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Dozens of the 127 proposed marine conservation zones, including one on the Isle of Wight, were judged by Government advisers to be at high risk but wildlife groups were left dismayed when it emerged they would not be immediately protected.

One such site is Bembridge, a coastal area to the east of the Isle of Wight, which is made up of a mosaic of habitats from limestone reefs to sand and gravel beds.

It is home to a number of important species and habitats which the marine conservation zones are focused on protecting, including maerl and peacock’s tail seaweed, kaleidoscope stalked jellyfish, short and long snouted seahorses and seagrass beds.

Sea bream breed in the thin layer of gravel in the bay, while the rocky areas are habitat for sponges and juvenile edible crabs, which can be seen s...

The United States said it will continue to work with the Philippine government as it apologized for any damage that its minesweeper has caused when it ran aground the Tubbataha Reef off Palawan last week.

The weather is much better, and we were able to do several dives and get a good grasp on just how bad the lionfish invasion in Belize really is.

They are everywhere. We saw and collected them in all habitats we visited, including coral reef, sea grass and mangrove. Finding them in the last two is especially disheartening, as they are nursery habitats for many coral reef species.

Lionfish are eating young reef fish before they can even get there.

In the morning we dove along the barrier reef to estimate lionfish abundance there. During a 45-minute dive, we counted more than 20 of them.

For perspective, we were a group of five divers, swimming slowly over the edge of the barrier reef. Collectively we would see a lionfish on average every two minutes.

Even though this area of Belize has so...

Great news. South Korea has dropped its controversial plans to resume

This summer, add Australia’s best scuba diving sites to your bucket list. Here are our picks:

COD HOLE, Lizard Island – Queensland

As its name suggests, this north Queensland dive site is known for the friendly potato rockcod who call it home.

Australian Geographic lists Cod Hole in its top 10 dive sites in the country as it attracts not only its namesake but also giant clams, moray eels, whitetip reef sharks, humphead Maori wrasse, red bass and dwarf minke whales.

Also making this a must-visit destination is news that Lizard Island was recently named Best Resort in Australia at the Australian Gourmet Traveller 2012 Travel Awards.

Cod Hole is found on the outer Great Barrier Reef and can be reached via operators on Lizard Island itself (28km from the north Qld coast) or from Cairns and Por...

Massachusetts Audubon Society staff and volunteers continued to find sea turtles washing up on Cape Cod beaches during the holidays.

Nearly a dozen of these tropical turtles came ashore, their metabolism virtually shut down as a result of exposure to cold water, until they could do little but float and get pushed around by onshore winds.

Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary staff members said this year’s total of 350 threatened or endangered sea turtles that have been recovered on the Cape shattered the past record of 278 set in 1999 and is the highest since they started keeping track 30 years ago.

In a statement Friday, sanctuary director Robert Prescott said the dramatic increase was likely because there were a lot more turtles in Cape Cod Bay this year.

Hurricane Sandy also helped drive man...

A Coast Guard crew found an illegal gill net with hundreds of dead sharks Monday, 4 miles off the Texas coast.

The crew of a Coast Guard Station South Padre Island response boat spotted the gill net approximately 17 miles north of the U.S. – Mexican maritime border. The gill net was 5 miles long and was loaded with 345 dead sharks.

The species of shark seized included 225 black tip, 109 bonnet, and 11 bull sharks.

“Gill nets indiscriminately kill any fish or marine mammal it snares across miles of ocean, often leaving much of the catch spoiled by the time it is hauled in,” according to Cmdr. Daniel Deptula, the response officer for Coast Guard Sector Corpus Christi...

Soaring water temperatures off the WA coast have wiped out several lucrative fisheries and could have caused a spate of shark attacks, the State Government has claimed.

The Department of Fisheries said yesterday it was investigating whether a so-called marine heatwave was behind a series of events that have been wreaking havoc on fish stocks.

The heatwave, first documented during the summer of 2010-11, resulted in water temperatures rising up to 5C above normal along the west coast, particularly off the Gascoyne and Mid West.

Water temperatures hit almost 30C off some parts of the Mid West, while near Augusta in the South West they were up to 24C.

Senior WA marine scientists Alan Pearce and Ming Feng, in a Journal of Marine Systems article published this year, said the event was “unprecede...

Environmentalists are warning Warrnambool

Clownfish boost oxygen flow around their anemone hosts at night, scientists have found.

The relationship between the reef animals is well known, with the fish hiding in the anemone’s stinging tentacles to avoid predators.

But US researchers have discovered the anemones also benefit from the night-time presence of the fidgety fish.

“While many reef organisms can pick up and move to other areas with more oxygen, clownfish stick by their anemones; retreat is not an option,” explained Dr Joseph Szczebak from Auburn University, Alabama, US who led the study.

To understand more about the nocturnal relationship of the clownfish and anemone, Dr Szczebak and colleagues travelled to the Marine Science Station in Aqaba, Jordan.

Diving in the nearby Red Sea, the scientists were able to record how oxyg...