Category News

The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a week ago is now over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island’s ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic. Greenland, the world’s largest island, is a semi-autonomous Danish territory between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that has 82 per cent of its surface covered in ice. 

The area of the Greenland ice sheet that is showing indications of melt has been growing daily, and hit a record 56.5 per cent for this year on Wednesday, said Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute. She says that’s expected to expand and peak on Thursday before cooler temperatures slow the pace of the melt.

More than 10 billion tonnes of ice was lost to the oceans by surf...

Sales of single-use plastic bags at the seven biggest retailers in England have plummeted by 90 per cent since the introduction of a 5p charge in 2015, Government figures show. The decline was hailed by the newly installed Environment Secretary, Theresa Villiers, as “a powerful demonstration that we are collectively calling time on being a throwaway society”. Campaigners against plastic also welcomed the impact of the charge, credited with a dramatic change in consumer behaviour.

It follows huge falls in plastic bag use in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland which all introduced the levy sooner.

Britain beating plastic bags

Julian Kirby of Friends of the Earth said: “What an amazing difference good legislation makes...

Researchers have found that a third of Guam’s coral reefs died due to rising ocean temperatures. The Pacific Daily News reported Monday that University of Guam researchers say increased temperatures killed 34% of Guam’s coral reefs between 2013 and 2017.

The scientists say about 60% of the reefs along Guam’s eastern coast are gone.

Researchers say they have never before seen reef deaths as “severe” as the new findings.

The study was published in the scientific journal Coral Reefs.

A multi-agency Guam Coral Reef Response team monitors the island’s reefs and tries to revive coral communities in line with a 2017 recovery plan.

Researchers say elevated global carbon dioxide output is to blame for the heightened water temperatures.

Local contributing factors include the islan...

An industrial revolution is beginning in the oceans. Historically, the most valuable commodities drawn from the sea were products like cod, pearls, and sponges. The currencies of this new ocean economy are different: kilowatts of energy, shipping containers, metals, data, desalinated water, DNA, and oil, to name a few. The marine industrial economy has been valued at $1.5 trillion and is predicted to grow at double the rate of the rest of the global economy by 2030.

A sometimes unappreciated aspect of this recent explosive industrial marine growth is that its distribution is highly uneven. In fact, many key facets of the new ocean economy have been dominated by one nation: China.

China, for example, leads the world in industrial fishing...

With satellites the size of a loaf of bread — and some artificial intelligence — scientists and researchers are mapping the world’s coral reefs in an effort to conserve and restore the marine organism.

Since its launch this past October, the Allen Coral Atlas has grown to include data from coral reefs across six geographic zones. As the project approaches its one year anniversary, members of the Allen Coral Atlas team gathered at Vulcan Inc.’s Seattle offices on Thursday to present findings and look ahead at what’s possible with the bank of images and corresponding data.

The project is an initiative of Vulcan, founded by the late Paul Allen, who was an avid diver and witnessed the threats to reefs firsthand...

After returning to shore last January due to a fault, the floating barrier has set sail towards the Pacific Trash Vortex once again with the aim of removing the largest plastic island floating in the ocean. The Ocean Cleanup mission is giving it another go, not letting the first obstacle bring it to a permanent halt: the machine, whose full name is Ocean Array Cleanup, is a barrier designed to carry out the greatest ocean cleanup operation ever. 

Boyan Slat, the mastermind behind the project, announced via Twitter that it’s currently at sea headed towards the Pacific Trash Vortex, the largest plastic island on the planet.

Give it another go, Wilson

In late 2018, the 600-metre long machine called Wilson was damaged by continuous exposure to waves and wind, causing a 2...

Marine wildlife in a vast area of ocean to the north of Scotland is at risk from trawlers because of a gaping loophole in international fishing regulations.

Over 4,000 square kilometres of seabed on the West Shetland Shelf – where endangered cod, starfish and anemones are meant to be protected – are due to open up to trawling on 14 August.

A European Union (EU) ban on trawling for cod in the area is being lifted, while plans to restrict fishing as part of a “marine protected area” have been delayed and won’t come into force for many months.

One trawler skipper fears that the area will be “totally decimated within 48 hours”, and there are concerns that Orkney’s creel fishing industry will be harmed...

Hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is near record lows in its northern stretch and in decline in the south, surveys by government scientists have found. A report card by the government’s Australian Institute of Marine Science says hard coral cover in the northern region above Cooktown is at 14% – a slight increase on last year but close to the lowest since monitoring began in 1985. A series of “disturbances” – coral bleaching linked to rising water temperatures, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and tropical cyclones – have caused hard coral cover to decline to between 10% and 30% across much of the world heritage landmark over the past five years.

Mike Emslie, the institute’s acting head of long-term monitoring, said the report included glimmers of hope: individua...

It’s been a tough start to summer for the endangered North Atlantic right whale. Six were found dead last month in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, off Canada. Their deaths are prompting ocean officials to call for a swift response to protect the remaining 400 or so whales that are left. Part of this response came Monday night. Canadian officials announced protective measures for the right whale, including reduced ship speeds and increased aerial surveillance in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

Patrick Ramage is the director of marine conservation for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). Ramage is in Washington D.C. this week with IFAW, brainstorming for ways to better protect right whales. He spoke with WGBH Radio’s Judie Yuill about the plight of the North Atlantic Right Whales...

The sailing cargo ship Kwai docked in Honolulu last month after a 25-day voyage with 40 tonnes of fishing nets and consumer plastics aboard, gathered from what has become known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 

The latest annual clean-up voyage by the non-profit Ocean Voyages Institute (OVI) used satellite imagery to specifically target discarded fishing gear. More than half a million tonnes of plastic nets – so-called ghost nets – are abandoned each year in oceans across the world, entangling and killing up to 380,000 sea mammals.

The circulating ocean current known as the North Pacific Gyre is believed to contain 1.8 trillion plastic items weighing over 80,000 tonnes...