By Rachel Mealey 7 July 2017 TOKYO (ABC News) – Japan has passed a law enshrining the practice of whaling and is considering upgrading its fleet of vessels in a step toward returning to the controversial commercial practice. The new whaling bill sets out Japan’s plan to one day resume commercial whaling, with one MP […]
11 May 2017 (Alfred Wegener Institute) – By the second half of this century, rising air temperatures above the Weddell Sea could set off a self-amplifying meltwater feedback cycle under the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, ultimately causing the second-largest ice shelf in the Antarctic to shrink dramatically. Climate researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre […]
28 March 2017 (University of Southampton) – A team of scientists led by the University of Southampton has found that the Antarctic ice cap underwent dramatic cycles of expansion and melt-back millions of years ago when carbon dioxide levels were similar to those experienced today. The research, led by palaeoclimatologist Dr Diederik Liebrand as part […]
22 March 2017 (NSIDC) – Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its annual maximum extent on March 7. This is the lowest maximum in the 38-year satellite record. NSIDC will post a detailed analysis of the 2016 to 2017 winter sea ice conditions in our regular monthly post in early April. On 7 March […]
25 January 2017 (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) – In the cold depths along the sea floor, Antarctic Bottom Waters are part of a global circulatory system, supplying oxygen-, carbon- and nutrient-rich waters to the world’s oceans. Over the last decade, scientists have been monitoring changes in these waters. But a new study from the Woods […]
15 January 2017 (Sea Shepherd Global) – After five weeks of patrolling the Southern Ocean, Sea Shepherd has located the Japanese whale poachers’ factory whaling vessel in the Australian Whale Sanctuary with a dead minke whale on its flensing deck, the first to be documented since the International Court of Justice ruled against their whaling […]
By Sharon Livermore25 October 2016 (IFAW) – Today, at the second day of plenary meetings at the 66th International Whaling Commission in Portorož, Slovenia, a proposal from Latin American countries to form a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary again failed to pass with the needed three-quarters majority vote. At the conclusion of the voting session, Matt […]
By Andrew H. MacDougall22 August 2016 (Nature Geoscience) – Between 17,500 and 14,500 years ago, a period sometimes referred to as the Mystery Interval1, atmospheric CO2 concentrations began their post-glacial rise from about 190 ppm in glacial times to approximately 270 ppm by the beginning of the Holocene. The rise in CO2 during the Mystery […]
26 February 2016 (Sea Shepherd Global) – The hunt for the last of six known toothfish poaching vessels has ended with the arrest of the Nigerian-flagged Viking in Indonesia. The announcement of the vessel’s arrest was made at a press conference in Jakarta today, held by Indonesian Fisheries Minister, Susi Pudjiastuti, the Commander of the […]
21 January 2016 (Business Insider Australia) – More than 30 of the world’s top whale scientists have called on Japan to stop its so-called scientific whaling program. In the correspondence section of the international journal Nature, the experts write a letter to the editor under the headline “Japan’s whaling is unscientific”. The experts are mostly […]
