...Harry Opfar Research Essay Viability of Marine Biology as a Major When deciding on a major for my college education, I had to find a field both in demand and it had to be a field I would like to spend the rest of my life in. I have always had a love of the animals in sea and several years ago had an opportunity to go to Sea World in San Diego. Recalling this trip and the recollection of seeing the dolphins and whales perform actually helped me make the decision to pursue a career in Marine Biology as a marine biologist. That brought me to the essence of this essay. How much education is required and does the marine biology field offer ample job opportunities and is there plenty of growth for future jobs? Also need to look at where those jobs are available, where I might have to move to. So I will first look at the education needed and the marine biology programs. I will then evaluate the job market now and in the future of this niche field. I will also exam the pay within this field and find out how the pay is derived as my research has shown that much of the money in this field of study originates different sources than a regular paycheck. There are several aspects to getting an education in marine biology. One need to look at the classes required and what schools are available, as well as where the best schools are located. A person majoring in the marine biology field needs to plan on taking many different types of animal biology and physiology classes. ...
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...Fisheries Management of Coastal Florida Danny W. Lyles COMM/215 May 7, 2012 David Mumford Abstract This paper is intended to evaluate the success or failure of the fisheries management regarding Red Drum or Sciaenops ocellatus in the coastal Florida area of the United States. The Red Drum, or the common name “Redfish”, is a popular sport fish among anglers due to its reputation as a formidable adversary, and the value of it on the market for table fare. The advent of blackened recipes from the bayous of the southeast has also increased its popularity. Red Drum Fisheries Management of Coastal Florida The Red Drum inhabits inshore, near shore, and offshore waters throughout the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The adults spawn in rivers, bayous, and tidal areas and the fry will reside there for up to four years. This species can reach lengths of forty five inches and weigh as much as fifty pounds. Spawning is triggered by cooling waters and a decrease in daylight hours associated with late summer and fall. In 1989, the Red Drum was considered overfished in large part due to the fishing pressure placed on the species by recipes of “Blackened Redfish” introduced in Louisiana Cajun style restaurants and the chef’s that enjoyed success from the new menu item. In an attempt to control and regulate the harvesting of the species, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) instituted a slot limit of eighteen to twenty – seven inches with a bag limit...
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...Abstract The diversification of human induced disturbances upon natural ecosystems has contributed to wildlife habitat fragmentation which has been a serious threat to the survival of natural populations. Possible factors contributing to this decline include changes in food, loss of genetic variation, cover availability, evolution of predation, microclimatic effect, and lack of recolonization following extinctions. Habitat loss and fragmentation are processes that separate small populations, which have higher extinction rates that may lead to a reduction in biological diversity. Recent dramatic declines in forest management have brought some undesirable consequences for forest health and wildlife (Jack Ward, T. (n.d). Standing back and letting nature take its course has become increasingly prevalent. Unfortunately, while appealing as this sounds, this is not tenable in the long-term as it will not protect forests, retain biodiversity, and provide some wood products over time. We are increasingly depending on places beyond our borders to provide our wood places with far less resources and knowledge about how to manage forests responsibly. By importing wood products, we export not only environmental consequences but jobs and dollars ( Jack Ward, T. (n.d). Conservation biology needs to reach out to a much broader community of academics and practitioners in fields as diverse as anthropology, history, political geography, and environmental psychology (Bernstein...
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...Wildlife Conservation Efforts in India Geography project [Type the abstract of the document here. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document. Type the abstract of the document here. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document.] 2012 Nishant Aishwarya Roll Number - 26 Introduction Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, forests, rain forests, plains, grasslands, and other areas including the most developed urban sites, all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human factors, most scientists agree that wildlife around the world is impacted by human activities. Humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways including the legal, social, and moral sense. This has been a reason for debate throughout recorded history. Religions have often declared certain animals to be sacred, and in modern times concern for the natural environment has provoked activists to protest the exploitation of wildlife for human benefit or entertainment. Literature has also made use of the traditional human separation from wildlife. Foods, Pets, Traditional Medicine:...
