface water, and gas emissions became a routine part of landfill operations.

Despite all the improvement we have made to siting and operating landfills, the real problem is simply their large numbers and the expanses of valuable real estate they occupy. All along, landfills have been a child of convenience. Time has come to develop and implement waste management systems that do not impair our environment, use up valuable resources, or place limitations on future resources.

Public involvement is essential. Wastes are very democratic – they are produced by each and every one of us and so we all should contribute to the solution. The objective must be to minimize the impact on the environment through a combined strategy of reduction/reuse/recycling, and incineration and/or waste to energy conversion. Instead being the first choice, landfills will have to become the last resort.

We all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Why It Is Important To Study Wild Dolphins

2020-10-04 tarasfoundation Dolphins, Ocean Sentinels Club, Science

Most people love whales and dolphins. They think of them as intelligent creatures. They have heard stories of dolphins coming to the aid of stranded sailors, guiding swimmers back to shore and engaging in cooperative hunting with local fishermen. They feel whales and dolphins are important. And they are right! Maybe more than you might think!

Whales and dolphins embody most of what we need to understand about oceans. They are predators at the top of the food chain and can tell us a lot about what is important in the ocean; where are sites of high productivity, what is the most energy efficient way to travel, and what are the best senses to use in the water.

Because of their complex behavior and social structure, whales and dolphins are especially interesting. But they also offer us a window into the physiological and anatomical adaptations to aquatic life; information we can apply to echolocation and boat sonar. More than valuable intellectual exercises, these studies help us understand phenomena such as population decline, recovery, and extinction, and teach us to care about the world. Generally, understanding begets caring.

Further, whales and dolphins are a vibrant part of the global ecosystem and their populations have been severely affected by, and continue to be extremely vulnerable to human impact, including interactions with fisheries and whaling. Above all, marine pollution and habitat degradation looms as the most menacing threats of all. If we have any philosophical leanings towards preserving nature, either for future generations or for its own value, than learning enough to prevent this damage is crucial.

Lastly, whales and dolphins, are the archetypal ‘charismatic mega-vertebrates’. Throughout centuries, whales and dolphins have played major roles in myths and legends. Every culture that has come into contact with an ocean, have created myths and legends about how whales and/or dolphins came into being, and what their existence means to the world and to us.

In our times, whales and dolphins have come so symbolize, more than any other species, the concern for the environment and have become a special symbol of sharing the earth. People react to them with empathy and express concern for their welfare. They epitomize and illustrate many of the problems humans inflict on the sea. They engender, in people who might not otherwise care, a wish to improve the ‘health’ of the marine environment. The huge interest in these animals can therefore be used to encourage interest in the sea more generally, with whales and dolphins becoming flagships or ambassadors of the oceans.

All that makes it important to study these wonderful creatures. If you understand dolphin echolocation and how it works, then you have the tools to apply that knowledge. If you are a conservationist and are concerned about dolphin entanglement in nets, knowledge allows you to reduce that risk. The application of the knowledge depends on what you value: for an academic, to further knowledge and understanding; for an applied researcher, to be able to provide information to managers on the implications of a range of management options, for a conservation biologist: to find ways of ensuring the health of populations and habitats.

For more than thirty years, bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have been studied along the west coast of the United States, the Gulf of Mexico and along the eastern sea border, from the Carolinas to the southern tip of Florida. I have been involved with Coastal Dolphin Conservation through the Palm Beach Dolphin project of the Taras Oceanographic Foundation, headquartered in Jupiter, Florida. This project provides critical information on coastal dolphin communities, their lives and societies and shed light on how the health of these top predators, and the conditions of the natural resources they depend on, may directly or indirectly impact our own health and well-being.

In light of the enormous impact whales and dolphins have on humans and their lives, it is not difficult to understand why studying them serves the support of all of us. Search the Internet for the word dolphin sometime and see how many ‘hits’ you get. People believe that whales and dolphins have value and people put their money in things they hold interesting.

