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The Headlines:
Fish affected by a different kind of pollution
Madagascar’s rosewood rainforests ravaged
EPA to crack down on factory farms
Robot fish to help schools in need
Freshwater wind farm in the works
UK’s waste to become Euro fuel

The Details:

Fish affected by a different kind of pollution

We’re not talking about oil, and we’re not talking about trash. We’re talking about sound. A new study published in ScienceDirect finds that fish have a very well developed sense of sound, and over the last 100 years, humans have increasingly used the oceans of Earth, to the detriment of sea life.

According to the BBC, 80 percent of global freight transport is done by motorized shipping, and the global shipping fleet is made up of around 1.2 million vessels! That’s a lot of noise under the sea, and one effect of that is that fish are fleeing from the loud noises, causing an unequal distribution of fish across the oceans.

There are also problems for the fish that don’t flee from loud human sounds: they can’t hear the sounds they need to hear to function properly. Fish make noises to define territory, to court mates and to find food. They need to hear each other and their surroundings to live and thrive, but shipping noise is so loud that it’s disrupting their ability to do so.

Madagascar’s rosewood rainforests ravaged

You may know rosewood from high-end furniture or from the necks of guitars. But not many people know where rosewood comes from, or what the environmental impact of rosewood might be.

Most rosewood comes from Madagascar and it’s being plundered from the countryside on orders from Chinese furniture makers, who buy the wood to craft expensive furniture for Americans and Europeans. It’s been going on in small illegal operations for years now, but this past year, it has increased at least 25-fold, according to environmental groups. They estimate the value of trees felled this past year at $167 million or more!

Malagasy timber barons have stepped up operations because of a military coup that took place last year. The new government is weak and can’t really enforce rules against felling these increasingly rare trees. Some environmental groups even claim that the government of Madagascar is getting a cut of the profits.

Some scientists are recommending the few remaining rosewood trees in the rainforest of the island deserve the protection of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. We hope they get it.

EPA to crack down on factory farms

Due to a recent lawsuit settlement with environmental groups, the EPA is proposing a new policy in dealing with factory farms. It doesn’t have anything to do with animal treatment, however. This rule is about animal waste.

Animal waste, bacteria and parasites from chickens, pigs and cows drain into streams and rivers, posing a threat to human health. The EPA’s response? Their new policy proposal would require factory farms to report the type and capacity of manure storage facilities, quantity of manure generated, available land acreage to apply manure and how excess manure is disposed of to the EPA.

This is a nice first step, but the EPA’s proposal only requires farms to report this information every five years.

Robot fish to help schools in need

There are robots in the seas! They monitor ocean temperatures and scan for pollutants. But there’s a new robot fish on the block, and it’s there to actually help the fish.

Maurizio Porfiri, assistant professor at Brooklyn laboratories at Polytechnic Institute of New York University, created this new robot fish that can mimic the actions of ‘leader’ fish, who dart quickly around other fish to lasso them into a school which they then lead.

The idea is that the robot fish could take over a school and lead it away from boat motors and power plant turbines. Laboratory experiments with fish in aquariums have proved successful, and it’s just a matter of time before these robot fish can start saving the lives of fish in the ocean.

If the technology improves, scientists could develop other robot animals, like robot birds who could lead migrating flocks to safer areas than their usual migratory spots.

Freshwater wind farm in the works

The United States’ first freshwater wind farm is set to move forward! The wind farm would be located in Lake Erie, one of the giant and relatively shallow Great Lakes.

The Lake Erie Energy Development Company or LEEDCo, is a nonprofit company who is going to work with GE to get the first few turbines installed in the lake by 2012. The completed wind farm will eventually become a 200 turbine, 1,000 MW wind farm in the nearly 10,000 square mile lake by 2020.

UK’s waste to become Euro fuel

It might not be poo, but it’s still gross! Britain is in trouble right now because it generates much more household waste than it can get rid of. Landfills are filling up fast, and not everything can be recycled. So what to do?

Through the magic of processes like densification, pressing and water removal, household British waste can be squeezed into fuel pellets. These pellets can be directly used to generate heat which can then be used directly for heating purposes or convert water into steam to run a steam turbine for power generation.

And there are plans to export British fuel pellets to neighboring countries such as Holland and Germany. While it isn’t the greenest possibility, it’s a good start.