NOAA scientists report mass die-off of invertebrates at East Flower Garden Bank in Gulf of Mexico

1 August 2016 (Science Blog) – On Monday, sport divers on the M/V Fling, diving in the Gulf of Mexico 100 miles offshore of Texas and Louisiana, were stunned to find green, hazy water, huge patches of ugly white mats coating corals and sponges, and dead animals littering the bottom on the East Flower Garden […]

Great Barrier Reef suffers complete ecosystem collapse after record ocean heat wave – Bleaching event is ‘much more extreme than we’ve measured before’

By Dominique Mosbergen25 July 2016 (Huffington Post) – It’s been a wretched year for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest living structure and one of the most complex natural ecosystems on Earth. The area suffered the worst bleaching event ever, one that impacted over 90 percent of the reef and killed more than a third […]

China has been killing turtles, coral, and giant clams in the South China Sea – ‘There is no hope for many of these reefs to recover in the coming decades or centuries’

By Julie Makinen13 July 2016 (Los Angeles Times) – China struck back loudly and forcefully Wednesday after an international tribunal invalidated many of its claims in the South China Sea. But Beijing has largely been silent about some of the tribunal’s most damning findings: that its activities there have “caused devastating and long-lasting damage to […]

Kelp forests in the Great Southern Reef wiped out by marine heatwave – ‘When we went up to the northern regions and saw that everything was gone, it was devastating’

8 July 2016 (University of Western Australia) – A team of marine scientists led by The University of Western Australia have uncovered the extinction of a kelp forest ecosystem along 100 kilometres of Western Australia’s coastline, following a heatwave that occurred in 2011. Kelp forests in Western Australia have not experienced a heatwave of this […]

Great Barrier Reef mammal declared extinct due to global warming – ‘Significantly, this probably represents the first recorded mammalian extinction due to anthropogenic climate change’

[Many more to follow. –Des] 14 June 2016 (University of Queensland) –  University of Queensland and Queensland Government researchers have confirmed that the Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) – the only mammal species endemic to the Great Barrier Reef – is the first mammal to go extinct due to human-induced climate change. In a newly […]

This chart shows what’s at stake in the quest to stop global warming

By Chris Mooney 23 June 2016 (Washington Post) – Here at the Energy and Environment blog, we cover, regularly, the tipping points of climate change — how, for instance, the glaciers of West Antarctica may already have passed a key threshold that leads to unstoppable melt. We cover the history of the Earth’s climate — […]

The Great Barrier Reef: A catastrophe laid bare – ‘It was one of the most disgusting sights I’ve ever seen’

By Michael Slezak6 June 2016 (Guardian) – It was the smell that really got to diver Richard Vevers. The smell of death on the reef. “I can’t even tell you how bad I smelt after the dive – the smell of millions of rotting animals.” Vevers is a former advertising executive and is now the […]

Video: Diving in the stench of millions of rotting animals at the bleached Great Barrier Reef

7 June 2016 (Guardian) – Richard Vevers from the Ocean Agency had never experienced anything like the devastation he witnessed in May diving around the dead and dying coral reefs off Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. When his team emerged from the water, he says, ‘We realised we just stank – we stank […]

New photos show the rapid pace of Great Barrier Reef bleaching – ‘We are currently experiencing the longest global coral bleaching event ever observed’

By Merrit Kennedy14 May 2016 (NPR) – The massive bleaching hitting the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is likely that country’s “biggest ever environmental disaster,” says Dr. Justin Marshall, who has studied the reef for three decades. Only 7 percent of the reef has escaped bleaching, according to researchers at the ARC […]

‘Unprecedented’ mangrove dieback worries scientists

By David Sigston10 May 2016 (AAP) – Scientists are worried about an “unprecedented” dieback of mangroves in northern Australia and the link with large-scale coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. The widespread damage to mangroves around the Gulf of Carpentaria has been highlighted at an international wetland conference held this week in Darwin. While […]

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