Category News

Climate change could dramatically reduce life in the deepest parts of our oceans that are reached by sunlight, scientists warn. Global warming could curtail life in the so-called twilight zone by as much as 40% by the end of the century, according to new research. The twilight zone lies between 200m (656ft) and 1,000m (3,281ft). It teems with life but was home to fewer organisms during warmer periods of Earth’s history, researchers found.

In research led by the University of Exeter, scientists looked at two warm periods in Earth’s past, about 50 million years ago and 15 million years ago, examining records from preserved microscopic shells. 

They found far fewer organisms lived in the zone during these periods, because bacteria degraded food more quickly, meaning less of it reached ...

A recent, rapid heating of the world’s oceans has alarmed scientists concerned that it will add to global warming. This month, the global sea surface hit a new record high temperature. It has never warmed this much, this quickly. Scientists don’t fully understand why this has happened. But they worry that, combined with other weather events, the world’s temperature could reach a concerning new level by the end of next year.

Experts believe that a strong El Niño weather event – a weather system that heats the ocean – will also set in over the next months.

Warmer oceans can kill off marine life, lead to more extreme weather and raise sea levels. They are also less efficient at absorbing planet-warming greenhouse gases.

• What’s the difference between El Niño and La Niña?
• Accel...

Oil spilled routinely into UK waters over five years has added up to thousands of tonnes of pollution endangering marine life, according to data shown exclusively to BBC News. Campaigners say the data shows some spills hit areas meant to protect wildlife including porpoises and orcas. While some oil spillage is allowed in production, they say 40% of monitored releases breached permits.

An industry representative said it takes all releases very seriously.

Energy campaigning group Uplift obtained the data through Freedom of Information requests to the offshore oil and gas regulator, the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning. 

Uplift’s analysis suggested that between 2017 and 2022, 22,000 metric tonnes of oil were discharged in UK waters, or 164,000 ba...

On Monday, the so-called “synthesis report” was published by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body made up of hundreds of international scientists from a dizzying array of disciplines. The new report boils down six previous IPCC reports, published since 2018, which pulled together and analyzed thousands of climate science studies. 

It amounts to the most clear-eyed, up-to-date assessment of the climate crisis: how it’s affecting all corners of the world and its systems, and how humanity is faring in its attempts to mitigate disasters and adapt to those that are now unavoidable.

What is key about the IPCC report is that it’s signed off by national governments to confirm that they accept the scientific findings – and will incorporate them...

Earth is hotter than it has been in 125,000 years, but deadly heatwaves, storms and floods amplified by global warming could be but a foretaste as planet-heating fossil fuels put a “liveable” future at risk. So concludes the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which started a week-long meeting Monday to distill six landmark reports totalling 10,000 pages prepared by more than 1,000 scientists over the last six years.

Here are some of the main findings from those reports: 

– 1.5C or 2C? – 

The 2015 Paris Agreement called for capping global warming well below two degrees Celsius compared to late-19th century levels.

But a landmark IPCC report in 2018 left no doubt: only the treaty’s more ambitious aspirational limit of 1.5C could ensure a climate-safe world. 

For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas, representing a turning point in a years long effort to bestow order on vast stretches of the planet where conservation has previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. The treaty agreement concluded two weeks of talks in New York.

An updated framework to protect marine life in the regions outside national boundary waters, known as the high seas, had been in discussions for more than 20 years, but previous efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled...

Port and Starboard are the names of two infamous killer whales (orcas) that swim off the coast of South Africa. Their names come from their rare collapsed dorsal fins: Port’s bends to the left and Starboard’s bends to the right. The pair went on a killing spree last week, attacking and killing at least 17 broadnose sevengill sharks in a single day (February 24, 2023). The whales ate only the sharks’ livers and left their bodies to wash up on the beach.

This pair of male killer whales gained notoriety in 2015, when scuba divers found several broadnose sevengill sharks dead. Eventually, researchers fingered killer whales Port and Starboard in the deaths. Then, in 2017 and 2019, great white sharks were washing up on the coast with just their livers eaten out of their bodies...

Fifteen First Nations are assuming stewardship of a vast network of marine protected areas in their traditional territories that span two-thirds of Canada’s West Coast. The Great Bear Sea MPA Network, an unprecedented initiative co-developed with the B.C. and federal governments, is the result of two decades of work, said Christine Smith-Martin, executive director for Coastal First Nations.

The Indigenous-led initiative, also known as the BC Northern Shelf MPA Network, involves 100,000 square kilometres of ocean and stretches from Northern Vancouver Island to the border of Alaska. It was formally endorsed and celebrated on Sunday at IMPAC5, a global marine conservation summit underway in Vancouver.

The territories of the Nations involved, includes the Great Bear Rainforest conserv...

How do we go from protecting eight per cent of marine areas to 30 per cent in less than 10 years? This question is at the heart of a global forum in Canada aiming to save marine ecosystems under threat from overfishing, pollution and climate change.

On the heels of the historic biodiversity agreement signed at COP15 in Montreal late last year, about 3,000 officials, scientists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and Indigenous groups are meeting in Vancouver for the fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC5), which opened on Friday (Feb 4) and runs until February 9.

Scientists have said the meeting is crucial for setting up a framework to reach the agreed target at COP15 of protecting 30 per cent of the planet’s lands and oceans by 2030.

It is an immense st...

In between the sunlit shallows and the dark, deep ocean lies an inky realm where few people have ever been. Stretching from about 30 to 150 metres, the mesophotic zone (meaning “middle light”) is an awkward depth. It lies just beyond the reach of regular scuba divers and it’s usually what aquanauts inside multimillion-dollar submersibles merely glimpse as they plunge deeper.

However, a new generation of scientists is pushing the limits of diving to discover the secrets of this ecological zone. “There’s so much to see, and everything seems new,” says Erika Gress from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. “It’s like a different world.”

To access the mesophotic zone, divers use equipment called rebreathers, which don’t exhale bubbles...