Blog Archives

The first coral reef in Italy has been identified, according to researchers. The underwater ecosystem extends for at least two and a half kilometres on the Adriatic coast near Monopoli, in Puglia. It is the first mesophotic coral reef – a term applied to ecosystems with low levels of light – to be found in the Mediterranean.

These types of reef “are found at depths ranging from 30–40 metres … up to 200 metres”, the researchers write in the study published in Nature.

For this reason, the colours of the coral reef in Puglia are more subtle than the better-known varieties in the Pacific.

“The famous Australian or Maldivian coral reefs rise almost to the surface of the water, making the most of the sunlight that is the real fuel of these ecosystems,” said Prof Giuseppe ...

For more than a month, oil has been pouring out of a large ship that ran aground in the Solomon Islands next to a fragile UNESCO World Heritage site, and there’s growing outrage that the companies responsible have not taken action to stop the environmental destruction. 

The Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship, called the Solomon Trader, got stuck when it was attempting to load bauxite during a cyclone on Feb. 5, Radio New Zealand reported. The island’s reef tore a gash in the side of the ship, endangering what UNESCO describes as the “largest raised coral atoll in the world.” 

Since then, it has dispersed some 80 tons of heavy fuel oil into the sea and onto the shoreline, Australian authorities say, and more than 650 tons are still on the ship. 

“There is a high risk the remaining...

INTENSE HEAT WAVES are bad for human health. They can lead to sometimes deadly conditions like dehydration and stroke. And just like extreme temperatures on land, marine heat waves can drastically alter life under the sea.

A new study published today in Nature Climate Change found that the occurrences of marine heat waves have substantially grown in the past three decades, and it’s becoming clearer how deadly warmer temperatures are for biodiversity.

Marine heat waves are periods when the average water temperature of a given region is exceptionally high. In the past 30 years marine heat wave days have increased by just over 54 percent, a trend the study’s authors found consistent with declines in oceans life.

High-profile marine heat waves like “the blob,” a huge mass of wa...

As announced by the United Nations data on climate change, 30 percent of carbon dioxide produced by humans is absorbed by oceans, which endangers the maritime live. However, some maritime creatures of the northern Red Sea stand defiant against the increasing temperatures of oceans and seas. 

Unlike all kinds of coral reefs all over the world, coral reefs in the northern Red Sea stand defiant against ocean warming even if the sea water temperature increases by 6 °C in the summer, Professor of Marine Environment in the Faculty of Science at Al-Azhar University Eslam Osama told Egypt Today. 

“No coral bleaching was recorded in the northern Red Sea over the past three decades and that indicatesthat coral reefs in this area are less sensitive to high temperature,” said Osama, who conduc...

Scientists have found that dramatic changes in ocean salinity trigger the same stress response in corals as extreme heat. For example, when severe freshwater flooding greatly reduces the salinity of the seawater, corals can experience potentially fatal “freshwater bleaching.”

The researchers used the sequenced genome of the common reef-building coral Acropora millepora to detect changes in the coral’s biology when exposed to a sudden drop in seawater salinity. The experts observed a biochemical response which was similar to that from marine heatwaves, but potentially more damaging.

“Using the sophisticated labs at the National Sea Simulator, we put both young and adult corals under a salinity stress test to see how they respond to differing salinity concentrations,” said stu...

Conservation groups sued several Federal agencies today, after the Administration missed deadlines to list the Gulf of Mexico whale, a subspecies of the Bryde’s whale, as an endangered species. The Gulf of Mexico whale is one of the most endangered species on the planet, with fewer than fifty whales left.

“The Trump administration’s policies target the Gulf of Mexico whale for extinction,” said Zak Smith, senior attorney with the Marine Mammal Protection Project at NRDC. “Every day these animals go unprotected from oil and gas development and other threats, we come that much closer to wiping them out. And when we lose them, we lose an important part of the Gulf’s unique natural heritage.”

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), along with Healthy Gulf, formerly Gul...

As the outlook for coral reefs across a warming planet grows grimmer, scientists in Israel have discovered a rare glimmer of hope: The corals of the northern Red Sea may survive, and even thrive, into the next century.

There is broad scientific consensus that the effects of climate change have devastated the world’s reefs, recently ravaging large swaths of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, one of the natural wonders of the world.

The carbon dioxide that humans pump into the atmosphere spikes the temperature and acidity of seawater, which both poisons the marine invertebrates and hampers their growth at alarming rates, according to studies published last year in the journal Science. Experts estimate that half of the corals that existed in the early 20th century have died.

But...

Sharks, turtles, seabirds and fishing firms will be the first in line to benefit as conservation products company Fishtek Marine nears closing a £900,000 crowdfunding round through ethical specialist Triodos Bank.

The investment will speed up product development by the UK designer and manufacturer whose deterrent technology for the global fishing industry tackles the unintended slaughter of the oceans’ wildlife, known as bycatch. This, the accidental death or capture and eventual discard of species by fleets, now involves some 300,000 dolphins, porpoises and whales, 300,000 seabirds and 250,000 turtles every year which become fatally entangled in gear.

“The toll is tragic, but our technology is to be used with equipment and stops damage to it, so it’s in the interests of the ind...

The great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) may have wiped out the giant megalodon (Otodus megalodon).

Millions of years before human beings emerged, a type of shark that grew up to 60 feet (18 meters) long prowled the oceans. Based on the fossil record, scientists suspect that O. megalodon died off about 2.6 million years ago, around the time a lot of other marine species went extinct.

But scientists may have miscalculated megalodon’s time of death by about 1 million years.

For a paper published today (Feb. 13) in the journal PeerJ, researchers re-examined the fossil record of megalodons in California and Baja California, Mexico, where many examples of the huge fish have been found.

There’s clear evidence that up until about 3...

Life in the sea isn’t easy. Talk to most people about the ocean and they are likely to imagine a tropical scene with a stretch of golden sand and warm, clear water. The reality is often quite different – the marine environment can be a surprisingly cold place.

Water conducts heat far more effectively than air, which means that submerged animals quickly lose their body heat. It’s also harder to warm up again than on dry land, where animals often have the option of basking in the sun or on hot rocks. Finally, many aquatic animals use gills to get oxygen – great for breathing, but essentially another source of heat loss due to all the of water flowing across them and sucking away warmth. 

All this contributes to making it much harder for aquatic animals to regulate their body t...