Who says what?!

Impacts of the Japanese tsunami on ocean life (John Bruno)

As terrible as the impacts of the Japanese tsunami have been, one issue barely being covered by the media is the potentially massive effects on ocean life and ecosystems.

I can’t say too much as a scientist simply because there is no data on what is happening; nobody is measuring sediment input, toxin levels in seawater, etc. But I can cautiously speculate about some of the local and regional effects over the short and long term.

Observing the tsunami waves coming ashore, you saw that the water was already brown, likely due to the scouring effect of the waves. Within minutes, most of the seawater that destroyed coastal communities returned to the ocean, bringing untold tons of stuff with it; all the remnants of humanity including pieces of buildings, cars, trees, garbage, huge amounts of plastics, eroded soils and likely a wide variety of pollutants from those soils, homes, factories, stores, etc.

The sediment input alone could devastate coastal habitats such as seagrass beds and oyster reefs that were not directly destroyed by the force of the tsunami waves. Filter feeding bivalves like oysters are not tolerant of highly sediment loads in the water. And seagrasses are especially sensitive to sediment since they need light for photosynthesis (suspended sediments make the water less clear, reducing light penetrance).

Ecologists refer to organisms like seagrasses and oysters as “foundation species” since they create the habitat that countless other creatures inhabit. Thus loosing them means loosing the habitats, the fish that inhabit them, etc., with obvious effects on fishing. More directly, oyster fisheries are huge in Japan and the oyster farms must have been wiped out in many areas. The systems and organisms will certainly recover eventually, but it could take decades.

Moving beyond the direct physical damage and sedimentation I expect the chemical pollutants washed out to sea could have some effects, at least locally on some organisms. This will take years to evaluate.

Another clear threat is leakage from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. High radiation levels have been reported, although little information is being collected (or released) about the radioactivity concentrations offshore off the plant, however, terrestrial maps  suggest growing radiation levels tens of kilometers from Fukushima. Wind patterns could influence the spread of high radiation levels but a direct leak into the sea, and so the marine intertidal zone, from the plant would obviously be far more affected by local and regional current patterns.

Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa have projected the long term path of much of the ocean debris washed away by the retreating tsunami waves. Dr. Maximenko is well known for his work on predicting the locations of the major ocean garbage patches, places where debris accumulate and remain for decades.  (read more about their study here)

So.. 

there will be a huge impact on the marine intertidal zone. 

• First of all, different species (especcialy fishes) shifted thei habitat and moved to the intertidal zone. Now claims, crabs, .. have more predators.
• Other species such as barnacles might not have huge impact, but their habitat had radically changed and would move again to "normality" not in less than 3 year.
• Organism such as diatoms and plankton didn't have a strong repercussion

WE WILL THEREFORE WAIT AND SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN! 

Sources (some of them)

• http://www.greenpeoplenews.com/en/2011/03/22/impact-of-the-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-on-animals-and-environment/
• http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article_pf.asp?ID=2448
• http://www.springerlink.com/content/md1v0utx5665dyrl/
• http://spie.org/x648.html?product_id=837285
• http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=fish+that+die+in+acidic+water&hl=en&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on

Better News!

Amidst all this bad news, sad news, devastating news, there is some glimpse of hope. Not all that the earthquake does is devastating. In fact, I think that there is a reason perhaps that our earth does the things it does. Maybe that it is just that we have not been able to efficiently work around the schedule of the earth in terms of where we settle and how we live that we are so negatively impacted by earthquakes and tsunamis and therefore consider them so devastating. In fact, for the shallow water fish, this is good news. The abundance of dead and decaying material produces a massive growth in the plankton population. Hence, all the fish that feed on plankton suddenly experienced a huge growth in their population, an example being sardines. In addition, due to the wave action and the obvious fear of the effects of the earthquake and tsunami and the possibility of another occurrence of such a thing, there was a significant decrease in the amount of motor boats present on the water. This caused an increase in fish populations as well as populations of dolphins.  

Intertidal Marine Reforestation

On the topic of the effect of the earthquake and tsunami on the intertidal marine organisms and therefore the intertidal marine ecosystem, there is the question of how to help rebuild these communities once and earthquake and/or tsunami has occurred. One concept around this idea is the concept of “Reforestation of Marine Ecosystems”. This theory takes the notion that when an earthquake occurs, with the impact of the water and plate movement, there will be soil erosion. This means that the coastlines will recede and come inwards. Therefore, the terrestrial organisms that used to be on this area of land will die due to the fact that they cannot live in water. Whatever intertidal organisms that are left will migrate upwards to the new intertidal zone, as will the other organisms of the other depths of the water. Once they have migrated, they will repopulate. Few of the previous terrestrial organisms may stay at the edge of the intertidal zone and adapt themselves to survive in periods of submergence in water.  

