News | Ocean Doctor | Ocean Conservation

Sea Level on U.S. East Coast Rising Up to Four Times Global Average

July 2, 2012/in Ocean Newswire/by Ocean Doctor

A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that sea level along the U.S. Atlantic coast — one of the world’s most densely-populated coastal regions including New York, Boston and Norfolk, Virginia — is rising up to four times faster than the global average.

Sea level along the 620-mile coastline has risen by two to 3.7 millimeters per year since 1990. However, as temperatures continue to rise, sea level could rise well beyond the one-meter rise predicted by scientists, by up to an additional 30 centimeters within the next 90 years. In comparison, the average global sea level rise over the same period was between 0.6 and one millimeter per year. Read more

Emperor Penguins Disappearing Due to Climate Change

July 2, 2012/in Featured, Ocean Newswire/by Ocean Doctor

Emperor penguins enter the water in Antarctica (Image by StormPetrel1 via Flickr)

ScienceDaily reports that a study led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, published in the June 20th, 2012 edition of the journal Global Change Biology, predicts that as global temperatures continue to rise, penguins in Terre Adelie, in East Antarctica, may eventually disappear. Emperor penguins are perhaps the best-known and most iconic of the Antarctic region and were featured in the popular film, March of the Penguins.

Read more

Seagrass Protects Coral Reefs from Ocean Acidification

June 30, 2012/in Featured, Ocean Newswire/by Ocean Doctor

The BBC reports on research pointing to the importance of seagrasses to protecting coral reefs against the impacts of ocean acidification, caused by carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions dissolving in seawater, causing unprecedented increases in the ocean’s acidity.

Dr. Richard Unsworth of Swansea University, along with a team of scientists from Oxford University and James Cook University in Australia, found several types of seagrass which may reduce the acidity of water around reefs, protecting them from erosion from acidifying seas. Read more

Saving the Oceans from Acidification Starts With an End to Fossil Fuel Subsidies

June 29, 2012/in Ocean Newswire/by Ocean Doctor

We’ve described ocean acidification as potentially the “the gravest and most immediate planetary threat yet,” and as more and more research results become public, it appears that this threat is, indeed, every bit as potent as we had feared.Yet it has been a painfully slow process for ocean acidification to gain traction in the media and is still far from being a “mainstream” issue. So when the San Francisco Chronicle recently called for action to deal with the issue, we took notice. Read more

Infographic: Oceans of Garbage

June 28, 2012/in Featured, News, Ocean Newswire/by Ocean Doctor

This infographic from MastersDegree.net lays it out there for all to see: Our oceans are getting more and more polluted, and most of the pollution originates from land, like plastics. These pollutants have a wide range of impacts on marine life, including getting caught up in the food chain, even at a microbial level. Scary stuff. Please share!

Greenland Sharks Are Dog Slow — So How Do They Eat?

June 27, 2012/in Ocean Newswire/by Ocean Doctor

Greenland shark part of a drawing in ‘Male Narwhal or Unicorn. Greenland Shark.” In: “An account of the Arctic regions with a history and description of the northern whale-fishery”, by W. Scoresby. 1820. Source http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/library/libr04

We’ve barely explored the world’s oceans, but when it comes to marine life living in the harsh conditions at the poles where few scientists and explorers can spend time, we are constantly being surprised by what we’re discovering. The Greenland shark — the largest shark in the dogfish family — is no exception. It’s slow — really slow — so scientists asked the logical question: “If it’s so slow, how does it catch prey?” The BBC reports on a recent study. Read more

Acid Oceans Turn ‘Finding Nemo’ Fish Deaf

May 31, 2012/in Ocean Newswire/by Newswire

SeaWeb – Ocean News

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

Distant ‘waterworld’ is confirmed

February 21, 2012/in Ocean Newswire/by Newswire

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50248000/jpg/_50248981_bean_image.jpg Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a new class of planet – a waterworld with a thick, steamy atmosphere.
BBC News – Science & Environment

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

The Other Final Frontier

February 21, 2012/in Ocean Newswire/by Newswire

There’s a strong bang-for-the-buck argument to be made for ocean-depth missions.

The United States has been out of the space shuttle business for a few months now, but the country is still seriously considering spending billions of dollars to send astronauts back to the moon, to Mars or to a nearby asteroid.

It’s heartening that the pioneering spirit behind crewed missions into outer space has not been dampened by the nation’s tide of red ink. But with price tags like $50 billion to return astronauts to the moon in the next decade, there’s a strong bang-for-the-buck argument to be made for far less expensive missions headed in the other direction: down into the ocean depths, which remain largely unexplored and unseen by human eyes.

Read “The Other Final Frontier” in the NY Times…

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