Category Archives: Oceans

Oceans’ capacity to absorb CO2 overestimated, study suggests

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Research into North Atlantic plankton likely to lead to negative revision of global climate calculations

The North Atlantic may be a weaker climate ally than previously believed, according to a study that suggests the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide has been overestimated.

A first-ever winter and spring sampling of plankton in the western North Atlantic showed cell sizes were considerably smaller than scientists assumed, which means the carbon they absorb does not sink as deep or as fast, nor does it stay in the depths for as long.

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‘Really amazing’: scientists show that fish migrate through the deep oceans

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Analysis of underwater photographs has demonstrated what marine biologists have long suspected – seasonal fish migrations

New research has finally demonstrated what many marine biologists suspected but had never before seen: fish migrating through the deep sea.

The study, published this month in the Journal of Animal Ecology, used analysis of deep-sea photographs to show a regular increase in the number of fish in particular months, suggesting seasonal migrations.

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Climate crisis may have pushed world’s tropical coral reefs to tipping point of ‘near-annual’ bleaching

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Exclusive: Mass bleaching seen along Great Barrier Reef could mark start of global-scale event, expert warns

Rising ocean temperatures could have pushed the world’s tropical coral reefs over a tipping point where they are hit by bleaching on a “near-annual” basis, according to the head of a US government agency program that monitors the globe’s coral reefs.

Dr Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Guardian Australia there was a risk that mass bleaching seen along the length of the Great Barrier Reef in 2020 could mark the start of another global-scale bleaching event.

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Poor water infrastructure is greater risk than coronavirus, says UN

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On World Water Day, UN warns that more than half the global population lacking access to safely managed sanitation

Decades of chronic underfunding of water infrastructure is putting many countries at worse risk in the coronavirus crisis, with more than half the global population lacking access to safely managed sanitation, experts said as the UN marked World Water Day on Sunday.

Good hygiene – soap and water – are the first line of defence against coronavirus and a vast range of other diseases, yet three quarters of households in developing countries do not have access to somewhere to wash with soap and water, according to Tim Wainwright, chief executive of the charity WaterAid. A third of healthcare facilities in developing countries also lack access to clean water on site.

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Taxi! Endangered New Zealand seabirds get a lift to safety after crash landing in fog

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Volunteer army led by a local taxi driver scours the streets in the middle of the night to save endangered birds

A taxi driver in New Zealand has swapped drunken revellers for wayward seabirds in an attempt to halt the decline of one of the nation’s endangered species.

Local cabbie Toni Painting leads a volunteer army that scours the streets of the South Island town of Kaikoura in the middle of the night in search of Hutton’s shearwater chicks that crash-land onto the road – mistaking the shiny bitumen for the sea.

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Earth may have been a ‘water world’ 3bn years ago, scientists find

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Chemical signatures in ancient ocean crust point to a planet without continents

Scientists have found evidence that Earth was covered by a global ocean that turned the planet into a “water world” more than 3bn years ago.

Telltale chemical signatures were spotted in an ancient chunk of ocean crust which point to a planet once devoid of continents, the largest landmasses on Earth.

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What four years at sea taught me about our relationship to the ocean

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Oceans are central to the story of civilisation – so why do so many of us feel disconnected from them?

It was on day 11, I think, that I stopped getting out of bed at all. I had already let my hygiene standards slip to the point that a large knot was starting to form in my hair. Later my mother would have to cut it out with scissors. She didn’t mind. We were all in the same boat.

I was nine years old, and nearly two weeks into sailing across the Atlantic with my family. My father had sailed all his life, and introduced my mother to it; and they spent years preparing to sail around the world. Including my little sister, that made four of us aboard a 52ft yacht – our home for four years from 2000, in which time we got from Dorset to New Zealand.

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Giant dams enclosing North Sea could protect millions from rising waters

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Dams between Scotland, Norway, France and England ‘a possible solution’ to problem

A Dutch government scientist has proposed building two mammoth dams to completely enclose the North Sea and protect an estimated 25 million Europeans from the consequences of rising sea levels as a result of global heating.

Sjoerd Groeskamp, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, said a 475km dam between north Scotland and west Norway and another 160km one between west France and south-west England was “a possible solution”.

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Race to exploit the world’s seabed set to wreak havoc on marine life

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New research warns that ‘blue acceleration’ – a global goldrush to claim the ocean floor – is already impacting on the environment.

The scaly-foot snail is one of Earth’s strangest creatures. It lives more than 2,300 metres below the surface of the sea on a trio of deep-sea hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Here it has evolved a remarkable form of protection against the crushing, grim conditions found at these Stygian depths. It grows a shell made of iron.

