Chasing leopard seals in Antarctica

by Jon Bowermaster on


Though everyone would agree that ice is king in Antarctica, the most powerful of natural elements, when it comes to the animal world the Leopard seal – 1,000 pounds of lightning fast muscle armed with a mouthful of sharp incisors – is the top of the food chain. While confident due to their size and position, they have been known to drag the occasional diver to the bottom of the ocean and not playfully.

So anyone who dives in the Southern Ocean is constantly attuned for who, or what, is swimming nearby. When my friend Kelvin Murray, who splits his underwater time between two cold water destinations (the North Atlantic and Antarctica), sent this photo of himself being followed/observed/stalked by a big Leopard seal I had to know what he was thinking:

“Let’s face it; diving in Antarctica is not for everyone. Many people ask me what is it like to roll out of the boat into zero-degree water. First question is always, Doesn’t your face freeze? Well yes, but it goes numb so quickly I don’t feel anything. Is the equipment heavy? Yes, but I’m ‘weightless’ in the water. Is there anything to see?
Yes, lots… “It’s when I tell them about the Leopard seals that they truly believe me to be mad. With a head three times the size a man’s, equipped with large canine and tricuspid teeth, powered by 1000 pounds of muscle and flesh in a twelve-foot long frame, this is a creature that demands respect.

“It was while I was guiding a group of underwater photographers on a recent trip along the Antarctic Peninsula that I had my closest encounter.

“We were reaching the end of the dive when the seal appeared. It immediately swam around and amongst us, using its long foreflippers to manuever with precise grace. Straight away it began to gape at the various camera dome ports, flashing its teeth in time with the flashing of the strobes.

“My dive partner took this particular shot as the Leopard circled us. Seconds later I turned around and found myself eyeball to huge, black eyeball with the mighty seal, literally, physically and metaphorically in my face. It hung in the water, slowly twisting and gazing at me with what looked to b a huge crooked smile. I was careful not to blow bubbles – this is sometimes regarded a sign of aggression or frustration in marine mammals – and slowly turned my face away, reminding myself a stare-down might be seen as a challenge. The seal continued to stamp its authority on the area as we returned to our boat, giving us ample opportunity to express a mix of admiration, joy and well…relief. Later in the day we returned to the site and watched with macabre enthusiasm as the seal chased down, drowned and dismembered a penguin, with our snorkelers mere feet away.

“This was a very special encounter. There are few places in the world where you can get so close to an apex carnivore to observe while it stalks, hunts, kills and eats. With iconic top predators under intense pressure the world over, mostly due to some kind of human impact – whether wolves and dogs, bears or big cats – the much-maligned Great White shark is more endangered in the wild than the tiger. All of these majestic animals deserve respect and probably a small portion of appropriate fear but despite our inherent misgivings, the reality is they have more to fear from us than we have of them.”
Photograph by and courtesy of Chris Sterritt

Jellyfish return to the nation’s coasts

by Jon Bowermaster on

They’re back!

And we’re not talking hurricanes, though that season is officially underway.

And, no, this is not about sharks, since Discovery’s dubious Shark Week doesn’t start until the end of July.
No, it’s time for the increasingly unpopular annual return of swarms of jellyfish to beaches around the world. Last year they made much of the western Mediterranean unswimmable. A couple of weekend’s ago – the official start of summer — thousands of nasty, golf-ball sized jellyfish washed ashore on a 10-mile stretch of Florida’s east coast, stinging a reported 1,800 swimmers. Red warning flags were posted on beaches from Cocoa Beach to Cape Canaveral.

In large part thanks to the overfishing of big predator fish and warmer ocean waters, jellies are showing up sooner, in bigger numbers and far beyond home territories. In Florida they clogged the shallows and took over the wet sand of the beach. Lifeguard stands stocked up with vinegar-and-water solutions to help try and diffuse the itching, burning and rashes, which I guess beats urinating on them, though its proven that Benadryl cream helps alleviate itching and swelling. Despite air temps in the 90s and water temperature of 79, wetsuits were very popular. Innocent kids picked them up and tossed them at each other, only to be stung. Tough guys waded into the shallows attempting to shrug them off but were quickly running towards the lifeguard stands and that vinegar solution. At least two jelly victims were hospitalized.The beachings are as bad for the jellies as for man; as soon as they hit the sand, they start to die. And there are so many of them huddled en masse in the shallows that they soon run out of food.

