(February 12, 2013)  Earlier this year researchers at USC have developed a new lithium-ion battery design that uses porous silicon nanoparticles in place of the traditional graphite anodes to provide superior performance.

The new batteries, which could be used in anything from cell phones to hybrid cars, hold three times as much energy as comparable graphite-based designs and recharge within 10 minutes. The design, currently under a provisional patent, could be commercially available within two to three years.

“It’s an exciting research. It opens the door for the design of the next generation lithium-ion batteries,” said Chongwu Zhou, professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, who led the team that developed the battery. Zhou worked with USC graduate students Mingyuan Ge, Jipeng Rong, Xin Fang and Anyi Zhang, as well as Yunhao Lu of Zhejiang University in China. Their research was published in Nano Research in January.

Researchers have long attempted to use silicon, which is cheap and has a high potential capacity, in battery anodes. (Anodes are where current flows into a battery, while cathodes are where current flows out.) The problem has been that previous silicon anode designs, which were basically tiny plates of the material, broke down from repeated swelling and shrinking during charging/discharging cycles and quickly became useless.

Last year, Zhou’s team experimented with porous silicon nanowires that are less than 100 nanometers in diameter and just a few microns long. The tiny pores on the nanowires allowed the silicon to expand and contract without breaking while simultaneously increasing the surface area — which in turn allows lithium ions to diffuse in and out of the battery more quickly, improving performance.

Though the batteries functioned well, the nanowires are difficult to manufacture en masse. To solve the problem, Zhou’s team took commercially available nanoparticles — tiny silicon spheres — and etched them with the same pores as the nanowires. The particles function similarly and can be made in any quantity desired.

Though the silicon nanoparticle batteries currently last for just 200 recharge cycles (compared to an average of 500 for graphite-based designs), the team’s older silicon nanowire-based design lasted for up to 2,000 cycles, which was reported in Nano Lett last April. Further development of the nanoparticle design should boost the battery’s lifespan, Zhou said.

“The easy method we use may generate real impact on battery applications in the near future,” Zhou said.

Future research by the group will focus finding a new cathode material with a high capacity that will pair well with the porous silicon nanowires and/or porous silicon nanoparticles to create a completely redesigned battery.

(June 14, 2012) Remember all the whoopla about cold fusion in the late 1980s? It promised to provide a cheap, safe and an infinitely abundant form of energy with relatively no dangerous byproducts.

Mainstream science quickly disregarded the concept because the original results could not be replicated consistently and reliably, once again proving the old adage, “If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.”

But armed with the knowledge that there are tremendous amounts of potential energy locked into every atom in the known universe, many scientists never stopped believing that if there is a Holy Grail for energy, it lies in some form of nuclear fusion.

One such group of scientists and engineers at the California-based, Global Energy Corporation(GEC) is experimenting with a pilot reactor named GeNiE that produces energy without the drawbacks of conventional nuclear reactors.  This new technology with a twist is called Lattice Assisted Nuclear Energy, which fundamentally is a form of cold fusion.

GEC claims that their pilot reactor doesn’t require enriched uranium and by fissioning existing hazardous waste, it doesn’t produce hazardous byproducts.   Further, the technology uses (fertile) Uranium 238 and not the (fissile) Uranium 235 of conventional nuclear technology. Uranium 238 is plentiful in nature and in non-radioactive nuclear waste. The use of Unranium 238 also nullifies the weaponization issue.

In addition the company states that fusion and fast fission nuclear reactions do not involve any chain reaction, and as a consequence can be stopped in a straightforward manner without danger of runaway core meltdown.

Presently the company is planning its designs around a modular concept with units possibly as small as 25 MW, that can be “stacked” as demand increases.  A conventional nuclear reactor is about 1,000 MW.

This unconventional design has attracted some unconventional clients, like Saipan (population 48,000), the largest island of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, located in the western Pacific.

Last month the Saipan Tribune reported the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation had recommended to Saipan Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, that CUC sign a commitment letter to allow GEC “to shop for financing for a 50-megawatt plant” estimated at $250 million.

Saipan is also in the process of developing a 10-megawatt photovoltaic solar plant project with two companies, Japan-based Saipan Solar System and U.S.-based American Capital Energy Company.

