Blog Archives

A staggering 16,000 disused bottles were collected from nearly 400 beaches during last year’s Beachwatch Big Weekend.

This year’s event on September 18-19, organised by the Marine Conservation Society charity, is encouraging volunteers of all ages to enjoy some sea air while clearing up the UK shoreline.

To find your nearest participating beach, call its litter team on 01989 567807 or visit www.mcsuk.org.

Thanks!

An invasive species of predatory shrimp has been found in the UK for the first time.

The animal was spotted by anglers at the Grafham Water reservoir in Cambridgeshire and sent to the Environment Agency for identification.

The shrimp preys on a range of native species, such as freshwater invertebrates – particularly native shrimp – and even young fish.

This alters the ecology of habitats it invades, and could cause extinctions.

According to the Environment Agency, the animal, known as Dikerogammarus villosus, often kills its prey and leaves it uneaten.

Insects such as damselflies and water boatmen could be at risk, with knock-on effects on the species which feed on them.

D. villosus has spread across most of Western Europe over the last 10 years...

Two-thirds of the earth is underwater. We glide over the surface of the oceans, but we still have very little idea what is going on even a few metres down.

We spend billions sending craft and people into space, but we do not really know what happens under the waves.

One man who finds that more than curious is Graham Hawkes, a beneath-the-sea maverick who has been working on underwater craft for most of his life.

It is a lonely, driven quest, relying rather dangerously on the engagement and backing of a few wealthy enthusiasts.

Born in London, Mr Hawkes learnt his engineering expertise in the defence industry, working initially on torpedoes in Norfolk, England.

In the 1980s he went to the US, working on oil and gas exploration before setting up on his own, with the aim of bringing a new cla...

Narwhals are the ‘marathon runners’ of the oceans, scientists have discovered.

The Arctic-living tusked whales are exceptional endurance athletes, possessing a greater density of slow-twitch fibres in their muscles than any other marine mammal studied.

But this ability also means they are one of the sea’s slowest swimmers.

That places them at high risk from climate change, as narwhals will not be able to cope with shifting, highly mobile ice floes caused by warmer seas.

Details of the narwhal’s extreme endurance ability and susceptibility to climate change are published in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

Narwhals are one of three species of cetacean living in the Arctic, alongside the beluga whale and bowhead whale.

They are also known as the ‘unicorns of the sea’ due to their long, el...

Two Greenpeace activists, nicknamed the

The French yacht Tara left on Sunday on the second leg of a three-year expedition across the world’s oceans to chart the effects of climate change on micro-organisms that produce half our oxygen.

The 36-metre (118-foot) schooner sailed from Cape Town a year after leaving Lorient in western France to head across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for New Zealand next August as part of a 150,000-kilometre (93,750-mile) journey.

“We are going to Ascension Island — we’ll be there in one month and then in Rio in the middle of October,” said captain Olivier Marien shortly ahead of the yacht’s departure.

“We have a busy schedule on the way so we will make several stops. Tomorrow will be the first sampling off the South African waters.”

The plankton-studying boat will then sail to Argentina and furth...

Officials are trumpeting the success of an artificial coral reef off Racha Yai Island, some 25 kilometers south of Phuket, that has become a hit with foreign and Thai divers.

As many as 100 divers are visiting the

The son of famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau has urged Australia to protect its marine environment as a way to ensure the future viability of the fishing industry.

Speaking to The Age from his base in California, Jean-Michel Cousteau said protected marine national parks help restore the planet’s dwindling fish stocks, allowing fishermen to reap the ”spill over” benefits and ensure their long-term sustainability.

Mr Cousteau’s plea comes as the opposition vows to halt immediately the introduction of marine conservation parks around Australia if it forms government, saying the process would hurt commercial and recreational fishing industry.

Mr Cousteau, like his father, is an ocean explorer and filmmaker and in 2006 famously convinced former US President George Bush to establish the Papa...

Orcas, commonly known as killer whales, are still evolving, and quickly.

Researchers have discovered that two distinct types of orca, a large and a pygmy form, are rapidly diverging, evolving away from each other.

The scientists’ study reveals each type of orca carries a unique gene mutation that benefits its particular lifestyle.

The genetic change has occurred in the past 150,000 years, adding to evidence that the orcas are quickly evolving into two distinct species.

Details of the research are published in the journal Biology Letters by an international team of scientists led by orca expert Dr Andrew Foote of the Natural History Museum of Denmark based at the University of Copenhagen.

Energetic lifestyles

The orcas studied live in Antarctic waters, and are known as type B and type C or...

Coral reefs are sensitive to climate change and track sea level. New observations show that an extensive coral reef existed in the southern Pacific Ocean thousands of years ago.

Woodroffe et al. used multi-beam sonar, coring, and dating to examine a relict reef discovered in water about 20-25 meters (65-82 feet) deep around Lord Howe Island in the southern Pacific Ocean.

They found that the reef thrived from about 9,000 to 7,000 years ago and covered an area 20 times larger than the modern reef, which is the southernmost Pacific coral reef.

About 7,000 years ago, the reef was drowned, probably due to abrupt sea level rise, and then shrunk to its modern extent.

The observation shows the extent to which reefs grew 9,000 years ago...