From the Smithsonian , something that makes me wonder. When the ice ages lowered sea levels and opened land bridges, and mammals of all sorts made passages, or when a study shows Arctic sea ice extent ~6000 years ago was much less than today, were those migrations then worthy of the label “invasive species”. It seems lame to me, Nature is just doing what Nature does, filling a void with life. It also seems to me that this story is nothing more than a headline generator, for buried within it is the admission that it is mostly a non-problem so far.
Melting Arctic opens new passages for invasive species
Scientists say early action could protect coasts
For the first time in roughly 2 million years, melting Arctic sea ice is connecting the north Pacific and north Atlantic oceans. The newly opened passages leave both coasts and Arctic waters vulnerable to a large wave of invasive species, biologists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center assert in a commentary published May 28 in Nature Climate Change.
Two new shipping routes have opened in the Arctic: the Northwest Passage through Canada, and the Northern Sea Route, a 3000-mile stretch along the coasts of Russia and Norway connecting the Barents and Bering seas. While new opportunities for tapping Arctic natural resources and interoceanic trade are high, commercial ships often inadvertently carry invasive species. Organisms from previous ports can cling to the undersides of their hulls or be pumped in the enormous tanks of ballast water inside their hulls. Now that climate change has given ships a new, shorter way to cross between oceans, the risks of new invasions are escalating.
“Trans-Arctic shipping is a game changer that will play out on a global scale,” said lead author Whitman Miller. “The economic draw of the Arctic is enormous. Whether it’s greater access to the region’s rich natural resource reserves or cheaper and faster inter-ocean commercial trade, Arctic shipping will reshape world markets. If unchecked, these activities will vastly alter the exchange of invasive species, especially across the Arctic, north Atlantic and north Pacific oceans.”
The first commercial voyage through the Northwest Passage—a carrier from British Columbia loaded with coal bound for Finland—occurred in September 2013. Meanwhile, traffic through the Northern Sea Route has been rising rapidly since 2009. The scientists project that at the current rate, it could continue to rise 20 percent every year for the next quarter century, and this does not take into account ships sailing to the Arctic itself.
For the past 100-plus years, shipping between oceans passed through the Panama or Suez Canals. Both contain warm, tropical water, likely to kill or severely weaken potential invaders from colder regions. In the Panama Canal, species on the hulls of ships also had to cope with a sharp change in salinity, from marine to completely fresh water. The Arctic passages contain only cold, marine water. As long as species are able to endure cold temperatures, their odds of surviving an Arctic voyage are good. That, combined with the shorter length of the voyages, means many more species are likely to remain alive throughout the journey.
Though the routes pose major risks to the north Atlantic and north Pacific coasts, the Arctic is also becoming an attractive destination. Tourism is growing, and it contains vast stores of natural resources. The Arctic holds an estimated 13 percent of the world’s untapped oil and 30 percent of its natural gas. Greenland’s supply of rare earth metals is estimated to be able to fill 20 to 25 percent of global demand for the near future. Until now the Arctic has been largely isolated from intensive shipping, shoreline development and human-induced invasions, but the scientists said that is likely to change drastically in the decades to come.
“The good news is that the Arctic ecosystem is still relatively intact and has had low exposure to invasions until now,” said coauthor Greg Ruiz. “This novel corridor is only just opening. Now is the time to advance effective management options that prevent a boom in invasions and minimize their ecological, economic and health impacts.”
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Tim Folkerts says:
May 28, 2014 at 11:19 am
Almost all creatures, including human creatures, carry other species around with them. These start with the bacterial, and end up with “hitch-hikers” of all kinds getting a free lift for themselves or their seeds.
Since almost all creatures carry around other creatures and/or their eggs, seeds, larvae, and since there are many special adaptations to allow such hitch-hiking, your claim is that when human creatures carry other species around with them it is not “what Nature does” … sorry, but that makes no sense. Nature does that constantly.
So you can certainly argue that humans should be very careful about what we carry around with us and I will agree with you all day long. And it’s not just accidental damage. We’ve caused huge environmental problems through casual, unthinking, yet deliberate and planned introduction of species into new areas. Think rabbits in Australia. The argument that we should take care who goes hitch-hiking with us is one I agree with.
But you can’t argue that hitch-hiking species are not what Nature does. Nature does it very well. In fact, Nature has evolved hugely complex systems like e.g. black plague, which took up hitch-hiking on fleas specifically so that it could become an “introduced species” where there were new potential hosts. Said fleas, in turn, take up hitch-hiking on rats … and for exactly the same reason, so that they can become an “introduced species” where there are new hosts. But after while the fleas stop hitch-hiking on the rats and take up hitch-hiking on some poor man, who then takes the fleas on board ship with him to some new land …
… and you blame man for this, saying when Nature does it it’s fine, if it’s just rats and fleas its fine, but when the flea gets on a man and the man gets on a ship, somehow that’s not just Nature at its finest, that’s Homo Misanthropus’s fault? I agree we need to take care, but to say man is somehow separate from nature doesn’t work at all.
w.
