Download Sea cucumbers.

Quest for Illegal Gain at the
Sea Bottom Divides Fishing
Communities
By KARLA ZABLUDOVSKY
DZILAM DE BRAVO, Mexico — Whispers of high-speed boat
chases, harpoon battles on the open sea and divers who dived
deep and never re-emerged come and go around here like an
afternoon gale.
The fishermen eye strangers — and one another — with deep
suspicion. “We’ll tear them apart,” said one, Jorge Luis Palma,
squinting into the horizon at a boat he did not recognize.
What has wrapped this village in such hostility?
Sea cucumbers.
The spiky, sluglike marine animals are bottom feeders that are not even consumed in Mexico, but they are a highly prized delicacy
half a world away, in China, setting off a maritime gold rush up and down the Yucatán Peninsula.
“There is tension,” said Manuel Sierra, one of the unofficial leaders of the fishermen here, “and now it has exploded.”
There has been an indefinite ban on harvesting sea cucumbers, but it has been loosely enforced, and the black market is thriving.
With a growing Chinese middle class, demand for sea cucumbers has soared, depleting populations in Asian and Pacific waters
because of overfishing.
“Sea cucumber fever,” as residents call it, has taken a toll here, too. Of the estimated 20,000 tons available in 2009, only 1,900 tons
are left, according to Felipe Cervera, secretary of rural development in Quintana Roo State.
The ban, meant to give the population time to replenish, came during seasonal bans on grouper, octopus and lobster. With few
alternative sources of income, some fishermen are going after the sea cucumbers clandestinely, far from the coast and often in the
middle of the night.
Once they have harvested and prepared the sea cucumbers, fishermen sell them to people they call “intermediaries,” who
coordinate the overland journey to ports in northern Mexico. From there, where the authorities are less concerned with illegal sea
products than with drug shipments, the sea cucumbers are shipped to China, where a single pound can sell for $300.
With the quest to meet demand and cash in — fishermen here can make more than $700 on a good day — have come tales of
derring-do and danger.
Local residents have turned the Yucatán waters, only intermittently patrolled by the authorities, into a kind of Wild West, with
communities claiming and guarding their slices of the marine pie. Coastal towns are growing increasingly hostile to one another as
neighbors are divided between those who respect the bans and those who fish illegally. The growing divisions within and between
these communities have already led to violence.
In late January, fishermen here in Dzilam de Bravo detained a boat from the nearby village of Progreso, brought it to shore and
burned it. In cellphone video captured by a resident and shown on Milenio Television, a crowd can be heard cheering as bright
flames engulf the small craft.
During a town meeting here this month, shouts filled a tense conference room in the municipal palace as community members
fought over what to do about the growing problem of “outsiders” seeking local fishing rights.
The Mexican Navy has been deployed in Yucatán waters, though patrols are irregular. The government has set up at least 15
checkpoints along highways in the state to deter sea cucumber shipments and their traffickers.
In Celestún, a town 120 miles west of here, a group of fishermen recently flipped over a van belonging to the National Aquaculture
and Fishing Commission, rumored to be transporting a confiscated sea cucumber shipment. Fishermen have grown increasingly
hostile toward the authorities, who they believe are cracking down on certain groups while, for a fee, helping others traffic in the
contraband product.
Those involved in this bonanza risk more than jail time.
Fishermen talk of violence at sea, though they never report it to the authorities. Some say the people involved in the trade have shot
at competitors to scare them away. Others speak of rapid retreats prompted by the sudden appearance of rivals or the authorities,
leaving poachers who were diving below stranded at sea. Indeed, untrained and under equipped, many fishermen here have put
down their harpoons and become divers in record time.
They plunge to depths of more than 50 feet with little more than a mask, their undergarments, a rickety hose for oxygen and a net,
harvesting the glacial-paced animals like farmers picking strawberries.