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...wolves should be shot on site. How could you argue with the people most directly affected by the re-introduction of wolves into their area? When your livelihood is constantly threatened by the predators, it drives people to extremes. In our initial settling of this country we drove the other predators (mainly Native American and wolves) from their lands; forcing them to remote outskirts. We nearly killed the wolf off in our drive to seize this vast territory and everything in it. By doing that we threw off nature’s food chain, which caused a ripple effect among other animals and plants directly affected by the wolf. By re-introducing the wolf to its once natural territory, are we trying to right an injustice done by our ancestors long ago? Research has shown that wolves impact society through its reputation as killer of livestock, important link in the eco-system, and pawn in the ongoing debates between Government and Conservationist groups. There’s something spiritual about gazing into a wolf’s eyes. It touches your soul and it changes you. According to Lopez (1978) “It takes your stare and turns it back on you. People suddenly want to explain the feelings that come over them when confronted with that stare-their fear, their hatred, their respect, their curiosity” (p4).You cannot deny the power and strength that lies in that stare, although we share different physical forms, we can still aspire to the virtues of Wolves: Innocent victim or vicious killer? 3...
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...Human Population and Environmental Problems by PAUL R. EHRLICH, Ph.D.(Kansas) Professor of Biology and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, U.S.A. rather small number that are thought of as 'important' forms of wildlife—will have a dramatic negative feedback effect on the capacity of our planet to support human life. This is because, although politicians and laymen tend to focus attention on air pollution and water pollution as the most serious environmental problems, in fact the most devastating of all is the destruction of the life-support systems of our planet. These are the natural ecosystems that provide us with a series of public-service functions without which we cannot persist indefinitely on this Earth—such functions as maintaining the quality of the atmosphere, controlling roughly 99 % of the potential agricultural pests, recycling of our waste products, and many other services that we cannot perform for ourselves (Ehrlich et al., 1973). The third message which I would like to give you is that the time for research as a major approach to the world's problems is long past. If you are trapped in a forest, downwind from a forest fire, and it is raging towards you at ten or more kilometres per hour, you do not immediately convene a committee to study reforestation—you call for water. In human society, calling for water basically consists of promoting political action...
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...BIODIVERSITY Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life. This can refer to genetic variation, species variation, or ecosystem variation within an area, biome, or planet. Terrestrial biodiversity tends to be highest at low latitudes near the equator, which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest and in mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time but will be likely to slow in the future. Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions. One estimate is that less than 1-3% of the species that have existed on Earth are extinct. Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic eon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion—a period during which the majority of multi-cellular phyla first appeared. The next 400 million years included repeated, massive biodiversity losses classified as mass extinction events. The Carboniferous, rainforest collapse led to a great loss of plant and animal life. The Permian–Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago, was the worst; vertebrate recovery took 30 million years. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, occurred 65 million...
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...Deforestation of the Amazonian Rainforest Tiffani Swank GE150 Survey of the Sciences Erica Price/Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. to 12:24 p.m. Earth’s natural resources are what we are extracting from the earth. Industries, which excavate the earth’s resources, include forestry, oil extraction, and mining. Present-day society is based upon a vast consumption of non-replaceable minerals and fuels such as coal, oil and natural gasses. Other materials such as cotton, wool timber and produce, if utilized wisely can be replenished. Is the carbon dioxide level higher, due to massive amounts of forest being cut down and the levels of carbon dioxide left in the atmosphere higher? Therefore, my hypothesis is that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest leads, not only, to a reduction of the amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere, but also to an increased release of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The earth’s natural resources are there for all of us to use. We need the water, food, air, energy, medicines, warmth, shelter and minerals that the earth’s natural resources give us. Therefore, keeping us fed, comfortable, healthy and alive. If we use the resources carefully then they will last indefinitely. But if we use them wastefully and excessively, they will soon run out and all will suffer. The excessive waste is happening in our rainforest every minute of every day of...
