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World Oceans Day

8 June 2021, New York, United States of America

Public grasps threat to ocean even as leaders fail to meet targets, poll finds

As people mark World Oceans Day today, an overwhelming 94% of people in England and Wales believe the fate of the oceans and humans are inextricably linked, while more than half rate global ocean health as “poor or very poor”, according to a government survey.

Why it’s time we woke up and listened to the ocean

The importance of protecting biodiversity is not lost on Tanzanians. Our country is well known for its incredible beauty and diverse ecosystems: home to an incredible 24 percent of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.

In Gabon, a new partnership for sharks and rays announced on World Ocean Day

The Government of Gabon has passed landmark measures to manage and protect the country’s sharks and rays: over the past decade, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has worked with the Gabon government to identify 69 species in the country’s waters, highlighting the diversity that these measures ...

China marks World Oceans Day with a focus on protecting marine biodiversity

Countries across the world will observe World Oceans Day on Tuesday. This year's theme, "The Ocean: Life and Livelihoods," highlights the importance of oceans for the life and activities of the global community.

Statement by Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity on the occasion of WORLD OCEANS DAY 2021: “The Ocean: Life and Livelihoods”

Statement by Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity on the occasion of WORLD OCEANS DAY 2021: “The Ocean: Life and Livelihoods”

Turkish leader vows tackle outbreak of "sea snot" blamed on pollution and climate change

Istanbul — Turkey's president has promised to rescue the Marmara Sea from an outbreak of "sea snot" that is alarming marine biologists and environmentalists. A huge mass of marine mucilage, a thick, slimy substance made up of compounds released by marine organisms, has bloomed in Turkey's Marmar ...

Strange Sea Creature Found in Oceans Around the World May Improve Health of Marine Ecosystems

Florida State University researchers have more insight into a strange sea creature found in oceans around the world and what their presence means for the health of a marine ecosystem.

Lake habitats are disappearing as the climate changes

Global warming is increasing the temperatures of lakes worldwide—are species finding the temperatures they need to survive? Researchers led by scientists at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) have quantified the long-term temperature changes in 139 lakes world ...

Underwater ancient cypress forest offers clues to the past

When saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths and giant sloths roamed North America during the last Ice Age about 18,000 to 80,000 years ago, the Gulf Coast's climate was only slightly cooler, more similar to regions to the north like Missouri and North Carolina's climate today.

Video: Humpback whales spotted 'bubble-net feeding' for the first time in Australia

If you gaze at the ocean this winter, you might just be lucky enough to spot a whale migrating along Australia's coastline. This is the start of whale season, when the gentle giants breed in the warm northern waters off Australia after feeding in Antarctica.

World’s Lakes Losing Oxygen Rapidly As Planet Warms – Biodiversity and Drinking Water Quality Threatened

Oxygen levels in the world’s temperate freshwater lakes are declining rapidly — faster than in the oceans — a trend driven largely by climate change that threatens freshwater biodiversity and drinking water quality.

Rivers are key to restoring the world’s biodiversity

In October 2021, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will meet in China to adopt a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework to reverse biodiversity loss and its impacts on ecosystems, species and people. The conference is being held during a moment of great urgency: According to a re ...

3rd session of the Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Aquatic Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

1 - 3 June 2021, Rome, Italy

Divers discover coral garden in Manila Bay

Just when people thought that portions of Manila Bay are dead and incapable of sheltering marine life, a group of divers accidentally discovered a coral garden in Ternate, Cavite last May 17.

Sharp rise in Florida manatee deaths as algal blooms hasten food depletion

Environmental groups in Florida are warning that unusually high numbers of manatee deaths in the first five months of the year, blamed in part on resurgent algal blooms contaminating and destroying food sources, could threaten the long-term future of the species.

There's a growing focus on ocean resilience in China – and the positive impacts could be global

Like many coastal nations, China has also been facing an acute decline in the health of the ocean along its coastline caused by both terrestrial and marine development. The rapid expansion of the ocean economy, as well as increasing discharge of land-based pollutants, have exerted a heavy toll o ...

Aquaculture turns biodiversity into uniformity along the coast of China

Fishery and aquaculture have given rise to an enormous uniformity in the diversity of bivalves along the more than 18,000 kilometer long Chinese coast, biologist He-Bo Peng and colleagues report in this month's issue of Diversity and Distributions.

