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Wolves on an Alaskan island are showing a remarkable adaptation.

Pleasant Island in Alaska is not exactly befitting of its name. The frigid, 20-square-mile island is uninhabited by humans, but it hosts a remarkably large and rich ecosystem that features deer, otters, red squirrels, and even brown bears. But in 2013, the island got a new addition: wolves.

When wolves colonized the island in 2013, it set up a natural experiment.

"This provided a great opportunity to study predator-prey dynamics of wolves and deer," says Roffler Gretchen. "We were interested in seeing how the newly colonizing wolf population would impact the deer population and predicted that the wolves might eat all the deer, and then leave the island as it is only separated from the mainland by 1.5 km."

The first part of the prediction came true. The deer population of around 120-200 deer plummeted. But instead of moving to greener pastures, the wolves remained on an island and shifted their diet to unexpected prey: sea otters.

Sea otters are themselves a top predator in the near-shore ecosystem, while wolves are an apex predator in the terrestrial area. -- so it's pretty surprising that you end up with a dynamic where one eats the other, says Taal Levi, an associate professor at Oregon State. "You have top predators feeding on a top predator," Levi says.

Gretchen, Levi, and colleagues were studying the wolf diets throughout southeast Alaska, as these wolves are petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act -- so knowing more about their feeding ecology was important.

They tracked some of the wolves with GPS collars and analyzed their scat. They found that in 2015, deer were the primary food of wolves, representing 75% of their diet. By 2017, wolves transitioned to eating primarily sea otters (57% of their diet), while deer only made up 7% of their diet. The pattern held through to 2020, when the study ended.

Otters themselves have had a rough history in the area. During the 19th and 20th centuries, sea otters in the region were hunted by fur traders and basically wiped out from the region. Local wolves were not hunted to extinction, unlike wolves in other parts of the US. But it was only in recent decades, thanks to the legal protection granted to sea otters, that the two populations overlapped.

But researchers weren't expecting wolves, a terrestrial species, to become so proficient at eating sea otters -- which, as the name implies, spend most of their time at sea.

"They are both scavenging otters and hunting them when the sea otters haul on land. Sea otters are very unlikely to be vulnerable to wolves in the ocean," notes Levi.

Wolves were often seen patrolling the shoreline of Pleasant Island and investigating rocky outcrops. The GPS data confirmed that they spent a lot of time in the intertidal zone as if looking for something -- and indeed they were: they were looking for otters to ambush.

Sea otters haul out on rocks to conserve energy, says Roffler. But this makes them more vulnerable to predation as they are slow and awkward on land -- and wolves are quick to take their chance. "We have collected evidence of wolves killing sea otters by ambush when they haul out on land or are in shallow water," Gretchen adds.

This new twist to the ecosystem makes for a very interesting case study, Gretchen continues.

"Previously there have been investigations into the effects of marine predators on sea otter populations, but until now very little attention has been paid to the impact of terrestrial predators on sea otters, or how sea otters may be an abundant marine prey to terrestrial predators. This interaction was unexpected, but has had profound effects, at least on Pleasant Island."

For now, it's not clear how the otters are adapting to this (or if they are adapting at all). The biggest effect might be a behavioral change that forces them to spend more time at sea, even when it would be beneficial to them to conserve energy on land -- the effects of this could be stressful in the long term, but this is something that warrants future research, Levi says.

But overall, the researchers don't expect that wolves will have a big effect on the sea otter population. The more important ecosystem implication is that wolf population dynamics can be decoupled from the large mammals that make up their typical prey.

"This allows wolves to remain abundant even as they cause large herbivore populations to decline. That is, sea otters may allow wolves to maintain large herbivores at lower densities, which has implications for vegetation and the animals that depend on it (bees, birds, bears for floral and berry resources, for example), across a huge coastline that will be eventually occupied by sea otters as their recovery continues," Levi adds.

This surprising finding of wolf diets definitely warrants more studies to better understand the interactions in this ecosystem -- and Levi says they're working exactly on that.

"We are now increasingly following up on the wolf-sea otter story with additional field studies, including one by PhD student Ellen Dymit, comparing mainland study areas with and without sea otters along the colonizing front of sea otter population expansion."

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

archive: https://archive.ph/wip/wgO64

The Vibrio vulnificus pathogen thrives in hot coastal waters, and beachgoers can contract it via a small cut or scrape. It can also kill them in two days.

If you were planning on a shore vacation this year, you might have kept track of great white sharks. The apex predator made famous by Jaws (and, OK, by The Meg and Sharknado) has been spotted on East Coast beaches from South Carolina up past Cape Cod, leaving potential beachcombers worried by accounts of close encounters and attacks.

But many marine biologists are worried about a much smaller—in fact, microscopic—threat. They are tracking an unprecedented surge in ocean-going bacteria known as Vibrio, which recently killed three people and sickened a fourth in Connecticut and New York, at least two of them after swimming in the coastal waters of Long Island Sound.

For swimmers and fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, Vibrio is a known summer foe. It is one of the reasons for the old saying that you shouldn't eat oysters in months that don’t have an R in their name: Warmer water encourages bacterial growth, and oysters accumulate these organisms when they feed. The bacteria is also an infection hazard for anyone who gets a cut while cleaning up soaked debris after a hurricane. But Vibrio appearing in the waters of the upper East Coast is a new and unfamiliar problem, fueled by the rapid ocean warming of climate change.

Researchers worry Vibrio is going to become a persistent threat to whether people can safely enjoy the beach—and physicians who work in areas where it is already common wonder whether their northern colleagues will be alert to its potentially fatal risks. “We are used to certain diseases in our area, but they are something that clinicians in the Northeast, for example, may not be as familiar with,” says Cesar Arias, a professor and chief of infectious diseases at Houston Methodist Hospital. “All these changes in climate that we are seeing, including the tremendous heating of the oceans, is making the geography of infectious diseases change.”

Already, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there may be 80,000 illnesses and 100 deaths caused by Vibrio species in the US each year; about 52,000 of them come from eating seafood. But because shellfish safety is tightly policed by federal agencies, it’s the other portion of Vibrio infections, caused by the species Vibrio vulnificus, that is raising so much concern right now. These infections happen when bacteria-laden seawater infiltrates a break in the skin. In an average year there are believed to be 28,000 cases, but that’s widely considered an undercount.

Those infections can be treated, if people get antibiotics quickly. But without rapid attention, they can cause necrotizing fasciitis—flesh-eating disease—that can only be arrested by amputation, and also can put people into septic shock in as few as two days. The bacteria can enter the body through very minor injuries: a cut from stepping on a shell, a pinch from a crab’s claws, water touching the incision created by a new piercing or tattoo. Up to one-fifth of those who contract vibriosis from wound infections die.

The risk is serious enough that, on Friday afternoon, the CDC sent out an alert to health departments and physicians, urging them to consider the possibility of V. vulnificus if they learn of wound infections in anyone who has been in the water in the Gulf of Mexico or on the East Coast. The alert emphasizes how fast these infections turn septic and asks doctors to send cultures to a lab—but it also urges them to start patients on antibiotics immediately, without waiting for lab results or consultation with a specialist.

Vibrio are on the move. In March, a research team based at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom used records of diagnoses combined with models of climate warming to define the situation in the US now and forecast what might come next. They found that, just for V. vulnificus wound infections, cases increased eightfold between 1988 and 2018. Every year, they were recorded about 30 miles (48 kilometers) further north.

