Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
Much of the 200 miles of Belize's coral reef has been "bleached" in the last decade and some scientists warn it is likely to die, a victim of global warming.
Scientists estimate over 27 percent of the world's coral has been permanently lost and at current rates of destruction, another 30 percent will disappear over the next three decades.
Reefs across the Caribbean have been hit particularly hard, making them vulnerable to deadly diseases.
Belize lost nearly half of its reef, a World Heritage Site, in 1998 when global warming and the "El Nino" weather phenomenon combined to cause the highest sea temperatures ever recorded worldwide.
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Monday, October 30th, 2006
Just when we thought it was getting smaller, the hole in the ozone layer has reached record proportions. Between 21 and 30 September, the average area of the hole reached 27.5 million square kilometres, according to scientists monitoring ozone levels over the South Pole using NASA's Aura satellite and balloon-borne instruments. This marks an increase of roughly 3.9 million square kilometres from last year.
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Monday, October 30th, 2006
Specially selected books: guides to diving around the world, stories of the history and pioneers of diving, books featuring great underwater photography and some just stories about diving.
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Friday, October 27th, 2006
The number of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in the world's seas and oceans has risen more than a third in the past two years because of fertilizer, sewage, animal waste and fossil-fuel burning, according to United Nations experts. Their number has jumped to about 200, according to new estimates.
Oxygen starvation robs the seas and oceans of many fish, oysters, sea grass beds and other marine life - and the number of such dead zones has grown every decade since the 1970s.
Not all of them persist year-round, as they do in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi River pours its fertilizers and other nutrients.
Some dead zones return each summer, depending on winds that generate upwelling, in which nutrient-rich water is brought to the surface from lower depths.
But all the dead zones pose a danger to global fish stocks, which many marine scientists say are increasingly hammered by overfishing and pollution.
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Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
The fasting growing economies and populations of East Asia are putting the region's marine ecosystem under increasing stress, the United Nations has warned. A new study finds 90 percent of Asia's sewage is discharged into the marine environment waters without treatment, threatening fisheries, mangrove forests, coral reefs and coastal wetlands.
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Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
Overfishing and the environmental degradation of the oceans are hitting fish populations with a "double whammy" from which many may not recover, a study has found.
Research has shown that measures to conserve fish stocks may actually be making things worse by creating vulnerable populations.
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