Category Archives: Marine life

Covid turns tide on India’s Ganesh festival traditions

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Thousands of ritual statues are dunked into the sea off Mumbai each year – but coronavirus and pollution concerns are forcing change

In the quiet housing estate of Angrewadi in the heart of Girgaon in south Mumbai, people are celebrating the 100th consecutive year of the Ganesh Chaturthi, the Hindu festival of the elephant-headed god of new beginnings. Statues of Lord Ganesh are brought into homes and put on display for offerings and prayers.

On the 11th and final day of the festival, the ritual of Ganesh Visarjan takes place – falling this year on 1 September. The statues, normally made of soluble plaster of paris, are traditionally carried in a public procession with music and chanting, and are then immersed in either a river or the sea. Here, they slowly dissolve in a ceremony that dramatises the Hindu view of the ephemeral nature of life – but also causes widespread pollution.

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Spanish fishing boats land only a tenth of normal catch of octopus

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Meteorological and environmental reasons cited as reasons for record low catches

Spanish fishing boats are landing only a tenth of their normal summer catch of octopus – an unheard-of drop.

To date, since 1 July they have caught 38 tonnes of octopus, compared with a normal average of 378 tonnes over the same period. Income has slumped by 84%. Catches vary from year to year but such a huge drop is unprecedented.

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‘It’s terrifying’: can anyone stop China’s vast armada of fishing boats?

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Ecuador stood up for the Galápagos, but other countries don’t stand a chance against the 17,000-strong distant-water fleet

The recent discovery by the Ecuadorean navy of a vast fishing armada of 340 Chinese vessels just off the biodiverse Galápagos Islands stirred outrage both in Ecuador and overseas.

Under pressure after Ecuador’s strident response, China has given mixed signals that it could begin to reel in its vast international fishing fleet. Its embassy in Ecuador declared a “zero tolerance” policy towards illegal fishing, and this week it announced it was tightening the rules for its enormous flotilla with a series of new regulations.

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Tokyo Bay’s seaweed forests – and prized abalone that live in them – disappear

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Rise in sea temperatures caused by climate emergency is transforming marine environment and affecting local species

The waters off Kyonan were once home to dense forests of seaweed – the ideal habitat for the prized abalone and sardines that support the town’s economy.

Today, the seaweed beds are threadbare; in some places they have vanished altogether, to be replaced by coral that belongs in the tropics, not in this corner of Tokyo Bay. Marine life that depended on macro algae for survival is making way for fish usually found in waters much further south.

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Experts and volunteers scramble to save Mauritius’s wildlife after oil spill

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Grounded carrier has split in half and poor conditions make removal of ship’s remaining oil risky

International experts and thousands of local volunteers were making frantic efforts on Sunday to protect Mauritius’s pristine beaches and rich marine wildlife after hundreds of tonnes of oil was dumped into the sea by a Japanese tanker in what some scientists called the country’s worst ecological disaster.

Related: Grounded carrier off Mauritius breaks apart risking ecological disaster

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Grounded carrier off Mauritius breaks apart risking ecological disaster

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Battle is on to remove fuel oil from Japanese vessel the MV Wakashio as weather worsens

A Japanese bulk carrier that ran aground on a reef in Mauritius last month threatening a marine ecological disaster around the Indian Ocean island has broken apart, authorities said on Saturday.

The condition of the MV Wakashio was worsening early on Saturday and by early afternoon, it had it split, the Mauritius National Crisis Committee said.

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Supertrawlers ramp up activity in UK protected waters during lockdown

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Fishing time in first half of 2020 almost double that in whole of last year, Greenpeace says

Supertrawlers vastly stepped up their fishing in the UK’s protected waters during the coronavirus lockdown earlier this year, while most of the UK’s smaller vessels were confined to port.

The amount of time supertrawlers spent fishing in marine protected areas in the first half of this year was nearly double that spent in the waters in the whole of last year, according to a Greenpeace investigation. There were 23 supertrawlers catching fish in UK protected areas in the period, none of them UK-owned.

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Close encounter: mother and calf humpback whales stun surfers at Sydney’s Manly beach

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Images show dozens of surfers about 10 metres from whales, which migrate up and down the Australian coast

A humpback whale calf, closely followed by its mother, came within metres of surfers and swimmers at Manly beach, in Sydney’s north, on Sunday afternoon.

It is unusual to see a whale calf so early in the year in Sydney. Eastern Australian humpbacks migrate north from Antarctica, along the coast to tropical waters in north Queensland from April to July.

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Small crustacean can fragment microplastics in four days, study finds

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‘Completely unexpected’ finding is significant as harmful effects of plastic might increase as particle size decreases

Small crustaceans can fragment microplastics into pieces smaller than a cell within 96 hours, a study has shown.

Until now, plastic fragmentation has been largely attributed to slow physical processes such as sunlight and wave action, which can take years and even decades.

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Beloved Eel McPherson disappears from New Zealand pond during massive storm

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Owners hope the friendly shortfin eel, which delighted children in Whangārei for 35 years, made it out to sea during deluge

A shortfin eel named Eel McPherson, who was beloved by a New Zealand city for 35 years, has bid bon voyage to its backyard pool and disappeared during a once-in-500-years flood.

The eel was kept by a Whangārei man, George Campbell, for decades – first at a fish museum that he ran during the 1990s and later at his home – said Campbell’s granddaughter, Alyce Charlesworth.