Then, using several computer models based on predicted levels of greenhouse gas emissions combined with population movements, the group plotted the bacterium’s possible further shift. Under a conservative low-emissions scenario, they found that Vibrio—already present in the Chesapeake Bay—might extend its range to the middle of the New Jersey shore by 2060. In the outer bound of a high-emissions scenario, it might move as far north as the coast of southern Maine by 2100.

Elizabeth Archer, an environmental scientist who led the work as a doctoral student, says it was a mild shock to discover, via news of the recent Connecticut and New York cases, that V. vulnificus had already reached the edge of New England. “Our model had predicted that area to be in the main distribution of infections by mid-century,” she says. “So it was perhaps a bit surprising that it came so soon—but also not surprising, given the trends in ocean warming and air temperatures.”

In a few scientific circles, there has been concern for years that temperature anomalies are permitting Vibrio to surge out of its historic areas. Bacterial surges have been documented on the coasts of the Netherlands and Poland, and isolated from tidal flats in northern California—all places where the water ought to be too cold for Vibrio to grow. And over the past decade, Vibrio has increased in Atlantic coastal waters off Florida and the Carolinas, not only contaminating seafood but also posing a hazard to people who fish or boat in marshes and in-shore waterways.

This year, the unprecedented warming of ocean water, which fueled the rapid intensification of Hurricane Idalia the night before it struck Florida’s Big Bend, is changing marine environments all the way up the Atlantic Coast. Both Long Island Sound—where two of the Connecticut victims were apparently infected—and waters off New England have reached record-high temperatures in the past few years.

“V. vulnificus is only active at a temperature that's above 13 degrees Celsius, and then it becomes more prevalent up until the temperature reaches 30 degrees Celsius, which is 86 Fahrenheit,” says Karen Knee, who is an associate professor and water-quality expert at American University and an open-water swimmer accustomed to ocean conditions. “I was looking at the sea surface temperature maps, and everywhere south of Cape Cod is getting into territory that's above 20 degrees Celsius, which is when [Vibrio] really starts to become more infectious. And that's most of the swimming waters on the East Coast.”

There’s more going on than just temperature shifts. Geoffrey Scott, the chair of environmental sciences at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health who leads a research consortium on oceans and climate change, says changes in water quality are whomping up Vibrio’s ability to cause severe illness. Those changes are driven by people relocating to coasts, which increases nutrient flows into the ocean via wastewater.

Vibrio used to be a late-summer hazard, but is now turning up earlier—and also later— in the year. “We've gone from them being mainly an issue from late July through early October, to being present April through November,” says Scott, who formerly supervised several coastal laboratories in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “And in some cases, they have been seen overwintering in North Carolina, around the Outer Banks.”

To the problems of V. vulnificus being more virulent, in more places, for longer, you can add that more people may be exposed: first, because hot weather naturally sends more people to the beach, and second, because some of those people may not realize how vulnerable they are. “[Vulnificus] predominantly seems to impact people who have liver disease much harder than those who do not,” says Scott Roberts, an infectious-disease physician and assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine. “And in general, being in an immunocompromised state. That could be from age, could be from chemotherapy, or if there's some sort of underlying disease.”

Many people won’t know they are in danger. Every state with a shellfish industry participates in the National Shellfish Sanitation Program run by the Food and Drug Administration, which dictates standards for every aspect of shellfish production, including screening for contamination by Vibrio. That’s out of self-interest: Any hint of the organism’s presence can shut down a state’s shellfish economy. (In fact, since the recent deaths, the home page of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture has been topped by a highlighted banner declaring “Connecticut shellfish have never been associated with Vibrio vulnificus infections.”)

But there’s no national program that can warn swimmers or surfers of Vibrio’s presence in the ocean; no testing regime like ones that look for coastal E. coli; no system of flags like the ones that announce strong surf and rip tides. These hazards are local knowledge, shared among people who have lived alongside them.

“People down here may have a buddy who got cut on a shell or while fishing, and their finger’s a little red and swollen, and somebody will be like, ‘Don't sleep on that. I had a buddy who waited till the next morning and he lost his hand,’” says Brett Froelich, a microbiologist and assistant professor at George Mason University in Virginia. “Other people in other locations don't know that. They will absolutely think, ‘Well, I hope it gets better in the morning,’ and in the morning, their hand is black.”

This poses a problem: How to make the public in newly endemic areas conscious of their new risks. No one—especially not researchers at publicly funded universities—wants to be perceived as hurting coastal tourism. “We don’t want to scare people away from beaches,” Froelich says. “You don't need to avoid [them]. You just need to be aware.”

archive: https://archive.ph/VvI1h

For food companies, it will be a balancing act between raising prices and losing customers. For the agriculture business, it may be a boon.

First, there was the intense heat. Then, the wildfires and violent storms followed.

This summer is on track to be the hottest recorded on Earth. But the impact goes far beyond keeping cool: Extreme high temperatures are creating risks to food production.

Heat waves destroy crops and threaten to drive up food prices. Food insecurity is the ‘new normal’ with climate change pointing to recurring crises and structurally higher agricultural commodity prices, wrote J.P. Morgan’s chair of global research Joyce Chang in a recent research note.

Big packaged-food companies such as Mondelez International (ticker: MDLZ), Unilever (UL) and Nestlé (NESN.Switzerland) could face an increasing struggle to pass on price increases while not driving away customers. However, price volatility could bring benefits for companies such as agricultural equipment supplier Deere (DE) and commodities trader Bunge (BG).

The standout example of how extreme weather can drive up food prices is olive oil. The Mediterranean staple has more than doubled over the last 12 months to $8,000 a metric ton, a record high according to statistics tracked by the International Monetary Fund back to 1990. Extreme heat was the culprit as Spain, the world’s largest producer, was hard hit by drought.

The impact on privately owned Dave’s Gourmet offers a snapshot into what some of America’s biggest food producers could face in the future. The Dallas-based specialty food company sources olive oil from a producer in the south of Spain. Dave’s Gourmet marketing director Jade Steger told Barron’s that its supplier raised prices by 20% to cover additional costs.

“Half of the Spanish olive groves are not in irrigated plantations,” Steger said. “Our partner relies on an efficient water irrigation system which significantly reduces the risk, but unfortunately it can’t be removed entirely.”

Olive oil has a relatively limited knock on effect in the food chain, although fans of Starbucks ’s (SBUX) range of olive-oil infused coffees might need to brace themselves for a price increase. However, a whole range of major food ingredients are at risk. Argentina’s soybean crop fell by more than half this year due to prolonged drought, according to the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange. Kansas had its smallest wheat crop since 1966 this summer after dry conditions caused many fields to be abandoned.

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Government-imposed measures to tackle food inflation pose the most immediate threat to corporations. The French government said in June that it had reached a deal with dozens of food producers to lower their prices, with a minister subsequently naming Unilever as one of the companies which wasn’t doing enough to bring down costs. Unilever declined to comment on the French government’s comments but told Barron’s its pricing decisions are always taken very carefully and it is investing in regenerative agriculture practices to secure the food-supply chain.

Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher told analysts on a recent earnings call that agricultural commodities were still highly volatile, citing the drought in Southern Europe, and said the company had been facing prolonged negotiations with retailers.

That was also a theme picked up by Oreo maker Mondelez, which said that its volumes of sales in Europe were down in the second quarter due to contentious negotiations with grocers, which included its products being temporarily removed from some supermarkets.

At the moment, the effects look manageable. Unilever’s underlying sales rose 7.9% in the second quarter of the year from the same period a year earlier, while Mondelez‘s organic net revenue was up 16%, both boosted by price increases. Unilever’s U.S.-listed shares are flat this year so far while Mondelez is up 4.2%.

