- Email: [email protected]
Tasmanian coast wave damage
Stockholm and After
page 81
News Tasmanian Coast Wave Damage Saving Spitzbergen Wildlife Purest may not be best Co-operation Wanted Catalogue of Oil Spills New Canadian Pipeline? Aquamobile for Fishermen International Water Resources Association Problems of the Caspian Reports Effects of Steel Works Effluents E. J. Perkins Bacterial Pollution of the Bristol Channel G. C. Ware, Avril E. Anson and Yolande F. Arianayagam Stressed Coral Reef Crabs in Hawaii Louis H. DiSalvo Indigenous and Petroleum-derived Hydrocarbons in a Polluted Sediment M. B/umer and J. Sass
82 82 83 83 83 84 84 84 84 86 88 90 92
Book Reviews Safety on Tankers Endangered Wetlands
94 95
Conference Pollution and ASLO
95
concerns might well feel inclined to transfer their operations to more permissive areas where production costs would be lower. There is already some hint that this may not be the formidable barrier to progress that once it appeared. Pollution abatement costs money and whether it comes from taxes or increased charges for industrial products, the effect is the same: a country devotes some of its wealth that might otherwise have gone on more exotic food, creature comforts or material gadgets, to buying cleaner, healthier and more pleasant surroundings. At one level of argument there is no reason why all countries should have the same priorities. Some may value a decent natural environment more than commercial frills and be prepared to accept a lower material standard of living than their neighbours, with different priorities, as a means of achieving it. Whatever else publication of documents like 'Limits to Growth' may have done, it has brought governments up sharply against the issue of whether or not the chase after increasing material goods and staying ahead of the Joneses in this respect is desirable, let alone feasible. Whatever conclusion is come to, the world will never be quite the same again. What was an unquestionable dogma a few years ago has come under serious scrutiny and future policy will therefore be that degree more conscious and, with luck, more rational. None of this ensures we are about to see an abrupt reversal of former policies and a sudden retreat from the pursuit of material goods in favour of improving our surroundings. While public opinion is shifting and there are beginning to be 'votes in sewage', substantial changes will still demand international agreement over a wide area. Discussion of these matters at Stockholm
89.
will help focus attention on them. Governments cannot repeatedly make pious statements in the full glare of international publicity and ignore them afterwards, and by bringing these issues into the open, Stockholm will inevitably exert pressures on laggard governments and help the cause of the more progressive ones. But it would be futile to expect dramatic changes overnight. Even at the national level a long, slow haul is needed to abate pollution, improve the environment and bring about the revolution in thinking that is needed before rational management of our resources can be achieved. On the international front, the haul will be longer and slower.
Tasmanian Coast Wave Damage According to a report by Dr E. Guiler of the University of Tasmania, circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Center for Short-lived Phenomena, the east coast of Tasmania was pounded by abnormally heavy seas for about 18 hours on 25-26 March, 1972, causing damage of over $100,000 to boats and installations. The waves were a result of an oceanic cyclone, but were not accompanied by wind. The shore and offshore algae, mainly of the genera Mycrocystis, Durvillea, Lessonia and Phyllospora were uprooted and thousands of tons of algal debris were deposited along all of the east coast in beds between 2-3 feet thick. Animals living amongst the algae were widely affected as well as ascidians of the genera Pyura and Boltenia, Modiulus albicostus, and the echinoderm Amblypneustes ovum. Penguins, Eudyptula minor, were found dead in some numbers. The lower midlittoral mixed algal shore community was destroyed, the area being largely denuded not only of algae, but also of chitons and surf barnacles, Catophragmus polymerus, although limpets were not affected.
