Sea why

Van Antwerpen, a beefy and voluble man, gestured unhappily toward a basket of pale green fishing-line weights at the back of his vessel. Longline fishing kills albatrosses differently than trawling does. A smaller seabird dives down and brings a baited hook to the surface and tries to pull the bait off, and then an albatross barges in and swallows the whole thing, hooking itself and drowning.

One solution is to weight the line, so that the baited hook quickly sinks out of reach of the birds. BirdLife recommends sinkers with a loosely attached casing of luminescent plastic light attracts fish , and van Antwerpen had been eager to try them on his vessel.

Wanless frowned and pointed out that this would make the hook sink too slowly to protect seabirds. But maybe increasing the weight of the sinker would compensate for a greater separation? He just wanted to catch tuna without losing all his sinkers.

A trawler, by using only a bird-scaring line, can reduce the number of albatrosses it kills by as much as 99 percent. Any commercial vessel fishing in South African waters now has to practice seabird bycatch mitigation, and Wanless and Angel are attempting to forge relationships with every longline tuna skipper.

But protecting seabirds takes more than regulations. It also requires independent monitoring of fishing vessels and, ideally, a financial incentive for the industry to reduce seabird bycatch. Pursuit of this premium market, particularly in Europe, has already led many South African fishing vessels to pay for independent observers, to ensure compliance with bycatch rules. Without an observer on board, even a captain like van Antwerpen may be tempted to break the rules.

The best way for a government to ensure compliance is to mandate that every vessel be outfitted with a digital camera to monitor its catch and bycatch. When Australia did this with its tropical tuna-fishing fleet, in , ship captains placed panicked calls to Australian regulators, asking where they could buy bird-scaring lines.

For now, though, the global situation remains atrocious. Wanless and Angel have expanded their outreach to the fisheries of South America, Korea, and Indonesia, with not altogether discouraging results, but the fleets of China and Taiwan, which together account for two-thirds of fishing vessels on the high seas, operate with little or no regard for seabird mortality, and they sell their catch in markets mostly indifferent to sustainability.

Wanless estimates that , seabirds, including , albatrosses, continue to be killed annually by long-liners alone. This is hard enough on the abundant species, like sooty shearwaters.

But many species of albatrosses, which are slow to reach maturity and typically breed only in alternate years, are threatened with extinction. Gough Island, a square-mile mass of volcanic rock in the South Atlantic Ocean, is home to millions of breeding seabirds, including the entire world population of the Atlantic petrel and all but a few pairs of the critically endangered Tristan albatross.

Ross Wanless first went to Gough in , as a doctoral candidate, after other researchers had reported that alarmingly few petrels and albatrosses were fledging chicks. It was known that rats and cats, which humans have introduced on islands all over the world, prey heavily on seabirds. But there were no rats or cats on Gough, only mice. Using video cameras and infrared lights, Wanless recorded what the mice were doing to the petrel chicks.

It hesitated and then started nibbling on the chick. Other mice came, and I witnessed this insane, disgusting attack. As the blood started to flow, the mice got more and more excited. Having evolved without terrestrial predators, seabirds have no defense against mice. In more recent years, failure has been as high as 90 percent. Among all seabird species on Gough, mice now kill two million chicks every year, and many of these species are also losing adults in the fisheries.

Annual mortality among adult Tristan albatrosses at sea has risen to 10 percent—more than triple the rate of natural mortality. Ten percent adult mortality plus 90 percent breeding failure is a formula for extinction.

The calamitous decline in seabird populations has many causes. Overfishing of anchovies and other small prey fish directly deprives penguins and gannets and cormorants of the energy they need to reproduce.

Plastic pollution , particularly in the Pacific Ocean, is clogging the guts of seabirds and leaving them hungry for real food. And the resurgence of marine mammal populations—in other respects, an environmental success story—has resulted in more seals to eat young penguins, more sea lions to crowd cormorants out of their breeding sites, and more whales to compete with diving birds for prey.

The number one threat to seabirds, however, is introduced predators: rats, cats, and mice overrunning the islands where they breed. This is the bad news. The good news is that invasive species are a problem with achievable solutions. Organizations such as Island Conservation , a nonprofit based in California, have perfected the use of helicopters and GIS technology to target predators with poisoned mammal-specific bait.

The most ambitious rodent-eradication effort to date was mounted by the South Georgia Heritage Trust. South Georgia island, miles from the Antarctic Peninsula, is the breeding ground of perhaps 30 million seabirds; without rats and mice, the island could easily host three times that number. No living rat or mouse has been detected on the island since Mice came to Marion with whalers and sealers in the 19th century.

Some ocean salts come from underwater volcanic eruptions, which directly release minerals into the ocean. Salt domes also contribute to the ocean's saltiness. These domes, vast deposits of salt that form over geological timescales, are found underground and undersea around the world. They are common across the continental shelf of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Two of the most prevalent ions in seawater are chloride and sodium.

Together, they make up around 85 percent of all dissolved ions in the ocean. A possible reason for its name may come from the distinctive brownish-yellow color of the water that flows in from the Yellow River, which carries huge amounts of silt from the upper plains. Irina Dreyvitser is currently an Advancement Assistant with the SSEC, focusing on building awareness of science education among the leaders of corporations, foundations, and academic institutions and securing grants and private donor funding for numerous educational projects.

Irina provides administrative and management support to all aspects of the advancement program, including research, data and gift processing, donor relations, and events management.

She received the Smithsonian Unsung Hero Award in and the Smithsonian Certificate of Accomplishment for taking a leadership role to organize the Round Table discussions with the Smithsonian Leadership during the Mentorship Program. Before joining the Smithsonian in , Irina worked as a travel and sales manager with several agencies in Washington, DC, and Virginia. In addition, she held Real Estate licenses for Virginia, Washington, DC, and Maryland and worked as a realtor for several years providing a full range of services.

View the discussion thread. Skip to main content. Why is the Black Sea black? There are a number of hypotheses for why it was eventually called the Black Sea: Metal objects from ships, dead plants, and animal matter that sunk deeper than meters for a long period of time became covered with a black sludge due to the high concentration of hydrogen sulfide in the sea. From the perspective of sailors, the sea was black due to severe storms in the winter, during which the water is so dark it looks black.

Request Quote Request a Quote and book. Rooms and Rates. Sea Why 1 room. Room information x 2 main is Double. Ensuite Bathroom Shower only. Max Guests Max. Description: The bedroom offers a double bed bedding and towels supplied , built in cupboards and electronic safe.

There is an ensuite shower, WC and basin. Reviews of Sea Why.