Missed out on January 2024’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
Oceanography
People and the Sea
Animals and Plants
Giant kelp, the foundation species of rocky reefs, serves as a major part of the beach food web as fronds of the giant seaweed break away from the forest and are transported to the beach. But the relationship goes deeper…Scientists demonstrate that kelp forests can do more than supply food to tiny, hungry crustaceans living in the sand. They can also influence the dynamics of the sandy beach food web. Read more.
If a stranded whale can’t be saved, what is the next best option? Girius set out to find a euthanasia solution Read more.
A group of tourists were aboard a charter boat on New Year’s Eve in the Andaman Sea off the coast of Phuket when something caught their eye. Next to the boat, a pair of rare Omura’s whales were swimming together — and one of them was completely white. Read more.
Massive Die-Off of Elephant Seals in Argentina Due to Avian Influenza Is Latest Sign that the Virus Is an Existential Threat to Wildlife. Read more.
Large numbers of fungi have been found living in the twilight zone of the ocean, and could unlock the door to new drugs that may match the power of penicillin. Read more.
A new study shows the Megalodon, a gigantic shark that went extinct 3.6 million years ago, was more slender than earlier studies suggested. This finding changes scientists’ understanding of Megalodon behavior, ancient ocean life, and why the sharks went extinct. Read more.
Sea otters helped prevent widespread California kelp forest declines over the past century. After near-extinction, growth of the southern sea otter population helped kelp forests expand by increasing resilience to environmental stressors, including extreme ocean warming Read more.
Fossils of kelp along the Pacific Coast are rare. Until now, the oldest fossil dated from 14 million years ago, leading to the view that today’s denizens of the kelp forest – marine mammals, urchins, sea birds – coevolved with kelp. A recent amateur discovery pushes back the origin of kelp to 32 million years ago, long before these creatures appeared. A new analysis suggests the first kelp grazers were extinct, hippo-like animals called desmostylians. Read more.
An international team of scientists has uncovered the ocean’s intricate web of microbial interactions across depths. Their research provides crucial insights into the functioning of ocean ecosystems. Read more.
Sharks have persisted as powerful ocean predators for more than 400 million years. They survived five mass extinctions, diversifying into an amazing variety of forms and lifestyles. But this ancient lineage is now among the world’s most threatened species groups due to overexploitation in poorly regulated fisheries and the proliferation of wasteful finning practices. Read more.
New study uncovers mechanics of ‘tail-whipping’ in thresher sharks Read more.
Sperm whales live in structured clans similar to early humans, according to new research. Hal Whitehead, the sole author of the study and a professor at Dalhousie University, said the clan systems are matrilineal and average roughly 20,000 females per clan Read more.
A study led by Fisheries and Oceans Canada has found seals and porpoises pose little risk to migrating Atlantic salmon in an area of southern New Brunswick full of fish farms. Read more.
A newly discovered species of bacteria found at the deep-sea hydrothermal vent known as ‘Crab Spa’ offers significant insights into the evolution of bacteria. Read more.
University of Queensland researchers Dr Fabio Cortesi and Dr Lily Fogg have been studying the visual system of nocturnal coral reef fish to uncover how these fish use specialised retinas for faster and more sensitive sight in low-light conditions, giving the fish the equivalent of in-built night-vision. Read more.
Seaweed ‘could survive nuclear war, avert famine’ Read more.
Alarming levels of chemical contamination found in small coastal ecosystems. The new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that these harmful chemicals pose a significant risk to both the environment and human health. Read more.
Researchers of the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources (NBFGR), functioning under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), have discovered two eel species, one each from the coasts of Gulf of Mannar in Ramanathapuram and Kochi in Kerala. Read more.
Hydrothermal vents and manganese nodule fields in the deep oceans contain more biodiversity than expected. Read more.
Seagrasses provide the foundation of one of the most highly biodiverse, yet vulnerable, coastal marine ecosystems globally. They arose in three independent lineages from their freshwater ancestors some 100 million years ago and are the only fully submerged, marine flowering plants. Moving to such a radically different environment is a rare evolutionary event and definitely not easy. How did they do it? New reference quality genomes provide important clues with relevance to their conservation and biotechnological application. Read more.
