Red tide is devastating Florida’s sea life. Are humans to blame?

By Maya Wei-Haas 8 August 2018(National Geographic) – The first thing you notice is the smell. It’s not a scent, exactly, but a tingling in the nose that quickly spreads to the throat and burns the lungs. But then you see the carcasses. Thousands of sea creatures now litter many of southern Florida’s typically picturesque […]

Toxic algae bloom killing fish, eels, and turtles by the tens of thousands in southwest Florida – “This is the worst I’ve ever seen”

By Manuel Bojorquez 2 August 2018 MIAMI (CBS News) – Thousands of fish, eels and turtles are dying, sometimes as far as the eye can see, in parts of southwest Florida. Just this week, one of several lifeless manatees was pulled from the water. The suspected culprit is a toxic algae bloom known as “red […]

Study finds oxygen loss in the coastal Baltic Sea is “unprecedentedly severe” – Global warming delays recovery from 20th century pollution

5 July 2018 (EGU) – The Baltic Sea is home to some of the world’s largest dead zones, areas of oxygen-starved waters where most marine animals can’t survive. But while parts of this sea have long suffered from low oxygen levels, a new study by a team in Finland and Germany shows that oxygen loss […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of algae bloom in the Gulf of Finland, 18 July 2018

By Mike Carlowicz 23 July 2018(NASA) – Every summer, phytoplankton spread across the northern basins of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, with blooms spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometers. Nutrient-rich, cooler waters tend to promote more growth among marine plants and phytoplankton than is found in tropical waters. Blooms this summer off of […]

Across U.S., toxic algal blooms threaten lakes and other waterways, with alarming rise from 3 blooms in 2010 to 169 blooms in 2017

AMES, Iowa, 15 May 2018 (EWG) – Across the U.S., a growing epidemic of toxic algal blooms is polluting lakes and other waterways, according to a new report by the Environmental Working Group.Toxic algal blooms occur when chemical pollution from farms and other sources runs off into waterways, forming a thick, green, soup-like substance on […]

Ocean heatwaves becoming longer and more frequent – “With more than 90 percent of the heat from human-caused global warming going into our oceans, it is likely marine heatwaves will continue to increase”

11 April 2018 (University of Tasmania) – An international study in Nature Communications co-authored by researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) reveals that marine heatwaves have increased globally over the past century in number, length and intensity as a direct result of […]

Study finds warning signs for mass extinction do exist, contrary to previous assumptions – “We should take these signs very seriously”

14 March 2018 (FAU) – Mass extinctions throughout the history of the Earth have been well documented. Scientists believe that they occurred during a short period of time in geological terms. In a new study, FAU palaeobiologists and their research partners have now shown that signs that the largest mass extinction event in the Earth’s […]

Phosphorus pollution reaching dangerous levels worldwide, new study finds

WASHINGTON D.C., 25 January 2018 (AGU) – Man-made phosphorus pollution is reaching dangerously high levels in freshwater basins around the world, according to new research. A new study published in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, estimated the global amount of phosphorus from human activities that entered Earth’s freshwater bodies from […]

Ocean oxygen levels dropping as world warms – “The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth’s environment”

4 January 2018 (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center) – In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside […]

Global warming has quadrupled ocean dead zones – “The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth’s environment”

4 January 2018 (SERC) – In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as […]

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