Keyword: reefs
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The Philippines accused the China Coast Guard of blocking a Filipino supply vessel and damaging it with water cannon on Saturday morning (Mar 23) off a remote and contested South China Sea reef. The Philippine military said the nearly hour-long attack occurred off Second Thomas Shoal, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannon and collided with Filipino vessels in similar stand-offs in recent months. The military released video clips that showed a white ship repeatedly dousing another vessel sailing alongside it with a water cannon. One clip showed two white ships simultaneously firing water at the same vessel.
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Seventy percent of coral reefs off the coast of Florida are eroding and experiencing a net loss of habitat, according to new research out of the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Science. The decline is a result of bleaching events which are driven by climate change, ship groundings and disease. In 2014, researchers discovered an outbreak of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, which is decimating reefs both in Florida and the Caribbean. The state’s coral reefs also support around 70,000 jobs and generate $8.5 billion annually, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)...
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This weekend, a U.S. satellite intelligence firm Simularity released a report connecting the movements of more than 200 suspected Chinese vessels in the South China Sea with massive deposits of human waste.From May 14, 2016 to June 17, 2021, Simularity tracked clusters of anchored ships operating around the Spratly Islands and matched them with concentrations of Chlorophyll-a, indicative of the ships dumping raw sewage.While Chlorophyll-a deposits can happen near shorelines due to runoff from fertilized agricultural areas, erosion of riverbanks and land clearing, Derr said the Chlorophyll-a deposits this far out in the ocean are due entirely to “ship wastewater...
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Florida cities and counties wouldn't be able to ban sunscreens containing ingredients that some researchers say harm coral reefs, under a bill passed by the state Senate on Wednesday. The Senate voted 25-14 in favor of the bill after no discussion or debate. If it becomes law, a Key West ordinance to ban the sale of sunscreens containing oxybenzone or octinoxate would be nullified. The Key West ban is set to go into effect next year. Research has shown the chemicals can cause coral bleaching, and the reefs around Key West attract divers, snorkelers and fishing enthusiasts. But Republican Sen....
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Hawaii is set to become the first state to ban the sale of sunscreens containing chemicals believed to be harmful to the environment. State lawmakers passed a bill Tuesday that prohibits the sale and distribution of over-the-counter sunscreens containing oxybenzone or octinoxate, two chemicals that have been found to "cause genetic damage to coral and other marine organisms." "These chemicals have also been shown to degrade corals' resiliency and ability to adjust to climate change factors and inhibit recruitment of new corals," the bill reads. The contamination is "constantly refreshed and renewed everyday" by swimmers and beachgoers, according to the...
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An Australian university recently censured marine scientist Paul Ridd for “failing to act in a collegial way and in the academic spirit of the institution,” because he questioned popular claims among environmentalists about coral reefs and global warming. What was Ridd’s crime? He found out two of the world’s leading organizations studying coral reefs were using misleading photographs to make the case that global warming was causing a mass reef die-off. Ridd wasn’t rewarded for checking the facts and blowing the whistle on misleading science. Instead, James Cook University censured Ridd and threatened to fire him for questioning global warming...
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What caused a fall from grace so sudden that IPCC’s insiders now demand Pachauri’s ouster, and that leads the Indian government to set up an “Indian IPCC” as a national alternative to the IPCC, declaring that it “cannot rely” any longer on the organization that its own representative heads? One answer is Climategate — the unauthorized release of emails in November that showed the duplicity of scientists associated with the IPCC. Unquestionably, Climategate opened the floodgates to the torrent of scandals that have since poured out, seemingly without end. Many of the new scandals, some of them sporting “-gate” as...
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Tyler Durden 10/15/2015 Earlier this week, US officials indicated that they are set to go through with a plan to sail warships around China’s man-made islands in the Spratlys. “It’s just a matter of time when it happens,” one government source told WSJ. Over the course of the last six months, we’ve seen China’s land reclamation efforts go from oddity, to spectacle, to alleged “provocation”, to excuse for war as Washington feels compelled to come to the aid of its allies in the South Pacific who cried foul after it became apparent that this was no “normal” dredging effort. In...
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A newly contentious phase appears to be under way in the South China Sea, where China has made expansive territorial claims, after the head of US naval operations said today in Tokyo that US vessels are free to travel “wherever international law allows." Echoing earlier remarks by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, John Richardson, the US chief of naval operations, stated that, "It should not come as a surprise to anybody that we will exercise freedom of navigation wherever international law allows.” He added that "I don't see how this can be interpreted as provocative." A Chinese spokesman responded by...
