State panel floats ‘litter tax’ to curb debris along coast
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 1, 2008 at 1:09 pmFrom the San Diego Union Tribune:
The influential California Ocean Protection Council has proposed an attack on everyday threats to sea life, including a ban on some popular take-out food containers and fees on plastic and paper bags. The panel, which advises the governor and lawmakers, also recommended imposing upfront charges on other packaging commonly left on beaches, such as snack-food bags and candy wrappers. This so-called litter tax also would extend to cigarettes because so many butts are extinguished in the sand.
“We’re putting it out and teeing up the public conversation,” said Mike Chrisman, a member of the council and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Cabinet secretary on natural resource issues.
The proposals must be enacted by the Legislature, which has balked at tax increases and defeated a bill last year to tack a charge on plastic bags at the checkout counter. There’s also stiff resistance from powerful business interests warning of higher costs during the economic downturn. Makers of plastics said they are taking voluntary steps to cut waste.
Chrisman’s voice is significant because he has a reputation for advocating cautious, business-friendly approaches. But he is convinced that stronger action is imperative to gradually reduce the use of plastic bags and polystyrene take-out containers. “We have to deal with it,” he said.
Read more from the San Diego Union Tribune by clicking here.
California ocean group proposes plastic ban
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 29, 2008 at 6:37 amFrom SustainableBusiness.com:
The California Ocean Protection Council (OPC) has proposed banning plastic take-out containers and instituting plastic bag use fees as part of a strategy to reduce ocean litter. The proposal calls for plastic manufacturers to recover and dispose of their products and for product user fees to be assessed.
The proposed implementation strategy, that will require legislative action in order to be enacted, identifies three primary approaches that California should take to eliminate marine debris. California should: (1) establish a “take-back” program that would require manufacturers to take back used packaging and dispose of it properly; (2) institute a statewide fee on single-use plastic grocery bags and a prohibition on polystyrene food containers; and (3) impose user fees on other commonly littered packaging items.
“The council is confident that this strategy will have far reaching benefit for ocean health and brings about needed action to tackle the marine debris problems plaguing our oceans,” said OPC Chair and Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman. “Our decision today moves California closer to a real solution to reduce the threats to our ocean and coast.”
Read more from SustainableBusiness.com by clicking here.
The (tuna) tragedy of the commons
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 27, 2008 at 9:29 amFrom the New York Times DOT Earth blog:
There was new evidence early this week that the world has not yet absorbed just how deeply humans have depleted our “exhausted oceans.” At the latest meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, created under a treaty 42 years ago to manage shared fisheries in that ocean, European governments ignored a strong recommendation from the group’s own scientific advisers for deep cuts in some harvests of the Atlantic bluefin tuna. On its face, that would seem to be a strange development considering that the organization’s Web site says flatly: “Science underpins the management decisions made by I.C.C.A.T.”
But such moves seem unremarkable, for now, in a world seeking to manage limited, shared natural resources while also spurring economic growth — whether the resource is the global atmosphere or an extraordinary half-ton, ocean-roaming predator. The European stance — insisting on a harvest in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean 50 percent above the limit recommended by scientists — was sharply criticized by environmental campaigners, marine biologists and United States fisheries officials. Some biologists criticized the United States, as well, for playing down the role of American fishers, both recreational and commercial, in destroying the once-bountiful fishery.
Read more from the New York Times DOT Earth blog by clicking here.
Short sea shipping being pitched by maritime group
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 27, 2008 at 7:41 amFrom the Eureka Times-Standard:
Stephen Pepper sees an opportunity for Humboldt Bay — and it doesn’t involve enormous ships, dredging, a railroad or large amounts of public money.
It’s also something that’s been quietly steaming along, a little behind the scenes, in the conversation about how the port might become a greater economic engine in the region.
Short sea shipping involves moving cargo and containers from one American port to another, where it can be shipped across the ocean to a final destination. Pepper, who has worked in the tugboat industry and formed a logistical outfit called Humboldt Maritime Logistics, sees an operation that would use tugs and barges to move goods between five different West Coast ports, including Humboldt Bay.
Short sea shipping — say it three times fast — is a model used on the East and Gulf costs, in Europe and along other coastlines in the world. ”It’s only a matter of time before it comes to the West Coast,” Pepper said.
Read more from the Eureka Times-Standard by clicking here.
California eyes bans, use fees to limit plastic waste
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 25, 2008 at 10:23 pmFrom Greenbang:
After Hawaii, California is the U.S. state that’s probably closest to the vast gyre of plastic waste that swirls in the mid-Pacific, and state officials say they don’t want to contribute any more to the mess.