Discovered in 1999, the multi-layered iron sulphide armour of Chrysomallon squamiferum – which measures a few centimetres in diameter – has already attracted the interest of the US defence department, whose scientists are now studying its genes in a bid to discover how it grows its own metal armour.

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Huge ‘hot blob’ in Pacific Ocean killed nearly a million seabirds

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  • Thousands of bodies washed up on North America’s Pacific coast
  • Study finds common murres probably died of starvation

A million seabirds died in less than a year as a result of a giant “blob” of hot ocean, according to new research.

A study released by the University of Washington found the birds, called common murres, probably died of starvation between the summer of 2015 and the spring of 2016.

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Ocean temperatures hit record high as rate of heating accelerates

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Oceans are clearest measure of climate crisis as they absorb 90% of heat trapped by greenhouse gases

The heat in the world’s oceans reached a new record level in 2019, showing “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet.

The world’s oceans are the clearest measure of the climate emergency because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human activities.

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Hot blob: vast patch of warm water off New Zealand coast puzzles scientists

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Area of water in the Pacific Ocean is 6C hotter than normal, possibly due to a lack of wind in the region

A spike in water temperature of up to 6C above average across a massive patch of ocean east of New Zealand is likely to have been caused by an “anti-cyclone” weather system, a leading scientist says.

Appearing on heat maps as a deep red blob, the patch spans at least a million square kilometres – an area nearly 1.5 times the size of Texas, or four times larger than New Zealand – in the Pacific Ocean.

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Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s

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Scale and speed of loss much higher than predicted, threatening inundation for hundreds of millions of people

Greenland’s ice sheet is melting much faster than previously thought, threatening hundreds of millions of people with inundation and bringing some of the irreversible impacts of the climate emergency much closer.

Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, and the scale and speed of ice loss is much higher than was predicted in the comprehensive studies of global climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to data.

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Blooming scary: runner rescued after getting stuck in cornflake seaweed on Gold Coast beach

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Algae piles up thigh-deep in places – and could keep water murky for weeks

A woman running on a Gold Coast beach has been rescued after becoming stuck in masses of cornflake seaweed that has piled up thigh-deep in places.

A seaweed expert, Pia Winberg, said the bloom of Colpomenia – also known as sea potatoes, oyster thief or cornflake seaweed – was not unusual for this time of year.

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Fishing nations to lower catch limits for Atlantic bigeye tuna

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Plan aims to allow tuna population to recover from overfishing, but conservationists say endangered mako shark has been overlooked

Conservationists welcomed “long overdue” catch limits set this week for bigeye tuna and other Atlantic species, but criticised weak measures to rebuild endangered mako shark populations.

The International Commission for the Conservations of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) – responsible for the management of tuna and tuna-like species and bycatch including sharks and rays – set new catch limits for bigeye tuna at a meeting in Palma, Mallorca, this week. It also agreed to reduce juvenile fish mortality by limiting certain fishing practices.

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Thousands of rare ‘ice eggs’ found on beach in Finland

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Couple stumble upon unusual occurrence that is result of very particular weather conditions

A rare collection of “ice eggs” has been spotted in Finland, a phenomenon experts say only occurs in highly particular conditions.

Risto Mattila, who photographed the eggs, said he and his wife were walking along Marjaniemi beach on Hailuoto island on Sunday when they came across the icy balls covering a 30-metre (98ft) expanse of shoreline.

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Ocean acidification can cause mass extinctions, fossils reveal

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Carbon emissions make sea more acidic, which wiped out 75% of marine species 66m years ago

Ocean acidification can cause the mass extinction of marine life, fossil evidence from 66m years ago has revealed.

A key impact of today’s climate crisis is that seas are again getting more acidic, as they absorb carbon emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Scientists said the latest research is a warning that humanity is risking potential “ecological collapse” in the oceans, which produce half the oxygen we breathe.

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Ocean cleanup device successfully collects plastic for first time

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Floating boom finally retains debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, creator says

A huge floating device designed by Dutch scientists to clean up an island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean that is three times the size of France has successfully picked up plastic from the high seas for the first time.

Boyan Slat, the creator of the Ocean Cleanup project, tweeted that the 600 metre-long (2,000ft) free-floating boom had captured and retained debris from what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

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Scott Morrison says Australia’s record on climate change misrepresented by media

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PM trumpets his country’s achievements in address to UN general assembly

Scott Morrison signalled that Australia is unlikely to update its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris agreement before a speech to the UN in which he declared that the media was misrepresenting the country’s climate change record.

During a press conference before his UN speech at a recycling facility in Brooklyn, the prime minister said he wouldn’t characterise “misrepresentations” about Australia’s climate stance as fake news.

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