oceans

A bottom trawler scores underwater pot, and it’s open season for Japanese whalers

... a study found that just 79 percent of known fish species has been formally described, and that the largest gaps in knowledge centered on the oceans' most diverse habitats ...

... California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger suspended all fishing in the San Francisco Bay after the area's worst oil spill in two decades. The governor called the 58,000 gallon spill, which occured after a cargo ship collided with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, an "unbelievable human failure" ...

... German scientists developed LOKI, a device that can recognize and count organisms as small as 0.2 millimeters across. It will be used to study zooplankton, a critical food source for juvenile fish ...

Six tons of fish soup in Russia, 500 tons of pee in the Pacific

Investigators found that fisherman caught twice their legal quota of bluefin tuna in European waters this year, despite an early closure to the season due to the stocks' precipitous decline ...

... a trout farm in Nova Scotia was torn apart by Tropical Storm Noel, freeing an estimated 500,000 fish and causing $1 million in damages ...

... endangered humpback and fin whales swam hundreds of miles north of their usual habitats in search of colder waters. "All signs point to global warming," said an advocate ...

... Korean scientists successfully transported a live flatfish out of water for a 20-hour transatlantic flight to Los Angeles. The fish went into an induced hibernation inside a plastic bag ...

... an Australian company was planning to use 500 tons of industrial urea in a bid to promote plankton growth in the Pacific. The company preferred the term "nutrient injection" to "dumping" ...

Oil companies target the fragile Arctic continental shelf for oil drilling

You’re probably against drilling in the Alaskan Refuge, but what you really ought to be worried about is offshore drilling on Alaska’s continental shelf, which isn’t protected by law or by close attention from environmentalists — and where the likelihood and impact of accidents are far worse. Read Peter Matthiessen’s definitive piece in The Nation: […]

Planktos update

Remember Planktos, the company that was going to sail into the Atlantic ocean and dump a bunch of iron ore, hoping it would stimulate CO2 absorption and profit the company via carbon offsets? Well, Andy Revkin brings news that the company has set sail. Guess the cat’s out of the bag! (Planktos has been criticized […]

Iraqi catches shark, blames America

... in Iraq, a shark was found 160 miles from the sea in an irrigation canal that joins the Euphrates River. "I believe America is behind this matter," said the Iraqi who netted it ...

... the seasonal growth of water hyacinth disrupted local fishing activities along the coast of Lagos in Nigeria. The plant can grow rapidly enough to choke waterways overnight ...

... Turkish academics decided to establish the country's first rehabilitation center for sea turtles ...

... salmon fishing on Oregon's Rogue River was poor this season ...

... the New England Fishery Management Council decided not to end its scallop season on Nov. 1, a move usually made to protect sea turtles off the eastern U.S. coast ...

... an ocean quahog clam dredged up off the coast of Iceland was thought to be the oldest living creature ever discovered. The clam was nicknamed Ming in reference to the Chinese dynasty that was in power at the time of its birth 405 to 410 years ago. The clam died when the researchers counted its rings ...

Fish living in trees and underwater pumpkin carving

... in his weekly radio address, President Bush spoke on conserving fisheries. "The most important thing is not the size of your catch but the enjoyment of the great outdoors," he said ...

... conservationists said that talks at a recent international convention devoted to bluefin tuna recovery were derailed by Japan, resulting in no meaningful progress ...

... an MIT researcher designed new equipment to gather scallops from the sea floor with hopes that it would be less damaging than the dredges in use now ...

... the U.S. Senate approved a resolution directing the government to negotiate an international agreement for managing fish stocks in the Arctic Ocean ...

... the U.S. Congress considered a bill that would reduce the debt of Caribbean nations that pledge to protect coral reefs and marine ecosystems, as well as forests ...

... scientists have discovered that the mangrove killifish, found in the Caribbean, can modify its biological makeup so it can breathe air and live in trees for months at a time ...

The ocean carbon sink is saturating

The long-feared saturation of one the world's primary carbon sinks has apparently started. The BBC reports, "The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced."

After 10 years and more than 90,000 ship-based measurements of CO2 absorption, University of East Anglia researchers reached this stunning conclusion:

CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.

The BBC writes: "Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas."

Sigh. Note to the BBC, you don't need a double hedge: If you're going to just say "might get worse" you surely can drop "Scientists believe." Frankly I doubt you can find many, if any, reputable scientists -- or even the few remaining deniers -- who would say that if the ocean sink saturates, global warming won't get worse. I would probably phrase it this way: Global warming will accelerate if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.

The researchers say, "it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become 'saturated' with our emissions -- unable to soak up any more."

Why is that bad news?

Overlap in supervision allows sea turtles to slip through the cracks

Ask any number of surfers, divers, and ocean-goers of all stripes what one of their favorite ocean critters is, and chances are a good percentage of them will mention sea turtles.

Insomniac zebra fish and stranded sea-turtle babies

... in defiance of a 1959 treaty that agreed no new claims would be laid on Antarctica, press reports say Britain is poised to claim a million square kilometers of Antarctic seabed ...

... the Canadian government announced it would add six new positions dedicated to fisheries assessment in the Arctic ...

... scientists began mapping the seafloor off the coast of Ulster. One scientist said the results would show that 90 percent of the Irish Republic is land beneath water ...