Cold storage
Mario Tamburri, a marine scientist and director of the Maritime Environment Resource Center at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, has been researching survivorship and reproduction of organisms likely to be transported by ships by mimicking the conditions of shipping traffic. New colder, shorter routes afforded by the retreat of ice help invaders, such as mussels, barnacles and crabs, on a biological level, Tamburri says. Cold water slows metabolism of organisms, which can sustain themselves in low food conditions. “It’s like putting your groceries on ice,” he says.
Shorter routes also mean more organisms either attached to the hull or in ballast water are now more likely to survive the journey. Previously, the high heat and lack of light of longer trips outside the Arctic killed them off. “When ships now transport goods through the Panama Canal, for instance, through warm water and freshwater, natural barriers to invasive species are built into the shipping routes,” Tamburri says. “In the Arctic, those barriers go away.”
Ballast water and bivalves
Murmansk, Russia, a leading global port and the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, is one area that ice-free routes will likely open up further this summer. As more ships exchange ballast water for cargo, native species in places like Murmansk can quickly lose out against new species that have no checks and balances, such as marine species like bivalves that can be dispersed by larvae in ballast water as well as cold-water adapted adults, including green crabs.
Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, says that once introduced, a new species can outcompete everything that has evolved over millennia. Although some nonnative species are innocuous, others thrive because there have no predators. Nothing controls them in the natural system, and they are better at filtering food out of the water than their native cousins. “Invasives use up the lion’s share of resources, and whatever biodiversity that was there falls apart,” Ziska says.
When new interlopers take hold, one or two tend to become very well suited for that environment and dominate it. The natural biodiversity diminishes, Ziska says. Scientists are beginning to catalogue and classify native and nonnative species at ports near oil facilities in Alaska. No large obvious invasions by marine traffic have occurred yet in the high latitude environment but Ziska and others scientists say no one can be sure. Scientists are only now beginning to look closely.
“We weren’t expecting the Arctic to change this quickly,” Ziska notes, adding that the implications for not only human traffic but also for biology are worrisome. “It’s basically opening up the entire Arctic region as a huge playground for invasive species. New things, new biological organisms are going into the area where they have never been seen before. The consequences of that are, quite frankly, are completely unknown.”
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9 Comments
Add CommentSilly article. Anyone who has ever been up there knows that the shipping season is so short and the weather so unpredictable that it is a dangerous way to ship cargo and not worth the trouble.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd the issue of species invasion is even more far-fetched. The author would have you believe that the Arctic Ocean is somehow magical and isolated from the rest of the planet. Sorry, but currents flow through there just like every other place on the planet. As to ships dumping their bilges up there. Yes, but they dump them everywhere else and the currents circulate the waste into the Arctic just as it always has and always will.
This article is a waste of electrons and utterly meaningless.
It will make way for a lot more than that--it will make way for another intelligent species to replace man!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fast changes from Chixilub 65 million years ago resulted in new pathways that allowed mammals--including man to flourish.
Who is to say that if it heats up 20 degrees--and it can if the permafrost were to all melt--that the devastation resulting wouldn't push man to the brink of extinction and new life forms to replace us.
It happened before it can happen again.
You've got to be kidding me. No wonder you deniers are so eager to parrot fossil fuel propaganda, you have no idea what's going on outside of what they tell you. The opening of the Northwest Passage has been sought for over a century as a way to decrease shipping time and costs:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"That’s [the opening of the Northwest Passage] good news for economic development because it offers many new and faster routes from east to west, shaving 40 percent off transportation time and fuel costs compared with shipments via the Suez Canal."
Not worth the trouble my foot!
And are you a biologist and / or a geographer? Do you specialize in invasive species? How are you qualified IN ANY WAY to make such sweeping statements about the threats to Arctic ecosystems that increased shipping traffic poses? I mean, do you honestly believe you little spat of armchair science denial has more credibility than the study highlighted in this article?
Look, you OBVIOUSLY have no idea how science works. Why don't you read a scientific paper or two? I mean, I'm STILL waiting for ANY of you science deniers to present EVEN ONE scientific paper showing that climate change is not going to be bad. I mean, you deniers HAVE to be getting your info from somewhere...it would be really sad (but not all that surprising) if it turned out that all your denier info came from fossil fuel propaganda that their paid / willing dupes regurgitate onto the Internet just to fool people like you.
As the artic ice clears out due to human-caused climate change shipping over the top of the world will become a viable option. Having been up north doesn't make me a shipping expert. Are you one? There have been many articles discussing the possibilities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnvasive species are a global problem. The fact that ships will be passing through arctic like never before will introduce species that have never been there.
Yes, some comments are a waste of electrons and utterly meaningless.
3. sault in reply to Shoshin 11:48 AM 3/6/13 inserts an unidentified quote to the effect that....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...."That’s [the opening of the Northwest Passage] good news for economic development because it offers many new and faster routes from east to west, shaving 40 percent off transportation time and fuel costs compared with shipments via the Suez Canal."....
Sault I feel I must bring to your attention that there is another Sault posting on these very pages. That Sault belittled my suggestion that oil sands product could and likely eventually would be exported through ports in the Arctic region. That Sault claimed that shipping in the region was possible for only three months out of the year if that.
Northern, it hurts when my camomile tea spurts out of my nose. LOL.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do believe you are missing the point. More open water, longer. Now, can you guess why?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot just Polar Bears, Musk Oxen, Walruses, Seals, and Inuit, eh?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this8. Happy Hal 11:01 PM 3/11/13 writes...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...Not just Polar Bears, Musk Oxen, Walruses, Seals, and Inuit, eh? ...
That is the entire comment. Since it has no direct connection to previous comments I have no idea what is intended by it.