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A noisier coral reef is going to be a healthier reef, a new study finds.

Researchers from Exeter University and the University of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, both in England, found a clear association between overall noise level generated by a reef’s denizens and the amount of living coral present: Healthy reefs mean more coral structures, more fish and other creatures calling that coral home; and more inhabitants mean more noise.

This finding could change the way scientists monitor reefs, and give insight into behavior seen in juvenile fish, the researchers said.

Reefs can be surprisingly noisy places, with fish and invertebrates producing a cacophony of clicks and grunts. Each coral reef is subtly different depending on its size and the species that live there...

Tiny Palau and Honduras declared that their ocean waters are shark-infested — and they want the rest of the world to jump right in.

The presidents of the two tiny countries met in New York to sign a declaration urging other coastal nations to join them in declaring their waters havens for the ocean’s increasingly threatened predator.

“We cannot stand idly by while sharks are eradicated,” Palau’s President Johnson Toribiong and Honduran President Porfirio Lobo said in the declaration, coinciding with a UN summit on poverty and biodiversity.

“We believe it is in the long interest of our countries to have healthy ocean ecosystems, which is not possible without healthy shark populations.”

Environmental activists say that 73 million sharks are killed annually just to feed Asia’s appetite for sh...

The foundation of coral reefs is an ancient symbiotic relationship between coral and microscopic algae. The single-celled, golden-brown algae, called zooxanthellae (genus Symbiodinium), are less than 0.01 millimeters in diameter, yet they are a fundamental part of most coral reef systems. The relationship between the coral and the zooxanthellae is mutualistic: Both gain something from it. This relationship works so well that, based on fossils, it

China is the largest consumer of seafood, but the environmental impact of countries like Japan and the United States is magnified by a taste for fish at the top of the food chain, according to a report released Wednesday.

Canadian research published in October’s National Geographic magazine concluded that consumers worried about the oceans need to consider not just how much fish they consume, but what that fish ate before it was caught and where it came from.

The researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver said their SeafoodPrint Study tried to measure the impact that different countries had on the oceans by looking at not only how much fish they consumed but also what type of fish was eaten.

A large tuna at the top of the food chain must eat the equivalent of its body w...

Among the biggest “known unknowns” is the long-term effects on the marine environment of a spill of this magnitude.

There are questions too about what additional damage, if any, rendered by the government’s decision to use such huge quantities of chemical dispersants to prevent the oil from coming ashore.

And then there is the uncertainty, fuelled by a lack of transparency by BP and the Obama Administration, even about the “known knowns”. Independent scientists and environmental organisations have grown suspicious of official reports on the oil spill. Do we really know what we think we know?

Now a team led by Timothy Crone, a marine geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, has tackled another of the great “known unknowns”: how much oil entered the Gulf o...

An exploding scuba diving tank killed two Polish tourists and seriously injured two others overnight on a Croatian island, officials said.

The first victim on the southern island of Vis was a 48-year-old Polish woman who died on the spot, a police spokeswoman told AFP.

“The diving tank exploded while it was being unloaded from a boat on the coast in the port of Komiza,” the transport and sea ministry said in a statement.

The cause of the blast was most likely a valve that popped out, it added.

Three other injured tourists – two men and a woman – were immediately transported to a hospital in the coastal town of Split on the mainland.

One of them, a 43-year-old man who sustained a head injury, died in the hospital later that day, its surgical department announced.

The victims were in a grou...

An international meeting to try to prevent the Arctic becoming the next battleground over mineral wealth is taking place in Moscow.

One quarter of the world’s resources of oil and gas are believed to lie beneath the Arctic Ocean.

Russia, Norway, Canada, Denmark and the United States have already laid claim to territory in the region.

Although the summit is promoting dialogue, a Kremlin adviser said Russia would defend its national interests.

Melting ice cap

The region’s resources are rapidly becoming accessible due to the rapid shrinking of the polar ice cap.

Senior Norwegian adviser Olaf Orpheum told the conference that nowhere else had seen “such dramatic changes in the surface of the Earth”.

The race for the Arctic centres on an underwater mountain range known as the Lomonosov Ridge.

In...

The surfaces of the oceans went through a short period of rapid temperature change 40 years ago, scientists have found – but the cause is unknown.

Top layers of Northern Hemisphere water cooled by about 0.3C; the south saw roughly the same degree of warming.

Writing in the journal Nature, the team suggests that air pollution cannot be responsible for the changes, as has been suggested for mid-century cooling.

They do not suggest a cause. It is not clear what could link all the oceans.

However, events called Great Salinity Anomalies have been recorded in the last few decades in the North Atlantic Ocean – including one around 1970.

The 1970s global temperature record shows a period where the Earth’s surface cooled in the Northern Hemisphere, while the Southern Hemisphere saw warming.

It has ...

In 1998, 16% of the world’s shallow-water reefs died, as a result of global temperatures that were the hottest ever recorded.

Scientists say the die-off could be even worse this year, as coral from Texas to Thailand are bleaching–a stress reaction that indicates survival mode for coral, which are especially vulnerable to warming oceans.

Scientists say this is only the second known global bleaching of coral reefs (following 2008). They hope it won’t be as bad, as 2008, but in some areas it is almost certain to be worse.

For instance, last month scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society reported on what they say is one of the most rapid and severe coral mortality events ever recorded, unfolding in Indonesia.

Source: Sustainable Business

Photo provided by Yvonne Dierich

Once again, there had been a mass stranding of pilot whales on New Zealand beach.

It had reached to 124 pilot whales which were found stranded at Spirit Bay according to the Department of Conservation.

But Department of Conservation Area Manager Jonathan Maxwell have announced, that 25 pilot whales were already dead when they arrived.

Some of them are still alive. In addition to this, 50 pilot whales more were perceived not too far from 74 which got stranded.

According to Maxwell, they need many volunteers in order to drive the mammals back to the ocean.

However, it’s possible that it will reach until tomorrow before driving the stranded pilot whales back.

In August alone, 58 pilot whales were also stranded at the neighboring Karikari Beach.

New Zealand is one of which having numerous ca...