It’s not just the abundance of jellyfish in Florida’s that was surprising, it was the species. The critters washing ashore in the thousands were so-called “mauve stingers,” which haven’t washed up on Florida beaches for more than a decade (more common are the blue Portuguese man-of-war or cannonball varieties). Compact but fitted with long tentacles, these are exactly the same jellyfish that harassed Mediterranean beaches during the summer of 2010.

Scientists believe they were transported across the Atlantic in the Gulf Stream, which wraps around the coast of Florida, suggesting they will be a hindrance on many Gator state beaches this summer. Meanwhile across the pond, biologists who study the Irish Sea are blaming a similar boom in jellyfish there on the overfishing of herring, which has given jellyfish an “exponential boost” in population. The trend has been growing since 2005.

Though explanation for why these jellyfish on these beaches is still being studied, it’s clear that since humankind has taken 100 to 120 million tons of predators out of the sea in the past 20 years it’s left plenty of room for jellyfish populations to boom. Jellyfish thrive in disturbed marine ecosystems, from dead zones to seabeds that have been raked by trawling nets. And they are spreading around the world thanks to powerful currents and aided by stowing away on fleets of ships delivering goods around the globe.

In Florida, maybe the only person happier than the pharmacist selling all that Benadryl was a Cocoa Beach, Florida, coconut salesman who claimed the less time people spent actually in the water cooling off, the thirstier they were.

[flickr image via jepoirrier]

Maldives meltdown

by Jon Bowermaster on

As political unrest swept through the Muslim nations of North Africa, even the remote island-nation of the Maldives was caught up in its own Arab Spring in the form of political protest and street clashes.
One major difference: Efforts in the Maldives were focused on pushing out a young, democratically elected president and replacing him with an aging despot.

President Mohammed Nasheed, 44, has gained accolades around the globe for his commitment to preparing the Maldives for the coming impacts of climate change on an island nation and simultaneously attempting to turn the country carbon neutral. Since the first of May intermittent protests have wracked the streets of the tiny island capitol of Male – just two square miles and home to 100,000 – with some calling for Nasheed’s resignation; the irony, of course, is that he is the country’s very first democratically elected leader.

As many as 5,000 protestors have been shouting not about green issues, but about homegrown concerns, including a sour economy and increases in crime and inflation.

They have also complained about Nasheed’s alleged “westernization” of the traditional Islamic culture and allowing the economy to crumble. One report has his popularity rating at just 18 percent. The military has dispersed youthful crowds with high-pressure hoses and batons.

Waiting in the wings? None other than Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, 74, whose 30-year dictatorship was ended in 2008 with Nasheed’s election. Nasheed has no love loss for the former president, who still lives in the Maldives. A former journalist, activist and political prisoner, Nasheed was tortured while in prison during Gayoom’s presidency.

Many attribute the economic mess of today to the 30-year long Gayoom administration. It’s no big surprise that it is the former president and his representatives who are working behind the scenes to fan the current protests.

Nasheed spokesman Mohamed Zuhair suggested to the BBC that the former president is encouraging violence in the streets. “In the Middle East, you have democrats on the streets bringing down dictatorships. Ironically in the Maldives, the remnants of the former dictatorship are trying to bring down a democratically elected government.”

It doesn’t help that oil prices are going through the roof, since everything in the Maldives is imported and it spends one quarter of its GDP on oil. Tourism, which accounts for 70 percent of the Maldives economy, has been negatively impacted by the unrest.

On May 25 the government proposed an agreement with representatives of the International Monetary Fund that would raise import duties, lower capital spending, freeze public sector wages, taxes on goods and services and tourist taxes as a way to help fix some of its economic woes.

