The tsunami that struck Japan on Friday brought back memories of the tsunami of 2004 that devastated many parts of Sri Lanka. At the time, the steady destruction of coral reefs around the country was believed to have aggravated the impact of the disaster. The theory was confirmed by Sri Lankan scientist, Harindra Fernando, who […]
NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS) announces the availability of the Record of Decision (ROD) for its Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on Coral Restoration in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. The ROD, in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, summarizes the decisions made and […]
BY SANDER R. SCHEFFERS, ROB. W. M. VAN SOEST, GERARD. NIEUWLAND, AND ROLF P. M. BAK ISSUED BY ATOLL RESEARCH BULLETIN NO. 583 ABSTRACT Hard substratum surface area of framework cavities constitutes a major habitat in coral reefs. We studied the community composition and distribution of cryptic sessile macro-organisms in framework cavities in relation to […]
Executive Summary Climate change is now widely acknowledged as a global problem that threatens the success of marine and coastal conservation, management, and policy. Mitigation and adaptation are the two approaches commonly used to address actual and projected climate change impacts. Mitigation applies to efforts to decrease the rate and extent of climate change through […]
To combat last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, nearly 800,000 gallons of chemical dispersant were injected directly into the oil and gas flow coming out of the wellhead nearly one mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, as scientists begin to assess how well the strategy worked at breaking up oil droplets, Woods Hole […]
Demographics of bleaching in a major Caribbean reef-building coral: Montastraea annularis R. Hernández-Pacheco, E. A. Hernández-Delgado, A. M. Sabat Read the full paper www.esajournals.org 6 January 2011 v Volume 2(1) v Article 9 Abstract. Mass bleaching events have become a major cause of coral decline at a global scale. In the summer/fall of 2005 the […]
ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2011) — Sharks are unable to distinguish colors, even though their close relatives rays and chimaeras have some color vision, according to new research by Dr. Nathan Scott Hart and colleagues from the University of Western Australia and the University of Queensland in Australia. Read more
Widespread, persistent oxygen-poor conditions in Earth’s ancient oceans impacted early evolution of animals, say UC Riverside scientists (January 5, 2011) RIVERSIDE, Calif. – The conventional view of the history of the Earth is that the oceans became oxygen-rich to approximately the degree they are today in the Late Ediacaran Period (about 600 million years ago) […]
ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2011) — Geologists at Brown University and the University of Washington have a cautionary tale: Lose enough species in the oceans, and the entire ecosystem could collapse. Looking at two of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth’s history, the scientists attribute the ecosystems’ collapse to a loss in the variety of species […]
Conserving these corals may offer hope for shallower, degraded reefs January 4, 2011 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 […]