TXAlbert
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Just something interesting..
NY Times Article here
BUTARITARI, Kiribati â€" Off the palm-fringed white beach of this remote Pacific atoll, the view underwater is downright scary.
Corals are being covered and smothered to death by a bushy seaweed that is so tough even algae-grazing fish avoid it. It settles in the reef’s crevices that fish once called home, driving them away.
Dead coral stops supporting the ecosystem and, within a couple of decades, it will crumble into rubble, allowing big ocean waves to reach the beach during storms and destroy the flimsy thatched huts of the Micronesians.
“We are catching less and less fish, and the seaweeds are fouling our nets,†says Henry Totie, a fisherman and Butaritari’s traditional chief, in an interview in his traditionally built house in the village near the blue-green lagoon.
The area affected, about four miles long and a mile wide, lies off the island’s main village, an underwater examination showed. It looked strikingly similar to Kaneohe Bay in the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where the seaweed also has spread out of control.
“This is one of the most damaging seaweeds I have ever seen,†says Jennifer E. Smith of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the Hawaiian invasion for eight years. “If there is that much Eucheuma in Butaritari, it proves it can destroy a healthy reef as opposed to a degraded one like in Kaneohe.â€Â
Moiwa Erutarem, the Butaritari representative of the fisheries ministry, said the biggest losses were being felt by the most vulnerable: those who use nets in the shallow coral table and do not have the boats required to fish farther away. Seafood is virtually the only source of protein in Butaritari, complemented by breadfruit and coconut.
This equatorial island of 4,000 people is the latest victim of a 30-year global effort to encourage poor people in the coastal areas of the tropics to grow seaweed that, while not edible, produces carrageenan, an increasingly sought-after binder and fat substitute used in the food industry, notably in ice cream.
Today, about 120,000 dry metric tons a year are produced, mostly in the Philippines and Indonesia, where the two main algae originate. Kappaphycus alvarezii is most desirable because of its high carrageenan content; Eucheuma denticulatum is less valuable but easier to cultivate.
Both were introduced in the past three decades to 20 countries around the world from Tonga to Zanzibar and the result in most of them has been failure or worse. The alga K. alvarezii invaded the Gulf of Manmar Biosphere Reserve in south India a decade after commercial cultivation began in nearby Panban. “No part of the coral reef was visible in most of the invaded sites, where it doomed entire colonies,†the journal Current Science has reported.
In the Pacific, for example, the two algae were introduced to 10 countries and are said to be commercially cultivated in three: Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and Tonga.
But in the case of Kiribati, interviews with seaweed officials in Tarawa, the capital of this nation of tiny islands sprinkled over a swath of ocean the size of India, reveal that since the first effort to cultivate algae in 1986, the industry has lost money almost every year and the farmers have shown little enduring enthusiasm for the crop.
In some places and times, low prices are blamed. In others, unreliable purchasers are. Then there are cultural factors. Some Pacific countries, like Kiribati, are populated by what ethnologists call nonconsumers: people who need just a little cash to get by and once that need is met, prefer to spend time with their family, go fishing or sleep.
There is also “pubusi,†(pronounced poo-boo-SEE) the local tradition in which one person can ask another for pretty much anything, using the magic word, and the other person has to hand it over or face public opprobrium.
“What’s the point of making money if you have to pubusi it all away?†says Kevin Rouatu, a stocky, cheerful former banker who runs the Atoll Seaweed Company in Kiribati.
This state-owned company was formed in 1991 to restart failed efforts by the fisheries ministry, advised by foreign consultants, to introduce seaweed farming in the 1980s. Today, after the algae were introduced to 10 islands in Kiribati, only one, Fanning in the Line Islands, is producing anything. So the government is giving up on the other nine and moving the seaweed company to Christmas Island, which is near Fanning Island and more than 2,000 miles from Tarawa.
“The government raised the price we pay to farmers to 60 cents a kilo so we lose 27 cents a kilo by the time we’ve shipped it to the processing plant,†which is 3,000 miles away in the Philippines, Mr. Rouatu said. “The government didn’t give us the difference last year, so we were only able to buy 100 tons, and the farmers are now stuck with 250 tons.â€Â
In Butaritari, where seaweed farming ended two years ago, Reuera Redfern, a retired seaman who became the island’s top producer and then the seaweed company’s purchasing agent, estimates there is 6 to 10 dry tons’ worth of Eucheuma â€" the variety with less carrageenan â€" on the coral reefs today, and an unknown amount off Tarawa. Mr. Redfern said he was told it was also spreading in Abemama, another island in the Gilbert group.