Often, they come up too quickly or suffer other diving injuries. In Celestún, an estimated 30 fishermen have died from
decompression sickness while harvesting sea cucumbers since 2009, according to Álvaro Hernández, a researcher at the National
Fisheries Institute.
“My children ask for him and I just don’t know what to tell them,” said Blanca Mezeta, 26, who said her husband died in January
after diving for sea cucumbers. He felt sick after ascending, but his boss insisted that they take the day’s catch to the buyer before
going to a clinic.
The fishing is leaving an environmental mess, too. A recent visit by boat to a clandestine preparation site, where the recently
harvested animals are boiled and salted, revealed rusted caldrons and hundreds of black plastic bags strewn around bushes and
trees in Celestún National Park, a protected biosphere reserve. Sea cucumber remains, beer bottles and empty cigarette packs
dotted the coastline.
Navigating back into the harbor, Roman Agusto Flores, a lifelong fisherman in Celestún who opposes the poaching, discreetly
pointed out the different groups of men sitting on docked boats, distinguishing between those who engage in the illegal sea
cucumber trade and those who are restraining themselves. The two groups do not mix, he said.
“We have ruined everything ourselves,” Mr. Flores said.
Standing by the entrance to her shack at the end of a dirt road in Celestún, Ms. Mezeta, the woman who lost her husband,
remembered asking him to stay away from sea cucumbers. “Stick with fish,” she said, fighting back tears. “Even if it’s less money,
we’ll still eat.”
QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!
1. Describe a sea cucumber.
2. What is causing all the controversy?
3. How much have the numbers dropped since 2009?
4. Once the sea cucumbers have been harvested, describe their trip across the world.
5. How much can fishermen make harvesting these sea cucumbers?
6. What did disgruntled fishermen in Celestun do? Why?
7. What other issues are these fishermen facing? Why is it a life-threatening business?
8. What do you think the government should do to help this situation?
To Catch a Tarpon, Be Ready for a Fight
By CHRIS SANTELLA
JUCARO, Cuba — I stood on the bow of a Dolphin skiff anchored at the edge of a large
channel in Jardines de la Reina. The incoming tide flooded through the strait with the
Caribbean, a patchwork of shifting blues and greens, stretching to the south.
“They’re coming,” my guide, Leonardo Arche, cried out. A dozen silhouettes appeared
75 yards in front of the boat, their shape unmistakable against the white sand bottom
as they moved toward us: tarpon.
“Cast now,” he barked. After two false casts, I dropped the fly, a chartreuse Toad with
a menacing 3/0 hook, a few yards in front of the fish, 25 yards away.
“Strip,” Arche instructed. One strip of the fly, and a fish peeled away from the school.
A second strip, and the tarpon’s basketball-size mouth closed over the fly.
“Set,” Arche yelled, and I pulled back hard on the line. The fish — 75 to 85 pounds, we
estimated — catapulted into the air, sunlight sparkling upon its large silver scales and the droplets of water its flight had
displaced.
Jardines de la Reina is a 75-mile-long archipelago of mangroves and coral islands 60 miles off the southern coast of Cuba.
Designated a national park in 1996 by the Cuban government, Los Jardines is closed to commercial fishing, inhabitation
and almost any other visitation. Since the park was established, limited sport fishing and diving have been available
through a joint venture between the government and an Italian outfitter, Avalon, which operates several mother ships
along the archipelago. Guests dine and sleep on the ships, and take skiffs to the fishing and diving grounds.
“There are very few places left in the Caribbean that are undiscovered and pristine,” said Jim Klug, the director of
operations for Yellow Dog Fly-fishing Adventures, a travel company based in Bozeman, Mont. “I visit saltwater fishing
destinations all over the world, and when you arrive in Jardines, you pretty much feel as if you’re the first person to set
foot there.
“On a given week, you have a maximum of 24 anglers fishing an area the size of the Florida Keys. The lack of anglers
make the fish susceptible to flies — especially the tarpon. In many places, tarpon can be spooky. In Cuba, they’ll eat the
fly 95 out of 100 times. Oftentimes, you’re casting at fish that have never been fished to before.”
