Category News

Spanish and French fishing vessels were found to have been illegally fishing in the exclusive economic zones of Somalia, India and Mozambique, claims a new report by the Blue Marine Foundation, an NGO dedicated to marine conservation. The EU is the biggest tuna harvester in the Indian Ocean, with France and Spain accounting for most of the catches.

The two operate sizeable distant-water fleets that engage in purse seining, large-scale industrial fishing, which poses threat not only to the target species but also – due to large amounts of bycatch it produces – endangers marine life in general.

The Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) were established by the UN in 1982 and are reserved for the exclusive use by individual sovereign nations...

Coral reefs have complex soundscapes – created by fish and other creatures living there – which can be used by scientists to measure coral health. However, traditional acoustic surveys of reefs rely on labor-intensive methods which face significant difficulties in assessing reef health through the use of individual recordings. Now, a research team led by the University of Exeter has trained a computer algorithm using multiple recordings of both healthy and degraded reefs, allowing the machine to learn the difference. When fed new data, this algorithm was able to successfully identify reef health 92 percent of the time.    

“Coral reefs are facing multiple threats including climate change, so monitoring their health and the success of conservation projects is vital,” said stu...

Memories shape who we are – and who we will become. Our past helps us figure out what to do in increasingly stressful or confusing situations, and the more experience we have the better equipped we are to make the next move.

But people and other living things aren’t the only things with memory. Oceans, in a way, remember too. Ocean memory, a relatively new term, has hit the headlines recently as new research out this month in Science has demonstrated how the ocean is “losing its memory.” How that loss, which occurs thanks to human caused climate change, will alter the future is still up in the air.

Here’s what you need to know about the concept, and what its loss could mean for the future of the oceans and the planet. 

What is ocean memory?

While ocean memory might ha...

The United Nations has declared Sunday to be the International Day for Biodiversity to raise awareness of the extinction risk facing animals and plants. Nearly a third of all species are now endangered due to human activities. Later this year governments will meet to come up with a long-term plan to reverse the threat to life on Earth – in all its varieties – at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in China.

What is biodiversity and why is it important?

Biodiversity is the variety of all life on Earth – animals, plants, fungi and micro-organisms like bacteria.

Animals and plants provide humans with everything needed to survive – including fresh water, food, and medicines. 

• Biodiversity: Why it matters, in five graphics

However, we cannot get these benefits from indivi...

According to a new study from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), in 2021 our oceans reached their hottest and most acidic levels since we began recording them. The study, which was part a larger report released annually, looked at four main drivers of climate change: greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean temperatures, and ocean acidity. All hit record highs last year.

“Our climate is changing before our eyes,” WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “The heat trapped by human-induced greenhouse gases will warm the planet for many generations to come.”

The rapidly rising temperatures and greenhouse gasses are having a catastrophic effect on our oceans...

Pacific bottlenose dolphins treat their skin conditions in coral reef spas, a new study has found. The dolphins are regular customers at specific Red Sea reefs, where they rub up against certain types of corals that contain distinct active medicinal compounds, according to the study, published on Thursday in iScience. 

Repeated rubbing allows these chemicals “to come into contact with the skin of the dolphins,” Gertrud Morlock, of Germany’s Justus Liebig University Giessen, said in a statement. 

This could help dolphins prevent or treat microbial infections, Morlock added.

“Many people don’t realize that these coral reefs are bedrooms for the dolphins, and playgrounds as well,” co-author Angela Ziltener of the University of Zurich added. 

“It’s almost like they a...

Coral reefs are complex, large underwater ecosystems that support marine life both as a form of food and shelter for fish. Over the years, the climate crisis has marked an end date for these vibrant marine structures, based on a new study in the Caribbean where marine ecologists warn that coral extinction is imminent if global temperatures continue to rise.

The new study followed recent research regarding the increasing risk brought by ocean warming to coral reef systems, placing them in the state of coral bleaching and eventual death.

Previous scientific papers have also revealed a drastic coral population decline across the globe, including in the Great Barrier Reef.

In addition to natural hazards, human-related activities such as overfishing and the use of explosive devices in...

The federal government will spend $20m to buy out fisheries in Australia’s south-east in part because the climate crisis is affecting population numbers of some species, making current fishing levels unsustainable. The Australian Fisheries Management Authority will buy back vessel permits in the south-east trawl fishery, which is the largest commonwealth-managed fin fish fishery in Australia.

It is the first time the authority has said it will conduct a buyout because of climate change and environmental factors, which are preventing the recovery of some populations.

The government announced $24m in the March budget for a structural adjustment package for the fishery, the bulk of which is for the buyouts to try to ensure its long-term sustainability.

The authority told a Senate ...

Earth’s oceans are home to some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, but warming temperatures are causing many marine animals, including coral, to die out. A new study into managing the effect climate change has on these organisms says that more international collaboration is needed to ensure the future of the more than 6,000 coral species.

“Coral reefs are an essential ecosystem on our planet,” said Andrea Grottoli, co-author of the study and a professor in earth sciences at the Ohio State University. “Coral reefs are really important for humans in that they provide protection to coastlines from erosion and storms, and they’re essential for certain services like tourism and other parts of the economy.”

The study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, advocates fo...

Coral bleaching affected 91% of reefs surveyed along the Great Barrier Reef this year, according to a report by government scientists that confirms the natural landmark has suffered its sixth mass bleaching event on record. The Reef snapshot: summer 2021-22, quietly published by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority on Tuesday night after weeks of delay, said above-average water temperatures in late summer had caused coral bleaching throughout the 2,300km reef system, but particularly in the central region between Cape Tribulation and the Whitsundays.

“The surveys confirm a mass bleaching event, with coral bleaching observed at multiple reefs in all regions,” a statement accompanying the report said...