Price increases are slowing now, after hitting a peak in July last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a global crisis. However, climate change is increasing the chances of sharp swings in food prices in the future. Over the next few years that could be exacerbated by the El Niño weather pattern, which tends to raise temperatures and bring more extreme weather conditions.

“Sugar, cocoa, coffee are very much at risk and so are the grains,” said Kathy Kriskey, a Commodities ETF strategist at Invesco. Cocoa prices hit a 12-year high in New York trading this summer with harvests in West Africa hit by extreme wet weather.

Higher prices for cocoa and coffee pose challenges for companies such as Nestlé, although the the effects can be complex. Higher prices could drive consumers to Nestlés instant coffee products. Nestlé shares are down 2.8% this year so far, after it reported organic sales growth of 8.7% for the first half of the year.

Another example of a vulnerable staple is wheat. Researchers at Tufts University found that heat waves that only had a probability of happening once every hundred years based on conditions in 1981 are now likely to happen once every six years in the Midwestern U.S. and once every 16 years in Northeastern China, both key wheat-producing areas.

That could have an effect on agricultural equipment suppliers such as Deere. They generally benefit from rising crop prices, which leave farmers with more profit to spend on tractors and other machinery. Drier conditions can therefore be helpful in supporting crop prices and farming profits but only if they don’t tip over into severe drought.

For this year, Deere executives said they expect sales of large agricultural equipment in the U.S. and Canada, its largest markets, to be up approximately 10% as drier weather conditions supported commodity prices. Deere shares are down 2.8% this year so far and it trades at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 12.5 times, below its five-year average of 16.0 times according to FactSet.

One company hoping to profit from volatile weather swings is grain trader and oilseed processor Bunge. Earlier this year it struck a deal to buy fellow grain merchant Viterra for $8.2 billion, citing the advantages of having a larger global footprint to deal with violent weather caused by climate change. Bunge’s profit tripled in the second quarter on improved margins as it benefited from commodities volatility despite falling sales. Bunge stock is up 14% this year so far and it trades at a forward P/E multiple of 9.5 times, below its five-year average of 11.3 times according to FactSet.

Investors can also look to invest directly in commodities to either back an expected rise in prices or hedge against inflation. Invesco’s Kriskey advises against concentrating on a single crop and instead looking for exposure to a broader basket such as via the fund manager’s Agriculture Commodity Strategy No K-1 ETF, an exchange-traded fund with exposure to 11 agricultural commodities.

A new normal for the climate is likely to mean more abnormal movements in food prices. That creates risks but also opportunities for investors keeping a close eye on the stocks and commodities most affected and with a strong understanding of how to play a rising likelihood of food price shocks.

archive: https://archive.ph/9fFye

The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying plans to tighten air quality standards for smog despite a recommendation by a scientific advisory panel to lower air pollution limits to protect public health.

The decision by EPA Administrator Michael Regan means that one of the agency’s most important air quality regulations will not be updated until well after the 2024 presidential election.

“I have decided that the best path forward is to initiate a new statutory review of the ozone (standard) and the underlying air quality criteria,’' Regan wrote in a letter to the EPA advisory panel last month. The letter cites “several issues” raised by the panel in a recent report that “warrant additional evaluation and review.’'

The review, which will last at least two years, will “ensure that air quality standards reflect the latest science in order to best protect people from pollution,’' Regan said.

Regan’s decision avoids an election year battle with industry groups and Republicans who have complained about what they consider overly intrusive EPA rules on power plants, refineries, automobiles and other polluters.

The delay marks the second time in 12 years that a Democratic administration has put off a new ozone standard prior to an election year. President Barack Obama shut down plans to tighten ozone standards in 2011, leading to a four-year delay before the standards were updated in 2015.

Paul Billings, senior vice president of the American Lung Association, called the EPA’s decision “profoundly disappointing” and a missed opportunity to protect public health and promote environmental justice. A recent report by the lung association showed that minority communities bear a disproportionate burden from ground-level ozone, which occurs when air pollution from cars, power plants and other sources mixes with sunlight. The problem is particularly acute in urban areas.

Billings called the ozone rule “the public health cornerstone of the Clean Air Act,’' adding that “millions of people will breathe dirty air for many more years’’ as a result of the delay. An increased number of asthma attacks, sick days and even premature death are likely to occur, he and other public health advocates said.

Raul Garcia, vice president of policy and legislation for Earthjustice, called the delay “shameful” and unjustified. “The science tells us we are long overdue,” Garcia said.

Democratic lawmakers also were disappointed. “Inaction threatens public health and puts those with underlying conditions such as asthma or lung disease at an elevated risk,’' said Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. He and 51 other Democrats had urged swift action on a new rule.

“Unfortunately we’ve seen the process for updating the ozone standards repeatedly swept up in political games that risk lives,’' the lawmakers said in an Aug. 7 letter to the EPA.

Conor Bernstein, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, applauded the EPA’s decision “not to race ahead with an unnecessary revision of the ozone standards,’' which have not been changed since 2015. The current standard was reaffirmed in December 2020 under then-President Donald Trump, a Republican.

Bernstein, whose members produce coal and other fossil fuels, urged officials to reconsider other regulations that he said target coal-fired power plants and endanger reliability of the electric grid. “It’s clear — and deeply alarming — that EPA (does not) understand the cumulative impact its rules will have on the grid and the nation’s severely stressed power supply,’' he said.

A spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, said current ozone limits are among the most stringent in the world. “Any tightening of the standard could impact energy costs, threaten U.S. energy security and impact businesses and American consumers,’' spokeswoman Andrea Woods said in an email.

The EPA’s decision comes after two advisory panels — the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council — urged the agency to lower the current ozone standard of 70 parts per billion.

“Based on the scientific evidence currently available, it is concluded that the level of the current standard is not protective with an adequate margin of safety,’' the EPA panel said in a June report. A limit of 55 to 60 parts per billion “is more likely to be protective and to provide an adequate margin of safety,’' the panel said.

Lianne Sheppard, a University of Washington biostatistics professor who chairs the scientific advisory panel, said Regan’s decision was “his alone” to make.

“However, I am disappointed, given the robust scientific evidence that ozone is harmful to public health and welfare,” she told E&E News last month.

The White House environmental justice council, meanwhile, cited the “horrible toll of air pollution’’ and its disproportionate effect on minority communities. In a letter to the White House, co-chairs Richard Moore and Peggy Shepard said the problem is “compounded by the inadequate monitoring and enforcement in many of our communities.’'

Moore is co-director of Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, while Sheppard is co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice in New York City.

Tomas Carbonell, a top official in the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said the report by the scientific panel left the EPA with little choice but to launch a comprehensive review even though all but one panel member supported a stricter ozone standard.

“When we’re looking at our national air quality standards, there’s really no way to cut corners around that process,’' Carbonell said in an interview.

The agency will convene workshops next spring to gather information and will release a review plan for action in late 2024, he said. A final decision could be years away.

archive: https://archive.ph/wip/lSj05

The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying plans to tighten air quality standards for smog despite a recommendation by a scientific advisory panel to lower air pollution limits to protect public health.

The decision by EPA Administrator Michael Regan means that one of the agency’s most important air quality regulations will not be updated until well after the 2024 presidential election.

“I have decided that the best path forward is to initiate a new statutory review of the ozone (standard) and the underlying air quality criteria,’' Regan wrote in a letter to the EPA advisory panel last month. The letter cites “several issues” raised by the panel in a recent report that “warrant additional evaluation and review.’'

The review, which will last at least two years, will “ensure that air quality standards reflect the latest science in order to best protect people from pollution,’' Regan said.