Tarpon, nicknamed silver kings by aficionados, are found on both sides of the Atlantic. In the Western Hemisphere, they
mostly inhabit warmer coastal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida and the West Indies, with fish found as far south as
Argentina and north to Chesapeake Bay.
Tarpon are readily distinguishable by their silvery sides, monumental mouth (the fish’s lower mandible extends well
beyond its gape) and significant size; Atlantic tarpon longer than 8 feet and weighing more than 300 pounds have been
caught, though anglers are more likely to encounter fish between 60 and 150 pounds.
In the western Caribbean and Gulf Coast, tarpon season reaches its apex in late spring when migratory fish join resident
schools as they gather to spawn. Surprisingly, little is known about the life cycle of the fish.
“Research suggests that tarpon spawn offshore, though we don’t know where,” said Aaron Adams, the director of
operations for Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, a conservation organization. “We’re also not sure where the fish go in the
winter.”
One thing is clear about tarpon: their appeal to anglers.
“It’s as if you’re sight-fishing to dinosaurs,” Adams said. “They’ve been around in their present form for tens of millions
of years. You’re trying to fool a fish that can be older than you — some live to 80 years — into eating a fly; and once they
eat, there are the jumps. Tarpon have been the ruin of many an angler.”
The first fish that I hooked spit the fly after its first elegant, arcing leap above the crystalline waters of Los Jardines.
Other encounters followed, all equally ephemeral. For many species I’ve fished for, making the proper presentation of
the fly and setting the hook is 90 percent of the game. In the pursuit of adult tarpon, this is only the beginning.
Once the tarpon has taken the fly, time seems to accelerate exponentially. Line that you have stripped in around your
feet speeds back through the guides of the rod. En route, there are ample opportunities to tangle around your shirt
button, your reel or your toes; I parted ways with three fish this way. Fail to put enough pressure on the line, generally
by pressing it against the rod handle with your index finger, and the hook will not set securely in the tarpon’s tough jaw.
Put too much pressure on, and you can pop the leader or cause the rod sections to come apart. I lost two fish like that.
When the tarpon jumps, you must be sure to lower or bow the rod to provide slack line so the pressure of the fish’s fall
to the water does not pull the fly loose. Of all the aspects of tarpon fishing, this may be the hardest to master. When a
fish as long as you leaps clear of the water 30 feet away and seems to look you in the eye, your instinct is to raise the rod
in defense — an almost sure way for the fish to become disengaged.
By week’s end, I hooked and lost nine tarpon at Jardines de le Reina.
“You only land one out of every 10 fish that you hook,” an angling friend offered as solace.
Perhaps the next one will be mine.
QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!
1. Describe Jardines de la Reina.
2. What features are offered in this place?
3. How many anglers are fishing on an average day?
4. What does the lack of fishermen mean to the tarpon?
5. Describe the tarpon fish.
6. In at least 3 sentences, how does the author describe his fly fishing experience and risks?
7. What does the author say his catch record was?
Giant squid population is one big happy
species
Elusive deep ocean dwellers have low genetic diversity despite living around the
globe
By Tina Hesman Saey
Giant squid are so mysterious — and so huge — that they inspired the legend of
the kraken, a Scandinavian sea monster. Now, a genetic analysis adds to the
creatures’ mystique.
DNA evidence suggests that all giant squid are part of one global interbreeding
species instead of the three that scientists previously thought existed, an
international group of scientists reports March 20 in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society B. The finding indicates the giant squid must migrate long distances to
keep the breeding population well mixed.
Nearly everything scientists know
about giant squid comes from
studying specimens that have
washed up on shore or gotten
caught in fishermen’s lines, like
the one shown. A new analysis of
mitochondrial DNA shows
that giant squid all belong to one
species with low genetic diversity.
