Stranded seal pup

Early Sunday morning, May 16, 2021, SEA received a call from a concerned citizen about a pup seal on the beach around marker 145, which is between Bullard’s Beach and Whiskey Run.  A message went out to those already on a phone tree text for Coquille Point.  I decided to respond to the call and headed out with signage and flags.  First I went to Bullard’s Beach but decided I didn’t want to walk what could have been 2 plus miles north.  I ended up at Whiskey Run since no other entry point in between could be found.  It was fate that I was being lazy and decided to try to find an easier route to this stranded seal pup. As I was walking south on the beach, I flagged down a truck coming north to ask if they had seen the pup.  A local, Kristal, not only knew where the pup was but drove me the more than 2 miles south.  As it turned out, if it were not for Kristal I would have had to walk more than 2 miles south instead of less than 2 miles north from Bullard’s.   But it was meant to be that I meet this concerned citizen who wanted to help.  We found the pup in the middle of the sandy beach with tire tracks all around.  As we were placing flags and signage, the pup kept crying but then got motivated to turn around and head into the water.  We both felt good that this pup would easily reunite with its mother and all would be good in the world again. 

While we were traveling to the parking lot at Whiskey Run, Kristal said there was a dead seal just north, and it had been there at least 3 days.  She drove over to it, and I was able to take a picture and send it to Jim Rice of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network.  Kristal is now aware of how to respond and report these kinds of issues.  She truly is a person who cares about wildlife and goes driving on the beach often.  Since we had time, Kristal ended up telling me a story about how she rescued a Canadian goose with a broken leg.  When she could not get any organization to take the bird, she decided to see if she could help it to heal.  She made a splint for the broken leg. After three months of care, “Quacky”, as she named it, was successfully released near a pond inland.  As we know, this was probably not the smart thing to do, but with no organization willing to help she just had to try and in the end all worked out.  It is caring citizens like Kristal that make a difference, and I am glad I was able to enlighten her on what to do next time.  And it was a rewarding experience knowing this baby seal pup was safe again.

Susan

This BBC video and text about Australian kelp research and production highlights some of the potential benefits these fast-growing shoreline plants could offer, including as a climate change solution. “Seaweeds are a platform of opportunity in sustainability, nutrition, and innovation.”

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210406-how-kelp-can-help-solve-climate-change