Today, Mr. Totie, the Butaritari traditional chief, says the only way to prevent Eucheuma (which locals call seaweeda, since it has no local name) from destroying the entire lagoon is for the seaweed company to offer to buy it. “Then the people would go out and get it and it would be gone in a few months,†he said. “If they wait, the problem will just get worse.†Mr. Rouatu agrees that some sort of noncommercial purchase plan needs to be set up to save the Butaritari lagoon, perhaps with foreign aid.
In an interview, President Anote Tong recalled going fishing with Mr. Redfern, his school friend, and said he was aware of the problem. But he displayed little interest in solving it, saying vaguely that it required a “scientific solution†â€" which he could not define.
“Buying it is something we cannot afford,†he said. “If we got a grant for that purpose, maybe, but,†he added with a fleeting smile, “it may encourage cultivation.â€Â
Dr. Smith argued that even if by world standards the damage caused by the alga is small, it adds a layer of stress to corals already dying fast because most of the algae-grazing fish that kept the reef ecosystem healthy have been eaten, leading to a much higher coral mortality when global warning sends water temperatures up. “Introduced species have had large impacts on marine ecosystems around the world,†she said. “We should avoid the intentional introduction of species that are known to harm coral, not promote it.â€Â
In Hawaii, three kinds of algae were brought in during the 1970s by a professor of botany at the University of Hawaii, Max Doty, who developed the techniques of cultivation that were exported around the world. One species dominates Oahu’s south and the two others, mostly Eucheuma, have spread to about half of the coral heads of Kaneohe Bay.
Celia Smith, the successor to the late Dr. Doty at the university, is now a leader in the effort to save the bay. “It’s not easy,†she said, for the seaweeds grow at a rate of 7 percent a week.
The university, state and Nature Conservancy devised Super Suckers, vacuum cleaners on powered catamarans that are sucking up 3,000 pounds of seaweed a day each. “At the current rate, we’ll need 10 years to clean up the bay,†says Brian Hauk, the state aquatic invasive species supervisor.
NY Times Article here
BUTARITARI, Kiribati â€" Off the palm-fringed white beach of this remote Pacific atoll, the view underwater is downright scary.
Corals are being covered and smothered to death by a bushy seaweed that is so tough even algae-grazing fish avoid it. It settles in the reef’s crevices that fish once called home, driving them away.
Dead coral stops supporting the ecosystem and, within a couple of decades, it will crumble into rubble, allowing big ocean waves to reach the beach during storms and destroy the flimsy thatched huts of the Micronesians.
“We are catching less and less fish, and the seaweeds are fouling our nets,†says Henry Totie, a fisherman and Butaritari’s traditional chief, in an interview in his traditionally built house in the village near the blue-green lagoon.
The area affected, about four miles long and a mile wide, lies off the island’s main village, an underwater examination showed. It looked strikingly similar to Kaneohe Bay in the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where the seaweed also has spread out of control.
“This is one of the most damaging seaweeds I have ever seen,†says Jennifer E. Smith of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the Hawaiian invasion for eight years. “If there is that much Eucheuma in Butaritari, it proves it can destroy a healthy reef as opposed to a degraded one like in Kaneohe.â€Â
Moiwa Erutarem, the Butaritari representative of the fisheries ministry, said the biggest losses were being felt by the most vulnerable: those who use nets in the shallow coral table and do not have the boats required to fish farther away. Seafood is virtually the only source of protein in Butaritari, complemented by breadfruit and coconut.
This equatorial island of 4,000 people is the latest victim of a 30-year global effort to encourage poor people in the coastal areas of the tropics to grow seaweed that, while not edible, produces carrageenan, an increasingly sought-after binder and fat substitute used in the food industry, notably in ice cream.
Today, about 120,000 dry metric tons a year are produced, mostly in the Philippines and Indonesia, where the two main algae originate. Kappaphycus alvarezii is most desirable because of its high carrageenan content; Eucheuma denticulatum is less valuable but easier to cultivate.
Both were introduced in the past three decades to 20 countries around the world from Tonga to Zanzibar and the result in most of them has been failure or worse. The alga K. alvarezii invaded the Gulf of Manmar Biosphere Reserve in south India a decade after commercial cultivation began in nearby Panban. “No part of the coral reef was visible in most of the invaded sites, where it doomed entire colonies,†the journal Current Science has reported.