The massive invertebrates also have some of the lowest genetic diversity of any
species, the researchers report. That finding and the squid’s global interbreeding
are nearly impossible for scientists to explain, says study coauthor M. Thomas Gilbert, a geneticist at the Natural History
Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. “We were very surprised by the results,” Gilbert says.
Most of what is known about giant squid comes from studying carcasses washed up on beaches, hauled in by fishermen
or found in the bellies of sperm whales, the giant squid’s natural predator. Only last year did an expedition film a giant
squid in its natural habitat. Researchers can describe the physical characteristics of the animals, which can grow to be
about 18 meters long with parrotlike beaks, sucker-studded tentacles and eyes bigger than a person’s head. But not
much is known about how the creatures live.
Gilbert and his team got a glimpse by examining mitochondrial DNA from 43 giant squid. Mitochondria are the energy
factories inside cells. Scientists can trace a species’ life history through the DNA carried in mitochondria.
Researchers had thought there were three species of giant squid: one in the North Atlantic, a second in the southern
oceans and a third smaller species in Japanese waters, says Clyde Roper, a marine biologist emeritus at the Smithsonian
Institution’s Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. But the new analysis puts squid worldwide into what was
thought to be the Atlantic Ocean-dwelling species, Architeuthis dux.
The genetic homogeneity suggests that somehow squid must travel long distances. A previous chemical analysis of the
giant squid’s sharp beaks indicated that adults don’t migrate far. That means the juveniles and larvae must leave local
waters and migrate around the world. Gilbert and his colleagues think “the young float around on the surface before
they dive deep and become kingpins.” Surface currents could disperse the youngsters far and wide.
Roper calls the idea reasonable but notes that scientists have spotted only few young squid in the ocean’s upper
reaches.
Generally, low diversity comes with small populations, but researchers think the giant squid population is huge, perhaps
in the hundreds of millions. They only seem rare because they live in the deep sea, Roper says. “We don’t go where they
go very often, and they don’t go where we go.”
Gilbert and his colleagues suggest that giant squid used to be rare but had a population explosion between 32,000 years
and 730,000 years ago. The date spread is large because scientists don’t know how long giant squid take to reproduce or
how frequently their DNA mutates.
Alternatively, the giant squid population might have been large in the past, but rapidly diminished — what scientists call
a population bottleneck — and then grew again. “How can you bottleneck a species that lives globally?” Gilbert asks.
“It’s a massive mystery.”
The researchers have found no trace of historical environmental conditions that might have caused a global bottleneck
or rapid population expansion. Whaling may have dramatically reduced the number of sperm whales and enabled a
giant squid boom. But whaling is far too recent to account for population growth starting 32,000 or more years ago. “It’s
sort of a head-scratching thing,” Roper says of the population puzzle.
Gilbert says he hasn’t given up on the whaling hypothesis, but hopes that another solution may present itself. “What
we’re really hoping is that somebody will read our paper and tell us, ‘You guys are crazy. This is the real answer.’”
QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!
1.
What legend has the giant squid inspired?
2. What has DNA evidence uncovered about the giant squid?
3. How have scientists in the past studied these creatures?
4. What particular kind of DNA did the researchers use? What is it?
5. What was previously thought about the diversity of the giant squid?
6. What is their theory about giant squid migration?
7. What has happened to their population numbers in the past? When have their had growth and when have their
numbers receded?
8. What might have caused the bottlenecking and why is this theory questionable?
Aquatic predators affect carbonstoring plant life
Species at top of freshwater food web can indirectly limit
buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
By Janet Raloff
Web edition: February 17, 2013
Climate helper
In ecosystems around the world, big guys eat littler guys, who in turn eat plants and
other organisms at the base of the food web. A study now finds that removing top
predators in freshwater environments allows their prey to flourish — and overgraze
on plants and algae. The result of the missing plant matter: a 93 percent reduction in
uptake and storage of carbon dioxide.
