Category News

Whales, as we all know, are different from most other sea creatures. They are mammals, and give birth to live babies… and then they nurture and raise those babies, nursing them on rich, fatty milk so they can grow big and strong. But we can’t just put whales in an aquarium and watch them raise their families. They are large beasts with complex societies, and their migration can take them around the world.

While the ocean isn’t exactly hospitable to humans, though, we can send our technology. Through the use of whale-mounted cameras, scientists from the University of Hawaiʻi, Stanford University, and UC Santa Cruz were able to capture breathtaking video of humpback whales nursing their calves as they wintered in their breeding grounds in Maui.

Every year, around 10,000 humpback whales r...

The May 4^th debut of The Marine Mammal Center’s “Marine Mammal Mondays” webinar series will focus on marine science and ocean conservation efforts, taught by their award-winning education staff

View promotional video here

The Marine Mammal Center, based in Sausalito, CA, has announced a series of live, online, interactive learning broadcasts called “Marine Mammal Mondays.” The webinars and live Q&A sessions will take place on the first Monday of each month with a different theme. The Marine Mammal Center is the largest marine mammal hospital in the world, with their educators generating research and scientific outputs at volumes similar to top academic institutions...

Coral reefs are so fundamentally damaged by climate change that decades of research on how to protect them may not even still be applicable, scientists say.  In a study of coral over 20 years, UK scientists found that a warming climate undoes decades of knowledge on coral in protected areas, known as marine reserves.  These delicate and vital ecosystems have been used as a guide to rejuvenate biodiversity in other disrupted regions.

However, tropical coral reef marine reserves can offer little defence in the face of climate change impacts, meaning conservationists may have to ‘rethink their role’.

The team is calling for urgent reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions and poor land practices that leak pollutants into coastal waters, to protect coral reefs.

‘Climate change is so f...

A new method of detecting patches of floating macroplastics – larger than 5 millimetres – in marine environments is presented in Scientific Reports this week. The approach, which uses data from the European Space Agency Sentinel-2 satellites, is able to distinguish plastics from other materials with 86% accuracy.

Lauren Biermann and colleagues identified patches of floating debris from Sentinel-2 data based on their spectral signatures – the wavelengths of visible and infrared light they absorbed and reflected. The authors then trained a machine-learning algorithm to classify the individual materials that made up these patches according to the specific spectral signatures of different plastic and natural materials...

Ready, steady, action!

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many across the world are figuring out how to move forward with day-to-day activities as the plans to address the health, socio-economic and recovery issues take shape. But nature, now more than ever, needs us to pay attention to its warning signals and to take care of it so it can take care of us.

With this in mind, creative minds at home—teachers, students, parents, children and families—are invited to bring to life, through video skills, videos on why the world needs to save an important component of the planet’s rich biodiversity. For this online challenge, the focus is the world’s magical coral reefs, home to a quarter of sea life.

Get involved

The task is to create a short video about why the world needs to urgently support...

Despite the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, the world mustn’t forget the “deeper environmental emergency” facing the planet. That’s the view of the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in remarks released to celebrate Earth Day. The toll taken by the virus is both “immediate and dreadful”, Mr Guterres says.

But the crisis is also a wake-up call, “to do things right for the future,” said the Secretary General.

Mr Guterres re-iterated his view that the coronavirus is the biggest challenge the world has faced since the Second World War.

But as the world commemorates the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the planet’s “unfolding environmental crisis” is an “even deeper emergency”, he says.

“Biodiversity is in steep decline,” Mr Guterres stated.

“Climate disruption is approaching a point o...

Rare sea turtles and reef sharks are some of the endangered species that have been sighted in recent weeks off the coast of Thailand, where beaches have been emptied of tourists due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although experts warn that the pandemic may also have a negative impact on marine life. In early April, Thailand, which had close to 40 million tourists last year, closed its borders to the arrival of foreign visitors.

“With the pandemic, human activities have reduced. Businesses have closed and motor boat operations for tourists have stopped. This translates to fewer factors disrupting the life of animals. Now, they can go out to look for food more peacefully,” Teeranai Phetsom, a marine biologist operating in several natural parks along the west coast, told Efe news.

According to th...

Legendary American cartoon character Popeye the Sailor is teaming up with the French environmental organization, The SeaCleaners, to highlight the importance of conservation and cleaning the world’s oceans. Based in Brittany, the organization focuses on raising awareness and long-term, worldwide preservation of the ocean. It also develops solutions to clear the ocean of floating plastic pollution.

A staggering 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year. Last year, divers found a plastic KFC bag from the 1970s during an ocean clean-up off the waters off Bulcock Beach in Queensland, Australia and during a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench – the deepest point in the ocean – a plastic bag was found.

Popeye himself was created by Elzie Crisler Segar, ...

Though coral reefs are in sharp decline across the world, scientists say some reefs can still thrive with plentiful fish stocks, high fish biodiversity, and well-preserved ecosystem functions. An international team, led by Professor Josh Cinner from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU), assessed around 1,800 tropical reefs from 41 countries across the globe.

“Only five percent of the reefs were simultaneously able to meet the combined goals of providing enough fishing stocks, maintaining biodiversity and a working ecosystem,” Prof Cinner said.

“These are like the Hollywood A-listers of coral reefs. They have it all, but they’re also rare and live in exclusive areas—remote locations with little human pressure...

Data from atomic bomb tests conducted during the Cold War have helped scientists accurately age the world’s biggest fish. Whale sharks are large, slow moving and docile creatures that mainly inhabit tropical waters. They are long-lived but scientists have struggled to work out the exact ages of these endangered creatures. But using the world’s radioactive legacy they now have a workable method that can help the species survival.

Whale sharks are both the biggest fish and the biggest sharks in existence. Growing up to 18m in length, and weighing on average of about 20 tonnes, their distinctive white spotted colouration makes them easily recognisable. These filter feeders live on plankton and travel long distances to find food.

They are very popular with tourists in many locations, ofte...