By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News23 February 2011 Three-quarters of the world’s coral reefs are at risk due to overfishing, pollution, climate change and other factors, says a major new assessment. Reefs at Risk Revisited collates the work of hundreds of scientists and took three years to compile. The biggest threat is exploitative fishing, […]
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science WriterFebruary 20, 2011 Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist’s video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn’t degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor. That report is at […]
Sydney (AFP) Feb 6, 2011 – Hammered by a monster cyclone just weeks after flooding spewed toxic waste into its pristine waters, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef could face a slow recovery due to climate change, experts warn. Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi, a top-category storm, ripped through Australia’s northeast tourist coast Thursday, levelling houses and decimating […]
By Peter Michael, The Courier-MailFebruary 08, 2011 12:01AM WORLD Heritage rainforest and surviving populations of endangered southern cassowaries and dugong were hit hard by Cyclone Yasi, scientists warn. Some of Queensland’s top tropical experts met for the first time yesterday to assess the ecological impact of the Category 5 cyclone described as “far worse and […]
By James Mitchell Crow 18 January 2011 The floods that have devastated swathes of southern Queensland are beginning to perturb one of the world’s largest World Heritage Sites, the Great Barrier Reef, scientists in Australia say. Southern parts of the reef, which extends more than 2,000 kilometres along the Queensland coast in northeastern Australia, are […]
By ANDREW SHARPLESSTuesday, 01.18.11 Sometimes, seemingly small numbers can have remarkably big consequences. Miss a single free throw, and your team loses the championship. The economy slows by few percent, and millions of Americans are out of work. Your temperature rises by a degree or two, and you are down and out with a fever. […]
By Amy Pyett; Editing by Rob TaylorMon Jan 10, 2011 5:48am EST SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s devastating floods are flushing toxic, pesticide-laden sediment into the Great Barrier Reef, and could threaten fragile corals and marine life in the world’s largest living organism, environmentalists said on Monday. Flood plumes from the swollen Fitzroy and Burnett rivers […]
Aquatic Research4 January 2011 Examination of deep sea corals reveals that there have been drastic changes to oceanic currents in the western North Atlantic since the 1970s. The influence of the cold water Labrador Current, which is in periodic interchange with the warm Gulf Stream, has been decreasing continually since the 1970s. Occurring at the […]
By Chris JohnstonJanuary 3, 2011 … [A] prominent water scientist has forecast widespread damage to the Great Barrier Reef as murky floodwaters surge into the sea off Queensland. Jon Brodie, a senior research officer with the Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research at James Cook University in Townsville, told The Age the floods were a […]
By Joe RommDecember 7, 2010 Reefs are the ocean’s canaries and we must hear their call. This call is not just for themselves, for the other great ecosystems of the ocean stand behind reefs like a row of dominoes. If coral reefs fail, the rest will follow in rapid succession, and the Sixth Mass Extinction […]
