Pilot whales - Picture by: Clark Anderson

Researchers who have been studying the whales making their homes in the seas surrounding Britain have discovered that their calls have become ten times louder over the past five decades as they have battled to be heard about the noises accumulating in the seas.

“The rumbling noises emitted by ships and marine installations have similar frequencies to those used by whales,” explained a marine researcher over at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Peter Tyack.

“We found that whales are trying to adapt either by emitting much louder noises or by calling at higher frequencies. It’s like they’ve turned from a bass into a tenor.”

Whales are well known for their ability to talk to each other by using low frequency noise.

Sound waves have the ability to travel for hundreds of miles under the water. The lower the frequency the farther the sound wave can travel.

The number of most species of larger whales have diminished to less than five percent of the number they should be at, so this ability to communicate over large distances is paramount to their survival. However, Dr Tyack and other researchers have concerns that the noise pollution we are creating in the oceans is drowning out or canceling out the mating calls of these whales.

“The whales are not just getting louder. Their messages are getting simpler and repeated more often, just like a human forced to shout,” he explained.

“It also means they spend more energy on communicating.”

There is something fishy going on in Derbyshire – but it’s the good kind of fishy.

After two centuries and 80 kilometers inland, an amazing thing has happened on one of the largest rivers in Britain – a salmon was seen leaping its way upstream to spawn.

This amazing thing – which is more common in Scotland and Canada – was seen in Derbyshire on the Rover Derwent.

The salmon – which would have swum to the ends of the earth just to spawn and perish – had an easier time making its way up the river due to the higher water levels because of recent rainfall.

Experts are keeping their fingers crossed, and by building “fish passes” around the weirs, hope to encourage a more permanent presence of the salmon.

Salmon need to be able to make their way upstream to breed, and Jim Finnegan – an Environment Agency expert – has commented that everything should be done to try and make this process easier.

He said: ‘We have been down there and seen salmon trying to leap over the weir.
‘But the ultimate objective is to see them spawning or breeding in the Derwent, and there’s no evidence of that yet.
‘We will need to build these fish passes.’

Well, the good news is that the salmon are making their way back up to Derwent. This means, that with a little bit of work and care, that we as humans can help mother nature return to its natural course.

UK

Hide the fry, make sure they are tucked away good and tight. The boogie man of shrimp has come to town. This time it has selected Britain.

Britain appears to be under siege from a battalion of what appear to be killer shrimp.

This hungry invader, known as Dikerogammarus villosus, has been found by fishermen at Grafham Water in Cambridgeshire.

These shrimp, which are much larger than the shrimp native to Britain, come from Eastern Europe but have been steadily making their way westward, presumably looking for the buffet, for the past 10 years.

These invaders are aggressive hunters, and are feeding on the native freshwater shrimp, damselflies, small fish and water boatmen, and are poised to turn the local food chain on its head.

Often the shrimp kill just for the sport of it, and can rapidly take over lakes and rvers.

They aren’t a danger to local drinking water supplies, however fishermen have been warned to double check for the sneaky buggers so as to not aid in their spreading.

Researchers are taking the threat very seriously, and are now testing the water to see how widespread the problem is, and how to put a clamp on it.

Seems to me a lot of invasive species are making their ways into places they shouldn’t.. Global Warming? Or something more sinister? Either way, looks like Britain might be poised for a huge shrimp fry.

Many people are happy, and patting themselves on the back after finding the first baby sea horse at one of the leading breeding colonies in Dorset.

The tiny fry, what you call a tiny baby seahorse, discovered at Studland Bay is 4 centimeters in length.

Displayed sea horse is not from the dorset population.

The Seahorse Trust has claimed that the seahorses are an endangered animal, as many boats and mooring chains are taking big hunks and tearing up the seabed.

The Marine Management Organization, a government entity, has said that although research has been ongoing into the subject, there was no conclusive evidence that mooring chains are a threat to seahorses.

The Seahorse Trust is pushing for the protection of these amazing animals under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which came into existence in 2008.

“The trust and its volunteer divers have seen adults, pregnant males and juveniles on the site before but never a baby (fry),” a representative of the Seahorse Trust has commented.
“It does not mean they are thriving, quite the reverse, they appear to be hanging on in there against the odds of hundreds of boats dropping anchors and mooring chains ripping up the seabed, destroying their fragile home.”

