67 times around - and once there was a world's fair

Oceans in Peril


Monday, January 23, 2006; Page A14

THE BUSH administration remains in denial about climate change and sometimes treats environmental protection as an inconvenience. Yet there was reason to hope, when the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy issued its report more than a year ago, that President Bush would seize the issue of the dire threat to this country's coastal waters. The commission was the second major task force in recent years to detail the rapidly deteriorating ecology of America's oceans. All serious looks at the issue have reached similar conclusions: that current human use of oceans is unsustainable and that without dramatic changes in the ways the waters are exploited and enjoyed, the seas will die out. The magnitude of the crisis offers an opportunity for the president to lead on a preeminent environmental issue.

So far, it is an opportunity Mr. Bush has largely passed up. To be sure, there have been some constructive changes. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is pushing legislation to improve fisheries management. Regional fisheries managers have acted to protect deep sea corals. And, explains James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Policy, the president has moved to improve coordination on ocean-related policy by the many agencies of government that have jurisdiction over aspects of the problem, a key commission concern. The administration is developing a long-term research plan and is planning to protect a large area around some Hawaiian islands as a marine sanctuary. All of this is promising -- though a big test will come when the administration has to propose funding for oceans research in its coming budget.

Still, there is little sense of urgency about a problem the oceans commission described in stark terms: Americans, the report warns, are "starting to love our oceans to death." If that is to be averted, "reform needs to start now, while it is still possible to reverse distressing declines." Mr. Connaughton says Mr. Bush is deeply committed to the problem. Yet the president himself does not talk about it.

Tackling this meaningfully is going to require regulatory initiatives across a range of areas: pollution, runoff, development, environmentally harmful farming practices and others, requiring substantial sums. None of this is possible without sustained and vocal presidential leadership. Ecosystems are at a tipping point, verging on a collapse from which they won't recover. The stakes are as immense as the oceans, which will not wait for the White House to gear up to save them.

It's typically the males of a given species that seem to figure most prominently in the stupid-behavior department - the militant, mayhem-causing water striders and sticklebacks, for example, or fierce male Western bluebirds, who spend so much time defending nests or courting females that they completely neglect their own offspring. But perhaps the most glaring instance of dumb-animal doings is to be found in the female North American fishing spider. Studies have shown that a good number of female fishing spiders are from a very early age highly driven and effective hunters. It is a trait that serves them well most of their lives, particularly in lean times, but it wholly backfires during mating season, when these females can't keep themselves from eating prospective suitors.

"Now why would anybody, why would any organism do that?" asked Sih. "If you look at these female spiders just in the context of mating behavior, you would conclude that they're doing something mighty stupid here. But their behavioral type is very good for them for much of their life growing up in a highly competitive world where food is often scarce. They're so geared up, though, that when mating season comes around, they really mess up. And experiments have shown that even if they're given a reasonable amount of food, they'll still behave this way."

For Sih, the answer seems to be that our personality is a manifestation of a complex interplay between genetic inheritance and environment and early-life experience. Bold people, for example, are both naturally disposed to boldness and, further, choose to be bold, becoming ever better at it, building from an early age a mountain of abilities and tendencies that become a personality. It might happen, as well, that an inherently shy person is induced by an early-life experience to venture away from his or her natural disposition and cultivate a bold personality. But whether a person ends up building and climbing a shy or a bold mountain, it may become increasingly difficult to come back down and build another one.

Alison Bell has done related experiments with sticklebacks. It has long been clear to researchers that fish that have lived for many generations in the proximity of dangerous predators are less bold and less aggressive than animals that have lived relatively risk-free. What Bell discovered is that those cautious tendencies outlast the presence of risk, even by a generation. When she moved sticklebacks who had always lived in a high-risk environment into a low-risk environment, she found that not only did they retain their cautious tendencies, but so did their offspring. Even fish raised from birth in a low-risk environment behave more fearfully if raised by a particularly vigilant father from a high-risk background.

What Bell discovered is that those cautious tendencies outlast the presence of risk, even by a generation. When she moved sticklebacks who had always lived in a high-risk environment into a low-risk environment, she found that not only did they retain their cautious tendencies, but so did their offspring. Even fish raised from birth in a low-risk environment behave more fearfully if raised by a particularly vigilant father from a high-risk background