Ocean Sentry
When diving in the Gulf of Maine a few years back, Jennifer Dijkstra expected to be swimming through a flowing kelp forest that had long served as a nursery and food for juvenile fish and lobster.
August, 2017
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22 August
Chilean Government rejects mining megaproject that threatened penguin habitat
The Chilean government rejected on Monday plans for a $2.5 billion mining megaproject in the northern region of Coquimbo that would have had a negative environmental impact on an area that is home to 80 percent of the world’s Humboldt penguins.
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22 August
Warmer waters from climate change will leave fish shrinking, gasping for air
Fish are expected to shrink in size by 20 to 30 per cent if ocean temperatures continue to climb due to climate change.
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19 August
Canada’s forests are on fire, and the smoke is so thick it’s breaking records
These fires, and others in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, have been belching smoke into the air, in some cases up to 8 miles high.
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18 August
Endangered seahorses are being dried alive, made into jewellery and sold on Etsy
Every year billions of wild seahorses are pulled out of the ocean, die a slow death drying in the sun before their dead bodies are packed up and transported all over the world as part of a million pound trade.
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17 August
Giant larvaceans could be ferrying ocean plastic to the seafloor
Microplastics pervade the ocean. Their combined mass could reach 250 million metric tons by 2025. Scientists don’t know a lot about where microplastics stick around in open water ecosystems.
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16 August
Gulf of Mexico loaded with one of world’s highest concentrations of plastic
The Gulf of Mexico is famous for its bountiful catches: blue crab, shrimp, redfish. Add one more: plastic. The first survey of the amount and types of plastic in the gulf has found concentrations approaching the highest reported in world.
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16 August
Fish eat bits of plastic because they think they smell good
Hundreds of marine species are known to eat plastic – including those that regularly end up on our dinner plates. But why? It now seems that ocean-borne plastic has a smell that marine animals find appealing.
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15 August
Deep-sea animals eating plastic fibers from clothing
Far beneath the ocean waves lies the benthic zone – the cold dark region at the bottom of the sea that is home to some of the most important marine organisms, called meiofauna.
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14 August
How social media can help keep tabs on ecosystems’ health
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram could be a rich source of free information for scientists tasked with monitoring the health of coral reefs and other environmental assets, our new research suggests.
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14 August
Gulf of Mexico ‘dead zone’ is already a disaster – but it could get worse
This year, the Gulf’s “dead zone” is the largest on record, stretching from the mouth of the Mississippi, along the coast of Louisiana to waters off Texas, hundreds of miles away. Around 8,776 square miles of ocean, an area the size of New Jersey or Wales, is almost lifeless.
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14 August
Melting Arctic shows severity of global warming, scientists say
Glaciers, sea ice and a massive ice sheet in the Arctic are thawing from toasty air above and warm water below. The northern polar region is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet and that’s setting off alarm bells.