Aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burning after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, off the southeast tip of Louisiana, 21 April 2010. Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

10 years after BP spill: Oil drilled deeper; rules relaxed – “I’m concerned that in the industry, the lessons aren’t fully learned — that we’re tending to backslide”

By Kevin Mcgill and Matthew Brown 18 April 2020 NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters, where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Industry leaders and […]

Empirical relationship between system area and regime shift duration in freshwater, marine, and terrestrial systems. Graphic: Cooper, et al., 2020 / Nature Communications

Ecosystems the size of Amazon rainforest “can collapse within decades”

By Jonathan Watts 10 March 2020 (The Guardian) – Even large ecosystems the size of the Amazon rainforest can collapse in a few decades, according to a study that shows bigger biomes break up relatively faster than small ones. The research reveals that once a tipping point has been passed, breakdowns do not occur gradually […]

The Blue Acceleration: global trends in human exploitation of ocean resources. Graphic: Jouffray, et al., 2020 / One Earth

The “blue acceleration”: Study shows humans’ surging incursions into the sea

By Grace Dungey 13 February 2020 (Mongabay) – Humanity has depended on the ocean for millennia. Today, however, the rush to the sea is occurring with unprecedented diversity and intensity, propelled by population growth and demand for diminishing terrestrial resources. A study published in January in the new journal One Earth analyzed 50 years of data on 18 kinds […]

Sea surface temperatures off the coast of Tasmania on November 23, 2010-2017. Data: Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). Graphic: The Sydney Morning Herald

Empty nets and tropical fish in Tasmania as climate change hits Southern Ocean

By Royce Millar and Chris Vedelago 31 January 2020 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Rising temperatures and climate change have been blamed for the failure of stocks of some of the most popular eating fish in Australia’s Southern Ocean to recover from declines despite more than a decade of protection. The troubling findings come as […]

Global pattern in the cumulative development of coastal hypoxia in the periods before 1969, 1970-1989, and 1990-2015. Each red dot represents a documented case related to human activities. Green dots are sites that have improved. Since the 1960s, the global number of hypoxic systems has about doubled every ten years up to 2000. Data: Based on Diaz and Rosenberg (2008), Diaz, et al. (2010), and Conley et al. (2011). Graphic: Laffoley and Baxter, 2019 / IUCN

Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn

By Fiona Harvey 7 December 2019 MADRID (The Guardian) – Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with “dead zones” proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned. Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were […]

A spotted seal (Phoca largha) trapped in discarded fishing net in the Sea of Japan. Kilometers of nets thrown overboard monthly, junked by North Korean poachers, kill marine life in Russian waters. Photo: Igor Katin

Fishing nets junked by North Korean poachers kill marine life in Russian waters – Kilometers of nets thrown overboard monthly, expert warns – “We are currently in the state of a permanent ecological catastrophe”

24 October 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Anthropogenic rubbish – most of which is left in the sea by North Korean fishermen – is making deadly impact on marine life in Russian Far East. A warning of a ‘permanently ongoing ecological catastrophe’ and a call for action comes from Igor Katin, researcher at the Far […]

Southern resident orca J16 makes a rainbow while surfacing in Puget Sound. Photo: Miles Ritter

Orca task force adds 13 recommendations at final meeting as “biological extinction” looms

By Bellamy Pailthorp 8 October 2019 (KNKX) – Their goal is clear: to prevent Puget Sound’s iconic Southern Resident killer whales from going extinct. Solving that problem is anything but simple. The task force convened by Gov. Jay Inslee to save the orcas added 13 new recommendations this week, at its final meeting. The additions […]

Global fisheries subsidy amounts by category and grouped by a) low and high HDI country groups; and b) developed and developing, for 2018 (constant USD). Graphic: Sumaila, et al., 2019 / Marine Policy

The sea is running out of fish, despite nations’ pledges to stop it – Major countries that are promising to curtail funding for fisheries are nevertheless increasing handouts for their seafood industries

By Todd Woody 8 October 2019 (National Geographic) – As global fish stocks that feed hundreds of millions of people dwindle, nations are scrambling to finalize by year’s end an international agreement to ban government subsidies that fuel overfishing. Yet as negotiations at the World Trade Organization resume this week in Geneva, Switzerland, new research shows that governments have […]

Aerial views of the “Maersk Launcher” and the System 001/B plastic-capturing boom deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, from June to August 2019. Photo: The Ocean Cleanup

The Ocean Cleanup project successfully catches plastic in the great pacific garbage patch

2 October 2019 (The Ocean Cleanup) — Today, we announced that System 001/B is successfully capturing and collecting plastic debris. After one year of testing, we have succeeded in developing a self-contained system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that is using the natural forces of the ocean to passively catch and concentrate plastic, thereby […]

Diagram showing an open-loop Marine Exhaust Gas Cleaning System that removes sulfur and nitrogen compounds from a ship’s engine exhaust and dumps them into the surrounding water. Graphic: Tritech Engineers

Thousands of ships fitted with “cheat devices” to divert poisonous pollution into sea – “In the North Sea and some parts of the Channel, the water quality has already been heavily degraded”

By Wil Crisp 30 September 2019 (The Independent) – Global shipping companies have spent billions rigging vessels with “cheat devices” that circumvent new environmental legislation by dumping pollution into the sea instead of the air, The Independent can reveal. More than $12bn (£9.7bn) has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract […]

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