More and worse than ever: World Meteorological Organization new climate report

 There are those—some of them in our nation’s leadership—who still deny climate science.

It’s a little like rejecting the rain forecast when the flood is already up to your knees.

The World Meteorological Organization just issued its State of the Climate report. It is no longer about predictions, because the predictions of past decades are all now coming to pass.

 Here is the WMO press release about the report. 

Here is the actual WMO report. 

World atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels are the highest they have been in 800,000 years, and so are its fellow greenhouse gases methan and nitrous oxide.

Global surface temperatures are the highest they have been since records have been kept. Last year was the single hottest year on record, and the past decade is the single hottest decade on record. And it continues. January 2025 was the hottest January on record.

The oceans, which store massive amounts of heat, are hotter than ever. Each of the past eight years has been the hottest. Oceans take up 90% of the heat rise that is driven by greenhouse gas increases. Without the oceans taking up heat, the atmospheric temperatures would be even higher.

In part because of the heat, sea levels are rising faster than ever—both because warmer water takes up more volume and because glaciers are melting their stored water back into the sea.

The ocean is acidifying at a record pace—and changing the chemistry of the oceans will have significant effects. Says WMO: “The effects of ocean acidification on habitat area, biodiversity and ecosystems have already been clearly observed, and food production from shellfish aquaculture and fisheries has been hit as have coral reefs.”

All that warming and its impacts lead to weather disruptions, and the report says that extreme weather events in 2024 led to the highest level of human disruptions on record.

It takes all kinds of forms. One of them, for Hawai`i residents, is an ongoing drought that has produced the lowest stream flows since we started keeping records more than a century ago.

 The changes in climate also lead to reductions in food and fishery production, driving food insecurity on a global scale.

The severity of the climate disruption is such that the WMO is now more about responding to the chaos than stopping it. In the foreword to the report, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said this:

“WMO and the global community are intensifying efforts to strengthen early warning systems and climate services to help decision-makers and society at large be more resilient to extreme weather and climate. We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster. Only half of all countries worldwide have adequate multi-hazard early warning systems. This must change.”

The World Meteorological Organization is a non-governmental international organizatioTn founded as a place where international researchers could share data. It was created in 1950, but is rooted in the International Meteorological Organization, which dates back to 1873.

It is not just WMO reporting this.

Here is NOAA’s report: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202413

And here is the European Union’s Copernicus Program report: https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-climate-highlights-2024

 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2025

For Hawaiian monk seals, a glimmer of hope

There were years when we despaired about the survival of Hawaiian monk seals. 

 Image: A young seal at Pearl and Hermes Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Credit: NOAA Fisheries Hawaiian monk seal research program.

 

Populations were dropping year after year and nothing seemed to be able to turn that around. Take a look at RaisingIslands' 2008 post on the distressing status of seals at that time.

Now, a little hopeful news. It’s a slow process, but there has been a stabilization, and a tiny, steady increase in numbers for about the last 10 years. Over that time, up from just 1,400 to a current population estimated at about 1,600. 

That’s still only a third of what is believed to have been the stable healthy
population in the Islands, before they ran into humans. 

And right now, that increase is in spite of incidents of people shooting them, their getting hooked on fishing hooks, getting entangled in nets, picking up disease from land animals like dogs and cats, their Northwestern Hawaiian Islands pupping grounds disappearing due to ocean changes, shark attacks, and incidents of attacks by pet dogs. 

NOAA Fisheries in a 2022 release noted that the population had surpassed 1,500 for the first time in some 20 years. 

“From 2013 to 2021, the monk seal population grew at an average rate of 2 percent per year, providing hope for the species’ long-term recovery. Even so, the level required for the species to be down-listed from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act is more than double the current number of monk seals,” the report said. 

It is an enormous task to care for the seal population. Federal officials and volunteers keep close watch on them. Sick and injured seals are regularly removed from the wild for hospital care. 

In November 2024 a malnourished pup from an O`ahu beach was transported to the Marine Mammal Center’s Hawaiian monk seal hospital, Ke Kai Ola, in Kona. 