In the Pacific, for example, the two algae were introduced to 10 countries and are said to be commercially cultivated in three: Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and Tonga.
But in the case of Kiribati, interviews with seaweed officials in Tarawa, the capital of this nation of tiny islands sprinkled over a swath of ocean the size of India, reveal that since the first effort to cultivate algae in 1986, the industry has lost money almost every year and the farmers have shown little enduring enthusiasm for the crop.
In some places and times, low prices are blamed. In others, unreliable purchasers are. Then there are cultural factors. Some Pacific countries, like Kiribati, are populated by what ethnologists call nonconsumers: people who need just a little cash to get by and once that need is met, prefer to spend time with their family, go fishing or sleep.
There is also “pubusi,†(pronounced poo-boo-SEE) the local tradition in which one person can ask another for pretty much anything, using the magic word, and the other person has to hand it over or face public opprobrium.
“What’s the point of making money if you have to pubusi it all away?†says Kevin Rouatu, a stocky, cheerful former banker who runs the Atoll Seaweed Company in Kiribati.
This state-owned company was formed in 1991 to restart failed efforts by the fisheries ministry, advised by foreign consultants, to introduce seaweed farming in the 1980s. Today, after the algae were introduced to 10 islands in Kiribati, only one, Fanning in the Line Islands, is producing anything. So the government is giving up on the other nine and moving the seaweed company to Christmas Island, which is near Fanning Island and more than 2,000 miles from Tarawa.
“The government raised the price we pay to farmers to 60 cents a kilo so we lose 27 cents a kilo by the time we’ve shipped it to the processing plant,†which is 3,000 miles away in the Philippines, Mr. Rouatu said. “The government didn’t give us the difference last year, so we were only able to buy 100 tons, and the farmers are now stuck with 250 tons.â€Â
In Butaritari, where seaweed farming ended two years ago, Reuera Redfern, a retired seaman who became the island’s top producer and then the seaweed company’s purchasing agent, estimates there is 6 to 10 dry tons’ worth of Eucheuma â€" the variety with less carrageenan â€" on the coral reefs today, and an unknown amount off Tarawa. Mr. Redfern said he was told it was also spreading in Abemama, another island in the Gilbert group.
Today, Mr. Totie, the Butaritari traditional chief, says the only way to prevent Eucheuma (which locals call seaweeda, since it has no local name) from destroying the entire lagoon is for the seaweed company to offer to buy it. “Then the people would go out and get it and it would be gone in a few months,†he said. “If they wait, the problem will just get worse.†Mr. Rouatu agrees that some sort of noncommercial purchase plan needs to be set up to save the Butaritari lagoon, perhaps with foreign aid.
In an interview, President Anote Tong recalled going fishing with Mr. Redfern, his school friend, and said he was aware of the problem. But he displayed little interest in solving it, saying vaguely that it required a “scientific solution†â€" which he could not define.
“Buying it is something we cannot afford,†he said. “If we got a grant for that purpose, maybe, but,†he added with a fleeting smile, “it may encourage cultivation.â€Â
Dr. Smith argued that even if by world standards the damage caused by the alga is small, it adds a layer of stress to corals already dying fast because most of the algae-grazing fish that kept the reef ecosystem healthy have been eaten, leading to a much higher coral mortality when global warning sends water temperatures up. “Introduced species have had large impacts on marine ecosystems around the world,†she said. “We should avoid the intentional introduction of species that are known to harm coral, not promote it.â€Â
In Hawaii, three kinds of algae were brought in during the 1970s by a professor of botany at the University of Hawaii, Max Doty, who developed the techniques of cultivation that were exported around the world. One species dominates Oahu’s south and the two others, mostly Eucheuma, have spread to about half of the coral heads of Kaneohe Bay.
Celia Smith, the successor to the late Dr. Doty at the university, is now a leader in the effort to save the bay. “It’s not easy,†she said, for the seaweeds grow at a rate of 7 percent a week.
The university, state and Nature Conservancy devised Super Suckers, vacuum cleaners on powered catamarans that are sucking up 3,000 pounds of seaweed a day each. “At the current rate, we’ll need 10 years to clean up the bay,†says Brian Hauk, the state aquatic invasive species supervisor.