Regan’s decision avoids an election year battle with industry groups and Republicans who have complained about what they consider overly intrusive EPA rules on power plants, refineries, automobiles and other polluters.

The delay marks the second time in 12 years that a Democratic administration has put off a new ozone standard prior to an election year. President Barack Obama shut down plans to tighten ozone standards in 2011, leading to a four-year delay before the standards were updated in 2015.

Paul Billings, senior vice president of the American Lung Association, called the EPA’s decision “profoundly disappointing” and a missed opportunity to protect public health and promote environmental justice. A recent report by the lung association showed that minority communities bear a disproportionate burden from ground-level ozone, which occurs when air pollution from cars, power plants and other sources mixes with sunlight. The problem is particularly acute in urban areas.

Billings called the ozone rule “the public health cornerstone of the Clean Air Act,’' adding that “millions of people will breathe dirty air for many more years’’ as a result of the delay. An increased number of asthma attacks, sick days and even premature death are likely to occur, he and other public health advocates said.

Raul Garcia, vice president of policy and legislation for Earthjustice, called the delay “shameful” and unjustified. “The science tells us we are long overdue,” Garcia said.

Democratic lawmakers also were disappointed. “Inaction threatens public health and puts those with underlying conditions such as asthma or lung disease at an elevated risk,’' said Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. He and 51 other Democrats had urged swift action on a new rule.

“Unfortunately we’ve seen the process for updating the ozone standards repeatedly swept up in political games that risk lives,’' the lawmakers said in an Aug. 7 letter to the EPA.

Conor Bernstein, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, applauded the EPA’s decision “not to race ahead with an unnecessary revision of the ozone standards,’' which have not been changed since 2015. The current standard was reaffirmed in December 2020 under then-President Donald Trump, a Republican.

Bernstein, whose members produce coal and other fossil fuels, urged officials to reconsider other regulations that he said target coal-fired power plants and endanger reliability of the electric grid. “It’s clear — and deeply alarming — that EPA (does not) understand the cumulative impact its rules will have on the grid and the nation’s severely stressed power supply,’' he said.

A spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, said current ozone limits are among the most stringent in the world. “Any tightening of the standard could impact energy costs, threaten U.S. energy security and impact businesses and American consumers,’' spokeswoman Andrea Woods said in an email.

The EPA’s decision comes after two advisory panels — the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council — urged the agency to lower the current ozone standard of 70 parts per billion.

“Based on the scientific evidence currently available, it is concluded that the level of the current standard is not protective with an adequate margin of safety,’' the EPA panel said in a June report. A limit of 55 to 60 parts per billion “is more likely to be protective and to provide an adequate margin of safety,’' the panel said.

Lianne Sheppard, a University of Washington biostatistics professor who chairs the scientific advisory panel, said Regan’s decision was “his alone” to make.

“However, I am disappointed, given the robust scientific evidence that ozone is harmful to public health and welfare,” she told E&E News last month.

The White House environmental justice council, meanwhile, cited the “horrible toll of air pollution’’ and its disproportionate effect on minority communities. In a letter to the White House, co-chairs Richard Moore and Peggy Shepard said the problem is “compounded by the inadequate monitoring and enforcement in many of our communities.’'

Moore is co-director of Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, while Sheppard is co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice in New York City.

Tomas Carbonell, a top official in the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said the report by the scientific panel left the EPA with little choice but to launch a comprehensive review even though all but one panel member supported a stricter ozone standard.

“When we’re looking at our national air quality standards, there’s really no way to cut corners around that process,’' Carbonell said in an interview.

The agency will convene workshops next spring to gather information and will release a review plan for action in late 2024, he said. A final decision could be years away.

archive: https://archive.ph/wip/lSj05

Britain’s second-biggest city effectively declared itself bankrupt on Tuesday, shutting down all nonessential spending after being issued with equal pay claims totaling up to £760 million ($956 million).

Birmingham City Council, which provides services for more than one million people, filed a Section 114 notice on Tuesday, halting all spending except on essential services.

The deficit arose due to difficulties paying between £650 million (around $816 million) and £760 million (around $954 million) in equal pay claims, the notice report says.

The city now expects to have a deficit of £87 million ($109 million) for the 2023-24 financial year.

Sharon Thompson, deputy leader of the council, told councilors on Tuesday it faces “longstanding issues, including the council’s historic equal pay liability concerns,” according to the United Kingdom’s PA Media news agency.

Thompson also blamed in part the UK’s ruling Conservative Party, saying Birmingham “had £1 billion of funding taken away by successive Conservative governments.”

“Local government is facing a perfect storm,” she said. “Like councils across the country, it is clear that this council faces unprecedented financial challenges, from huge increases in adult social care demand and dramatic reductions in business rates incomes, to the impact of rampant inflation.”

“Whilst the council is facing significant challenges, the city is very much still open for business and we’re welcoming people as they come along,” she added.

A spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters on Tuesday: “Clearly it’s for locally elected councils to manage their own budgets.” The spokesperson added that the government has been “engaging regularly with them to that end and has expressed concern about their governance arrangements and has requested assurances from the leader of the council about the best use of taxpayers’ money.”

The council’s leader John Cotton elsewhere told the BBC that a new jobs model would be brought into the council to tackle the equal pay claims bill.

The multicultural city is the largest in central England. It hosted last year’s Commonwealth Games, a major sporting event for Commonwealth countries, and is scheduled to hold the 2026 European Athletics Championships.

archive: https://archive.ph/E6C6d#selection-2871.7-2891.225

Dimension 20's Brennan Lee Mulligan led an adventuring party in a final battle as part of the strike at Universal Studios.

When Jon Strahd, the evil CEO of Ravenloft Studios, was defeated, the crowd at Universal Studios gave a huge roar. A group of 500 adventurers had shown up to picket at “the worst [Hollywood] location,” and about 100 were now engaged in a existential fight with a contemporary capitalist, a spin on Wizards of the Coast’s notorious vampire, Baron Strahd von Zarovich, led by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan. (Wizards of the Coast, which had recently produced a massive Dungeons & Dragons film with Universal Studios, did not endorse this event.)

But Strahd wasn’t the final villain. As the metaphorical vampire crumpled under the weight of a zone of truth cast in order to expose the real streaming numbers, battered by the orcas summoned to destroy his yachts, an even more terrifying monster emerged from the shadows. The adventurers waited with bated breath as Mulligan–a professional dungeon master known for his shows on Dimension 20–narrated the scene. Rising from the ashes of the CEO came a massive, five-headed dragon. This was the real Big Bad Evil Guy: the AMPTiamat.

This was the beginning of the end of the Dungeons & Dragons-themed picket day at Universal Studios on August 30. The event was organized by three members of the WGA: Daphne Miles (Batwoman, Legends of Tomorrow), Lindsey Allen (Agent Carter, Emergence), and Lauren Muir (The 100). Miles had the idea at another picket—how could she leverage her love of D&D to help the union? Immediately after floating the idea past a friend, he volunteered to run a one-shot, and she was off to the Sword Coast. Allen was quickly recruited to help and Muir immediately responded to the call for aid, and the three of them worked together to organize one of the largest pickets that Universal Studios has seen in the 100+ days since the WGA began its strike. io9 spoke with the three organizers over video chat for this interview.

Out of the over 500 people who attended, the organizers said that there were about 350 people there who had never been to a picket before—and that was a conservative estimate. There were so many people in attendance that “we ran out of signs,” said Muir, and that wasn’t all. “We ran out of character sheets, we ran out of dice, we ran out of nametags,” listed Allen. While Dungeons & Dragons might have been the draw for many people when they first heard about the picket, nobody at the event lost sight of the fact that they were there for the unions first. “They were there for D&D as much as they were there to support the cause,” explained Muir.