What’s the solution? The California Ocean Protection Council, which has set a goal of eliminating marine debris, recently proposed a three-prong strategy for getting there: 1) require manufacturers to take back waste packaging for environmentally responsible disposal, 2) ban polystyrene food containers and impose a statewide fee on one-use plastic shopping bags and 3) set user fees for other common waste products.
“The council is confident that this strategy will have far reaching benefit for ocean health and brings about needed action to tackle the marine debris problems plaguing our oceans,” said Mike Chrisman, chairman and secretary of resources at the council. “Our decision today moves California closer to a real solution to reduce the threats to our ocean and coast.”
Read more from Greenbang by clicking here.
The Rising Tide in California: It’s not the extra few feet of water that make sea level rise so dangerous; It’s the extra few feet during a storm during El Niño during high tide, say researchers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 23, 2008 at 7:24 amFrom the California Progress Report, this article by Robert Munroe, UC California San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography:
In “Dover Beach,” the 19th Century poet Matthew Arnold describes waves that “begin, and cease, and then again begin… and bring the eternal note of sadness in.” But in the warming world of the 21st Century, waves could be riding oceans that will rise anywhere from 0.5 meters (19 inches) to 1.4 meters (55 inches), and researchers believe there’s a good chance they will stir stronger feelings than melancholia.
Several scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego are finding that sea level rise will have different consequences in different places but that they will be profound on virtually all coastlines. Land in some areas of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States will simply be underwater.
On the West Coast, with its different topography and different climate regimes, problems will likely play out differently. The scientists’ most recent conclusions, even when conservative scenarios are involved, suggest that coastal development, popular beaches, vital estuaries, and even California’s supply of fresh water could be severely impacted by a combination of natural and human-made forces.
Scripps climate scientists often consider changes in average conditions over many years but, in this case, it’s the extremes that have them worried. A global sea level rise that makes gentle summer surf lap at a beachgoer’s knees rather than his or her ankles is one thing. But when coupled with energetic winter El Nino-fueled storms and high tides, elevated water levels would have dramatic consequences.
The result could transform the appearance of the beaches at the heart of California’s allure.
“As sea level goes up, some beaches are going to shrink,” said Scripps oceanographer Peter Bromirski. “Some will probably disappear.”
Read more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
Underwater volcano off California’s Central Coast given national protection
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 21, 2008 at 5:27 amFrom the San Jose Mercury News:
Its slopes are thick with coral forests that grow 10 feet high. Fields of colorful sponges cover its rocky outcroppings. And marine mammals that until recently had never been seen by scientists teem all around it. On Thursday, a giant underwater volcano off California’s Central Coast that some have compared to an aquatic “Lost World,” was given national protection.
Davidson Seamount stands 7,546 feet above the ocean floor, in pitch black waters about 80 miles southwest of Monterey. Until eight years ago, almost nothing was known about it, largely because its summit sits 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
But as marine biologists began to send unmanned submarines to explore it, they found a pristine environment rich with life, from red crabs with spindle legs to anemones that close like Venus flytraps.
“We were astounded to discover the variety of life, and particularly the size of the animals,” said Dave Clague, a geologist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing. “Some of the corals are truly huge. The big pink bubble gum corals get at least 10 feet tall. And they are hundreds of years old. We’d never seen anything like that.”
On Thursday, the Bush administration published final regulations to expand the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary by 14 percent to include Davidson Seamount. The first such expansion since Congress and President Bush’s father established the sanctuary in 1992, the newly protected waters total 775 square miles — an area more than half the size of Yosemite National Park.
Read more from the San Jose Mercury News by clicking here.
How air imperils the sea: Rising levels of carbon dioxide make oceans more acidic, putting shellfish, corals, and more at risk
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 19, 2008 at 6:05 amFrom the Christian Science Monitor:
If the rising level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is a slowly ticking time bomb, some scientists say, the CO2 building in seawater is a depth charge about to explode. The world’s oceans are growing more acidic at an increasing – and some say alarming – rate. More and more environmentalists and scientists are saying it may take a severe lowering of CO2 levels to keep ocean life from facing major disruptions, including possible mass extinctions of species.
Seawater absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. But the huge amounts oceans have taken in since the Industrial Revolution began 250 years ago are beginning to make it more acidic. That, in turn, is beginning to stress aquatic life. The species most at risk are those that use calcium carbonate to form protective shells or other coverings – corals, lobsters, oysters, crabs, mussels, and snails. These species find it more difficult to construct their calcium crusts in more acidic waters.
Other less visible, but equally important, species could be affected, too. Tiny creatures called pteropods, whose shells also are made from calcium carbonate, serve as food for larger species that are caught and consumed by humans. The consequences if pteropods diminish or die out could be dramatic.
