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The Costa Concordia, the wrecked liner which has been half-submerged near the Italian island of Giglio since it hit a rock in January, could be a paradise for recreational scuba divers from around the world – if sunk instead of salvaged.

“Every night I light a candle and say a prayer for it to sink,” Aldo Baffigi, a Giglio native, says of the 290-metre-long ship with its towering smokestack and four swimming pools.

Most of the Tuscan island’s 1,500 residents want the modern-day Titanic to be hauled away as soon as possible, but Baffigi is an underwater guide and owner of Deep Blue Diving College, and he knows the fascination shipwrecks have for scuba divers.

“It would be the most popular shipwreck in the world. We wouldn’t know what to do with all the divers...

Our appetite for fish is far exceeding the ocean

World Oceans Day

Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Geraldine Knatz, Ph.D., has been named the 2012 recipient of the Blue Frontier Campaign

Reef Check Malaysia, a Kuala Lumpur-based non-profit organization, has launched a branch in Sabah to better enhance the health status of coral reefs here.

Programme manager Nattelee Lim, 26, said the Sabah branch was set up in April this year, but efforts to monitor coral reefs in the state had started earlier.

Environment Minister Tony Burke is under growing pressure to expand the marine park planned for northern Australia’s Coral Sea, with MPs from his own side calling for stronger protection of the reefs and tropical waters in the wake of a massive public campaign.

The waters, known for their rich coral and marine life, are already set to become part of the world’s largest marine protected area, covering 989,842 square kilometres, under a draft plan Mr Burke released in November.

But the draft plan falls short of what conservationists and some Labor MPs want, with about half the protected area still allowing both recreational and commercial fishing.

The public consultation on the draft plan has seen a flood of responses, with nearly 500,000 submissions from around the world, more than 99 per c...

Leading conservation groups have condemned the government’s “huge violation” of the rights of thousands of exiled Chagossian islanders who cannot return to their Indian ocean coral islands because they have been surrounded by the world’s largest marine nature reserve.

Proposals by the foreign secretary David Miliband Britain in 2008 for the creation of a giant 1m ha marine protection zone closed to all fishing around the almost pristine tropical archipelago were backed enthusiastically by nine of the world’s major green groups, including Kew Gardens, the RSPB, Greenpeace, the Pew Environment group, the Zoological Society of London and the Marine Conservation Society. Together they asked supporters to back the Foreign Office proposal for the reserve and raised over 275,000 signatures...

In the shallow waters of Gijon harbour, in northern Spain, a large, yellow fish cuts through the waves.

But this swimmer stands apart from the marine life that usually inhabits this port: there’s no flesh and blood here, just carbon fibre and metal.

This is robo-fish – scientists’ latest weapon in the war against pollution.

This sea-faring machine works autonomously to hunt down contamination in the water, feeding this information back to the shore.

Here in Spain, several are undergoing their first trials to see if they make the grade as future marine police.

“The idea is that we want to have real-time monitoring of pollution, so that if someone is dumping chemicals or something is leaking, we can get to it straight away, find out what is causing the problem and put a stop to it,” explains...

The annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Panama is about six weeks away, and it’s shaping up to be an important and perhaps defining moment.

A recent change of rules means resolutions have to be posted on the organisation’s website 60 days before meetings begin, so we have more advance notice of countries’ real intentions than formerly.

The Latin American bloc – known as the Buenos Aires Group for these purposes – has lodged a bid to create a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic Ocean.

Japan has set down a motion reserving its right to request a commercial or quasi-commercial hunting quota for minke whales in its coastal waters.

Monaco is looking for the IWC to refer whale protection to the UN; and, as happens every five years, various countries will be seeking ...

Tens of thousands of supporters of the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd have sent email messages of protest to the German Government calling for the immediate release of the group