Ocean Conservation News
Courtesy of Ocean Conserve

Corals inflate to escape the sand BBC: Coral might appear solid and inanimate, but surprising new footage of a mushroom coral inflating itself to escape a sandy burial has brought the organism to life. A scientist from the University of Queensland used timelapse photography to capture the footage. It was already known that the species could release itself from the sandy seabed, but it was not clear how. Since corals move so slowly, time-lapse imagery was used to find out. Dr Pim Bongaerts captured the footage and published... Author : BBC: Victoria Gill Publ.Date : Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0600 Whales 'stressed by ocean noise' BBC: Noise from ships stresses whales nearby, researchers have shown. Ships' propellers emit sound in the same frequency range that some whales use for communicating, and previous studies have shown the whales change their calling patterns in noisy places. Now, researchers have measured stress hormones in whale faeces, and found they rose with the density of shipping. The species studied in the Bay of Fundy in Canada, the North Atlantic right whale, is listed as endangered. It had been thought... Author : BBC: Richard Black Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:28:00 -0600 Consumer groups want tougher probe of engineered salmon Reuters: Three U.S. consumer groups petitioned the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to subject a new genetically engineered salmon to a more rigorous review process than is now in place before the fish can be approved as safe to eat. The fish at issue, AquaBounty Technologies' AquAdvantage salmon, is currently classified as a new animal drug for the purposes of FDA review. The FDA considers any genetically altered animal a new animal drug for approval purposes. The petition calls for the salmon... Author : Reuters: None Given Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:20:00 -0600 Spain's Green Groups Slam Rollback of Conservation Policies Inter Press Service: Spain's new conservative government has announced changes in environmental policy that are a significant step backwards for environmental protection in the country, provoking an immediate, harsh reaction from the opposition and civil society. Mario Rodríguez, head of the Spanish chapter of the environmental NGO Greenpeace, told IPS that the only fit response to the government's announcement is "citizens' protests to demand that the achievements for the defence of the environment over the past... Author : Inter Press Service: Tito Drago Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:36:00 -0600 Mediterranean seagrass could be hundreds of thousands of years old Guardian: A sprawling meadow of seagrass in the shallows of the Mediterranean may be the oldest living organisms on Earth. Scientists calculated the age of the plants from DNA tests on clumps gathered from the seafloor between Spain and Cyprus. They revealed the typical age of the seagrass, Posidonia oceanica, to be thousands or tens of thousands of years old, though some appeared to more ancient still. A 15km-wide stretch of seagrass lying in waters off the Spanish island of Formentera could be 200,000... Author : Guardian: Ian Sample Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:17:00 -0600 Rising ocean acidity worst for Caribbean and Pacific SciDev.Net: The current trend of increasing ocean acidification, which threatens fisheries around the world, is driven mainly by man-made changes and is higher even than that seen at the end of the last ice age, some 11,000 year ago, a study has said. Much of the carbon released by human activity ends up in the oceans, increasing their acidity and reducing the growth of corals and molluscs, which in turn may affect fisheries and aquaculture. Fisheries in the Pacific and the Caribbean may suffer the most... Author : SciDev.Net: Lisbeth Fog Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:09:00 -0600 BP squares up for oil spill lawsuits Reuters: BP ratcheted up the rhetoric around multi-billion dollar claims from the Gulf oil spill by warning it would "vigorously" contest lawsuits over one of the world's worst environmental disasters. While reiterating BP's "bias for settling" at hearings scheduled later this month, CEO Bob Dudley said he would only do so "on fair and reasonable terms." As he unveiled higher fourth quarter profit on Tuesday and a rise in the dividend, which he said showed BP was putting the spill behind it, Dudley... Author : Reuters: Tom Bergin Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:23:00 -0600 Judge allocates time for start of oil spill trial Associated Press: A federal judge has set aside nearly seven hours for opening statements in a trial over the deadly rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that resulted in the nation's worst offshore oil spill. Monday's order by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier divides up 400 minutes of opening statements by lawyers for the plaintiffs, government entities and companies involved in the trial scheduled to start Feb. 27. Plaintiffs' attorneys will go first and get 75 minutes to