Allie Menelli was one of those first-time picketers. She’s a long time D&D player, and she said that she didn’t have “any direct connection” to the unions. While the initial draw was D&D, she said that “I appreciate the importance of writers in making [media] happen, and I think it’s a disgrace that many writers do incredible work crafting stories that we as an audience resonate deeply with, but still struggling to make ends meet and to be treated fairly by studios.”

People began showing up at nine sharp and were greeted by Liam O’Brien and Sam Reigel of Critical Role. They picked up dice, a character sheet, and a sign, and were directed to the picket line. For about an hour people marched the picket line and stopped at Gate Masters who ran “short, intense” adventures. If they succeeded, they were given a boon to use in the final battle, which would be run by Mulligan for the entire group. Then, at Citywalk, Mulligan gave a rousing speech, thanked the organizers—Miles, Allen, and Muir—and began the final encounter.

Another participant, Felix S. said they wanted to attend, “first and foremost, for union solidarity. I’m not in the WGA or SAG, but I am an IATSE member.” They also said that it “seemed like it was going to be fun. I mean, free food, mini-adventures, and I’m sorry, what do you mean Brennan ‘Capitalism is the Bad Guy’ Lee Mulligan is running a GROUP boss battle? What IS that?!”

Brennan Lee Mulligan’s name kept coming up in these interviews. Not just because he’s a well known D&D personality, but because he helped facilitate one of the most powerful moments of the strike: the final battle. io9 was able to get Mulligan on the phone to chat about the event, and after about 10 minutes of shooting the shit, we finally got to ask a few questions about the picket, and specifically that last scene in the final battle.

For each character class a group of people decided on their moves collectively, and took turns attacking the five-headed AMPTiamat. Then, “on the final blow, the Fighter ended up rolling a natural 20,” Mulligan explained, excited. He described how Muir’s game design tweaks meant that a natural 20 activated Union Power, and every class could add damage to the attack. So when that one fighter struck, they had the power of every other person striking alongside them. Under the collective force of all the classes—and all the unions out there, supporting the strikes—the dragon fell. Mulligan described it as “a beautiful melding of mechanics and philosophy and solidarity.”

Miles said, “It was a kismet moment in we could not have planned it or written it, you know?” Muir called it “magical.” Logan Griffin, who described Mulligan as one of his personal heroes, called the feeling at the picket “empowering” and “awe-inspiring.” The organizers recalled looking up and seeing people on the bridge above Citywalk cheering. Allen said that “being surrounded by this massive crowd who were all working together and, with so many more people than we had anticipated, still being able to work together as a group, being cheered on from above… I got emotional because it really just felt like we were fighting together.”

Mulligan described the “electric” feeling at the picket. He was genuinely so excited to talk about this, to be there, and was honored to have been called and asked, “Do you want to be in solidarity with your union and do the one skill you have in a helpful was?” Mulligan was effusively grateful to the organizers for letting him be a part of the event. He estimated that he responded to the initial ask in “less than 60 seconds,” and said the event was a “life highlight.”

After the AMPTiamet fell, the crowd began to chant “loot!” It’s common refrain for any D&D player; after an enemy dies, you loot the body. But this wasn’t just any body—this was the body of a dragon who had, as Mulligan explained, “stolen and expropriated treasure from the hero’s community. Which is of course the nature of capitalism and how it functions… So when the group started chanting ‘loot, loot, loot,’ I just stood up and I said, ‘It’s not looting if was your fucking money to start with,’ which is of course, the nature of the struggle, right?”

Melissa Feuchtinger, a member of the DGA and SAG-AFTRA, and a massive fan of D&D, emailed me to explain why she felt so moved after the picket, and specifically after this final battle. “So much of fantasy and science fiction is rooted in humanity and current events, so for us to fight a five-headed dragon called the AMPTP, to have our Rogue party member granted sneak attack because they’re always near allies as union members... it felt so personal.” Feuchtinger, like many other ADs, has been out of work since March as the studios wrapped productions, anticipating a disruption. “I hope that people who showed up who were less informed about the strike left knowing that this is affecting, this is hurting, so many of us and that we need that support and solidarity from everyone.”

Menelli agreed. “I really felt the solidarity in the crowd—we cheered each other on as each class contributed to the fight, we booed the corporate greed, we collaborated, we picked each other up when things got rough.” Nate Buchman was also in attendance, and he volunteered to run a one-shot for raffle winner. He’s not a member of either the WGA or SAG-AFTRA but said that being there felt like “the right thing to do.”

Dave Metzger, a TV writer and one of the folks who acted as a Gate DM, said via email that “It truly felt like the best kind of storytelling, using fiction to help us remember the truth, that we’re far stronger together than we are apart, and, no matter the pain and the cost, through collective action we will win out in the end.” He called the picket “hugely fun and inspiring” and emphasized that themed pickets, while sometimes disparaged, are extremely helpful when you’re working to keep morale high and keep people engaged. He said that many themed pickets “remind everyone of the creative spark that drew so many of us to this career, to begin with.”

As I was wrapping up my interview with the organizers they mentioned that they had raised a huge amount of money for the Entertainment Community Fund. As of writing, the JustGiving page for the D&D Day donation has raised over $12,000 to support the crew affected by the industry shutdown. It proves that this fight isn’t just for the unions; it’s for everyone, and everyone is willing to show up to support each other.

Earlier at the picket, Mulligan had a chance to address the crowd before the battle. “We face an enemy that depends on you believing that it cannot be defeated,” he said. “But we know that it can. Every person in this crowd is dedicated to stories about overcoming impossible odds and telling people that in the depths of despair there is always hope and no matter what you are facing when you face it together, you are unstoppable.”

You heard him. Roll for initiative.

archive: https://archive.ph/wip/VGUEg

In an excerpt from his book River Notes, leading anthropologist Wade Davis recalls how the taming of the Colorado River in the 1960s — ‘nature serves man’ went the thinking — helped shape the nation. But now facing a historic drought, all that could be lost in a generation.

I first visited the Grand Canyon in 1967 with two school friends and an elderly teacher who filled his summers by taking young students on long road trips, camping across the country. I mostly remember the color of the sky and the immensity of the chasm, with the Colorado River as seen from the canyon rim just a dirt thread lying across the bottom of the world. The nearest we got to the river was a mule ride down the Bright Angel Trail, three hours that left us sunburnt and swarming with ticks. Of the greater forces at play that summer, we were as oblivious as our teacher.

In retrospect, 1967 was an auspicious year for the army of engineers, planners, and developers whose confidence in their ability to tame the Colorado, transform the desert, and reimagine the hydrology of the American West had taken on a religious dimension, secured as if an article of faith.

The Glen Canyon Dam, built over a decade, had been formally dedicated by the president’s wife, Lady Bird Johnson, on September 22, 1966. In scale, it was an astonishing feat of construction, a concrete arch surpassed in height only by its elegant sibling downstream, the Hoover Dam, an art deco masterpiece of engineering completed in 1935. Lake Mead above the Hoover Dam would remain the largest reservoir in the United States, but as the waters of the Colorado began to spread across the catchment of the Glen Canyon Dam in the first months of 1963, a vision emerged of a body of blue water in volume only slightly smaller than Lake Mead, but in scale and aspect incomparably more beautiful and dramatic.

To Floyd Dominy, the man ultimately responsible for the building of the Glen Canyon Dam—and its greatest champion—the reservoir that became Lake Powell was a thing of pure beauty, a miracle in the desert. “There is a natural order in our universe,” Dominy famously wrote.

