Oceans in Distress

Artist’s can play an integral role in the raising of the public consciousness through advocacy. Art can be used to communicate complex ecological and scientific principles to an audience outside of the confines of the academy or science museum. Enclosed are works which focus on Oceans in Distress through industrialization and climate change.

OCEANS IN DISTRESS: INDUSTRIAL FISHING

Filter feeding fish as the Atlantic Menhaden and Herring family provide an ecological service for the oceans. Historically the herring family of fish migrated in monolithic schools from the Gulf of Mexico to Maine. Schools spanned a mile across. As they swam they filtered phytoplankton from the water reducing the growth of algae, clarifying the water and purging suspended detritus from the coastal waters. This ecological vacuuming reduced turbidity and ameliorated dead zones caused by runoff from farms, phosphorous and nitrogen rich wastewater, and fertilizers from golf courses and suburban lawns. The menhaden and herring filtered out the algae blooms caused by the excessive nitrogen and phosphorous before the algae mats blocked the sunlight and sank to the bottom creating dead zones. The menhaden and herring cleansed the surface and estuarine waters with such efficiency that beneficial estuarine plants as eelgrass thrived. These sea grasses supported biodiverse nurseries of shellfish and juvenile fish. Oysters filtered impurities from the seabed floor thereby clarifying and purifying the deeper zones of water. The menhaden and herring family of fish are the base for the pelagic food chain from bluefish to striped bass to tuna, dolphins and whales. Factory fishing with spotter planes and efficient boats that encircle entire schools with nets have all but wiped out the prolific schools of menhaden along the Atlantic coast. The loss of the schools of filter feeding fish has created a broken trophic cascade with plummeting populations of predatory fish and an influx of invasive and destructive species as jellyfish, which fill the ecological niche abandoned by the overfished menhaden and herring family. Without the menhaden filtering the phytoplankton from the water, algae blooms are common occurrences within the estuaries and bays and coastal dead zones are expanding.

The Last Migration © Joseph Ingoldsby- Landscape Mosaics- All Rights Reserved

Anadromous Awakening

Anadromous Awakening- Rainbow Smelt © Joseph Ingoldsby, Landscape Mosaics

All Rights Reserved

Anadromous Awakening- River Herring © Joseph Ingoldsby, Landscape Mosaics

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Anadromous Awakening- American Shad © Joseph Ingoldsby, Landscape Mosaics

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OCEANS IN DISTRESS: INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION

In Memoriam- Gulf of Mexico- MMX © Joseph Ingoldsby, Landscape Mosaics

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OCEANS IN DISTRESS: INDUSTRIAL NOISE POLLUTION

In the last 60 years, the oceans have become industrialized and polluted with shipping traffic noise, sonar and militarization to the detriment of the social whales who communicate over long distances with each other using the acoustic properties of water for their song. The increased noise pollution has affected the ability of the whales to communicate and has disrupted their migrations, socializing and health. The critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale's song travels only tens of miles. The Humpback Whale's song travels hundreds of miles. The blue whales song travels thousands of miles. Noise pollution bleaches the acoustic properties of the water and deafens the whales to their pods calls.

In Memoriam - Gulf of Mexico - MMX

Of Fire and Ice, Joseph Ingoldsby

Credit: Joseph Ingoldsby, 2010

There is an old fishermen’s tale that states- “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.”

In the dawning hours, a prudent sailor would have raced for the safety of his port for the sky was afire. The copper light turned night to day. All was bathed in an eerie light, which illuminated the night. A presaging perhaps of the storm that swept from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, covering all in a mantle of snow and ice.

NASA Satellites Capture Data on Massive Winter

Storm Affecting 30 States - 02-01-2011

http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/goescolor/goeseast/hurricane2/movie/latest_sml.mov.

Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team, 01-31-2010

Of Fire and Ice

This week the U.S. northeast suffered through its sixth major snowstorm this winter, breaking all snowfall records. One of the largest winter storms since the 1950s is affecting 30 U.S. states today with snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain. NASA satellites have gathering data on the storm that stretches from Texas and the Southern Plains states northeastward through the Midwest and the upper Mid-Atlantic states into New England and on to Canada. In December of 2010, unprecedented winter storms blanketed the British Isles, Europe and Eastern Europe in snow, ice and frigid temperatures. What could have triggered these severe weather events? Scientists speak of Enhanced Modern Heat Transfer to the Arctic by Warm Atlantic Water within Science Magazine, 28 January 2011, Volume 331 no. 6016 pp. 450-453.

According to Robert F. Spielhagen "The accelerated decrease of the Arctic sea ice cover and the warming of ocean and atmosphere in the Arctic, as measured during the past decades, are in part related to an increased heat transfer from the Atlantic," said co-author Robert Spielhagen, a palaeoceanographer at the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany. “The Arctic is responding more rapidly to global warming than most other areas on our planet. Northward-flowing Atlantic Water is the major means of heat advection toward the Arctic and strongly affects the sea ice distribution. Records of its natural variability are critical for the understanding of feedback mechanisms and the future of the Arctic climate system, but continuous historical records reach back only ~150 years. Here, we present a multidecadal-scale record of ocean temperature variations during the past 2000 years, derived from marine sediments off Western Svalbard (79°N). We find that early–21st-century temperatures of Atlantic Water entering the Arctic Ocean are unprecedented over the past 2000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming.”

Stephen Leahy writes within an important series on Arctic climate change published by the Inter Press Service that “Sea ice has declined dramatically during the short Arctic summers in recent years, with some experts now projecting that the ice cover will be essentially gone in as little as five years. The warming Arctic and melting sea ice is a planetary-scale change since the Arctic Ocean covers 14 million sq km, an area almost as big as Russia. The Arctic and Antarctic polar regions are key drivers of Earth's weather and climate. The rapid defrosting of the Arctic has already altered the climate system, researchers now agree.”

