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SEPTEMBER 04-AUGUST 05
Oceans Found to Absorb Half of All Man-Made Carbon Dioxide Around half of all carbon dioxide produced by humans since the industrial revolution has dissolved into the world's oceans—with adverse effects for marine life—according to two new studies...
Hydrogen Sulfide Eruptions Along the Coast of Namibia On April 18, 2004, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite detected several bright green hydrogen sulfide eruptions along the coast of Namibia. The eruptions, which are deadly to fish, occur when bacteria release hydrogen sulfide gas as they break down dead plants and animals that have sunk to the sea floor...
"Dead Zones" Threaten Fisheries In midsummer, the northern Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi River empties into it, may shimmer like any other swath of sea. But a few score feet below, bottom-dwelling fish and other creatures struggle just to breathe...
Ship-Sinking Monster Waves Revealed by ESA Satellites Once dismissed as a nautical myth, freakish ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-storey apartment blocks have been accepted as a leading cause of large ship sinkings...
Plankton Cooled Off With Own Clouds Phytoplankton may be small, but that doesn't mean they can't do big things -- like change the weather to suit their needs...
Israel's Renowned Red Sea Corals are Close to Extinction EILAT, Israel - In their heyday, the corals along the shores of the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat were a hot spot for divers drawn by one of the most spectacular and biologically diverse reefs in the world. Today Eilat's corals are facing extinction and the colorful translucent fish are disappearing because of what environmentalists say is a lucrative fish-farm industry in the region's waters...
Atlantic Ridge Reveals Underwater Wonders Scientists studying the submerged peak of the mid-Atlantic ridge believe they have found several new species of fish and squid...
Ocean "Conveyor Belt" Sustains Sea Life, Study Says An estimated three-quarters of all marine life is maintained by a single ocean-circulation pattern in the Southern Hemisphere that pulls nutrient-rich waters from the deep ocean, brings them to the surface, and distributes them around the world...
Jolts of Low-Voltage Electricity Revive Damaged Reef Off Indonesian Resort Low-voltage current and steel bars used to regrow coral on Indonesian beach
Fishing Warnings Up Due to Mercury Pollution - EPA Americans were cautioned about eating fish from more than one-third of U.S. lakes and nearly one-fourth of its rivers last year due to pollution from mercury and other chemicals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said...
In Hawaii, Alien Species Launches Underwater Invasion Snowflake Coral Colonies Threaten the Future of the State Gemstone
The Deafening Sound of the Seas The World's Oceans Are Now So Saturated With Noise That Whales and Other Marine Mammals Are Dying, Biologists Say...
Irrawaddy Dolphins Gain Trade Protection Under CITES; WWF Urges Countries to Stop All Live Captures The international community today voted to prohibit commercial trade of critically endangered Irrawaddy dolphins, concluding they are so rare that any trade for aquariums and dolphinaria is a threat to the species...
Regan Joins Ministerial High Seas Task Force to Expose and Deter Illegal Fishing Activities The Honourable Geoff Regan, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, has agreed to participate in a task force of international fisheries ministers to expose and combat the global problem of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing on the high seas...
Kelp is at Hand for Fish Farm Pollution WASTE fish feed lost through the cages of salmon farms is being sucked up by edible seaweed in an innovative method developed by Scottish marine scientists...
Toxic Algae Bloom Seen Off Washington State Coast An unusually large toxic bloom of algae, which could poison humans and taint shellfish, has been detected in the ocean off the northwest coast of Washington state, oceanographers said...
Tourist Industry Capitalizes on Seal Hunting Visitors to Norway will be invited to liven-up their holiday with a spot of seal hunting. Conservationists are appalled, but it's not the first time the tourist industry has been accused of bad taste...
What's down there? Never have we looked at the ocean, from the surface through the depths to the miles-deep seafloor, in one long gaze. Next fall, Emory Kristof will do just that. The 62-year-old photographer, along with an A-team of biologists, oceanographers, and two of Jacques Cousteau's grandchildren, will venture to the Mariana Trench, just off the coast of Guam in the Pacific Ocean...
Newly Discovered Ocean Species Baffles Scientist
Over 178
new species of fish and hundreds more new species of plants and other
animals has been discovered by marine scientists in the past year,
raising the number of life-forms found in the world's oceans to about
230,000... Craig Venter is bringing genomics to the world’s oceans. With the same brash, unconventional style that characterized his efforts to sequence the human genome, he has set out on a global expedition to gather microbes from the world’s oceans and sequence their DNA...
