WEEK 1: Noaa and Nasa team up to investigate strongest El Niño on recordTwo agencies’ survey via land, sea and air will hopefully help improve weather forecasts and models that predict the longer-term impact of climate change

California’s Folsom Lake was nearly depleted by drought in 2015 and is now nearing capacity. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

America’s two leading climate science agencies are conducting an unprecedented survey via land, sea and air to investigate the current El Niño event and better understand its impact on weather systems that have brought both parched and soaking conditions to

North America.

The project, which will conclude in March, will deploy resources from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and Nasa to analyze one of the strongest El Niños on record. El Niño is a periodic phenomenon in which parts of the eastern Pacific warm, causing a ripple effect for weather around the world.Noaa’s Gulfstream IV research plane and its ship Ronald H Brown will collect data from the vast stretch of the Pacific ocean where El Niño climate events are spawned. Nasa will deploy its Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, which is able to fly at 65,000ft for 30 hours at a time.

It is hoped that instruments dropped from aircraft, supported by weather balloons, will help improve weather forecasts and models that predict the longer-term impact of climate change. The scientists will coordinate with researchers based in Honolulu and the Pacific island of Kiribati, around 1,340 miles south of Hawaii.“This has never been done with a major El Niño,” said Randall Dole, a senior scientist at Noaa’s Earth Sciences Research Lab.

“A field campaign ordinarily takes years to plan and execute. But we recognized what an important opportunity we had and everyone worked hard to pull this mission together.”

Noaa said it was conducting the rapid assessment due to heightened interest over El Niño’s impact upon California, which is in the midst of a historic four-year drought. El

Niño brought a slew of rain to California in December and January, prompting warnings to residents not to let their guard down in an unprecedented water conservation push.California’s Folsom Lake, which was nearly depleted by the drought, is nearing capacity; Lake Tahoe has been replenished by around 28bn gallons of water since December.

The precipitation has proved a boon for ski resort operators, with the water content of Sierra Nevada’s snowpack standing at 130% of normal for this time of year. Californians have also marveled at strange sightings of tropical fish, with several warm-water sea snakes washing up on the state’s beaches in recent months.Felicia Marcus, chair of California’s state water resources control board, said: “We are hopeful that we are turning the corner on this drought.”

However, 64% of the state remains in extreme drought conditions, with 11 of its 12 largest water reservoirs below historical capacity averages.While California has received some welcome rain, other parts of the US have experienced exceptionally dry and mild conditions. According to Noaa, only 5.7% of the Great Lakes’ surface was covered by ice as of 3 February, a huge drop on 2015, when 50% of the lakes’ surface was frozen.

The impact of El Niño has perhaps been most pernicious in Africa, with Zimbabwe declaring a state of emergency this week over a drought that has ravaged much of the south of the continent. An estimated 26% of Zimbabwe’s population, around 2.4 million, are now considered food insecure due to dying cattle and failed crops.

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. Which two agencies are teaming up? What area of science is each best known for?

2. What is El Nino?

3. Why is this mission so special?

4. What impact is El Nino having on California’s water supply?

5. What impact is El Nino having on wildlife?

6. Despite the water it brings to California, what hardships are the state still facing?

7. Where else has there been major impacts?

8. In at least 3 sentences, from your own experiences, how has El Nino affected our climate here this past winter.

Do you think this was a good study for the two agencies to team up for?

WEEK 2: What is the Sensible Seafood program?

Mission: To promote seafood choices that make sense for a healthy marine environment.The Sensible Seafood program helps consumers make sustainable seafood choices in stores and restaurants. Working in partnership with Monterey Bay Aquarium and an Advisory Panel of regional seafood experts, our Sensible Seafood program provides you with a handy reference pocket guide that rates the most popular seafood items as green, yellow or red. Green items are best choices for seafood that is abundant, well-managed, and fished or farmed in environmentally friendly ways. Yellow items are good alternatives to consider when best choices are not available, though there may be some concerns with how they are caught or farmed. You should avoid red items, at least for now, because they are over-fished or are caught or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment. Click here for more information on Monterey Bay's program. Because populations and harvesting methods change, our Sensible Seafood pocket guide and supporting information will be reviewed on a regular basis. The Sensible Seafood Advisory Panel meets annually to discuss new information on sustainable seafood sources, fisheries management, and species biology and revise the program’s recommendations, accordingly. Our program promotes seafood species that are grown in, or harvested from, Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region. Click here for a listing of participating restaurants and partners.

