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..because we can’t be underwater all the time
Archive for December, 2008
Monday, December 15th, 2008
The world is on the brink of a massive extinction event, according to the United Nations.
Rapid releases of greenhouse gas emissions are changing habitats at a rate faster than many of the world's species can tolerate.
"Indeed the world is currently facing a sixth wave of extinctions, mainly as a result of human impacts," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.
The latest global coral reef assessment estimates that 19 percent of the world's coral reefs are dead. Their major threats include warming sea-surface temperatures and expanding seawater acidification.
"If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions," said Clive Wilkinson of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. Overfishing, pollution, and invasive species continue to be risks as well, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
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Friday, December 12th, 2008
The Red Sea section of the SCUBA Travel site has had a major update. There are more dive centres in the diving operators pages, more descriptions of dive sites and more marine animals, photos and descriptions in the Red Sea Life area. What's more the navigation has been redesigned to make it easier to find what you are looking for. Includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Sudan.
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Thursday, December 11th, 2008
plastics do not just end up in landfills or pollute city streets. They also twirl inside massive ocean gyres that draw in debris from the coasts without leaving any chance of escape.
The most well-known is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that floats inside the North Pacific Gyre between San Francisco and Japan. This massive trash vortex, roughly the size of Texas, consists of an estimated 100 million tons of plastic debris continuously powered by currents in a clockwise fashion. Toothbrushes, umbrella handles, toys and soda bottles make up some of the material floating on the surface of the water. Most of the pollution is made up, however, of tiny pieces of plastic resting just below the surface, too tough for consumption by bacteria. Greenpeace estimates that there are one million items floating inside each square kilometer of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The result is a sea of rubbish that harms marine life.
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Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
A new museum, the first of its kind, is to be built partly above and partly under water. The submerged part of the complex will enable visitors to see archaeological remains on the Egyptian seabed. Other artefacts recovered from the Bay of Alexandria and adjacent sites will be presented in exhibition spaces above water.
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Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
Sexual stereotypes are not the preserve of humans - male dolphins seem reluctant to adopt a technique that females are keen to learn.
Male dolphins, it seems, are not interested in learning how to use a sponge, but their sisters are.
Dolphins were first seen carrying sponges cupped over their beaks in Shark Bay, Australia, in the 1980s.
Janet Mann of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and colleagues have now reviewed data collected during 20 years spent monitoring this group of dolphins and found that, while mothers show both their male and female calves how to use sponges, female calves are almost exclusively the only ones to apply this knowledge.
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Friday, December 5th, 2008
Chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that pilot whales no longer be considered fit for human consumption, because they are toxic - as revealed by research on the Faroes themselves. In a statement to the islanders, chief medical officers Pal Weihe and Hogni Debes Joensen announced that pilot whale meat and blubber contains too much mercury, PCBs and DDT derivatives to be safe for human consumption.
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