Today is World Oceans Day. A day to celebrate the diversity, fragility, and beauty of the oceans. Horray for that.

So how about we make today the day we all do one thing for the oceans?

Here are my top suggestions:

Ask

If you eat fish, next time you’re at restaurant, supermarket or fish mongers, ask the person behind the counter or taking your order (drag out a manager or head chef if you need to) and ask them exactly where the fish you’re planning on buying was caught and using what fishing method.

Go armed with a pocket guide from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch project, or the Marine Conservation Society’s Good Fish Guide (write to them and they’ll send you one free), and do your best to avoid fish from overfished stocks and those caught with the most damaging fishing gear like bottom trawls.

As a consumer, it’s your right to ask, and the managers/chefs need to have an answer. If it’s obvious they have no idea where their fish came from, then let them know why you won’t be eating it – and perhaps why you won’t be coming back.

Porbeagle steaks on sale in Borough Market London. Photo by pfig

Don’t flush plastic

It would be nice to believe that all the waste we flush down the loo will be processed and cleaned up before the water reaches the ocean – not so. Q tips, dental floss, condoms… all sorts of things we think are okay to flush can end up in the oceans where they choke wildlife and leach gender-bending pollutants.

Sure, there are many other ways plastics reach the oceans, but don’t let your toilet be one of them.

Laysan albatross chick impacted by plastic debris. Claire Fackler, NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries/Marine Photobank.

Go for a walk/ride

The tragedy unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is a horrible but timely reminder that our reliance on oil is one of the biggest threats faced by the natural world, especially the oceans.

Plane releases dispersants over Deepwater Horizon oil spill. U.S. Coast Guard, Stephen Lehmann Marine Photobank

Not only can its extraction be devastating to ecology but of course the CO2 it releases when we pump it into our cars (and trucks, planes etc) causes climate change and with it the seas are getting warmer and more acidic, triggering all sorts of problems for wildlife.

We might all feel addicted to our automobiles but why not try and use your feet instead, at least for those short journeys. Pop to the shops on your bike or take a stroll into town. It’s pouring down here in Cambridge today, but I’ll get my umbrella out and remind myself of that lovely sound of rain over my head.

Get writing

The power of the pen (or keyboard) is greater than you might imagine. Take a few moments to write to your local politician, your local newspaper, or whoever you think might listen, and tell them your concerns for the ocean and ask them to help you do something about it.

Increasing the number and size of marine reserves is the simplest and most proven way of promoting healthy oceans. The more voices that call for more protection, the greater chance we have of making a difference.

And one last thing… how about we try making every day oceans day?

The votes are in and the future does not look bright for a collection of marine species that are getting a pummeling from international trade. Fans of bluefin tuna sashimi and anyone outraged at the idea of taking a global stance against shark fin soup can heave a sigh of relief. Don’t worry: it’s business as usual.

Hammerhead shark. Photo by petersbar

In the build up to the 15th biannual meeting of CITES held in Doha, hopes had been high among some conservationists (I was one of them) that protection might be granted to some of the most threatened marine species that cruise the oceans in ever decreasing numbers thanks to human appetite for sushi, soup, and shark steaks.

But alas no. Despite all the scientific evidence that points towards extinction-by-overfishing, nations at the CITES meeting voted overwhelmingly not to offer any of these species international protection.

The trade in fins and meat will carry on regardless of massive, worldwide declines. Same goes for the imperiled bluefin tuna.

Porbeagle steaks on sale in Borough Market London. Photo by pfig

At the end of 2009 I helped research and write scientific reviews for IUCN and TRAFFIC of proposals to restrict international trade in 4 shark species: Oceanic whitetips, hammerheads, porbeagles and spiny dogfish (4 other sharks were also to be protected under the hammerhead proposal since their fins and meat are difficult to tell apart).

So, I’ve been through the data and I know the stories of all these sharks. And, trust me, they need all the help they can get.

The aim of these reports was to provide an expert analysis of the proposals to regulate and control the trade these sharks. We summarized the data and tried to make it easy for nations at the CITES meeting to make balanced and informed decisions.

I’ve seen the porbeagle and spiny dogfish data before – these 2 were rejected at the 2007 CITES meeting too. It leaves me wondering if the same species will keep coming up at CITES, time after time, until their numbers are so low they can be safely labelled as being “commercially extinct” i.e. don’t bother going out to try and catch them.