Nasheed is well known internationally for his outspoked-ness regarding the fate of all island nations as sea levels rise. Among his first pronouncements after he was elected in 2008 was that he would set aside money from tourism to help buy land to move Maldivians as sea levels rose (to India or Pakistan, maybe Australia). To draw attention to the very real impact of climate change on a nation that is barely more than six feet above sea level he held the first “underwater” cabinet meeting, which garnered more than a billion global media impressions.

[Flickr image via Ula Ahmed]

Rescue crews rush to aid naked Irish solo adventurer

by Jon Bowermaster on

The headline was too horrid on so many fronts to pass up.

It turns out 29-year-old Irishman Keith Whelan, attempting to become the first of his nation to row solo across the Indian Ocean – despite as far as I can glean having little rowing experience, just naked ambition and a Twitter account – had been slapped by a big wave 128 miles off the coast of Australia, cracked his head on a protruding bolt and called for help. A cargo ship, the Fujisuka — having nothing better to do — diverted course, picked him up and delivered him back to shore at Bunbury, where he held … drum roll … a press conference.

How do we know all this? Thanks to his constant tweeting and blogging and the 24/7 reach of the global media.

Before we go any further with the story of this faux adventure, why oh why did he opt to row naked? According to his website it was “to avoid painful chafing from salt encrusted clothing.” (“Having gotten into a rowing boat for the first time only a year or so beforehand, he will spend 110 days alone at sea, facing 50 foot swells, hurricane force winds and unrelenting sunshine … and he’ll be naked.”)

Not to mention the attention the word naked still garners in headlines, Twitter feeds and Google searches.
I’m not suggesting the guy shouldn’t be able to ‘define’ adventure in his own terms. With most corners of the world already explored in a variety of fashions, those who seek adventure are forced after a fashion to find new ways of doing them. People have walked up Everest on behalf of every imaginable disease, attempted long walks, long rows, long sails, etc., going forwards, backwards, sideways and upside down to try and draw attention to their pursuit. Whelan is hardly the first. (His charity is Keep A Child Alive, for which to-date he’s raised about $700 … out of a hoped-for $15,000).
But there is something missing, something lackluster, about much of the ‘adventuring’ we’re seeing in the early years of the 21st century? Rather than truly fulfilling dreams or accomplishing something brand new (Ed Stafford’s walking of the length of the Amazon stands out as a good example) it seems today all you need is an attention grabbing moniker, a sat phone for delivering constant updates to your blog, a charitable cause, some kind of ‘first’ (will climbing Everest naked be next for Whelan?), a contact for ‘media requests’ and – succeed or fail – a now-mandatory press conference.

I’m not suggesting we go back to the days when Robert Falcon Scott and team froze to death 10 miles from a depot (texting might have helped keep them alive)… or when the best rationale climbers could come up with for risking their lives on Himalayan peaks was ‘because it’s there’ … but it seems there are more and more inexperienced people launching adventures these days and getting sizable attention most often for their ineptitude, thanks to the instant reach of social media.

According to his tweets, Whelan is back on shore (after a “tough day, very long” aboard the cargo ship) and “up for trying the 3,600 mile solo row again.”

Given the way this adventure has started for the lad, I’d advise the ‘freelance events manager’ from County Kildare consider a year off for further planning.

Even before being rescued his Indian Ocean attempt suffered a variety of setbacks, beginning with severe seasickness. On May 11 he ran into trouble soon after launching and had to be rescued by a passing fishing boat, which towed him to a nearby island. After setting out again, on May 24 he blogged that he was back on the mainland after strong winds and bad weather blew him off course. Ready to depart one more time, he was alerted – by his Australian host, he apparently hadn’t noticed himself – that the boat’s rudder was badly damaged and needed serious repair.

Before starting this misadventure, this is how Whelan explained his motivation at his website: “I am a risk taker and risking your life to achieve a dream is the biggest risk you can take. Some might say it’s foolish but to my mind it is only foolish if you don’t know the risks and you don’t prepare for them and train for every possible scenario.”

My question is, Did he really understand the risks and was he prepared for ‘every possible scenario?’ Or was he just being foolish?

Whelan is not the only soloist attempting to cross the Indian Ocean this season; my friend Roz Savage – who at the very least has earned her headlines by previously having rowed across the Atlantic and Pacific – is now more than 40 days out.