Why do dolphins hear sounds up to 150kHz while we hear only to 15? What is there to listen to anyway? Why do only male humpback whales sing and why don’t females? What directs Humpback whales in Hawaii to swim directly north in the summer? How do they know which way is North? Do dolphins ‘see’ an image in their brain from echolocation signals that is similar to what we see with our eyes? Does a dolphin think, and if he does, what does he think about? Do whales dream? Why are blue whales the biggest animals that have ever lived on earth? Why do dolphins have pointy rostrums? But most importantly why does anyone care about the answers to these questions? The main point is that people do care, and this is why we should all take a stand, and invest our time and money into understanding and protecting these marvelous marine mammals. No doubt, life is better with dolphins around.

Living on the Coast

2020-09-27 tarasfoundation Ocean Sentinels Club, Oceans, Sustainability, Threats

Nearly 60% of the world’s population lives and works within 100 km of the coast, and a majority of metropolises with a population of more than 2.5 million, are situated at the edge of the sea. People chose to live near the water for various reasons: a fairly moderate climate influenced by coastal winds, and year-round access to leisure, fishing, and ports for navigation and transportation of goods. For many, the deciding factor evolves around the lifestyle coastal environments provide. In recent decades, affluent urbanites and retirees have begun to move to small existing coastal towns or newly created communities in their search for beautiful, natural surroundings. Recent research, suggesting that people who live closer to the coast are in better health, has only strengthened its appeal.

Undoubtedly, the largest influence on coastal development can be traced back to tourism, which represents the world’s largest service industry, supporting 1 in 12 jobs globally and generating $6.5 trillion every year. International travel has increased 40-fold since 1960 and surpassed 1 billion travelers in 2012, with many tourists spending time on the beach, or on the water. In fact, 12 of the 15 top international destinations are countries with coastlines. Sand, sun and sea tourism makes for the largest and most lucrative sector of the tourism industry.

In response to the increasing demand, coastal areas across the globe have seen a great deal of urban and resort development, including large, all-inclusive resorts, small upscale boutique hotels, eco-lodges, marinas, residential (second) homes, and commercial areas. Naturally, these developments often raise environmental and socio-cultural issues, including the modification of the natural landscape, competition for scarce resources, rising real estate prices, potential loss of distinctive character, the displacement of local fishing and farming communities, and the outright destruction of natural jewels, such as mangroves and coral reefs. The promise to create sustainable and resilient developments too often remains unfulfilled, quickly leading to increasing resistance from coastal communities and other stakeholders. Given the diverse ecosystem services coastal systems provide, these conflicts between utilization versus protection are bound to arise, and add to the already existing challenges, from water scarcity, resource shortages and climate change, to social inequities that threaten to destroy the social fabric of many of our communities.

Change is evitable, negative outcomes aren’t. In the past, little if any consideration was given to the importance of the natural and socio-cultural systems in coastal areas that already existed in areas under consideration for new real estate and tourism development projects.

It is encouraging that one of the world’s leading planning and design firms, EDSA in Fort Lauderdale, has begun to develop and employ a more research-based and performance orientated approach that emphasizes sustainability and resiliency when shaping the future of our coastlines.

Because we all depend on a healthy ocean; a healthy ocean depends on us. Let us be the change we would like to see in the world. Our new Ocean Sentinels Club is proof that conservation can be fun, rewarding and effective. The Club unites and empowers citizens to advocate for the conservation of dolphins and the marine environment across Palm Beach County, and beyond. Join us. The time is now. It begins with you.

Dr Stefan Harzen

The Face is Familiar, but …

Quo Tendimus

Marine Litter

Spatial Dependency

Dolphins as Sentinels for Oceans and Human Health

Sustainable Coastal Development

Without Music, Life would be a Mistake

The Waste Crisis

Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power.

A Short History of Solid Waste Management

Why It Is Important To Study Wild Dolphins

Living on the Coast

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta

Post Categories

Taras Oceanographic Foundation

Blogroll

We Are On Social Media

Living on the Coast