Paul Coppin says:
May 28, 2014 at 12:06 pm
IMO “invasive” has a valid application, in cases of introduced species which would not naturally be able to invade new habitat, without human transportation. Invasion that occurs naturally, as a result, say, of the opening of new connections between continents, can be invasive, but sometimes bring their predator & parasite species with them, mitigating the effect.
As I’ve commented here before, I’d like to extirpate starlings in North America, & I’m sure many in the SE US feel the same way about kudzu, to name but two of many unwanted, invasive weed species.
SMC says:
May 28, 2014 at 11:06 am
Well, no one has, so I will.
The Northwest Passage is a sea route that goes through the Arctic Ocean over the top of North America.
The Northern Sea Route is the corresponding route through the Arctic Ocean over the top of Europe/Asia.
I was unaware that there had been a commercial use of the NW Passage, although anything’s possible. But unless fuel costs skyrocket, it’s a very close balance between cost and danger. The Arctic Ocean doesn’t screw around. You can find yourself trapped in ice with very little notice. That means there has to be an icebreaker on standby, or you’re taking a huge risk.
Neither the NW Passage nor the North Sea Route will ever get much use at all, compared to the alternatives. Think about the alternative routes, which are the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal. Boats are lined up there, stem to stern, year-round. Compare that to one or even a dozen trips a year, one per month … meaninglessly small.
However, yes … we should sterilize ballast water. All kinds of uglies lurk there. Toss an ozonator down in the bilges and pump ozone through the water, it would sterilize it all quite quickly.
But the barnacles on the outsides of the hulls? Forget it. They or their nauplii hitch-hike, inter alia, on driftwood, seaweed, birds, and whales, so they are pretty ubiquitous in the open ocean, of which the Arctic Ocean is a part.
w.
In spite of intense efforts to prevent it, quagga mussels are now in Lake Powell. All it takes is one boat. And that’s all it takes in the Arctic: one sub, one icebreaker, one tour ship relocated through the Panama Canal. Yep, it’s just propaganda…endless propaganda. –AGF
There are so many pests, mildews, rusts, pathogens, smut, scab, and black spot on this planet which have been brought under control by some very simple and safe chemical means. Banning fungicides for organic farmers, and allowing these products to be shipped every where – that is spreading invasive species.
Banning fungicide is the act of opening Pandora’s box all over again. This nit picking at ships (which happen to be carrying fossil fuels) with the right hand, while banning fungicides with the left hand, gives the lie. As usual, progressive scientists are looking you straight in the eye and lying like hell.
WTF does that mean?
The northwest passage was navigated by Amundsen in 1906. Was that two million years ago?
Who was piloting the ships roughly 2 million years ago, which was evidently the last time that commercial shipping lanes were open across the arctic?
I guess they’re just following the rule to always lead with a scary statement, even if you have to make up something that is irretrievably stupid to do it.
agfosterjr says:
May 28, 2014 at 12:32 pm
Lots of hitch-hiking temperate & tropical species, should there be any on or in an Arctic freighter, are not going to survive high latitude conditions.
One of the silliest papers ever published. Virtually all the species that can survive year round in the true Arctic are circumpolar. Examples include birds (Larus gull, formerly thought to be one of 4 ring species), land mammals (polar bears, arctic fox), marine mammals (ring seals, bowhead whales), fishes (Arctic cod, arctic char), marine invertebrates (the various Arctic krill), and plants (Arctic willow). To be an invasive species transported by ship (hull attached or in ballast water) means some marine species from somewhere outside the Arctic with otherwise similar ecological ocean water conditions.
That can only mean from Antarctica. The only realistic possibility (presuming penguins are not) are the several distinct species of circumpolar Antarctic krill. There are just two problems. One, those species would not survive the warming of ballast water whilst necessarily crossing the equator along the way. Two, there is no commercial shipping from pole to pole.
The paper defines a grass eating snake, a theoretical combination of provably extant possibilities that in reality cannot co-exist. There are animals that crawl, like snakes. There are animals that eat grass, like cows. Nowhere in the world is there a grass eating snake; they are all carnivorous. Worse, the paper calls for additional funding to guard against this phantasmagoria. The authors are also undoubtedly afraid of the bogeymen that lurk under their beds at night, but only when they are asleep.
The crocodiles will soon be back in the Arctic Ocean for the first time in 75 million years.
Little doubt about that.
Tim Folkerts:
““Shipping” is not “nature doing what Nature does”. “Hulls of ships” are not “Earth just being Earth”. If, for example, whales started swimming along the north coast of Canada, that would be “Nature doing what Nature does.””
Why the hell not? What aspects of humans and human societies are not natural? And if they are not natural, what are they? Supernatural?
What difference does it make whether an organism winds up in a new location by floating on a piece of driftwood or hitching a ride on a cargo ship?
