Swarm of Jellyfish Shuts Down Scottish Nuclear Power Plant The Torness reactors can be primarily cooled by gas, but they still require water pumped in from the North Sea to meet regulations Jun 30 2011 In recent days, we've seen nuclear power plants threatened by fires and floods [ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/06/fire-and-flood-waters-threaten-us-nuclear-facilities/39281/ ], but this is something new. Both of the reactors at the Torness nuclear power station in Edinburgh, Scotland, were shut down on Tuesday afternoon when a swarm of jellyfish clogged the filters that are fitted over the pipes sucking water into the building. With a clean-up operation already under way, officials expect the plant to be up and running again by next week. The reactors at Torness, which is a second-generation facility and wasn't commissioned until 1988, are relatively advanced. But despite being primarily gas-cooled, the reactors still require seawater to keep them at a temperature low enough to comply with safety regulations. The seawater is pumped in directly from that off the eastern coast of Scotland, where temperatures have been stable in recent weeks. And that's part of one theory attempting to explain the increase in the number of jellyfish in the area: They may have been driven to the normal temperatures as the waters in other parts of the North Sea have been heating up. [...] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/swarm-of-jellyfish-shuts-down-a-scottish-nuclear-power-plant/241269/ [no comments yet]
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Warming oceans cause largest movement of marine species in two million years
Swarms of venomous jelly fish and poisonous algae are migrating into British waters due to changes in the ocean temperatures, a major new study has revealed.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent 6:45AM BST 26 Jun 2011
Warming ocean waters are causing the largest movement of marine species seen on Earth in more than two million years, according to scientists.
In the Arctic, melting sea ice during recent summers has allowed a passage to open up from the Pacific ocean into the North Atlantic, allowing plankton, fish and even whales to [move] into the Atlantic Ocean from the Pacific.
The discovery has sparked fears delicate marine food webs could be unbalanced and lead to some species becoming extinct as competition for food between the native species and the invaders stretches resources.
Rising ocean temperatures are also allowing species normally found in warmer sub-tropical regions to [move] into the northeast Atlantic.
A venomous warm-water species Pelagia noctiluca has forced the closure of beaches and is now becoming increasingly common in the waters around Britain.
The highly venomous Portuguese Man-of-War, which is normally found in subtropical waters, is also regularly been found in the northern Atlantic waters.
A form of algae known as dinoflagellates has also been found to be moving eastwards across the Atlantic towards Scandinavia and the North Sea.
Huge blooms of these marine plants use up the oxygen in the water and can produce toxic compounds that make shellfish poisonous.
Plankton sampling in the north Atlantic over the past 70 years have also shown that other species of plankton, normally only found in the Pacific ocean, have now become common in Atlantic waters.
The scientists, who have been collaborating on the Climate Change and European Marine Ecosystems Research project, found the plankton species, called Neodenticula seminae, traveled into the Atlantic through a passage through the Arctic sea ice around that has opened up a number of times in the last decade from the Pacific Ocean.
Larger species including a grey whale have also been found to have made the journey through the passage, which winds it’s way from the Pacific coast of Alaska through the islands of northern Canada and down past Greenland into the Atlantic Ocean, when it opened first in 1998, and then again in 2007 and 2010.
Professor Chris Reid, from the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, said: “It seems for the first time in probably thousands of years a huge area of sea water opened up between Alaska and the west of Greenland, allowing a huge transfer of water and species between the two oceans.
“The opening of this passage allowed the wind to drive a current through this passage and the water warmed up making it favourable for species to get through.
“In 1999 we discovered a species in the north west Atlantic that we hadn’t seen before, but we know from surveys in the north Pacific that it is very abundant there.
"This species died out in the Atlantic around 800,000 years ago due to glaciation that changed the conditions it needed to survive.
“The implications are huge. The last time there was an incursion of species from the Pacific into the Atlantic was around two to three million years ago.
