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The Southern Ocean circles Antarctica and remains one of the most pristine and ecologically rich oceans on earth.

Its richness has attracted a growing number of industrial fishing fleets, which are harvesting toothfish and krill, the tiny shrimplike creatures that are the foundation of the Antarctic

Thriving deep water coral populations could hold the key to saving the Great Barrier Reef’s degraded surface coral.

While surface coral is struggling due to the effects of storms, coral bleaching and the damaging crown-of-thorns starfish, a deep water survey has discovered large and healthy coral populations directly below those damaged communities.

At depths below 30m, the early findings of the Catlin Seaview Survey show coral is largely unaffected by the problems faced nearer the surface, a result that has shocked scientists involved in the project.

“The Holmes and Flinders Reefs in the Coral Sea are renowned for having been badly damaged,” said University of Queensland’s Dr Pim Bongaerts, who is leading the deep reef survey.

“Yet we have found their deep reef zone is hardly disturbed at...

Researchers in the US have been shocked to discover a beluga whale whose vocalisations were remarkably close to human speech.

While dolphins have been taught to mimic the pattern and durations of sounds in human speech, no animal has spontaneously tried such mimicry.

But researchers heard a nine-year-old whale named NOC make sounds octaves below normal, in clipped bursts.

The researchers outline in Current Biology just how NOC did it.

But the first mystery was figuring out where the sound was coming from. The whales are known as “canaries of the sea” for their high-pitched chirps, and while a number of anecdotal reports of whales making human-like speech, none had ever been recorded.

When a diver at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California surfaced saying, “Who told me to get o...

Bottlenose dolphins using sponges to protect their noses while foraging is a technique that the animals discovered in the 19th century, a study has found.

Scientists analysed data on the dolphins of Shark Bay, Australia, to model the appearance and transmission of the skill over generations.

The study found that “sponging” could have begun with a single “innovation event” between 120 and 180 years ago.

It suggested that mothers passed on the skill by teaching their offspring.

The analysis is published in the journal Animal Behaviour, and used previous field studies to investigate how sponging was established and maintained.

“It has been thought that behaviours which are exclusively learnt from one parent are not very stable...

Rich in fish, minerals and scientific potential, the seas around Antarctica are among the planet

A new atlas of the world’s oceans issued on Tuesday shows more than 3,000 sites important to seabirds as part of a drive to improve conservation.

The free online atlas could help governments plan, for instance, where to set up wildlife protection areas at sea or where to permit offshore wind turbines or oil and gas exploration, they said.

The atlas, showing areas vital to birds including pelicans, sandpipers, cormorants and skuas, was compiled by BirdLife International, drawing on work by 1,000 bird experts, government ministries and secretariats of UN conventions.

“Seabirds are now the most threatened group of birds. They present unique conservation problems, since many species travel thousands of kilometres across international waters,” BirdLife International said in a statement.

It iden...

A 10-fold rise in Marine Protected Areas has been recorded over a decade.

A report to a UN meeting on biodiversity in Hyderabad reports that more than 8.3 million sq km – 2.3% of the global ocean area – is now protected.

The percentage is small but the rapid growth in recent times leads to hope that the world will hit its target of 10% protected by 2020.

This would have looked most unlikely prospect just a few years ago.

The aspiration was agreed by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2004 with a target date of 2012. Progress was so slow at first that the target was slipped to 2020 – with some researchers forecasting it would not be reached until mid-century.

But recently there have been huge additions – like Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the UK-controlled Chagos archipelago and ...

Australian scientists have discovered a beef-like extract that may help to defeat a destructive starfish which has been wiping out some of the world

Soaring demand for omega-3 supplement is putting fish oil risk deep-sea sharks at risk, conservationists believe.

Marine conservation group Oceana Europe said deep-sea sharks were being targeted by fishing fleets for their liver oil (which is used in Omega-3 dietary supplements, in cosmetics, and as industrial lubricants).

The group warned that increased fishing of their species combined with slow growth rates and late maturity, they were

Tim Voit’s Sewee Entertainment, in partnership with Conservation International, has launched The Ocean Health Index on TV stations nationwide.

The Ocean Health Index reflects the results from a three-year global study of the world’s oceans and it provides policy-neutral, scientific composite measure of the world