With its unique blend of gossip, jokes and songs mixed with serious global issues, Kadal Osai has built a devoted audience
Selvarani Mari is a fisher and seaweed collector who lives on Pamban Island of Tamil Nadu, on the southernmost tip of India.
Every day she helps her husband cast the fishing nets, maintains rafts for cultivating seaweed, and dives into the ocean to gather sargassum. But she always makes time to listen to the radio.
Continue reading...Not-for-profit Women in Fisheries aims to get more women involved in male-dominated industry
Superstition among fishing crews has traditionally said that women on ships are bad luck – and it is among many of the reasons women in the fishing industry are in short supply.
Now though, they are being urged to join Britain’s fishing fleet by the first UK company to emerge that is actively encouraging women to fish.
Continue reading...Fifty years ago, a hit album proved whales “sing” – and led to one of the great environmental success stories. But soon it could all be for nothing
In June 1975, a small group of activists set off from the coast of California in an 85ft boat. They were headed for the Dalniy Vostok factory ship, which was at sea conducting business as usual: harpooning sperm whales.
The activists were members of Greenpeace, an organisation that had only recently been founded, in Vancouver in 1971, and they were setting out to meet the Russian whaling ship under the banner of what would become one of the most famous slogans of the environmental movement, Save the Whales.
Continue reading...Crisp packets, cup lids and wet wipes among the more mundane objects commonly encountered
A full-size disco ball, a plastic Christmas tree and a double mattress were among the more unusual objects found by volunteers cleaning up the UK’s beaches this autumn.
The most common polluting items retrieved in the Marine Conservation Society’s annual clean of coastal areas were pieces of plastic or polystyrene, plastic takeaway cup lids and wet wipes.
Continue reading...Canadian government’s speed restrictions are not enough to prevent deaths of endangered animals, researchers say
For North Atlantic right whales, collisions with large cargo vessels are one of the deadliest threats to an endangered population. But new research from Canada has found even under the government’s current maritime speed restrictions, strikes are likely to be fatal.
In a new paper published in Marine Mammal Science, biologists found that collisions between large vessels and whales at a speed of just 10 knots had an 80% chance of producing a fatality.
Continue reading...A flatback sea turtle has been filmed defending itself from a tiger shark attack off the Western Australia coast. A team of researchers at Murdoch University’s Harry Butler Institute and Western Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation & Attractions captured the vision after mounting a camera on the turtle's shell during a project at Roebuck Bay. Despite the mismatch in size, the turtle uses aggressive biting lunges at the shark before making a hasty escape to safety
Continue reading...Greenpeace report warns against granting licences to ‘deeply destructive’ industry with opaque oversight, and calls for global ocean treaty
Private mining firms and arms companies are exerting a hidden and unhealthy influence on the fate of the deep-sea bed, according to a new report highlighting the threats facing the world’s biggest intact ecosystem.
An investigation by Greenpeace found a handful of corporations in Europe and North America are increasingly dominating exploration contracts, and have at times taken the place of government representatives at meetings of the oversight body, the UN’s International Seabed Authority (ISA).
Continue reading...Scientists have for the first time identified a small gelatinous blob in the deep sea as a new species, using only high-definition underwater cameras.
Continue reading...A man has been killed while swimming at the beach in Broome, according to reports
A man was killed in a shark attack at Cable beach in Broome in the north of Western Australia on Sunday morning.
The attack occurred approximately 1.5km north of Cable Beach Surf Club.
Continue reading...After single sighting in 20 years of surveys, new expedition and analysis bring 58
When the Antarctic blue whale – the largest and loudest animal on the planet – was all but wiped out by whaling 50 years ago, the waters around South Georgia fell silent.
Twenty years of dedicated whale surveys from ships off the sub-Antarctic island between 1998 and 2018 resulted in only a single blue whale sighting. But a whale expedition this year and analysis by an international research team resulted in 58 blue whale sightings and numerous acoustic detections, raising hopes that the critically endangered mammal is finally recovering five decades after whaling was banned.
Continue reading...Transmitter attached to dorsal fin of shark with Twitter following had not sent a definitive message for a year and a half
Katharine, a 14ft-plus great white shark with a Twitter following, appeared again off the US east coast this week. A transmitter attached to her dorsal fin had not sent out a definitive message for a year and a half.
