Missed out on September 2022’s ocean news? Here’s a glimpse into what went down in Davy Jones’ Locker this month

Sections

Animals and Plants
Climate Crisis
Fisheries and Aquaculture
Marine Technology
People and the Sea
Other

Animals and Plants

• The IUCN released their Eastern Mediterranean fish field guide, showcasing 176 of the most commonly found fish species found off the Lebanese coast. You can download it for free
  
  

• Blue Indigo Foundation, a women-led community organization that works towards the sustainable development of the San Andres Archipelago, have been busy restoring coral reefs in the UNESCO Seaflower Biosphere Reserve.
  
  

• Who loves speed dating? Basking sharks apparently! Basking sharks have been spotted forming circling formations off Ireland, Canada, and the USA. Scientists think that these formations are part of the basking sharks’ courtship.
  
  

• Southern right whales in Australia seem to be having fewer babies that expected. Apparently, “Instead of having a calf every three years – on average, the majority of whales are now only having a calf every four or five years.”
  
  

• Scientists have successfully manged to get elkhorn coral to reproduce in an aquarium. Researchers hope that the development will help restoration efforts.
  
  

• Data from Ocean Sampling Day has been released! Ocean Sampling Day (OSD) is a simultaneous worldwide research campaign where marine biologists around the globe participate in sampling of the world’s oceans to produce contextual genomic data contextual genomic data. The data include 16S, 18S rRNA, and metagenomics data as well as environmental measurements made during the sampling events at each sampling site.
  
  

• In the Northern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic ocean, mahi-mahi experienced behavioral impairment such as decreased survival and spawning frequencyduring the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
  
  

• 230 pilot whales stranded on a beach in Tasmania, Australia. Despite rescue efforts, sadly, 204 of the whales died.
  
  

• Skinny salmon makes for skinny orca. New research suggests the southern resident killer whale population are suffering not just because chinook salmon numbers are very low, but because the salmon they’re finding just aren’t big enough to give the orca the energy they need.
  
  

• Who has a favourite arm? Why octopus of course! Researchers discovered California two-spot octopus favour their second arm from the middle for hunting prey. Whether they use the arm on the left or right, depends where the prey is located.
  
  

• NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer has been off exploring deepwater areas of the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Azores Plateau, and Puerto Rico, and they’ve released some very cool footage of all sorts of marine crittersspotted with their ROV dives.
  
  

• Corals in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary are being hit hard by stony coral tissue loss disease. A medical response is underway, with divers applying antibiotic treatments to individual corals. As you can imagine, the work is time-consuming and expensive.
  
  

• Not a marine species, but this research on the mathematical abilities of freshwater stingrays and cichlidsadds to the evidence that fish are smarter than we give them credit.
  
  

• Neon goby dads decide when it’s time for their offspring to hatch by picking up eggs with their mouths, then spitting the eggs outside of the sponges they live in.
  
  

• This is not the octopus you think it is. Researchers in China describe a new species of octopus - Callistoctopus xiaohongxu, a phonetic translation of the local Chinese name of this species in Zhangzhou, where it was collected.
  
  

• Why do wandering albatross get divorced? New research suggests “homewrecker males”play a large role.
  
  

• Is chaos theory the secret to understanding narwhal behaviour?
  
  

• It’s not just human bodies that are influenced by exersize. Researchers find sea anemone ‘exercise’ changes their developing size and shape.
  
  

Climate Crisis

• Rising sea temperatures are making Bulwer’s petrels vulnerable, thanks to changes in their prey.
  
  

• Not great news from the Arabian Gulf. Researchers have found an expanding and intensifying low-oxygen zone.
  
  

• When trying to predict the damage tropical cyclones will do to coral reefs, using climate models may not give the most accurate information.
  
  

• Copepods may be able to adapt to warmer and more acidic waters, as long as other stress factors don’t come on top.
  
  

• Over the past fifty years, the ocean has absorbed 90% of the excess heat caused by carbon emissions, with the Southern Ocean doing most of the heavy lifting.
  
  

• In a bid to protect British Columbia, Canada's kelp forests, researchers have developed a cryogenic freezing technique to store germplasm, or “seed”, of at-risk bull kelp in a biobank.
  
  

Fisheries and Aquaculture

• Non-profit Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch have placed American lobsters on its Red List. The recommendation to avoid American lobsters comes down to the risk the lobster traps pose to North Atlantic right whales. The Maine lobster industry has already pushed back on the listing.
  
  

• Scientists are supporting a ban on bottom trawling and other industrial extractive activities from the EU’s marine protected areas.
  
  

• Never heard of cusk? You might do in the future. Researchers in Norway put this bycatch fish to the taste test. The results were rather favourable!
  
  

• The EU Comission has closed 87 sensitive zones to all bottom gears in the EU waters of the North-East Atlanticin an effort to better protect vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems.
  
  

• Scammers are ever-inventive with their scams, like a fake website claiming to sell USA federal and state fishing permits.
  
  

• Fisheries and Oceans Canada want to buy back British Columbia salmon fishing licencesin the hope of protecting stocks.
  