What is sustainable seafood and why does it matter? Sustainable seafood comes from sources, either fished or farmed, that can continue to produce into the future without negatively affecting their populations or natural ecosystems. As consumers, we can be good stewards of the environment by making the right choices when we purchase our seafood. Sustainable seafood is Sensible Seafood, and that makes sense for a healthy marine environment.

How do we determine if seafood is sustainable? How is the species population doing? – This seems like an obvious question, but in

order to know if the seafood we are consuming is a good choice, we need to know about the life history of the species and if its population is abundant or disappearing. Some species easily reproduce in large numbers and grow to maturity very fast. Others, such as sharks, reproduce and mature more slowly. Understanding these factors is critical for good fisheries management. Abundant species from well managed fisheries make good seafood choices.

Where does the seafood come from? – Is the seafood from local sources, from other parts of the U.S, or imported? This is important because, like many other commodities, seafood can now be transported all over the globe. Seafood from local sources has the potential to be fresher and reduces the financial and environmental costs of long distance transport. Additionally, U.S. fisheries may be better managed than some foreign fisheries. These factors are important when considering where a seafood item might originate.

Is the seafood wild-caught, or is it farmed? – As seafood has become more popular, many species are now raised on farms, a process called aquaculture. In some cases, the wild stock of a species may be depleted, but there is a good supply from aquaculture, like catfish. In other cases, the farmed stock has been associated with problems and the wild-caught stock is the better choice, like some shrimp. Of course, most of our seafood choices still come mostly from wild-caught stocks.

How is the seafood harvested? – Are the fishing or aquaculture practices environmentally sound? To answer this question, we must understand fisheries and aquaculture techniques and how they are applied for harvesting different seafood species. Some fisheries techniques, like bottom trawling or dredging, have the potential to damage ocean bottom communities like corals. Others may have unintended catches of unwanted animals, called bycatch. Bycatch can include unwanted fishes and even sea turtles or marine mammals. Finally, poorly managed aquaculture operations can damage coastal ecosystems. Well managed fisheries and aquaculture, utilizing sound techniques to minimize bycatch and ecosystem impacts, provide the best seafood choices.

Sense-“Ability” How do we make sensible choices? Use the Sensible Seafood pocket guide – carry and consult the guide when making choices in the store, or when dining out. Click here to download the current Sensible Seafood pocket guide.Buy local sustainable seafood – not only does buying local usually ensure the freshest seafood, it also helps support an important segment of the local economy. Virginia’s seafood industry is the third-largest in the country, producing vast amounts of blue crabs, scallops, clams, croaker, spot, striped bass, and oysters that are shipped all over the world. Puchase sustainable seafood in your area, where you know and understand the harvesting or growing process, to think globally and act locally.Choose Sensible Seafood restaurant partners – a great way to make sensible choices is to visit one of our restaurant partners. These partners have agreed to serve seafood that is approved from our Sensible Seafood pocket guide. Partner restaurants will also provide information on sustainable seafood to their staff and patrons. The Sensible Seafood program has been endorsed by the Virginia Beach Restaurant Association.

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. What is the Sensible Seafood program?

2. Who has the Virginia Aquarium worked with to create the Sensible Seafood booklet?

3. What is sustainable seafood and why does it matter?

4. How do they determine if seafood is sustainable or not?

5. How do they want you to make sustainable choices.

6. Look at the list, are there any surprises?

7. Is there something you eat often that is on the avoid list?

8. Would this be easy for you to do?

9. In 2 sentences, do you think this is a good thing to have? Would you change your habits to only eat from the good

list?

WEEK 3: Aquatic predators affect carbon-storing plant life Species at top of freshwater food web can indirectly limit buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

By Janet Raloff

In ecosystems around the world, big guys eat littler guys, who in turn eat plants and other organisms at the base of the food web. A study now finds that removing top predators in freshwater environments allows their prey to flourish — and overgraze on plants and algae. The result of the missing plant matter: a 93 percent reduction in uptake and storage of carbon dioxide.

Several research teams have explored the importance of predators in protecting organisms that store carbon, notes ecologist James Estes of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new research. The new study is particularly strong, he says, because it demonstrates predators’ influence across a broad range of ecosystems. It therefore suggests “that the phenomenon may be fairly general.”