“God created both Nature and Man. Man serves God, but Nature serves Man. To have a deep blue lake, where no lake was before, seems to bring Man a little closer to God.”

Even his archrival, David Brower of the Sierra Club, haunted all his life by the loss of Glen Canyon, agreed that Dominy was a good man, even a great American, though very much a product of his times. Like so many of his generation, including my own father, Dominy believed that any natural resource not used was wealth wasted. He had been raised as a boy on a dying farm in Nebraska during the Dust Bowl. His first job as county agent in rural Wyoming was helping ranchers build earthen dams to secure water for their livestock. By his own account, he became a crusader for the development of water. As Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, singularly responsible for water policy in the American West, Dominy was not just an advocate of massive water projects, dams, and canals designed to tame every river and divert water to the cities, farms, and settlements of the desert southwest; he was, in his own words, “the messiah.”

As Lake Powell slowly came into being, with the flow of the Colorado shut down as if by a tap, there was little concern for the downstream consequences. In later years, conservation would sometimes trump engineering, but in 1963 ecological considerations hardly entered the conversation. The environmental movement was embryonic; as an organized political force it would only emerge in the wake of the dam’s construction, catalyzed by the outrage provoked as the reservoir above the dam deepened and spread, flooding Glen Canyon, famously eulogized by photographer Eliot Porter as “the place no one knew.”

The overwhelming national consensus in 1967 called for growth. Albuquerque’s population had doubled in a decade. Las Vegas that year had a population of 181,000; Tucson, 274,000; Phoenix, 763,000. Each of these cities would grow at least five-fold in a generation, with Las Vegas increasing to 2.8 million, and Phoenix by 2022 achieving a population of 4.6 million. If few in 1967 anticipated such figures, it was evident to all, as Dominy never ceased to say, that if there was to be any growth at all, it would be dependent on water, stored in Lake Powell.

Thus, over twenty years, as the reservoir expanded, reaching in 1983 a maximum depth of 583 feet, extending in length 186 miles, with a width of 25 miles and 1,900 miles of shoreline, Lake Powell—celebrated as a recreational wonderland — became a symbol of human triumph, capacity, and resolve. It stored 20 million acre-feet of water — enough to fill 10 million Olympic-sized swimming pools — a vital repository that made possible the transformation of desert lands that would, in time, be home to 40 million Americans.

In 1973, construction began on the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile diversion canal conceived to bring water from the Colorado — 456 billion gallons altogether — to Phoenix and Tucson, even while providing irrigation for more than a million acres, allowing farmers to grow cotton, hay, and alfalfa in the desert. To secure federal funds to cover construction costs, Arizona cut a deal with California that was certain to haunt the state should the flow of the Colorado ever be compromised or reduced. But with water in abundance, there was little concern. That the open canal lost over five billion gallons of water each year to evaporation, and another three billion to leakage, was considered tolerable wastage, given the scale and benefits of the project.

As Lake Powell reached its maximum capacity in 1980, water levels five times what they are today, the future seemed exceedingly bright. The only threat to the dam came in 1983 when a surge of snowmelt into the reservoir raised lake levels to a dangerous extent, forcing the engineers to open the spillways for the first time since the initial construction. Abundance of water, not a shortage, marked the 1980s, a decade now recognized as having been unusually wet.
...

archive: https://archive.ph/UOffT

In an excerpt from his book River Notes, leading anthropologist Wade Davis recalls how the taming of the Colorado River in the 1960s — ‘nature serves man’ went the thinking — helped shape the nation. But now facing a historic drought, all that could be lost in a generation.

I first visited the Grand Canyon in 1967 with two school friends and an elderly teacher who filled his summers by taking young students on long road trips, camping across the country. I mostly remember the color of the sky and the immensity of the chasm, with the Colorado River as seen from the canyon rim just a dirt thread lying across the bottom of the world. The nearest we got to the river was a mule ride down the Bright Angel Trail, three hours that left us sunburnt and swarming with ticks. Of the greater forces at play that summer, we were as oblivious as our teacher.

In retrospect, 1967 was an auspicious year for the army of engineers, planners, and developers whose confidence in their ability to tame the Colorado, transform the desert, and reimagine the hydrology of the American West had taken on a religious dimension, secured as if an article of faith.

The Glen Canyon Dam, built over a decade, had been formally dedicated by the president’s wife, Lady Bird Johnson, on September 22, 1966. In scale, it was an astonishing feat of construction, a concrete arch surpassed in height only by its elegant sibling downstream, the Hoover Dam, an art deco masterpiece of engineering completed in 1935. Lake Mead above the Hoover Dam would remain the largest reservoir in the United States, but as the waters of the Colorado began to spread across the catchment of the Glen Canyon Dam in the first months of 1963, a vision emerged of a body of blue water in volume only slightly smaller than Lake Mead, but in scale and aspect incomparably more beautiful and dramatic.

To Floyd Dominy, the man ultimately responsible for the building of the Glen Canyon Dam—and its greatest champion—the reservoir that became Lake Powell was a thing of pure beauty, a miracle in the desert. “There is a natural order in our universe,” Dominy famously wrote.

“God created both Nature and Man. Man serves God, but Nature serves Man. To have a deep blue lake, where no lake was before, seems to bring Man a little closer to God.”

Even his archrival, David Brower of the Sierra Club, haunted all his life by the loss of Glen Canyon, agreed that Dominy was a good man, even a great American, though very much a product of his times. Like so many of his generation, including my own father, Dominy believed that any natural resource not used was wealth wasted. He had been raised as a boy on a dying farm in Nebraska during the Dust Bowl. His first job as county agent in rural Wyoming was helping ranchers build earthen dams to secure water for their livestock. By his own account, he became a crusader for the development of water. As Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, singularly responsible for water policy in the American West, Dominy was not just an advocate of massive water projects, dams, and canals designed to tame every river and divert water to the cities, farms, and settlements of the desert southwest; he was, in his own words, “the messiah.”

As Lake Powell slowly came into being, with the flow of the Colorado shut down as if by a tap, there was little concern for the downstream consequences. In later years, conservation would sometimes trump engineering, but in 1963 ecological considerations hardly entered the conversation. The environmental movement was embryonic; as an organized political force it would only emerge in the wake of the dam’s construction, catalyzed by the outrage provoked as the reservoir above the dam deepened and spread, flooding Glen Canyon, famously eulogized by photographer Eliot Porter as “the place no one knew.”

The overwhelming national consensus in 1967 called for growth. Albuquerque’s population had doubled in a decade. Las Vegas that year had a population of 181,000; Tucson, 274,000; Phoenix, 763,000. Each of these cities would grow at least five-fold in a generation, with Las Vegas increasing to 2.8 million, and Phoenix by 2022 achieving a population of 4.6 million. If few in 1967 anticipated such figures, it was evident to all, as Dominy never ceased to say, that if there was to be any growth at all, it would be dependent on water, stored in Lake Powell.

Thus, over twenty years, as the reservoir expanded, reaching in 1983 a maximum depth of 583 feet, extending in length 186 miles, with a width of 25 miles and 1,900 miles of shoreline, Lake Powell—celebrated as a recreational wonderland — became a symbol of human triumph, capacity, and resolve. It stored 20 million acre-feet of water — enough to fill 10 million Olympic-sized swimming pools — a vital repository that made possible the transformation of desert lands that would, in time, be home to 40 million Americans.

