oceans

Congress has a chance to protect sharks from finning

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the U.S. Court of Appeals' decision to throw out penalties against a fishing vessel carrying 64,695 pounds of shark fins in U.S. waters. Shipping a cargo full of shark fins without sharks is illegal in the United States, but the King Diamond II sailed through a loophole that allowed it to carry fins it had gathered from other ships.

Something good has come out of this: The decision has galvanized pressure to end the brutal practice of shark finning, which kills tens of millions of sharks annually, including many species already threatened by extinction.

Late on Wednesday, Delegate Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam) introduced the Shark Conservation Act of 2008, which will not only require all sharks to be landed with their fins, but also require any other sharks imported into the United States to have the same protections. It's an intermediate step in ensuring protection for sharks worldwide, but it's a vital step all the same.

VBS.tv sails out to witness the garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean

This is the first episode of 12 from VBS.tv on the vast, Texas-sized stew of plastic and garbage floating in the North Pacific Gyre. They sailed out to see it with their own eyes.

WTF?

They’re submerging subway cars to make artificial reefs?! Nobody tells me anything.

Photosynthesis and invertibrate sex

Two new studies may upend previously accepted understanding of photosynthesis. A widespread type of cyanobacteria may not use as much carbon dioxide in photosynthesis as presumed, meaning the oceans are capable of less carbon dioxide absorption than scientists had thought ...

... in other cyanobacteria news, scientists discovered that viruses may play a key role in prompting the phytoplankton to consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen ...

... the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dropped buoys into the water off the coast of Massachusetts that will record sound for the next 30 months in an attempt to understand the effect of ocean noise on marine wildlife ...

The Age of Asparagus dawned in Roman times, but the time to eat it is now

Asparagus may be associated with spring, but there’s nothing new about it. It’s been gracing tables — to the joy of some diners and the horror of others — for at least two thousand years. In the earliest known cookbook, De Re Culinaria (circa A.D. 100), proto-foodie Marcus Apicius recommends pounding asparagus tips with black […]

E.O. Wilson calls for kids to be set free outside, scripted activities be damned

Renowned biologist and naturalist E.O. Wilson regaled the crowd at last week’s Aspen Environment Forum with his wit and wisdom during an on-stage interview. A choice segment: The worst thing you can do to a child, in my opinion, is take them on a hike through a botanical garden where there are the names of […]

How the Monterey Bay Aquarium makes its safe-seafood list

When it comes to safe seafood, the list-makers don’t horse around. Photo: SqueakyMarmot Back in the late 1990s, I happened to attend an exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California called “Fishing for Solutions.” The experience profoundly changed my attitude toward seafood and the supposedly limitless abundance of the sea. The exhibit focused not […]

New online game illustrates the impacts of overfishing

Following in the footsteps of other web-based enviro games such as Whale's Revenge, Planet Green, and, uh, Catstration (okay, maybe that one is a stretch) comes Ocean Survivor. The game has no relation to a certain CBS reality show; players swim through the sea as a bluefin tuna and avoid obstacles like death-by-bottom-trawler:

Duplicitous sand dollars and tenacious sea worms

A federal appeals court ruled that a Hong Kong company should not have been forced to give up the proceeds from 32 tons of shark fins seized by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2002 from the vessel King Diamond II. The 64,695 pounds of shark fins were valued at $618,956 ...

... a three-year study found a thriving reef fish community around three freighters sunk off the coast of Florida ...

... a graduate student discovered that sand dollar larvae can clone themselves in an effort to escape predation ...