Seawater already has dropped in pH, the measure of acidity, by a notable amount in the last couple of centuries, researchers say. And the pace of change is quickening: pH could drop significantly more in coming decades, they warn.
Read more from the Christian Science Monitor by clicking here.
Fishers give up on crab season
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 18, 2008 at 1:27 pmFrom the Contra Costa Times:
Crab fishers headed home Monday downcast and with few Dungeness crabs to show for their frenzied efforts during the season opener last weekend, putting a strain on the Thanksgiving market for the delicate treat. At this time in a normal year, hundreds of boats would be scooping up thousands of adult crabs around the Farallon Islands in the two-week period before the wily invertebrates start skittering farther westward toward the continental shelf.
This year, local fishers say the ocean is so barren of adult crabs it reminds them of the days before the advent of the Clean Water Act.
Some crabbers are already packing up their gear. The big boats that came down from Oregon and
other northern harbors to get an early jump on the Central California crab season have already left. Judging by the number of crabs they saw on the way home, it looks as though the crabs are missing up north, too.“We’ve been averaging one crab a pot. I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Bill Webb, sounding dazed Monday. Like many other fishers at Pillar Point Harbor near Half Moon Bay, Webb fishes for salmon and received a compensation check from the federal government after the unprecedented collapse of the Chinook salmon fishery last spring. But that money only covered half the price Webb was getting for his fish, and he, like dozens of other Bay Area fishers, was staking his survival on a successful crab season. “If this season ends up being a bust, I think a lot of us aren’t going to be able to survive. “
Read more from the Contra Costa Times by clicking here.
Fate of Trestles, toll road project may soon be known
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 18, 2008 at 1:19 pm
From the Outposts Blog at the LA Times:
A U.S. Department of Commerce decision is expected soon regarding a controversial toll road extension that would slice through a portion of San Onofre State Beach, jeopardizing a pristine watershed that is home to endangered species, and also jeopardizing the famous Trestles surf breaks.
In case you missed it, the L.A. Times devoted nearly a page in Monday’s California edition outlining issues that have made the proposed project so contentious. Personally, I despise the idea as much as I despise heavy traffic.
What the story glossed over were the pros and cons of developing state parks.
Outdoors enthusiasts ought to oppose any project that sacrifices even a portion of any state park. Parks ought to be considered sacred ground and protected against all infringements of civilization.
Isn’t that the purpose behind them?
More from the Outposts Blog by clicking here.
The issues behind the San Onofre toll road plan
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 17, 2008 at 6:28 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
The contentious proposal to extend a toll road 16 miles, part of that through San Onofre State Beach in northern San Diego County, has been moving slowly through the bureaucratic process for decades. The $1.3-billion road is intended to connect Rancho Santa Margarita in southern Orange County with Interstate 5 at Basilone Road just south of San Clemente.
The U.S. Department of Commerce is now considering whether to override the state Coastal Commission’s rejection of the project this year. Summarized below are key aspects of the dispute.
– Susannah Rosenblatt Environment
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a biological opinion in April, which concluded that although alternative routes would have a lesser effect, the road would be “not likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of at-risk species in the 2,107-acre state park. A coalition of environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit in August alleging that the agency’s opinion was flawed.
* Pro-road: Supporters say mitigation measures such as preserved and re-created habitat, wildlife crossings and scientific monitoring would help protect nine federally endangered or threatened species in the area. They point out that trestles and Interstate 5 already cross the San Mateo Creek watershed.
* Anti-road: Many conservationists consider San Onofre State Beach part of one of the last pristine watersheds in Southern California and say an extension of California 241 would encroach on critical habitat and put other state parks at risk.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Dan Haifley, Our Ocean Backyard: Hidden creeks flow to the ocean
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 16, 2008 at 6:10 amFrom the Mercury News:
You may not notice them as they meander, quietly, behind our parks and our streets and near our homes, carrying water to our estuaries, bays and to the ocean.
But some of you may have noticed those round blue signs next to area roadways. They identify creeks or rivers that you may have passed many times but you never knew existed. In Santa Cruz County, these signs are part of an effort by the Resource Conservation District to increase public awareness of local watersheds thanks to funding from the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, the California Coastal Conservancy, the city of Santa Cruz Water Department and others. This and similar efforts in the region install signs identifying creeks and watershed boundaries, which complements work to reduce pollutants that flow to our rivers, creeks and the ocean.
