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Scuba News..because we can’t be underwater all the time
Archive for September, 2008Marine ‘dead zones’ leave crabs gaspingTuesday, September 30th, 2008
It's not easy being a fish these days, but it could be even harder being a crab. Research into marine "dead zones" around the world suggests that crustaceans are the first to gasp for air when oxygen levels get low.
Film of fishermen dumping catch causes uproarFriday, September 26th, 2008
British trawler has sparked an international incident after being filmed taking a boatload of endangered fish caught in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea and then dumping the majority overboard in UK waters.
Norwegian government coastguards filmed the crew of the Prolific, a Shetland-based trawler, openly discarding more than 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish, or nearly 80% of its catch.
It is illegal to discard fish in Norwegian waters, but boats are forced to do so in European Union waters if they have caught the wrong species of fish or fish that are too small. Last year the EU estimated that between 40% and 60% of all fish caught by trawlers in the North sea is discarded. The practice of dumping is widely recognised as unsustainable but inevitable given the present EU quota system.
Acidifying oceans are brewing up an underwater dinWednesday, September 24th, 2008
The ocean is getting noisier. Sound can now travel further than it did a century ago, thanks to carbon emissions that have made the oceans more acidic. Researchers have known for some time that acidity can influence how far sound travels in seawater. Oceans are becoming more acidic because of rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which dissolves in seawater to form carbonic acid.
Underwater Photo Gallery: ItalyTuesday, September 23rd, 2008
SCUBA Travel have a new room in their Photo Gallery, dedicated to the marine life and dive sites of Italy.
Secrets of Effective Communication beneath the SeaMonday, September 22nd, 2008
An acoustic signal is sent horizontally through ocean waters from one point to another. Along the way the sound is bouncing off a "ceiling" of choppy, wind-whipped seas and seafloor that could be craggy rock or smooth sand. If researchers can better understand how physical conditions like these distort sound as it travels through the ocean, they could send data underwater faster and with less power and could make it much easier for networks of sensors to talk to each other simultaneously. They could improve wireless communications from commonly used ocean instruments such as Doppler current profilers and potentially eliminate the need for vehicles and gliders to surface just to transmit modest amounts of data. With these goals on the horizon, a science team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography have successfully completed a three-week study of waters west of the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
Reef Search Finds Hundreds of New SpeciesFriday, September 19th, 2008
Hundreds of new kinds of animal species surprised international researchers systematically exploring waters off two islands on the Great Barrier Reef and a reef off northwestern Australia - waters long familiar to divers. The discoveries were made at Lizard and Heron Islands (part of the Great Barrier Reef), and Ningaloo Reef in northwestern Australia. The found about 300 soft coral species, up to half of them thought to be new to science.
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