Global Energy Corporation and their collaborators are in the process of designing and building a prototype GeNiE Reactor for commercial applications. According to their website, “while there are numerous product possibilities, GEC is currently focusing on the GeNiE Hybrid Fusion, Fast-Fission Reactor that will use either natural uranium(238) or existing hazardous waste as fuel.”

Description of Theory:  Energy Revolution? with Lewis Larsen President of Lattice Energy.

More reading:

Some VERY technical information

Cold Fusion

(December 3, 2012)  In Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, climate change scenarios seemed to be about as bad as one could imagine.  But shortly after its publication, science tempered Gore’s worst case scenario to less alarming levels.

Unfortunately, over the years since that film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, dozens of revisions have been made with consistent scientific consensus of the “real picture”, which depicts a world not far off from that original manuscript.

Published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, and using the latest satellite technology to measure sea level rise recent studies have found that sea levels have been rising by 3.2mm per year for the last 30 years. That’s 50% greater than previous studies that determined the annual rise at about 2mm.

If the trend continues then sea levels could be rising by 9mm per year within a century and the total rise by century’s end could be 1.2m or 3.5 feet.

These findings were revealed while nearly 200 countries gather in Doha, Qatar for the latest UN meeting on climate change.

Meanwhile, a report from the US National Research Council, commissioned by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence agencies, says the consequences of climate change–rising sea levels, severe flooding, droughts, fires, and insect infestations–pose threats greater than those from terrorism ranging from massive food shortages to a rise in armed conflicts.

Last month two major organizations released their most recent findings on climate change with both predicting a future filled with gloom and doom if we stick to our current course and fail to take more aggressive measures. A World Bank report imagines a world 4 degrees warmer (by 2100), which most scientist agree would change predictions in rising sea levels, making a 3.5 foot rise seem rather mild.

Last week The Atlantic published an article entitled, 5 Charts About Climate Change That Should Have You Very, Very Worried.  

These shots published in the World Bank report show an unusually large ice melt over a four-day period, when an estimated 97% of Greenland’s surface ice sheet had thawed by the middle of July 2012.

This past summer, the US experienced its worst drought in more than a half a century–severely reducing farm yields, livestock production, and raising food prices globally. The World Bank shared this snapshot of drought conditions covering some 63% of the contiguous US on Aug. 28, 2012.

David Roberts – Climate Change is Simple

(November 16, 2012)  According to researchers at Southern Cross University, Australia’s biggest coal seam gas field, the Queensland’s Tara gas field, has been leaking large amounts of methane.

The researchers said methane, carbon dioxide and other gases appear to be leaking through the soil and bubbling up through rivers, according to a 11/15 article by United Press International.

The Tara gas field produces the equivalent of 6.86 billion barrels of oil, says the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics, or the eerily exact amount of oil consumed in the United States in 2011.

Methane gas is of particular concern to climate scientists as it has four times the negative affect on global warming as that of carbon dioxide.  In addition, there are incalculable amounts of methane trapped in permafrost layers of the more northern latitudes like Siberia.  Scientist have calculated that this large carbon pool represents more carbon than currently exists in all living things and twice as much carbon as exists in earth’s atmosphere.

Climate change models today all reveal a tipping point of no return while most scientist agree that we will be way past that point once a significant amount of permafrost begins to thaw.

“‘The concentrations here (Tara) are higher than any measured in gas fields anywhere else that I can think of, including in Russia,” Damien Maher, a biochemist who helped conduct the tests, was quoted as saying in the UPI article. ”The extent of these enriched concentrations is significant.”

Under Australia’s carbon tax plan, which went into effect in July, businesses that emit 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide or the equivalent in other greenhouse gases must pay $24 per ton.

The Tara Gas Field is owned by Britain’s BG Group.

Is Climate Change Happening faster Than Predicted

The following article was written by  Lauren Morello and ClimateWire and published earlier this month in Scientific American.

Climate change is likely to be worse than many computer models have projected, according to a new analysis.

The work, published yesterday in Science, finds evidence that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than some earlier studies had suggested.