When pesticide runoff, overfishing or other human activities impact ecosystems, the first species to disappear are usually the bigger, top predators, notes freshwater ecologist John Richardson of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and coauthor of the study, published online February 17 in Nature Geoscience. The new work shows that predator losses have effects beyond the loss of biodiversity: “We can see climate effects as well,” he says. “We start seeing a higher flux of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

Study leader Trisha Atwood, then also at the University of British Columbia, and colleagues simulated three freshwater ecosystems outdoors to study the effects lower in the food web of predator loss at the top. They diverted water from streams near Vancouver into six channels they had constructed. Those channels accumulated critters and debris for about six weeks. To simulate ponds, Atwood’s team added water and sediment from ponds in Vancouver to 10 tanks, each about 2 meters across, and let them acquire organisms over 18 months. And to study the water-holding reservoirs among leaves of some plants, the ecologists went to Costa Rica and let the center well of 20 bromeliads — flowering plants found mainly in tropical regions — collect a little water and wildlife over a two-week period.

In half of the simulated ecosystems in each location, the researchers added top predators. For streams, that predator was the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a 10-centimeter-long fish that feeds on zooplankton in stream water. Stonefly larvae served as the predator in the simulated ponds. And the researchers introduced damselfly larvae to feed on zooplankton in the bromeliads.

At the end of these accommodation periods, the researchers made daylong measurements of carbon dioxide in water. Then they compared the values for environments with and without their top predators.

Adding the top predators decreased the amount of carbon dioxide in the water by an average of 93 percent, Atwood and her colleagues report. When predators are absent, the researchers think the unchecked zooplankton aggressively feed on plants and algae in each ecosystem. Those photosynthetic organisms, had they not gotten eaten, would have used and stored carbon, removing it from the water. That in turn would have pulled more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This predator effect on carbon dioxide has been reported in a few land-based environments, says David Butman of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. But, he adds, “there have been few studies to explicitly suggest stream and pond systems may perform similarly.” As such, he argues, the new study is important in unraveling

Climate helper

This freshwater stickleback can keep in check the tiny animals in stream water that graze on plants and algae. This predation allows those plants and

other organisms to collect and store carbon, rather than letting it escape into the atmosphere.

Nicole Bedford/UBC

the complexity of natural environments. However, he cautions, scientists must recognize that the results come from artificial manipulations of ecosystems “until similar systems are identified in the wild.”

Correction: This story was updated on February 20, 2013, to clarify that predators decreased carbon dioxide levels in the water by 93 percent on average.

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. What is the normal food web described in the beginning of the article?

2. If the plant matter is overeaten, what happens?

3. What are some causes of top predators disappearing?

4. In at least 4 sentences, describe the “pond” the research team assembled and what results they found.

5. Is there a direct link between top predators and gas levels in the ponds?

WEEK 4: Giant squid population is one big happy species Elusive deep ocean dwellers have low genetic diversity despite living around the globe

By Tina Hesman Saey

Giant squid are so mysterious — and so huge — that they inspired the legend of the kraken, a Scandinavian sea monster. Now, a genetic analysis adds to the creatures’ mystique.

DNA evidence suggests that all giant squid are part of one global interbreeding species instead of the three that scientists previously thought existed, an international group of scientists reports March 20 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The finding indicates the giant squid must migrate long distances to keep the breeding population well mixed.

The massive invertebrates also have some of the lowest genetic diversity of any species, the researchers report. That finding and the squid’s global interbreeding are nearly impossible for scientists to explain, says study coauthor M. Thomas Gilbert, a geneticist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. “We were very surprised by the results,” Gilbert says.

Most of what is known about giant squid comes from studying carcasses washed up on beaches, hauled in by fishermen or found in the bellies of sperm whales, the giant squid’s natural predator. Only last year did an expedition film a giant squid in its natural habitat. Researchers can describe the physical characteristics of the animals, which can grow to be about 18 meters long with parrotlike beaks, sucker-studded tentacles and eyes bigger than a person’s head. But not much is known about how the creatures live.

Gilbert and his team got a glimpse by examining mitochondrial DNA from 43 giant squid. Mitochondria are the energy factories inside cells. Scientists can trace a species’ life history through the DNA carried in mitochondria.