In October a thin and weak pup from Lana`i and Maui was brought into care. 

In September, three malnourished pups from Pearl and Hermes Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands were transported to the medical facility. 

In June, a Kaua`i pup suffering multiple infectious diseases was hospitalized. He was released back into Kaua’i waters healthy in late November. 

Occasionally, seals are relocated to move them from beaches with threats to beaches where they will be safer. 

The effort involves NOAA Fisheries, the Coast Guard, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Marine Mammal Center and lots of volunteers. 

Hawaiian monk seals, the most endangered seal species in the world, are found in the Main Hawaiian Islands, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and on Johnston Atoll, which is about 700 miles southwest of O`ahu. 

If you see a seal in trouble, you can email pifsc.monksealsighting@noaa.gov. Or call the Pacific Islands NOAA Marine Wildlife Hotline at (888) 256-9840. 

Here is a NOAA Fisheries resource page for more information about Hawaiian monk seals. 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

Navy: Targeting Ka'ula Island bird refuge weekly with bombs and guns would only result in "incidental" take

 The Navy’s new proposal to expand bombing and gunnery practice at Ka’ula Island seems insupportable, both morally and as a matter of federal law.

Here is the Draft Environmental Assessment that includes the Ka’ula impacts.

It expands potential military operations at the tiny island to 55 per year, more than one a week. That is on an island that is a designated state seabird sanctuary (established 1978) and contains endangered and state and federally protected plants and birds, and marine protected species in the nearshore waters.

Ka’ula is one of the four islands of of Kaua’i County (Kaua’i, Ni’ihau, Lehua and Ka’ula). The designated weaponry impact area is 11 acres at the southern end of the 130-acre island.

Ka’ula is well known in Hawaiian history and chant. The bird life there was once so dense that the island was used as an example of overcrowding. 

(Hā’iki Ka’ula I ka ho’okē a na manu. There is no room on Ka’ula, for the birds are crowding. –from ‘Ōlelo No’eau by Mary Pukui.)

It has been bombed since 1952.

The Navy over the years has steadfastly resisted calls to end its bombing, from fishermen, from U.S. Congress members, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, from the Kaua’i County Board of Supervisors (1961) and Kaua’i County Council (1975), and from federal fisheries and wildlife officials.

And from the State of Hawai’i, whose attorney general in 1978 asserted the island belongs to the state. That conflict over ownership was not resolved, and state officials now say the ownership is contested but no recent efforts to assert state control have been reported.

Weapon strikes are proposed to be limited to the designated 11-acre “impact area.” But that has not always been the case: 1) A 1978 fisherman’s report saw bombs exploding both in the water and among seabirds; 2) The Draft EA says there are likely live munitions on the island outside the impact area; 3) On one occasion in 1965, bombs intended for Ka’ula landed on Ni’ihau, more than 20 miles away.

The new proposal says only inert weapons will be deployed in the future.

The birds and seals of Ka’ula, as well as passing whales and dolphins, are protected by the US. Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act as well as the island’s designation as a State of Hawai’i bird refuge.

The Draft EA proposes that the impact of bombing, gunnery exercises, helicopter landings and other activities are acceptable. There are Hawaiian cultural sites, including stone temples and habitation sites, but they are outside the designated impact zones and so, “impacts on cultural resources would be less than significant.” (Page 3-86)

The Navy’s legal justification for harming wildlife is contained in a federal law, the 2003 National Defense Authorization Act. It “gave the Secretary of the Interior authority to prescribe regulations to exempt the Armed Forces from the incidental taking of migratory birds during authorized military readiness activities,” the Draft EA says.

Based on that, the Draft EA argues that targeting a wildlife refuge and protected bird nesting site with bombs, shells and landing helicopters would result in takes that are merely incidental. The Draft EA says (Page 3-30) that the Department of Defense has a responsibility to minimize and mitigate its impacts. But it seems at least problematic to argue incidental and minimized when the wildlife refuge is the target.

