Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Sad news today that Lummi, the great-great-grandmother of a family of killer whales in Puget Sound known as the “K-Pod,” has gone missing and is presumed dead. She was believed to have been born in around 1910. When I read...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
The Washington Post reports that viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a disease often described as “fish ebola,” has been discovered in southern Lake Michigan and a reservoir in Ohio. Hemorrhagic septicemia is an invasive species, most likely brought into the great lakes in...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Researchers in Australia recently announced the discovery of two new species of wobbegong (or carpet) sharks, which they have named the "floral banded wobbegong" and "dwarf spotted wobbegong." As the name suggests, the dwarf spotted wobbegong is a smaller cousin...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Solving Global Warming
Scientists, gathered at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Annual Meeting in Boston, are expressing increased concern over the growing threat to some of the smallest seas creatures in the world, including tiny snails sometimes called pteropods...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
John Platt, over at the Extinction Blog has an interesting item up about what the Korea Times calls "ghost whales" -- the elusive, mysterious, and highly endangered western pacific gray whale. A close cousin of the more populous eastern pacific...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Today the National Marine Fisheries Service formally proposed listing black abalone as an endangered species. Black abalone's historic range extends from Baja California to Del Norte county, well north of San Francisco. Once a dominant feature of the southern...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , U.S. Law and Policy
I've been traveling the last few days and didn't have much time to post on Switchboard, but I would be remiss if I didn't give a quick shout out to my colleagues at NRDC's Marine Mammal Protection Program, who scored...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler
A lot has been written here at Switchboard about the plight of the polar bear in the face of ever-receding sea ice, but the truth is that it's hardly just polar bears that are effected. The entire Arctic ecosystem is...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Curbing Pollution , Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
One of the biggest threats to aquatic ecosystems in the United States--and to the Great Lake's in particular--is the introduction of foreign species (everything ranging from plants, to fish, to microscopic organisms) into our waters by transoceanic ships. These vessels take on...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Today's AP featured a rather extraordinary claim by the United States Navy. In a story about the particular vulnerability "beaked" whales (a kind of small toothed whale that encompasses about twenty different species) to naval sonar, the commander of the U.S. Pacific...