If the new results are correct, that means warming will come on faster, and be more intense, than many current predictions. Moreover, the impacts of that warming, including sea level rise, drought, floods and other extreme weather, could hit earlier and harder than many models project, said study co-author John Fasullo, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“Temperatures are likely to go up to the high side of current projections, as is [atmospheric]  water vapor,” he said. “To the extent those environmental impacts influence events like [Superstorm] Sandy, expect the impacts to be on the high side.”

For scientists like Fasullo and co-author Kevin Trenberth, head of NCAR’s climate analysis section, determining the climate’s precise sensitivity to the CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere has been an unusually tough task.

The full article by Scientific American

Blue Men For a Blue Planet

(October 22, 2012) Reality has little to do with American politics today. Public perception is the only reality that counts and when that perception is in conflict with our bipolar political system, politicians ignore it or special interest changes it.

The environment is an example of the former and gun control, the latter.

Where guns are concerned, a 2004 CBS/New York Times poll revealed overwhelming support for stricter gun control laws by more than a two to one margin. In a representative government like the United States, such support should result in two-thirds of all members of congress to be ‘up in arms’, to change existing laws. Alas, that won’t happen because of the ever-powerful and well-funded National Rifle Association (NRA).

In 2004 the NRA opposed renewal of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which banned many features of certain semiautomatic rifles and certain types of removable magazines – gun control advocates wanted to make the ban permanent and expand it. The NRA succeeded, and the ban expired at midnight on September 13, 2004.

In 2012 alone, the NRA spent nearly $15-M in direct contributions, lobbying and outside spending, which largely includes ad campaigns for or against targeted politicians.

Ignoring the Environment in 2012

Where the environment is concerned, the polls also show a similar disconnect between the public and their representatives.

In August a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation Poll found that 74% thought that the federal government should regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming?

Sixty percent said our natural environment has been degraded over the past ten years and 55% said things will get worse over the next ten years.

When asked if human activity had a mostly positive or mostly negative effect on the natural environment, about two-thirds responded negative.

With most all issues, it is very clear what the public believes and also what they want out of their congress, state governments and the President.  What happens beyond that seems to be out of the control of your average American.

In my opinion there is one paramount issue, where all Americans need to concentrate their collective efforts to encourage a positive change.  No, it’s not gun control or the environment… not jobs or the economy, but rather our unique political system, gone awry.

Lobbying needs to stop. Lobbyist for lobbying would argue that this is how politicians are informed and kept abreast of issues that affect their constituents.  My argument is that if a politician doesn’t know how to turn on the TV and watch the news… he or she should step aside and make room for someone who can.

But most important, our political leaders need to get real. Thanks to the Supreme Court ‘Citizens United’ decision, corporations now have the same free speech rights as human beings.  According to all polls (that I’ve read), the vast majority of all Americans think this is a joke!  Our forefathers would’ve busted a gut over this one.

The only way “The American Dream” has any chance of surviving into the future is to first repeal Citizens United.  After that, America will once again be a nation of individuals.

Then it’s up to you…

This You Tube video pokes fun at a subject that is no joke!

After writing the above post I came across the following (somewhat related) article from Scientific American. Similarly with my post, the S.A. article deals with the manipulation of public perception. A must read:

Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy

It is hard to know exactly when it became acceptable for U.S. politicians to be antiscience. For some two centuries science was a preeminent force in American politics, and scientific innovation has been the leading driver of U.S. economic growth since World War II. Kids in the 1960s gathered in school cafeterias to watch moon launches and landings on televisions wheeled in on carts. Breakthroughs in the 1970s and 1980s sparked the computer revolution and a new information economy. Advances in biology, based on evolutionary theory, created the biotech industry. New research in genetics is poised to transform the understanding of disease and the practice of medicine, agriculture and other fields.

The Founding Fathers were science enthusiasts … READ MORE

(October 15, 2012)  In just 27 years – a mere moment on our planet’s life-clock, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral cover; an area equal to the size of Germany. Three separate culprits have been given credit for the decline, while all three are said to be related to climate change and global warming.

This was revealed in a study from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), published earlier this month in the US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The following article was published at the same time in Australian Geographic.  The following are excerpts.

THE GREAT BARRIER REEF is one of the planet’s most famous natural wonders, stretching across 348,000sq.km and comprised of more than 2900 separate reefs. But disturbing new research reveals it has lost half its coral cover since 1985.