The Draft EA argues that health, safety and noise are not issues because there are “no human sensitive receptors” nearby. This, of course, does not address the impacts on the health, safety or hearing of protected sooty terns, threatened black-footed albatross or endangered Hawaiian monk seals.

The Navy asserts that it owns Ka’ula. That position has long been challenged by Hawai’i.

The island was set aside by the Territory of Hawaii for use by the U.S. Department of Commerce under the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1924 as a lighthouse reserve. Commerce conveyed it to the Coast Guard, which operated a navigational light there until 1947, when it was permanently shut down.

Instead of returning the island to the territory, the Coast Guard in 1952 authorized the Navy to conduct bombing exercises, apparently without the authorization of territory. 

Kaua’i County residents began regularly protesting the activity within a few years, at the behest of anglers who said the bombing was impacting birds, which the fishermen depended on to locate schooling fish.

U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink in the early 1960s urged the island’s inclusion in the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge, and the Department of Interior started but failed to complete that inclusion.

The Navy rejected the Hawaiian ownership arguments, and in 1965, U.S. Rep. Spark Matsunaga reported that the Coast Guard had transferred its authority over the island to the Navy.

The comment period for this Draft EA is ending. Comments go to pmrf-lbt-ea-comments@us.navy.mil.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

Hawai'i ocean levels inches below normal--what's going on?

 Sea levels around Hawai’i are unusually low, and have been for some months.

Experts aren’t sure why. They are pretty sure they’ll come back to normal, and higher. But because they’re not sure precisely why, they also can’t be sure when.

My canoe paddling clan in recent month has noticed that low tides have seemed really low. Like, mud flats where there’s normally water. Others may be seeing reefs where there's normally water. And seeing beaches bigger than they were last year.

To figure this out, I called Chip Fletcher, who didn’t know, but knew who would. Fletcher is the interim dean at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. He’s the go-to guy on impacts of sea level rise in the Islands.

He suggested calling the university’s Sea Level Center, where associate director Matthew Widlandsky confirmed what we’d been seeing.

“You are right about the sea levels this year around Hawaii being lower than in recent years,” he wrote.

But while he and his colleagues have a theory about the reasons, nobody’s actually gone out and done the work to prove them. “We have not yet studied this event in detail,” Widlansky said.

One theory is that it’s associated with cooler water in the central Pacific, in connection with our just-ended three-year La Niña. Cooler water is denser, meaning it takes up less volume.

One of the several drivers of sea level rise is warmer water expanding, and this would be the reverse, a temporary situation in which cool water contracts.

But there might be more to it than just that.

We’ve experienced this kind of condition before in connection with El Niño (warm conditions) and La Niña (cooler conditions) climate cycles. A study in 2020 reviewed a 2017 period when we were having super-high tides.

Widlansky was a co-author of an article on that study, published in the Journal of Climate. Other authors were Xiaoyu Long, Fabian Schloesser, Philip R. Thompson, H. Annamalai, Mark A. Merrifield and Hyang Yoon.

“Hawaii experienced record-high sea levels during 2017, which followed the 2015 strong El Niño and coincided with weak trade winds in the tropical northeastern Pacific,” the authors wrote.

“During August 2017, the Honolulu Harbor tide gauge recorded the highest monthly average water level since records began in 1905.” That record was 17 centimeters, or more than half a foot higher than expected.

That said, high sea levels don’t always follow strong El Niño events, and didn’t after the strong 1997 event. So there’s something else also going on. Maybe winds. Maybe other stuff.

“The processes controlling whether Hawaii sea levels rise after El Niño have so far remained unknown,” they wrote.

In 2017, "the high sea levels were caused by the superposition, or stacking, of multiple contributions.”

The high sea levels associated with the 2015 strong El Niño lasted from 2016 until the end of summer in 2017, and then tapered off.

The current low water is just a couple of inches lower than normal, and it's different in different locations. 

It is not clear how long the current low stand of Hawaiian water will last. 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2023

Climate shifts further: La Niño is over, El Niño coming by summer

The La Nina oceanic condition, which we’ve been in for many months, has ended, and an El Nino appears likely to form in the summer or fall.