"Large numbers of species were introduced from the Pacific and made large numbers of local Atlantic species extinct.
“The impact on salmon and other fish resources could be very dramatic. The indications are that as the ice is continuing to melt in the summer months, climate change could lead to complete melting within 20 to 30 years, which would see huge numbers of species migrating.
"It could have impacts all the way down to the British Isles and down the east coast of the United States.”
He added: “With the jellyfish we are seeing them move further north from tropical and subtropical regions as a result of warming sea temperatures."
Researchers say the invading plankton species is likely to cause widespread changes to the food web in the Atlantic ocean as the invading species are less nutritious than native species, which are eaten by many fish and large whales.
Changes in populations of tiny animals called copepods, which are an essential food source for fish such as cod, herring and mackerel, are already being blamed for helping to drive the collapse of fish stocks as the native species of copepods have been replaced with smaller less nutritious varieties.
This has resulted in declines in North Sea birds, the researchers claim, while Harbour porpoises have also migrated northwards North Sea after sand eels followed the poleward movement of the copepods they ate.
Scientists taking part in the project from the Institute for Marine Resources & Ecosystem Studies, in the Netherlands, found that warmer water would also lead more species in the North and Irish sea as species move from more southerly areas.
But they found that the Atlantic ocean west of Scotland would have fewer species.
Dr Carlo Heip, director general of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, which led the project that is a collaboration of more than 17 institutes in 10 different countries, said: “We need to learn much more about what’s happening in Europe’s seas, but the signs already point to far more trouble than benefit from climate change.
“Despite the many unknowns, it’s obvious that we can expect damaging upheaval as we overturn the workings of a system that’s so complex and important.
“The migrations are an example of how changing climate conditions cause species to move or change their behaviour, leading to shifts in ecosystems that are clearly visible.”
The researchers conclude that these changes will have serious implications for commercial fisheries and on the marine environment.
Among the other species to have migrated from the Pacific Ocean into the Atlantic was a grey whale that was spotted as far south as the Mediterrean off the coast of Spain and Israel.
Grey whales have been extinct in the Atlantic Ocean for more than a hundred years due to hunting and scientists found the animal had crossed through openings in the Arctic sea ice.
Dr Katja Philippart, from the Royal Netherland’s Institute for Sea Research, added: “We have seen very small plankton and large whales migrating from the Pacific into the North Atlantic, so there will certainly be many other species, including fish, that we haven’t detected yet.
“To see a whale in this part of the world was quite remarkable and when we looked at it we concluded it can only have come from one place.”
Pacific species migrating through warmer Northwest Passage
A pod of killer whales swims at the north end of Baffin Island. Killer whales have been capitalizing on the melting Arctic since at least 2007. Gretchen Freund/Handout
Tristin Hopper National Post Jun 28, 2011 – 6:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 28, 2011 10:19 AM ET
Set loose by an ice-free Northwest Passage, an invasion force of Pacific sea creatures are moving east to Atlantic waters.
Researchers at the U.K.-based Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science have called the discovery of a microscopic west coast plant on the east coast a “harbinger of an inundation of the North Atlantic with foreign organisms.”
“The Arctic is getting easier to navigate … organisms that don’t even swim are getting through,” says Eric Solomon, director of conservation strategy at the Vancouver Aquarium.
This week, British researchers announced that the plant, extinct along the East Coast for more than 800,000 years, has begun to reappear there after migrating through the Arctic Ocean. It marks the first time an organism has completed a trans-Arctic crossing in modern times without a set of fins.
Last summer, European scientists were baffled when a grey whale appeared appeared off Israel – the first time a grey whale had been spotted in Mediterranean waters since it was hunted to extinction in the 1700s. At the time, researchers speculated that the Pacific Ocean whale had made its way east through the ice-free Northwest Passage and “was now wondering where the hell it is.”
