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Scuba News..because we can’t be underwater all the time
Archive for June, 20088-day undersea mission begins experiment to improve coral reef restorationWednesday, June 18th, 2008
Scientists have begun an eight-day mission, in which they are living and working at 20 m below the sea surface, to determine why some species of coral colonies survive transplanting after a disturbance, such as a storm, while other colonies die.
Acidic ‘champagne sea’ nothing to celebrate for coralsTuesday, June 17th, 2008
Lush, grassy, and populated by invasive algae and molluscs with paper-thin shells - that is what the acidic oceans of the future could look like.
An exploration of natural "bubble streams" of carbon dioxide in shallow Mediterranean waters off the coast of Italy is the first to document the effects of ocean acidification in a real ocean setting. The notion that the oceans will become more acidic as CO2 concentrations rise is well understood. By the year 2100, ocean acidity is predicted to be 7.8 pH, compared to 8.2 pH in 1900.
Robot fish may track whales or pollutionThursday, June 12th, 2008
In the world of underwater robots, new Robofish are a team of pioneers. While most ocean robots require periodic communication with scientist or satellite intermediaries to share information, these can work cooperatively communicating only with each other. In the future, ocean-going robots could cooperatively track moving targets underwater, such as groups of whales or spreading plumes of pollution, or explore caves, underneath ice-covered waters, or in dangerous environments where surfacing might not be possible. Schools of robots would be able to work together to do things that one could not do alone, such as tracking large herds of animals or mapping expanses of pollution that can grow and change shape.
Missing divers: Five Europeans found on remote Indonesian islandTuesday, June 10th, 2008
Five divers who were swept away during a dive off Indonesia have been found safe on a remote beach on an island 25 miles away.
The 36-hour ordeal saw them carried to the neighbouring island by strong currents while they waited for their dive boat to return.
Fearing their rescue might take days, the dive party began scavenging for shellfish to survive and were forced to use rocks to drive off a komodo dragon - one of the huge, aggressive lizards native to the area that are capable of killing humans.
Scientists Announce Top 10 New SpeciesThursday, June 5th, 2008
Scientists at the International Institute for Species Exploration have put together a list of the Top 10 New Species described in 2007.
Number one on the list is a sleeper ray called Electrolux addisoni. It was thus named because the discovery of this brightly patterned electric ray "sheds light (Latin, lux) on the rich and poorly known fish diversity of the Western Indian Ocean. And the vigorous sucking action displayed on the videotape of the feeding ray may rival a well-known electrical device used to suck the detritus from carpets and furniture in modern homes".
“La Nina” effect may be behind shark attacksTuesday, June 3rd, 2008
Cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures due to the La Nina phenomenon may be partly responsible for a spate of fatal shark attacks off Mexico's Pacific coast, a U.S. shark expert has said. La Nina, which usually results in cooler than normal water in the Pacific, has moved the boundary between cold and warm water closer to the shore, and along with it, fish and their shark predators, George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research told Reuters.
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