That’s the latest prediction from the Climate Prediction Center: 

It builds on the report we filed last month, when we suggested a fair chance of El Nino by mid year. That fair chance now seems to have been elevated to a pretty good chance. Spring predictions tend to be problematic, but most models see us going that way.

Thus the La Nina cool phase of Central Pacific climate is behind us, and we are in something called ENSO-neutral, ENSO being the term for the whole warm-cold cycle, El Niño Southern Oscillation.

Most climate prediction models now suggest we should shift into El Niño during the summer, and it might happen pretty quickly: “it is possible that strong warming near South America may portend a more rapid evolution toward El Niño.”

One of the things that can mean for Hawai’i is that we are likely to have a more active hurricane season. Also some other changes. More on that a little further down.

But one the questions that still challenges climate researchers is where climate change is taking the ENSO pattern broadly. There’s some suggestion that the past 40 years—since 1980—have been a little cooler than expected, a little more La Niña.

Now, many researchers say their models suggest the next few decades may swing toward more active El Niño conditions. But they don’t fully trust those models: the computer climate models of past climate don’t match up real will with actual observations of the climate. So how to be sure? A whole lot of smart people are working hard to make sense of that.  A discussion on this can be found at the ENSO blog. 

Among the variables: Warmer oceans can feed circulating storms, but warmer oceans and changing wind conditions can also cause changes in deep ocean upwellings. If they bring cool water to the surface from the deep ocean, then that could reduce the energy available to circulating storms like hurricanes. Changes in cloud cover could also create cooler surface conditions. And there are other variables.

“Heroic efforts are being done at modeling centers around the world to improve the representation of the physical processes,” wrote Kris Karnauskas, of the University of Colorado-Boulder.

That’s the long term.

For the coming year, what does an El Niño mean for us? There’s a nice NOAA fact sheet here. 

It suggests wetter weather at first, in late summer and fall, then drier. Maybe a dry winter this year. Weaker trade winds. More hurricanes and tropical storms. Warmer water around the Islands.

And sea levels slightly higher than normal, meaning big storm surf will reach farther inland.

All in all, interesting times.

© Jan TenBruggencate

Sperm whale strands on Kaua'i's Lydgate Beach at Wailua

 

An adult sperm whale washed ashore early today (Saturday, January 28, 2023) at Lydgate Park in Wailua, on Kaua’i.

The county issued a press release urging people to stay away from the popular beach park while government agencies respond to the incident.

The marine mammal appeared by initial estimates to be more than 50 feet in length, and could weigh 30-45 tons.

The whale was reported visible on the reef off the beach park Friday afternoon, apparently already dead. By morning it was washing in the shorebreak. Government officials were working to determine how to deal with the animal.

Sometimes dead marine mammals are brought ashore for burial. Sometimes they are towed out to sea. And occasionally, particularly when they are in remote locations, they are left to decompose in place, where they become a major food resource for crabs and other coastal marine life.

However, Kaua’i County’s Lydgate Beach Park is hardly a remote location. It gets hundreds of visitors daily for its white sand beach, protected swimming area, pavilions, playground, tennis courts and more. The whale carcass was roughly in the middle of the beach fronting the park, about 1,500 feet south of the mouth of Wailua River.

No cause of death has been determined, but National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration personnel, along with state Department of Land and Natural Resources personnel, will conduct a necropsy to gather evidence.

In a 2017 stranding of five pilot whales at Kalapaki Beach, about six miles south of Lydgate, the animals were removed to a remote island location, where necropsies were conducted before burial of the whales.

Sperm whales are found regularly in the deep waters off the Hawaiian Islands and the rest of the Pacific, and they were a key target of the whaling fleets that operated around the Islands during the early 1800s. There have been sperm whale strandings on several Hawaiian Islands.

In December 2021, an adult sperm whale washed ashore at Pila’a, Kaua’i, about a dozen miles north of Wailua.

Whale strandings and deaths have been linked to disease, parasites, impact injuries from watercraft and other causes, but the cause of many strandings is never determined.

