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Furry crabs once thought to be damaging the Great Barrier Reef may in fact be helping save the coral by stopping the spread of disease, according to research.
Divers from Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Five recovered the 500-pound bombs on Aug. 29 and Aug. 30, using lift balloons to bring them to the surface, according to a 7th Fleet statement. The Navy left behind two cement-filled, inert training bombs with an agreement from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, according to the statement. The inert bombs contain no explosives, electronics, propellant or fusing mechanisms. We supported the U.S. Navy's decision to leave the inert rounds on the seafloor due to the challenging and potentially unsafe diving condition, park authority chairman Russell Reichelt said in a statement.
From right, Capt. Heidi Agle, deputy commodore, Amphibious Squadron 11, Michael Phelan, operation coordinator with Great Barier Reef Marine Park Authority, discuss methods of bomb recovery in the wardroom aboard dock landing ship USS Germantown, which is part of the Bonhomme Richard Amphibious Ready Group. With the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, it is currently conducting routine joint-force operations in the U.S. 7th Fleet Area of Responsibility.
The bombs, which were dropped in roughly 180 feet of water about 18 miles south of Bell Cay, caused no observable environmental damage, Navy officials said. Park officials will continue to monitor the site, according to a statement. Following recovery, the two unarmed bombs were destroyed at the Triangular Island demolition area in Queensland, Australia. The bombs were initially located by Royal Australian Navy minehunter HMAS Gascoyne on August 16.
They were jettisoned by two Marine AV-8B Harrier jets on July 16 after a civilian vessel was spotted in the off-limits Townshend Island range area, which was the planned target. The jets took off from the Sasebo-based USS Bonhomme Richard as part of Talisman Saber 2013, a biannual exercise including 21,000 U.S. servicemembers and about 7,000 Australian servicemembers. The jets would have had difficulty landing back on the ship with the bombs attached, Navy officials said in July.
US, Aussie sailors recover bombs dropped within Great Barrier Reef park boundary - Stripes - Independent U.S. military news from Iraq, Afghanistan and bases worldwide
The Australian government yesterday approved a controversial Indian-backed project to build one of the world’s biggest coal mines, despite conservationists’ fears that it threatens the Great Barrier Reef and vulnerable species while contributing to global climate change. The Queensland project was approved subject to “36 of the strictest conditions in Australian history,” Australian Minister of the Environment Greg Hunt said.
A portion of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of the Whitsunday Islands
It came two months after the Federal Court of Australia blocked the A$16.5 billion (US$12.1) Carmichael mine, largely in relation to its impact on two vulnerable reptiles — the lizard-like yakka skink and the ornamental snake. “The rigorous conditions will protect threatened species and provide long-term benefits for the environment through the development of an offset package,” Hunt said in a statement. “These measures must be approved by myself before mining can start,” he said, adding that he had the power to suspend or revoke the approval and impose penalties if there was a breach of conditions. Adani has faced numerous legal and approval hurdles for the huge open-cut and underground coal mine, plans for which are in the fifth year of development.
British bank Standard Chartered and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia have withdrawn as financial advisers, while major European and US banks have refused to fund the project due to environmental concerns. Under the conditions, all advice from an independent scientific committee has to be implemented, 31,000 hectares of southern black-throated finch habitat will be protected and improved, and groundwater at a nearby wetland will be monitored. About AU$1 million of funding over 10 years also has to be allocated to research programs that boost the conservation of threatened species in the Galilee Basin, about 1,200km northwest of Queensland’s capital, Brisbane. The Indian conglomerate, which has hit out at activists and accused them of exploiting legal loopholes to stall the mine, welcomed Hunt’s decision and the “rigorous and painstaking conditions.”
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As crab season has arrived in Taiwan, Lai Hui-lien, a physician at the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Keelung Hospital, is urging members of the public to show restraint. Crab meat is very rich in protein, which means it is not healthy to eat too much of it, Lai said, especially people who suffer from hypertension or cardiovascular diseases. People with gout or skin allergies should avoid crab completely, she said. Deemed to be “cold” in terms of Chinese medicine, crabs should not be eaten alongside with beer and pears, Lai said. Crab season coincides with persimmon season, but the two do not go together, as the protein in crab meat can coagulate with the tannin in persimmon and lead to indigestion, which can cause food in the intestines to ferment and lead to stomach pains and diarrhea, the doctor said.
A customer inspects live crabs at the Wanli District seafood market in New Taipei City
It is not just consumers who look forward to crab season every year, the nation’s fishermen do too. Fishermen say that Taiwanese crabs fall into two categories: those born in captivity — mainly Chinese Mitten crabs — and wild crabs such as the stone crabs found off New Taipei City’s Wanli District. Wanli is one of the top four ports nationwide for crab cuisine — a distinction it shares with the city’s Yehliu and Gueihung districts and Dongao in Yilan County. However, the popularity of crabs in Wanli has led to a significant hike in prices. Local business operator Lu Feng-e said crabs and crab dishes in Wanli are now a lot more expensive than they are in Keelung, about a half-hour drive away. His advice to customers it to try to select fresh crabs by observing their “liveliness.”