The largest study of ocean DNA reveals the rich world of ocean microbes. With more than 317 million gene groups, the KMAP Global Ocean Gene Catalog 1.0 is an open-source database that can drive biotechnology innovation and uncover the role of marine microbes in mitigating global warming and safeguarding human and planetary health. Read more.
Climate Crisis
As climate change fuels sea level rise, younger people will migrate inland, leaving aging coastal populations – and a host of consequences – in their wake, a study finds. While destination cities will work to sustainably accommodate swelling populations, aging coastal communities will confront stark new challenges, including an outflow of vital human infrastructure such as health care workers. Read more.
Protecting the world ocean against accelerating damage from human activities could be cheaper and take up less space than previously thought, new research has found. Read more.
Climate change has tipped the scales, causing juvenile sockeye salmon in B.C. to grow bigger over the past century. The growth of salmon using lakes as nurseries during the first years of life in northern B.C. is about 35 per cent higher than 100 years ago, a new study from Simon Fraser University shows. Read more.
Greenland’s glaciers are melting and the surrounding seawater is getting warmer. How are arctic char coping with climate change? Scientists are in the process of figuring it out. Read more.
Fisheries and Aquaculture
The EU fisheries control system gets a major revamp. The revised rules modernise the way fishing activities are controlled, for both EU vessels and those fishing in EU waters. Read more.
In December, the Spanish government issued sanctions against 25 Spanish-flagged vessels that fished near the border of Argentina’s territorial waters between 2018 and 2021. The sanctions were for repeatedly turning off their satellite tracking devices that EU and Spanish laws require to be switched on to indicate a vessel’s location. Read more.
A group of lobster fishermen has sued fishing regulators in federal court, claiming that new electronic monitoring requirements designed to protect rare whales are unconstitutional. Read more.
As salmon disappear, the battle over Alaska fishing rights heats up Read more.
Australia’s southern coast has 1,500 species of seaweed — the second highest number in the world after Japan — and one Port Lincoln fishing company is harvesting them to make organic products while helping the environment. Read more.
Marine heat waves appear to trigger earlier reproduction, high mortality in early life stages and fewer surviving juvenile Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska, a new study shows. These changes in the hatch cycle and early growth patterns persisted in years following the marine heat waves, which could have implications for the future of Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod, an economically and culturally significant species. Read more.
In wave-making research, a team of biologists has quantified the rate at which great hammerhead sharks are eating Atlantic tarpon hooked by anglers at Bahia Honda, Florida – one of the prime tarpon fishing spots in the Florida Keys. Read more.
Interest in the seaweed industry is growing rapidly across Europe, and seaweed farming is viewed as a forerunner of a sustainability transition with widespread local benefits. However, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland questions if the industry is able to deliver on its promises of an inclusive transition. Conducted in Norway, the study found a mismatch between the seaweed farming industry’s projected development pathways and the possibilities for an inclusive participation of coastal communities in this novel economy. Read more.
More than a third of all shark species are heading towards extinction. Sharks face various threats, from warming oceans to coastal development, but overfishing has been the main cause of decline over the last half-century. Despite the widespread introduction of protective regulations to prevent this, a new study published in Science reveals that shark mortality rates from fishing are increasing. Read more.
In Tanzania, the Fight against Blast Fishing Is Ramping Up Read more.
France has announced a temporary ban on almost all commercial fishing in the Bay of Biscay to protect dolphins. It will run until 20 February affecting fishing grounds off the country’s Atlantic coast. French marine experts CIEM estimate around 9,000 dolphins die in the bay each year after being accidentally caught in fishing gear. Local fishermen say the ban is “absurd” and fear losing money - but the government has promised compensation. Read more.
A British Columbia (Canada) wildlife protection group says chinook salmon that form the key diet for endangered orcas are being caught in their thousands by trawlers, only to be dumped or turned into compost. Pacific Wild said it had obtained a yet-to-be-published Fisheries and Oceans Canada report on groundfish trawl bycatch, which found more than 28,000 salmon were netted as bycatch in the 2022-23 fishing season, with 93 per cent of them — more than 26,000 — chinook salmon. Read more.
