Tag: life onboard

Animation video from Pew Environment Group and the Zoological Society of London

To protect ocean life, with limits placed on fishing and oil and gas exploration off the coast Australia announced plans to create the world's largest network of marine parks to protect ocean life, with limits placed on fishing and oil and gas exploration off the coast.The new reserves would cover 3.1 million square kilometres or more than one-third of Australian waters, taking in significant breeding and feeding grounds.The announcement, after years of planning and consultation, came ahead of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development next week in Brazil, which Environment Minister Tony Burke and Prime Minister Julia Gillard will attend."It's time for the world to turn a corner on protection of our oceans," Burke said in the lead-up to the conference, which marks the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit that declared the environment a priority."And Australia today is leading that next step." he added."This new network of marine reserves will help ensure that Australia's diverse marine environment, and the life it supports, remain healthy, productive and resilient for future generations."The network will boost the number of reserves from 27 to 60, expanding protection of creatures such as the blue whale, green turtle, critically endangered populations of grey nurse sharks, ...

Algae blooms or oil pollution? Scientists are trying to find out why 119 bottlenose dolphins became stranded and died along the Texas coast in recent months, looking at possibilities ranging from algae blooms to oil pollution.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared that the stranding of 123 dolphins in Texas between November and March was an "unusual mortality event" and called for the investigation.Heidi Whitehead, state operations coordinator of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network, which is involved in the investigation, said on Tuesday that four dolphins have survived and are being rehabilitated."Beginning in November of 2011, we started seeing a higher number than average of marine mammal strandings on the Texas coastline," Whitehead said. "There is no cause that we have ruled out."Possible causes include algae blooms and pollution such as oil, she said. The strandings coincided with a harmful algal bloom in southern Texas, according to NOAA, and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.But investigators may never know what caused the die-off.This is the fifth unusual mortality event in Texas and the first since 2008, according to NOAA. All involved bottlenose dolphins.This die-off affected ...

When a floating dock the size of a boxcar washed up on a sandy beach in Oregon, beachcombers got excited because it was the largest piece of debris from last year's tsunami in Japan to show up on the US West Coast.But scientists worried it represented a whole new way for invasive species of seaweed, crabs and other marine organisms to break the earth's natural barriers and further muck up the West Coast's marine environments. And more invasive species could be hitching rides on tsunami debris expected to arrive in the weeks and months to come."We know extinctions occur with invasions," said John Chapman, assistant professor of fisheries and invasive species specialist at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center. "This is like arrows shot into the dark. Some of them could hit a mark."Though the global economy has accelerated the process in recent decades by the sheer volume of ships, most from Asia, entering West Coast ports, the marine invasion has been in full swing since 1869, when the transcontinental railroad brought the first shipment of East Coast oysters packed in seaweed and mud to San Francisco, said Andrew Cohen, director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions ...

60 per cent reduction in the volume of Antarctic Bottom Water Comparing detailed measurements taken during the Australian Antarctic program's 2012 Southern Ocean marine science voyage to historical data dating back to 1970, scientists estimate there has been as much as a 60 per cent reduction in the volume of Antarctic Bottom Water, the cold dense water that drives global ocean currents.In an intensive and arduous 25-day observing program, temperature and salinity samples were collected at 77 sites between Antarctica and Fremantle. Such ship transects provide the only means to detect changes in the deep ocean.The new measurements, which have not yet been published, suggest the densest waters in the world ocean are gradually disappearing and being replaced by less dense waters."The amount of dense Antarctic Bottom Water has contracted each time we've measured it since the 1970s," said Dr Steve Rintoul, of CSIRO and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC. "There is now only about 40 per cent as much dense water present as observed in 1970."The ocean profiles also show that the dense water formed around Antarctica has become less saline since 1970."It's a clear signal to us that the oceans are responding rapidly to variations in climate ...

International Day for Biological Diversity on May 22 Marking the International Day for Biological Diversity on May 22,Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday highlighted the fragile state of the world's oceans, urging greater protection for marine biodiversity."Oceans cover almost three-quarters of the surface area of the globe. They are home to the largest animal known to have lived on the planet - the blue whale - as well as billions upon billions of the tiniest of microorganisms. From sandy shores to the darkest depths of the sea, oceans and coasts support a rich tapestry of life on which human communities rely," Mr. Ban said in amessage to mark the Day."Yet, despite its importance, marine biodiversity... has not fared well at human hands," he added.The General Assembly proclaimed 22 May as the International Day for Biological Diversity, to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues. The theme for this year's observance is marine diversity.In his message, Mr. Ban noted the impact of commercial over-exploitation of the world's fish stocks, with more than half of global fisheries exhausted and a further third depleted, and between 30 and 35 per cent of critical marine environments - such as seagrasses, mangroves and coral reefs - estimated ...

Two years since BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

iPad and iPhone application by NOAA A new iPad and iPhone application is aimed at protecting critically endangered North Atlantic right whales from collisions with ships, its U.S. developers say.The free app, developed by researchers led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sends data about right whale detections directly to an iPhone or iPad on a ship's bridge, said researchers at the University of New Hampshire, who participated in the app's creation.The app links whale calls detected by a series of listening buoys to captains transiting the busy shipping lanes in and around Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay, a university release said.Collisions with ships are a leading cause of death of right whales, one of the world's most endangered large animals with just an estimated 350 to 500 animals surviving, scientists said.The WhaleALERT app can use Automatic Identification System, a communication system on board all ships, as well as wireless or satellite Internet or 3G networks to deliver information about right whales in the vicinity of ships."This is a huge leap forward in terms of giving this information to mariners in a way that's part of their daily routine," UNH researchers said, noting ...

Marine life in deep oceans investigation The two-and-a-half-year TARA OCEANS expedition finishes on 31 March when the ship and crew reach Lorient, France. The arrival completes a journey of 60 000 miles across all the world's major oceans to sample and investigate microorganisms in the largest ecosystem on the planet, reports Eric Karsenti in an editorial published in Molecular Systems Biology."Life and evolution started in the oceans, yet we know very little about the distribution of marine biodiversity," said Karsenti, senior scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and Co-Director of the TARA OCEANS project."If it were not for these microorganisms we would not exist. First, we are their evolutionary descendants and second they generate the atmosphere of the Earth."The scientists taking part in the TARA OCEANS expedition want to understand how the populations of microscopic organisms that make up 98% of life in the oceans interact with the environment and how these complex systems have evolved over time."It is an interplay between the different species and each species affects the environment," explained Karsenti in a live interview with Molecular Systems Biology. "Oceans are very heterogeneous both geographically and at different depths - each water mass has ...

Hopes that coral reefs might escape climatic devastation Corals may be better placed to cope with the gradual acidification of the world's oceans than previously thought -- giving rise to hopes that coral reefs might escape climatic devastation.In new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change, an international scientific team has identified a powerful internal mechanism that could enable some corals and their symbiotic algae to counter the adverse impact of a more acidic ocean.As humans release ever-larger amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, besides warming the planet, the gas is also turning the world's oceans more acidic -- at rates thought to far exceed those seen during past major extinctions of life. This has prompted strong scientific interest in finding out which species are most vulnerable, and which can handle the changed conditions.In groundbreaking research, a team of scientists from Australia's ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, at the University of Western Australia and France's Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, has shown that some marine organisms that form calcium carbonate skeletons have an in-built mechanism to cope with ocean acidification -- which others appear to lack."The good news is that most corals ...