Newsweek earlier this month reported an unusual increase in marine mammal strandings recently, including two sperm whales and seven humpbacks in the North Atlantic since December. 

NOAA Fisheries reports that on average, there are 20 strandings of whales or dolphins in the Hawaiian Islands in any given year. 

Just this week, researchers at the University of Hawai’i and NOAA reported on a newly discovered virus that was found in the tissues of 15 of 30 tested cetaceans that died on beaches in Hawai’i, Samoa, Saipan and at sea. It is not clear that virus was the cause of death in any of these cases, but it has the capacity to cause significant illness in some dolphins and whales. We reported on that in an earlier blog. 

Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales, with adults ranging from 40 to 52 feet in length. The Lydgate whale appears to be at the upper end of that range. They can range in weight from 15 to 45 tons, according to NOAA Fisheries.

They are found throughout the world’s oceans, and while their population has increased significantly from the heavy whaling years, they continue to be listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. They are now protected throughout their range.

NOAA estimates that more than 400,000 sperm whales were taken between the start of whaling in 1800 and its end in 1987 in the North Pacific alone, and more in other oceans. 

A study reported last year in Nature estimates that the pre-whaling global population of sperm whales approached 2 million, that it was severely depleted by whaling, and that in 2022, the number had grown back to around 850,000. But the study said those estimates are very uncertain.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2023

Removing rats from islands has big impacts on nearshore ocean productivity

 New research shows that small islands without rats have more productive nearshore environments than those with rats.

It’s a fascinating bit of data that seems to confirm Leonardo Da Vinci’s observation: “Learn how to see.  Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

But how do rats and fish connect?

Well, through seabirds.

The birds catch fish at sea. They nest on islands. They poop on those islands. The guano runs off to the nearshore water, where it fertilizes the reef. That means reef fish have more to eat. (And then, of course, the seabirds eat the fish, closing a great circle.)

If you put invasive rats on such an island, they eat the birds and eggs, the seabird population collapses, there’s less guano, and reef fish populations do less well.

The details of this dynamic are described in a new 2023 paper in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. It is entitled, Terrestrial invasive species alter marine vertebrate behavior. 

Ultimately, it’s a natural nutrient cycle, and the rats break it. Across the globe conservation organizations have been trying to heal the cycle by eradicating alien rats from small islands. It’s a huge task.

The removal of rats from Lehua Island, north of Ni’ihau, required a concerted effort by a broad consortium that included the organization Island Conservation, along with the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife and its parent agency the State Department of Land and Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center in Hilo, Niihau Ranch, U.S. Coast Guard, National Tropical Botanical Garden and several other associated organizations and agencies. 

At Lehua, they were able to remove the rats, and have recorded recovering bird populations. Whether fish populations around the island have changed or increased has not been reported.

Most of the research to date on rat removal has been used to document the recovery of bird populations, like this report on Anacapa Island, off California. 

And this report on Hawadax Island in the Aleutians, formerly known as Rat Island. 

Guano has been mined off small bird islands around the world for many years, for use as a natural fertilizer for land-based agriculture. Guano has similar fertilizing impacts on aquatic systems, says the Nature Ecology and Evolution study.

“The movement of naturally occurring nutrients across habitats and ecosystems is a strong driver of productivity and can influence community dynamics,” the authors wrote.

They found that fish in rat-free environment have to spend less time fighting for food, and are able to cruise larger territories.

The research was done on 10 islands, 5 without rats and 5 with rats, in the Chagos Archipelago, which is in the Indian Ocean south of the Maldives. One finding: “Seabird densities on rat-free islands are up to 720 times higher, and the nitrogen input provided by seabirds is 251 times greater, than around rat-infested islands.”

One interesting finding is that there wasn not necessarily more algae growing on rat-free islands, but that the algae there was more nutritious, so fish didn’t have to eat as much.

The Nature study’s English and Canadian authors are Rachel L. Gunn, Cassandra E. Benkwitt, Nicholas A. J. Graham, Ian R. Hartley, Adam C. Algar and Sally A. Keith. Most are from the Lancaster environment Centre at Lancaster University.