A new study has revealed how much carbon bottom trawling releases into the atmosphere. Much of the damage done by dragging huge nets - some as big as 10 passenger jets - across the bottom of the sea to catch fish has been clear for a long time. But this new research reveals the practice is also an unaccounted source of carbon emissions that is “too big to ignore” Read more.
Businesses and marine organisations in Scotland’s coastal communities will benefit from £14 million in grants from the Marine Fund Scotland 2023-24. A total of 91 projects, with grants ranging from just under £1,000 up to £1.6 million, will support innovation and sustainable practices for the marine economy, including work to reduce carbon emissions. Read more.
Copepods – tiny creatures that can help reduce the need for soya imports Read more.
Seas At Risk say the European Parliament endorses controversial reports, undermining the credibility of its environmental ambition but backs the Commission on the urgent need to protect sensitive species from fishing nets Read more.
Marine Technology
Researchers want to create a forecasting system for oxygen concentrations in sea water, Read more.
WSense is a deep-tech company bringing innovation to underwater monitoring and communication systems. Through their patented technologies, they have pioneered the ‘Underwater Internet of Things’ and enable wireless underwater communication. Read more.
A University of Rhode Island professor of Ocean Engineering and Oceanography, along with a multidisciplinary research team from multiple institutions, successfully demonstrated new technologies that can obtain preserved tissue and high-resolution 3D images within minutes of encountering some of the most fragile animals in the deep ocean Read more.
Scientists have found a new non-invasive way to identify a deadly virus in dolphins that could be a testing breakthrough. For the first time, researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi Health and Stranding Lab have successfully detected Fraser’s morbillivirus, which can cause respiratory and neurological disease, in the feces of a dolphin. Read more.
Scientists have mapped the largest known deep-sea coral reef, stretching hundreds of miles off the US Atlantic coast. While researchers have known since the 1960s that coral is present off the Atlantic, the reef’s size remained a mystery until new underwater mapping technology made it possible to construct 3D images of the ocean floor. Read more.
The EU built 17 GW of new wind energy in 2023, slightly up on 2022 – and more than ever in a single year in fact. But it’s not enough to reach the EU’s 2030 targets. The EU should be building 30 GW of new wind every year between now and 2030. Read more.
To mark the release of the APPG for the Ocean’s latest inquiry report The Ocean: Inquiry into the Future of Ocean Technology, the APPG held a roundtable in [the UK] Parliament, bringing together parliamentarians and stakeholders to discuss the key findings of the report. This was an informative and insightful discussion on the recommendations of the report, the innovative and modern approaches to sustainable ocean technology and how government and industry can work collaboratively to ensure that the UK ocean technology sector can continue to flourish. Read more.
Oceanography
The Marine Institute has released a new high resolution geomorphology map on the Irish Marine Atlas for most of the Irish continental shelf to support ocean science, environment and biodiversity management and offshore renewable energy development. Geomorphology is the scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Read more.
New Faroes Ecosystem Overview published by ICES. Ecosystem Overviews are one of ICES’ key products that identify human activities and resulting pressures. Describing the current state of regional ecosystems, ICES Ecosystem Overviews explain how these pressures affect key ecosystem components at a regional level. Read more.
A new way to measure the ocean oxygen level and its connections with carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere during the last ice age could help explain the role oceans played in past glacial melting cycles and improve predictions of how ocean carbon cycles will respond to global warming. Read more.
Large coastal upwelling systems along the eastern margins of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are among the most biologically productive and biodiverse regions of the world’s oceans. Typically, the strength and timing of upwelling in such systems are linked to the prevailing winds. Interestingly, in some tropical regions, high levels of productivity occur even when the upwelling favorable winds are weak. Read more.
A new method predicts how much flooding a coastal community is likely to experience as hurricanes evolve due to climate change. Using New York as a test case, the model predicts Hurricane Sandy-level flooding will occur roughly every 30 years by 2099. Read more.
People and the Sea
The United States has unveiled the results of a monumental undersea mapping effort that could add 1 million square kilometers of sea floor—twice the area of California—to its territory. In addition to enabling the U.S. to claim valuable geological and biological resources, particularly in the Arctic, the project has produced a wealth of seafloor data that are fueling a wide range of scientific advances. Read more.