Oceanic whitetip shark. Photo by Tom Weilenmann

This latest round of CITES negotiations on marine species has been the most public and – from where I’m sitting – the most frustrating and depressing.

When I set out to review the CITES shark proposals alongside a team of other wildlife trade experts, it wasn’t a forgone conclusion and certainly not simply a case of “save the sharks no matter what the science says”. We rigorously and objectively analyzed each species against the strict criteria set by CITES and – trust me – I could only wish the picture had been less clear cut and less desolate.

To be eligible for a trade ban under CITES, species of “commercially exploited aquatic species” (including sharks and tuna) need to have declined by somewhere between 80 and 95% from a historic baseline or by just 50% more recently.

If trade looks to be threatening the survival of a species in the wild but they don’t yet meet these thresholds, then less strict trade regulations can be imposed in the hope they will stave off the need for a trade ban.

And shockingly all these sharks – except possibly a few populations of spiny dogfish that remain in reasonable shape - and bluefin tuna fall well within the trade ban criteria.

I won’t repeat all the data here (if you want to know more, do check out the IUCN/TRAFFIC review documents) but here are a few of the more worrying statistics:

• Since the 1950s, oceanic whitetip sharks in the NW Atlantic and Central Pacific have declined by between 90-99%.
• Since the 19th century, hammerhead sharks and porbeagles in the Mediterranean have both plummeted by 99.9%.
• In the NE Atlantic, it took 82 years for porbeagle populations to collapse to 6% of their former abundance.
• Between 1905 and 2005, the population of spiny dogfish in the NE Atlantic population declined by 93.4 – 94.8%.

And I’ve not  just taken the juiciest pickings of the data to try and make a point. Similar stories of demise have been going on across the ranges of these sharks.

Nevertheless all this science, all the fisheries statistics, models and projections have been ignored.

Spiny dogfish. Photo by brotherM

The CITES criteria are not only based on population declines. The biology of the species is also taken into account: species that are more biologically vulnerable should, according to CITES, be protected more carefully.

And sharks are some of the most vulnerable fish in the oceans. They tend to grow slowly, mature late, produce a small number of young, and live a long time.

During my research I was astonished to learn that spiny dogfish probably have the longest gestation of any vertebrate in the world. Female spiny dogfish are pregnant longer than us human beings and longer than elephants or whales. They can gestate for up to 22 months, and even after all that waiting they may only give birth to a handful of pups. That doesn’t add up to a species that will cope well with commercial exploitation.

Hammerhead shark. Photo by Erik Charlton

One big question that many people are currently debating is whether CITES is the right tool for conserving marine species, including sharks.

Some say this is the job of regional fisheries organizations (like ICCAT). The most vocal on this are China and Japan who seem adamant that CITES should keep their sticky beaks out.

Others say CITES lacks legal bite and with so many opt-out clauses has little effect on the species in real danger.

Nevertheless, there are a handful of sharks that have managed to get onto the CITES appendices.

At a landmark vote back in 2002, basking sharks and whale sharks were the first elasmobranchs to earn themselves international regulation, followed by great white sharks in 2004, and a trade ban in sawfish – a close relative of sharks – in 2007.

But where next for ocean trade?

Right now, I really don’t know. My only hope is that all this attention and the mixed views being spread around the media will mean that the plight of the sharks and bluefin tuna – members of that unseen and largely uncared for marine world – will be higher on the interntional agenda and maybe those regional fisheries organizations will get their act together and do their job properly.

Of course as consumers we can all boycott bluefin and shark (ask where your fish and chips came from – it could be a spiny dogfish female who’s been pregnant for 2 years). But I fear that might not be enough. International, top-down action will probably be needed too.

And if we don’t do something there might not be any more bluefins and even fewer sharks to haggle over the next time CITES comes around.

As I mentioned in my last post, 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. And what better way to start things off than with a neat study from Florida telling us why some fish species are especially important.

This is the story of the red grouper.

Red grouper. by NOAA.

As their name suggest, these chaps are usually red. They can grow to over a metre from head to tail although 50cm (or nearly 2 feet) is more common. They can apparently live for up to 25 years, which is quite a lot for a fish. And like many other fish, red groupers are sex shifters: they are all born as females and after between 7 and 14 years they reajust their sexual organs, transforming into fully-functioning males.

The warm waters of the Caribbean Sea and central west Atlantic, between North Carolina and Brazil, are where the red groupers call home. And it now turns out these fish help to build and maintain their complex reefy  habitats.

“Red groupers are the Frank Lloyd Wrights of the sea floor” said the study co-author Susan Williams, from University California-Davis.

