Ocean Sentry
We are living through a massive species extinction event that rivals the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But while an asteroid collision likely did in the dinos, today’s extinctions are a direct consequence of human activity, writes Dick Ahlstrom, Science Editor Whatever the cause, the …
January, 2011
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11 January
Salmon farms contaminate wild fish
Salmon farms may be contaminating local wild fish but how much depends on the species, finds a new study that raises another concern about the environmental impacts of salmon farming. The fish are eating food pellets meant for their penned neighbors – pellets that can be contaminated with chemicals known …
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7 January
Great Barrier reef under threat from floods
Australia”s spectacular Great Barrier Reef is under threat from massive floods swamping the country”s northeast which are pouring harmful debris and sediment into the sea, an expert said Wednesday. The full impact of the floods, which are rushing huge volumes of water into the pristine surrounds of the world”s largest …
December, 2010
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30 December
Invasive species play role in mass extinctions
The arrival of invasive species can prevent the formation of new species and help to trigger mass extinctions, according to a study published Thursday. That conclusion is based on the study of one of the five major mass extinctions that have occurred in Earth”s history — the Late Devonian collapse …
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28 December
Projects raise concerns for marine life
Without maps or GPS, great white sharks travel thousand of miles round-trip from California to Hawaii or Australia to South Africa.Sea turtles hatched on the beaches of Florida travel the currents of the North Atlantic Gyre to Europe, Africa and South America before heading home. And in one of the …
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28 December
UN report urges fishing subsidy reform
The continuation of government fishing subsidies is damaging to the world”s oceans and should be halted, states the United Nations Environment Programme in a new publication that calls for subsidy reform. The report, Fisheries Subsidies, Sustainable Development and the WTO, finds that in many cases the subsidies encourage fishing in …
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23 December
Study shows marine reserves send fish far and wide
Scientists now have hard evidence for something they have long believed — that establishing no-fishing zones in the ocean will help replenish fish populations far away that have been over-harvested. Authors of the study published online Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE said it bolsters scientific evidence for establishing …
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22 December
Shrinking habitat may result in overharvest of tuna, billfish
Tuna and billfish, such as sailfish and marlin, might be more vulnerable to overharvest because their Atlantic habitat is shrinking. A study led by Eric Prince of NOAA Fisheries” Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami shows that a large area of oxygen-poor water in the eastern tropical Atlantic is expanding, …
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22 December
Disappearance of arctic ice could create ‘grolar bears’, narlugas; trigger biodiversity loss
The melting of the Arctic Ocean may result in a loss of marine mammal biodiversity, reports a new study published in the journal Nature and conducted jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the University of Alaska, and the University of Massachusetts. The study is the first to …
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21 December
Ocean acidification may disrupt the marine nitrogen cycle
Ocean Acidification, , the result of roughly a third of global CO2 emissions dissolving into the seawater and lowering its pH, has complicated and poorly understood consequences for ocean ecosystems. Scientists already know that a drop in ocean pH affects the carbon cycle, reducing the carbonate ions that organisms like …
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3 December
UN report highlights ocean acidification
Carbon emissions from fossil fuels may bear a greater risk for the marine environment than thought, with wide-ranging impacts on reproduction, biodiversity richness and fisheries, a report at the UN climate talks here on Thursday said. Each year, billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, are …
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3 December
‘No fish left behind’ approach leaves earth with nowhere left to fish, study finds
Earth has run out of room to expand fisheries, according to a new study led by University of British Columbia researchers that charts the systematic expansion of industrialized fisheries In collaboration with the National Geographic Society and published in the online journal PLoS ONE, the study is the first to measure …