In this month’s Ocean Brief, we look at coral restoration, taking a French supermarket to court, and armour.
A reason for hope
Restoration is a tricky business. Stress, damage, and unsuitable conditions are among the troubles that have plagued many a restoration project, tipping them into eventual failure. This isn’t a reason to give up on restoration. After all, we still have a lot to learn, and failures can teach us many valuable lessons. Then there are those restoration projects like the red coral transplantation project in the Medes Islands that, after years, are showing positive results.
Red corals are targeted by poachers for jewellery. About ten years ago, corals seized from such poachers provided an opportunity to see what happens if these corals are transplanted to new areas. Researchers from the University of Barcelona and the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) planted the corals in the Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter Natural Park. This area didn’t seem to suffer from too much poaching, and climate change didn’t seem to be causing huge problems.
Ten years on, and not only did the corals survive, but they’ve started to rebuild the reef’s structure, and attracted other species. Whether the transplantation will eventually result in a fully restored, self-sustaining coral reef is still uncertain, but at least the signs so far are positive.
➡️ Read the open-access paper Active restoration of a long-lived octocoral drives rapid functional recovery in a temperate reef
Something to work on
Non-profits Bloom and Foodwatch France are taking one of France’s largest supermarket chains (and the 7th largest retailer in the world) to court.
Why?
“Despite its legal obligation of vigilance, Carrefour does not prohibit destructive fishing methods in its tuna supplies, has not adopted a maximum mercury limit sufficient to protect consumer health, and is unable to demonstrate that the canned food it sells is free from human rights abuses. These are serious failings. Carrefour must act, and we are calling on the courts to force it to do so.”
As the two organisations point out, Carrefour is subject to France’s Duty of Vigilance” law. This law means that Carrefour has an obligation to prevent harm to human health, human rights, and the environment in its activities and the activities of the suppliers it uses. In this case, those suppliers are tuna fisheries. Bloom and Foodwatch France contend that Carrefour hasn’t put in sufficient measures to ensure their canned tuna doesn’t contain high levels of mercury or warn consumers (particularly those who are pregnant or children) of the risks of consuming mercury-containing fish. They point out that the tuna is caught by fisheries using unsustainable practices and that they could do a lot more to ensure that they are sourcing tuna from fisheries that do not use forced labour, torture, debt bondage, or practice other human rights violations that are sadly not uncommon on tuna vessels.
This isn’t the first time Carrefour’s tuna practices have been called out. Back in November 2023, Bloom served Carrefour formal notice for failing the Duty of Vigilance Law. Apparently, Carrefour made some very vague promises. In April last year, Foodwatch France joined Bloom in serving a second notice.
"Almost two years after our first alerts, Carrefour's assessment is damning: while the company has generally kept to its five commitments, it has not raised its ambitions. Only one measure taken has had a concrete, albeit limited, impact: stopping the supply of overfished tuna from the Indian Ocean, which accounts for 30% of its European supply. For the rest, the consultation of stakeholders, the publication of a charter and a report are empty shells, with no real transformative power. This falls far short of addressing all the critical issues with the tuna industry,” Bloom writes in its “Drowning the Catch” report.
➡️ Read the Bloom report “Drowning the Catch” (in partial English)
➡️ Lire le rapport Bloom « Carrefour : Le Cynisme »
Something we’ve learned
Did you know that sharks and rays have a special kind of armour? Unlike most fish, sharks and rays have cartilage skeletons (that’s the soft bit in between your nostrils), and these skeletons are covered in thousands of tiny, hard tiles called tesserae. These tiles form a protective shell, kind of like a built-in chainmail suit. ⛓️
Cool right? But that’s not the thing we’ve learned recently.
Until now, there was a mystery. What happens when the animal grows? Do they grow new tiles to fill in the gaps? Nope. Research from Binru Yang (Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces) and colleagues reveals that as the tiles grow as the shark or ray grows.
But wait, there’s more!
Bigger tiles grow faster than smaller ones. This means the skeleton remains fully protected without needing to rearrange any tiles or change their shapes. What’s particularly cool is that the growth of the tiles seems to adjust to the growth of the animal. The researchers think that they do this by sensing strain from the growing skeleton.
What else caught my eye
There’s a huge seagrass mapping project underway in Italy
Not ocean-specific, but Greenpeace has been ordered to pay US$660 million in damages (defamation, trespass, nuisance, and conspiracy) to the oil pipeline company Energy Transfer.
Those origin labels on the cod you buy? If you’re in Germany, France, Spain, or the UK, around 30% of those labels are wrong.
Robots for sustainability? Israeli scientists have developed a solar-powered underwater robot called SOUND that can roam autonomously for five days at a stretch, counting fish and communicating its findings back to observers onshore
Researchers have identified viruses in red tides for the first time.
34 million years ago, iguanas floated on rafts made of vegetation from North America across the Pacific to Fiji….possibly…