In 1973, construction began on the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile diversion canal conceived to bring water from the Colorado — 456 billion gallons altogether — to Phoenix and Tucson, even while providing irrigation for more than a million acres, allowing farmers to grow cotton, hay, and alfalfa in the desert. To secure federal funds to cover construction costs, Arizona cut a deal with California that was certain to haunt the state should the flow of the Colorado ever be compromised or reduced. But with water in abundance, there was little concern. That the open canal lost over five billion gallons of water each year to evaporation, and another three billion to leakage, was considered tolerable wastage, given the scale and benefits of the project.

As Lake Powell reached its maximum capacity in 1980, water levels five times what they are today, the future seemed exceedingly bright. The only threat to the dam came in 1983 when a surge of snowmelt into the reservoir raised lake levels to a dangerous extent, forcing the engineers to open the spillways for the first time since the initial construction. Abundance of water, not a shortage, marked the 1980s, a decade now recognized as having been unusually wet.
...

archive: https://archive.ph/UOffT

Spanish research centre achieves first tank-bred Atlantic bluefin as NGOs warn of poor welfare, more antibiotic use and water pollution

The first successful breeding of Atlantic bluefin tuna at a Spanish research centre has spurred at least two companies to ramp up plans for the industrial farming of land-bred tuna.

The companies would be the first to use only tank-bred Atlantic bluefin stocks of fertilised eggs or young tuna. Up to now, farming of Atlantic bluefin has relied on catching young wild fish and fattening them in open-sea cages.

After the breakthrough in July at the government-run Mazarrón aquaculture plant in Murcia, the company Next Tuna said it plans to begin building a tuna farm north of Valencia. Nortuna, a Norwegian company, has also signed a deal with Mazarrón for the firm’s pilot site in Cape Verde, off the west coast of Africa.

Commercial aquaculture companies argue that as more fish are farmed from stocks in closed tanks, fewer wild Atlantic bluefins will be caught for fattening or immediate consumption, reducing pressure on sea stocks. However, many NGOs note that an increase in farmed tuna would mean more fish taken from oceans to feed them. They have also raised concerns about animal welfare, antibiotic use and water pollution.

Two other species, the Pacific and southern bluefin, have been successfully bred on land before, but until July no one had successfully reproduced Atlantic bluefin (Thunnus thynnus) from tank-based adults. Atlantic bluefin are highly prized for sushi, but their commercial importance has attracted overfishing and populations have plummeted by as much as 80% in some areas of the Atlantic Ocean.

Aurelio Ortega, who leads the research team at the Mazarrón centre, said: “We have about 2,000 or 3,000 tuna fish now. They weigh about 5g to 10g each, and they will take two to three years to reach a size of about 30kg to 40kg.”

Under the plans, the plant will supply fertilised eggs and juvenile tuna to the newly created commercial firms, which will either continue the breeding cycle on land, or use a combination of land-based tanks and sea cages.

NGOs said this will pitch companies into unknown territory, given how little is known about the bluefin species. Catalina López, a veterinarian and director of the Aquatic Animal Alliance at the Aquatic Life Institute, said: “Very little is known about [tuna] requirements for adequate welfare, as it is a highly migratory species with complex hunting behaviours and migration patterns.

“Without extensive scientific research on the welfare of tuna, it is irresponsible to farm them intensively, and could lead to many welfare issues [including] stress, frustration and, ultimately, poor immunity.”

Environmentalists have also noted that more tuna in captivity will mean diverting fish supplies that could be eaten by humans. Tuna, said López, are “a very unsustainable species to farm, since 90% of the species used for fish meal and fish oil are food grade, meaning it could feed humans directly”.

More tuna farming would also mean increased use of antibiotics, which intensive farmers typically employ to avoid diseases spreading, given the relatively poor immunity of farmed animals.

Nortuna and Next Tuna have signed contracts with the Mazarrón research centre, Ortega said. Both companies claim to have plentiful space, which would allow low densities of tuna in the tanks. However, according to Claudia Millán, a fish welfare specialist with the NGO Equalia, even spacious captivity may be incompatible with the needs of a migratory species that crosses oceans to find food and reproduce.

Inefficient feeding practices can also produce toxic wastewater, said Salazar. “Left untreated, [this wastewater] can deplete surrounding waters of oxygen, causing algal blooms [or] dead zones, and public health issues,” she said.

The new breeding successes mean the supply of fertilised eggs could expand outside the species’ natural reproductive season, normally limited to about 45 days in June and July. By controlling the natural spawning triggers of water temperature and lighting, the researchers said they hope the reproduction period could last for 60 or more days.

Other tools to induce breeding include implanting female fish with a synthetic version of a hormone that causes them to release eggs for fertilisation.

Paul Sindilariu, a co-founder of Next Tuna, said the company’s farming plan involved “a closed system that will bring in seawater, but there will be no outflow, so no environmental impacts”. He said the firm’s model, known as a recirculating aquaculture system, would use floating cages that are on, but not in, the sea, and this would allow the company to control the water quality and temperature conditions in a similar way to a laboratory.

“The system has to be tuna-friendly,” said Andrew Eckhardt, who manages site selection and financing for Next Tuna. “They have to be comfortable. Our stocking density will be very low, less than 10kg [of fish weight] per cubic metre.”

The company said it plans to establish its own breeding programme and sell young fish to “grow-out” farms for fattening and sale. It aims to bring its first stocks from the research centre tanks to the new site at the port of Castellón de la Plana next year, with the goal of selling about 45 tonnes of juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna by 2025, and 1,200 tonnes by 2028.

Nortuna also said it would keep stocking densities low. The company’s chairman, Anders Attramadal, said one of the attractions of the pilot site in Cape Verde was space. He said the company aims to get fertilised eggs from the Mazarrón research centre this year in order to produce saleable fish weighing between 12kg and 30kg by late 2024.

“We would buy eggs every week if we could. Right now, we can only get a six-to-eight-week supply,” he said.

Attramadal dismissed concerns about food supply, saying farmed tuna ate less than wild ones. “With formulated food we expect to be getting down to 3kg to 4kg of feed per kilo of [farmed fish] muscle mass,” compared with about 30kg per kilo of muscle for wild Atlantic bluefin, he said.

Eckhardt said that although the main food for the tuna would be fishmeal and fish oil, Next Tuna would be “working with our feed partners to add other ingredients, maybe plant proteins, algae, insects or krill”.

Nortuna said antibiotic usage would be minimal, only for brief periods if fish are sick, while Next Tuna said it would not use any antibiotics at all because they are incompatible with its recirculating aquaculture model.

Welfare experts said another problem with captive tuna was how to kill large, strong fish in a humane way. Recommended tuna-killing methods include shooting or stabbing heads with a metal spike, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health.

Next Tuna said it would sell young fish before slaughter, while Attramadal said Nortuna would “use the best humane approved methods that apply at the time”, adding that a “stressed, uncomfortable fish tastes less delicious”. According to a 2009 European Food Safety Authority report, when “Atlantic bluefin tuna struggle to escape before dying, they produce considerable amounts of lactic acid … resulting in severe degradation of the flesh, [making them] unsuitable for the sushi and sashimi market”.

archive: https://archive.ph/BAE0i

Spanish research centre achieves first tank-bred Atlantic bluefin as NGOs warn of poor welfare, more antibiotic use and water pollution

The first successful breeding of Atlantic bluefin tuna at a Spanish research centre has spurred at least two companies to ramp up plans for the industrial farming of land-bred tuna.

The companies would be the first to use only tank-bred Atlantic bluefin stocks of fertilised eggs or young tuna. Up to now, farming of Atlantic bluefin has relied on catching young wild fish and fattening them in open-sea cages.

