DangerousCatch-Group2

“Our massive demands on the ocean’s bounty impacts life far beyond the shoreline: bushmeat hunting is on the rise in Ghana while in Namibia; fishing grounds struggle to recover as putrid fumes explode from the ocean depths and poison the waters; and radical new fish farms are sprouting up from Puerto Rico to Canada. Across the globe, all life is feeling the effects of overfishing. Can we protect fish in time to safeguard the ocean, life on land and ultimately ourselves? Find out how we all can make a difference.”
 * __Dangerous Catch (Pd 3)__**

· Explain the sulfur events that Brownen Currie and others experience in Namibia. · What steps did Currie take to determine what was happening? · How did Scarla Weeks help Brownen solve the mystery? · How did Andrew Bakun link these sulfur events to rain in the desert? · Where do sardines fit into the picture? · What would you recommend to reduce the sulfur events?
 * //Group 2: Stench Effects in Namibia//**

Summary of the video: Did you know that fish were linked to under sea explosions? A team of scientists, Bronwen Currie, Scarla Weeks, and Andrew Bakun were very concerned of the various explosions going on under water. It started when Bronwen Currie smelt a foul stench in Namibia near the ocean. She also noticed that the ocean was not the regular blue color all the time, but occasionally a milky white, brown and yellow. They also found that tons of dead fish had washed up on shore in the past years. This team of researchers went to work trying to figure out what caused these problems. After weeks of research, they found out that dead phytoplankton could be building up on the ocean floor and the sediment was at such a low pressure that it was causing eruptions. They also found out that the eruptions were not in just one specific area, but up and down the entire coast line. This means that a lot of phytoplankton has died throughout the coasts of Namibia, in the past years. Parts of the explosions were giving off methane which causes the ocean to turn the dirty colors that Bronwen noticed in the beginning of her research. The result is that over-fishing in Namibia has caused all of the phytoplankton to build up, causing major eruptions. 1.) Bronwen Currie and other people living in Namibia started to smell a terrible stench that some explained it as rotten eggs . She also noticed tons of dead fish had washed up on shore and they covered the shoreline. The other odd event that occured was that some days the ocean turned weird colors like milky white, yellow, and brown. 2.) One step that Bronwen took to determine what was happening is she used a corer to hall up sediment from the ocean. She also paired up with Scarla Weeks to find out what was happening to the ocean color. Weeks had satellite images that detected sudden changes in the ocean’s color; they collected water changes and they found out the color change was from sulfur. Finally, she paired up with Andrew Bakun to find out where the explosions were coming from and how they could stop them. 3.) One major way that Scarla Weeks helped Bronwen solve the mystery is she gave her satellite images that she had taken herself. These images detected sudden changes in the ocean color throughout the coast of Namibia. Weeks then went on to help Currie determine what was causing the color changes and they eventually found out that they were coming from sulfur eruptions at the bottom of the ocean. 4.) Andrew Bakun found out that as desert rains pass over the ocean, it causes low pressure in the water. The low pressure drops to the ocean floor and eventually causes an eruption. High pressure keeps the sediment locked onto the ocean floor so if there is not enough pressure, then the sediment erupts. This is how Bakun linked the sulfur events to rain in the ocean. When there is a low atmospheric pressure system that causes rain in the desert an eruption occurs. The reason is that the pressure on the ocean floor is HIGHER than the pressure at the surface. The atmospheric pressure is not pushing down on the hydrogen sulfide gas as hard as it was before. This cause the hydrogen sulfide gas to come to the surface. 5.) A few years ago, Namibia's fisheries used to be very rich with sardines- they probably had about 10 million tons of sardines! The sardine's main food was phytoplankton, which kept the phytoplankton population balanced. Because of over- fishing in Namibia, the sardine population started to die off in the ocean and the phytoplankton level started to boom. This meant that there was nothing to eat the phytoplankton, so eventually their bodies started to build up on the ocean floor. Eventually all of the sediment created sulfur eruptions in the ocean. 6.) The best way to reduce the sulfur events would be to set aside areas of the ocean as no-fishing zones. This way the sardines and the phytoplankton would be balanced and it would reduce the sulfur eruptions going on.

Great job explaining and summarizing the sulfur events. 75/75