Category News

Scientists at the Regional Aquaculture and Fisheries Research Center in Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo managed, for the first time in Mexico, to reproduce corals sexually in controlled environments and in an assisted manner, a historic achievement that gives hope for coral reef repopulation in the Mexican Caribbean.

The team led by Dr. Claudia Padilla, from Inapesca, has been working on coral reproduction for 10 years, but this is the first time that they have spawned these organisms in a controlled pond, which simulates sea conditions in temperature, light, waves, and current.

What is coral?
Coral reproduction is a complex process, for which it is necessary to first understand what a coral is.

These are colonial animals made up of a calcium carbonate base (skeleton) that covers a layer of l...

Public opinion research sponsored by Oceana, the world’s largest international ocean conservation organization, shows Amazon customers are buying more online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, are overwhelmingly concerned about plastic pollution and its impact on the oceans, and want major online retailers including Amazon to give them plastic-free packaging choices. In response to these findings and the growing ocean plastic pollution crisis, Oceana in Canada, the U.S and the UK announced today it is launching a campaign calling on Amazon to offer its customers plastic-free packaging choices.

“Jeff Bezos credits Amazon’s success to an ‘obsessive’ focus on its customers...

Every dollar invested in a sustainable ocean economy can yield at least five times the return in benefits, according to a new report commissioned by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy.

As many countries roll out bailout packages to counter the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the report says investment in these four key ocean intervention areas could help aid economic recovery both now and in the future:

• Conservation and restoration of mangroves
• Decarbonization of the shipping industry
• Scaling up offshore wind production
• Increasing sustainable protein from the ocean

“They give jobs and livelihoods to people and communities and you’re doing so by investing in making your environment more sustainable,” said Manaswita Konar, lead author of the report...

To mark Shark Awareness Day, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has urged all Mediterranean countries to urgently act to improve the information and awareness for fishermen, boost controls and ensure an adequate system to report the capture of sharks and rays.

The organization wrote in a statement that sharks and rays are fundamental indicators of the state of health of the oceans and their beneficial impact on the welfare of the seas is wide-ranging.

In many areas of the world, they also represent an important economic resource for tourism. The WWF will promote on its social media accounts a special marathon to inform on the importance of sharks for the marine ecosystem, dispelling myths about the threat posed by this species and suggesting behavior to promote its preservation.

The public will...

Canada is an ocean nation with the longest coastline in the world. Canadians rely on healthy marine ecosystems to sustain our economy, our food supply, and our coastal communities. But the ocean is a shared resource that requires a global effort to ensure marine conservation. That is why the Government of Canada is joining other countries to advocate for international action to increase conservation and protection of our oceans by 2030.

Today, during the Protecting the Oceans Most Important Places webinar, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, the Honourable Bernadette Jordan, announced Canada has joined the United Kingdom and other countries in the Global Ocean Alliance...

In the most comprehensive report to date on the economic implications of protecting nature, over 100 economists and scientists find that the global economy would benefit from the establishment of far more protected areas on land and at sea than exist today. The report considers various scenarios of protecting at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean to find that the benefits outweigh the costs by a ratio of at least 5-to-1. The report offers new evidence that the nature conservation sector drives economic growth, delivers key non-monetary benefits and is a net contributor to a resilient global economy.

The findings follow growing scientific evidence that at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean must be protected to address the alarming collapse of the natural world, which now thre...

The World Meteorological Organisation says there’s a growing chance that global temperatures will break the 1.5C threshold over the next five years, compared to pre-industrial levels. It says there’s a 20% possibility the critical mark will be broken in any one year before 2024. But the assessment says there’s a 70% chance it will be broken in one or more months in those five years.

Scientists say that keeping below 1.5C will avoid the worst climate impacts.

The target was agreed by world leaders in the 2015 Paris climate accord accord.

They committed to pursue efforts to try to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C this century.

• Siberian Arctic ‘up to 10 degrees warmer’ in June
• UK could hit 40C ‘regularly’ by end of century
• Increase car taxes to help climate, advisers say

This...

As the world battles the coronavirus pandemic, more and more protective equipment is ending up in the sea.

Globally we are using 129 billion face masks and 65 billion plastic gloves every month, according to some estimates.

And divers and observers are spotting more of this discarded waste floating underwater, causing problems for wildlife and washing up on shorelines all over the world.

Source

Marine conservation areas have failed to protect wildlife from the fishing industry, according to a study by Scottish Government scientists.

Researchers from the government’s marine laboratory in Aberdeen have found that less than one per cent of trawling and dredging around Scotland’s coast has been covered by controls in marine protected areas (MPAs). This is “unlikely to significantly reduce the fishing pressure” on rare seabed plants and animals, they say. The way MPA networks have been claimed to provide protection is “misleading”, they warn.

Environmental groups say the new study confirms fears that MPAs have been ineffective, and are calling for more restrictions on fishing...

A British family is leaving their comfortable life in London in order to pursue something more. The Seath family, including Karolina, Barry and their two children, are about to move to an island you probably never heard of in a bid to help replenish and revitalize the area’s coral reef, which have been ravaged by the rising sea temperatures off the coast of Africa’s smallest island.

The island in the Seychelles, measuring just 400 metres long by 300 metres wide, will play host to the family’s land-based coral farm, which will only be the second of its kind in the entire world — the other being on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

“We are just a normal husband, wife, and two kids, living the sort of life that most others do… but we felt the need to make a positive change for oursel...