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Artist's depiction of an Earth-like beach on Mars. (© Prasa-gg - stock.adobe.com) ================================================================= In a nutshell * Chinese Zhurong rover discovered underwater layers of sediment beneath the Martian surface that closely resemble Earth’s coastal beach deposits, providing the strongest evidence yet for an ancient ocean on Mars. * The beach-like formations extend continuously for over 1.3 kilometers, indicating a stable, long-lived body of water rather than temporary flooding — essentially a “vacation-style beach” that existed for tens of millions of years. * This discovery suggests Mars once had a complex water system with rivers, waves, and ocean currents that could...

'There’s been an uptick in that imbalance and that has led to an uptick in the rate of ocean warming.' Credit: DepositPhotos Earth’s oceans caught a fever in March 2023 that has yet to break. Since then, the bathwater-like conditions have killed corals in a record-breaking mass bleaching event, fueled hurricanes, and collapsed entire fisheries. The two years of heat have created a scientific mystery, with 450 straight days of record high global sea surface temperatures from April 2023 to July 2024 — a streak that exceeded climate scientists’ predictions even when accounting for climate change and the natural...

Taiwan is investigating a Chinese-owned ship suspected of severing an undersea fiber-optic cable north of the island. While the incident caused minimal disruption to internet services, analysts say it reflects the vulnerability of Taiwan and its undersea infrastructure in the event of a Chinese military attack or blockade. “It’s a vulnerability shared by a lot of countries in a globalized world,” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and a former Pentagon official. “The real challenge for Taiwan is how do they increase their resilience now [that] there is growing awareness...

'Octopuses are among the most intelligent, complex life on Earth. Farming them is not only inhumane but poses significant environmental risks.'It's officially illegal to farm octopus in the state of California. On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bipartisan bill (which had zero opponents) that criminalizes the farming of octopuses for human consumption, based on the ideas that the aquatic animals are "highly intelligent," have "long-term memory," and have "have a well-developed nervous system." And, as the Los Angeles Times importantly noted, the bill also bans business owners and operators from "knowingly participating" in the sale of an octopus that...

A recent study on beaked whales showed that even the reclusive giants are negatively affected by a host of anthropogenic activities. What's happening? The paper, published in Royal Society Open Science in April, documented 14 human-caused threats to the cetaceans, which Phys.org dubbed "one of the least encountered mammals." Climate change, including ocean acidification and marine heatwaves; plastic pollution; and whaling were among the dangers categorized as serious, intermediate, moderate, or unknown. The study of "gray literature" was led by Laura Feyrer, a research scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Military sonar was listed as a serious threat to beaked...

A Chaunax, a genus of bony fish in the sea toad family Chaunacidae, is seen at a depth of 1,388 meters (4,553 feet) on a seamount inside the Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park. Image credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More than 100 new species have been discovered on an underwater mountain range off the coast of Chile. Among the never-before-seen critters seen on the expedition are corals, glass sponges, sea urchins, amphipods, lobsters, plus a gaggle of peculiar fish and squid that are already known to science (but no less strange). The discoveries come from an international group of scientists who recently...

The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a London-based non-governmental organization, this week published a report on the destructive, largely unregulated, and often illegal operations of China’s immense deep-water fishing fleet. An especially disturbing chapter of the report dealt with the harmful impact of Chinese fishing on West African nations, where entire coastal communities tremble on the verge of economic collapse thanks to China’s rapacious practices.The report, titled The Ever-Widening Net: Mapping the Scale, Nature, and Corporate Structures of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing by the Chinese Distant-Water Fleet, accused China of creating a huge fleet to fish outside China’s own depleted...

Jack Hellner recently suggested that oil spills are only moderately harmful to the environment. I disagree. Oil in the environment is normally there and has been for centuries. That’s how people first discovered the stuff. In California’s uber-environmentalist Santa Barbara County, an estimated 11 to 160 barrels of oil seep into the ocean daily and have for countless centuries; the locals have made attempts at capping it. They have failed so farIn nature, there are the butanes, gasolines and kerosene in the oil, which, when deposited on the surface, evaporate off as naphtha (probably the basis of the ancient Greek...

The New York Times seems to get a kick out of pushing, hubris-riddled blather normalizing the ridiculous notion that governments can control Mother Nature to fight climate change. A Sept. 14 Times guest essay whined that switching to clean energy from fossil fuels wasn’t enough of a radical change to “stave off climate catastrophe.” The essay, which had three co-authors, was adamant that “we desperately need another solution.” Their so-called “solution” was nothing short of cuckoo, and the co-authors even admitted as much: “As crazy as it might sound, geoengineering the oceans by adding iron — in effect, fertilizing them...