Workshop on Management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for Small Cetaceans (ASCOBANS)

18 May 2021, Online, Bonn, Germany

Chaos and beauty

Todd Thimios is an acclaimed underwater photographer, deep sea submersible pilot and expedition leader, currently based in Australia. His work has been feature in The Times, Boat International and get lost magazine, and was highly commended in the 2020 Ocean Photography Awards. In this interview ...

Great Whites Found… Where?!

For how infamous the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is, it can be a bit alarming to know that there are still large gaps in the knowledge scientists have of them. Gracing our cinematic screens for decades now, the gray-and-white toothed predator is known to make long‐distance migrati ...

Sharks use Earth’s magnetic field as ‘GPS’ guidance system, study says

Scientists in Florida have concluded that sharks possess an internal navigation system similar to GPS that allows them to use Earth’s magnetic forces to travel long distances with accuracy.

Researcher describes four new species of sponge that lay undiscovered in plain sight

The ocean is a big place with many deep, dark mysteries. Humans have mapped no more than 20% of the sea, and explored less. Even the kelp forests of Southern California – among the best studied patches of ocean on the planet – hide species not yet described by science.

Fangs and tentacles: rarely seen deep sea fish washes up on California beach

With its mouth agape – revealing a set of pointy black teeth – and a large protruding appendage surrounded by a series of tentacles, the sea creature resembled something out of a horror film. But, the 18in-wide fish, which somehow found its way from the depths of the Pacific to the shores of New ...

Canada's oceans on the crest of a transformative decade

Canada is in the enviable position of having the longest coastline in the world. But our trio of oceans is being battered by a storm of negative impacts, be it overexploited fish stocks, plastics pollution, degrading marine food webs, increasingly fragile coastal ecosystems or biodiversity loss ...

Immediate and drastic action needed to save coral reefs

New research has revealed that while we still have a chance to save coral reefs, time is quickly running out. The study from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies suggests that under an intermediate emissions scenario, the growth rate of some reefs may keep pace with sea level rise ...

Thousands of salmon fry released in B.C. river to restore populations devastated by Big Bar landslide

Thousands of salmon fry have been released in a river west of Prince George, B.C., in the hope they will help restore the salmon population devastated by the Big Bar landslide. Monday's effort is part of an ongoing release of 101,000 chinook salmon fry that Fisheries and Oceans Canada says will ...

Deepest Oceans And Seas

Although Planet Earth has a total surface area of about 510.1 million km2, approximately 70.9% is covered by drainage features like oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, streams, gulfs, and other water reservoirs. Oceans and their marginal seas are the world’s largest and deepest waterbodies.

9 stunning images of deep-sea life captured by an aquatic robot

During a recently completed 18-day expedition in the protected Ashmore Reef Marine Park (off of Australia), scientists aboard a Schmidt Ocean Institute exploration vessel dropped an underwater robot into deep, low-light depths. At some 165 to 500 feet down (50-150 meters), it observed otherworld ...

It stores pollution 30 times faster than forest. What is blue carbon?

At Australia’s westernmost point lies the Coral Coast, a land of strange extremities. Marine megafauna is more accessible than ever before. Tourists swim with humpbacks and manta rays and whale sharks. They hand-feed playful dolphins that obligingly stick out scarred and blemished dorsal fins sc ...

Care for oceans a ‘collective duty’

We have a collective duty to watch over our ocean and its biodiversity to ensure it is still there for our children and the generations to come, says Pacific Ocean Commissioner Dame Meg Taylor.

Q&A with EDF's Eric Schwaab: How do we manage fisheries in the midst of climate change?

The world’s oceans are the ultimate global commons, and as such, profits have been realised privately, but costs are borne by the public, with often the most marginalised and disadvantaged facing the greatest burdens.

Cyprus’ coral reefs under threat

It is likely that coral reefs around Cyprus will die in the near future because of climate change and unsustainable tourism, but there is more to the story, marine ecologist Louis Hadjioannou told the Cyprus Mail.

The radical coral rescue plan that paid off

When Hurricane Iris hit southern Belize in 2001, the country's magnificent corals were wrecked. But within 10 years, a radical restoration project brought the reef back to life.

Northern Red Sea corals pass heat stress test with flying colors

Even under the most optimistic scenarios, most of the coral reef ecosystems on our planet -- whether in Australia, the Maldives or the Caribbean -- will have disappeared or be in very bad shape by the end of this century.

Olive Ridley turtles stay from Rushikulya in Odisha this year

The annual spectacle of the mass nesting of millions of Olive Ridley sea turtles near the Rushikulya river mouth in Odisha is likely to be missed this year, as the time for it is almost over. The mass nesting this time was about a month late as compared to last year.

Watching a coral reef die in a warming ocean

The Chagos Archipelago is one of the most remote, seemingly idyllic places on Earth. Coconut-covered sandy beaches with incredible bird life rim tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles from any continent. Just below the waves, coral reefs stretch for miles along an underwater mou ...

Light, in addition to ocean temperature, plays role in coral bleaching

A study by University of Guam researchers has found that shade can mitigate the effects of heat stress on corals. The study, which was funded by the university's National Science Foundation EPSCoR grant, was published in February in the peer-reviewed Marine Biology Research journal.

Marine biodiversity: Enormous variety of animal life in the deep sea revealed

Ecologists at the University of Cologne's Institute of Zoology have for the first time demonstrated the enormously high and also very specific species diversity of the deep sea in a comparison of 20 deep-sea basins in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Over a period of 20 years, a research team le ...

Persian Gulf National Day: Let’s protect precious marine environment

The day marks the anniversary of forcing out the Portuguese navy of the Strait of Hormuz in the Capture of Ormuz (1622). The Persian Gulf has an area of about 241,000 square kilometers. Its length is some 990 km, and its width varies from a maximum of about 340 km to a minimum of 55 km in the St ...

Protecting the world’s vanishing coral reefs

As soon as he could walk, Tom Goreau ’70 was swimming in the warm waters off Jamaica, where he grew up. He recalls water so consistently clear and blue he could see all the way down to the corals and marine life blanketing the bottom. His dad would dive below, releasing streams of bubbles that G ...

Researchers rush to understand kelp forests as harvesting increases

The kelp forests of the oceans are a habitat for a wide range of marine species, rivaling even the great tropical forests for sheer richness of biodiversity, according to scientists from the KELPER project, which studies these marine algae ecosystems.

NASA NeMO-Net video game helps researchers understand global coral reef health

Marine ecosystems are in the midst of a conservation crisis, with coral reefs in particular facing numerous challenges as a result of climate change. In an effort to better understand these environments and the threats they face, researchers collect huge image libraries of these underwater envir ...

“It’s deep. It’s dark. It’s elusive.” The ocean’s twilight zone is full of wonders.

At the beginning of the dive, you’re in the ocean’s epipelagic, or sunlight zone: the shallow waters where light still penetrates and photosynthetic organisms live. But as you dive deeper and deeper, the sunlight above you fades. The ocean around you gets darker and darker, colder and colder.

One of the Largest Efforts to Protect the Planet's Ocean Underway

A new ocean conservation initiative is underway to catalyze the protection and conservation of 18 million square kilometers of the ocean (7 million square miles) over the next five years—an area twice the size of the continental United States and larger than the continent of South America.

Tide turning as indigenous groups help steer global effort to save oceans

A global push to conserve vast swathes of ocean – 18 million square kilometres – over the next five years was launched Tuesday, as the world seeks a landmark deal to protect a third of its oceans by the end of the decade.

Will Probiotics Save Corals or Harm Them?

Manta rays and whitetip reef sharks glide past socially distanced visitors at Rio de Janeiro’s hangar-sized AquaRio aquarium. In a laboratory upstairs, above the main gallery, a new experiment is underway, one that marine scientists hope will enhance the survival prospects of the world’s coral r ...

These Billionaires are Helping the Oceans

Climate activists have come together to support the ocean in a special way. A group of philanthropists has gotten together to start the Philanthropic Ocean Research Vessel Operators, according to Robb Report. Many of the group are former business executives and they’re hoping to apply business k ...

Northern Star Coral study could help protect tropical corals

As the Rhode Island legislature considers designating the Northern Star Coral an official state emblem, researchers are finding that studying this local creature's recovery from a laboratory-induced stressor could help better understand how to protect endangered tropical corals.