Tanzania Coast Excites Seekers Of "Living Fossil" The tropical waters off Tanzania have emerged as the favoured spot for scientists seeking new populations of the coelacanth, an ancient fossil fish that has been swimming the seas for 400 million years...
Cloned Gene from Sea Animal May Prove Key in Cancer Drug Development Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and their colleagues have taken a significant step forward in developing a new method to produce drug compounds with potential to treat various types of cancer...
Lonely Whales Song Remains a Mystery A lone whale with a voice unlike any other has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years...
Scientists Discover Warning Signs of Coral Bleaching on Great Barrier Reef Scientists have identified early warning signs of rising ocean temperatures which threaten to drain Australia's Great Barrier Reef of its vibrant colors...
U.S. Judge Affirms Tuna Rules:
He rejects Bush Dolphin Standard
A federal judge has rejected the Bush
administration's attempt to relax the nation's "dolphin-safe'' tuna
labeling standard in a scathing decision that accuses the
administration of sacrificing science -- and dolphins -- for politics.
Arctic Ocean Was Balmy 70 Mln Years Ago - Study It may be freezing cold and covered in ice now but 70 million years ago the Arctic Ocean was as tepid as the Mediterranean...
I Won't Take the Cod, Thank You Stop by the seafood section of a typical supermarket these days, and you'll see a vivid testimony to the bounty of the oceans: piles of snowy white North Atlantic cod, glistening red snapper, and thick swordfish, halibut, and sea bass. But beneath this display of abundance lurks the reality that many popular fish will soon be missing from fish markets because large numbers of them are already missing from the oceans...
Melting Ice May Create Shipping Shortcut An international consortium of scientists has concluded that the polar ice cap is melting at such an alarming rate that cargo ships could begin using the Arctic Ocean as a shortcut between Asia, Europe and the East Coast within decades...
Deepest U.S. Coral Reef Found Off Florida Coast Officials hope to preserve site rich in fish
Lawmakers Float Plan for Underwater Logging A forest of old-growth trees is submerged in Lake Washington, perfectly preserved and possibly worth a small fortune. Under a bill proposed in the state Senate, this underwater timber could be harvested to raise money for the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington...
Groups Eye Davidson Seamount For Different Reasons A water war over control of Davidson Seamount -- an underwater volcano off the coast of Big Sur -- is pitting environmental and oil interests against each other...
French rower Maud
Fontenoy set out from St. Pierre et Miquelon, (French) Canada on June 13,
2003 in an attempt to become the first woman to row across the Atlantic West
to East. 117 days and an arduous journey later, she reached that goal on
October 9th, 2003... Seafloor Still About 90 Percent Unknown, Experts Say The U.S. nuclear submarine San Francisco crashed into an uncharted underwater mountain in the South Pacific last month, killing one submariner and injuring dozens of others...
Coral Concerns Spur Vast Trawling Ban Commercial fishing nets that drag the sea floor will be banned from more than a half-million square miles of ocean near the Aleutian Islands under a government plan to protect the deep-water corals and sponges that help nurse Alaska's fishing grounds...
Toxic Warning: Dolphin Meat is Poisoning the Japanese People Three international environmental organizations -- the Elsa Nature Conservancy (ENC) of Japan, the International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island Institute (EII), and One Voice -- warned today that dolphin meat sold to the Japanese people is highly contaminated with mercury, methylmercury, cadmium, DDT, and PCBs. Despite the scientific evidence of dangerous contamination, the Japanese government provides no warning to its people that eating dolphin meat is a serious health hazard...
Scripps Researchers Find Clear Evidence of Human-Produced Warming in World's Oceans Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and their colleagues have produced the first clear evidence of human-produced warming in the world's oceans, a finding they say removes much of the uncertainty associated with debates about global warming. In a new study conducted with colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI),Tim Barnett and David Pierce of Scripps Institution used a combination of computer models and real-world "observed" data to capture signals of the penetration of greenhouse gas-influenced warming in the oceans. The authors make the case that their results clearly indicate that the warming is produced anthropogenically, or by human activities...
Farm Sea Lice Plague Wild Salmon The spread of parasitic sea lice from salmon farms to wild salmon is a far bigger problem than had previously been imagined, a new study claims...
Scientists Mystified by Herring Decline A steep decline in Puget Sound-area herring, a critical food source for larger fish, marine mammals and sea birds, has scientists mystified...
A new program at the Vancouver Aquarium is helping B.C. restaurants make ethical and environmentally sustainable decisions about what to serve their customers. So far, only Vancouver's C Restaurant is part of the Ocean Wise initiative, which guides restaurants to serve up only sustainable species...