Submarines – which have both hulls and ballast tanks – have been plying the arctic for more than fifty years. USS Seadragon …
Return of the invasive species. Crocodile fossils in Svalbard, hippo bones in the Thames valley, elephants and rhinos in continental Europe…
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/hippos-thames-dung-beetle-fossils-reveal-elephants-rhinoceroses-roamed-prehistoric-europe-1438715
AGF, both quagga and zebra mussels are a special case. They originate in the Dneiper river basin, and are estuarine. (They can tolerate extremes of salinity from freshwater to seawater, as well as large seasonal water temperature variation.) They both hitchhiked in ballast water from the Black Sea across the Atlantic into the St. Laurence and the Great Lakes. Undoubtedly some idiot did not wash their boat, or worse moved bait, from Lake Michigan to Lake Powell. Or, worst but most probable planted them deliberately to improve fishing (they are now a favorite food of yellow perch in the Great Lakes). Kudzu, garlic mustard, multiflora rose, melaleucha, and burmese pythons are all serious invasive species problems in regions of the US. And every one was originally deliberately introduced by man, not as a hitchhiking accident.
Find a possible case surviving the Arctic marine environment that would not come from the Antarctic marine environment before becoming angst filled.
Let’s not forget the nuclear submarines that have been performing circumpolar navigation for half a century now.
milodonharlani says:
May 28, 2014 at 12:39 pm
agfosterjr says:
May 28, 2014 at 12:32 pm
Lots of hitch-hiking temperate & tropical species, should there be any on or in an Arctic freighter, are not going to survive high latitude conditions.
==========================================================================
I don’t know much about bilge water temperature, but my point was, commercial freight is only repeating what nuclear subs have have been doing for decades. Can any temperate species survive an Arctic crossing that can’t survive Panama? Inside or out? Maybe, but if so, it’s only a matter of time that they will. Mediterranean and Red Sea species have been mingling for decades–that’s all or nothing. This Arctic nonsense is a matter of degree. –AGF
I found a fairly exhaustive list of invasive, foreign, parasytic species which attack the natives right here:
BINGO: ‘Business-friendly international NGO’ or ‘Big international NGO’
TANGO: ‘Technical assistance NGO’
TSO: ‘Third-sector organization’
GONGO: ‘Government-operated NGOs’ (set up by governments to look like NGOs in order to qualify for outside aid or promote the interests of government)
DONGO: ‘Donor organized NGO’
INGO: ‘International NGO’
QUANGO….
Among those you mentioned, like mustard & attendant insects, here in Oregon we’re afflicted with Scotch broom (bad for hay fever sufferers & the timber industry), Scotch thistle, tumbleweed, kochia (bad for agriculture), starlings & nutria, among many others.
agfosterjr says:
May 28, 2014 at 12:58 pm
Good point about nuclear subs. For that matter, the Arctic seaways were often open & used in the 1920s to ’40s. Before that, the Arctic, North Pacific & North Atlantic Oceans were visited by whalers, although not so much along the supposedly threatened seaways.
The opening statement about “opened land bridges” and such, and then the label “invasive species” is correctly labeled lame.
Two terms come to mind, colonizer species and refugium (refugia). A plant, such as Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium) is said to be a robust colonizer on newly exposed land.
http://www.florafinder.com/Species/Chamerion_angustifolium.php
There is NOT a shortage of studies using these terms rather than invasive prior to CAGW.
Rud Istvan says:
May 28, 2014 at 12:54 pm
================================
Actually the mussels have been on downstream lakes for some time. They could have been transported from Lake Meade, or from a few small infested lakes in Utah. The only reservoir left on the Colorado River System is Flaming Gorge (on the Green River). It’s only a matter of time. If we outlawed speed boats and sail boats, canoes and kayaks would do the trick. This is serious trouble for hydroelectric power.
P.S. I intended no sarcasm. Willis is absolutely correct. –AGF
Willis, you make some good points, but I disagree with your conclusion “but to say man is somehow separate from nature doesn’t work at all.”
It does work in many ways. Humans, as a species, change the earth in ways that no other species can. To argue that we are “just another species” ignores too many facts. Our dominance is illustrated by a great image from XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1338/ . Heck, we tend to intentionally separate ourselves from ‘nature’, walling it out and damming it up and chopping it down and kiiling it off when it gets too close.
Sure, fleas have hitchhiked on rats for millions of years, but no rat ever decided to carry that flea 2000 km in one month (let alone one day). Migrating birds can and do carry parasites and seeds long distances relatively rapidly, but in more or less the same paths year after year.
“Heck, we tend to intentionally separate ourselves from ‘nature’, walling it out and damming it up and chopping it down and kiiling it off when it gets too close.”
Is he posting in his birthday suit on a log in a forest by rubbing two sticks together?
You can pooh-pooh it all you like, but if the Nomura jellyfish gets into the Atlantic Ocean it’s toast. Say goodbye to seafood.
a large wave of invasive species.
They imagine all these insects, reptiles and mammals waiting on the beaches for the ice to melt. Shields in hands, spears at the ready, SUV filled with deisel.
tjf, an interesting reference to xkcd. They are the folks who do not consider rodents land mammals.