An earlier study by some of the same researchers confirmed that rat-free islands had higher nutrient levels in nearshore waters. 

And this study suggests that while there aren’t necessarily more fish around rat-free islands, the fish grow faster and are significantly heavier.   “Overall mean body size was 16% larger around rat-free islands.”

© Jan TenBruggencate 2023

At Palmyra, native forests store more carbon than coconut plantations

There are lots of interesting things about native forests in the Islands, and The Nature Conservancy has just added an important one.

These forests do a better job of capturing carbon than planted forests, at least in the example of Palmyra Island, where the Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operate an atoll refuge a few hundred miles south of Hawai’i.

Native Hawaiian forests are excellent at capturing moisture and preventing aggressive, eroding runoff. That is in part due to the complexity of the Hawaiian forest. There are generally canopy trees, and smaller understory trees and shrubs and at the lowest level, ferns and mosses.

So when a heavy rain falls, its downward force is diminished by all the leaves and branches it encounters on the way down, and then the forest soaks it up like a sponge. So mountain streams in native forest areas run clear, not muddy. And they keep running even after weeks of dry weather, as the natural spongy forest floor lets the water seep out slowly.

By contrast, in a forest dominated by alien trees, like eucalyptus or Java plum, there is little understory growth. And heavy rains often lead to muddy runoff, eroded gullies, and sediment-filled streams. And shortly after the rain stops, the soils dry out.

(Image at right: Pisonia forest at Palmyra. Credit: Andrew Wright.)

A new study at Palmyra by The Nature Conservancy has shown that another benefit of native forests is that they also store more carbon than single-species forests like the coconuts that once dominated Palmyra’s coralline ground.

The paper was published in PLOS One by Kate Longley-Wood, Mary Engels, Kevin D. Lafferty, John P. McLaughlin and Alex Wegmann. The title: Transforming Palmyra Atoll to native-tree dominance will increase net carbon storage and reduce dissolved organic carbon reef runoff.

At Palmyra, the Conservancy has been replacing dense coconut stands, which are not native to the island, and were planted to promote a copra industry, with the native forest that once existed there.  They knew there would be impacts of this conversion, but it wasn’t entirely clear what they would be.

“To better understand how this landscape-level change will alter the atoll’s carbon dynamics, we used field sampling, remote sensing, and parameter estimates from the literature to model the total carbon accumulation potential of Palmyra’s forest before and after transformation,” the authors wrote.

Their research showed that the new forest increased carbon storage on the atoll’s land areas by nearly 12 percent, and also reduced the flow of dissolved organic carbon into the island’s lagoon. That, in turn, is expected to result in healthier corals and a strong community of the species reliant on the coral reefs.

“We’ve demonstrated that better stewardship of natural resources can increase their carbon capture ability,” said lead author Kate Longley-Wood, Ocean Mapping Coordinator with TNC’s Protect Oceans, Lands and Waters program. “That native tree species are better for carbon capture and ocean health is the icing on the cake.”

All that said, it takes time for the effect to be seen, and the story will likely change somewhat over time as the restored forest matures. There is a loss of carbon in the standing trees when the coconuts are cut down and allowed to be replaced by native Pisonia grandis (Pu’atea in Tahitian or cabbage tree in English), Heliotropium foertherianum (beach heliotrope), Pandanus tectorius (hala or screwpine) and other species native to the atoll.

The native species are considered to be superior habitats for native seabirds, they store more carbon, and they support a larger native ecosystem.  But the results don’t mean it’s appropriate to go around cutting down all the coconuts elsewhere, as they could be important parts of the human communities on some islands. The scientific name of coconut is Cocos nucifera, sometimes written C. nucifera.

“C. nucifera’s role in human migration and settlement throughout Oceania is notable, and control of C. nucifera to transform native forest should be balanced with the societal value provided by C. nucifera to Pacific Island communities,” the paper said.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2022

Vampire mice killing hundreds of Laysan albatross on Hawaiian island of Midway

Bloodied albatross. USFWS photo.

