Northeast Region

• Microscopic shells shed by single-celled creatures lie deep within the Long Island Sound's sediment. Researchers believe they have a lot to tell us about climate change.
• Connecticut Sea Grant-funded paleo-oceanographer Ellen Thomas calls these shells, or forams, "the canary in the coal mine."
• Thomas studies the chemistry of the shells to reveal the source of the carbon, and the water's salinity, oxygen content and temperature when the forams lived.
• Through forams, Thomas can see natural climate variations such as a warming period in the Middle Ages and the Little Ice Age that followed it.
• She can also see the effect of global warming in the past 150 years—coinciding with a decrease in salinity and a decline in oxygen in the Long Island Sound—all tied to human activity.
• Thomas' work is helping scientists understand how ocean life responded to climate changes of the past, and perhaps how it will respond to the climate change ahead.

• More than 60 fishermen from Maine and Boston's South Shore attended a recent "Safety at Sea" session, sponsored by MIT Sea Grant and the Massachusetts Fishermen's Partnership.
• Fishermen were taught five main safety topics:  proper firefighting techniques; medical emergencies; situations where a boat was taking on water; survival suits and life rafts; and, how to fire off flares, trip EPIRBs (emergency position indicating radiobeacons) and properly issue a mayday call.
• "It's important for the fishermen to get the training, so they can come home safely," said Coast Guard Commanding Officer Gene Gibson, who oversees the Gloucester station. "Since we started the annual training, we've seen a break in the amount of calls and rescues."
  

• WHOI physical oceanographer Glen Gawarkiewicz is studying the formation of cold, dense water off Cape Cod, using and testing a new tool—the REMUS autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).
• "Outer Cape Cod is tremendously important," said Gawarkiewicz, "because it is a choke point in the larger coastal circulation."
• How the water masses form, and where they go, can affect the fish populations, where whales feed, and how harmful algal blooms move down the coast, since the current links the Arctic with Cape Cod.
• This is the first time this important current system has been thoroughly studied in the winter, and for good reason: "This study would have been incredibly expensive if we had done it through traditional [ship-based] methods," Gawarkiewicz said. "Using the new REMUS is a whole new way to measure the coastal ocean and study processes, at lower cost."
• The development of the new REMUS was funded through the Office of Naval Research. Woods Hole Sea Grant and the WHOI Coastal Ocean Institute provided funding for the Outer Cape Cod Winter Cooling study, which spanned two winters.

• Recreational, commercial, and industrial users of the coast are competing for access, placing pressure on America’s shorelines as a tide of demographic and economic change sweeps through coastal towns, harbors and communities.
• A new Maine Sea Grant report, "Access to the Waterfront: Issues and Solutions Across the Nation," contains the results of a survey of over 140 coastal managers and extension agents conducted by Maine Sea Grant, Hawaii Sea Grant, the National Sea Grant network and Coastal Zone Management programs.
• The survey found that access to and from the ocean is a challenge in many communities. Respondents to the survey cited multiple reasons for these changes, including increasing population and development, rising coastal property values, declines in fishing and other industries and shifting land ownership patterns.
• One of the goals of the survey and report was not only to cover the scope of the issue nationwide, but also to highlight the various solutions that communities are developing throughout the country.
• "It is evident that these issues are of critical importance to people all over the country, and we hope this project helps communities, businesses, and individuals to respond to these challenges more effectively," says Maine Sea Grant Director Paul Anderson, who presented the survey results May 9 in Norfolk, Va., at Working Waterways and Waterfronts 2007, a symposium hosted by Virginia Sea Grant.
• The full report is available at http://www.seagrant.umaine.edu/index.htm
  

• Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced a donation of $3,000 to the New Hampshire Sea Grant Extension program this spring.
• The donation was presented at a ceremony at the company's Portsmouth store in April.
• New Hampshire Sea Grant Extension representative Mark Wiley accepted the check.
• The donation is one in a series of recent Wal-Mart donations to local nonprofit organizations.

• Scientists are suggesting a common cause for two seemingly unrelated events: the feminization of fish in Jamaica Bay, where the former 50-50 male-to-female ratio has all but disappeared, and enlarged breasts in young boys.
• The common factor is endocrine disruptors (found in detergents, cosmetics and other products) that scientists now believe play havoc with normal hormone activity.
• Sea Grant researcher Anne McElroy's data shows gender change in Jamaica Bay's flounder due to chemical residues (the endocrine disruptors) that find their way into Jamaica Bay where the fish live.
• These residues mimic the female hormone estrogen, which may explain the three cases of enlarged breasts in young boys.
• The three cases prompted the National Institutes of Health to advise doctors to suspect the use of cosmetics that act as endocrine disruptors.

• As tuna ranching expands rapidly along Mexico's Baja California peninsula on the Pacific coast, a team of researchers from the United States and Mexico is undertaking a study of the industry. 
• Researchers Charles Yarish, a professor at the University of Connecticut, and Barry Costa-Pierce, director of Rhode Island Sea Grant and a professor of fisheries and aquaculture at the University of Rhode Island, are working with José Zertuche, of the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Ensenada, Mexico, and associates, to assess tuna and sardine stocks along the coasts of southern California, northwest Baja and the Gulf of California.
• They are examining aquaculture practices and networks, and will evaluate governance and social issues associated with "capture-based" tuna ranching.  They hope to determine best practices and make recommendations regarding the methods needed to develop successful captive reproduction, feeds, and non-polluting systems for tuna farming.
• Tuna aquaculture has not caught on in the U.S. because of regulatory restraints and conflicting uses of the coast. 
• The study is funded by the Packard Foundation.