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...SUSTAINABILITY Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In ecology the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. For humans, sustainability is the potential for long-term maintenance of well-being, which has ecological, economic, political and cultural dimensions. Sustainability requires the reconciliation of environmental, social equity and economic demands - also referred to as the "three pillars" of sustainability or (the 3 Es). Healthy ecosystems and environments are necessary to the survival and flourishing of humans and other organisms. There are a number of major ways of reducing negative human impact. The first of these is environmental management. This approach is based largely on information gained from earth science, environmental science and conservation biology. The second approach is management of human consumption of resources, which is based largely on information gained from economics. A third more recent approach adds cultural and political concerns into the sustainability matrix. Sustainability interfaces with economics through the social and environmental consequences of economic activity. Sustainability economics involves ecological economics where social aspects including cultural, health-related and monetary/financial aspects are integrated. Moving towards sustainability is also a social challenge that entails international...
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...(A Reaction Paper on a film “An Inconvenient Truth” by “Al Gore”) Earth is a very beautiful place every human being lives in. It is so beautiful that every details of it works perfectly fine in order for us to live in a very harmonious, lovely and peaceful way. But what if it is being destroyed by “US” who lives in it and make it suffer as much as it could to work perfectly for us in order to live in? Will it ever survive? Will it keep giving us all the things that we need? Will we ever make a move to rescue it and bring it back to where it should always be? These are some questions that rise up in my mind about global warming and its effect in human kind. Greenhouse effect The "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat. These gases let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the glass walls of a greenhouse. First, sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and then radiates back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, “greenhouse” gases trap some of this heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped. This greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it, the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. Causes of Global Warming Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are drying, and wildlife is scrambling...
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...1) a) Resource used I. Exotic plant management teams II. Integrated pests management b) Number of results * Over 6,500 non-native invasive species have been documented on park lands * More than 650 invasive species have been found in marine parks c) Number of full text results Invasive species include all taxa of organisms, ranging from microscopic insects to 100 lb sheep. d) 70% of documented invasive species on park lands are invasive plant species around 5% of park lands are dominated by invasive plants. 2) Texas Today: A Sea of the Wrong Grasses “I In the ’60s when I bought this place and moved Here from Houston, we had so many quail that You didn’t even need a bird dog to find them,” Mused my 85-year-old hill country neighbour. “Then,” he Paused, his satirical glance drifting toward the mantle to A dust-covered 20-gauge double-barrelled shotgun and a Faded John Cowan Print of a quail hunt on a shin oak Mountaintop of the Texas hill country, “by the early ’80s, The quail were gone.” “Well,” I interjected in a smug biologist’s refrain, “what Changed?” “Hell, I don’t know, but just before that time everybody Planted all the maize fields to coastal (Bermuda grass), and That damn KR bluestem came in from the highway when They redid it.” “I’ll bet that’s part of it,” added the old man. What ran through agronomist Nick Diaz’s mind on a Hot, dry Gulf Coast summer day in 1939, when he first laid Eyes on the...
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...Name: C.T.B. Assignment: “Our Stolen Future” Date: 12/03/2012 The Book “Our Stolen Future” is considered to be a sequel of “Silent Spring“, a Rachel’s Carson classic work, a clarion call to protect the American public from manmade synthetic pesticides that cause genetic mutations and cancer. Carson not only described how persistent chemicals were contaminating the natural world, she documented how those chemicals where accumulated into our bodies. Since then, studies of human breast milk and body fat have confirmed the extent of our exposure. Human beings in such remote locations as Canada’s far northern Baffin Island now carry traces of persistent chemicals in their bodies, including notorious compounds as PCBs, DDT and dioxin. Even worse, in the womb and through breast milk, mothers pass this chemical legacy on to the next generation. “Our Stolen Future”, the scientific discovery of Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers, takes up where Carson left off and reviews a large and growing body of scientific evidence, linking synthetic chemicals to aberrant sexual development and behavioral and reproductive problems, such as low sperm counts, infertility, genital deformities, hormonally triggered human cancers, like those of breast and prostate gland, neurological disorders in children such as hyperactivity and deficits in attention. The quality of men's sperm declined steadily in the early years of the 21st century until hardly anyone could reproduce in...
