Oceans to Oceans

Annotated Bibliographies 

 

 

 

 

This article had an abundant amount of information on the strandings of sea turtles as well as statistics and experiments to further research. Strandings of marine life on shore helps provide valuable information on cause of death at sea, minimum mortality, and the time period the animal died. The only problem that remains with the mortality is that the probability of strandings can be difficult for space and time and does not exceed 10-20% of total mortality even in shores (Page 1). Researchers have found it more challenging to determine the estimate of total mortality when you use only stranding frequencies even in shore lines. Many marine mammals and sea turtles are listed on the IUCN Red list, and also suffer high moralities from fisheries or direct harvest. Researchers have found that Baja California Sur is one of the highest stranding areas of marine turtles and mammals because of the by long- line fisheries and poaching. The most deadly to sea turtles though is by catching because they cause an overlap between fishing areas and important sea turtles habitats (Page 1). The way researchers determined and estimated strandings of sea turtles is by counting stranded animals and drifter experiments along the coastline in Baja California Sur, Mexico (2010-2011). In total, after 1500 hours of sampling were used during the study period to patrol more than 13,000km of shoreline to look for the strandings. In the surveys there were 594 turtle carcasses recovered, 370 being loggerheads, 186 Green turtles, 34 Olive Ridley turtles, and one being a Hawksbill turtle (Page 4). Although most believed the reason for strandings were caused by fisheries only 1.8% of the deaths were from by catch and the other 87% being in the southern gulf of Ulloa, a hot spot of loggerhead distributions (Page 4). The 1.8 % resulted to the seasonal variations in strandings closely related to the main fishing seasons. One of the main communicators in the study, J Seminoff, believed, “the large number of strandings in this Gulf of Ulloa region is therefore likely a result of the overlap of an aggregation of loggerheads and small-scale fisheries that frequently employ fishing gear with high by catch rates (bottom-set nets & long lines) (Seminoff p 5).” However, estimated strandings from drifter experiments varied among the site trials, meaning only a few of dead, sea turtles can be observed at beaches and the rest at sea. In conclusion, not only did the study show that drifter trials and beach monitoring offer estimates for death at sea to measure the impact of fisheries that are difficult to monitor for by-catch, but also provided improvements to estimate mortality for future studies and high light the importance of small scale fisheries in marine life (Page 5).

This article was very credible because used numerous professional experimenters as well as actual fishery sites for their samples. The information and studies also presented data and graphs to back up the information gathered. The article showed full credits to every contributor to the study such as the researchers, experimenters, writers, observers, etc. I believe this article is somewhat in the right direction I am headed for my research product because it does deal with marine life, but I am leaning more towards marine mammals. However, I can use some of this information pertaining to the mortality of the sea turtles by seasonal fishing to add to my research project. The main thing that interests me about the sea and its animals is that many of the marine life cannot help that they are being fished by or increasingly dying and this drives me to help them even more by reading this article.

 

Tomoharu Eguchi, et al. "Estimating At-Sea Mortality Of Marine Turtles From Stranding Frequencies And Drifter Experiments." Plos ONE 8.2 (2013): 1-10. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.

 

 

 

 

This article discusses animal behavior and research on animals like dolphins for example, which reveals that humans are not the only species that mourn the deaths of loved ones (July 2013). Marine biologist, Joan Gonzalvo, of the Tethys Research Institute in Milan, Italy and his observations of female bottlenose dolphins in the oceans near Greece's Amvrakikos Gulf are addressed, along with her research for her book "How Animals Grieve." Other areas include the naturalist Charles Darwin, the emotions of animals, and their mating behaviors. Quotes that I found in the article that could help towards my paper are said by Gonzalvo about his .research on the Bottle nose dolphin… "What prompted me not to interfere was respect," he told me earlier this year. "We were privileged to be able to witness such clear evidence of the mother-calf bond in bottlenose dolphins, a species that I have been studying for over a decade. I was more interested in observing that natural behavior than interrupting it by abruptly interfering and disturbing a mother who was already in obvious distress. I would define what I saw as mourning." Also, another quote I thought was important was …“Like most animal behaviorists, I was trained to describe such reactions in neutral terms such as "altered behavior in response to another's death." After all, the mother might have become agitated only because the strange, inert status of her calf puzzled her. Tradition dictates that it is soft-hearted and unscientific to project human emotions such as grief onto other animals” (par. 4) I believe these quotes will help my paper show actual research that Gonzalvo witnessed.

This source is reliable because I found it on school website from my library, and it is also cited with all sources and real scientist names are used. The article is up to date from 2010 to present day and also includes other resources on the topic; Galileo is said to be a credible source by many and is well referenced by many schools. Since my essential question ask about the study of the ocean and its animals I feel this articles shows research on the study of marine animals and how they mourn over loss. This article helped me because it is something that I can kind of relate to and understand because humans mourn too although we are much different from animals, and I can use this article in my research project because it ties in perfectly with my essential question. 

 

J. King, Barbara. "When Animals Mourn." Scientific American 308.7 (2013): 62-67. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 Feb. 2014