Red grouper. Photo by tiswango.

Felicia C. Coleman from Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory led the study in the West Florida Shelf, sending both scuba divers and mini-subs down to spy on the red groupers. The researchers watched on as the fish got busy, digging great holes in the seabed to live in – up to a few metres wide and deep. The fastidious fish then keep their homes neat and tidy, ejecting mouthfuls of sand and sweeping the rocks clean with their tail.

In a series of experiments, the research team temporarily kept groupers away from their excavated abodes (by putting a cage around them), showing just how well they maintain their burrows.

And it turns out that this meticulous housekeeping creates important three-dimensional habitat that many other species rely on, giving a boost to biodiversity wherever red groupers are present; it clears areas of hard rock for corals and sponges to settle on and provides hiding places for spiny lobsters and dozens of other fish species including many that we like to eat such as snappers.

No-one has yet experimented with taking away red groupers permanently to test out this theory; somehow that doesn’t seem like a very good idea, these days.  But this study from Felicia Coleman and colleagues gives us a strong hint that all would not be well if red groupers were to disappear. In their own habitat-building way, they could well be what ecologists call “key-stone species”.

So, without the red groupers it seems likely that a whole host of other species would suffer.

And in the end that’s why red groupers really matter.

In detail:

• Red groupers – Epinephelus morio – are listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, which is a fairly low threat category but means they are certainly not safe. Many populations are considered to be overfished, especially parts of the Gulf of Mexico, and despite a few recoveries declines have been particularly bad in some areas.
• They are ambush predators, sneaking up on their prey and swallowing it whole, including shrimp, octopus, squid, fish and crabs.
• Other key-stone species include sea otters and starfish. They exert a disproportionate influence (for their size and abundance) on the rest of the ecosystem mainly because of their voracious appetites.

A pair of sea otters holding hands. Just too cute. Photo by joemess

• The red grouper paper can be downloaded for free from the Open Fish Science Journal.

I welcomed in the new decade under a stunning blue moon here in Cambridge, and it’s got me to wondering whether the brand new year, and decade, that lie ahead of us might also be full of other rare and beautiful things.

2009 was undoubtedly the year when more people than ever before began paying attention to the problems of climate change. It was incredible to see these issues climb so high in the international agenda, even if the outcome might not yet be what most of us were hoping for.

But has all the talk about climate change distracted us from many of the other threats to the natural world?

Biodiversity – the wonderful diversity of wild species and the threats they face from human actions – is an issue that has been patiently waiting in the wings, waiting for the UN to push in out onto centre stage in 2010. Because this year is the UN International year of biodiversity.

The question is, will the dwindling populations of so many important, breathtaking, extraordinary species command as much global attention in 2010 as the climate change debate did in 2009.

Perhaps, if we’re lucky.

Coming up in the following months are a few major international meetings that could decide the fate of some of the world’s wildlife.

The international trade in bluefin tuna – highly prized for Japanese sushi – could be banned in March at the latest conference of CITES – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Following the failure last November of management bodies to take bold steps to help stop these magnificent fish being hunted to extinction, CITES could be the bluefin tuna’s last hope. But will countries with a vested interest in the trade be prepared to vote for a ban? The pessimist in me says, not likely.

Bluefin tuna on sale in Tsukiji Market, Tokyo. Photo by Sanctu

Also on the agenda at the CITES meeting will be a group of sharks that conservationists fear are being driven towards extinction by demand for their meat and most notably their fins, to be made into the Asian delicacy sharks fin soup. I’ve been working for the last 6 weeks assessing the proposals to have hammerheads, oceanic whitetips, spiny dogfish and porbeagle sharks join a trio of awesome sharks that already have trade restrictions – the basking sharks, whale sharks and great white sharks.

Hammerhead shark. Photo by gnuru

I’ll be blogging more about sharks and tuna this year, so watch this space.

Then, November will see another landmark UN meeting and with it another opportunity to make global deals that could help secure the future of the planet, this time at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

Back at the Rio Earth summit in 1992 nations pledged to put a halt to the loss of biodiversity. And they were going to do it by 2010.

Everyone knows that this has not happened – no where near it. We are barely even starting to understand how human actions are affecting biodiversity, let alone figure out ways of stopping extinction.

So this meeting will be a tricky one, but could be vital if a way forward for global action against extinction is to be found.

But ultimately what I hope this coming year will do is help people appreciate why biodiversity matters, just like many people in 2009 began to realise why climate change matters.