Researchers had thought there were three species of giant squid: one in the North Atlantic, a second in the southern oceans and a third smaller species in Japanese waters, says Clyde Roper, a marine biologist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. But the new analysis puts squid worldwide into what was thought to be the Atlantic Ocean-dwelling species, Architeuthis dux.

The genetic homogeneity suggests that somehow squid must travel long distances. A previous chemical analysis of the giant squid’s sharp beaks indicated that adults don’t migrate far. That means the juveniles and larvae must leave local waters and migrate around the world. Gilbert and his colleagues think “the young float around on the surface before they dive deep and become kingpins.” Surface currents could disperse the youngsters far and wide.

Roper calls the idea reasonable but notes that scientists have spotted only few young squid in the ocean’s upper reaches.

Generally, low diversity comes with small populations, but researchers think the giant squid population is huge, perhaps in the hundreds of millions. They only seem rare because they live in the deep sea, Roper says. “We don’t go where they go very often, and they don’t go where we go.”

Gilbert and his colleagues suggest that giant squid used to be rare but had a population explosion between 32,000 years and 730,000 years ago. The date spread is large because scientists don’t know how long giant squid take to reproduce or how frequently their DNA mutates.

Alternatively, the giant squid population might have been large in the past, but rapidly diminished — what scientists call a population bottleneck — and then grew again. “How can you bottleneck a species that lives globally?” Gilbert asks. “It’s a massive mystery.”

The researchers have found no trace of historical environmental conditions that might have caused a global bottleneck or rapid population expansion. Whaling may have dramatically reduced the number of sperm whales and enabled a giant squid boom. But whaling is far too recent to account for population growth starting 32,000 or more years ago. “It’s sort of a head-scratching thing,” Roper says of the population puzzle.

Gilbert says he hasn’t given up on the whaling hypothesis, but hopes that another solution may present itself. “What we’re really hoping is that somebody will read our paper and tell us, ‘You guys are crazy. This is the real answer.’”

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. What legend has the giant squid inspired?

2. What has DNA evidence uncovered about the giant squid?

3. How have scientists in the past studied these creatures?

4. What particular kind of DNA did the researchers use? What is it?

5. What was previously thought about the diversity of the giant squid?

6. What is their theory about giant squid migration?

7. What has happened to their population numbers in the past? When have their had growth and when have their

numbers receded?

8. What might have caused the bottlenecking and why is this theory questionable?

WEEK 5: Quest for Illegal Gain at the Sea Bottom Divides Fishing CommunitiesBy KARLA ZABLUDOVSKYDZILAM DE BRAVO, Mexico — Whispers of high-speed boat chases, harpoon battles on the open sea and divers who dived deep and never re-emerged come and go around here like an afternoon gale.

The fishermen eye strangers — and one another — with deep suspicion. “We’ll tear them apart,” said one, Jorge Luis Palma, squinting into the horizon at a boat he did not recognize.

What has wrapped this village in such hostility?

Sea cucumbers.

The spiky, sluglike marine animals are bottom feeders that are not even consumed in Mexico, but they are a highly prized delicacy half a world away, in China, setting off a maritime gold rush up and down the Yucatán Peninsula.

“There is tension,” said Manuel Sierra, one of the unofficial leaders of the fishermen here, “and now it has exploded.”

There has been an indefinite ban on harvesting sea cucumbers, but it has been loosely enforced, and the black market is thriving.

With a growing Chinese middle class, demand for sea cucumbers has soared, depleting populations in Asian and Pacific waters because of overfishing.

“Sea cucumber fever,” as residents call it, has taken a toll here, too. Of the estimated 20,000 tons available in 2009, only 1,900 tons are left, according to Felipe Cervera, secretary of rural development in Quintana Roo State.

The ban, meant to give the population time to replenish, came during seasonal bans on grouper, octopus and lobster. With few alternative sources of income, some fishermen are going after the sea cucumbers clandestinely, far from the coast and often in the middle of the night.

Once they have harvested and prepared the sea cucumbers, fishermen sell them to people they call “intermediaries,” who coordinate the overland journey to ports in northern Mexico. From there, where the authorities are less concerned with illegal sea products than with drug shipments, the sea cucumbers are shipped to China, where a single pound can sell for $300.

With the quest to meet demand and cash in — fishermen here can make more than $700 on a good day — have come tales of derring-do and danger.