Comment: Sunday, March 7, 2021

Sunday, March 7, 2021 Taking back the bay A sea urchin program by the University of Hawaii has been cleaning up Kaneohe Bay algae for a decade and doing a good job By Timothy Hurleythurley@staradvertiser.com Ten years ago the patch reefs in Kaneohe Bay were in pretty sad shape smothered and getting choked out by an invasive seaweed species introduced decades before.Today, it’s a different story in the bay. Most of those reefs are pretty healthy and largely clear of the marauding algae, thanks in large part to a unique bio-control program started by the University of Hawaii at Manoa Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit and the state Division of Aquatic Resources. It was 10 years ago that the first hatchery-raised sea urchins were released into Hawaii’s largest sheltered body of water, left to munch and mow down the seaweed like goats in a grass field.To date, the sea urchin bio-control project has treated more than 227 acres of reef inKaneohe Bay and has recently expanded to the Waikiki Marine Life Conservation District to control invasive algae.Funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the state, the hatchery has produced more than 600,000 sea urchins that have been released into the wild. “This is one of the most effective marine invasive species control projects implemented in Hawaii,” said Shaya Honarvar, director of the university’s Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit. The collector urchins, “This is one of the most effective marine invasive species control projects implemented in Hawaii.”Shaya HonarvarDirector, Pacific Cooperative Studies, UH ManoaThe sea urchin biocontrol project has released 600,000 sea urchins across the state, above. At left, project staff raise the sea urchins until they’re large enough to be released into the wild. (DNLR / DAR PHOTOS)Hatchery manager David Cohen. COURTESY MALIA URIE (Tripneustes gratilla) are spawned, settled and raised at the state’s Anuenue Fisheries Research Center at Sand Island, a building that was once home to a prawn hatchery dating back to the 1970s. The man in charge is David Cohen, a career aquaculture professional who accepted the challenge more than a decade ago to establish the world’s first hatchery for sea urchin used for bio-control.It didn’t take long for Cohen to figure out how to raise the urchins, and he continues to work at improving the tricky process in a climate-controlled facility that handles the creatures from egg to maturity.Parent urchins are collected from local reefs and taken to the hatchery to spawn. At any given time, the facility is occupied by as many as 15 million urchins in various stages of life, including some 20,000 to 60,000 young urchins earmarked for out-planting.After about 26 days growing from larvae to urchin, they are moved into horizontal tanks lining the interior of the hatchery. After four to six months, the urchins are trucked to a boat for placement on reefs. Kaneohe Bay is home to one of the only barrier reef systems in the United States, offering shelter for a wide variety of aquatic wildlife. But the corals in the bay were ailing, under attack from non-native seaweeds brought to Hawaii in the 1970s for experimental aquaculture projects that were later abandoned. The seaweed escaped and spread throughout the bay.Before the hatchery was created, two types of invasive macroalgae Kappaphycus and Euchuema grew in thick mats on top of reefs in Kaneohe Bay, blocking sunlight, killing coral and reducing the watery habitat’s ability to produce fish and marine life.”Some places it was 2 or 3 feet deep,” Cohen said of the seaweed.It was so thick that divers would first have to remove the algae, scooping it up in thick mounds before feeding it into a suction pump mounted on a barge nicknamed “The Super Sucker. “The urchins would then be planted in a space where they could do their thing, paving the way for coral to regrow and allow for open spaces for fish, native seaweed and invertebrates to use as habitat.While a 2018 UH study found that native sea urchins had successfully reduced the invasive, reef-smothering macroalgae by 85%, Cohen said he and others have seen patch reefs where most, if not all, of the invasive seaweed is gone.Nowadays the Super Sucker machine isn’t needed. The bay’s reef areas are monitored for algae regrowth and urchins are out-planted as needed if invasive seaweed is detected. In a few weeks, survey divers are scheduled to go out into the bay and determine where to out-plant sea urchins for the rest of the year.”They will find plots that need spot-treating,” Cohen said.Building on the success at Kaneohe Bay, the Division of Aquatic Resources last year began out-planting hatchery- raised urchins in the Waikiki Marine Life Conservation District. Some 100,000 urchins were placed in a 4-acre reef covered by invasive algae. “We hope to see the same level of success in Waikiki to improve coral habitat and expand healthy reef coverage in the most visible MLCD in the state,” Wesley Dukes, DAR Habitat Monitoring Coordinator, said in a news release last year.If other areas in Hawaii need invasive-algae cleaning, the $400,000-a-year project will consider sending urchins there as well, Cohen said.Cohen said the project’s success has not gone unnoticed. Officials in Puerto Rico have contacted him and are hoping to replicate the effort following the pandemic using an urchin in the same genus. The Caribbean has been plagued by invasive seaweed over the past decade.”I believe it will be a game changer in the Caribbean,” Cohen said. Copyright (c)2021 Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Edition 3/7/2021Powered by TECNAVIA

On Saturday, April 17, 2021, from 10 AM to 1PM, SOLVE and SEA will offer a Beach Cleanup Day to honor Earth Day, 2021. More details and a form for signing up can be found in the link below.

https://www.solveoregon.org/opportunity/a0C1I00000QFDXh

Well, maybe you’d like to become one. If you don’t know what a “nurdle” is, please read the article below. This new crisis to our waterways and oceans is very real and VERY destructive. We are finding nurdles regularly on our beaches in Bandon. They are extremely dangerous to the fish in our oceans, so we at SEA are putting together monthly “Nurdle Patrols” to do our part in trying to reduce the damage being done by the manufacturers of nurdles. Please let us know if you want to be added to our email list for alerting you to the dates of our nurdle patrols. Just send an email to info@sea-edu.org and we will send you dates and locations as they become available.

https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2019/12/13/ever-hear-of-a-nurdle-the-western-pa-ethane-cracker-could-bring-this-new-form-of-pollution-to-the-ohio-river/

If you are like the thousands of people who flock to the Oregon Coast every summer to catch sight of a tufted puffin, you should know that this “Clown of the Sea” is in danger of disappearing from our shores. Read the article below and see what is happening to this beautiful sea bird.

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/02/08/cannon-beach-last-place-to-see-tufted-puffins-from-shore-but-for-how-long/

I seldom think about noise in the world’s oceans. Do you? The image that comes to mind is a silent world – a diver gliding noiselessly through an underwater wonderland. But then again . . . . . . . . Read the article below and give it another thought.