The main goal of the Seahorse Trust is to get those nasty moorings replaced with more environmentally sound ones which do not damage seagrass, and for boat users to switch to these new devices.

Hopefully the discovery of this new baby seahorse will prompt some more interest in the issue, and something will be done to help protect these magnificent sea creatures.

Oyster bed

There’s no need to worry – oyster herpes is not transferable to humans by eating “the food of love”.

This incurable, not to mention deadly, virus is a grave concern to the fishing communities in Europe. Oyster herpes is on the rise in Europe, and could go on spreading itself out even further, should the seas continue to get warmer, experts warn.

This past July farmed oysters were tested and the first known United Kingdom cases of herpes was detected in shellfish. This virus has already made its mark, killing somewhere between 20 and 100 percent of the breeding pacific oysters in some French beds from 2008 until 2010, according to, Ifemer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea.

The reason that oyster herpes has been emerging more in Pacific oysters off of England still has scientists stumped, however many are speculating that Global Warming has something to do with it.

A new strain of Oyster herpes (Ostreid herpesvirus), remains dormant until the temperature of the water exceeds 16 degrees Celsius. UK waters reach this temperature in the height of summer, according to a member of the British government’s Fish Health Inspectorate, Kevin Denham.

Keeping that fact in mind, the director of Ifemer’s genetic and pathology lab, Tristan Renault, has commented that global warming “could be an explanation of the appearance of this particular type of virus.”

Though all of the herpes strains are DNA-based viruses, herpes, which infects everything from elephants to chickens to monkeys, comes in an astonishing number of species, each with their own distinct set of symptoms.

In humans, the best known forms of herpes are the Herpes simplex viruses, which spread through close contact and can produce symptoms such as oral and genital blisters.

Ostreid herpes viruses have been shown to affect not only oysters, but also scallops, clams and other scallops, explains Renault.

New Oyster Herpes

Shellfish who are infected with herpes are not new to the scientific world, however, in 2008 – the first year where there was a marked increase in the mortality rates detected in France – Ifremer stumbled upon a new strain of the virus.

Much like the other strains of the oyster herpes virus which infect mollusks, this new strain singles out younger oysters during the breeding season when the bodies of the mollusks’ are focusing all their energy on producing sperm and eggs, leaving them without enough energy to maintain their immune system Renault explains.

However, this new strain of oyster herpes is “more virulent than strains we have identified before,” Renault continued, adding that the virus is extremely efficient when it comes to killing its hosts, and can eradicate 80 percent of the oysters in a bed inside a week.

The most starting thing about this new strain of oyster herpes, is that the only visible sign there is something amiss, is the mortality rate, because oyster herpes does not have any visible symptoms, and can only be diagnosed through a lab test.

Orange lobster - Picture Birmingham sealife center

So what exactly is so strange about an orange lobster? It’s actually living! Normally, lobsters are a brownish-green color when they are alive, and they turn orange when they have been cooked. That being the case, a strange live reddish-orange lobster has been sighted in the UK.

The lobster, which hails from North America, has been aptly named “Gumbo”. Gumbo is so rare that he was saved from becoming dinner, and was plunked down into a new home at the Birmingham National Sea Life Center.

Before making his way to the Sea Life Center, Gumbo was staying at the Natural History Museum I London. The museum was made aware of the rare find by fishmonger Rex Goldsmith. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 25 years in this business,” Rex commented.

Paul Clark, a crustacean researcher at the museum, was simply flabbergasted by extraordinary color of the carapace and agreed to aid Rex in finding a more suitable home for the lobster. “I was able to set up a saltwater tank here at the Museum to keep him alive until Sea Life agreed to take him and arrange collection.” Paul explained.

The shells of lobsters generally have red, yellow, and blue pigments which give them their brownish-green color when they are still alive.

The lobsters’ diet consists of shrimp, algae and other sea animals which contain cartenoid pigments.

These pigments are what give lobsters their color, and when they are cooked they break down and give them that “red” look.

