Global warming will drive many of North America’s fish species hundreds of miles northward, potentially costing coastal fishing communities billions of dollars over the next few decades, new research shows. In New England, the centuries-old cod fishery is at… Read More ›
Heart-breaking documentary footage of a dead whale calf has prompted a reminder that plastic pollution is a killer round shores close to home. The manager of a nature reserve in the Firth of Forth warned that the scourge highlighted by… Read More ›
“Across the United States, changes in our climate and our oceans are having very real and profound effects on communities, businesses, and the natural resources we depend on — including our economically valuable fisheries …” declared a NOAA Fisheries webpage updated in June. “Understanding these changes and measuring their impacts is an important part of NOAA Fisheries’ mission.”
Though scientists have long been sounding the alarm over the environment some people refuse to listen. Many countries have introduced environmental policies and series of initiatives to raise awareness at community level, but the journey to environmental awareness and… Read More ›
More than five trillion pieces of plastic are estimated floating on the surface of the world’s oceans. It has been claimed that there is now enough plastic to form a permanent layer in the fossil record.
“The ocean gives us oxygen, it gives us food, it gives of joy. We give it plastic, saturate it with carbon, and relentlessly extract the life out of it,” said Sir Richard Branson during the World Oceans Day conference. “The… Read More ›
The marine environment globally is challenged by a number of factors, including environmental degradation, habitat destruction, overfishing, and climate change, so there is a real need for protection. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the international community has agreed that we will protect 10 percent of the oceans in marine protected areas by 2020.
Researchers have more than once warned of “dead zones” and toxic algal blooms as a consequence of changing climatic conditions. Ocean temperatures are increasing, and this in turn encourages a new set of biochemical processes.
Professor Hollibaugh and a colleague report in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that over the course of eight summers they measured peaks of nitrite, alongside massive increases in the numbers of the microorganisms that produce it, in coastal waters off Georgia.
Hundreds of tonnes of plastic are cluttering the once pristine Arctic Ocean and doing great damage to the planet, a new report has found. On top of the danger of fish and other wildlife swallowing the plastic, the material contains… Read More ›
We now have a 2017 event, which is not quite as bad as 2016, but certainly worse than the first two events that we studied [in 1998 and 2002]. That is significant because it postpones any hope of recovery. The current bleaching occupies a different geographical footprint from last year, which is bad news because it means between last year and this year a much greater extent of the Great Barrier Reef has now been damaged. In 2017, the hot water was in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, the central section; last year it was in the north.
Neptune 911! 