An algae bloom stretching from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state to the northern parts of Oregon has killed thousands of seabirds by stripping them of the natural oils that keep them waterproof. Without these oils, seabirds quickly get wet and succumb to hypothermia.
The Indonesian Navy (TNI AL) has officially announced that they are deploying five warships and one reconnaissance plane to protect the Natuna waters from illegal fishing and poaching.
According to a new UN report, marine plants take 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide away from the atmosphere each year as they use the carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. Most of these plants are plankton, but planktons rarely form a permanent carbon store on the seabed. Instead, mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds are responsible for locking away well over 50 percent of all carbon that is buried in the sea – an amazing feat when you consider that these types of habitat only comprise 1 percent of the world’s seabed.
The rare Gangetic dolphin (Platanista gangetica) has been declared National Aquatic Animal of India. A few days after the formal declaration, which took place at a National Ganga River Basic Authority meeting in New Delhi earlier this week, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar announced that he has directed state authorities to put a halt to dolphin hunting in the Ganga.
Lack of iron is a limiting factor for plankton growth in many parts of the ocean, especially in the southern oceans and parts of the eastern Pacific. Scientists at the University of Leeds, UK, have now showed that acid in the atmosphere breaks down large particles of iron found in dust into small and highly soluble iron naonparticles; particles which can be easily absorbed and utilized by oceanic plankton.
Compared to the record-setting low years of 2007 and 2008, the Arctic Sea ice has made a slight recovery in 2009, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center. Despite this positive change, the minimum sea ice extent in 2009 was the third lowest since satellite record-keeping started in 1979.
During a visit to a beach in Saint-Michel-en-Greve, Brittany, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon announced that the French government will pay to have the beaches of France cleaned from toxic seaweed.
Federal stimulus money will be used to pay about 40 diving fishermen to recover lost fishing nets from the Puget Sound.
Significant areas of coastal wetlands have been restored and enhanced in Port Arthur, Texas. The largest restoration took place in the Lower Neches Wildlife Management Area near the Gulf of Mexico where historic water flow has been brought back into roughly 1,300 acres of wetland.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have developed an aquatic robot capable of collecting algal cells from the ocean and extracting the genetic information needed to identify them.
Ballast water is great for stabilizing a ship in rough waters. Unfortunately, it is equally great at carrying all sorts of aquatic organisms across the world before releasing them into new ecosystems where many of them become problematic invasive species.
Tens of thousands of crab pots litter the ocean floor, forming lethal obstacle courses of plastic lines and weighed-down metal cylinders. Lost crab pots are responsible for killing a long row of air breathing ocean dwellers, such as whales, sea lions and turtles.
Two species of Asian mouse-deer have been observed utilizing a very interesting technique to get away from predators; they jump into the water and stay there until its safe to come up. By carefully swimming up to the surface to breathe now and then they can stay submerged for long periods of time.
Specimens of the invasive Blue catfish (Ictalurus furcatus) have now grown large enough to reach the top of the food chain in James River, Virginia. A catfish weighing 102 lbs (46 kg) was caught from the river not long ago; the largest caught freshwater fish ever to be reported from Virginian waters.
“For the Florida Keys’ reefs, overall, the live coral cover has diminished by 50 to 80 percent in the past 10 years,” says Margaret Miller, a coral reef researcher at the National marine Fisheries Service. According to Miller, the destruction is the result of several contributing factors, such as pollution, climate change, over-fishing, and coastal developments.