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

The boat is intended for carrying workers and equipment to underwater structures in need of repair or maintenance work, such as oil rigs and bridge structures. Since it is capable of travelling on water as well as submerged, the vessel can quickly travel to the right location on the surface before submerging down to the desired depth.

The vessel consists of outer and inner tubes, plus an underneath compartment that holds the main fuel tank and lightweight batteries. The underneath compartment can be flooded to aid submerging and keep the vessel stable underwater. The outer tubes will normally be open, but can be closed if necessary. The inner tubes are inflatable and will be used to provide positive buoyancy when its time to resurface.

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.

As reported earlier, the artificial reef – which is located in Boscom on UK’s South Coast – consists of big geo-textile bags pumped hard with sand and aids in the formation of powerful barrel waves by pushing the naturally occurring waves upwards.

Prior to the opening, surfers had expressed fears that the reef was too big, situated the wrong way around, located on the wrong side of the pier, and potentially dangerous, so many eyes are now carefully monitoring the project to see if it’s a flip or flop.

“We have now got to give it the chance to see if it [the reef] does perform against the criteria that we have agreed with them,” says Roger Brown, the council’s director of leisure services.

Sean Wade, from Sorted surf shop, said: “Longer term it will need tweaking but with any project it is finding out how it works and what the best conditions are. Yesterday it looked pretty amazing.”

The artificial reef is part of the £8 million Boscombe Spa Regeneration Project funded through the sale of a seafront car park to a company that will use the space to build flats. On days with good swell, the new reef is expected to provide grade five waves.

The fossilised skull of a gigantic predator has been found off the English Channel coast of southern England.

The skull is 2.4 meters long and scientists believe it once belonged to a 16 meter long pliosaur which probably weighed an impressive 12 tons.

The pliosaurs were a type of ocean dwelling reptiles that dominated the seas roughly 150 million years ago.

The man behind the discovery is fossil hunter Kevin Sheehan from Dorset who gradually uncovered the remains of the fragmented skull over a number of years.

“In 40 years of collecting, I have often been green with envy at some of the finds other people have made“, said Sheehan. “But now when someone shows me a find, I can say ‘That’s not a fossil, this pliosaur, that’s a fossil’.”

The fossilised skull is 90% complete and clearly shows the jaws of a powerful predator.

“These creatures were monsters”, says Dr David Martill, a palaeontologist from the University of Portsmouth. “They had massive big muscles on their necks, and you would have imagined that they would bite into the animal and get a good grip, and then with these massive neck muscles they probably would have thrashed the animals around and torn chunks off. It would have been a bit of a blood bath.”

Martill suspects that the skull may belong to a species of pliosaur that haven’t been unearthed until now.

“This is one of the largest, if not the largest, pliosaur skull found anywhere in the world and contains features that have not been seen before“, he explains. “It could be a species new to science.”

The skull has been purchased by the Dorset County Council and will be displayed in the county museum.

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.

”Even as the finishing touches are made to the reef body boarders have already been surfing the hollow, powerful barrels that it was intended to produce,” says Paul Clarke of the Bournemouth Surfing Centre. ”It will put Boscombe on the map as the top south coast surfing spot. The water here is between three to five degrees warmer than around the rest of the country which makes the season longer as the water is still warm into the autumn.”

Dr Kerry Black, managing director of ASR Ltd, designed the Boscombe surf reef after travelling the entire Pacific Rim measuring 44 of the world’s best surf breaks to recreate a world-class wave.

Large geo-textile bags pumped hard with sand have been fixed to the sea bed 225 metres from the shore where they will mimic the effects of a natural reef. A reef does not create waves, but it pushes the naturally occurring waves upwards and shapes them into the powerful barrels coveted by surfers. The Boscombe artificial reef is expected to double the height and number of good surfing days. On days with good swell, the reef is expected to provide grade five waves.

”Like any major construction project, there are extensive checks to be undertaken before we can say the project is complete, says ASR Ltd technical director Shaw Mead. ”We are now starting to make all those checks thoroughly and according to the agreed specification and I remain confident that we will finish in September as scheduled.”

The £1.4 million project is part of the £8 million Boscombe Spa Regeneration Project funded through the sale of a seafront car park to a company that will use the space to build flats.