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Protection for key nature sites in UK seas has come a step closer with the unveiling of proposals to create over 100 Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs).

The zones range from tiny stretches of coastline to large tracts of sea floor.

The proposals stem from the 2009 UK Marine Bill and cover seas abutting the English coast and waters around Wales more than 12 miles from the coast.

They will be assessed by an expert panel before the government makes its final decision, probably next year.

The panel will also have to finalise levels of protection in each zone, as the Marine Bill allows regulators a lot of flexibility in what to prohibit (such as fishing) for which periods of the year.

If all proposals are approved, just over a quarter of English waters would end up under some kind of protection...

King crabs have been found on the edge of Antarctica, probably as a result of warming in the region, scientists say.

Writing in the journal Proceedings B, scientists report a large, reproductive population of crabs in the Palmer Deep, a basin cut in the continental shelf.

They suggest the crabs were washed in during an upsurge of warmer water.

The crabs are voracious crushers of sea floor animals and will probably change the ecosystem profoundly if and when they spread further, researchers warn.

Related species have been found around islands off the Antarctic Peninsula and on the outer edge of the continental shelf.

But here the crabs (Neolithodes yaldwyni) are living and reproducing in abundance right on the edge of the continent itself.

Search for life

The researchers sent the Genesis, ...

The body of a blue shark has been found washed up on a Western Isles’ beach.

RSPB Scotland conservation officer Martin Scott discovered the pregnant 1.8m (6ft) female blue shark at Barvas on the west side of Lewis.

The find comes just over a week before the Shark Conservation Society begins survey work off the Hebrides.

Blue sharks are believed to be the most heavily fished shark and its fins are sought after as food in Asia, according to the Shark Trust.

Mr Scott said the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth hoped to carry out tests on the Barvas shark.

Gulf Stream

The 41-year-old said: “I was walking along the beach when I noticed something in the seaweed. At first I thought it was a dead seal.

“It was only when I got close to it and kicked off the seaweed I saw it was a 6ft-long shark ...

It was with deep anguish that I received confirmation early Friday afternoon from Faroese police authorities that over 100 pilot whales have been brutally slaughtered in the town of Vestmanna in the Faroe Islands.

These numbers have undoubtedly since risen as locals continued throughout the day to carve up these sentient and intelligent beings who violently lost their lives to bloodlust and greed in a cowardice act of cultural tradition referred to by locals as “grindadrap”.

In Faroese, “grind” literally translates to pilot whale, while “drap” translates to “murder” thus representing the largest extermination of marine mammals in all of Europe — literally whale murder. Well, at least we can call a spade a spade here.

Upon recently returning from the Faroe Islands as part of The Sea Sheph...

Scientists have found hawksbill turtles “hiding” in mangrove forests of the eastern Pacific.

The team, that has been tracking the turtles for three years, also found that the critically endangered animals nested in these estuaries.

The discovery of this previously unknown sea turtle habitat was published recently in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

It could explain why the species went undetected in the region for so long.

Mangrove forests, which are unique coastal tree and shrub habitats, are also under threat. They could represent an important breeding and nesting site for the species, which was thought to depend on coral reefs.

Alexander Gaos, a conservation scientist with San Diego State University and the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative, led the research.

He and his co...

Great white sharks could be “occasional vagrant visitors” to waters around the British Isles, according to an expert.

Richard Peirce, chairman of the Shark Trust, said the conditions and availability of prey made British waters an ideal hunting ground for the feared predator.

Mr Peirce said: “The real surprise is that we don’t have an established white shark population, because the conditions here mirror those in parts of South Africa, Australia and northern California.

“Research has shown that white sharks tolerate water temperatures in a range which would make British waters perfectly suitable for this species.”

British waters are home to many species of predatory sharks including blue and mako sharks which have been spotted off southwest England in the summer and threshers and porbeagl...

Preserving just 4 percent of the ocean could protect crucial habitat for the vast majority of marine mammal species, from sea otters to blue whales, according to researchers at Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Their findings were published in the Aug. 16 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Of the 129 species of marine mammals on Earth, including seals, dolphins and polar bears, approximately one-quarter are facing extinction, the study said.

“It’s important to protect marine mammals if you want to keep the ocean’s ecosystems functional,” said study co-author Paul Ehrlich, professor of biology and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford.

“Many of them are top predators and have impacts all the wa...

Scientists hope to harness coral’s natural defence against the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays to make a sunscreen pill for humans.

The King’s College London team visited Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to uncover the genetic and biochemical processes behind coral’s innate gift.

By studying a few samples of the endangered Acropora coral they believe they can synthetically replicate in the lab the key compounds responsible.

Tests on human skin could begin soon.

Before creating a tablet version, the team, led by Dr Paul Long, plan to test a lotion containing the same compounds as those found in coral.

To do this, they will copy the genetic code the coral uses to make the compounds and put it into bacteria in the lab that can rapidly replicate to produce large quantities of it.

Dr Long said: “...

Killer whales, the ocean’s fiercest predators, are easily recognisable by their black and white markings.

But their future seems less clearly defined.

Marine experts are concerned about an invisible threat to the animals that has been building in our seas since World War II.

That was when industries began extensively using chemical flame retardants, such as PCBs.

These chemicals were later found to harm human health and the environment, and governments around the world banned their use in the 1970s.

But their legacy lives on in the world’s seas and oceans, say biologists, posing a modern threat to animals such as killer whales, also known as orcas.

Small population

Ingrid Visser grew up watching killer whales, the largest members of the dolphin family, from the shores of her native New Ze...

Hurricane Irene’s rough surf caused problems for sea turtle nests in Florida.

The eggs of Loggerhead, Leatherback, and green turtles are normally burrowed in the sand. But the erosion has been strong enough to expose them.

Many of the eggs were left damaged, while some sea turtles were hatching prematurely.

Turtle hatchlings that shouldn’t have been born yet are fighting the rough surf. Biologists from Loggerhead Marine Life Center are combing beaches on the East Coast to try to save the turtles. But there wasn’t much that could have been done to prevent the problem.

The marine center’s Biologists crunched the numbers and found that roughly 88% of the remaining nests this season were tossed around by Irene’s rough waters...