Killer whales have been capitalizing on the melting Arctic since at least 2007. Faster and smarter than the North’s large, lumbering sea creatures, killer whales have been enjoying free reign over Arctic populations of narwhals, belugas and seals. Packs of killer whales have also been seen taking down bowhead whales twice their size. Wary of the ferocious newcomers, bowhead whales, narwhal and beluga have all been spotted staying near shore and swimming in unnaturally tight formations.
The Humboldt squid, a creature once seen only off the South American coast, has gradually worked its way north into ice-filled waters off Alaska. Soon, researchers suspect, the 45 kilogram squid could begin charting its own cross-Arctic trip.
“It used to be that the primary consideration for staying alive in the Arctic was being able to breathe through a hole in the ice, and that’s not going to be true anymore,” says Ron O’Dor, global scientific director with the Halifax-based Ocean Tracking Network.
The Ocean Tracking Network, headquartered at Dalhousie University, is deploying millions of dollars of equipment to the High Arctic to track the west-east migrations. “There’s going to be some reshuffling of the ecosystems,” says Mr. O’Dor. “Whether that’s good for humans or bad for humans is yet to be determined.”
The invasion is already bad news for Newfoundland’s ravaged Atlantic cod. While the decimated cod stock may no longer be threatened by fishing nets, they are “facing a potentially mutating ecosystem with the arrival of these different species,” says Julian Dodson, a marine biologist at the University of Laval. He notes Arctic char are already facing tough competition for food by schools of east-moving capelin, a small forage fish.
As Arctic shipping traffic ramps up, the migration of sea life will only increase as crustaceans and plankton hitch rides east on Europe-bound freighters. Following the construction of the Suez Canal, says Mr. D’Or, the Mediterranean Sea became overcome with invasive species swimming over from the Red Sea. “The Arctic is going to turn into a giant Suez Canal,” he says.
Species used to move freely between the Atlantic and Pacific, but they were isolated by the introduction of polar ice. Pacific and Atlantic counterparts are now poised for their first meeting in several million years. Pacific salmon have begun cropping up off the Arctic coast of Alaska, and Atlantic salmon are appearing near Iqaluit. It is “inevitable” the two species will eventually collide, says Mr. O’Dor.
Coincidentally, many of these east-west encounters will occur in the waters surrounding Newfoundland and Labrador. One thousand years ago, the area hosted a different kind of east-west reunion when European explorers first encountered North American aboriginals in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.
It was also a predictable result of Congress’s failure to enact climate change legislation that would have placed a price on emissions and given businesses compelling economic reasons to clean up their plants and develop new technologies. Without industrywide federal standards in place, state utility regulators would not have allowed A.E.P. to recoup its investment through higher prices, making the whole project untenable.
Coal-fired power plants produce one-third of the nation’s emissions of carbon dioxide. Policy makers have other tools to help lower these greenhouse gas emissions, including regulations requiring more efficient plants. What they do not have is breakthrough technologies.
The A.E.P. project, located at a 31-year-old coal-fired plant in West Virginia [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/earth/22coal.html ], was the country’s most advanced attempt to strip carbon dioxide from the flue gases and store it permanently underground in deep-rock formations under the plant. The company had completed a small pilot program, and the Energy Department had promised to pay for half the final $668 million bill. But A.E.P. would have been on the hook for the rest.
When work began two years ago, it was assumed that Congress would adopt a cap-and-trade program — imposing a price on emissions, rewarding companies that found innovative ways to reduce them and providing upfront subsidies for advanced technologies. The House passed such a bill, but the Senate balked.
Most of the other proposals and projects in the United States involve enhanced oil recovery, in which utilities capture carbon dioxide and ship it to oil fields where it is injected into wells to extract more oil. Senator Richard Lugar has introduced legislation that would provide tax breaks for utilities that participate. That’s a start. But, at best, oil recovery will be able to absorb only one-sixth of the country’s annual carbon-dioxide emissions.
To address global warming, the country needs new technology and more ambitious projects. There is little chance that industry will invest in them unless Congress provides far stronger financial incentives.
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