Change in pH of water

Through the past, we can predict a change in the pH levels of the coastline water surrounding Japan. Sea water is in general basic, meaning that it has a pH level greater than seven (7), seven (7) being neutral. This change in pH levels could be due to many factors including soil erosion and dead material (plants, fish, etc). For example, if we are to take the case study of Wenchuan earthquake of May 12, 2008 in China. Although it was not located exactly on a coastline, it heavily impacted the bodies of water in that area due to soil erosion. The soil erosion was so severe that it increased the area by 279.2 km², 1.9% of the total statistical area of land. More than 3.9 km² of the lakes and streams were blocked by debris. The increase of soil erosion causes water to decrease its pH level and become more acidic. Acidic water can cause the death of salmon in between 12 and 27 hours, and the death of trout in 30 to 48 hours. Acidic water can also cause the death of embryos during the birth process of certain fish. This loss of the replenishing of new fish can be extremely detrimental to the redevelopment of the marine ecosystem in general after an earthquake. Acidity can also cause acute mortality, reduced growth, skeletal deformation, and reproductive abnormalities.

Beyond the Tsunami: India vs Japan

Beyond the Tsunami

Is a research conducted by United Nations India, United Nations Development Programme and Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in 2008, by the researchers: Anjana Mohan, Terenia Berlie, Naveen Namboothri and Kartik Shanker.

By evaluating the Macro and Mega Faunal Communities of Intertidal Ecosystems on the Tamil Nadu  Coast, India, in three years they reached to a conclusion.

This is to show how our topic is wide: even if it could look like very narrow in a first moment. The aspect we focus on is principally based on prediction and if we observe Japan’s marine intertidal organism, in a estimated time of three years we will be able to notice how the intertidal zone varied drastically.

This source is a sample of our project from a wide point of view and might help us to reach to our conclusions.

So..what did these guys observed..that we haven’t observed yet?!

(I can't post it - editing problems :(, but I have the file in my laptop!) Really really interesting!
http://www.dakshin.org/DOWNLOADS/ECOLOGY%20REPORT.pdf page 27 and 28

More information: Other species affected

They say that animals can sense that a storm is coming. They run for the hills. They fly away. Still, the massive March 11 Japan earthquake and tsunami seems to have done its fair share of damage to wildlife, too. While the human victims in Japan are foremost on our minds these days, animals affected by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami also are an issue. Many animals are dead. Many others need help.

Some sea animals close to shore can be washed up on shore and killed. land animals can be drowned, crushed, or sucked into the ocean. Animals far out enough are usually not affected in the least.

M. Sanjayan of The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia, told ScienceInsider that the biggest impact on wildlife would be on shorebirds nesting on small islands throughout the Pacific, rather than on the Japanese mainland. Indeed, the majority of wildlife-related news of the tsunami has come from small Pacific islands such as those in the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

While some of the reports are heartening, and many are devasting, more in-depth research into the short- and long-term effects of the tsunami on marine and coastal ecosystems will take much longer. But the 2004 magnitude 9.15 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, and the resulting tsunami that rippled across the Indian Ocean have been extensively studied, and allow us to speculate regarding possible outcomes of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

The Wildlife Trust of India, along with the International Fund for Animal Welfare initiated several investigations following the earthquake and tsunami to assess their impact on wildlife. Overall, they found that damage to wildlife populations was generally limited on the mainland, and slightly worse on the islands. Particularly hard-hit, however, were coral reef systems. Several beaches were washed away, and freshwater habitats were inundated with saltwater. While most of these ecosystems were eventually able to rebound, problems did occur.

For example, one mainland wildlife sanctuary became flooded with saltwater and covered with sand, making is impossible for the various plant-eating ungulates (hoofed animals) to graze. Even worse, with seawater comes toxic pollution.

And there were probably other invaders, as well. Furry ones. Large dead trees from distant islands were found washed up on mainland beaches. While there was no danger to beach ecosystems from the trees themselves, since they were dead, they may have carried some critters with them that would eventually colonize mainland coasts. It is well-known that rodents, reptiles, and insects are quite capable of setting up camp in new environments after rafting across the sea.

As we can already tell from the Japan earthquake, birds are particularly vulnerable to tsunamis. But in the 2004 tsunami, it wasn’t all bad news for the birds! In fact, after the seawater receded, it left quite a bit of silt and sediment behind. Some of that sediment settled into pre-existing lagoons and creeks, making them much shallower.