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Blue Ocean Film Festival announced the festival

Greenpeace will give teams of scientists direct access to study the long-term effects of the Gulf oil spill on marine ecosystems.

If you have been following the news recently, schizophrenia seems to have set in regarding the longterm impacts of the Gulf oil spill. One day, the place is coming up smelling like roses, the next it’s nearh high the apocalypse, with 80% of the oil working its way into the ecosystem.

One reason for this is a shortfall of research cash this year, with scientific teams having trouble justifying the expenses associated witn independent expidtions into the Gulf to systematically measure what is REALLY going on down there.

Fortunately Greenpeace has lent one of its ships — the Arctic Sunrise — to the research cause...

In an effort to preserve the biodiversity of Hawaiian coral species, scientists at the University of Hawaii have created the first frozen coral cell bank

Environmental and animal-welfare groups are urging the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to persuade the World Health Organization (WHO) to act over fears about eating whale meat.

The coalition of organisations wants the WHO to issue guidelines amid fears about the safety of the meat.

The groups say whale meat is highly contaminated with mercury and should not be eaten.

But whaling nations say they already have health guidelines in place.

For the past weeks, anti-whaling activists have been drafting a letter aimed at persuading governments to act, in particular, trying to draw attention to the issue of consuming meat of smaller whales and dolphins, known as small cetaceans.

They say dangerously high levels of mercury accumulate up the food chain.

Small cetaceans, like tooth whales and...

In what could be a key step to the formation of the second largest protected area in the open oceans, a Chilean Senate committee has urged declaration of a large scale marine park around remote Salas y Gomez Island.

The recommendation to create the marine park stretching 200 nautical miles around the island – about 380 km east of Easter Island in the South Pacific

Britain is said to be bracing itself for a re-run of its Cod Wars with Iceland – except this time the fish being fought over is mackerel. Yet, until recently, few were interested in a fish regarded as unclean.

As far as fishing is concerned, relations between the UK and Iceland have been as turbulent as the waters of the North Atlantic where their disputes have been played out.

So it is perhaps no surprise to see a British MEP, Conservative Struan Stevenson, calling for an EU-wide blockade of Icelandic boats – along with those from the Faroe Islands – in a row over quotas.

However, while rows in the past have been over the coveted and dwindling stocks of cod, this time the nations are clashing over mackerel.

Iceland, which landed practically no mackerel before 2006, has allocated itself a ...

Oceana, celebrity activists and corporate partner Nautica, will meet in Mississippi, today to provide an update on the first legs of its two-month research expedition in the Gulf of Mexico and discuss its upcoming deepwater oil exploration efforts near the Deepwater Horizon wellhead.

Award-winning actors Ted Danson and Morgan Freeman will be joined by New York-based Spanish model Almudena Fern

Deep-sea trawling is damaging the UK’s sponge beds and threatening a potential source of medical cures, scientists have warned.

Researchers in Edinburgh said deepwater sponges were “treasure chests” that were being worn away by fishing and engineering works.

Ocean sponges from shallower waters have already proved effective at combating diseases like cancer.

Scientists believe the deepwater variety will be equally valuable.

Trawlers work by pulling large nets close to or along the sea floor to catch fish like cod.

According to a study led by a team at Heriot-Watt University, sponge grounds dating back up to 9,000 years are being destroyed in the process.

‘Causing carnage’

Murray Roberts from the Centre for Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology said: “People might think of natural sponges as...

The ocean has been our savior. Besides generating about two thirds of the oxygen we breathe, oceangoing phytoplankton — those floating microscopic plants that form the base of the aquatic food chain — absorb about a third of all the carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere.

In this way, the oceans have managed to slow the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and stave off even more dramatic warming of the planet.

But John Guinotte and colleagues are discovering that the critical role of “carbon sink” comes at a potentially devastating cost for the world’s oceans: acidification.

Guinotte is a coral specialist at the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Bellevue, Wash. The changes he sees in ocean chemistry spell trouble for the coral that he studies closely.

If the acidificatio...

A cargo ship ran into a coral reef off the Kavaratti Island in Lakshadweep, damaging around 400 square metres of the pristine reef that’s home to thousands of marine species.

The latest environmental damage on Sunday came eight days after two container vessels collided off Mumbai and caused an oil spill and serious damage to the mangroves and marine life.

Coast Guard officials said the 78-metre-long cargo vessel, Nand Aparajita, was still lying on the eastern side of the island near the solar plant. The coral reefs around Kavaratti Island are the second largest collection of reefs in Indian waters after those off the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

There was no oil spill right now but the ship was “dangerously perched on the reef”, a Coast guard official said...