Her daily blogs often tend to focus as much on the hi-tech side of modern-day adventuring — whether its failing GPS’s, trickiness downloading emails or sat phones calls ‘with Mum’ being disconnected – as the ocean world around her (the daily repetitiveness of which can, I’m sure, get very boring).

Reading postings from the middle of the ocean by these modern day adventurists makes me wonder what 140 character missives Thor Heyerdahl would have sent back from the balsa wood raft Kon Tiki in the 1940s.
“Another yellowfin commits suicide by throwing itself aboard; Bengt keeping the three of us up with incessant snoring”

[flickr image via wongaboo]

Sushi Wars

by Jon Bowermaster on

The question arises with more and more frequency these days: To sushi or not to sushi?

There is a growing contingent of conscientious mariners and travelers out there who refuse to eat all seafood, arguing that sea life has been so injudiciously hammered in the past five decades that if it’s going to survive we need to give it a true break. That path, of course, puts at risk the livelihoods of 30 million-plus global fishermen and the related industry they support.

Others, attempting to choose wisely, attempt to navigate by choosing so-called sustainable seafood, which leads away from the big-name predators (tuna, salmon, swordfish, mahi-mahi) towards smaller, less-popular thus still prolific species.

But in the booming sushi trade, opting for that admittedly delicious tuna and other at-risk fish can prompt lively pre-dinner brawls, even among the most enlightened carrying smart phones armed with apps to help steer them towards the “safest” fish on the menu.

With bluefin season heating up in the Mediterranean the question is ever more relevant. Several weeks ago Sea Shepherd’s “Operation Blue Rage” sent two of its boats, the Steve Irwin and Brigitte Bardot, to the coast of Libya to help monitor and take direct action if it observes illegal tuna-ing.”Any tuna fishing vessel we find off the Libyan coast will be operating illegally,” said Sea Shepherd’s boss Paul Watson as his boats steamed away from the coast of France toward Libya. “We will cut their nets, free the fish and document and report their operations to ICCAT and the European Union.”

A decade ago it became clear that bluefin would soon be extinct if the hunting continued apace and little has been done to slow the take, even as the popularity of the species booms in sushi restaurants around the globe, from Stillwater to Moscow (and particularly in Japan, which is said to consume 80 percent of the planet’s bluefin). Some marine protectors stick with the prediction that bluefin will be commercially unavailable by 2012 … next year!

A small and hopefully growing number of chefs and restaurants have taken bluefin off the menus. At the same time necessary further protection for the species continues to erode. In May, the Obama administration refused to list it as endangered, which conservationists were calling for; late last year European quotas for tuna were reduced, though by just a few tons, even as worries that any decrease in legal takings would result in a rise in illegal fishing.

NYT food critic Sam Sifton got into the middle of the debate a couple days ago when reviewing the NYC restaurant Masa Masa, which he admits serves “an enormous amount” of bluefin, and of which he admitted to happily sampling during several visits.

So back to the question, To sushi or not to sushi?

Casson Trenor’s book (Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time) and website may be the best place to start building your argument. He operates San Francisco’s only sustainable sushi restaurant, Tataki, and recently hosted a sustainable seafood feast at the National Geographic Society in D.C.

On his recent birthday (32) he blogged: “I talk a lot about moderation on this blog – staying away from critically endangered delicacies like bluefin tuna, not eating sushi four times a week, and all that – and I stand by it. But there’s a time and a place for celebration, and that’s important too. Not that I would eat bluefin tuna even for a holiday banquet, but I just might gorge myself a little bit (or a lot) on some sort of sustainable delight and fall asleep on the couch. My birthday is not a good day to be a crawfish, believe me.”
I think what we’re seeing is the emergence of a list of “good sushi” and “bad sushi.” Or should we simply put it all off limits … for now? Where do you fall?

Sifton’s review elicited a slew of responses. A majority but not all sided with the fish. Others suggest if you don’t like what’s on the menu, vote by not walking through the door. Have a look for yourself and weigh in here at Gadling.

[Flickr image via Bill Hails]