Air temperatures were higher than normal over Baffin Island, Hudson Bay, and eastern Siberia for the month of December, which was associated with low sea ice extent in those areas. The temperature pattern resulted from a negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation.
—Credit: NSIDC courtesy NOAA/ESRL PSD

Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, NSIDC, and NOAA had drawn the correlation between the frigid temperatures and heavy snowfall in the eastern United States and Europe during the winter of 2009-10 and the loss of Arctic sea ice, basing their findings on research on the impacts of low sea ice and weak polar vortex in 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2011 on the winter weather patterns of the mid latitude North America and Europe.

This pattern of progressive sea ice melt and increasing major winter storms worsens in 2011 and does not bode well for the future. As more and more sea ice melts, there is more open water to absorb the summer sun's heat. James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States has stated that a day of 24-hour summer sun in the Arctic puts more heat on the surface of the ocean than a day in the tropics. That extra heat in the ocean is gradually released into the lower atmosphere from October to January as the region slowly re-freezes months later than normal. This is a fundamental change - a large part of the Arctic Ocean is radiating heat instead of being cold and ice-covered. That has disrupted wind circulation patterns in the northern hemisphere, reported Overland and other researchers at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference in Norway last June.

This change has affected the winter weather patterns of North America and Europe as explained by scientists from NSIDC and NASA: "Warm conditions in the Arctic and cold conditions in northern Europe and the U.S. are linked to the strong negative mode of the Arctic oscillation. Cold air is denser than warmer air, so it sits closer to the surface. Around the North Pole, this dense cold air causes a circular wind pattern called the polar vortex , which helps keep cold air trapped near the poles. When sea ice has not formed during autumn and winter, heat from the ocean escapes and warms the atmosphere. This may weaken the polar vortex and allow air to spill out of the Arctic and into mid-latitude regions in some years, bringing potentially cold winter weather to lower latitudes."

http://www.nasa.gov/mov/52535main_Ice%20Albeldo%20Arctic.mov

The result: the Arctic stays warm and mid-latitude regions become colder and receive more snow for much of the winter. Last December was the coldest south Florida has experienced in more than a century of record-keeping. Most of Britain suffered through its coldest December ever. Up in the Arctic, Coral Harbour on the northwest corner of Hudson Bay was above zero degrees C for two days in early January for the first time in history. Much of the eastern Arctic centred around Baffin Island averaged +21C above normal between Dec. 17 and Jan. 15 this year. Hudson Bay remained navigable through mid-January. The Labrador Sea has yet to freeze. Normally at this time of year, ice extends several hundred kilometers from the coast all the way to northern Nova Scotia. Polar bears, seals and walrus are endangered by the lack of sea ice habitat.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/arcticice_decline.html

This looks to be an irreversible tipping point since Arctic experts agree the melting sea ice is now locked into a death spiral. "In future, cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception in the eastern United States and Europe", Overland said. To slow climate change down to manageable levels will require international cooperation to a degree unseen in current negotiations and green energy advancements. What we are experiencing today will intensify with each passing year of passivity. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in a landscape of fire and ice.

Bibliography:

Enhanced Modern Heat Transfer to the Arctic by Warm Atlantic Water

1. Robert F. Spielhagen¹,²,*,
2. Kirstin Werner²,
3. Steffen Aagaard Sørensen³,
4. Katarzyna Zamelczyk³,
5. Evguenia Kandiano²,
6. Gereon Budeus⁴,
7. Katrine Husum³,
8. Thomas M. Marchitto⁵, and
9. Morten Hald³

Author Affiliations:

¹ Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and Literature, 53151 Mainz, Germany.

1. ² Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR), 24148 Kiel, Germany.
2. ³ Department of Geology, University of Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø, Norway.
3. ⁴ Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research, 27515 Bremerhaven, Germany.
4. ⁵ Department of Geological Sciences and Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.

Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis, NSIDC, February 2, 2011

NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team, 01-31-2010

Francis, J.A., Chan, W-H., Leathers, D.J., Miller, J.R., Veron, D.E., 2009. Winter Northern Hemisphere weather patterns remember summer.Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L07503, doi:10.1029/2009GL037274.

Overland, J.E., Wang, M-Y., 2010. Large-scale atmospheric circulation changes are associated with the recent loss of Arctic sea ice. Tellus62A, 1-9.

Cohen, J., J. Foster, M. Barlow, K. Saito, and J. Jones, 2010. Winter 2009-2010: A case study of an extreme Arctic Oscillation event.Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L17707, doi:10.1029/2010GL044256.

Leahy, Stephen, 2011. Arctic Defrost Dumping Snow on U.S, and Europe, IPS

Joseph Ingoldsby writes and exhibits about the the science of vanishing landscapes and endangered species utilizing art, science and technology to communicate complex issues to the public. He is a member of the AAAS, ASLA, and FES. Writings, exhibitions and installations may be viewed at:

http://www.landscapemosaics.com/ and http://josephemmanuelingoldsby.com/

Human Planet: Fishing frenzy

On one day of the year the Dogon people of Mali choose their best warriors from each tribe to fish in the sacred water of Lake Antogo. It’s every fisherman for himself as the lake is emptied of fish in minutes. The ritual capture of a fish brings a hopeful blessing of abundance to a people who live life in a desert furnace. Can this burgeoning crowd of people battling for limited resources in a hostile environment be a glimpse into our future?

CREDITS

Series Producer

Dale Templar

Narrator

John Hurt

Producer

Tuppence Stone

To learn more about the life of the Dogon people of Mali, please download videos from:

http://www.telleestmatele.com/article-26513281.html