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The UN biodiversity meeting in Japan has agreed a 10-year plan aimed at preserving nature.

Targets for protecting areas of land and sea were weaker than conservation scientists wanted, as was the overall target for slowing biodiversity loss.

Most developing countries were pleased with measures aimed at ensuring they get a share in profits from products made from plants and other organisms.

Nations have two years to draw up plans for funding the plan.

“This agreement reaffirms the fundamental need to conserve nature as the very foundation of our economy and our society,” said Jim Leape, director-general of WWF International.

“Governments have sent a strong message that protecting the health of the planet has a place in international politics, and countries are ready to join forces to save ...

Underwater canyons, deep-sea coral reefs and sponge banks are part of a unique ecosystem that South Africa wants to save within its first deep-sea marine protected area.

After 10 years of consultations, South Africa has mapped the boundaries for the proposed reserve stretching 100 kilometres from the eastern KwaZulu-Natal coast.

The mapping required synthesising the many divergent interests in the Indian Ocean waters, with 40 industries from fishing to gas lines to jet skis operating in an area home to about 200 animal species and their ecosystems.

“All of this data was then entered into conservation planning software in order to identify areas of high biodiversity while avoiding areas of high (economic) pressure,” said Tamsyn Livingstone, the researcher who heads the project.

The conserv...

A swathe of the North Sea has been chosen as the first area off England’s coast to get a marine planning system.

The marine plan aims to bring to the sea the same level of planning as councils have on land.

The area extends from Flamborough Head, East Yorkshire, to Felixstowe, Suffolk, and 200km (124 miles) out to sea.

Plans will be drawn up by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) over the next two years to co-ordinate the development of all marine activities.

They will serve as a blueprint for what activities can be licensed in the new marine plan area.

The Flamborough-to-Felixstowe zone will be the first of 10 that will eventually form a comprehensive marine planning system around England.

They will aim to bring “joined-up” planning to marine activities including wind farms, oil and...

A team of researchers have been trying to identify how jellyfish may benefit from marine ecosystems destabilised by climate change and overfishing.

There is concern that a rise in jellyfish numbers could prevent depleted commercially important fish stocks recovering to historical levels.

However, a study by European scientists says more data is needed to understand what is happening beneath the waves.

The findings are set to be published in the journal Global Change Biology.

Researchers from the UK and Ireland said samples collected from the Irish Sea since 1970 have recorded an increase in material from cnidarians (the division of the animal kingdom that includes jellyfish and coral), “with a period of frequent outbreaks between 1982 and 1991”.

“There does appear to have been an increase ...

Over the next few years, we can expect to see huge advances in our ability to harness power from the ocean

International marine scientists say that a huge coral death which has struck Southeast Asian and Indian Ocean reefs over recent months has highlighted the urgency of controlling global carbon emissions.

Many reefs are dead or dying across the Indian Ocean and into the Coral Triangle following a bleaching event that extends from the Seychelles in the west to Sulawesi and the Philippines in the east and include reefs in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and many sites in western and eastern Indonesia.

“It is certainly the worst coral die-off we have seen since 1998. It may prove to be the worst such event known to science,” says Dr Andrew Baird of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook Universities...

Global conservation organization WWF has welcomed the EU Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Maria Damanaki

A team of independent scientists has started a new investigations campaign in the Gulf of Mexico, that will provide additional insight into how the BP oil spill affected corals living deep under the surface.

This type of reeds are relatively unstudied, when compared to their shallow-water brethren, because they are a lot more difficult to get to. They are however significantly more widespread.

The new expedition started yesterday, October 20, on the six-month anniversary of the start of the massive oil spill that was to become the worst environmental disaster in the history of the US.

Scientists are using the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise as a research platform...

Anxious to prevent the collapse of Jamaica’s overexploited marine fisheries, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is promoting the consumption of lionfish to control its burgeoning population. At risk officials say, are the nation’s marine biodiversity, its food security and economic well- being.

“The situation in Jamaica is urgent,” said Nelsa English, national coordinator for the Jamaican component of a Caribbean-wide Invasive Alien Species Project at the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA).

“A lack of sufficient natural predators suggests that it (lionfish) could be a potentially significant threat to Jamaica’s biodiversity and the ecosystem in general,” she noted.

Jamaica’s marine resources are stretched to the breaking point, its reefs overfished and degraded due to...

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