“Coral cover on the GBR is consistently declining, and without intervention, it will likely fall to 5 to 10 per cent within the next 10 years,” say the authors of the report. “Without intervention, the GBR may lose the biodiversity and ecological integrity for which it was listed as a World Heritage Area.”

The study is based on data collected by a reef monitoring program that began in 1985 and looked at 214 reefs in 2,258 separate surveys. It showed a 50.7 per cent decline in reef cover between 1985 and 2012.

The authors of the report cite three major causes for the decline: tropical cyclones caused 48 per cent of the loss, coral predation from crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) led to another 42 per cent, and coral bleaching was responsible for the final 10 per cent.

“The shocking thing about the research is that this downward turn in coral cover has occurred in the world’s most sophisticated marine management park,” says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who heads up the Coral Reef Ecosystems Lab at the University of Queensland. “We’re not talking about reefs that have been under extreme environmental stresses, such as those in Southeast Asia; it’s happening in this well-managed marine park and it’s happening very rapidly.”

All three of the drivers causing the coral decline are related to climate, says Ove, who was not involved in the study. Bleaching is caused by extreme heat events and rising sea temperatures, and there’s growing evidence to suggest warmer seas are leading to more intense tropical storms and more intense flooding of the sort we saw two years ago.

Ove says that a global reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is the long-term key to preventing bleaching and reducing the intensity and volume of storm systems. “What we do in the coming decade will ultimately determine the future of ecosystems like this one,” he adds.

Read more: Australian Geographic

(October 11, 2012)  One of the world’s foremost climate scientists has warned that vulnerable island states may need to consider evacuating their populations within a decade due to a much faster than anticipated melting of the world’s ice sheets.

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said the latest evidence shows that models have underestimated the speed at which the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets will start to shrink.

Mann, who was part of the IPCC team awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2007, said it had been expected that island nations would have several decades to adapt to rising sea levels, but that evacuation may now be their only option.

His warning comes just weeks after the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado disclosed that sea ice in the Arctic shrank a dramatic 18% this year on the previous record set in 2007 to a record low of 3.41m sq km.

“The models have typically predicted that will not happen for decades but the measurements that are coming in tell us it is already happening so once again we are decades ahead of schedule.

“Island nations that have considered the possibility of evacuation at some point, like Tuvalu, may have to be contending those sort of decisions within the matter of a decade or so.”

Mann says the Pacific islands, which are only 4.6 meters above sea level at their highest point, are facing the imminent prospect of flooding, with salt water intrusion destroying fresh water supplies and increased erosion.

Suggesting evacuations would accelerate a change in public consciousness around the issue of climate change, he said: “Thousands of years of culture is at risk of disappearing as the populations of vulnerable island states have no place to go.

The above is an excerpt from a October 4th story in The Guardian (UK). Read the FULL STORY.

Below is a 12 minute You Tube clip of Bill McGibbin being interviewed by Bill Maher and a panel of two conservative guest, who question the accuracy or even reality of global warming and climate change. Both Bills do well to hold their own, based on irrefutable fact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dmgQW5owI 

A must see.

(October 1, 2012) Science is defined as a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths. By definition, science cannot be bias, but occasionally there is room for the interpretation of facts. That doesn’t mean, however, one can change or ignore these truths to suite one’s belief. That’s called many things including pseudo-science, propaganda and misinformation.

In addition, there was a time in the history of U.S. media where print and television news was also based on a body of facts or truths. Things have changes in the 21^st Century.

“Scientific American” is one of the oldest and most reputable American magazines, reporting on a wide variety of scientific news and discoveries. Last week they reported on how some news organizations, namely Fox News, ignore the science.

Here is an excerpt and a link to the original article:

For anyone with an interest in journalism, it’s no surprise that Fox News Channel and the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal lean well to the right. Editorially, these two jewels of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. have a long history of denying human-induced global warming, in keeping with certain ideological interests.

New data support the anecdotes and conventional wisdom. At a midday panel on September 21 in New York City’s Science, Industry and Business Library, the Union of Concerned Scientists released results of an analysis quantifying the media outlets’ distortions of climate science.

