Ocean Conservation & Tidalpunk

Kochi: The fisher community will intensify its strong protests against the deep-sea mining proposed by Centre off the Kerala coasts.

In a landmark ruling, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court concluded that the government must set limits on human activity, like industrial fishing, to protect marine ecosystems’ natural cycles.

Ecuador, in 2008, became the first country in the world to recognize in a national constitution that nature, similar to humans and corporations, has legal rights. More than a dozen other countries have through legislation or court rulings recognized that ecosystems or individual species have rights, including to live, persist and regenerate.

Until now, all of Ecuador’s Constitutional Court rulings regarding nature’s rights have involved ecosystems on land, mangroves and wild animals. Lawyers familiar with rights of nature jurisprudence say the coastal marine ecosystem case, released late last year, is a landmark decision that extends heightened protections to the country’s vast aquatic ecosystems.

Research on Scott Reef off Northwest Australia has shown that local coral connections help boost the resilience of remote atoll reef systems following bleaching and storms.

The research, based on extensive modeling of currents and other oceanographic variables, (...)

The study, reported in a paper published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, investigated the Scott system of reefs, an isolated group of three coral atolls 300 km off the northwest coast of Australia.

“These people are book smart, but when it comes to common sense, they have nothing,” said Travis Dardar about the project. Dardar is a Cameron-based fisher and founder of the group, Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (FISH).

According to a report from the Center for International Environmental Law, in the best-case scenario, the injection of captured carbon may temporarily disrupt fisheries because of drilling and seismic testing.

In the worst-case scenario, underwater carbon sequestration wells could fail and release the stored carbon, killing off the plants, fish and even the people in boats in the waters above. Storing carbon also has potential global implications, if, as opponents claim, carbon capture and sequestration will allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain the status quo as one of the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gasses.

The research “has revealed that storing carbon dioxide underground is not an exact science,” IEEFA said. “It may carry even more risk and uncertainty than drilling for oil or gas, given the very limited practical, long-term experience of permanently keeping CO2 in the ground.”

Ocean acidification has been referred to as “climate change’s evil twin” because it intensifies many of the same issues associated with global warming and presents unique challenges. While climate change leads to rising ocean temperatures and altered weather patterns, ocean acidification directly threatens marine chemistry and biology.

The pace of acidification is alarming, estimated to be about 100 times faster than any natural changes over the past 650,000 years,

Discover how artificial light disrupts coral reef ecosystems, altering nocturnal marine life and threatening biodiversity.

The naming of a new deep-sea ocean animal pays tribute to Cervante’s novel Don Quixote and reinforces themes of sweetness and beauty.

The FRONTLINE project will use autonomous underwater vehicles, satellite remote sensing and other surveys to investigate how the rapid expansion of FLOW and climate warming is likely to affect oceanographic processes and marine life.

This study aims to bridge that knowledge gap, providing insights to guide measures that protect marine ecosystems amid the increasing demands on our oceans. The findings will also help ensure that the rapid expansion of offshore wind farms, vital for achieving global net-zero targets, is delivered sustainably.

Austrian scientists uncovered a hidden undersea world with gigantic ‘worms’ lurking beneath the Earth’s crust.

Shell has agreed to settle its controversial multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Greenpeace after its campaigners boarded an oil rig last year as part of a peaceful protest.

As part of the final settlement, Greenpeace will accept no liability and pay no money to Shell. The group will instead donate £300,000 to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Recent studies have revealed that variations in ocean density significantly influence the efficiency with which marine plankton incorporate carbon into their shells. This finding has important implications for carbon cycling and the ocean’s ability to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels in the context of climate change. Traditionally, research has focused on the impacts of ocean chemistry and acidification on the biomineralization process of marine plankton. Nonetheless, this pioneering study redirects attention to the essential role of physical ocean characteristics on this important process.