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Rescuers struggle to free sperm whale trapped in netting off Sicily

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Divers and biologists trying to free whale caught in illegal netting near island of Salina

The Italian coastguard is struggling to free a sperm whale caught up in illegal fishing netting off the coast of one of Sicily’s Aeolian islands.

A team of divers and biologists have been working for more than 48 hours to help the whale close to the island of Salina. The whale’s huge size and agitated state has made the operation more challenging.

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Why we need sharks: the true nature of the ocean’s ‘monstrous villains’

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Why did dolphins get Flipper while sharks got Jaws? These majestic, diverse animals bring balance to the ocean ecosystem – and they’re in grave danger

Each day, as the sun sets over the coral-fringed Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia, an underwater predator stirs. As predators go, it’s not especially big or ferocious – an arm’s length from head to tail, with a snuffling, moustachioed snout.

What’s unique is that it doesn’t so much swim along the seabed as walk. Using its four fins as legs, and twisting its spine like a lizard, it can emerge from the water and hold its breath for an hour, strutting across the exposed reef and clambering between tide pools to find prey.

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Shark finning: why the ocean’s most barbaric practice continues to boom

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The recent seizure of the biggest shipment of illegal fins in Hong Kong history shows the taste for shark is still going strong

In the narrow streets of Sai Ying Pun neighbourhood, the centre of Hong Kong’s dried seafood trade, most window displays give pride of place to a particular item: shark fins. Perched on shelves, stuffed in jars and stacked in bags, shark fins are offered in all shapes and sizes. Several shops even include “shark fin” in their name.

Fins are lucrative, fetching as much as HK$6,800 (£715) per catty (604.8g, or about 21oz), and the trade is big business. Hong Kong is the largest shark fin importer in the world, and responsible for about half of the global trade. The fins sold in Sai Ying Pun come from more than 100 countries and 76 different species of sharks and rays, a third of which are endangered.

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How do you deal with 9m tonnes of suffocating seaweed?

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Across the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, scientists are developing alternative sustainable solutions to the golden tide of Sargassum

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, first detected by Nasa observation satellites in 2011 and now known to be the world’s largest bloom of seaweed, stretches for 5,500 miles (8,850km) from the Gulf of Mexico to the western coast of Africa.

Millions of tonnes of floating Sargassum seaweed in coastal waters smother fragile seagrass habitats, suffocate coral reefs and harm fisheries. And once washed ashore on Mexican and Caribbean beaches, this foul-smelling, rotting seaweed goes on to devastate the tourist industry, prevent turtles from nesting and damage coastal ecosystems, while releasing hydrogen sulphide and other toxic gases as it decomposes.

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Cape Cod issues great white shark warning ahead of 4 July holiday

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Sharks found in nearly every part of the cape, and are gathering there in summer in increasing numbers

Cape Cod’s beaches and towns may be quieter because of the coronavirus pandemic, but officials are reminding visitors ahead of the 4 July holiday that the famous Massachusetts destination remains a popular getaway for other summertime travellers: great white sharks.

Great whites have been coming to the Cape in greater numbers each summer to prey on the region’s large seal colonies. Most tend to favour the Atlantic ocean-facing beaches where seals tend to congregate, but researchers have found them off nearly every part of the Cape.

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Plastic superhighway: the awful truth of our hidden ocean waste

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Solving the issue of waste in our seas turned out to be more complex than scrounging for bottles off the beach, Laura Trethewey found

We called the competition Who Found the Weirdest Thing? So far, the entries that day were a motorcycle helmet, a lithium battery covered with scary stickers asking that we return it to the military, and a toy dinosaur.

The dinosaur was warm from the sun and starting to degrade. The ocean had smoothed and worn down its edges. Rocks and sand had crosshatched its skin. It was missing a hind leg. On one side it was dark grey; the sun had bleached its opposite flank white.

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Surfer dies after shark attack in northern New South Wales

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A 50-year-old man has died after being bitten by a shark while surfing at Casuarina Beach near Kingscliff in the NSW northern rivers region

A 50-year-old man has died after being bitten by a shark while surfing near Kingscliff in northern NSW.

A Surf Life Saving NSW spokesman told Guardian Australia the man died while surfing at Salt Beach at about 10.40am on Sunday morning.

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Snake eels burst through the stomach of predators in bid to escape being eaten alive

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Creatures’ attempts are in vain, and as they are unable to burrow through the fish’s ribcage, the eels become trapped in the gut of their captor

It’s no secret that nature can be brutal and violent, but a new Queensland Museum report on the death of some snake eels reads more like the plot of a horror movie than a scientific paper.

Snake eels are a family of eel species that live most of their lives burrowed in the soft sand on the floor of the ocean.

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Bid for first eco-labelled bluefin tuna raises fears for protection of ‘king of fish’

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Conservationists warn the species, which was almost extinct 10 years ago, could be under threat if Japanese fishery is MSC certified

A decade ago, the highly prized “king of fish”, the bluefin tuna, was taken off menus in high-end restaurants and shunned by top chefs, amid warnings by environmentalists that it was being driven to extinction. Recent assessments of Atlantic bluefin tuna, which can grow to the size of a small car and live for up to 40 years, have shown much healthier populations.

But now conservationists and scientists are warning that the largest and most valuable tuna species could once again be under threat if a Japanese bluefin fishery in the Atlantic Ocean is awarded an internationally recognised “ecolabel” they claim is based on flawed science.

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