In the six months from February to July 2012, the UCS searched for the terms “climate change” and “global warming” during primetime Fox News Channel programs, which consist of political commentary shows such as The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity.

The UCS found that, in 37 of 40 instances, Fox News programs misled viewers about climate science—mainly, by broadly dismissing it. As an example, the UCS quotes an on-air statement from April 11, 2012: “I thought we were getting warmer. But in the ‘70s, it was, look out, we’re all going to freeze.” (The report didn’t reveal the name of the actual source.) Fox News hosts and guests also mocked and disparaged statements from scientists and drowned out genuine scientific assertions with cherry-picked data and false claims.

The You Tube (above) video clip was produce by Media Matters for America, a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

(September 18, 2012) During the mid to late 20^th Century millions of American families sat down every evening to get their news from the likes of Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw. Back then the news was the simple reporting of events, without conjecture, omission or opinion. The latter came later in the program under the clearly specified heading of “editorial.”

Today we have “hybrid” news programs such as Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left: Both guilty of accentuation facts and stories that promote their political views while under-reporting events that may be harmful to their cause.

The News Hours, a PBS production, has always been a breath of fresh air in today’s confused media circus, strictly adhering to the journalism standards of Cronkite, et al.

PBS is funded by taxpayer dollars and contributions from “Viewers Like You” and large corporate and non-profit organizations.

But recently, it appears that someone got to them. The following is a story from MediaMatters.org,

Last night, PBS NewsHour turned to meteorologist and climate change contrarian Anthony Watts to “counterbalance” the mainstream scientific opinions presented by the program. This false balance is a disservice to PBS’ viewers, made worse by the program’s failure to explain Watts’ connection to theHeartland Institute, an organization that receives funding from some corporations with a financial interest in confusing the public on climate science.

While PBS mentioned that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that manmade global warming is occurring, it did not reflect this consensus by giving significant airtime to Watts’ contrarian views. The segment presented Watts as the counterbalance to scientists that believe in manmade global warming — every time a statement that reflects the scientific consensus was aired, in came Watts to cast doubt in viewers’ minds. As 66 percent of Americans incorrectly think that “there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening,” news organizations need to be careful not to contribute to this confusion.

The segment focused on the findings of physicist Richard Muller, who was previously skeptical of climate science, and decided to embark on a study to re-examine the data. Muller’s work was partially funded by the Koch Brothers, who fund climate contrarian groups like the Heartland Institute, and he collaborated with Watts to address his concerns about the reliability of the temperature record. Watts stated at the time, “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” But after Muller reconfirmed the surface temperature record that has been constructed by several scientific groups and is consistent with satellite temperature records, Watts continued to dispute it. Yet in the full interview with Watts that PBSposted online, reporter Spencer Michels did not challenge Watts once, instead asking questions like, “What’s the thing that bothers you the most about people who say there’s lots of global warming?”

In the online report, Michels revealed that he got in contact with Watts through the Heartland Institute — which he failed to mention on-air. Segments like this one on PBS are the very goal of groups like the Heartland Institute, as the New York Times‘ Andrew Revkin explained:

“The norm of journalistic balance has been exploited by opponents of emissions curbs. Starting in the late 1990s, big companies whose profits were tied to fossil fuels recognized they could use this journalistic practice to amplify the inherent uncertainties in climate projections and thus potentially delay cuts in emissions from burning those fuels. “

Full Story from Media Matters

by Mark Kneubuhl -

(August 6, 2012)  There’s a lot of ocean that surrounds Rose Atoll. The closest “major” port is Pago Pago about 140 miles to the west. Auckland harbor is about 1500 miles southwest and Pearl Harbor, about 2500 miles northeast. Rose Atoll is a rather remote outlier in a sparsely populated part of the planet called Oceania.

Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge was created in 1973 when the American Samoa Legislature approved an agreement between the Governor and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Additionally, President Bush created Rose Atoll Marine National Monument in 2009, which extends 50 nautical miles from Rose Atoll. One has to be within five miles (that’s on a clear day), to spot the atoll’s highest point, no taller than a chimney on a single-story house.

Rose Atoll is at the eastern boundary of a group of Island’s that make up the Territory of American Samoa, the only U.S. soil located in the Southern Hemisphere. On the western end of the group is the island of Tutuila, home to most of American Samoa’s 70,000 residents… and me!