speak. BP PLC, owner of the blown-out... Author : Associated Press: None Given Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:25:00 -0600 BP's steady recovery could be undone by Deepwater court case Guardian: Bob Dudley has tried, over his short tenure as boss of BP, a few eye-catching – but ultimately unsuccessful – moves to attract the attention of investors and restore the company's still-sagging share price. More workaday news such as Tuesday's bounceback to profitability and decision to raise the dividend 14% plus a series of positive statistics about how many wells are being drilled and the successful acreage secured, might be a better way of achieving his goal. Dudley tried to tie up a glitzy... Author : Guardian: Terry Macalister Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:17:00 -0600 BP preparing "vigorously" for oil spill lawsuits Reuters: BP said it was preparing "vigorously" for lawsuits related to its Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which are due to start later this month, as it unveiled a rise in fourth-quarter earnings boosted by higher oil prices and one-off gains. Chief Executive Bob Dudley said on Tuesday BP was ready to settle the approximate 600 civil lawsuits it faces from people in states as far away as South Carolina and Kentucky, as well as litigation from the government, on "fair and reasonable terms." However, as the... Author : Reuters: Tom Bergin Publ.Date : Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:40:00 -0600 The sea is rising? Island nations will see you in court LA Times: If the globe keeps warming and the seas keep rising, the country of Palau could be wiped off the map. So the Pacific island is teaming up with other small island nations to fight the threat of climate change -- in court. The countries want the International Court of Justice to offer an opinion on whether countries that pollute have a responsibility to other countries that get hurt by that pollution. Ecological damage that crosses borders could be seen as a violation of international law, a legal... Author : LA Times: None Given Publ.Date : Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:48:00 -0600 A Scramble to Rescue Dolphins New York Times: Rescue workers transporting a mother and calf last month on Sagamore Beach in Massachusetts. The dolphins were returned to the ocean later in deeper waters. In just over three weeks, 129 common dolphins have stranded themselves along 20 miles of Cape Cod beaches. While mass strandings of marine mammals are hardly new in the area - even the Pilgrims witnessed them - this series is different. It`s the biggest single-species stranding that Cape Cod has ever seen, and the dolphins keep on coming,... Author : New York Times: Joanna M. Foster Publ.Date : Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:32:00 -0600 Patch of seagrass is world's oldest living organism New Scientist: It's green and very, very old. A swathe of seagrass in the Mediterranean could be the oldest known living thing on Earth. Carlos Duarte of the University of Western Australia in Perth sequenced the DNA of Posidonia oceanica at 40 sites spanning 3500 kilometres of seafloor, from Spain to Cyprus. One patch off the island of Formentera was identical over 15 kilometres of coastline. Like all seagrasses, Posidonia oceanica reproduces by cloning, so meadows spanning many kilometres are genetically identical... Author : New Scientist: Wendy Zukerman Publ.Date : Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:46:00 -0600 Research team monitors disappearance of Arctic tundra in Canada's Yukon Edmonton Journal: Smith and Sarah Wheeler standing by their camp in the Ruby Mountain Range of the Yukon after an early fall snow storm knocked down their camp University of Alberta biologist Isla Myers-Smith and her colleague were taking down their research camp in the Ruby Mountain Range when a snowstorm with winds of near hurricane force blew down their tent and sent their electric generator tumbling down a hillside. For nearly three days, Myers-Smith and Helen Wheeler hunkered down, eating what little food... Author : Edmonton Journal: Ed Struzik Publ.Date : Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:00:00 -0600 Jellyfish explosion may be natural cycle Mongabay: Evidence that jellyfish are taking over the oceans is currently lacking, according to a new study published in Bioscience. Complied by a number of marine experts, the study found that while jellyfish have been on the rise in some regions it is likely due to a natural cycle of jellyfish populations and not a global boom. Researchers, including a number of marine biologists, have warned for years that jellyfish numbers may be exploding due to human activities, such as overfishing, warmer oceans due... Author : Mongabay: Jeremy Hance Publ.Date : Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:18:00 -0600 Climate risk of toxic shock Physorg: Increased flooding could release contaminants previously regarded as secure into groundwater, rivers, oceans, the food supply and atmosphere, the director of the CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment, Professor Ravi Naidu said today. "Most