Local residents have turned the Yucatán waters, only intermittently patrolled by the authorities, into a kind of Wild West, with communities claiming and guarding their slices of the marine pie. Coastal towns are growing increasingly hostile to one another as neighbors are divided between those who respect the bans and those who fish illegally. The growing divisions within and between these communities have already led to violence.

In late January, fishermen here in Dzilam de Bravo detained a boat from the nearby village of Progreso, brought it to shore and burned it. In cellphone video captured by a resident and shown on Milenio Television, a crowd can be heard cheering as bright flames engulf the small craft.

During a town meeting here this month, shouts filled a tense conference room in the municipal palace as community members fought over what to do about the growing problem of “outsiders” seeking local fishing rights.

The Mexican Navy has been deployed in Yucatán waters, though patrols are irregular. The government has set up at least 15 checkpoints along highways in the state to deter sea cucumber shipments and their traffickers.

In Celestún, a town 120 miles west of here, a group of fishermen recently flipped over a van belonging to the National Aquaculture and Fishing Commission, rumored to be transporting a confiscated sea cucumber shipment. Fishermen have grown increasingly hostile toward the authorities, who they believe are cracking down on certain groups while, for a fee, helping others traffic in the contraband product.

Those involved in this bonanza risk more than jail time.

Fishermen talk of violence at sea, though they never report it to the authorities. Some say the people involved in the trade have shot at competitors to scare them away. Others speak of rapid retreats prompted by the sudden appearance of rivals or the authorities, leaving poachers who were diving below stranded at sea. Indeed, untrained and under equipped, many fishermen here have put down their harpoons and become divers in record time.

They plunge to depths of more than 50 feet with little more than a mask, their undergarments, a rickety hose for oxygen and a net, harvesting the glacial-paced animals like farmers picking strawberries.

Often, they come up too quickly or suffer other diving injuries. In Celestún, an estimated 30 fishermen have died from decompression sickness while harvesting sea cucumbers since 2009, according to Álvaro Hernández, a researcher at the National Fisheries Institute.

“My children ask for him and I just don’t know what to tell them,” said Blanca Mezeta, 26, who said her husband died in January after diving for sea cucumbers. He felt sick after ascending, but his boss insisted that they take the day’s catch to the buyer before going to a clinic.

The fishing is leaving an environmental mess, too. A recent visit by boat to a clandestine preparation site, where the recently harvested animals are boiled and salted, revealed rusted caldrons and hundreds of black plastic bags strewn around bushes and trees in Celestún National Park, a protected biosphere reserve. Sea cucumber remains, beer bottles and empty cigarette packs dotted the coastline.

Navigating back into the harbor, Roman Agusto Flores, a lifelong fisherman in Celestún who opposes the poaching, discreetly pointed out the different groups of men sitting on docked boats, distinguishing between those who engage in the illegal sea cucumber trade and those who are restraining themselves. The two groups do not mix, he said.

“We have ruined everything ourselves,” Mr. Flores said.

Standing by the entrance to her shack at the end of a dirt road in Celestún, Ms. Mezeta, the woman who lost her husband, remembered asking him to stay away from sea cucumbers. “Stick with fish,” she said, fighting back tears. “Even if it’s less money, we’ll still eat.”

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. Describe a sea cucumber.

2. What is causing all the controversy?

3. How much have the numbers dropped since 2009?

4. Once the sea cucumbers have been harvested, describe their trip across the world.

5. How much can fishermen make harvesting these sea cucumbers?

6. What did disgruntled fishermen in Celestun do? Why?

7. What other issues are these fishermen facing? Why is it a life-threatening business?

8. In at least 2 sentences, what do you think the government should do to help this situation?

WEEK 6: To Catch a Tarpon, Be Ready for a FightBy CHRIS SANTELLAJUCARO, Cuba — I stood on the bow of a Dolphin skiff anchored at the edge of a large channel in Jardines de la Reina. The incoming tide flooded through the strait with the Caribbean, a patchwork of shifting blues and greens, stretching to the south.

“They’re coming,” my guide, Leonardo Arche, cried out. A dozen silhouettes appeared 75 yards in front of the boat, their shape unmistakable against the white sand bottom as they moved toward us: tarpon.

“Cast now,” he barked. After two false casts, I dropped the fly, a chartreuse Toad with a menacing 3/0 hook, a few yards in front of the fish, 25 yards away.

“Strip,” Arche instructed. One strip of the fly, and a fish peeled away from the school. A second strip, and the tarpon’s basketball-size mouth closed over the fly.

