By JOHN M. CRISP
Scripps Howard News Service

Here in South Texas, marine-mammal mortality was in the news during the past few weeks. On Sept. 21, Cobie, a 15-year-old bottlenose dolphin housed at the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi, succumbed to a lung condition that had plagued him all summer. The director of the aquarium says that Cobie was a "wonderful ambassador for his aquatic brethren."


Read full article: 'Captive marine mammals lead short, miserable lives'

San Diego, California (Oct 29, 2007 16:49 EST) An array of instruments, many built at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, that allows scientists to observe the basic physical state of all world oceans simultaneously is approaching its coverage goal after eight years of deployments.

The Argo network of sensor-bearing profiling floats measures ocean water temperature, salinity and velocity to a degree never before possible. The Argo Steering Committee, the international panel of scientists that manage the network, has designated Nov. 1 as the date on which it will reach its full deployment of 3,000 units. The deployment of these final floats will mean that data from every ocean region in the world will be available with average coverage of one sensor per 3 degrees latitude and longitude.


Read full article: 'Unprecedented Global Measurement Network Achieves Full Coverage Of Oceans'

Moscow: Russia will file a claim to the gigantic mineral wealth of the Arctic seabed with the United Nations by the end of the year, Russia's natural resources minister was quoted as saying yesterday.

Russia, the world's biggest country, says a whole swathe of the Arctic seabed should belong to Moscow because the area is really an extension of the Siberian continental shelf.


Read full article: 'Russia will file Arctic claim to UN by year-end'

State College, Pennsylvania (Oct 31, 2007 19:36 EST) The latest development in a major debate over a controversial hypothesis of biodiversity and species abundance is the subject of a paper to be published in the Nov. 1 issue of the journal Nature The authors report good agreement between the species richness of two of the world's most vulnerable ecosystems -- tropical forests and coral reefs -- and a simple mathematical model building on the so-called "neutral theory of biodiversity." "We're helping to refine and improve this theory because it might have important implications for the effort to protect terrestrial biodiversity from climate change and urban development," said Jayanth Banavar of the Department of Physics at Penn State, a member of the research team.


Read full article: 'Why So Many Species Live In Tropical Forests And Coral Reefs'

MARSEILLE, France (AFP) — Italy, France, Japan and Spain are guilty of the biggest violations of international quotas for bluefin tuna fishing, a report claimed on Wednesday.

Countries are assigned fishing quotas by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) to help avert the eventual extinction of the fish, which is highly prized for Japanese sushi and sashimi.


Read full article: 'Tuna fishing quota violators targeted in report'

By Paula Thompson

IT covers 70 per cent of the Earth's surface and could hold the cure for some of our most terrible diseases from cancer to AIDS and MRSA. But we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about our oceans.

Despite its importance for human survival, more than 95 per cent of the world's seas remain unexplored and only five per cent of its species have been discovered.

MPs warned this week that more scientific research is needed into our seas.


Read full article: 'Oceans' hidden depths'

East Anglia, U.K. (Oct 23, 2007 14:41 EST) Further evidence for the decline of the oceans’ historical role as an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide is supplied by new research by environmental scientists from the University of East Anglia.

Since the industrial revolution, much of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere has been taken up by the world’s oceans which act as a strong ‘sink’ for the emissions.

This has slowed climate change. Without this uptake, CO2 levels would have risen much faster and the climate would be warming more rapidly.


Read full article: 'North Atlantic Slows On The Uptake Of CO2'

IAN JOHNSTON (ijohnston@scotsman.com)

IT IS something most of us hardly think of as we go about our daily lives. Out of sight and out of mind, our waste is largely someone else's problem.

The popularity of recycling may have soared in recent years, but this recent awakening will do little to address the 1,000-year legacy of litter and pollution we have already left for the world's marine life.


Read full article: 'Everyday objects condemn sea life to death'

By Tim Shipman in Washington

Scientists have made a breakthrough in man's desire to control the forces of nature – unveiling plans to weaken hurricanes and steer them off course, to prevent tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina.
The damage done to New Orleans in 2005 has spurred two rival teams of climate experts, in America and Israel, to redouble their efforts to enable people to play God with the weather.

Under one scheme, aircraft would drop soot into the near-freezing cloud at the top of a hurricane, causing it to warm up and so reduce wind speeds. Computer simulations of the forces at work in the most violent storms have shown that even small changes can affect their paths – enabling them to be diverted from major cities.


Read full article: ' Scientists a step closer to steering hurricanes'

IAN JOHNSTON

SCOTLAND'S seas contain some of the most special marine environments in the world, but they are almost completely unprotected from human exploitation.

Now a landmark report on conservation has identified 31 sites around the coast, including St Kilda, the Firth of Forth and Sound of Mull, which could become the basis for a network of marine reserves that would finally begin to redress this situation.


Read full article: 'An end to man's destruction of the 'web of life''

Manila, The Philippines (Oct 16, 2007 10:23 EST) U.S. and Philippine scientists may have discovered new marine species in the world's most biologically diverse region, their expedition leader said Tuesday.

Dr. Larry Madin, who led the Inner Space Speciation Project in the Celebes Sea south of the Philippines, said scientists had been to one of the world's deep ocean basins in search of organisms that may have been isolated there for millions of years.

Madin, of the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, or WHOI, said the Celebes Sea is at the heart of the "coral triangle" bordered by the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia - a region recognized by scientists as having the greatest degree of biological diversity of the coral reef community of fish and other marine life.


Read full article: 'New Species Found In Philippines Waters'

By Alissa Poh
Sentinel Correspondent
Loggerhead turtles are facing extinction — but not because of annihilation by huge factory trawlers plying the oceans.

A new study published in the Wednesday edition of PLoS ONE, and led by UC Santa Cruz graduate student Hoyt Peckham, shows that loggerhead turtles are 10 to 100 times as likely to die through small-scale Mexican fisheries off the coast of Baja California as from all of the industrial fishing fleets in the North Pacific Ocean combined.


Read full article: 'UCSC researchers helps Mexican fishermen save endangered sea creature'

ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2007) — The world’s oceans are becoming more acid, with potentially devastating consequences for corals and the marine organisms that build reefs and provide much of the Earth’s breathable oxygen.

The acidity is caused by the gradual buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, dissolving into the oceans. Scientists fear it could be lethal for animals with chalky skeletons which make up more than a third of the planet’s marine life.


Read full article: 'Acid Oceans From Carbon Dioxide Will Endanger One Third Of Marine Life'

Bloomington, Indiana (Oct 10, 2007 13:01 EST) A study by an Indiana University environmental science professor and several colleagues suggests a widely planted variety of genetically engineered corn has the potential to harm aquatic ecosystems. The study is being published online this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

Researchers, including Todd V. Royer, an assistant professor in the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs, established that pollen and other plant parts containing toxins from genetically engineered Bt corn are washing into streams near cornfields.

They also conducted laboratory trials that found consumption of Bt corn byproducts produced increased mortality and reduced growth in caddisflies, aquatic insects that are related to the pests targeted by the toxin in Bt corn.


Read full article: 'Genetically Engineered Corn Could Affect Aquatic Ecosystems'

Benjie Telleron - AHN News Writer
Manila, Philippines (AHN) - The Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA), overseer of the Philippines' largest freshwater body, on Tuesday called on all local executive chiefs of the cities and municipalities surrounding the Laguna Lake to take drastic steps to stop its worsening condition after it has been tagged as the "world's largest septic tank."


Read full article: 'Philippine Lake Is Dubbed World's Largest Septic tank'