Garbage Islands
February 4th, 2012Belize Protected Area Boosting Predatory Fish Populations
January 2nd, 2012ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2011) —” A 14-year study by the Wildlife Conservation Society in an atoll reef lagoon in Glover’s Reef, Belize has found that fishing closures there produce encouraging increases in populations of predatory fish species. However, such closures have resulted in only minimal increases in herbivorous fish, which feed on the algae that smother corals and inhibit reef recovery. The findings will help WCS researchers in their search for new solutions to the problem of restoring Caribbean reefs damaged by fishing and climate change.
The study appears in an online version of Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. The authors include:..”
Read more
Pacific Garbage Patch – getting bigger
November 12th, 2011The story of Broke
November 8th, 2011Shallow Waters
November 6th, 2011Protest song: Wanna Pump the tar Sands
November 6th, 2011Shark massacre
October 20th, 2011
“Colombian environmental authorities have reported a huge shark massacre in the Malpelo wildlife sanctuary in Colombia’s Pacific waters, where as many as 2,000 hammerhead, Galápagos and silky sharks may have been slaughtered for their fins.
Sandra Bessudo, the Colombian president’s top adviser on environmental issues, said a team of divers who were studying sharks in the region reported the mass killing in the waters surrounding the rock-island known as Malpelo, some 500 kilometres from the mainland.
“I received a report, which is really unbelievable, from one of the divers who came from Russia to observe the large concentrations of sharks in Malpelo. They saw a large number of fishing trawlers entering the zone illegally,” Bessudo said. The divers counted a total of 10 fishing boats, which all were flying the Costa Rican flag.
“When the divers dove, they started finding a large number of animals without their fins. They didn’t see any alive,” she said”
Bag It
October 20th, 2011Coral reefs ‘will be gone by end of the century’
October 3rd, 2011They will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist
Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.
The claim is made in a book, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be “a new first for mankind – the ‘extinction’ of an entire ecosystem”. Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification, though local activities such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development have also harmed the reefs. The book, Our Dying Planet, published by University of California Press, contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that “we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years”.
Marshall Islands Declares World’s Largest Shark Sanctuary
October 3rd, 2011The Marshall Islands government has created the world’s largest shark sanctuary, covering nearly two million sq km (750,000 sq miles) of ocean.
The Marshall Islands initiative is the latest in a worldwide islands' movement to protect sharks
The Pacific republic will ban trade in shark products and commercial shark fishing throughout its waters.
Tourism, including diving, is a staple of the Marshall Islands archipelago, which is home to just 68,000 people.
Sharks and their near relatives such as rays are seriously threatened by issues such as habitat loss and fishing.
About a third of ocean-going sharks are on the internationally-recognised Red List of Threatened Species.
“In passing this [shark protection] bill, there is no greater statement we can make about the importance of sharks to our culture, environment and economy,” said