The transmitter that was attached off Cape Cod in August 2013 is roughly half the size of an iPhone and is meant to ping whenever the shark breaks the ocean surface.
Continue reading...Navy joins forces with rescuers and volunteers in effort to push pilot whales back into ocean
Rescuers and volunteers were racing to save about 100 pilot whales stranded on Sri Lanka’s western coast in the country’s biggest mass beaching.
The short-finned pilot whales began beaching at Panadura, 15 miles (25km) south of Colombo, shortly before dusk. Within an hour their numbers swelled to about 100, a local police chief, Sanjaya Irasinghe, said.
Continue reading...Town beach closed after 13-year-old bitten and taken to hospital in a stable condition
A 13-year-old boy has been bitten by a shark at Port Macquarie on the New South Wales mid north coast.
NSW Ambulance says the attack happened just before 6am at Town Beach.
Continue reading...Joint study conducted finds that fish fed a diet including plastic were more likely to be eaten themselves
Microplastics can alter the behaviour of fish, with those that ingest the pollutants likely to be bolder, more active and swim in risky areas where they die en masse, according to a new study.
The survival risk posed by microplastics is also exacerbated by degrading coral reefs, as dying corals make particularly younger fish more desperate to find nutrition and shelter, and to venture into waters where they are more likely to be taken by predators themselves.
Continue reading...Hilsa fishermen must borrow to buy equipment but have to sell their catch at a low price to moneylenders – creating a generational debt trap
Kalam Sheikh’s life revolves around the few months when he goes in search of Bangladesh’s prized hilsa fish. When he gets a good catch, he can make enough money to live on for the rest of the year. He can pay off some of his debts and even improve his home.
But this fragile annual cycle has been broken this year, with bad catches bookended by months off the water by the coronavirus pandemic and government restrictions to stop overfishing.
Continue reading...Scientists searching for reasons fear breeding cycle will be disrupted for years to come
An estimated 5,000 Cape fur seal foetuses have been found along the shores of Namibia, a large portion of the expected new pup arrivals.
The bodies were spotted by Naude Dreyer of Ocean Conservation Namibia (OCN), who flew his drone over Walvis Bay’s Pelican Point seal colony on 5 October and counted hundreds of bodies. “This is tragic, as it makes up a large portion of the new pup arrivals expected in late November,” he tweeted.
Continue reading...Voluntary action of companies including Tesco and Princes aims to put pressure on regulatory body to tackle overfishing
British supermarkets and brands, including Tesco, the Co-op and Princes, are stepping up action to cut yellowfin tuna catches in the Indian Ocean, amid warnings the stock is in a “critical” state.
The effort, by companies reliant on healthy fish stocks, represents a counterintuitive effort to force regulators to act, rather than the other way around.
Continue reading...La Niña’s possible influence on feeding considered as Western Australian surfer’s death takes 2020 toll to highest in 86 years
More Australians have been killed in unprovoked shark attacks this year than in any year since 1934.
But the total number of shark bites is in line with the annual average over the past decade. It is prompting experts to consider whether the La Niña weather event, associated with cooler sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific, may be affecting where sharks search for prey.
Continue reading...Huge creature took wrong turn after coming ashore and ended up in suburbs of Puerto Cisnes
Chile’s overnight curfew, declared at the end of March to help curb the spread of Covid-19 through the narrow South American country, has not been universally observed by all species. Emboldened by the lack of people and cars, seven mountain lions have been captured on the streets of Santiago in recent months. Now it appears the large cats are not the only creatures keen for a change of scene.
On Monday night, the residents of Puerto Cisnes, a coastal town 1,500km (932 miles) south of the capital, were treated to the decidedly un-swanlike spectacle of a two-tonne elephant seal hauling itself through their neighbourhoods at a surprisingly decent clip.
Continue reading...Inquiry into encounters off coasts of Spain and Portugal says speed could be a factor
Experts investigating a series of extraordinary encounters between orcas and yachts off the coasts of Spain and Portugal believe the animals responsible may have been triggered to target boat rudders by an earlier “aversive incident” involving some kind of vessel.
Related: 'They were having a real go': man tells of orca encounter off Spain
Continue reading...