Over the past 30 years, I’ve explored just about every nook and cranny throughout these islands… except Rose Atoll. It’s always been on that “other” bucket list; you know, the one that’s still in your pocket when you die. As a National Wildlife Refuge, Rose Atoll is now protected with entry into its lagoon or fishing in its waters, prohibited to protect the fish and wildlife, and reduce the chances of introducing invasive species. . So, in the recent past I’ve been painfully aware that my chances of exploration in that area were slim to none.

But as fate would have it, things changed for me last month when I was asked to help a local charter company take a group of six scientists and officials to Rose Atoll. While Rose Atoll has a manager on the Fish and Wildlife Services payroll, oversight of the national monument is a rather complex “association” of several federal and territorial government departments. We were taking a party of five Department of Interior personnel, plus the manager, Frank Pendleton.

“Going where? Did you say Rose?” I said yes, of course, and a couple weeks later we were on our way; our guests with their masks, snorkels, cameras and other observation gear, and me with my revised bucket list.

Although we were traveling east, in this part of the world, we call that “going up”: Heading directly into the tradewinds, which blew 10-15 mph, creating wind swells of 6-8 feet… typical for that time of year. But after getting sufficiently beat-up for the first few hours of what would have been a 12 hour trip, the winds calmed and the swells dropped to 3-5, allowing for a more comfortable and speedier trip.

To be continued….

A Little History (From the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website)

Rose Atoll is nearly square, with the ocean-side slopes about 1.5 miles in length. It is one of the smallest atolls in the world and includes two low sandy islets, Rose and Sand, located on a coralline algal reef enclosing a lagoon. The lagoon is about 1.2 miles wide and up to 98 feet deep. Rose and Sand Islands are about 14 and 7 acres respectively.

The early Polynesians of Samoa likely visited the atoll periodically over the past millennium or more, and the atoll has a Samoan name “Motu o Manu,” literally meaning “island of seabirds.” Captain Louise de Freycinet christened the isle “Rose” on October 21, 1819, after his wife who was traveling with him at the time.

A Fairy Tern (White Tern) hovering with a curious but watchful eye on the cameraman.  Rose Atoll is the most important seabird colony in the region, since approximately 97 percent of the seabird population of American Samoa resides on Rose. The two islands provide important nesting and roosting habitat for 12 species of federally protected migratory seabirds.

Rose Atoll has been the subject of approximately 300 papers and reports over the last century. These describe the geology, geography, biology, meteorology, and history of the area.

Rose Island has sustained only brief human habitation in recent history. In the 1860s, a short-lived attempt was made by a German firm to establish a fishing station and coconut plantation at Rose Atoll. Sand Island is a shifting sand bank and could not support human habitation.

Read more about the marine and terrestrial wildlife on the FWS website.

Cont….

After 11 hours we could see the small Island portion of the relatively big atoll. Again, we were only a few miles away and it didn’t take long to get to the lagoon entrance. From a distance, the first thing I noticed was what looked like a swarm of bees, which we all knew to be birds. 

On approach and within earshot, there was no question while the cries of thousands of boobies and terns made their presence known.

The author with a couple of unabashed boobies.  Most of the bird life on the islets of Sand and Rose island were more curious than afraid, having few non-avian visitors. Only 1 year after removal of rats, two species of Shearwaters landed on Rose Island, the first record of any Procellariform bird since ornithological observations began. Additionally, five species of federally protected migratory shorebirds and one species of forest bird, the long-tailed cuckoo (a migrant from New Zealand), use the atoll for feeding, resting, and roosting.

While maneuvering to anchor in the lagoon, members of the party relax on the flying bridge of the Bonavista ll. Several buoys were spliced into the anchor line to keep it from damaging the reef below.  Rose Islet is in full view in the background.  (From left) Colleen Charles,Eileen Sobeck, Barry Stieglitz, Capt’n Russ and Deanna Spooner. 

Barry and Stingray (Photo: Karen) The fish communities at Rose are also distinct from others in the Samoan Archipelago. Fish density is very high and species diversity is moderately high at Rose Atoll. However, fish biomass is relatively low due to the dominance of small, planktivorous species. The fish assemblages at Rose also differ from the rest of the archipelago by having a much lower density of herbivorous fishes (especially parrotfishes and damselfishes) and a high density of planktivorous and carnivorous fishes.

