Australia’s global leadership on whale conservation will be tested as Japanese hunters move to a different hemisphere
Japan’s whaling fleet arrived back at the port of Shimonoseki on the weekend with a barbaric tally of 333 dead whales that are no longer swimming freely in the Southern Ocean.
If the work of the Japanese whalers is anything like last year, more than 100 pregnant females and 50 or so juveniles will have been killed. But from now on, things are different.
Continue reading...Once a rapidly spreading rift intersects with another fissure, an iceberg of at least 660sq miles is set to be loosened, Nasa says
An iceberg roughly twice the size of New York City is set to break away from an Antarctic ice shelf as a result of a rapidly spreading rift that is being monitored by Nasa.
A crack along part of the Brunt ice shelf in Antarctica first appeared in October 2016, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). The crack is spreading to the east. This rift, known as a Halloween crack, is set to intersect with another fissure that was apparently stable for the past 35 years but is now accelerating north at a rate of around 2.5 miles a year.
Continue reading...Weddell Sea expedition team loses contact with autonomous vehicle under ice sheet
The search for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, Endurance, has been called off after extreme weather trapped an underwater vehicle under a sheet of ice.
Explorers working on the Weddell Sea Expedition had hoped to find the Antarctic explorer’s vessel, which was crushed by ice and sank in 1915 during his ultimately unsuccessful attempt at a land crossing of the continent. But severe weather closed in and the sea ice conditions led to the loss of the team’s specialist autonomous underwater vehicle, the AUV7.
Continue reading...Disintegration of rapidly melting Thwaites ice mass could threaten coastal communities worldwide
Scientists have discovered a giant cavity at the bottom of a disintegrating glacier in Antarctica, sparking concerns that the ice sheet is melting more rapidly than expected.
Researchers working as part of a Nasa-led study found the cavern, which they said was 300 metres tall and two-thirds the size of Manhattan, at the bottom of the massive Thwaites glacier.
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