Fish Shrinkage Threatens Survival The shrinking size of fish due to their overexploitation has dire consequences for the recovery of depleted stocks, scientists have claimed...
Cousteau Sub Mimics Great White The grandson of famous oceanographer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau believes the best way to learn about sharks is to become one...
Whale-Dolphin Hybrid Has Baby 'Wholphin' The only whale-dolphin mix in captivity has given birth to a playful female calf, officials at Sea Life Park Hawaii said Thursday...
Cousteau Grandson Backs Windmill Park Plan
The grandson of marine scientist Jacques
Cousteau is backing a proposal to build an energy producing windmill
park in the Atlantic Ocean, four miles south of Long Island... Two Teenagers Rescued After Six Days at Sea Two teenagers lost at sea for six days without food or fresh water were spotted by fishermen more than 100 miles from where they started, clinging to their small sailboat...
India Urged to Ban 'Toxic Ship' The Indian government has been urged by the environmental campaign group, Greenpeace, not to allow a Danish ship carrying toxic waste to be scrapped...
Until the mid 20th century, the ocean was a key watery terrain of conflict between competing colonial powers seeking to expand their control over territories and natural resources...
Pile-up as Berg Hits Antarctica An iceberg the size of Luxembourg has smashed into another vast slab of ice that juts out from Antarctica.
Anti-Whaling Groups Say Japan Already Kills Too Many Whales Australia is stepping up a diplomatic campaign to persuade Japan to drop plans to increase commercial whaling...
Warmer Waters 'Drive Fish North' Many fish species in the North Sea are steadily moving northwards to escape warming waters, researchers report...
The Mad Genius from the Bottom of the Sea The topic under discussion is Craven's plan to use cold water pumped up from the deep ocean to provide low-cost and environmentally sustainable power, water, and food to a new residential and commercial development in the Marianas, a chain of islands some 3,000 miles to the west...
Seaweed is everywhere. It is found in soaps and toothpastes, eaten with sushi, and used as a fertilizer. Australian and British scientists have now found another use: Seaweed can help clean up contaminated soil, a process known as bioremediation.
New Collision Looks Imminent For B-15A Iceberg
The mammoth B-15A iceberg appears poised
to strike another floating Antarctic ice feature, a month on from a
passing blow that broke off the end of the Drygalski ice tongue. As
this Envisat image reveals, this time its target is the ice tongue of
the Aviator Glacier... With old ways and new ideas, Willapa Bay's oystermen face a shifting future...
Resurgence of Piracy on Ttsunami-Hit Seas After a period of relative quiet following December's tsunami, maritime piracy appears to be re-emerging in Asia and is sparking concerns about a potential terrorist attack...
Changes in Gulf Stream Could Chill Europe One outcome of global warming could be a dramatic cooling of Britain and northern Europe...
Nets Kill Nearly 1,000 Marine Mammals a Day Fishing nets intended for other marine species are killing at-risk species of dolphins and porpoises around the world, according to a report commissioned by the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund-U.S...
Sustainable Energy & the Bermuda Triangle Riddle Cardiff experts have designed world-first technology to investigate sustainable energy sources from the ocean bed by isolating ancient high-pressure bacteria from deep sediments...
A ban on fishing sandeels in the North Sea is welcome but comes too late for this year's seabirds, says the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds...
Beached Whales Saved in Australia Volunteers have helped to save scores of false killer whales that were stranded in western Australia after they beached near Busselton...
LIKE A FISH – Revolutionary Underwater Breathing System
An Israeli Inventor has
developed a breathing apparatus that will allow breathing underwater
without the assistance of compressed air tanks. This new invention will
use the relatively small amounts of air that already exist in water to
supply oxygen to both scuba divers and submarines. The invention has
already captured the interest of most major diving manufacturers as well
as the Israeli Navy. British University to Conduct Major Survey of Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises A British university on Tuesday announced plans for what it called the largest international survey of whales, dolphins and porpoises on the European Atlantic continental shelf...
Offshore Fish Farms - a Solution or a Problem? Fish farming has long been viewed as a way to help fill dinner bowls worldwide while easing the pressure on declining populations of wild ocean fish. Now the US aquaculture industry is poised to shed its coastal cloak to farm deeper waters. Tuesday, the Bush administration sent a bill to Capitol Hill that would open 3.4 million square miles of ocean - roughly the land area of the lower 48 states - to fish farms... |