“Set,” Arche yelled, and I pulled back hard on the line. The fish — 75 to 85 pounds, we estimated — catapulted into the air, sunlight sparkling upon its large silver scales and the droplets of water its flight had displaced.

Jardines de la Reina is a 75-mile-long archipelago of mangroves and coral islands 60 miles off the southern coast of Cuba. Designated a national park in 1996 by the Cuban government, Los Jardines is closed to commercial fishing, inhabitation and almost any other visitation. Since the park was established, limited sport fishing and diving have been available through a joint venture between the government and an Italian outfitter, Avalon, which operates several mother ships along the archipelago. Guests dine and sleep on the ships, and take skiffs to the fishing and diving grounds.

“There are very few places left in the Caribbean that are undiscovered and pristine,” said Jim Klug, the director of operations for Yellow Dog Fly-fishing Adventures, a travel company based in Bozeman, Mont. “I visit saltwater fishing destinations all over the world, and when you arrive in Jardines, you pretty much feel as if you’re the first person to set foot there.

“On a given week, you have a maximum of 24 anglers fishing an area the size of the Florida Keys. The lack of anglers make the fish susceptible to flies — especially the tarpon. In many places, tarpon can be spooky. In Cuba, they’ll eat the fly 95 out of 100 times. Oftentimes, you’re casting at fish that have never been fished to before.”

Tarpon, nicknamed silver kings by aficionados, are found on both sides of the Atlantic. In the Western Hemisphere, they mostly inhabit warmer coastal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida and the West Indies, with fish found as far south as Argentina and north to Chesapeake Bay.

Tarpon are readily distinguishable by their silvery sides, monumental mouth (the fish’s lower mandible extends well beyond its gape) and significant size; Atlantic tarpon longer than 8 feet and weighing more than 300 pounds have been caught, though anglers are more likely to encounter fish between 60 and 150 pounds.

In the western Caribbean and Gulf Coast, tarpon season reaches its apex in late spring when migratory fish join resident schools as they gather to spawn. Surprisingly, little is known about the life cycle of the fish.

“Research suggests that tarpon spawn offshore, though we don’t know where,” said Aaron Adams, the director of operations for Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, a conservation organization. “We’re also not sure where the fish go in the winter.”

One thing is clear about tarpon: their appeal to anglers.

“It’s as if you’re sight-fishing to dinosaurs,” Adams said. “They’ve been around in their present form for tens of millions of years. You’re trying to fool a fish that can be older than you — some live to 80 years — into eating a fly; and once they eat, there are the jumps. Tarpon have been the ruin of many an angler.”

The first fish that I hooked spit the fly after its first elegant, arcing leap above the crystalline waters of Los Jardines. Other encounters followed, all equally ephemeral. For many species I’ve fished for, making the proper presentation of the fly and setting the hook is 90 percent of the game. In the pursuit of adult tarpon, this is only the beginning.

Once the tarpon has taken the fly, time seems to accelerate exponentially. Line that you have stripped in around your feet speeds back through the guides of the rod. En route, there are ample opportunities to tangle around your shirt button, your reel or your toes; I parted ways with three fish this way. Fail to put enough pressure on the line, generally by pressing it against the rod handle with your index finger, and the hook will not set securely in the tarpon’s tough jaw. Put too much pressure on, and you can pop the leader or cause the rod sections to come apart. I lost two fish like that.

When the tarpon jumps, you must be sure to lower or bow the rod to provide slack line so the pressure of the fish’s fall to the water does not pull the fly loose. Of all the aspects of tarpon fishing, this may be the hardest to master. When a fish as long as you leaps clear of the water 30 feet away and seems to look you in the eye, your instinct is to raise the rod in defense — an almost sure way for the fish to become disengaged.

By week’s end, I hooked and lost nine tarpon at Jardines de le Reina.

“You only land one out of every 10 fish that you hook,” an angling friend offered as solace.

Perhaps the next one will be mine.

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. Describe Jardines de la Reina.