The term watershed describes a land area from which water flows downhill to a single spot. Water drains both underground and on the surface into streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries, eventually reaching the ocean. The major watersheds that send water into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary include the Carmel River, Salinas River, Pajaro River, San Lorenzo River, Gazos Creek, Scott Creek and Elkhorn Slough. To see a map of the major watersheds in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary region, visit http://montereybay.noaa.gov/monitoringnetwork/map.html.
The health of the ocean is influenced by the quality of the water that flows into it.
Read more of Dan Haifley’s column from the Mercury News by clicking here.
World’s oceans face problem of plastic pollution; Some researchers believe that more than 5 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean has become a soup of plastic confetti
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 14, 2008 at 1:48 pmFrom PBS’s Online News Hour:
JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the problems created by trash floating in the Pacific Ocean. Spencer Michels has our Science Unit report.
SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour correspondent: Sixty-one-year-old Charles Moore, former owner of a furniture repair business in Long Beach, California, and an amateur scientist, surprised the scientific world with a discovery he made in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
While sailing his research vessel back from Hawaii in 1997, he ran into what he calls a vast “garbage patch” in a calm part of the sea.
CHARLES MOORE, Ocean Researcher: Every single day for that week that we crossed these doldrums, we saw trash every time we came on deck. I think it’s fair to say that the phenomena exists from just off the coast of China all the way to a few hundred miles from the coast of California. It’s at least one-and-a-half times the size of the United States, approximately 5 million square miles.
SPENCER MICHELS: Using what’s called a manta trawl to skim the water, Moore and his crew found tons of trash in an area called the North Pacific Gyre, that is largely off the main shipping and sailing routes. Among the junk: umbrella handles, cigarette lighters, ropes, thousands of toothbrushes.
These are from Hawaii, huh?
CHARLES MOORE: Yes, they’re from Asia, probably. Like here’s a brand I don’t recognize.
Read more, or watch the video of the broadcast from the Online News Hour by clicking here.
Water laws may be used to fight warming
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 14, 2008 at 5:48 amFrom the New York Times:
The Center for Biological Diversity said it was prepared to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to use the Clean Water Act to respond to the threat of ocean acidification as the oceans absorb an estimated 22 million tons of carbon dioxide from the 80 million tons emitted each day by human activities. The result is a buildup of carbonic acid, which is lowering the pH of seawater. That trend toward acid conditions could threaten corals and plankton with shells containing calcium, biologists have warned.
More from the New York Times Dot Earth blog:
The Bush administration has strongly opposed legal maneuvers aimed at limiting greenhouse gases with existing environmental laws. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, has warned that such efforts constitute a “regulatory train wreck.”
The environmental group cited a paper in the journal Science in July that stressed the need for the E.P.A. to update its water-quality standards for pH, which have not been updated since 1976. “The federal Clean Water Act requires the E.P.A. to update water-quality criteria to reflect the latest scientific knowledge,” the group said in a news release. “Since the agency developed the pH standard back in 1976, an extensive body of research has developed on the impacts of carbon dioxide on the oceans.”
More from the New York Times by clicking here; more from the New York Times Dot Earth blog by clicking here.
How climate change is killing our oceans
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 14, 2008 at 5:28 amFrom AlterNet:
The most pressing example of climate change’s impact is not monster hurricanes, retreating glaciers or water wars. It’s the humble swimming sea snail. The tiny pteropod has difficulty growing a shell in a warmer planet’s acidified ocean waters. Given the snails’ role at the base of the cold-water food chain, its struggle threatens the entire polar ecosystem, through salmon to seals and whales.
The problem is one of many associated with ocean acidification. That change is well underway — a consequence of warming that has already happened and fossil-fuel emissions that have long since been dumped into the atmosphere.
In absorbing those emissions the oceans have buffered humanity from the worst effects of climate change. But in doing so ocean chemistry has changed, acidifying to levels not seen in 800,000 years.
The result, according to a new report issued by Oceana, is that today’s ocean chemistry is already hostile for many creatures fundamental to the marine food web. The world’s oceans — for so long a neat and invisible sink for humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions — are about to extract a price for all that waste.
Read more from AlterNet by clicking here.
Commercial fishing frenzy criticized: Report calls practice wasteful, hazardous
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 13, 2008 at 6:42 amFrom the San Diego Union Tribune:
It’s known as the “race for fish” – the free-for-all at the start of each commercial season in which those who catch the most fish the fastest get the biggest payday. The strategy often leads to huge loads of wasted seafood, unsafe fishing conditions and the depletion of ocean ecosystems worldwide, according to a report to be released today by a bipartisan group of politicians, scientists and policymakers, including California’s secretary of resources.
The group is pushing President-elect Barack Obama and Congress to reform ocean fish management by switching from derby-style competitions to “catch shares,” which allot a percentage of the overall harvest to specific fishermen, allowing them to catch their quotas whenever they choose.