Chiang Ching-shu owns the Chingshan Chinese Mitten Crab farm in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District and he said the quality of crabs bred at his farm are the result of a lot of work and top quality feed. There are seven ponds on his farm, spread across 3,000 ping (9,917.37m2) of land and filled with mountain water from Yangmingshan, he said. His crabs are fed mackerel, corn, wheat and silver-stripe round herring for 10 months, but no antibacterial medicines or growth hormones are used. The farm sends a sample of its crabs to the SGS Co and the New Taipei City Department of Agriculture for inspection before sales commence each year, Chiang said. The meat from male Chinese mitten crabs is more tender, while the females allow gourmands to enjoy both the meat and eggs, Chiang said. If consumers want to pick up the freshest crabs, they should look for bubbles in the water, and buy from local vendors, he said. The going prices are: for six crabs totaling 1kg, NT$2,000; five crabs totaling 1kg, NT2,400 and four crabs totaling 1kg,NT$2,800, Chiang said.
Doctor warns against going crab crazy - Taipei Times
The natural devastation adds to the human and economic toll of Cyclone Debbie, which killed at least six people in recent weeks and severed rail transport lines in one of the world's biggest coal precincts. The damage caused when the intense, slow-moving cyclone system struck a healthier section of the reef outweighed any potential beneficial cooling effect, scientists from the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies said. “Any cooling effects related to the cyclone are likely to be negligible in relation to the damage it caused, which unfortunately struck a section of the reef that had largely escaped the worst of the bleaching," ARC said in a statement.
Australian senator Pauline Hanson listens to marine scientist Alison Jones, left, as she displays a piece of coral on the Great Barrier Reef. Australian scientists say warming oceans have caused the biggest die-off of corals ever recorded on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
The World Heritage site has suffered a second bleaching event in 12 months, triggered by unseasonably warm waters, ARC added. Higher temperatures force coral to expel living algae and turn white as it calcifies. Mildly bleached coral can recover if the temperature drops, and an ARC survey found this happened in southern parts of the reef, where coral mortality was much lower, though scientists said much of the Great Barrier Reef was unlikely to recover. “It takes at least a decade for a full recovery of even the fastest-growing corals, so mass bleaching events 12 months apart offers zero prospect of recovery for reefs damaged in 2016,” said James Kerry, a senior research officer at the ARC.
Repeated damage could prompt UNESCO's World Heritage Committee to reconsider a 2015 decision not to put the Great Barrier Reef on its "in danger" list. Tourists drawn to the unique attraction spend A$5.2 billion ($3.9 billion) each year, a 2013 Deloitte Access Economics report estimated.
Cyclone Strikes Healthiest Part of Great Barrier Reef
In other words, what the Greenies screamed were destroying our planet may actually save it. Anyone else see the irony in this?
Charlie Veron is one of the world's leading experts on coral reefs. Born in Sydney, he is known as the ‘godfather of coral’ because he has discovered so many different species. He is part of the Great Barrier Reef Legacy mission, which is taking eight teams of scientists on a voyage to map and test the health of remote parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. They are searching for so-called ‘super corals’ that managed to survive the past two years of devastating coral bleaching events.
Veron says the reef is in sharp decline. “It is gut-wrenching and I have lived with this now for close on 20 years," he said. "The predictions that scientists made well over a decade ago have all turned out to be spot on. Well, this is a very important trip because we are actually seeing for ourselves what corals are vulnerable to mass bleaching and what corals are surviving mass bleaching. So, once we know that we will be able to make smart decisions about coral, so the trip is really quite pivotal.”
Great Barrier Reef, Australia, Pacific Ocean.
In April, researchers discovered that for the first time mass bleaching had affected the Great Barrier Reef in consecutive years, damaging two-thirds of the World Heritage-listed area. When it bleaches, the coral is not dead, but it begins to starve and can eventually die. The reefs, though, are resilient, but what concerns scientists is that more frequent bleaching, which is caused by rising water temperatures, makes it harder for the coral to recover. Bleaching occurs when corals under stress drive out the algae that give them color.
Scientists believe that the main threat to the reef that stretches 2,300 kilometers down the Queensland coast in northern Australia is climate change. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is about the size of Italy or Japan and is so big it can be seen from outer space. It is home to more than 3,000 types of mollusks and 30 species of whales and dolphins.
‘Godfather of Coral’ on New Mission to Help Save Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