2. What features are offered in this place?

3. How many anglers are fishing on an average day?

4. What does the lack of fishermen mean to the tarpon?

5. Describe the tarpon fish.

6. In at least 3 sentences, how does the author describe his fly fishing experience and risks?

7. What does the author say his catch record was?

WEEK 7: EXTRA CREDIT - The dogs that protect little penguinsImage copyright Global screen

When foxes discovered little penguins on a small Australian island, they nearly wiped the colony out. But a farmer came up with a novel way to protect the birds - and the story has been made into a hit film.As a premise for a film, think Lassie meets Babe meets Pingu. What's not to like?Middle Island, a beautiful, rugged and windswept outcrop off the coast of southern Victoria is home to a colony of the world's smallest penguins. Originally known as fairy penguins, before some pen-pusher deemed that politically incorrect, they've now been given the far more dreary sounding title of little penguins.

To be fair, they are just that - little, standing at 30 to 40cm tall.There used to be hundreds of them on Middle Island - but that was before the foxes got to them.

"We went from a point where we had around 800 penguins down to where we could only find four," says Peter Abbott from the Penguin Preservation Project.

"In our biggest bird kill, we found 360 birds killed over about two nights. Foxes are thrill killers. They'll kill anything they can find."

That particular incident was in 2005, but the problem had been building up for a few years. Middle Island - which is uninhabited by humans - is separated from the mainland by a stretch of water measuring no more than 20 or 30m.

At low tide, and when sand builds up in the narrow channel, foxes can cross from the mainland barely getting their paws wet. Image copyright Warrnambool CouncilThe problem first became apparent in the year 2000 when the sea's natural current led to increased sand build-up.Over time the fox population grew as it became clear they had an easy source of food.The fairy penguins, as I'm going to call them, faced being wiped out on Middle Island - until a chicken farmer, by the made-for-cinema name of Swampy Marsh, came up with a plan. He suggested sending one of his Maremma dogs to protect the birds.

"In Australia those dogs are generally used for chicken protection or goats or sheep," says Abbott.

The dog, the first of several to be used on Middle Island, was called Oddball - and Oddball made quite an impact."We immediately saw a change in the pattern of the foxes," says Abbott.

"Leading up to when the dog went on the island, every morning we'd find fox prints on the beach. Putting a dog on the island changed the hierarchy. The foxes can hear the dogs barking, they can smell them so they go somewhere else."

Amazingly, since Oddball and his four-legged successors were introduced 10 years ago, there has not been a single penguin killed by a fox on Middle Island.

The fairy penguin population has gone back up to almost 200.The current dogs patrolling Middle Island are Eudy and Tula, named after the scientific term for the fairy penguin: Eudyptula.They are the sixth and seventh dogs to be used and a new puppy is being trained up by Peter Abbott and his team to start work in 2016.The dogs operate in the penguin's breeding season, usually from October to March, when they spend five or six days a week on the island.

Even when the dogs are not there, their lingering scent is enough to keep the foxes away.

The project has been such a success that a movie called Oddball has been made about it.

"It's a great story. We're trying to save a cute penguin with a couple of cute dogs but the movie has taken things to a different level," says Abbott.The film has already taken around 11m Australian dollars ($8m; £5.3m) at the box office here and is now heading for global audiences.

"The movie had been in the pipeline for many years," says Kristen Abbott from the Middle Island Project Committee."Many of us thought, 'Yeah, we'll believe it when we see it,' and then suddenly it was pandemonium in the town with video cameras and actors everywhere."It has provided a huge boost for tourism - and in the summer months people can visit the island on a "Meet the Maremma Tour"."It's been one of the best things that's happened for a long time," says John Watson who runs a local hotel.

"It's filled a lot of extra bed nights for us with tourists coming down to either meet the dogs or do a tour of the island."Many of the locals appeared as characters in the film and others worked as extras on set.

"My character was played by an American actor," says Peter Abbott. "I tell people it's because they couldn't find an Australian as good looking as me."

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. What was the threat to the penguins?

2. Where are they found?

3. What type of penguin are they? Describe them.

4. How does the tide affect them?

5. What was the solution to the threat?

6. How has the solution worked?

7. Write a little story, either from the dog’s perspective, the penguin’s perspective, or the fox’s perspective, about the situation and their point of view. The story needs to be at least a paragraph long. It can either be in the form of a journal entry or a newspaper article published by that creature.

Little penguins

Also known as blue penguins, little blue penguins and fairy penguins

Smallest of all known penguin species, made up of six subspecies, they live in Australia and New Zealand

Most are monogamous and breeding pairs tend to return to the same nest year after year

Successful mating produces a clutch of two eggs, which hatch after 35-37 days

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica