Science and Nature

(CNS): Following a recent rescue of a hawksbill turtle which became tangled in discarded fishing line at the Sundivers “Turtle Reef” dive site in West Bay, the Department of Environment (DoE) is asking those out on the water to take more care with their fishing lines and nets. Entangled turtles usually die from injuries caused by loops of line tightening around their flippers—or drown when they cannot break lines to reach the surface. Although in the most recent case DoE divers were able to save the turtle, the department says entanglement in lost fishing line is one of the leading causes of severe injury and death for turtles. (Picture Grahman Harris).

(CNS): The QE II Botanic Park in Frank Sound was offering thanks recently to a local donor who has given over $6,000 to its new orchid garden. Park officials said the new garden will be unveiled at the forthcoming annual Orchid Show on 13 and 14 February, and it provides another avenue for the protection and conservation of Cayman’s native orchids, as well as a focal point for education. The new garden will consist of a boardwalk over the natural woodland area that is home to Cayman’s extensive orchid collection, including nine of the 26 species known to be native to the Cayman Islands. (Photo - Cayman’s ghost orchid)

(CNS): Despite the fact that the Department of the Environment is working closely with the RCIPS Marine Unit to enforce the grouper fishing ban in the spawning areas around the Cayman Islands, there are still a number of people illegally catching the endangered fish. DoE Director Gina Ebanks-Petrie warned that the more illegal fishing that takes place, the greater the impact on the aggregation. Ebanks-Petrie said that, at the moment, the ban on fishing grouper in designated spawning areas remains in place until 1 January 2012.

(MSNBC): NASA's latest sky-mapping space telescope has found an asteroid never-before-seen from Earth, the first of hundreds of new objects the telescope is expected to find. The near-Earth object, designated 2010 AB78, was discovered by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer  WISE, on Jan. 12. The space rock doesn't appear to pose any threat to Earth, NASA officials said. Currently about  98 million miles (158 million km) from Earth the asteroid has an estimated diameter of 0.6 miles (I km). The rock comes as close to the sun as Earth does, but because it circles the sun in an elliptical orbit tilted with respect to the Earth's orbital plane, the asteroid isn't thought to come near enough to our planet to pose a hazard.

(CNS): Brian Jones, the  Professor of Geology at the University of Alberta who has been doing research on the geology of the Cayman Islands since 1981, has told CNS that there are numerous  caves and caverns on the Cayman Islands, both above and below sea level, that can account for the sinkhole that appeared in the wake of the recent earthquake. Although Cayman is in an area susceptible to earth tremors, Professor Jones also says that in general the seismic events affecting the islands are usually very deep and, coupled with our strong infrastructure the islands, are less likely to suffer major damage.

(BBC): It is pitch black, icy cold and the pressure is phenomenal. The deepest parts of the ocean are some of the least hospitable places on Earth - yet footage from recent expeditions reveals that life in the oceanic trenches is thriving. many trenches contain an abundant food supply, especially those close to the coast. Organic matter drifts into the depressions, sinking to the bottom, contained by the steep sides. But while scientists knew that fauna could survive here - and early trawling expeditions gave some idea of a trench's biology - a broader picture of deep-sea life has only emerged more recently.

(CNS): The Blue Iguana Recovery Programme (BIRP) has been given a $646,000 (€550,000) by the European Union to help with the goal of returning a viable population of the critically endangered species to the wild. According to government information services, the grant from the EU was brokered through the Cabinet Office and made to the National Trust’s blue iguana project as part of a regional EU programme to help countries sustainably manage their protected areas. EU Representative Marlene Lamonth, who toured the blue iguana captive breeding site during the EU delegation’s visit earlier this month, met with BIRP Director, Fred Burton, to discuss key aspects of the project.

(CNS): Award-winning photographers, William and Donna Goodwin are hoping to inspire Cayman’s young people about their own marine environment. The husband and wife team have donated five DVDs to the Education Ministry containing more than 800 images and video clips of marine life and underwater scenery taken just off the coast of Cayman Brac. The couple said with the pressures of climate change and man’s impact on the environment, the marine world was changing rapidly and they want to enthuse young Caymanians to understand what they have beneath the waves before it is all lost.

(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution): The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that triggered disastrous destruction and mounting death tolls in Haiti this week occurred in a highly complex tangle of tectonic faults near the intersection of the Caribbean and North American crustal plates, according to a quake expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) who has studied faults in the region and throughout the world. Jian Lin (left), a WHOI senior scientist in geology and geophysics, said that even though the quake was “large but not huge,” there were three factors that made it particularly devastating: First, it was centered just 10 miles southwest of the capital city, Port au Prince.

(CNS): Wilderness Farm in East End, formerly home to the prison agricultural facility, has been earmarked as the site for the new Doppler weather radar station planned for Cayman. The prison farm was closed last year following the discovery of the body of Sabrina Schirn nearby and the subsequent arrest of an inmate on the farm detail for her murder. Revealed as a security risk in a special government report and more so with the mounting revelations in the current trial of Randy Martin for Schirn’s killing, the farm could now be transformed to play a crucial part in the Caribbean’s early warning weather system.

(CNS): Despite the chilly temperatures in the Cayman Islands over the last few days, the mercury has still not reached record lows. Even though unofficial weather stations were registering daytime temperatures lower than 61°F on Monday, it was still some way from the country’s lowest official temperature. “The record coldest temperature at the Owen Roberts International Airport is 52° F measured in February 1968,” said Chief Meteorologist John Tibbetts, who said that the official measuring and recording of temperatures started in 1962.

(BBC): Coral reefs give rise to many more new species than other tropical marine habitats, according to a new study. Scientists used fossil records stretching back 540 million years to work out the evolution rate at reefs. They report in the journal Science that new species originate 50% faster in coral reefs than in other habitats. The team says its findings show that the loss of these evolution hotspots could mean "losing an opportunity to create new species" in the future. Coral reefs harbour a huge number of marine species - they are often likened to rainforests in terms of their biodiversity.

(CNS): Despite the trials and tribulations of Portsmouth Football Club its new mascot ‘Pompey’ the blue iguana can sleep easy as the DoT says it has been assured by the club’s commercial director that they are still backing their new lizard friend all the way. The ongoing financial troubles of the club reached a new high recently when HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) applied for a winding up petition against the struggling premier league side. The club’s sponsorship of one of Cayman’s own ‘blues’ came about following a visit to the islands by the club's director of operations, Lucius Peart.

(CNS):  The battle to preserve the spawning grounds for Cayman’s Nasaau Grouper depends on the work of DoE underwater research which needs specialized equipment. Using conventional dive equipment researchers are limited in the amount of time they can spend at the depths where these fish spawn restricting the study of what is thought to be an ecological and economic corner stone of Caribbean coral reefs. However, a number of dive firms have come together to donate re-breather equipment that the DoE staff needs to carry out their essential work. (Photo by Jason Washington.)

(CNS):  A UK football club has officially sponsored one of the Cayman Islands Blue Iguanas.  Portsmouth Football Club is known both as “The Blues” and “Pompey”, and in honour of their new alliance, the five-foot female blue has been renamed "Pompey". The sponsorship came about following a recent visit to Cayman by the club's director of operations, Lucius Peart, who was completely taken by her story. Pompey was rescued from the roadside and found to be one of only a handfull of Blue Iguana’s on Grand Cayman that had survived in the wild and is now adding her genes to boost the limited pool at the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme.