<p>Terpios hoshinota is an encrusting cyanobacteriosponge which grows aggressively over live coral colonies and has been reported to undergo outbreaks which kill corals. In an underwater survey conducted
Contrary to expectations, a microscopic plant that lives in oceans around the world may thrive in the changing ocean conditions of the coming decades, a team of scientists reported on Thursday. The main threat to many marine organisms is not global warming but ocean acidification, as carbon dioxide from the air dissolves into the water and turns into carbonic acid.
Mythology speaks about devas (Gods) and asuras (devils) churning the sea for amrit that will give them immortality. Today, scientists at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) are churning the oceans for drugs capable of fighting many terminal diseases, including HIV and cancer. "The sea is a treasure house of healing," says Prof. Muthusamy Chandrasekaran, the Cuddalore born bio-technologist at Cusat.
Climate change is dulling the hearing of fish and making it more difficult for them to find a home, Australian researchers say.
Scientists Are Building First Worldwide Portrait Of Human Impact That Has Left Just 4% Of The Seas Pristine In 1980, after college, I joined the crew of a sailboat partway through a circumnavigation of the globe. Becalmed and roasting one day during a 21-day crossing of the western Indian Ocean, several of us dived over the side. Within a few swimming strokes, the bobbing hull seemed a toy over my shoulder as I glanced back through my diving mask. Below me, my shadow and the boat's dwindled to the vanishing point in the two-mile-deep water. Human activity seemed nothing when set against the sea itself. Just a few weeks later, on an uninhabited island in a remote part of the Red Sea, I was proved wrong. The shore above the tide line was covered with old light bulbs, apparently tossed from the endless parade of ships over the years. Now scientists are building the first worldwide portrait of such dispersed human impacts on the oceans, revealing a planet-spanning mix of depleted resources, degraded ecosystems and disruptive biological blending as species are moved around the globe by accident and intent. A paper in the February 15 issue of the journal Science is the first effort to map 17 kinds of human ocean impacts like organic pollution, including agricultural runoff and sewage; damage from bottomscraping trawls; and intensive traditional fishing along coral reefs. About 40% of ocean areas are strongly affected, and just 4% pristine, according to the review. Polar seas are in the pristine category, but poised for change. Some human impacts are familiar, like damage to coral reefs and mangrove forests through direct actions like construction and subtler ones like the loss of certain fish that shape ecosystems. Others were a surprise, said Benjamin S Halpern, the lead author and a scientist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California. He said continental shelves and slopes proved to be the most heavily affected areas, particularly along densely populated coasts. The most widespread human fingerprint is a slow drop in the pH of surface waters around the world as a portion of the billions of tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere from fuel and forest burning each year is absorbed in water, where it forms carbonic acid. That progressive shift in ocean chemistry could eventually disrupt shell-forming plankton and reef-building species, particularly where other impacts, including rising temperatures from human-caused global warming, create simultaneous stresses, many marine biologists say. "I study this stuff all the time and didn't expect the impacts to be as pervasive as we found,' Halpern said. The review provides a baseline necessary for tracking further shifts, he said. It also identifies some unanticipated trouble spots, similar to terrestrial biodiversity "hot spots' that environmental groups have identified over the years. NYT NEWS SERVICE
Scientists gather mysterious creatures from icy Antarctic waters Organisms that are stalk-like in structure and resemble glass tulips, spotted in Antarctic waters in January, among others. SYDNEY: Scientists investigating the icy waters of Antarctica said on Tuesday they had collected mysterious creatures including giant sea spiders and huge worms in the murky depths.
In one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the oceans, researchers say that humans have "strongly' fouled 41 per cent of the high seas with everything from storm water runoff to shipping waste and that only small polar regions are still untouched. "Almost half of the oceans are in a fairly degraded state, based on what we found,' said Benjamin Halpern, the report's lead author and a marine biologist at the California-based National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. "There isn't a spot on the planet that hasn't been touched by humans.' The report, being published Friday in the journal Science and presented at a scientific conference this week in Boston, is designed to summarise how humans are affecting the 70 per cent of the planet covered by the seas. "You just can't manage fisheries alone or try to just manage nutrient runoff or invasive species by themselves. You have to think of them in a more comprehensive context,' said Donald F. Boesch, a professor of marine science and president of the University of Maryland Centre for Environmental Science. The international team of 19 researchers looked at effects from 17 human activities, including commercial fishing, runoff from development, invasive species, industrial pollution, oil rigs and climate change. Their sources included satellite imagery, UN reports on fisheries harvests, estimates of commercial shipping wastes and runoff from pesticide use. "The oceans are in trouble, in a lot of areas and in a lot of ways,' said Andrew Rosenberg, a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire who reviewed the study. Only 3.7 per cent of the oceans have seen little or no effect from human activity and they lie near the North and South poles, the researchers say. The most polluted areas are along the Atlantic's eastern seaboard, as well as in the North Sea, Caribbean, Red Sea, Bering Sea, the Persian Gulf and the China seas. "Hopefully, this is a wakeup call showing what our impacts are on the oceans and what can be done to minimise them,' Halpern said. There have been previous alarms. A $5-million report by the Pew Ocean Commission in 2003 called for restoring coastline ecosystems, improving the way fisheries are managed and cracking down on sources of pollution. But experts say Halpern's report goes further. "This changes how we view the oceans by showing how widely scattered our impacts are,' said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Worm was co-author of a report in 2003 that predicted a collapse of the world's fisheries by mid-century if human effects continue at their current pace. The most severely troubled waters lie within dozens of miles of most coastlines. It is there that effects from land and ocean-based activities show up, such as the depletion of fish stocks from commercial fishing and sediment runoff from coastal development. Industrial fishing fleets equipped with sonar and global positioning systems have fished the seas to the point that about 90 per cent of the worldwide stocks of tuna, cod and other large fish have disappeared, experts say. To help address the problem, people should be careful to eat fish harvested with sustainable, environmentally conscious methods and try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by driving smaller cars, Halpern said. They also should avoid fertilisers and pesticides, he said. "There are things people can do.'
The management and conservation of the world's oceans require synthesis of spatial data on the distribution and intensity of human activities and the overlap of their impacts on marine ecosystems.
India sent its first team to the Arctic recently. Two of its members have returned with a variety of samples, some dating back to millions of years. ARCHITA BHATTA spoke with them "We found round
ecologists have long predicted that the demise of top predators in an ecosystem could trigger destructive consequences. Researchers, in a first-ever field experiment, have shown that the loss of
Fish antics Two US-based Johns Hopkins University researchers have found answers to how the brain guides the complex movement of limbs in a tropical fish. Their research may contribute to important