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...Jarrett Rowland English 108 “Research Essay 2 RD” MWSU-Dr. Heard 15 November 2010 Missouri Mountain Lions Return: Can the State Support A Breeding Population? One hot wildlife question being debated in coffee shops, sporting goods stores, and Internet chat sites across Missouri goes something like this: “Do we have mountain lions here or not?” The short answer is yes, sometimes. But we have far fewer than rumors would lead you to believe. What we do not have is any evidence of a viable, breeding population of mountain lions in Missouri. As a result, the Missouri Department of Conservation has changed the state classification of the species from endangered to extirpated. An extirpated species is one that is considered extinct as a viable breeding population from a portion of its historical range. The Conservation Commission has determined that, based on considerations of human safety and risk to livestock, it is undesirable to have a breeding population of mountain lions in Missouri. Therefore, the Department of Conservation will not encourage the species to reestablish itself in the state. Despite rumors, the Department has never stocked mountain lions and will not do so in the future. Although mountain lions, sometimes called cougars, pumas, panthers or catamounts, were common in Missouri and elsewhere in the Midwest prior to European settlement, they were eradicated during the 19th century. As the countryside was settled and developed, the large predators were shot....
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...energy adviser Carol Browner said on Sunday. "There could be oil coming up 'til August." Browner told CBS's "Face The Nation," "We are prepared for the worst." Louisiana, the nearest state to BP's gushing undersea well that is 42 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, has been the most impacted by the spill so far. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said this week that more than 100 miles of Louisiana's 400-mile coast had so far been impacted by the spilled oil. State officials have reported sheets of oil soiling wetlands and seeping into marine and bird nurseries, leaving a stain of sticky crude on cane that binds the marshes together. Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, saw dying cane and "no life" in parts of Pass-a-Loutre wildlife refuge. "Oil debris", in the form of tar balls and surface "sheen", has also been reported coming ashore since the April 20 accident in outlying parts of coastal Mississippi and Alabama. In the week of May 17, Coast Guard officials found tar balls on some beaches in the Florida Keys, raising fears that the so-called Loop Current that runs from the Gulf of Mexico through the Florida Straits may have already brought oil from the spill far to the southeast. But laboratory tests subsequently showed the tar balls were not from the BP spill. FISHERIES The U.S. government has declared a "fishery disaster" in the seafood-producing states of...
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...community, population, or species (Govoni, 2005). There are many different sectors of fisheries to study. For example, abundance and distribution of different fishes, human impact, and the study of the physical processes are difference sectors. This paper will focus on human impacts on commonly fished populations in the Puget Sound. Human impact includes climate change, ocean acidification, eutrophication, development of coastal areas, and commercial, traditional, recreational, and farm fishing. Some critical types of fishes for any harvestable and healthy marine ecosystem are predator, forage, demersal, and farmed fish. Approximately 67% of the population of Washington State lives on Puget Sound’s coast. Washington’s Office of Financial Management states that by 2020, 5.1 million people will live and work in the Puget Sound region. This volume of people will further urbanize the Puget Sound coastlines. This poses environmental challenges. Of the sound’s 2,500 miles of shoreline 750 miles of that is developed with artificial bulkheads and seawalls. Many issues in the recent past have come up. For example, loss of habitat, like salt marshes, eelgrass beds, and estuaries polluted storm water, streams, rivers, lakes, and threatened wildlife have all been issues in the last 125 years have been either damages or completely lost from human development according to The Department of Ecology of the State of Washington (Department of Ecology – State of Washington). Puget Sound is one of...
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