Coral communities at Rose presently include 113 species and are distinctive and quite different from those of the other islands in Samoa. Dominant corals at Rose include Favia, Acropora, Porites, Montipora, Astreopora, Montastrea, and Pocillopora. (Photo of Giant Clam by Karen)

Rose Atoll Marine National Monument Manager, Frank Pendleton lead Barry and Deanna on a tour around Rose Islet.  (photo: Karen)

“Rose Atoll is a truly amazing place where a significant portion of American Samoa’s sea turtles and seabirds breed. It is wonderful to know that Rose Atoll is being preserved to protect all of its fish and wildlife for future generations.”  (F.P)

Barry, myself and Karen Koltes PhD lifting fishing net into zodiac….” A stark reminder that no place – no matter how remote – is safe from what’s happening elsewhere in the world. A ghost net at Rose Atoll NWR, miles from anywhere inhabited, had managed to ground and entangle an threatened green turtle. Fortunately it was alive and well, which helped to restore my faith that man can also undo what man has done.” (Barry Stieglitz- Refuge Supervisor, Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Refuge Complex) (photo by Colleen Charles)

Wildlife is abundant in and on Rose Atoll… sharks included.  The most numerous and curios were the Black Tip.  And yes, we did swim with the sharks. (Photo: Barry)

The lagoon is almost entirely enclosed by shallow perimeter reefs, except for a narrow channel on the northwest side. About 15 patch reefs reach the lagoon sea surface from depths of 20 to 50 feet and are concentrated on the southwestern half of the lagoon. The lagoon floor is sandy with a few isolated Acropora table-coral patches on the bottom and scattered around the perimeter of the flat-topped, steep-sided pinnacles that extend up to the surface.

In describing Rose Atoll, one realizes how over-used and diluted the meaning of the word “Spectacular” has become. Also, the word “pristine” is usually applied in a relative way to what we know or have experienced. In today’s world, the word spectacular may be used to describe an amusement park ride and pristine marine environments are most commonly found in our state-run aquariums. Rose Atoll Marine National Monument is truly one of the few remaining pristine environments left on our planet, and one word describes it best… SPECTACULAR!

 Life Finds A Way…

Message from the National Wildlife Refuge Complex

This was my first trip across the Equator, to American Samoa, to the Rose Atoll National Wildlife and Marine National Monument, and all “firsts” were amazing.  American Samoa looks like I thought Hawai’i would look – lush, green, and mountainous – before I came here the first time before I learned Hawai’i has both deserts and some of the highest areas of rainfall in the world.  The Samoan people were wonderful – amazingly warm, welcoming, and polite.  I was amazed, in a very positive way, in which the Samoans waved and smiled at us while we – obviously visitors to their island – roamed Tuituila by car or bus.

As a SCUBA diver and manager of several large marine protected areas – about 54 million acres – I was, of course, most impressed by the marine resources in American Samoa, and especially at Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.  The nearshore habitats of Hawai’i, including its coral reefs, are heavily impacted by human use.  The places with truly abundant, healthy corals are few and far between.  And finding large fish is uncommon outside of the few Marine Life Conservation Districts.  Rose Atoll is well-named, as it is pink, pink, pink! Nesting seabirds and fish were abundant, filling every glance both above and below the water. Amidst all this beauty, though, was a stark reminder that no place – no matter how remote – is safe from what’s happening elsewhere in the world. A ghost net at Rose Atoll NWR, miles from anywhere inhabited, had managed to ground and entangle a threatened green turtle. Fortunately it was alive and well, which helped to restore my faith that man can also undo what man has done. My message to the people of American Samoa would be to treasure what you have, and teach your children to treasure their natural heritage as well. As the old saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”: it’s much easier to maintain healthy ecosystems than to try to restore them once they’re damaged.

- Barry Stieglitz, August 2012

Note: Some of the captions were created using the Fish and Wildlife Service website as a resource. Once again, here’s the link:  http://www.fws.gov/refuges/whm/pdfs/RAMNM_brief.pdf