After the breakthrough in July at the government-run Mazarrón aquaculture plant in Murcia, the company Next Tuna said it plans to begin building a tuna farm north of Valencia. Nortuna, a Norwegian company, has also signed a deal with Mazarrón for the firm’s pilot site in Cape Verde, off the west coast of Africa.

Commercial aquaculture companies argue that as more fish are farmed from stocks in closed tanks, fewer wild Atlantic bluefins will be caught for fattening or immediate consumption, reducing pressure on sea stocks. However, many NGOs note that an increase in farmed tuna would mean more fish taken from oceans to feed them. They have also raised concerns about animal welfare, antibiotic use and water pollution.

Two other species, the Pacific and southern bluefin, have been successfully bred on land before, but until July no one had successfully reproduced Atlantic bluefin (Thunnus thynnus) from tank-based adults. Atlantic bluefin are highly prized for sushi, but their commercial importance has attracted overfishing and populations have plummeted by as much as 80% in some areas of the Atlantic Ocean.

Aurelio Ortega, who leads the research team at the Mazarrón centre, said: “We have about 2,000 or 3,000 tuna fish now. They weigh about 5g to 10g each, and they will take two to three years to reach a size of about 30kg to 40kg.”

Under the plans, the plant will supply fertilised eggs and juvenile tuna to the newly created commercial firms, which will either continue the breeding cycle on land, or use a combination of land-based tanks and sea cages.

NGOs said this will pitch companies into unknown territory, given how little is known about the bluefin species. Catalina López, a veterinarian and director of the Aquatic Animal Alliance at the Aquatic Life Institute, said: “Very little is known about [tuna] requirements for adequate welfare, as it is a highly migratory species with complex hunting behaviours and migration patterns.

“Without extensive scientific research on the welfare of tuna, it is irresponsible to farm them intensively, and could lead to many welfare issues [including] stress, frustration and, ultimately, poor immunity.”

Environmentalists have also noted that more tuna in captivity will mean diverting fish supplies that could be eaten by humans. Tuna, said López, are “a very unsustainable species to farm, since 90% of the species used for fish meal and fish oil are food grade, meaning it could feed humans directly”.

More tuna farming would also mean increased use of antibiotics, which intensive farmers typically employ to avoid diseases spreading, given the relatively poor immunity of farmed animals.

Nortuna and Next Tuna have signed contracts with the Mazarrón research centre, Ortega said. Both companies claim to have plentiful space, which would allow low densities of tuna in the tanks. However, according to Claudia Millán, a fish welfare specialist with the NGO Equalia, even spacious captivity may be incompatible with the needs of a migratory species that crosses oceans to find food and reproduce.

Inefficient feeding practices can also produce toxic wastewater, said Salazar. “Left untreated, [this wastewater] can deplete surrounding waters of oxygen, causing algal blooms [or] dead zones, and public health issues,” she said.

The new breeding successes mean the supply of fertilised eggs could expand outside the species’ natural reproductive season, normally limited to about 45 days in June and July. By controlling the natural spawning triggers of water temperature and lighting, the researchers said they hope the reproduction period could last for 60 or more days.

Other tools to induce breeding include implanting female fish with a synthetic version of a hormone that causes them to release eggs for fertilisation.

Paul Sindilariu, a co-founder of Next Tuna, said the company’s farming plan involved “a closed system that will bring in seawater, but there will be no outflow, so no environmental impacts”. He said the firm’s model, known as a recirculating aquaculture system, would use floating cages that are on, but not in, the sea, and this would allow the company to control the water quality and temperature conditions in a similar way to a laboratory.

“The system has to be tuna-friendly,” said Andrew Eckhardt, who manages site selection and financing for Next Tuna. “They have to be comfortable. Our stocking density will be very low, less than 10kg [of fish weight] per cubic metre.”

The company said it plans to establish its own breeding programme and sell young fish to “grow-out” farms for fattening and sale. It aims to bring its first stocks from the research centre tanks to the new site at the port of Castellón de la Plana next year, with the goal of selling about 45 tonnes of juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna by 2025, and 1,200 tonnes by 2028.

Nortuna also said it would keep stocking densities low. The company’s chairman, Anders Attramadal, said one of the attractions of the pilot site in Cape Verde was space. He said the company aims to get fertilised eggs from the Mazarrón research centre this year in order to produce saleable fish weighing between 12kg and 30kg by late 2024.

“We would buy eggs every week if we could. Right now, we can only get a six-to-eight-week supply,” he said.

Attramadal dismissed concerns about food supply, saying farmed tuna ate less than wild ones. “With formulated food we expect to be getting down to 3kg to 4kg of feed per kilo of [farmed fish] muscle mass,” compared with about 30kg per kilo of muscle for wild Atlantic bluefin, he said.

Eckhardt said that although the main food for the tuna would be fishmeal and fish oil, Next Tuna would be “working with our feed partners to add other ingredients, maybe plant proteins, algae, insects or krill”.

Nortuna said antibiotic usage would be minimal, only for brief periods if fish are sick, while Next Tuna said it would not use any antibiotics at all because they are incompatible with its recirculating aquaculture model.

Welfare experts said another problem with captive tuna was how to kill large, strong fish in a humane way. Recommended tuna-killing methods include shooting or stabbing heads with a metal spike, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health.

Next Tuna said it would sell young fish before slaughter, while Attramadal said Nortuna would “use the best humane approved methods that apply at the time”, adding that a “stressed, uncomfortable fish tastes less delicious”. According to a 2009 European Food Safety Authority report, when “Atlantic bluefin tuna struggle to escape before dying, they produce considerable amounts of lactic acid … resulting in severe degradation of the flesh, [making them] unsuitable for the sushi and sashimi market”.

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Ukraine has broken the first line of Russian defenses in some places and has had "some success" against the second, US official John Kirby said.

• Ukraine's counteroffensive in the south had made "notable progress," a top US official said.
• They have had "some success" against the second line of defense.
• Ukrainian forces are battling complex Russian defenses, including dense minefields and fortifications.

Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russia's invasion in the south of the country has made "notable progress" in the past 72 hours, according to a top US official.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Ukraine had broken through Russia's first line of defenses in several places in the advance in the Zaporizhzhia area, The Guardian reported.

"They have achieved some success against that second line of Russian defenses," Kirby added.

He said it was now up to Ukraine to capitalize on the progress.
Ukraine recaptured the village of Robotyne this week, and troops have been penetrating Russian lines between the village and Verbove in the Zaporizhzhia region, according to Western assessments, per The Guardian.

As Ukraine troops push forward, they have come up against complex Russian defenses, including dense minefields and fortifications, according to the Institute for the Study of War think tank.

The next layer of defense likely consists of "anti-tank ditches; dragon's teeth anti-tank obstacles; and additional minefields," the think tank said, with Russian fighting positions behind these obstacles.

Ukraine aims is to reach the Sea of Azov, where it aims to split Russian occupation forces in two.

Ukraine's long-anticipated counteroffensive kicked off to a slow start on June 4, with progress being slower than expected.

Recent reports, including one from the New York Times, have quoted Western officials criticizing the counteroffensive's strategy and pace.

Kirby said that criticism from anonymous officials was "not helpful" and said: "Any objective observer of this counteroffensive, you can't deny that they have made progress now."

Ukraine's deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar also said on Friday that Ukrainian forces were advancing in the Zaporizhzhia region and that the first line of defenses had been broken in some places, per The Guardian.

However, she said that Ukraine's troops were coming up against major defensive Russian fortifications.

"Our armed forces have to overcome a lot of obstacles in order to move forward," she said.

archive: https://archive.ph/esDlY