Today’s report follows a landmark decision in San Diego last week to establish the most sweeping catch-share program in the country. It covers dozens of species of West Coast groundfish, including types of cod and sole, that are caught by commercial boats.
“We are right at the beginning of changing the way that we fish and acknowledging that the oceans are not limitless,” said George Sugihara, a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “This is going to bring about a revolution in how fisheries evolve into organized, transparent markets instead of a race for fish.”
Read more from the San Diego Union Tribune by clicking here.
Supreme Court on sonar: Navy trumps whales
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 13, 2008 at 5:49 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle:
Threats to national security are more important than possible harm to whales and dolphins, the Supreme Court ruled today in lightening restrictions on the Navy’s use of sonar in anti-submarine training off Southern California despite its potential effects on undersea creatures.
The ruling, the first of the court’s 2008-09 term, accepted the Navy’s arguments that the limitations would hinder vital exercises in the use of sonar to detect enemy submarines. The restrictions, imposed by lower courts, would have required the Navy to reduce or halt underwater sonar pulses when marine mammals might be nearby.
“Forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. The resulting damage to the Navy and the public interest, he said, outweighs the injury that environmental groups that challenged the use of sonar might suffer from “harm to an unknown number of marine mammals that they study and observe.”
The ruling - endorsed by six of the nine justices, and in part by a seventh - overturned decisions by a federal judge in Los Angeles and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco restricting sonar use during training exercises scheduled to end next month.
Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Completion of world’s first artificial kelp reef praised
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 10:58 pmFrom the San Diego Union-Tribune:
State and utility officials applauded the completion Monday of the world’s first artificial kelp reef that they say will provide a thriving habitat for fish and marine organisms for decades.
Spread over two miles south of San Clemente Pier, the pioneering reef was undertaken by Southern California Edison to make up for environmental damage caused by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
“In the end we have both the energy and the environment we need,” Cecil House, a Southern California Edison vice president, said during a ceremony attended by about 100 people on the pier.
The 175-acre reef was constructed by dumping 120,000 tons of rock ranging from the size of a soccer ball to a miniature refrigerator in a patchwork over an area about 1 mile by 2.5 miles, at a depth of 30 feet to 50 feet.
Read more from the San Diego Union-Tribune by clicking here.
Major change planned for West Coast fisheries
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 6:12 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
After years of lax rules and wasteful practices that led to an economic disaster, fishery managers have decided to adopt a new approach to some of the West Coast’s largest fisheries: give fishermen an exclusive right to a portion of the overall catch.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted unanimously Friday to make a historic shift in strategy that encourages cooperation, rather than competition, among fishermen who drag nets to catch cod, whiting, various rockfish, flounder and sole.
The new approach, often called “individual fishing quotas,” will give commercial fishermen from Morro Bay on California’s Central Coast to Puget Sound in Washington the rights to bring in their portion of the catch when the seas are safe and they can command higher prices.
It will also eliminate frustrating rules that forced fishermen to shovel tons of dead fish overboard because they didn’t have permits to sell particular species inadvertently caught in their nets.
Advocates of this approach, which has been used successfully in Alaska and elsewhere, believe this can help turn around West Coast fisheries. In January 2000, the federal government formally declared these fisheries an economic disaster, the culmination of decades of overfishing. Since then, managers have attempted to restrict catches and buy out fishing boats — actions that brought only marginal recovery of fish stocks.
“We expect in five to 10 years this will be one of the best managed fisheries in the country,” said Johanna Thomas, Pacific Ocean policy director of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Great white sharks look for girlfriends in underwater singles bar, scientists believe
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 5:36 amTheir headline, not mine! From the U.K.’s Telegraph:
Great white sharks travel huge distances and mysteriously spend up to six months gathered at an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii. Satellite tagging has revealed that male and female sharks make frequent and repetitive dives together, which may be linked to courtship. The stretch of ocean the sharks make for - from both California and Mexico - is not a particularly rich feeding ground but it may act as a “singles bar” where they can find a mate.
“There is something going on there but as yet we don’t know,” said marine biologist Professor Ron O’Dor. “Maybe it’s just a good place to pick up girl sharks.”
The shark mystery is one of thousands to emerge from an ambitious attempt to compile the first comprehensive survey of life in the world’s oceans. The Census of Marine Life is a 10-year project which will summarise everything known about all forms of life in the sea.
Involving more than 2,000 scientists from 82 nations it is due to be published in 2010 forming an online encyclopaedia of all old and new creatures with a web page for every species.
Read more from the Telegraph by clicking here.
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