Authorities have said that a woman had a deadly reaction and died after being stung by a jellyfish on an Italian beach.

Maria Farcus, 69, is thought to be the first such case of a person dying of a jellyfish-sting in Europe.

Furcas came up onto the beach and collapsed having suffered what appeared to be anaphylactic shock after being stung by the Portuguese Man-of-war jellyfish. Paramedics rushed onto the scene, but were unable to save her, reported the Daily Mail.

“The lady came out of the water dragging her leg and screaming she had been stung by a jellyfish. There was a very vivid red mark on her right leg. Then she collapsed to the ground and a lifeguard and other people on the beach rushed to help her. … She died on the sand in front of dozens of people” A witness on the scene reported.

Experts have said that they believe that Furcas’s case is the first fatal case in the Mediterranean, despite the fact that thousands are stung each year on the beaches by jellyfish.

Furcas’s death happened just days after more than 700 jellyfish stings were reported along the Costa Blanca in Spain.

“This type of jellyfish has always been present in the Mediterranean but now they are increasing in numbers due to global warming and they can grow tentacles up to 60 feet long,” explained a marine biology lecturer at the University of Lecce, Ferdinando Boero.

A group of scientists have discovered four ancient shipwrecks off of Zannone, a tiny Italian island, which appear to have their cargoes of wine and oil intact.

The skeletons of these wrecks, which date back from the first century BC up until the fifth to seventh century AD, are at a depth of approximately 165 meters beneath the waves, which saved them from being disturbed by fishermen for centuries.
“The deeper you go, the more likely you are to find complete wrecks,” an official from the archaeological services section of the Italian culture ministry, Annalisa Zaratinni said.

The wooden hulks have all but disappeared, as tiny marine organisms used it as food. However the skeletons as well as the cargoes are still in the same positions as the ay they sank.

“The ships sank, they came to rest at the bottom of the sea, the wood disappeared and you find the whole ship, with the entire cargo. Nothing has been taken away,” Annalisa Zaratini explained.

These ancient wrecks were discovered by the the Aurora Trust, a US foundation which promotes the exploration of the Mediterranean seabed, and Italian authorities.

The wrecks, which were about 18 meters in length, had been carrying large jars of wine from Italy, and other cargo which included olive oil, fruit, and even a fish sauce.

Another wreck was discovered, and appears to have been carrying bricks for building. It is not clear as of yet, just what led these ships to their demise, and there have been no human remains found, making these apparent “ghost” ships.

As reported earlier , the European Union has decided to ban the import of seal skin and other seal products hailing from commercial seal hunting.

This has upset Canadian seal hunters since Italy and Denmark, both members of the European Union, are two major importers of seal products. Italy imports most of their seal skins from Russia, but Denmark has always been an important trade partner for North American seal hunters, partly due to Denmark’s traditional connection to Greenland.

According to a statement from Canadian Trade Minister Stockwell Day, the federal government is now getting ready to move in with an appeal against the ban, which they see as a clear breach of WTO regulation.

“We’ll go to the WTO because it’s clear in WTO regulations that if one country wants to ban the products of another, it has to have clear scientific, medically acceptable reasons for doing so, and this EU ban is not based on hard science,” Day said.

The Canadin government believes that Canada deserves an exemption from the import ban since it follows internationally accepted guidelines regarding seal hunting, e.g. by prohibiting the clubbing of baby seals while they still have their white coats.

Day claims that the European ban is based on “people’s feelings” rather than hard facts, and says that the trade action will proceed unless the European Union Parliament exempts Canada and other countries that he said practise humane and sustainable seal hunting. According to Day, seal hunt proponents erroneously portray seal hunting as it was 40 years ago.

The suggested seal import ban must still be approved by individual European governments before becoming law but can, if passed, come into effect as early as next year. If the is approved, it will cause an annual 2 million USD loss for the Canadian industry.

Canadian Fisheries Minister Gail Shea agrees supports the government’s planned trade action.

“When you live in small coastal communities, sometimes there’s not many opportunities to make some additional money,” she said. “We have a number of families who make up to 35% of their annual income from the seal hunt. So yes, I do think it’s very important.”

