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.
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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
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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.
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(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More than a century on, Sakhalin’s prisoners have been replaced by oil and gas workers, most of whom seem to agree that Chekhov’s description still fits.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…
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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…
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Former President Bill Clinton congratulates NOAA on the 10th anniversary of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve.
NOAA National Marine Sanctuary News
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When you hear “pipeline” in Hawai’i, the first thing you think of is that quintessential North Shore surf break – a heaving wall of tropical blue water arcing towards shore. Recent research, however, is showing that there’s another, far less appealing but far more direct association brewing between pipelines and coastal waters. Sewage is a big problem here, and while some seaweeds flourish with the extra nutrients, people and corals are getting sick.
Though the battle rages on in Maui, this is an issue all the Hawaii islands, and many other states face as well. You can find out more about how to help reduce the use of injection wells in Hawaii here.
Photo credit: eutrophication&hypoxia
Change.org’s Environment Blog: Oceans
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A team of state and federal biologists assisted a severely entangled North Atlantic right whale off the coast of Daytona, Fla., on Dec. 30, 2010. The team successfully removed more than 150 feet of ropes wrapped around the whale’s head and fins, and cut portions of entangling ropes that remain on the animal.
NOAA News Releases
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Opening the Arctic Ocean to offshore oil development, where several energy companies are pressing to drill, poses risks of devastating spills complicated by harsh weather and months of winter darkness, a new report said.
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Billfish and tuna, important commercial and recreational fish species, may be more vulnerable to fishing pressure because of shrinking habitat according to a new study published by scientists from NOAA, The Billfish Foundation, and University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
NOAA News Releases
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