By Matt McGrath, Environment correspondent13 November 2013 (BBC News) – The world’s oceans are becoming acidic at an “unprecedented rate” and may be souring more rapidly than at any time in the past 300 million years. In their strongest statement yet on this issue, scientists say acidification could increase by 170% by 2100. They say […]
By Harriet McLeod3 November 2013 (Reuters) – “Shrimpers are reporting to us that they dump the bag on the deck, and the shrimp are just dead,” one fisheries director said. Wild shrimp hauls off the southern Atlantic coast have plunged in recent months as a parasite has made it harder for the creatures to breathe, […]
By Andrew Darby7 October 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Turns out it’s the little things we need to worry about in climate change. When they’re in trouble, a great polar ecosystem may be, too. The oceans are now absorbing so much carbon dioxide they are acidifying at an unprecedented rate, according to the International […]
By Ian Lloyd Neubauer 23 September 2013 (TIME) – A dead cat in the in-tray. That’s what Greenpeace called the newly elected Australian government’s inheritance of a proposal to build the largest coal port in the world at Abbot Point in the northeastern state of Queensland. A decision is required, and the stakes couldn’t be […]
By Craig Welch12 September 2013 HILO, Hawaii (Seattle Times) – It appears at the end of a palm tree-lined drive, not far from piles of hardened black lava: the newest addition to the Northwest’s famed oyster industry. Half an ocean from Seattle, on a green patch of island below a tropical volcano, a Washington state […]
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ8 September 2013 CLEWISTON, Florida (The New York Times) – On wind-whipped days when rain pounds this part of South Florida, people are quickly reminded that Lake Okeechobee, with its vulnerable dike and polluted waters, has become a giant environmental problem far beyond its banks. Beginning in May, huge downpours ushered in the […]
By Craig Welch15 September 2013 NORMANBY ISLAND, Papua New Guinea (Seattle Times) — Katharina Fabricius plunged from a dive boat into the Pacific Ocean of tomorrow. She kicked through blue water until she spotted a ceramic tile attached to the bottom of a reef. A year earlier, the ecologist from the Australian Institute of Marine […]
By Matt Pearce13 September 2013 (Los Angeles Times) – Fish began dying en masse in the waters around Honolulu after hundreds of thousands of gallons of molasses spilled into Honolulu Harbor early this week, and there’s nothing officials can do to clean it up. Thousands of fish have died from the sugary sludge. Crabs lay […]
By Mark Memmott12 September 2013 (NPR) – “Everything down there is dead.” That’s one stunning quote from Hawaii News Now’s latest report about the devastating damage that’s been done to the marine life off Honolulu’s Sand Island by 233,000 gallons of molasses that were spilled into Honolulu harbor on Monday. Gary Gill, deputy director of […]
By Brad Plumer31 August 2013 (Washington Post) – The world’s oceans are turning acidic at what’s likely the fastest pace in 300 million years. Scientists tend to think this is a troubling development. But just how worried should we be, exactly? It’s a question marine experts have been racing to get a handle on in […]
