Extreme Heat Bleaches Coral, and Threat Is Seen

From Thailand to Texas, many corals are reacting to heat stress by shedding their color and going into survival mode, putting the oceans’ richest ecosystems and fisheries at risk.

Read the full New York Times article…

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.

New Orleans Fish Market Struggles After Gulf Spill

Ruth Graves makes a point of thanking all her customers for supporting what she calls “seafood people”.

She has been selling shrimp, crabs and fish at the Westwego market just outside New Orleans for three decades, but her family is now in a desperate situation.

“This is my only livelihood,” says Ms Graves, 51. “My husband is diabetic so he can’t work, so it’s just me supporting the whole family.”

Read more at BBC

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.

Oceans ’11: The BP Oil Spill Commission Speaks – Ocean Issues to Watch

The Ocean Doctor on WebTalkRadio.net

January 17, 2011: The National? Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling has released its final report. What does it say and what are the lessons from this tragedy? The Ocean Doctor guides you through the highlights. Also: From The Ocean Foundation’s headquarters in Washington, DC, our panel of experts discusses other key ocean issues we should pay attention to this year.

The Ocean Doctor airs weekly on WebTalkRadio.net. Want to listen on your iPod, iPhone or mp3 player? Download the mp3 file or subscribe on iTunes and don’t miss a single episode. See the complete list of episodes.

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Submit a question and I’ll try to answer it on the air. Even better, record your question or comment on our special message line and I might play it on the air. Call: (805) 619-9194. You can also leave questions and comments for this episode below.

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Lights, Camera, Walrus! From Beneath the Ice to the Big Screen

The Ocean Doctor on WebTalkRadio.net

January 10, 2011: Award-winning underwater cinematographer, Adam Ravetch works in one of the most unforgiving, hostile environments imaginable: Under the ice in the Arctic. And with camera in hand, he pursues some of the most elusive and dangerous Arctic life, including polar bears and walrus. The critically-acclaimed film, “Arctic Tale” narrated by Queen Latifah told the story of a polar bear cub and a walrus pup against the backdrop of a changing Arctic environment and showcased 15 years worth of Adam’s incredible footage and insights. Adam joins us this week to tell us how he did it, and what’s next!

The Ocean Doctor airs weekly on WebTalkRadio.net. Want to listen on your iPod, iPhone or mp3 player? Download the mp3 file or subscribe on iTunes and don’t miss a single episode. See the complete list of episodes.

Follow The Ocean Doctor on TwitterBecome a Fan on Facebook!

Submit a question and I’ll try to answer it on the air. Even better, record your question or comment on our special message line and I might play it on the air. Call: (805) 619-9194. You can also leave questions and comments for this episode below.

Like the show? Learn how to become a sponsor. Read more

Thriving ‘Middle Light’ Reefs Found in Puerto Rico

NOAA-funded scientists have found extensive and biologically diverse coral ecosystems occurring at depths between 100-500 feet within a 12 mile span off the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico. With the overall health of shallow coral reefs and the abundance of reef fish in Puerto Rico in decline, this finding brings hope that deeper fish stocks may help to replenish stocks on shallower reefs.

Read the NOAA News Release…

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.

Getting to Know Your Neighbors Below the Surface

Over the last 10 years, thousands of scientists have collaborated on an enormous research effort to catalog the plants and animals in the world’s oceans.

Read the full article in the New York Times…

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.

Hunting the Invasive Lionfish

There are nearly 660 fewer Indo-Pacific red lionfish in the waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, thanks to more than 40 teams of divers who participated in a series of derbies aimed at reducing the population of this marine invader in sanctuary waters.

NOAA National Marine Sanctuary News

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.

Bacteria Devoured Methane Gas from Gulf Oil Spill, Scientists Say

By Brian Vastag
Washington Post Staf Writer
Thursday, January 6, 2011; 3:19 PM

Last August, just two days into a research cruise to study methane gas spewed into the Gulf of Mexico by the Deepwater Horizon gusher, Texas A&M University oceanographer John Kessler turned to one of his colleagues and said, “Well, it looks like it might be gone. What do you think?”

The huge wallop of methane burped up from deep inside the earth was, in fact, missing.

To read the rest of this article, visit this link.

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.

Oil and Ice: Worse than the Gulf Spill?

(Reuters) – When writer Anton Chekhov arrived on the Russian island of Sakhalin in 1890, he was overwhelmed by the harsh conditions at the Tsarist penal colony. It wasn’t just the floggings, forced prostitution and ill-treatment of children in the colony. It was the environment itself. “There is no climate on Sakhalin, just nasty weather,” Chekhov wrote. “And this Island is the foulest place in all of Russia.”

More than a century on, Sakhalin’s prisoners have been replaced by oil and gas workers, most of whom seem to agree that Chekhov’s description still fits.

The sparsely populated island — which is the length of Britain — has some of the most extreme weather on earth. Marine cyclones and violent snowstorms rip through its forested hills, and the ocean waters off its northern coast freeze solid for a good part of the year. In winter, temperatures drop to minus 40 Celsius and snow can pile three meters high.

Workers at Exxon’s Odoptu oil field, eight km (five miles) off the northeast coast of Sakhalin, had to shovel their way out of their dormitory last winter to clear pipe valves and free oil pipelines of snow. “The blizzards were so bad that at one point we had to evacuate half of the staff,” says Pavel Garkin, head of the field’s operations.

Now Moscow hopes to attract global oil players to another extreme location: its icy Arctic waters. Shared by Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Russia and the United States, the Arctic may hold around one-fifth of the world’s untapped oil and gas reserves according to a U.S. Geological survey. The past few years have seen a rush of activity in the region, with UK oil explorer Cairn Energy drilling for oil off the west coast of Greenland and Norway’s Statoil, one of the world’s largest offshore oil producers, pushing further and further up the Nordic country’s serpentine coastline, drilling wells inside the Arctic Circle beneath both the Norwegian and Barents Seas…

To read the rest of this article, visit the link below:

SeaWeb – Ocean News

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.

Fish Kill in Chesapeake Bay

Millions of fish wash up dead on Chesapeake Bay

Millions of fish wash up dead on Chesapeake Bay

It could be two weeks before state officials know for certain what killed an estimated 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay.

Or, they may never find out the exact cause.

Biologists with the Maryland Department of the Environment sent tissue samples from the fish, mostly juvenile spot 3- to 6-inches long, to state labs to pinpoint the reason they died. But for now, they believe a rapid drop in temperature in December caused cold-water stress, said MDE spokeswoman Dawn Stoltzfus.

Read the full story in the Baltimore Sun…

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.