The Atlantic Ocean’s sensitive circulation system has become slower and less resilient, according to a new analysis of 150 years of temperature data — raising the possibility that this crucial element of the climate system could collapse within the next few decades. Scientists have long seen the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, as one of the planet’s most vulnerable “tipping elements” — meaning the system could undergo an abrupt and irreversible change, with dramatic consequences for the rest of the globe. Under Earth’s current climate, this aquatic conveyor belt transports warm, salty water from the tropics to the North...

Temperatures reached a global average of 69.98 Fahrenheit (21.1 degrees Celsius) in the first days of April. The previous record of 69.9 F (21 degrees C) was set in March 2016. Both are more than a degree higher than the global average between 1982 and 2011, which runs at around 68.72 F (20.4 C) in early spring...

Sea level rise has long been expected to be an ongoing and worsening problem for U.S. coasts, but scientists have found that some areas are experiencing "unprecedented" levels of rising seas, raising concerns about the fate of already vulnerable communities. A new study published in Nature Communications on Monday found that since 2010, sea level rise along the nation's Southeast and Gulf coasts has ramped up dramatically, hitting rates that are "unprecedented in at least 120 years." Since 2010, scientists from Tulane University have found that sea levels in those regions have increased by about half an inch every year....

Ocean ecosystems keep our planet in balance by producing nearly half of the earth's oxygen and absorbing much of its carbon dioxide - but they are under threat from pollution, exploitation and global warming. ... WHAT IS IN THE HIGH SEAS TREATY AND WHY IS IT NEEDED? The treaty, in a nutshell, will provide a legal framework for establishing vast marine protected areas (MPAs). This means that all activities that go on in the high seas will be subject to environmental impact assessments, with member states held accountable for their actions. The treaty itself focuses on four main areas, according...

THE Moon destroyed a forest on Earth just by wobbling, according to a new study. The theory solves a mystery from 2015 which involved tens of millions of mangrove trees dying in Australia.... ...The researchers used 30 years of national satellite data to conduct their research and correlate the Moon's behavior with the mass tree death. This helped them spot a pattern of trees dying every 18 to 19 years, which is in keeping with the Moon wobble timeline....

Tiny self-propelled robo-fish can swim around, latch on to free-floating microplastics and fix itself if it gets damaged Scientists have designed a tiny robot-fish that is programmed to remove microplastics from seas and oceans by swimming around and adsorbing them on its soft, flexible, self-healing body. Microplastics are the billions of tiny plastic particles which fragment from the bigger plastic things used every day such as water bottles, car tyres and synthetic T-shirts. They are one of the 21st century’s biggest environmental problems because once they are dispersed into the environment through the breakdown of larger plastics they are very...

Bloomberg News seems unaware that a principal underlying cause for both bumper crops and crop failures resides way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Climatologists and meteorologists point to a natural phenomenon known as “ENSO,” the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, while farmers around the Great Plains anxiously await tardy rains. What does ENSO mean in layman’s terms? Many have heard that El Niño (Spanish for “the boy”) weather events bring above-average moisture to the US grain belt. When that happens, certain other weather features naturally fall into place. Surface waters off the Pacific coast produce substantially more moisture from...

After years studying the icy waters of the Southern Ocean with floating robotic monitors, a consortium of oceanographers and other researchers is deploying them across the planet, from the north Pacific to the Indian Ocean. The project known as the Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Array, or GO-BGC, started in March with the launch of the first of 500 new floating robotic monitors containing computers, hydraulics, batteries and an array of sensors scientists say will relay a more comprehensive picture of the ocean and its health. "The ocean is extremely important to the climate, to the sustainability of the earth, its supply...

Current models used by many climate scientists estimate global sea levels could rise by between 1 and 2 meters by the end of this century. The Durham researchers used detailed geological sea-level data and state-of-the-art modeling techniques to reveal the sources of the dramatic five-century sea level rising event. Comparable to melting an ice sheet twice the size of Greenland, it resulted in the flooding of vast areas of low-lying land and disrupted ocean circulation, with knock-on effects for global climate, they said. "Our study includes novel information from lakes around the coast of Scotland that were isolated from the...

..... Scaling up You can think about the oceans as a gigantic bathtub. More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is ocean, giving this bathtub an area of about 140 million square miles. To figure out how much the water will rise, we need to know the volume of people sitting in it and divide it by this ocean area. Currently, there are almost 8 billion people on Earth. Human beings come in all sizes, from tiny babies to large adults. Let’s assume the average size is 5 feet tall – a bit bigger than a child – with an...

An abandoned cargo ship has landed on the coast of Ireland after spending more than a year drifting alone at sea. The Irish Coast Guard said it responded to the vessel aground near Ballycotton, Cork on Sunday and discovered there was no one was on board. It turns out that the mysterious vessel is the 250-foot Tanzanian-flagged merchant ship Alta, which had been adrift since the U.S. Coast Guard rescued all 10 crew members on board after the vessel lost power while en route from Greece to Haiti in September 2018. At the time of the rescue, the U.S. Coast...