As reported earlier, the proposed European seal import ban will contain some exemptions and seal products resulting from hunts traditionally conducted by Inuit and other indigenous communities can still be imported to and marketed in European Union countries even if the ban is approved. Products that result from hunting conducted for the purpose of sustainable management of marine resources on a non-profit basis will also be allowed, and individual travellers will be permitted to bring seal products to the European Union as long as the import is of an occasional nature and consists exclusively of goods for the personal use of the traveller.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) estimates that 51 percent of all the Bluefin tuna caught in the Mediterranean during 2007 was illegal and unauthorised. According to the commission, the total catch for last year was 61,000 tones – a sharp contrast to the agreed quota of 29,500 tones. The commission is now warning for a complete collapse of the tune stocks in the Mediterranean, unless drastic measures are put into action.

According to the commission, the recovery plan implemented over the past two years by tuna fishing countries has failed to improve the poor state of the tuna stocks. If the Mediterranean tuna stocks collapse, it will not only be a catastrophe from a conservational perspective; it will also have serious consequences for all those who get their livelihood from tuna fishing in the area.

“Scientists have made the situation clear and now it is necessary for ICCAT and all the states involved in blue fin tuna exploitation to act in order to halt the decline and prevent a collapse“, says Xavier Pastor, the director of Oceana, an organisation that works to protect the world’s oceans. “Drastic measures should be adopted, such as closing the Mediterranean tuna fishery from June to August, the blue fin tuna’s reproductive months.”

According to Christian Agrillo, an experimental psychologist at the University of Padua in Italy, the North American mosquito fish can count up to four. This rudimentary mathematical ability makes it possible for the North American mosquito fish to count how many other fish that are nearby – but only up to four. Similar counting abilities have already been observed in dolphins, but until now researchers only new that fish could tell big shoals from small ones, not that they were able to actually count.

In earlier research, Agrillo and his colleagues found that a female specimen of the North American mosquito fish will swim to the largest nearby shoal to protect herself from a harassing male. In order to do so, she must of course be able to somehow tell the difference between a larger shoal and a smaller one.

To establish exactly how advanced the counting ability of the North American mosquito fish was, Agrillo et al continued their research by testing if a lone specimen would prefer to join a shoal consisting of 2, 3 or 4 other fish. The study showed that female fish could tell the difference between two shoals even when the shoal size differed by only one specimen. Females would significantly more often prefer to join a shoal consisting of four others rather than three, and would also favour shoals comprised of three fish rather than of two.

When a new series of experiments were conducted using even larger shoals, researchers found that the female North American mosquito fish were unable to directly count over four. If two shoals differed in size by a ratio of 2:1 she would go for the larger one, but if the difference was smaller she seemed to conclude that they were “both big”. She would for instance not favour a shoal consisting of 12 fish over a shoal of 8, but could clearly tell a shoal of 16 from a shoal of 8. The female North American mosquito fish therefore seems to have the ability to estimate larger numbers, but not very exactly.

The results of the study can be found on BBC’s site Loveearth.com

An Italian museum in Bolzano have defied and angered the papacy by refusing to remove a piece of art that the Vatican has condemned as blasphemous. The piece of art depicts a crucified green frog. The tongue hangs out of its mouth and it has a beer mug and an egg in its hands. The sculpture is about 1 meter 30 cm (4 feet) high The Vatican demanded that the piece should be removed from the exhibit and not be displayed again.

The statue is made of wood and crafted by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger (died 1997) and is called “Zuerst die Fuesse,” (Feet First). The artists considered it a self-portrait illustrating human angst.

The Museion (art and culture multitude) museum is as earlier mentioned located in the city of Balzano which is located in northern Italy. The board of directory discussed removing the painting and a majority vote decided that the frog is to be consider a piece of art and as such should not be removed from the exhibition.

Balzano is located in a heavily catholic area and the local resident Franz Pahl has started to hunger strike to get the statue removed from the exhibition. He says that the statue is to be considered as blasphemous and that it will upset a lot of people in the are. He further states that: “This decision to keep the statue there is totally unacceptable. It is a grave offence to our Catholic population,”

Art experts disagree as art must always be free and without restrictions.

You can see a picture of the frog here.

Well not really but it is close enough to report on even if it isn’t fish related. In a nature reserve in Italy in the town of Prato, Tuscany, there is a deer that has only one horn in the center of its head. The dear, named unicorn, was born in captivity in the research area of the park and is believed to be a genetically anomaly. Another theory suggest that his unicorn look might be due to an injury the deer might have suffered when young. Although deers sometime only have one horn it is very rare, if not unknown to have a deer with one horn in the middle of the head. More commonly they just lack the left or the right horn. It has been suggested that this anomaly regardless of it cause might be the source for the myth about the unicorn.

You can read more about it and see pictures of the deer by clicking the link below.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25097986/