  

• Indigenous lobster divers in Honduras have suffered debilitating medical conditions from their deep-water forays without proper equipment or protocols. Back in 2021, 42 members of the Miskito community successfully sued the Honduran government over their failure to regulate, supervise and oversee the deep diving lobster fishing industry sued the Honduran government over their failure to regulate, supervise and oversee the deep diving lobster fishing industry. They’re still waiting for compensation.
  
  

• Chinese soldiers have been driving away fishing vessels from waters around Mischief Reef, an area that China, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all claim to be theirs.
  
  

• In response to historically low levels of sardines, the South African Government has declared temporary closures for commercial fishing of anchovies and sardines around major penguin colonies.
  
  

• In efforts to tackle seafood fraud, researchers are building a database of “chemical fingerprints common to the bones and shells of marine life from specific ocean environments.”These fingerprings will help udentufy where seafood really comes from.
  
  

• Faced with an unexpectedly large catch, one fishing boat dumped some 900,000 menhaden off the coast of Louisiana, USA. Unsurprisingly, the action, and catch size, has drawn ire.
  
  

Marine Technology

• CalWave is pressing ahead with its plans for wave energy. The company has completed its ten-month-long open-ocean wave energy pilot off the coast of San Diego.
  
  

• Nanosatellite, Seahawk-1 CubeSat reached a new milestone in September when in transmitted it’s 5,000th high-resolution ocean colour image to NASA!
  
  

• Chinese scientists say they have tested an underwater communications technology that allows submarines and drones to maintain contact for over 30,000 square kilometres!NA
  
  

• Researchers harness the power of dinoflagellates to create soft devices that glow in the darkwhen squished, stretched, twisted, or bent.
  
  

• Fully biodegradable polyurethane foam? Researchers take a look at what happens to the foam in the ” the first commercially available biodegradable shoes” when they end up in the ocean. Apparently, ” an assortment of marine organisms colonizes on the polyurethane foam and biodegrades the material back to their starting chemicals, which are consumed as nutrients by these microorganisms.”
  
  

• Could Brillouin scattering spectrum be the next big think for ocean lidar remote sensing technology? Research from China suggests it’s possible.
  
  

People and the Sea

• The UK is continuing to dump raw sewage into the ocean. What went wrong? Outdated infrastructure, low investment, privatisations, and feeble fines, says Dr Edmonds-Brown.
  
  

• Underwater for some 350 years, the treasure-laden Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas has attracted the attention of salvagers for a long time. Recently researchers and local divers using remote sensing technology to discover a trail of debris stretching some 13 kilometres across the sea floorand retrieve new treasures.
  
  

• The UK isn’t the only country to have a sewage-ocean issue. In San Fransico Bay, wastewater seems to be promoting the Bay’s algal bloom woes.
  
  

• There’s nothing like a great underwater photograph, which is why you should take five minutes to check out the Winning Images from Scuba Diving’s 2022 Underwater Photo Contest.
  
  

• Another tragic shipwrecking incident, this time taking the lives of 71 migrant souls forced to flee their homes.
  
  

• It’s normal for scientists to face failure, even if they don’t really talk about it. In an open access paper, four scientists share their experiences of failure in participatory marine social science fieldwork, and the strategies they used to confront, deal with, and overcome the failures they faced.
  
  

• NA Sustainable ocean investing goes mainstream, says the World Economic Forum.
  
  

• Researchers have found a Roman jetty submerged off the Croatian coast. The jetty probably formed part of a Roman harbour used by the olive oil industry that flourished during the 1st century AD.
  
  

• How do surfers really feel about sharks? According to some new research, surfers don’t fear sharks, and do support shark conservation efforts.
  
  

• Salvage efforts on the shipwreck the Yangtze River Estuary No.2 has brought up over 600 artifactsthat, experts say, “shows constant cultural exchanges between China and the West.”
  
  

• Researchers have been looking at sediment plums that would be created by deep sea mining vehicles. They suggest that impact assessments will need to capture “complex processes like turbidity currents that take place when you do this kind of collection.”
  
  

• Around the world, major cities are becoming more vulnerable to sea level rise, because they are sinking.
  
  

Other

• From January 2023, the ICES Journal of Marine Science will be fully open access.
  
  

• In the Arctic small islands seem to appear and then disappear. Now scientists think they know what’s going on. These ghost islands are actually super huge icebergs.
  
  

• Scientists drilled into an undersea earthquake fault, found the tectonic stress in Japan’s Nankai subduction zone“is less than expected.”
  
  

• What is the energy of ocean currents larger than 1,000 kilometres? Researchers use “coarse graining techniques” to ” provide a new window for understanding oceanic circulation in all its multiscale complexity.” BTW, if your wondering which current is the most energetic… it’s the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
  
  

• Sea water, 660 metres below the Earth’s surface? Analysis of a rare diamond confirms ” ocean water accompanies subducting slabs and thus enters the transition zone.”
  
  

• Researchers have documented new hawksbill and green turtle nesting beachesin the Saudi Arabian Red Sea.
  
  

• Researchers have identified the mechanism responsible for thermohaline staircases in the Arctic Ocean.
  
  

• Mercator Ocean International have released the 6th edition of the Copernicus Ocean State Report and Summary.