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An international team of scientists, led by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, has used DNA to determine that groups of dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) and copper sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus) living in different coastal regions across the globe are separate populations of each species.

Both are large apex predators that are heavily exploited for the shark fin trade, which claims tens of millions of animals every year to produce the Asian delicacy, shark fin soup. Many of these species are declining as a result of this fishing pressure for their fins.

The dusky shark is classified as “Endangered” in the Western Atlantic by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as its population is below 20 percent of what it was two decades ago...

The Pew Environment Group announced today that four individuals, representing Chile, Mexico and the United States, received a 2011 Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation.

The 2011 Pew Marine Fellowships will support projects to map genetic patterns in dolphin populations, measure the economic and ecological tradeoffs of removing small fish species from the ecosystem, lay the scientific foundation for the establishment of marine protected areas in the Chilean fjord region and analyze the common threads in communities that prioritize environmental conservation.

“We are proud to welcome this exceptionally talented group of ocean conservationists into the Pew Marine Fellowship Program this year,” said Joshua S. Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group...

The Antarctic ozone hole is changing weather patterns across the Southern Hemisphere, even affecting the tropics, scientists have concluded.

The scientists behind the new study added the ozone hole into standard climate models to investigate how it might have affected winds and rains.

Writing in the journal Science, they say rainfall has moved further south, towards the pole.

They deduce that the effect has been notably strong over Australia.

“The ozone hole results in a southward shift of the high-latitude circulation – and the whole tropical circulation shifts southwards too,” explained study leader Sarah Kang from Columbia University in New York.

Of particular interest was the southward migration of the Southern Hemisphere jet stream.

These high-altitude winds are key to determining wea...

A marine reserve set up off the Isle of Arran in 2008 is already flourishing with wildlife and commercially-valuable scallops, according to researchers.

The small area of seabed in Lamlash Bay became the first protected site of its kind in Scotland.

A study by York University and a local seabed trust has found significantly more juvenile scallops inside the reserve than outside.

And there were also high levels of kelp and other marine life.

The 2.7sq km (1sq mile) area, representing about a third of Lamlash Bay, is conserved from any fishing and other potentially damaging activities.

The Community of Arran Seabed Trust (Coast), which was formed to improve protection of marine life around the islands, said they were delighted at the findings.

Positive future

Coast chairman Howard Wood said ...

For the most part, we don

On land, our planet’s rising temperatures have shifted ecosystems uphill and towards the poles.

According to a study in Nature Climate Change, a similar shift may be happening in the oceans.

A fish species native to Australia and New Zealand seems to have hit a wall in the northern part of its range, with individuals in that area experiencing a decline in growth in that area.

The species in question, the banded morwong (also known as the red moki, or C. spectabilis) serves, in a lot of ways, like a tree. Once its juvenile stage is over, it settles down on a reef and pretty much stays there, living for nearly 100 years.

It’s also got the equivalent of tree rings: a bony organ called the otolith, which sees additional growth every year that’s proportional to the growth of the rest of the f...

Sri Lanka has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently, beset with problems from terrorism to flooding.

But in the wake of the contentious ending of the war in 2010 with the Tamil Tigers, this verdant island is experiencing a new tourist boom founded largely on its exquisite beaches, where one may spend weeks doing nothing but drinking lime sodas in the sun.

However, I found another prospect more appealing

The Palau government says it

Recordings of male humpback whales have shown that their haunting songs spread through the ocean to other whales.

Researchers in Australia listened to hundreds of hours of recordings gathered over more than a decade.

These revealed how a specific song pattern, which originated in Eastern Australia, had passed “like Chinese whispers” to whale populations up to 6,000km away in French Polynesia.

The findings are reported in the journal Current Biology.

Cultural ripples

The research team, led by Ellen Garland from the University of Queensland, say the findings show the animals transmit such “cultural trends” over huge distances.

“Within a population, all males sing the same song,” Ms Garland explained. “But that song is constantly changing...

The EU has agreed on common inspection rules to prevent overfishing and make it possible to trace fish “from net to plate”, the European Commission says.

The rules include a new point system to punish crews who fish illegally. If they accumulate too many points they will lose their licence.

EU nations police their own fisheries, but they have agreed on common inspection and reporting methods.

The controls are part of a big reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy.

Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki said fishing data would be cross-checked electronically across Europe and law-breakers would face equally severe sanctions, whatever their nationality.

Ms Damanaki said: “We can no longer allow even a small minority of fishermen to ignore the rules.”

Many EU fish stocks are seriously deplet...