By Michael Slezak22 September 2016 (The Guardian) – The worst global bleaching event on record could simply be the new normal, according to one of the foremost experts on coral reefs and their response to warming oceans. Mark Eakin, head of the Coral Reef Watch program at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has […]
[Interestingly, the Australian Government’s Reef 2050 Plan for restoring the Great Barrier Reef doesn’t once mention the Carmichael coal mine. –Des] 15 October 2015 (BBC News) – Australia’s government has given its approval for one of the world’s biggest coal mines to be built by India’s Adani Mining in Queensland. In August, a court temporarily […]
[Although this obituary is cleverly written, the GBR’s situation is bad enough, and overstating it isn’t helpful. Nevertheless, this was possibly the GBR’s worst year in its 600,000 year history, with 22 percent of the reef totally bleached. The inexorable trends in acidification and ocean warming suggest that we may still witness the death of […]
By Ivan Nagelkerken, Sean Connell, and Tullio Rossi19 September 2016 (Australian Geographic) – Despite appearances, the oceans are far from silent places. If you dunk your head underwater you’ll hear a cacophony of sounds from wildlife great and small, crashing waves, and even rain. And it’s louder still for creatures attuned to these sounds. However, […]
By Kieron Monks18 September 2016 (CNN) – Few predators can match the devastating impact of the lionfish. Since arriving in US waters in the 1980s, these fearsome creatures have left a trail of destruction along the Atlantic Coast, from Rhode Island to Venezuela. Lionfish can reduce a flourishing coral reef to barren wasteland in a […]
By Rachael Bale29 August 2016 PUERTO PRINCESA, Philippines (National Geographic) – Years ago Christopher Tubo caught a 660-pound blue marlin in the South China Sea. The fishing was good there, he says. Tuna fishermen would come home from a trip with dozens of the high-value fish as well as a good haul of other species. […]
MIAMI, 12 September 2016 (University of Miami) – In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University showed that increased carbon dioxide concentrations alters brain chemistry that may lead to neurological impairment […]
25 August 2016 (350) – The seas of dead coral are a crime scene. This year, the world witnessed the most devastating mass coral bleaching event ever recorded which left behind dead reefs in at least 38 countries. Many of these reefs will never recover. The immediate cause is clear: the ongoing rise in global […]
By Jeremy Hance16 August 2016 (mongabay.com) – The Paris Agreement marked the biggest political milestone to combat climate change since scientists first introduced us in the late 1980s to perhaps humanity’s greatest existential crisis. Last December, 178 nations pledged to do their part to keep global average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius […]
By Michael Slezak14 August 2016 (Guardian) – First seabirds started falling out of the sky, washing up on beaches from California to Canada. Then emaciated and dehydrated sea lion pups began showing up, stranded and on the brink of death. A surge in dead whales was reported in the same region, and that was followed […]