The transition to a greener, renewable economy will require large amounts of minerals, and society has to get them from somewhere. Norwegian politicians have reached an agreement approving deep sea mining, in a proposal that has reaped both cheers and frustration from scientists and activists alike. Read more.
As sea levels rise by multiple feet in the coming decades, communities along the coastal United States will face increasingly frequent flooding from high tides and tropical storms. Thousands of homes will become uninhabitable or disappear underwater altogether. Read more.
Ocean adventurers teaming up with scientists can improve the health of our seas, claims new research from the University of Portsmouth. Read more.
Florida’s 156-mile-long Indian River Lagoon (IRL) borders five different counties and has five inlets that connect the lagoon with the Atlantic Ocean. In recent years, this estuary has experienced numerous phytoplankton bloom events due to increased seasonal temperatures coupled with environmental impacts. Algal blooms produce a myriad of small organic molecules, many of which can be toxic to humans and animals. Among these phycotoxin producers is Microcystis aeruginosa, a freshwater cyanobacterium, which can be found in the Southern IRL. Measurable amounts of microcystins have been found in nasal swabs of people who live and work near the area, although finding microcystins in mucosal membranes may be evidence that the body is doing its job to eliminate them. Read more.
Beaches and dunes globally squeezed by roads and buildings. Beaches and dunes are becoming increasingly trapped between rising sea levels and infrastructure. Researchers found that today, when dropped on a random beach anywhere in the world, you only need to walk 390 meters (on average) to find the nearest road or building. And while that short walking distance may seem convenient if you want a day at the beach, it’s bad news for our protection against rising sea levels, drinking water supplies and biodiversity. Read more.
The summer of 2023 saw the exciting start of the BioMARathon along the Catalan coast in Spain. Over 300 volunteers joined the event from the 1st of May until the 15th of October, collecting more than 60 000 observations of marine life, including 34 invasive and 40 protected species, as well as the previously-unrecorded presence of the African fiddler crab. Read more.
New research could lead to major improvements in marine oil spill cleanup processes. The innovative study assessed the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on microscopic seawater bacteria that perform a significant role in ecosystem functioning. Read more.
Algal blooms can mean toxic fumes, green muck, nasty stench and death for seagrass and marine animals. All of it is bad for Florida’s economy, and sometimes human health. But just how bad has been murky — until now. Read more.
An Oceana analysis uncovered that 79% of ships violated mandatory speed zones in the weeks leading up to the discovery of a maimed North Atlantic right whale calf off South Carolina. Read more.
The widespread demise of coral reefs due to climate change is now a certainty. But what role does art have in our future for coral reefs? Read more.
A social enterprise has launched in Britain to provide marine conservation jobs in deprived coastal communities. Read more.
Shark meat, traditionally preferred by low-income groups, now in high demand by Indian restaurants. Most shark meat consumption happens at a household level. Offering it at restaurants with an online presence could challenge conservation efforts. Read more.
A new study examining the historical decline of fish populations in Vancouver waters highlights the detrimental impacts urban development has had on the local environment, and way of life for First Nations communities. Read more.
A new map-based digital tool will make plans for shoreline management easier to access, understand and use for coastal practitioners and the public alike. The Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) Explorer will enable coastal practitioners and local planners to find the information they need more easily. It will also improve the Environment Agency’s ability to monitor the risks of flooding and erosion around England’s coasts throughout this century. Read more.
Saudi Arabia is best known for its holy cities, its vast undulating desertscapes, and the energy contained within them. But, as the Kingdom diversifies its economy away from one that is based on oil, it is harnessing and protecting the wealth of its surrounding seas. Read more.
According to Jan Hoffmann, Chief of Trade Logistics at UNCTAD, the attacks are not only adding to geopolitical tensions but also raising costs and leading to increased greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Read more.
Have Researchers Found Amelia Earhart’s Long-Lost Plane? A new sonar image shows an airplane-shaped object resting on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, not far from where Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, went missing in 1937 Read more.
With Canada’s oceans getting louder — causing increasing harm to marine species — the federal government initially committed to release the first draft of its Ocean Noise Strategy in summer 2021. Then by the end of 2022. Now, as Parliament sits for the first time in 2024, WWF-Canada is urging them to not let another year go by without delivering a strong plan to protect whales, walrus and other sea life from underwater noise pollution. Read more.