Fish and aquatic news

A rigid inflatable boat capable of submerging and operating underwater has been developed by Severn (7) Shipbuilders in Gloucestershire, UK.

Europe’s first artificial surf reef was officially launched this Monday. Around a dozen surfers and body boarders headed for the waves as soon as the Bournemouth Borough Council declared the reef open.

In most species, a male specimen will usually don’t invest a lot of time or energy in caring for young when there is a good chance that he is not their father. There are how ever exceptions to this rule, such as the Ocellated wrasse.

The Jordanian government has announced its plans to extract over 10 billion cubic feet of water per year from the Red Sea and send most of it to a desalination plant to produce drinking water.

A gigantic underwater museum filled with 400 sculptures will be created in Mexico’s West Coast National Park in on the Yucatán Peninsula. The artistic director is Jason de Caires Taylor, famous for his underwater sculptures, but other artists will also be involved in the project.

A marine park will be formed at Camden Sound, Australia, in an effort to protect the Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). Once hunted to the brink of extinction, the humpbacks have already bounced back considerably thanks to conservation efforts and they are now much sought after by whale-watchers, particularly off parts of Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Dr Parker, from James Cook University’s School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, and collaborator Professor Rocky de Nys, from JCU’s School of Marine and Tropical Biology, have just received a $7,000 Collaboration Across Boundaries grant to prove their theory that feeding seaweed to cow will improve their digestion and make them produce less methane.

Straddling the heavily populated border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lake Kivu contains huge amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide and highly combustible methane gas.

Europe’s first artificial surf reef is now undergoing its final adjustments to be ready for the start of the UK surf season in September, and it is already attracting surfers.

Florida seems to have gotten its very own alleged sea monster. It lives in the waters off Singer Island in the Lake Worth Lagoon, not far from the Riviera Beach Florida Power & Light plant.

A married couple based in Florida Keys have been sentenced to prison for lobster poaching and will have to pay 1.1 million USD to restore the marine sanctuary in which they carried out their illegal activities

A 100 metre by 100 metre* anchor-free zone will be established in Studland Bay in Dorset bay to protect the largest seahorse breeding colony in the United Kingdom.

Yesterday, French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced that France backs Monaco’s call for an international trade ban for Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna.

Ever wondered how the turtle got its shell? So has a Japanese team of scientist and they decided to investigate the subject by comparing turtle embryos with those of chicks and mice.

At a meeting in Paris last month, the General Assembly of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) agreed to introduce a new thermodynamic description of seawater. The new description will be based on a new salinity variable called Absolute Salinity.