The link between biodiversity loss and our own lives may not be as obvious as the threats from climate change, but there are so many ways in which we depend on healthy, diverse, functioning ecosystems. And that’s something else I’ll be writing about more this year.

For now, Happy New Year to you all. May 2010 be full of rare and beautiful things for us all.

As their name suggests, Goliath Groupers are really very big indeed. The largest known have been around 2.5m long, or 8 feet.

They are undeniably fully-fledged members of the marine megafauna.

But these big fish are in big trouble and they need your help.

Goliath Grouper. Photo by pony 33406

Because it’s become more and more difficult to spot one of these giants, the fish formerly known as jewfish. Being so very huge made them an irresistible target for fishers. Over the last few decades goliath groupers have been fished so heavily from their reefy and rocky homes on both sides of the Atlantic, in the Caribbean and the eastern reaches of the Pacific Ocean, that they are now labelled as being Critically Endangered.

In days gone by, a common place to spot a goliath grouper was strung up on a quayside alongside a grinning recreational fisher. So many goliath groupers were caught by sport and commercial fishers that their populations became economically extinct: it made no sense to try and catch them if you wanted to make money.

Goliath grouper catch from 1950s Florida. Photo from Florida Keys Public Libraries

Goliath grouper catch from 1950s Florida. Photo from Florida Keys Public Libraries.

Good news is that since the 1990 it’s been illegal to catch goliath groupers in US waters. And a fishing ban on them has been in place across the Caribbean since 1993. As a result, populations of these enormous fish have been slowly recovering.

The problem is they have apparently been recovering a bit too well for some people’s liking. There is growing pressure to lift the fishing ban in Florida, one of the only places where scuba divers have a good chance of meeting these kings of the reef. Do we really want to relive a time when killing such magnificent fish was all the rage? Couldn’t we move on from that?

In early December the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will decide on whether to stick to the goliath grouper fishing ban or open these beasts up once again to human exploitation.

The Floridian scuba diving and conservation community are lobbying politicians hard in the hope they will hear a unified and loud voice of reason. An online petition to keep the fishing ban is gathering support and they hope to reach at least 1000 signatures.

So, do your bit and sign up. Because wouldn’t it be a crying shame if these spectacular beasts were once again allowed to be caught to make a bit of money or just for the fun of it.

Goliath grouper catch. Photo from Florida Keys Public Libraries.

It’s been well proven that big fish like the goliath grouper are far more vulnerable to extinction than smaller fish. In a twist of nature, it’s the bigger animals that grow more slowly and take longer to reach maturity (5 or 6 years for goliath groupers). So, if someone asks you to take a guess at which species are most at risk, whether they live in the sea, on land, or in freshwater, all you need do is pick out the biggest ones and you won’t go wrong.

In detail:

• Goliath groupers or jewfish (Epinephelus itajara) can live for nearly 40 years if we let them.
• They commonly grow to 1.5m from head to tail.
• Young goliath groupers live in mangrove forests, giving us yet another vital reason to care about and protect these habitats that are so often overlooked and cleared away.

Saturday was International Day of Climate Action run by 350.org

I meant to publish this post on Saturday – but somehow I must have hit ‘Save Draft’ instead of ‘Publish’! whoops!  Sorry about that. But it’s still not too late to get involved in the campaign.

This is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis, the solutions, as 350.org says “that science and justice demand”.

The focus of the campaign is on the number 350, because that is becoming widely considered as the “safe upper limit” for the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere (in parts per million or ppm). Keep CO2 levels beyond that and we are really in trouble.

As I wrote about a few weeks ago, if we don’t get levels down to 350 ppm we may as well wave goodbye to coral reefs and all the benefits – economic and otherwise – they provide. And given that currently the atmosphere holds around 387 ppm, there is a massive task ahead.

But we have to do something because this matters way too much.

And with the climate talks coming up in Copenhagen in December, now is the time for the international community to stand up and make themselves heard. Well, that’s what SAturday was all about anyway.

But don’t just let me go on about it. Check out the 350.org website and see what’s going on, pledge your support and spread the word.

In a USA Today blog, Desmond Tutu said this week that the 350 campaign is “the same kind of coalition that helped make the word “apartheid” known around the world. In South Africa, we showed that if we act on the side of justice, we have the power to turn tides. Worldwide, we have a chance to start turning the tide of climate change with just such a concerted effort today.”

My tiny contribution to today are these seahorses… 350 of them.

