Posts Tagged ‘research’
Sunday, May 12th, 2013
“Imagine slipping off a boat into warm, aqua blue, waist-deep, Caribbean water. Suddenly, there are hundreds of stingrays swarming around you, sliding against your legs. For some people this is a nightmarishly, terrifying scenario. For others, it’s a tropical wildlife paradise. Either way, it’s what tourists to Stingray City in the Cayman Islands drop millions of dollars each year to experience.
Each stingray on this sandbar off Grand Cayman earns the islands about $500,000 every year in tourism revenue. Globally, this kind of interactive wildlife experience is big business, generating about $165 billion each year worldwide. Moreover, interacting with animals can make even the least outdoorsy among us passionate about protecting wildlife.
But what about the stingrays? How is this normally solitary creature handling life in the public spotlight? ”
Read more
Tags: conservation, eco-aware, environment, reef, research, stringrays, threat, tourism
Posted in Global issues, Reef issues | No Comments »
Monday, October 3rd, 2011
They 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”.
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Tags: climate change, conservation, coral reef, eco-aware, education, environment, global warming, research, sustainable
Posted in Global issues, Reef issues | No Comments »
Saturday, October 1st, 2011
ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2011) — Sharks are in big trouble on the Great Barrier Reef and worldwide, according to an Australian-based team who have developed a world-first way to measure rates of decline in shark populations.
“There is mounting evidence of widespread, substantial, and ongoing declines in the abundance of shark populations worldwide, coincident with marked rises in global shark catches in the last half-century,” say Mizue Hisano, Professor Sean Connolly and Dr William Robbins from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.
“Overfishing of sharks is now recognized as a major global conservation concern, with increasing numbers of shark species added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s list of threatened species,” they say in the latest issue of the international science journal PLos ONE.
“Evaluating population trends for sharks is complicated,” explains Professor Connolly. “The simplest approach of looking at trends in fisheries catches doesn’t work well for sharks. First, many countries with coral reefs don’t keep reliable records of catches or fishing effort.
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Tags: action, conservation, coral reef, global warming, research, sharks, sustainable, threat
Posted in Belize, caye caulker news, Global issues, Reef issues | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
“London (CNN) — Marine life is under severe threat from global warming, pollution and habitat loss, with a high risk of “major extinctions” according to a panel of experts.
These are the conclusions of a distinguished group of marine scientists who met at Oxford University, England, in April to discuss the impact of human activity on the world’s oceans.
The meeting, led by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), examined the combined effects of pollution, acidification, ocean warming, over-fishing and depleting levels of oxygen in the water.
The panel found that oceanic conditions are similar to those of “previous major extinctions of species in Earth’s history,” and that we face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such..”
Read the rest of this CNN report
Tags: action, conservation, coral reef, eco-aware, education, environment, global warming, research, sustainable, threat
Posted in Belize, caye caulker news, Global issues, Reef issues | No Comments »
Monday, June 20th, 2011
“Clownfish, the spectacular tropical species featured in the movie Finding Nemo, appear to lose their hearing in water slightly more acidic than normal.
At levels of acidity that may be common by the end of the century, the fish did not respond to the sounds of predators.
The oceans are becoming more acidic because they absorb much of the CO2 that humanity puts into the atmosphere.”
Read the rest of this BBC article
Tags: action, conservation, coral reef, environment, global warming, pollution, research, sustainable
Posted in Global issues, Reef issues | No Comments »
Monday, November 1st, 2010
“Lionfish have invaded the Caribbean, Bahamas, Florida and Gulf of Mexico – the INVASION ZONE. Populations are exploding and the invasion could become disastrous for coral reef ecosystems. An obvious question is why aren’t lionfish a problem in the Pacific? Surprisingly, not much is known about lionfish ecology in the Pacific. Some scientists speculate that large groupers might eat them and that other predators consume lionfish eggs, but nobody really knows for sure.
What we do know is that in the INVASION ZONE, few natural predators exist – except for humans!
Management strategies adopted by NOAA and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary are about trying to control populations of lionfish through programs that encourage CATCH and EAT! Lionfish are really tasty and easy to catch – just watch out for those venomous spines!”
Read more about what you can do, and get recipies etc
http://www.deathtolionfish.org/invasion.html
Tags: action, Belize, coral reef, education, environment, fish, global, research, sustainable, threat
Posted in Belize, caye caulker news, Global issues, Reef issues | No Comments »
Monday, December 21st, 2009
“ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2009) — Scientists are reporting the first identification of substances involved in the Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation that changes harmless marine bacteria into killers that cause “coral bleaching.”
Their study appears in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.
Dan Bearden and colleagues note that bleaching already has destroyed up to 30 percent of the world’s coral reefs, and scientists are searching for ways to slow or stop the damage. One known culprit is an ocean-dwelling bacterium, Vibrio coralliilyticus, which chokes off corals’ energy supply and kills these shell-clad marine animals. At lower temperatures, the bacteria are harmless to coral. But at warmer temperatures (above 75 degrees Fahrenheit) the bacteria become virulent and can kill coral.
The white areas on this coral are a result of bleaching. Scientists are reporting progress toward understanding how this harmful process occurs. (Credit: National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration)
The new study reports identification of three chemicals — betaine, glutamate, and succinate — that V. coralliilyticus produces in warmer water and are involved in the transformation. The discovery opens the door to understanding the biology involved in the complex interactions between corals and bacteria and unraveling the mystery of coral bleaching, the scientists indicated.”
Tags: conservation, coral reef, environment, global, global warming, reef, research, threat
Posted in Belize, Global issues, Reef issues | No Comments »
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
(Nadine Pedoe)
On 28th May 2009, Central America was rocked by a strong earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, which has luckily caused far less damage and fewer fatalities than it may have done. Earthquakes affecting Belize are extremely rare, so it has caused a lot of panic. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning in the immediate aftermath of the quake, causing further panic amongst island and coastal dwellers. Hopefully understanding some of the science behind it can relieve some of those fears.
Why did it happen and is it likely to happen again?
Earthquakes and volcanoes are caused by movements of massive plates that make up the crust of the earth. All the land and ocean rests on one or other of these plates, which form a kind of jigsaw pattern around the earth. The plates move very slowly in relation to each other, just a few inches a year, caused by heat cells in the liquid mantle (made of magma) below them. Where these plates meet is known as a plate boundary, of which there are four different kinds.
Three of the kinds of plate boundary (from Wikipedia)
Constructive plate boundary (or divergent)
The plates move apart (more…)
Tags: caribbean, earthquake, education, faults, global, ocean, plate tectonics, research, threat, tsunami, volcanic, warning
Posted in Belize, caye caulker news, Global issues | No Comments »