The mysterious vampire mice of Midway Atoll have left hundreds of adult Laysan albatross dead, their necks torn open in garish bloody wounds.

These mice are doing something no mice anywhere else in the world are known to do.

Late at night, they climb the necks of nesting seabirds and chew through the skin, apparently feeding on the birds’ blood, skin, fat and muscle.

The albatross’ commitment to protecting their eggs is so strong that they will shake their heads, but will not leave the nests even with a predatory rodent chewing on them.

And the problem has grown since it was first spotted in 2015.

Wildlife officials assess injured Laysan albatross. Credit: USFWS

“It is horribly destructive what they do to those birds,” said Matt Brown, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service superintendent for the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, which includes Midway.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has teamed up with a number of agencies and now hopes to eradicate the mice, which are an alien species to Midway. Among the 10 major atolls, reefs and islets of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, mice only occur on Sand Island, one of the three specks of dry land within Midway Atoll.

The mice have been here at least since World War II, but the new vampirish behavior is both new to Midway and apparently new to science. Mice are known to take eggs and nestlings of seabirds elsewhere, but only on Midway do they attack large adult birds.

“This isn’t a behavior that has been observed before, although rodents have been responsible for a number of seabird extinctions and extirpations on islands,” said Megan Nagel, public affairs officer for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Honolulu.

A Fish and Wildlife Service fact sheet quoted Midway Atoll Refuge manager Bob Peyton: “The Service is working against the clock to determine how many birds have been attacked, what the rate of spread is, and how to stop the attacks. Albatrosses lay only one egg a season.” 

The proposal they’ve come up with is to try to eradicate the mice. New Zealand just completed a successful five-year effort to remove mice from the Antipodes Islands, where they were feeding on chicks and eggs of seabirds, apparently including the Wandering Albatross, whose 10 to 11-foot wingspan makes it one of the biggest of birds. 

The Midway approach will be similar to the one used at the Antipodes: a helicopter drop of toxic bait pellets during a period when the nesting seabird population is at its lowest.  That’s also similar to the technique that has been used to remove mice from more than 80 other islands and to remove rats from more than 400 islands around the world.

In Hawai`i it’s much like the system that was used to eradicate Pacific rats from Mokapu Island off Molokai and black rats from Mokoli`i off O`ahu, and which has been used to control rats at Lehua Island off Ni`ihau, a process that is still underway.

Rats were eradicated from Midway’s three islets in 1996.

The environmental assessment for the Midway mouse effort, under the name Midway Seabird Protection Project, describes the issues and the proposed solution. The public comment for the environmental assessment is open through April 20.

The helicopter would achieve a uniform islandwide distribution of specially designed bait pellets that contain the anticoagulant Brodifacoum. Some hand distribution will be employed in sensitive areas such as near the shore. The work would be done in the summer of 2019, during a period when seabirds are comparatively scarce on the island, and when dry weather limits mouse food supplies—making the grain-based bait pellets more appealing.

There are a number of reasons to use a helicopter, including assuring an even bait distribution but also foot traffic in many areas would collapse many of the thousands of nesting burrows of Bonin Petrels, which recovered strongly after rats were removed.

Similar eradication efforts on other islands have usually but not always been successful. In recent years, the success rate has gone up with improvements in technique. The environmental assessment reviews alternative approaches, and looks at the option of doing nothing at all.  The Brodifacoum bait delivered by helicopter at the right time of year, in specific amounts over time, as described in the proposal, is viewed as the best alternative.

The project is estimated to cost $3.5 million. It is not yet clear the source of that money. Many previous eradications have been funded through a combination of government funds, grants from foundations, and money from private institutions like conservation groups.

The Fish and Wildlife Service would be the lead operational agency, with technical support and assistance from Island Conservation and the Midway Restoration Partnership Group. This is a collaboration of the Fish and Wildlife Serfvice and Island Conservation as well as American Bird Conservancy, the National Wildlife Research Center of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, U.S Geological Survey and the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2018

What's at risk :Midway albatross colony. Credit: USFWS.