This freshwater stickleback can keep in check the
tiny animals in stream water that graze on plants
and algae. This predation allows those plants and
other organisms to collect and store carbon,
rather than letting it escape into the atmosphere.
Nicole Bedford/UBC
Several research teams have explored the importance of predators in protecting organisms that store carbon, notes
ecologist James Estes of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new research. The new
study is particularly strong, he says, because it demonstrates predators’ influence across a broad range of ecosystems. It
therefore suggests “that the phenomenon may be fairly general.”
When pesticide runoff, overfishing or other human activities impact ecosystems, the first species to disappear are
usually the bigger, top predators, notes freshwater ecologist John Richardson of the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver and coauthor of the study, published online February 17 in Nature Geoscience. The new work shows that
predator losses have effects beyond the loss of biodiversity: “We can see climate effects as well,” he says. “We start
seeing a higher flux of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”
Study leader Trisha Atwood, then also at the University of British Columbia, and colleagues simulated three freshwater
ecosystems outdoors to study the effects lower in the food web of predator loss at the top. They diverted water from
streams near Vancouver into six channels they had constructed. Those channels accumulated critters and debris for
about six weeks. To simulate ponds, Atwood’s team added water and sediment from ponds in Vancouver to 10 tanks,
each about 2 meters across, and let them acquire organisms over 18 months. And to study the water-holding reservoirs
among leaves of some plants, the ecologists went to Costa Rica and let the center well of 20 bromeliads — flowering
plants found mainly in tropical regions — collect a little water and wildlife over a two-week period.
In half of the simulated ecosystems in each location, the researchers added top predators. For streams, that predator
was the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a 10-centimeter-long fish that feeds on zooplankton in
stream water. Stonefly larvae served as the predator in the simulated ponds. And the researchers introduced damselfly
larvae to feed on zooplankton in the bromeliads.
At the end of these accommodation periods, the researchers made daylong measurements of carbon dioxide in water.
Then they compared the values for environments with and without their top predators.
Adding the top predators decreased the amount of carbon dioxide in the water by an average of 93 percent, Atwood
and her colleagues report. When predators are absent, the researchers think the unchecked zooplankton aggressively
feed on plants and algae in each ecosystem. Those photosynthetic organisms, had they not gotten eaten, would have
used and stored carbon, removing it from the water. That in turn would have pulled more carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere.
This predator effect on carbon dioxide has been reported in a few land-based environments, says David Butman of Yale
University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. But, he adds, “there have been few studies to explicitly
suggest stream and pond systems may perform similarly.” As such, he argues, the new study is important in unraveling
the complexity of natural environments. However, he cautions, scientists must recognize that the results come from
artificial manipulations of ecosystems “until similar systems are identified in the wild.”
Correction: This story was updated on February 20, 2013, to clarify that predators decreased carbon dioxide levels in the
water by 93 percent on average.
QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!
1.
What is the normal food web described in the beginning of the article?
2. If the plant matter is overeaten, what happens?
3. What are some causes of top predators disappearing?
4. In at least 4 sentences, describe the “pond” the research team assembled and what results they found.
5. Is there a direct link between top predators and gas levels in the ponds?
What is the Sensible Seafood program?
Mission: To promote seafood choices that make sense for a healthy marine environment.
The Sensible Seafood program helps consumers make sustainable seafood choices in stores
and restaurants. Working in partnership with Monterey Bay Aquarium and an Advisory Panel
of regional seafood experts, our Sensible Seafood program provides you with a handy
reference pocket guide that rates the most popular seafood items as green, yellow or red.
Green items are best choices for seafood that is abundant, well-managed, and fished or
farmed in environmentally friendly ways. Yellow items are good alternatives to consider when best choices are not
available, though there may be some concerns with how they are caught or farmed. You should avoid red items, at least
for now, because they are over-fished or are caught or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment.
Click here for more information on Monterey Bay's program.
