From the Times of London.

June 28, 2007

A flotilla of plastic ducks is heading for Britain’s beaches, according to an American oceanographer.

For the past 15 years Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking nearly 30,000 plastic bath toys that were released into the Pacific Ocean when a container was washed off a cargo ship.

Some of the ducks, known as Friendly Floatees, are expected to reach Britain after a journey of nearly 17,000 miles, having crossed the Arctic Ocean frozen into pack ice, bobbed the length of Greenland and been carried down the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Mr Ebbesmeyer, who is based in Seattle, said yesterday that those that had not been trapped in circulating currents in the North Pacific, crushed by icebergs or blown ashore in Japan are bobbing across the Atlantic on the Gulf Stream.

Any beachcomber who finds one of the ducks will be able to claim a $100 (£50) reward from the toys’ American distributor, First Years Inc.

The ducks began life in a Chinese factory and were being shipped to the US from Hong Kong when three 40ft containers fell into the Pacific during a storm on January 29, 1992. Two thirds of them floated south through the tropics, landing months later on the shores of Indonesia, Australia and South America. But 10,000 headed north and by the end of the year were off Alaska and heading back westwards. It took three years for the ducks to circle east to Japan, past the original drop site and then back to Alaska on a current known as the North Pacific Gyre before continuing north towards the Arctic.

Many were stranded as the currents took them through the Bering Strait, which divides Alaska from Russia. Mr Ebbesmeyer predicted that they would spend years trapped in the Arctic ice, moving at the rate of one mile a day towards the Atlantic.

In 2000, eight years after their journey began, the ducks were reported in the North Atlantic and in 2003, when they were expected to wash up on the east coast of America, First Years Inc announced the reward. By now the ducks had been bleached white by the sun and sea water. Sightings in the past two years have been scant, but oceanographers believe that their next port of call is southwest England, southern Ireland and western Scotland.

Simon Boxall, of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, said that the ducks offered a great opportunity for climate change research. “They are a nice tracer for what the currents are doing as they travel around the world, and currents are what determines our climate, and cycles of carbon.

“I would ask holidaymakers to keep an eye out, as they might be very few and far between by now. It’s a real adventure story and the plastic should last 100 years, so we hope it will continue.”

The landfalls have all been logged on a computer model called the Ocean Surface Currents Simulation, which is used to help fisheries and find people lost at sea. Two children’s books have been written about the saga and the ducks have become collector’s items, changing hands for £500.

Posted by Cal Vornberger at 6/28/2007 06:59:00 PM | Permalink   

While photographing Piping Plover and their chicks at local beaches recently I was reminded of the furor these little birds caused in 2005 when they nested too close to the area in East Hampton where the annual Fourth of July fireworks take place.

As usual, the New York Times was right on top of it, although Jerry Della Femina seemed a little slow on the uptake.

June 23, 2005
Those Little Birds on the Beach Mean No Fireworks in the Sky
By JULIA C. MEAD

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y., June 22 - It's not exactly San Juan Capistrano, and they're not exactly swallows. They're piping plovers and, for fans of the local fire department's Fourth of July fireworks display, this year the tiny shorebirds' annual return is no cause for celebration.

Plovers build their nests right on the beach, and they are listed as threatened along the Atlantic Coast on the federal endangered species list. That means local officials must fence off any patch of sand where a nest is found, and beachgoers, along with their dogs and four-wheel-drive trucks, are personae non gratae in those spots.

This week, village officials said they had canceled the July 2 fireworks display at Main Beach because there were so many plover nests that they could not find anywhere to launch the fireworks. The tradition, decades old, draws tens of thousands of fireworks fans to the beach. Many homeowners whose backyards are nearby give parties that climax with the long and spectacular display.

Jerry Della Femina, an advertising executive and restaurateur, and his wife, Judy Licht, a photographer and writer, have played host to a Fourth of July celebration for at least 10 summers. The gregarious Mr. Della Femina was first at an uncharacteristic loss for words when a reporter told him the display had been canceled this year. He quickly recovered.

"I just sent out invitations to about 500 people," said Mr. Della Femina, who is often an outspoken critic of village government. "That's insane. They must be out of their minds. I'm flabbergasted."

Federal regulations impose a fine of up to $10,000 for disturbing the tiny birds and prohibit launching fireworks within three-quarters of a mile of a nest. In 1990 and 1999, the federal government sued the Breezy Point Cooperative, a private community at the western end of the Rockaways in Queens, accusing it of not doing enough to protect plovers.

In East Hampton, the village administrator, Larry Cantwell, said he met on Tuesday with fire and police officials, but they could not find a legal site in the four-square-mile village. He said one nest was fenced off just east of Georgica Pond. Another was a few hundred feet from the pavilion of Main Beach. A third and fourth were near the private Maidstone Club.

"Obviously, this is terribly disappointing for a lot of people," Mr. Cantwell said. He said residents start calling Village Hall in January to get the date so they can plan their parties. "But, as disappointing as it is, we see no option other than to reschedule the fireworks to Labor Day weekend." By then, most of the birds will have flown south.