Sunscreen chemicals may harm corals, but they're the tiniest player among reef threats

The dangers of certain sunscreens to coral reefs are believed by some Hawai`i legislators to be so dangerous that they are considering banning it.

Can they really be that bad? If they were, wouldn’t reefs where nobody swims be far healthier than those frequented by oil-slathered masses?

In our review of the science, it’s true that some of the chemicals in some sunscreens are harmful to reef organisms.

But as usual, this issue is complicated. 

While there has been much breathless prose arguing the hazards of sunscreens on reefs, there is also another side to this story. The other side is, essentially, that it is an issue, but a very minor one compared to the other challenges.

Also, even though folks worried about certain sunscreen products recommend using other products, some of those others may be dangerous to reefs too. And still more may use compounds that have not yet been thoroughly tested.

A 2008 research effort by Italian scientist Robert Danovaro argues that sunscreens can promote viral infections in tiny algae called zooxanthellae, and that can cause coral bleaching. Danovaro’s team looked at various components of sunscreens and found that in the laboratory, these had the strongest impact on coral bleaching: butylparaben, ethylhexylmethoxycinnamate, benzophenone-3 and 4-methylbenzylidene camphor.

Another of the key studies on the subject was published last year in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. The lead author was Craig Downs. It found that if certain corals were exposed to the active ingredient in many sunscreens, oxybenzone or benzophenone-3, they could harm corals and cause coral bleaching.

Oxybenzone is one of the chemicals in many sunscreens that shields your skin against ultraviolet radiation from the sun. And that reduces skin cancer risk.

Researchers found that if you expose coral cells to enough oxybenzone, it will kill them. At lower levels it will deform them, and will cause reef corals to expel their food-giving algae. When the algae are gone, the corals go white, a process called bleaching. Eventually the coral polyps can starve and die.

The study found that there can be impacts on coral larvae and cells at oxybenzone concentrations in the higher ranges found on Hawai`i beaches—notably heavily populated O`ahu beaches.

Thus, the authors wrote, “Oxybenzone poses a hazard to coral reef conservation and threatens the resiliency of coral reefs to climate change.”

But there’s more to it than that. 

We’re still waiting for studies that link the health of reefs where there is a lot of sunscreen-drenched swimming compared to similar reefs that are pristine.

Coral reefs are being hit by all kinds of attacks, and coral reefs are bleaching in the Main Hawaiian Islands as well as in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, many of which are uninhabited and sunscreen-free.

Hawai`i is taking coral reef degradation seriously. Earlier this year, the Department of Land and Natural Resources released its Coral Bleaching Recovery Plan. It focuses on a number of reef threats, primarily warming waters.

It does not consider sunscreen issues.

That doesn’t mean sunscreen is invisible to the state. The state Division of Aquatic Resources has issued a statement of concern that “Researchers have found oxybenzone concentrations in some Hawaiian waters at more than 30 times the level considered safe for corals.”

Rather than slathering on sunscreens with oxybenzone (read the label), the state recommends other alternatives to prevent sunburn: “water resistant sunscreens, which are more likely to stay on your skin, and sunscreens that use mineral filters, such as zinc oxide or titanium dioxide. Also, rash guards or wet suits will reduce the area of exposed skin, and thus the amount of sunscreen needed for protection.”

But switching to any other sunscreen may not be the best answer. It depends on which one. Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are also potential reef problems. This study suggests that titanium dioxide, as it breaks up in the marine environment, can be toxic to marine algae. Zinc oxide is believed to have similar impacts.

If you care about reefs, limiting your participation in adding harsh chemicals to the surf is important. But you should also be paying attention to some of the more serious threats to reefs—including climate change, sedimentation from the land and overfishing. 

This 2012 study looked at all the known causes of a 27-year decline in coral cover on the massive Australian Great Barrier Reef. None of them was sunscreen. 

The big culprits, after tropical cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish and climate-related bleaching: “their high sensitivity to rising seawater temperatures, ocean acidification, water pollution from terrestrial runoff and dredging, destructive fishing, overfishing, and coastal development.”

 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2017