Because if CO2 levels keep on rising, then we may well see the last of the coral reefs (at least on a time scale with any meaning to humanity) and with them we would see the disappearance of many of the world’s seahorse species (and the million upon million of other species they share the reefs with).

Now we wouldn’t want that, would we?

350 seahorses. my tiny contribution to International day of Climate Action, October 24th 2009

Happy International day of Climate Action everyone. Let’s all take some action, shall we?

This week is European Shark Week run by the Shark Alliance.

The idea is to spread the word about the many species of shark, ray and chimera that live in European waters, and highlight the problems they are all facing.

The Save Our Seas Foundation is running a great blog throughout the week. Offerings over the weekend include the announcement by three major european supermarkets that they plan to stock only shark products from non-threatened species. It’s a step in the right direction, but how about not selling any sharks at all?

Shark fins without the bodies they came from. Jessica King/Marine Photobank.

Shark Week has just begun and already there is one piece of encouraging news for European sharks.

It’s been announced that shark finning will be affectively banned in the UK. The plan is to close a loophole in existing legislation by no-longer giving fishermen permits to bring back fins that have been separated from sharks at sea. Hopefully this will turn the pressure up on Spain and Portugal, the two main shark-finning nations in Europe, to do something similar.

So, do look out for more European shark news this week.

And you can spread the word a little further yourself by sending out  Shark Week e-cards to your friends (check out the theme music!).

That’s it. We can’t ignore this any longer. Coral reefs are in big, serious trouble. Not the sort of trouble that might spoil a few nice dive sites. This is the sort of trouble that could spell the end of all the world’s reefs within the next century. Yes, it could mean no more reefs.

So be warned. This is an unapologetically dismal post.

But please don’t take my word for it. I urge you to find half an hour to watch Professor Charlie Veron, veteran coral reef scientist, give a lecture on the past and future of the world’s coral reefs. Is the Barrier Reef on Death Row?

Is the Great Barrier Reef on Death Row? ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies/Marine Photobank

J.E.N. Veron, known as Charlie, is undoubtedly the world’s most well-respected coral taxonomist and biogeographer. His three-volume Corals of the World sits behind me, reminding me of the days I’ve spent conducting underwater coral surveys.

But lately he has become increasingly worried that those books could become history books. Now he spends his time researching and lecturing about the future of coral reefs. In particular ocean acidification, the ‘great big gorilla in the cupboard that is waiting for us’ as he put it.

Dead coral and live starfish. Wolcott Henry 2005/Marine Photobank

In his lecture Veron tells us about how reef extinction has happened before. Five times in fact. Each time, corals under various guises were hit hard, but each time reefs reinvented themselves and came back.

So why is this 6th extinction any different? I actually think he nails that question most eloquently in his recent paper The coral reef crisis.

Here, Veron and his co-authors succinctly explain that the rate of current (and near future) climate change is way faster than it ever has been in the past. This leaves little hope that corals will be able to adapt their way out of trouble. Even if they could, like they have in past, it would take thousands to millions of years for them to recover: that’s hardly relevant on a human time scale.

‘The difference is that this time humanity will have been the cause and also one of the species to suffer,’ they write.

Synergism

In both his lecture and paper, Veron explains the critical importance of multiple threats. Reefs today face a scrimmage of problems, not just rising sea levels, but rising acidification, rising temperatures triggering mass coral bleaching events, overfishing, poor water quality and bigger, more frequent storms (watch his lecture for more details on all of these).

Scientists have – until now – mostly studied how reefs deal with each of these issues in turn. But what happens when they all come along together?

Synergism. The combined effect will almost certainly be greater than the sum of the separate effects.

Bleached and healthy coral. (c) Wolcott Henry 2005/Marine Photobank

It’s an idea I wrote about in my masters thesis nearly a decade ago. Back then, there were hardly any studies focussing on how different stresses launch a combined assault on reefs. Now it’s something that people are having to think about more and more.

time to give up on reefs?

Veron doesn’t shirk his responsibility of delivering some really bad news. He outlines a series of increasingly spine-chilling scenarios. As CO2 levels ramp up from the current 387 ppm (parts per million in the atmsophere), first to 400, then 500 and 600, reefs will crumble and disappear.

By the time we reach 600 there won’t be any reefs left. And that could happen within 100 years.

Telling the story through the eyes of a moray eel he met on a recent dive on the Great Barrier Reef did little to take the edge off his apocalyptic message.

