by Lewis Smith Conservationists are demanding an immediate and thorough inquiry into what they say is the suspicious stranding of 200 whales and dolphins. Fears that the mass stranding on an Australian beach on Sunday was caused by human disturbance were raised because two species of cetacean came ashore simultaneously. Most of the animals were […]
By Alison Auld, THE CANADIAN PRESS HALIFAX, N.S. – Dolphins, sharks and other large marine species around the world are going hungry as they seek out dwindling supplies of the small, overlooked species they feed on, according to a new study that says overfishing is draining their food sources. In a report released Monday, scientists […]
By KYLE HOPKINS – McClatchy Newspapers An already-fragile population of killer whales that hunts Prince William Sound never recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill and is doomed to die off, biologists said last week. … One of the most striking surprises to emerge from the annual Alaska Forum on the Environment was the tale […]
Researchers have marked another decline in northern fur seal pup births in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, where most of the world’s population of northern fur seals gather in the summer to rest and breed. “We started seeing an over-all decline in the abundance of fur seals on the Pribilof Islands around […]
Despite successes in reducing dolphin bycatch fishing found to negatively affect reproduction By Mario Aguilera, Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UC San Diego Despite broad “dolphin safe” practices, fishing activities have continued to restrict the growth of at least one Pacific Ocean dolphin population, a new report led by a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at […]
By James Morgan, Science reporter, BBC News Harbour seals, or common seals, are familiar faces along coastlines across the northern hemisphere. But they are now vanishing in the UK at an alarming rate, warn scientists from St Andrews University. Numbers have halved in the hardest hit area, the Orkney Islands, since 2001 – falling almost […]
By Morgan Erickson-Davis, mongabay.com Caspian Seal populations have declined 90% in the past 100 years, prompting the IUCN to switch their designation from Vulnerable to Endangered. A team from the University of Leeds performed a series of surveys in 2007 and 2008 which revealed that the birth rate has decreased from around 17,000 pups born […]
By Andrew Darby, Hobart THE first evidence suggests that a predicted rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide will wreak havoc on krill, the tiny crustacean at the heart of the Antarctic food web. Although public sympathy for the crustacean is undetectable, polar life such as penguins, seals and whales would wither without it. Captive-bred krill at […]