Because populations and harvesting methods change, our Sensible Seafood pocket guide and supporting information
will be reviewed on a regular basis. The Sensible Seafood Advisory Panel meets annually to discuss new information on
sustainable seafood sources, fisheries management, and species biology and revise the program’s recommendations,
accordingly. Our program promotes seafood species that are grown in, or harvested from, Virginia and the mid-Atlantic
region. Click here for a listing of participating restaurants and partners.
What is sustainable seafood and why does it matter?
Sustainable seafood comes from sources, either fished or farmed, that can continue to produce into the future without
negatively affecting their populations or natural ecosystems. As consumers, we can be
good stewards of the environment by making the right choices when we purchase our
seafood. Sustainable seafood is Sensible Seafood, and that makes sense for a healthy
marine environment.
How do we determine if seafood is sustainable?
 How is the species population doing? – This seems like an obvious question, but in
order to know if the seafood we are consuming is a good choice, we need to know
about the life history of the species and if its population is abundant or disappearing.
Some species easily reproduce in large numbers and grow to maturity very fast.
Others, such as sharks, reproduce and mature more slowly. Understanding these
factors is critical for good fisheries management. Abundant species from well managed fisheries make good seafood
choices.
 Where does the seafood come from? – Is the seafood from local sources, from other parts of the U.S, or imported?
This is important because, like many other commodities, seafood can now be transported all over the globe.
Seafood from local sources has the potential to be fresher and reduces the financial and environmental costs of long
distance transport. Additionally, U.S. fisheries may be better managed than some foreign fisheries. These factors are
important when considering where a seafood item might originate.
 Is the seafood wild-caught, or is it farmed? – As seafood has become more popular, many species are now raised on
farms, a process called aquaculture. In some cases, the wild stock of a species may be depleted, but there is a good
supply from aquaculture, like catfish. In other cases, the farmed stock has been associated with problems and the
wild-caught stock is the better choice, like some shrimp. Of course, most of our seafood choices still come mostly
from wild-caught stocks.
 How is the seafood harvested? – Are the fishing or aquaculture practices environmentally sound? To answer this
question, we must understand fisheries and aquaculture techniques and how they are applied for harvesting
different seafood species. Some fisheries techniques, like bottom trawling or dredging, have the potential to
damage ocean bottom communities like corals. Others may have unintended catches of unwanted animals, called
bycatch. Bycatch can include unwanted fishes and even sea turtles or marine mammals. Finally, poorly managed
aquaculture operations can damage coastal ecosystems. Well managed fisheries and aquaculture, utilizing sound
techniques to minimize bycatch and ecosystem impacts, provide the best seafood choices.
Sense-“Ability” How do we make sensible choices?
Use the Sensible Seafood pocket guide – carry and consult the guide when making choices in the store, or when dining
out. Click here to download the current Sensible Seafood pocket guide.
Buy local sustainable seafood – not only does buying local usually ensure the freshest seafood, it also helps support an
important segment of the local economy. Virginia’s seafood industry is the third-largest in the country, producing vast
amounts of blue crabs, scallops, clams, croaker, spot, striped bass, and oysters that are shipped all over the world.
Puchase sustainable seafood in your area, where you know and understand the harvesting or growing process, to think
globally and act locally.
Choose Sensible Seafood restaurant partners – a great way to make sensible choices is to visit one of our restaurant
partners. These partners have agreed to serve seafood that is approved from our Sensible Seafood pocket guide. Partner
restaurants will also provide information on sustainable seafood to their staff and patrons. The Sensible Seafood
program has been endorsed by the Virginia Beach Restaurant Association.
QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!
1.
What is the Sensible Seafood program?
2. Who has the Virginia Aquarium worked with to create the Sensible Seafood booklet?
3. What is sustainable seafood and why does it matter?
4. How do they determine if seafood is sustainable or not?
5. How do they want you to make sustainable choices.
6. Look at the list, are there any surprises?
7. Is there something you eat often that is on the avoid list?
8. Would this be easy for you to do?