RSPB Highlight Sandeel Slaughter

[Yakity - Yak - u.k.]

Jaffa,

 

Interesting stuff.

Very sad too , quite alarming to know that no research is planned, to try and understand what is causing the problem

 

Never knew a Guillemot could dive so deep.

 

YY

[Jaffa]

Yep 100m is a fair way down.

 

Alarming about the research but wheres the money and drive to do that when we have already identified the problem:- funnily enough for our country, its those paedophile/junkie/rapist/ "netsmen" again.

[captain cojones]

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/090_divers.shtml

hello guys, its a very interesting thread. i was suprised to to read that the birds could dive to 100metres,this doesnt seem to be backed up by other information on the birds that i have seen. ( click upon link above) i saw many times the birds underwater when i was working as a prof diver,but normally they were at relativly shallow depths of 25mts or less.regards dave.

[Jaffa]

Nice link CC. Thanks

 

I have seen plenty of coromrants at 30ft but can't remember seeing any deeper .

 

Gullimotes at 90 meters! blows you away. How on earth do they do that.....

 

Guess guillimotes are 3/4 the way to a penguin

[Jim Roper]

Norm B:

Support them, don't knock them, they and Green Peace will be the saviour of our fish stocks, much more so than anglers. Members and money talks. Look what the £1,000,000 donation to the Labour Party from the LACS achieved.

Isn't it the RSPB that has just got the Government do do a U-turn on the control of Cormorant numbers?

[Jaffa]

Ken, here is the stuff on sandeels. First, a scientific rundown on sandeel biology and fisheries that highlights the importance of the Shetland example-

 

http://www.frs-scotland.gov.uk/FRS.Web/Del...x?contentid=657

 

Marine Lab , Abredeen, study of the decline of Shetland sandeels that shows fishing was not to blame The PDF version with photos not working for me atm, but heres a html link)-

 

www.marlab.ac.uk/FRS.Web/Uploads/Documents/Sandeels"]www.marlab.ac.uk/FRS.Web/Uploads/Documents/Sandeels%]www.marlab.ac.uk/FRS.Web/Uploads/Documents/Sandeels

 

Despite their constant bad press here is an example of what can be done locally when local fishermen and local RSPB people work with each other. When i was up there the fishermen stopped fishing for sandeel without goverment intervention. -

 

http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/archives/pa..._save_birds.htm

 

The scary thing for me is that this stuff is all pointing to huge ecological change on a scale not seen since our ancestors were first hacking down the trees on this Island, and its happening now

 

On the positive side, found this site and am downloading the software now:

 

http://climateprediction.net/

 

These guys are trying to use all our unused computer power to attempt to model the future climate change; oceanic currents, weather, the works. Its serious science and they have already been published in Nature. As I understand it we download the software, set how much of our comp power we wish to give up to it, then our comps run models with different startpoints for them.

As payback we get to see how "our" model develops - set it as screen saver for instance plus we actually get to do something and help.

 

The Nature letter:

 

http://www.climateprediction.net/science/p...rst_results.pdf

 

Bloody depressed atm but its at least something... I look at that political thread and keep wondering why no one highlights the ecological changes as a big issue. This is going to hit hard I suspect and we are now beyond the "what do we do to stop greenhouse gas" phase and into what are we, on this tiny industrialised island, going to do to prepare ourselves for whats coming.

 

For gawds sake someone tell me im wrong

 

[ 27. February 2005, 09:56 PM: Message edited by: Jaffa ]

[Jaffa]

Can't get the Marine lab link to show :confused:

 

Its on google as HTML but can't seem to link that here. PDF version no longer seems up? :confused:

[sanctuary]

Got to admit the RSPB has a bigger clout than us anglers, we are fighting plans to extract millions of tons of brine from caverns around Fleetwood in order to store LPG . This brine is to be pumped into the lune deeps which will cause great problems to our fishing grounds in and around Morecambe bay over the next 10 years however the RSPB have joined the fight and seem to be more effective than we are. Lets hope we can be successful together.

[Jaffa]

Never heard of that Sanctuary, whats going on there and what are the likely effects on the grounds? What kind of scale are you taking about? Are these caverns huge then?

[Jaffa]

Marine lab link seems to be working now or I was doing something wrong before

 

http://www.marlab.ac.uk/FRS.Web/Uploads/Do...satShetland.pdf

 

Chris.