The village police chief, Gerard Larsen Jr., said the fireworks had been a tradition for him for nearly all of his 40 years, but he believed this was the first time they had ever been canceled. "It's unfortunate, but it's something we can't control," he said.

Latisha Coy, who runs the plover protection program for the Town of East Hampton, said the sand-colored birds returned in late March and were mostly gone by August. This season, she fenced off 50 nests between Montauk and Wainscott, and some mating pairs show signs of staying longer. As of Wednesday, four chicks had hatched and others were about to.

Larry Penny, the town's natural resources director, said 72 plovers were fledged last year, 73 the year before. "We broke some records, and this year looks to be really good too," he said. "I don't know how this bodes for the future. We may end up with plovers all over the place."

Mr. Della Femina said he was determined to carry on with his party. "We'll still have it," he said, "but we'll be serving barbecued piping plover. I hear it tastes like chicken."

Posted by Cal Vornberger at 6/27/2007 09:18:00 PM | Permalink   

Haven't been blogging much lately--too busy with spring migration, school, and my new book.

Check my gallery for current work. Those Piping Plover chicks look awful cute!

Here is an interesting article I ran across on the Reason magazine site. It's an interesting perspective and one that bears directly on the Peregrine Falcons we see nesting on buildings in New York City. Many building owners embrace the falcons but others are loath to have them on their buildings because they don't want the hassles involved in protecting an endangered species.

Let the Mighty Eagle Soar

Freeing the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act

Brian Seasholes | June 26, 2007

In 1967, there were fewer than 500 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states. The national bird was in danger of disappearing from much of the United States.

Though the eagles were never in danger of extinction—the vast majority, over 100,000, were in Alaska and Canada—Americans understandably wanted to protect a national symbol.

Today, the bald eagle is doing well. On June 29 the bald eagle in the lower 48 states will be officially removed, or delisted, from the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Yet delisting the bald eagle from the ESA has been a decade-long process that shows how even the most well-intentioned policy can be overcome by politics and ulterior motives.

The bald eagle should have been delisted in the early-to-mid 1990s, when it surpassed the original goal of around 3,000 pairs in the lower 48 states. Since then, the population has continued to grow at the very healthy rate of about 8 percent annually, reaching at least 9,921 pairs in the contiguous U.S. this year. Still, the Fish and Wildlife Service has been unwilling to part with its best public relations tool, likely because it's also a powerful means to control land use.

Take the case of Ed Contoski, co-owner of 18 lakeshore acres in central Minnesota. To provide for his retirement, in 2004 Contoski decided to sell his property to family members. The only option for raising the $425,000 needed to purchase Ed’s half-share was dividing the property’s northern seven acres in to five residential lots and selling them. But authorities found a bald eagle nest on Contoski's property, development halted. Faced with the ESA’s harsh penalties, $100,000 and/or one year in jail for harming an eagle or habitat, Ed had to abandon his plans.

To recover use of his land, Contoski sued the Interior Department for failing to delist the eagle. He won his case last year, forcing the federal government finally to set the eagle free of the ESA.

When the eagle is at last delisted, we'll likely hear it championed as an ESA success story. The reality is more complicated.

The National Audubon Society explains that, “nearly everyone agrees that the key to the eagle’s resurgence—even more so than the Endangered Species Act—was the banning of the use of the insecticide DDT in this country in 1972." DDT led to pervasive reproductive failures in the birds, but it was also banned a year prior to the ESA’s passage, suggesting there's more to the eagle's recovery than land use restrictions.

The ESA’s ultimate purpose is to recover species to the point they no longer need protection, not to keep healthy species as wards of the federal government.

Even after they’re delisted, eagles will still be covered by essentially all of the ESA’s land-use controls because the federal government has transferred the controls to the Bald & Golden Eagle Protection Act, a move of dubious legality that will likely prolong the problems of Ed Contoski and other landowners.

There are many landowners like Ed Contoski across the country. Most are proud to have rare species on their land. Tragically, the ESA has pitted land owner against bird. Quietly, many of these people who might otherwise relish having an eagle's nest or other endangered species on their land are taking steps to keep those species out, to avoid being clobbered by the government’s harsh penalties.

“I’ve seen eagle’s nests where people climbed up the trees and knocked them out,” stated Jodi Millar, former federal bald eagle recovery coordinator.

With the bald eagle now safe, let's reform the Endangered Species Act to harness the goodwill of America's citizen conservationists. It's time for a new, more effective environmentalism based on cooperation and positive incentives, not conflict and punishment.

Brian Seasholes is the author of a forthcoming Reason Foundation study on bald eagle conservation.

Posted by Cal Vornberger at 6/27/2007 08:59:00 PM | Permalink   

Red Knot are the long-distance champs among shorebirds. Their annual migration takes them from the tip of South America up to their breeding grounds in the Arctic and back again--a journey of well over 10,000 miles.