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BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Friday it was "extremely concerned" about a suggestion from a top U.S. commander that U.S. ships and aircraft should challenge China's claims in the South China Sea by patrolling close to artificial islands it has built. China's increasingly assertive action to back up its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea have included land reclamation and the construction of ports and air facilities on several reefs in the Spratly Islands. The work has rattled China's neighbors, in particular U.S. ally the Philippines, and raised concern in the United States. China says it has irrefutable...
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January's big chill led to widespread death of corals in many near shore and mid-channel reefs from Biscayne Bay to Summerland Key, but most of the popular offshore diving and fishing reefs in the Florida Keys were spared. A survey conducted at 78 sites throughout the Florida Reef tract from Martin County to the Keys also found that corals fared well north of Miami and in the Lower Keys west to the Dry Tortugas. Analysis of the data collected by 31 scientists from 13 organizations has not been completed to determine the amount of coral damage throughout the island chain....
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The oil platforms provide an unusual artificial reef for advanced divers.
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Following is a summary published on-line in CO2 Science website, refuting the exaggerated threat of global warming against the ocean's coral reefs. Supposedly, rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere will cause the CO2 to dissolve in the water, lowering the pH (causing it to turn from basic towards an acidic solution), thus dissolving/harming/killing/bleaching/destroying (depending on who is speaking) the wrold's coral reefs. ----------------- Marine Photosynthesis and Oceanic pH Volume 10, Number 34: 22 August 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Based on four theoretical constructs - a geochemical model, an ocean general-circulation model, an IPCC CO2 emissions scenario for the 21st century, and a...
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FORT EUSTIS, Va. - Soldiers from the 97th Transportation Company recently returned from an unconventional mission - recovering thousands of tires from off the Florida coast in an effort to dismantle the world's largest man-made reef. The 15 Soldiers spent two and a half months off the Florida coast, conducting training operations for dive teams. They then traveled down coast to Fort Lauderdale, where they began a historic effort in environmental preservation. "In 1972, a number of organizations with good intentions dropped about two million tires in the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to build the world's largest man-made reef,"...
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Coral "shuffle" helps reefs survive warmer world: study SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's Great Barrier Reef might be able to survive warming sea temperatures, as a result of global warming, better than first thought because some coral algae are more heat tolerant, Australian scientists said. Coral geneticists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science have found that many corals store several types of algae, which can improve their capacity to cope with warmer water. "This work shatters the popular view that only a small percentage of corals have the potential to respond to warmer conditions by shuffling live-in algal partners," said...
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Coastal pollution from land development may be obstructing the recovery of coral reefs damaged by rising sea temperatures, the United Nations said Thursday, warning of new threats to the world's oceans. The UN Environment Programme said in a report that "land-based pollution, reclamation, clearing of coastal vegetation and poor sewage control can damage reefs." "More importantly," it said, "they demonstrate that protection of coastal land area around marine protected areas is essential for reducing local pollution and facilitating re-colonization of corals." Coral reefs sustained widespread damage in the late 1990s due to higher than normal surface temperatures caused by global...
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KEY LARGO, Fla. — Marine scientists hope "test-tube coral babies" will take root to help restore a tract of reef ravaged by a 1984 ship grounding in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. A team of University of Miami marine science researchers is collecting coral eggs and sperm all this week during an annual reproductive ritual, dubbed coral spawning. Looking like an upside-down, underwater snowstorm, most corals in the Keys, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean release eggs and sperm into the water a few days after the full moon in August. In the wild, eggs and sperm randomly mix...
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An international team of marine ecologists is urging the United States to take immediate action to save its fragile coral reefs. Their message is contained a strongly worded essay titled, "Are U.S. Coral Reefs on the Slippery Slope to Slime?" that appears in the March 18 edition of the journal Science. "We're frustrated with how slowly things are moving with coral reef conservation in the United States," said Fiorenza Micheli, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station. "Tiny steps are being taken, but they really don't address the overall problem." Micheli and Stanford graduate student...
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Reef Madness By Marlo Lewis Now that Russia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, Australia is the only industrialized country besides the United States to reject the U.N.-sponsored climate treaty. However, a report commissioned by Australian affiliates of World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace denies that Australia has any choice in the matter. The report, prepared by the Sydney Centre for International and Global Law, contends that the World Heritage Convention, a treaty administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), obligates Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and, thus, limit its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), chiefly carbon...
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No-take reserves are not a cure-all -- they do not address problems such as pollution and rising temperatures -- but several recent studies suggest they can help restore fish populations and damaged ecosystems. In 1994, after fisheries collapsed in the Gulf of Maine's Georges Bank, for example, federal authorities prohibited groundfish fishing and dragging for scallops in three areas spanning 6,600 square miles. Within five years, haddock and witch flounder stocks rebounded, while scallops grew bigger and became nine to 14 times more dense than in fished areas.
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