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The winding back of plans for a huge Antarctic marine sanctuary is a “significant blow” and “baffling,” conservation groups say. A joint New Zealand-US proposal to create the world’s biggest marine reserve in the Ross Sea was scaled back by 40 per cent ahead of negotiations in Australia next month.

Officials believe it will be easier to get the support of the 25 nations of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) for a smaller sanctuary.

The Antarctic Ocean Alliance, an umbrella group of 30 conservation organisations, says it is “baffling” that the two governments have weakened their proposal. The environmentalists believe it was a “tactical mistake” to scale back the plan without first securing support from other nations.

This is likely to be a bl...

At a speed-dating night for nerds, the talk isn’t about love or even real estate investment – it’s all about finding new friends with which to team up and save the world. At such a night in Edinburgh, deep-sea biologist Lea-Anne Henry had 60 seconds to connect with artificial intelligence wizard David Corne.

”I said ‘I need to find some way to get a robotics system down to repair our coral reefs.’ He said, ‘I have a solution to that.’ ”

Professor Corne, from the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, was working in ”swarm intelligence”, an emerging technology where robots in large numbers work in a coordinated fashion...

In a landmark study, scientists at The Univ. of Queensland (UQ) have simulated future ocean conditions and found climate change will jeopardize the future of coral reefs. The study published in PNAS, finds coral reefs dissolve rapidly once exposed to warmer, more acidic ocean conditions associated with business-as-usual CO₂ emission rates predicted for the latter half of this century.

The collaborative study, led by Associate Prof. Sophie Dove from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, concludes that increases in temperature and acidity cause major disruptions to coral reefs like those growing around the world famous Heron Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Dove says even under fairly low emission scenarios, most corals bleached and died.

“Given corals are essential to coral reef...

Scientists writing in the journal PLOS ONE say that if fish larvae were lost, they could just sniff their way back home. The study establishes that reef fish larvae can smell the presence of coral reefs from as far away as several miles offshore. The larvae are then able to use this scent to help guide themselves back home.

The researchers were aiming to study the response of cardnalfish and damselfish larvae in an open ocean setting using an outflow plume. The larvae were observed in the central chamber of an ocean Drifting In Situ Chamber (o-DISC), a device that is composed of a circular behavioral arena that is transparent to light, sound and small-scale turbulence.

The equipment was set up in the water column, and the swimming activity and bearing of the larvae was recorded using...

Conserving the country’s precious marine resources begins with showing fisher folk that protecting natural habitats will redound to more money for them, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Philippines). “Local communities are the delivery systems of conservation,” WWF-Philippines vice chair and chief executive officer Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan said at the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) Philippines Forum in Makati City on Wednesday. He stressed the importance not only of promoting sustainable livelihood for coastline communities but of showing fisher folk that they can earn good profits through sound business practices.

“By delivering bottom-line results that not only provide livelihood but create wealth, we exert a profound influence on sustainably transforming systems and...

Here’s a new twist to the geoengineer’s dilemma: just change the climate locally – over the bit you want to protect – and leave the rest of the planet alone. Dr. Alan Gadian, from Leeds University in the UK, wants to make the marine clouds brighter and in effect raise a parasol over the ocean’s most sensitive structures, the coral reefs. Carbon dioxide dissolves in water to make a very weak carbonic acid and there’s a continuing argument about the eventual fate of the world’s coral reefs as the planet warms and the oceans become more acidic.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere look set to double. Can the corals adapt to changes in the pH of sea water as yet more carbonic acid pours from the skies and drains from the rivers?

And carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas...

Forget about elephants – scientists say that dolphins have the longest memories yet found in a non-human species. Researchers in the US say that even after 20 years of separation, dolphins could recall the whistles of former companions. The authors believe that these long-term memories are a product of the complex social connections that dolphins have evolved. The research is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

In the study, the scientists used information on the relationships between 56 captive bottlenose dolphins that have been moved for breeding purposes between six different zoos and aquariums in the US and Bermuda. The records, dating back decades, showed which of the dolphins had been housed together.

Total recall

The researchers then played recordings to the do...

Coral reefs teem with a diverse array of life and colour, but in many places around the world, their future is uncertain. The Caribbean, where this vibrant moray eel was shot by an advance party for the mappers, is having a particularly bad time of it. Over the past 50 years, 80 per cent of the coral reef cover there has been lost to a perfect storm of pollution, overfishing, rising temperatures and ocean acidification. Researchers worry that others could soon be in a similar state.

More detailed, comparable information on how reefs are faring around the world is vital if we are going to be able to protect them.

One group attempting to do this is the Catlin Seaview Survey...

A major survey of the coral reefs of the Caribbean is expected to reveal the extent to which one of the world’s biggest and most important reserves of coral has been degraded by climate change, pollution, overfishing and degradation. The Catlin scientific survey will undertake the most comprehensive survey yet of the state of the region’s reefs, starting in Belize and moving on to Mexico, Anguilla, Barbuda, St Lucia, Turks & Caicos, Florida and Bermuda. The Catlin scientists said the state of the regions’ reefs would act as an early warning of problems besetting all of the world’s coral. As much as 80% of Caribbean coral is reckoned to have been lost in recent years, but the survey should give a more accurate picture of where the losses have had most effect and on the causes.

Loss of ...

Despite the fact that Indonesia is a part of the Coral Triangle Initiative — an initiative to safeguard the home to more than 75 percent of the world’s coral species and more than 37 percent of coral reef fish, spanning from Malaysia to Solomon Islands — 90 percent of the country’s coral reefs remain under threat by over-fishing and disruptive fishing. Rod Salm, the senior advisor at the marine program of the Indo-Pacific Division at the Nature Conservancy, who has been diving in the country’s most exotic diving destinations since 1973, talked to The Jakarta Post’s Nadya Natahadibrata about the importance of preserving coral reefs. The following are excerpts from the interview.

Question: What do you think is the biggest change in Indonesia’s marine conservation compared to the ...