Category News

Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection reported Sunday that heavy damage was caused to the coral reef in the Red Sea, off the coast of the southern resort city of Eilat. This is one of the northernmost coral reefs in the world, and the only one in Israel.

National monitoring carried out by the ministry, through The Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, found that the percentage of coral living on the reef has dropped dramatically.

This is a result of an unusual storm that occurred in March 2020, causing massive damage to the infrastructure and beaches in Eilat, as well as the coral reef located in Eilat’s Coral Beach Nature Reserve.

The monitoring found that at a depth of five meters in the reserve, area covered with living corals was about 25 percent lower co...

Years of marine conservation efforts throughout the Mediterranean are beginning to pay dividends in Tunisia, with activists expecting a further increase in the number of sea turtles visiting the country’s beaches to build their nests this year. It’s an unlikely, albeit fragile, victory. Many of the factors that pushed sea turtles on to the world’s endangered list are still present and continue to threaten the survival of the species. However, activists monitoring sea-turtle nests on Kuriat Island, a vital nesting ground, have reported an increase in nests from 11, when they first started monitoring in 1997, to more than 40 annually.

“Sea turtles are what we call a keystone species,” says Jamel Jrijer, a marine project manager at the WWF’s offices in Tunis...

The Sargasso Sea, an area of the Atlantic Ocean between the Caribbean and Bermuda, has bedeviled sailors for centuries. Its namesake — sargassum, a type of free-floating seaweed — and notoriously calm winds have “trapped” countless mariners, including the crew of Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria.

For the past 500 years, most of the stories that have come from the Sargasso have been about stranded ships and sunken vessels. But in recent years scientists have rewritten the sea’s narrative. It’s not a life-stealing sea, but a life-giving one. The seaweed alone helps support 100 species of invertebrates, 280 species of fish and 23 species of birds.

That’s one of the reasons why a team of scientists from 13 universities and institutions included the Sargasso Sea as one of 10 biodiversity ...

As oceans warm due to climate change, some coral reefs have been devastated in recent years by bleaching events that cause them to die and damage the biodiversity that depends on them. Multiple studies are underway to understand more about these bleaching events and if corals can bounce back. While bleaching is associated with the stark white skeletal remains of corals after they have lost their live tissue, an opposite effect can also take place when such an event occurs.

It’s known as colorful bleaching, where corals seem to amp up their pigments and provide brilliant displays of neon color.

Colorful bleaching has been observed since 2010 in coral reefs aroundthe globe, but the mechanism and reasoning behind it hasn’t been understood...

A new study from The University of Western Australia has revealed clear evidence highlighting the importance of fish biodiversity to the health of tropical coral reef ecosystems. This is the case for reefs that are pristine and also those that have been affected by stresses, such as bleaching events caused by warming oceans.

However, the study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, showed that even though strong relationships between diversity and a healthy ecosystem persist, human-driven pressures of warming oceans and invasive species still diminish ecosystems in various ways.

A team of researchers from UWA and Lancaster University in the United Kingdom conducted surveys on coral reefs around 10 islands in the remote Chagos Archipelago – the largest uninhabited and unfished coral re...

The pandemic has disrupted conservation work and funding, with potential repercussions for years to come, according to conservation groups. But we can seize the opportunity to push for stronger action to protect the natural world, say Dr Diogo Veríssimo and Dr Nisha Owen from campaign group On The Edge Conservation.

The pandemic struck in what was meant to be a landmark year for biodiversity.

New goals for protecting the natural world are due to be agreed in October.

While lockdown has been linked to a number of positive environmental changes, including wildlife reclaiming urban spaces, we know very little about how large areas of the world that host vast quantities of biodiversity have been faring, said Dr Owen.

“There’s reports coming in of illegal activities happening on the ground th...

Scientists in Australia say they have found a way to help coral reefs fight the devastating effects of bleaching by making them more heat-resistant. Rising sea temperatures make corals expel tiny algae which live inside them. This turns the corals white and effectively starves them.

In response, researchers have developed a lab-grown strain of microalgae which is more tolerant to heat.

When injected back into the coral, the algae can handle warmer water better.

The researchers believe their findings may help in the effort to restore coral reefs, which they say are “suffering mass mortalities from marine heatwaves”.

The team made the coral – which is a type of animal, a marine invertebrate – more tolerant to temperature-induced bleaching by bolstering the heat tolerance of its microalgal s...

A fleet of Russian supertrawlers has been spotted fishing off the coast of Scotland in a protected area, raising concerns by environmentalists over the impact of industrial vessels on marine life in UK waters. The 11 vessels, among the largest trawlers in the world, have spent “significant time” fishing in the Wyville-Thomson Ridge, a British special area of conservation (SAC), according to data analysed by Greenpeace.

The vessels, each more than 100 metres long and capable of processing hundreds of tonnes of fish every day, are believed to be targeting blue whiting, a pelagic species that lives in midwater.

The fleet is operating legally, according to the Scottish government. The area, to the west of the Shetland Islands, is within waters shared by the UK and the Faroe Islands...