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An environmental group is planning on using electricity to restore the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is known to be affected by climate change. The electricity is expected to speed up coral growth, preventing the coral bleaching caused by warming ocean temperatures.

The group is called Reef Ecologic, and it wants to start a trial to see how the technique works on the Great Barrier Reef’s coral, reports New Scientist. The group plans to use steel frames to contain the electricity and simulate coral growth. The process of “regrowing” coral is incredibly slow and could take decades to restore naturally, so the new approach using electricity speeds up the process.

This is not a new idea...

Coral reefs have long faced problems like overfishing, global warming and pollution—but they’re also threatened by how slow they regenerate. To reproduce, coral release sperm and eggs and form larvae, which then swim around and attach to a surface, where they begin to develop into coral polyps and grow. They face a variety of competitors, and most don’t survive. If they do survive, it takes years for the coral to be able to reproduce, and even longer for entire reefs to form.

Researchers at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) at the University of Illinois want to increase the rate of coral regeneration by creating a new home for coral larvae: artificial structures that encourage larvae settlement and discourage the growth of competitor species.

The research will be led...

A fleet of robotic jellyfish has been designed to monitor delicate ecosystems, including coral reefs. The underwater drones were invented by engineers at Florida Atlantic University and are driven by rings of hydraulic tentacles. The robots can squeeze through tight holes without causing damage.

One expert praised the design but warned that the man-made jellyfish might be eaten by turtles.

The flexible, 20cm-wide bots are modelled on the appearance of the moon jellyfish during its larval stage.

The design is intended to be less environmentally disruptive than a drone submarine, according to Prof Erik Engeberg, of Florida Atlantic University.

“Mini-submarines are rigid and typically use a propeller for locomotion,” he said...

A dolphin in Scotland’s Firth of Clyde may be exchanging messages with porpoises. The dolphin, named Kylie, usually makes clicking sounds with a frequency of around 100KHz. But after interacting with a group of local porpoises he changed his tune. Research from the University of Strathclyde found that Kylie’s clicking became higher than normal, and closer to that of his new found friends, who generally make sounds at 130KHz.

He has made his home around a navigational buoy between Fairlie and the Isle of Cumbrae, in western Scotland.

University of Strathclyde PhD student Mel Cosentino has been analysing the sounds.

“We have some more recording to do with Kylie when he is on his own and when he is with the group of porpoises,” she said.

“We want to see whether he is imitating the porpoise...

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said that if the world doesn’t change course by 2020, we run the risk of runaway climate change. Mr Guterres said he was alarmed by the paralysis of world leaders on what he called the “defining issue” of our time.

He wants heads of government to come to New York for a special climate conference next September. The call comes amid growing concerns over the slow pace of UN negotiations.

Mr Guterres painted a grim picture of the impacts of climate change that he says have been felt all over the world this year, with heatwaves, wildfires, storms and floods leaving a trail of destruction.
Corals are dying, he said, the oceans are becoming more acidic, and there are growing conflicts over dwindling resources.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmo...

Few conservation issues generate as emotional a response as whaling. Are we now about to see countries killing whales for profit again? Commercial whaling has been effectively banned for more than 30 years, after some whales were driven almost to extinction. But the International Whaling Committee (IWC) is currently meeting in Brazil and next week will give its verdict on a proposal from Japan to end the ban.

Don’t the Japanese already kill whales?

Yes, they do – but it’s complicated. IWC members agreed to a moratorium on hunting in 1986, to allow whale stocks to recover. Pro-whaling nations expected the moratorium to be temporary, until consensus could be reached on sustainable catch quotas.

Instead, it became a quasi-permanent ban, to the delight of conservationists but the dismay of wha...

A Spanish-registered fishing vessel detained by the Naval Service off the southwest coast has been found to have more than a tonne of shark fins on board. Up to 5,000 sharks are estimated to have been caught and stored on the vessel before it was boarded last week by an inspection team from the LÉ William Butler Yeats, 150 nautical miles south of Mizen Head.

Shark can be caught legally, but removing fins at sea has been illegal since 2013 under EU regulations.

Shark fins can fetch a high price in Asia, where they are used in sharkfin soup. The fins are often removed while the shark is still alive and it can then no longer swim effectively and either suffocates or is eaten by other predators.

The vessel, Virxen da Blanca, was escorted into Castletownbere, Co Cork, where it was handed ov...

Crown-of-thorns starfish are having a devastating impact on the health of the Great Barrier Reef but a robot drone is set to track and kill them. RangerBot is a hunting machine that uses a hi-tech vision system to track and kill crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), as well as monitoring reef health indicators like coral bleaching and water quality. The machine has been developed over the past ten years by roboticist Matthew Dunbabin in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology, Google and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

The deadly starfish pose a huge threat to the coral in the Great Barrier Reef. According to a report, published in the journal Nature, COTS outbreaks have a higher impact on reef health than coral bleaching and disease combined...

A fish normally found in tropical waters has twice been spotted off the west coast of Scotland last week. It is the fourth time this year that the sunfish has been recorded by the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust. The ocean sunfish is the heaviest bony fish in the world, with an average weight of 2,200lbs (998kg). The species was recorded on Friday by the crew of a fishing boat off the north coast of Skye. A sunfish was also seen off Ardnamurchan on Wednesday.

Sunfish, which drift with ocean currents, were once rarely seen in Scotland, but boat operators have reported more sightings in recent years, with August being the peak month.

They live on a diet of mostly jellyfish and swim at depths of up to nearly 2,000ft (610m).

Donning just a pair of briefs with a simple cap and goggles, activist swimmer and UN Patron of the Oceans Lewis Pugh became the first person to swim the length of the English Channel. Completing an incredible 530k swim, which started on July 12th, 48-year-old Pugh swam an average of 10k for 50 days straight in the hopes of putting Marine Protected Areas around the UK and Overseas Territories in the public spotlight.

“This swim was not about being the first person to swim the length of the English Channel. I would describe it as a protest swim,” he said. “It was a swim done to highlight what’s happening in our oceans and to really try to get world leaders to understand how serious it is and how quickly our oceans are changing,” Pugh said after he came ashore.

“Completing The Long ...