Saving Spitzbergen Wildlife The World Wildlife Fund has asked the Government of Norway to ensure that oil exploration and related facilities do not damage the natural environment in Svalbard (Spitzbergen), an important breeding area of the threatened polar bear, reindeer and other wild species. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Fund suggested that the Government of Norway use its powers under Article 2 of the Svalbard Treaty of 1921 to establish reserves and protected areas to conserve biologically important parts of the Svalbard archipelago. The WWF praised the efforts already made by the Norwegian Government for polar bear conservation, but stressed that human penetration of the Arctic was increasing so much that it could lead to the extinction of the bears if conservation measures were not implemented before it was too late. It drew attention especially to Edgeoya, where oil exploration has been going on,
page 81
News Tasmanian Coast Wave Damage Saving Spitzbergen Wildlife Purest may not be best Co-operation Wanted Catalogue of Oil Spills New Canadian Pipeline? Aquamobile for Fishermen International Water Resources Association Problems of the Caspian Reports Effects of Steel Works Effluents E. J. Perkins Bacterial Pollution of the Bristol Channel G. C. Ware, Avril E. Anson and Yolande F. Arianayagam Stressed Coral Reef Crabs in Hawaii Louis H. DiSalvo Indigenous and Petroleum-derived Hydrocarbons in a Polluted Sediment M. B/umer and J. Sass
82 82 83 83 83 84 84 84 84 86 88 90 92
Book Reviews Safety on Tankers Endangered Wetlands
94 95
Conference Pollution and ASLO
95
concerns might well feel inclined to transfer their operations to more permissive areas where production costs would be lower. There is already some hint that this may not be the formidable barrier to progress that once it appeared. Pollution abatement costs money and whether it comes from taxes or increased charges for industrial products, the effect is the same: a country devotes some of its wealth that might otherwise have gone on more exotic food, creature comforts or material gadgets, to buying cleaner, healthier and more pleasant surroundings. At one level of argument there is no reason why all countries should have the same priorities. Some may value a decent natural environment more than commercial frills and be prepared to accept a lower material standard of living than their neighbours, with different priorities, as a means of achieving it. Whatever else publication of documents like 'Limits to Growth' may have done, it has brought governments up sharply against the issue of whether or not the chase after increasing material goods and staying ahead of the Joneses in this respect is desirable, let alone feasible. Whatever conclusion is come to, the world will never be quite the same again. What was an unquestionable dogma a few years ago has come under serious scrutiny and future policy will therefore be that degree more conscious and, with luck, more rational. None of this ensures we are about to see an abrupt reversal of former policies and a sudden retreat from the pursuit of material goods in favour of improving our surroundings. While public opinion is shifting and there are beginning to be 'votes in sewage', substantial changes will still demand international agreement over a wide area. Discussion of these matters at Stockholm
89.
will help focus attention on them. Governments cannot repeatedly make pious statements in the full glare of international publicity and ignore them afterwards, and by bringing these issues into the open, Stockholm will inevitably exert pressures on laggard governments and help the cause of the more progressive ones. But it would be futile to expect dramatic changes overnight. Even at the national level a long, slow haul is needed to abate pollution, improve the environment and bring about the revolution in thinking that is needed before rational management of our resources can be achieved. On the international front, the haul will be longer and slower.
Tasmanian Coast Wave Damage According to a report by Dr E. Guiler of the University of Tasmania, circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Center for Short-lived Phenomena, the east coast of Tasmania was pounded by abnormally heavy seas for about 18 hours on 25-26 March, 1972, causing damage of over $100,000 to boats and installations. The waves were a result of an oceanic cyclone, but were not accompanied by wind. The shore and offshore algae, mainly of the genera Mycrocystis, Durvillea, Lessonia and Phyllospora were uprooted and thousands of tons of algal debris were deposited along all of the east coast in beds between 2-3 feet thick. Animals living amongst the algae were widely affected as well as ascidians of the genera Pyura and Boltenia, Modiulus albicostus, and the echinoderm Amblypneustes ovum. Penguins, Eudyptula minor, were found dead in some numbers. The lower midlittoral mixed algal shore community was destroyed, the area being largely denuded not only of algae, but also of chitons and surf barnacles, Catophragmus polymerus, although limpets were not affected.
Saving Spitzbergen Wildlife The World Wildlife Fund has asked the Government of Norway to ensure that oil exploration and related facilities do not damage the natural environment in Svalbard (Spitzbergen), an important breeding area of the threatened polar bear, reindeer and other wild species. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Fund suggested that the Government of Norway use its powers under Article 2 of the Svalbard Treaty of 1921 to establish reserves and protected areas to conserve biologically important parts of the Svalbard archipelago. The WWF praised the efforts already made by the Norwegian Government for polar bear conservation, but stressed that human penetration of the Arctic was increasing so much that it could lead to the extinction of the bears if conservation measures were not implemented before it was too late. It drew attention especially to Edgeoya, where oil exploration has been going on,