Unless we deal with carbon emissions, reefs are on their way out.

‘We must approach this as reality, not as a fairy tale’ Veron entreats.

That’s a message that has to get through at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December. If we could somehow manage to keep CO2 levels below 350 ppm, there is a chance reefs will survive.

So, please. Go make yourself a cup of tea and watch Charlie’s talk. And join the campain to save the world’s coral reefs. And when December comes round, you might like to listen in to what’s going on in Copenhagen.

Because this really matters.

p.s. why coral reefs matter

You may already know this, but just in case here are a few of the many reasons why reefs matter:

• They cover just 0.2% of the world’s marine environment and yet are home to around one third of all marine species.
• Approximately 500 million people live within 100km of a coral reef, many of them relying on reefs for food and income.
• Intact reefs protect coastlines.
• Reefs globally generate something like 170-375 billion dollars of income every year, in terms of food, tourism etc. That’s really just a good guess, and doesn’t count all the services that reefs provide that we can’t imagine replacing.

In detail

• The lecture: Charlie Veron gave this talk in July this year at the Royal Society, introduced by Sir David Attenborough.
• The paper: The coral reef crisis: The critical importance of <350 ppm CO2

Could this be the end of the Chinese paddlefish?

This extraordinary aquatic giant wasn’t seen once during an intensive 3-year survey of the upper Yangtze River in China.

The Chinese paddlefish. A fish no more?

The last official reported sighting of the Chinese paddlefish was back in 2003. So, have they all gone now?

This bizarre species looks (or at least it did) a lot like a sawfish (a close relative of sharks and rays) with a huge long saw-like snout, or rostrum.

Chinese paddlefish have been measured at 3m long, while unconfirmed reports claim a 7m (22 feet) specimen weighing half a ton was found (that’s longer than three very tall men lying head to foot). Maybe they do grow that big, maybe they don’t. We may never know.

Because sadly we may never know much about Chinese paddlefish. They remain tremendously illusive with very few details uncovered about their habits. But it is thought that they probably spent time both in the sea as well as in rivers.

Overfishing and habitat destruction are named as the main culprits behind the demise of the Chinese paddlefish.

There was a possible sighting reported in Chinese newspapers earlier this year. But even so, with a team of keen-eyed scientists making every effort to find one – and failing – in the stretch of river they were most likely to hang out in, there is little doubt that there are hardly any of these magnificent beasts left in the wild.

If there are a few still hiding from us, there can’t be many.

And there aren’t even any in captivity.

What to do? Wave farewell?

Does this make the Chinese paddlefish the next on the list of species we have witnessed vanish, hot on the heals of the its former river-mate the Yangtze River dolphin?

If so, is there really anything we can do about it?

Scientists are talking about trying breeding programs, even artificial parthenogenesis. If only they could find a single, live female. Decide for yourself whether or not you think we should go to such extreme lengths to stop a single doomed species from being pushed over the edge.

A tiny part of me clutches onto a sliver of hope that there will still be Chinese paddlefish in the world in years to come. Just like I refuse to believe that I will one day wake up to the news that there are no more tigers or black rhinos or Philippine mahogany trees or any of the other critically endangered species there are.

But I’m afraid the pessimist in me seems to be winning on this one. I can’t really see how there is much chance the Chinese paddlefish will be with us for much longer, if indeed there are any out there right now. There are so many pressures crashing down on these fish – and many others species that live in the Yangtze. I just think we might be too late.

Flip side?

Is there a positive side to look on? Well, maybe.

While there may be not much hope for this particular species, I think we all need to reflect deeply on the possibility of another species lost. Stand (in your mind) on the banks of the River Yangtze, peer into the murky waters, and bid farewell to another creature gone, another fabulous product of natural selection.

It seems we never learn from our mistakes. But perhaps the story of the Chinese paddlefish could be one more reason to change that.

Because we’ve really got the stop this from happening. And not just for individual, charismatic species that we can admire and relate to, but for all creatures, great and small (as we used to sing in primary school assemblies), the species we may never meet and those we rely on in ways we may never know.

2010 is the year we said we’d reverse the tide of species loss. We’ve obviously not quite managed that yet. But I don’t think it’s time to give up.

In Detail:

• The Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) is one of only two known paddlefish, the sole members of the family Polyodontidae. The other species, the Mississippi paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) lives, as you might imagine, in rivers of southern United States.
• Photo of a tiny juvenile Chinese paddlefish.
• Link to paper: Zhang et al 2009.