People break into a warehouse with supplies believed to have been from when Hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017 in Ponce, Puerto Rico on 18 January 2020, after a powerful earthquake hit the island. Photo: Ricardo Arduengo / AFP / Getty Images

Discovery of unused disaster supplies from Hurricane Maria angers Puerto Rico

By Danica Coto 19 January 2020 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – People in a southern Puerto Rico city discovered a warehouse filled with water, cots and other unused emergency supplies, then set off a social media uproar Saturday when they broke in to retrieve goods as the area struggles to recover from a strong […]

On 1 January 2016 and 2 January 2016, 6,540 common murre carcasses were found washed ashore near Whitter, Alaska, translating into about 8,000 bodies per mile of shoreline — one of the highest beaching rates recorded during the mass mortality event. Photo: David B. Irons

Huge “hot blob” in Pacific Ocean caused mass starvation in largest seabird die-off – “The magnitude and scale of this failure has no precedent”

By Michelle Ma 15 January 2020 (UW News) – The common murre is a self-sufficient, resilient bird. Though the seabird must eat about half of its body weight in prey each day, common murres are experts at catching the small “forage fish” they need to survive. Herring, sardines, anchovies and even juvenile salmon are no […]

The tail of a male grey whale that stranded near Victoria, B.C. in April 2019, with skin eaten by an infestation of cyamids, or whale lice. Photo: Fisheries and Oceans Canada

In 2019, 214 grey whales washed up dead on the West Coast of North America – “They get eaten alive”

By Lisa Johnson 28 December 2019 (CBC News) – The first grey whale found dead in B.C. last year was in such rough shape that someone called to report it was tangled up in a big pink buoy. The pink wasn’t plastic, officials learned when they arrived to tow the skinny male to shore near […]

The water at Balmoral beach in New South Wales has turned black after Australia's recent deadly bushfires, 9 December 2019. Local woman Imogen Brennan shared videos of the beach on social media. Video: Imogen Brennan / BBC

Video: Bushfire ash washes up on Australian beach

24 December 2019 (news.com.au) — Ash and burned debris from trees washed up on beaches on the New South Wales south coast as weeks-old bushfires burned on Thursday, 24 December 2019. Two major uncontained bushfires had threatened coastal communities and forced evacuations in the area. The Currowan Fire had burned over 200,00 hectares since breaking […]

Micrographs showing microplastic particles embedded within a marine organism: (a) fluorescent PET MFs (23 × 100 μm) at 515–560 nm excitation; (b) fluorescent PP MF (28 × 100 μm) at 450–490 nm excitation; (c) fluorescent Nylon MFs (10 × 40 μm; yellow arrows) in the intestinal tract of a 50 h.p.f. brine shrimp (Artemia sp.), with 515–560 nm fluorescent excitation. Images taken at x25–200 magnification (Zeiss Observer Z1; AxioVision LE). Photo: Cole, 2016 / Scientific Reports

Microplastics are a million times more abundant in the ocean than previously thought

By MacKenzie Elmer 3 December 2019 (UCSD News Center) – Nothing seems safe from plastic contamination. It is pulled from the nostrils of sea turtles, found in Antarctic waters and buried in the fossil record. But a new study by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego suggests there could […]

Global pattern in the cumulative development of coastal hypoxia in the periods before 1969, 1970-1989, and 1990-2015. Each red dot represents a documented case related to human activities. Green dots are sites that have improved. Since the 1960s, the global number of hypoxic systems has about doubled every ten years up to 2000. Data: Based on Diaz and Rosenberg (2008), Diaz, et al. (2010), and Conley et al. (2011). Graphic: Laffoley and Baxter, 2019 / IUCN

Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn

By Fiona Harvey 7 December 2019 MADRID (The Guardian) – Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with “dead zones” proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned. Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were […]

Repparfjord is near the northernmost point of Norway. On 30 November 2019, Norway greenlit a copper mine that will dump two million tons of tailings in Arctic fjord each year. Photo: Thomas Nilsen / The Barents Observer

Norway greenlights copper mine that will dump two million tons of tailings in Arctic fjord each year – “Dumping of mining waste will kill every living thing on the ocean floor in the immediate area and disturb spawning grounds over a much greater distance”

ByThomas Nilsen 30 November 2019 (The Barents Observer) – “Allowing this to happen with a protected national salmon fjord doesn’t make sense at all,” said Silje Lundberg, head of Naturvernforbundet. The organisation is the Norwegian branch of Friends of the Earth. Lundberg said the planned dumping of tailings from the copper mine to the fjord […]

Satellite view of the extremely rapid intensification of Tropical Cyclone Ambali in the southern Indian Ocean, and then quick weakening, 6 December 2019. This entire satellite loop is only 24 hours. Photo: Stu Ostro / The Weather Channel

Two tropical cyclones set records in one week: Ambali has fastest intensification on record south of the equator, and Kammuri has tallest, coldest cloud tops ever

By Bob Henson 6 December 2019 (Weather Underground) – Barely a tropical storm on Wednesday night EST, Tropical Cyclone Ambali astounded weather watchers on Thursday as it pole-vaulted to the brink of Category 5 strength in the southwest Indian Ocean, counter to nearly all expectations. Ambali’s top sustained winds, as assessed from satellite data by […]

This animation depicts the abundance and direction of black carbon blowing through the atmosphere from 1 November 2019 to 18 November 2019. The data for the animation come from the GEOS forward processing (GEOS-FP) model, which assimilates information from satellite, aircraft, and ground-based observing systems. Video: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

Smoke plumes from Australia bushfires crossing oceans

By Michael Carlowicz and Adam Voiland 21 November 2019 (NASA) – Three weeks into November 2019, springtime bush fires continued to blaze across southern and eastern Australian states. As of November 20, government agencies counted 45 fires in South Australia and 49 in New South Wales, and dangerously dry and windy weather was fanning flames […]

(a) Estimated distances animals can travel during the Phocine distemper virus (PDV) latent and infectious period (1 week, 2 weeks, and 4 weeks) illustrating the areas where viral transmission could occur, based on median travel speeds calculated for satellite-tagged bearded seals (green circles), spotted seals (orange), Steller sea lions (blue), and northern fur seals (purple). (b) Recorded tracks of a PDV seropositive bearded seal followed in July 2009 and a seropositive northern fur seal followed in November 2010 shown with sympatric PCR positive spotted seals, ribbon seals, and northern fur seals sampled 2009–2010. Sea ice is shown at its minimum extent in September (panel a) and retreating the following July after reaching a maximum winter extent (panel b). Graphic: VanWormer, et al., 2019 / Scientific Reports

Deadly virus spreads among marine mammals as Arctic sea ice melts – Scientists fear the virus, once found only in European waters, could spread to the U.S. West Coast

By Sarah Gibbens 7 November 2019 (National Geographic) – When sea otters in Alaska were diagnosed with phocine distemper virus (PDV) in 2004, scientists were confused. The pathogen in the Morbillivirus genus that contains viruses like measles had then only been found in Europe and on the eastern coast of North America. “We didn’t understand how a […]

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