The Red Knot population has been in severe decline for several reasons. Red Knot, like many shorebirds, rely on the eggs of horseshoe crabs to sustain them during their migration northward. The decline of horseshoe crabs caused by overfishing has impacted the Red Knot population. Also contributing to their decline is the fact that they still heavily hunted in South America as a game bird.

According to Audubon:

The U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan lists Red Knot as a "Species of High Concern," based on declining population trends and threats on non-breeding grounds. This species was heavily hunted in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and while it no longer faces hunting pressure in North America, it appears that knots are still commonly hunted in South America (especially the Guianas). Based on the number of banding recoveries from hunted birds, it appears that this hunting might be fairly significant.

Red Knot is the most heavily concentrated of all shorebirds during migration, with 98% of spring migrants and 97% of fall migrants concentrating at important coastal migratory sites. This strong tendency to congregate at important traditional sites, both during migration and on wintering grounds, leaves Red Knot vulnerable to possible habitat destruction at these spots. Recently, there has been great concern about the continued ability of Red Knot to use Delaware Bay as a major migratory staging area, due to the increased harvest of horseshoe crabs whose eggs provide a primary food source for the birds along the mid-Atlantic Coast.

In the Delaware Bay area, federal, state, and local agencies have worked to protect Red Knot staging areas. In the late 1990s, as a result of major initatives by Audubon and other organizations, both New Jersey and Delaware instituted policies to limit the harvesting of horseshoe crabs along their coastlines. There have also been major efforts to reduce the risk of industrial and maritime accidents in the Delaware Bay area, in order to protect Red Knot and the resources that the species depends upon.

Several important areas for migrating and wintering Red Knot--Delaware Bay, sections of the coast of Suriname, and a major staging area in southern Brazil--have been designated as sites in the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (http://www.manomet.org/WHSRN/Sitesmap.htm), and additional areas are being considered for inclusion.

Unfortunately New York State has not stepped-up its protection of horseshoe crabs and although there are limits to how many crabs can be taken these limits are universally ignored because they are not enforced.

This article in yesterday's Newsday leads me to believe there might still be some hope for Red Knot and other shorebirds that depend on horseshoe crab eggs for their survival.

Newsday

State Nabs 10 For Taking Too Many Crabs

BY DEBORAH S. MORRIS
deborah.morris@newsday.com

June 3, 2007

Each spring during the high tides of the new and full moons, horseshoe crabs line local shores to spawn.

Ten local fishermen, some under cover of night, seized this annual ritual as a money-making opportunity: They were caught over-harvesting horseshoe crabs, which are highly prized by the biomedical industry for their blood, officials said.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has charged the fishermen with violating environmental conservation laws, including unpermitted taking and harvesting more than the allowable limit from the waters and beaches in Brookhaven, Smithtown and Islip towns. Several tickets for operating vessels at night without lights also were issued.

David Hartmann, 28, of East Patchogue, was charged with a felony for possessing a catch that had more than 1,500 horseshoe crabs over the limit and fishing without a permit, the DEC said. Paul Sharkey, 28, of Quogue, was charged on Wednesday with a misdemeanor for having more than the allowable limit of horseshoe crabs and then again on Thursday with a felony for being over the allowable limit, with more than 1,500 horseshoe crabs over the limit, according to the DEC.

If the value of the catch is over $250, the charge is a misdemeanor; if the value is over $1500, the charge is upgraded to a felony, the DEC said.

The following fishermen were charged with misdemeanors: Ken Wolfe, 42, of Islip; Ronald Parry, 49, of Islip; and Michael Mason, 42, of East Islip. Edward Kattar, 25, of Patchogue, and Richard Winkler, 50, of Miller Place, were both ticketed for fishing without a permit. Joseph Drago was issued a written warning for fishing without a permit, according to the DEP.

The two-day investigation commenced on Wednesday with environmental conservation officers and members of the marine enforcement unit in marked and unmarked vehicles and two patrol vessels. The DEC had gotten complaints that people were taking the gentle horseshoe crabs as they made nests on local beaches.

Not really a crab, the horseshoe crab is related to spiders, ticks and scorpions. Its blood, which is blue and copper-based, plays a vital role in injectable medications. The special cells in the blood are used by the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries to guard against bacterial contamination in intravenous drugs, vaccines, and medical devices. The exoskeleton of the crab is used in hair spray, contact lenses and skin creams, experts say.

On May 13, environmental conservation officers charged James Harkins, 42, of Medford, and James Fields, 33, of Patchogue, with fishing without a permit and having more than the daily allowed amount of horseshoe crabs, after they docked their vessel in the Great South Bay and off-loaded the crabs to Jeffrey Mannheimer, 34, of Medford, a shipper and dealer with Jmann Seafood in East Patchogue. Mannheimer was cited for purchasing seafood from unlicensed fishermen. Fields also was cited for speeding and having improper registration numbers on his vessel, according to the DEP.

None of those charged could be reached for comment.
Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

Posted by Cal Vornberger at 6/04/2007 09:25:00 PM | Permalink