of our urban landfills contain highly toxic substances from past decades – and were designed for the climatic conditions at the time. These have now changed, with the risk of bigger and more frequent floods, droughts, heat and acidity... Author : Physorg: None Given Publ.Date : Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:01:00 -0600 Study Reveals Climate Change's Large Scale Damages to Corals Fars News Agency: The results of a study showed that climate change and dramatic shifts in sea temperatures can cause short and long term damages to the world coral reefs. Around the world coral reefs are facing threats brought by climate change and dramatic shifts in sea temperatures. While ocean warming has been the primary focus for scientists and ocean policy managers, cold events can also cause large-scale coral bleaching events. A new study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San... Author : Fars News Agency: None Given Publ.Date : Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:44:00 -0600 United Kingdom: At -37C, the big freeze tightens its icy grip Independent: The coldest night of winter so far left the majority of Britain blanketed in snow as temperatures dropped to -12C. Drivers were warned to take extra care and planes were grounded, including at London Heathrow where one-in-three flights scheduled for today are expected to be cancelled. A host of sporting fixtures were also postponed. The evening match at Manchester City had to pause temporarily so the pitch markings could be made clear. In Beeston, Nottinghamshire, there were more serious... Author : Independent: None Given Publ.Date : Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0600 Image of the Day: A Crack Across the Pine Island Glacier Climate Central: A massive crack extending for 19 miles across the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica was discovered last October by NASA scientists working in the area. The crack is 260 feet wide, 195 feet deep and will eventually extend all the way across the glacier, calving a giant iceberg that will cover about 350 square miles. This image was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft on Nov. 13, 2011. Author : Climate Central: None Given Publ.Date : Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:01:00 -0600 Science behind the big freeze: is climate change bringing the Arctic to Europe? Independent: The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence. A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week. The death toll from Arctic blast has been particularly severe in the Ukraine, where many of the dead have been people... Author : Independent: Steve Connor Publ.Date : Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:17:00 -0600 Global experts question claims about jellyfish populations Santa Barbar Independent: Blooms, or proliferation, of jellyfish have shown a substantial, visible impact on coastal populations - clogged nets for fishermen, stinging waters for tourists, even choked intake lines for power plants - and recent media reports have created a perception that the world`s oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overharvesting of fish. Now, a new global and collaborative study conducted at UC Santa Barbara`s National Center for Ecological... Author : Santa Barbar Independent: None Given Publ.Date : Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 -0600 Lawmakers push for sea level rise study in Hampton Roads Daily Press: With its low-lying military bases and waterfront houses, Hampton Roads is more vulnerable to sea-level rise than most of the United States. Yet there is no coordinated plan to adapt to waters that, combined with slow-sinking land around the Chesapeake Bay, threaten to submerge entire neighborhoods by 2100. One Republican and six Democratic state lawmakers hope to change that with a first-of-its-kind study that would inventory what's been done and what can be done to mitigate the effects of... Author : Daily Press: Cory Nealon Publ.Date : Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 -0600 Sturgeon Scarcity Affects More Than Caviar National Public Radio: Sturgeon have been swimming around for more than 200 million years, but their eggs are sought after for caviar. This week, the National Marine Fisheries Service placed the Atlantic sturgeon on its endangered species list. Guest host David Greene speaks with Dr. Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University. Author : National Public Radio: None Given Publ.Date : Sat, 04 Feb 2012 07:00:00 -0600 Prince optimistic for fisheries BBC: There are reasons for optimism about the future of the world's fish stocks despite their currently dire state, said the Prince of Wales at the launch of a report from his green think-tank. Fisheries in Transition details 50 case studies of successful management in various parts of the world. The prince said the issue was dogged by a "debilitating fatalism". His International Sustainability Unit (ISU) is aiming to build constructive dialogue between industry and ecology. The report is... Author : BBC: Richard Black Publ.Date : Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:44:00 -0600