Save the corals of Maamigili
The airport expansion is already underway and will be completed within the next few months, so immediate action is required in order to save as many corals as possible.
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Conservation
Australia pledges 1 billion to protect Great Barrier Reef
Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled the nearly decade-long conservation package days ahead of a February 1 deadline set by UNESCO to submit a report on the reef's state of conservation, and months after it narrowly avoided being placed on the UN's cultural agency's "danger" list due to the threat of climate change.
“Any additional funding for the environment in Australia is welcome, as it is severely under-resourced. However, handing out cash for the Great Barrier Reef with one hand, while funding the very industry – fossil fuels – that’s driving devastating climate impacts like marine heatwaves and coral bleaching, means they are adding to the very problem they are claiming they want to fix.”
— Climate Councillor, climate scientist and Distinguished Professor of Biology at Macquarie University, Professor Lesley Hughes
Lake of Dreams: The Remaking of Tennessee's Gray Quarry
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Brian Ekey
Gordon Hutchinson
Carter Warden
Gray Quarry, Tennesee, USA. Photo by Gordon Hutchinson
Avid diver and professor of computing Dr. Phil Pfeiffer gives an account of how the love of diving, persistence, US$100,000, and a homebrew aerator turned an abandoned quarry in the US state of Tennessee into a thriving dive site for a region that lacked one—and had lost prospective divers for want of a site.
Politics posing as shark science
Leaving aside the question of why shark scientists would work to undermine shark conservationists, its simplistic assertion focuses on just two unrelated subjects: the efforts to ban the shark fin trade, and the existence or not, of sustainable shark fisheries.
Dive Green with Explorer Ventures Liveaboard Fleet
Starting back in 1987, Explorer Ventures put environmental consciousness at the heart of their business model before “sustainability” was an operational buzzword. This strong foundation has helped them navigate the changing tides of the pandemicand follow their customized sustainability management policy called Dive Green.
Environmental Project restores Belize Reefs
When Lisa Carne first visited Laughing Bird Caye National Park in 1994, the reef was vibrant and bursting with life, abundant with fish, corals, lobsters, crabs, sponges and sea turtles. After the hurricane, it was a scene of desolation, the seabed a swathe of rubble dotted with a few surviving corals. Hurricane Iris not only killed corals but uprooted their structure, making recovery more difficult.
Buoy in Celtic Sea tracks oceanic noise
Equipped with an autonomous hydrophone, the buoy's function is to conduct for the first time real-time acoustic monitoring of the water's cetaceans to assess how oceanic noise pollution affects them.
Deployed as part of the Smart Whale Sounds project, it will also track the distribution and behaviour of whale species in real-time and be used to train machine learning models to identify different species' calls.
Deciphering the corals' scents
Last December, marine biologist Caitlin Lawson made her way to the Great Barrier Reef.
Like countless others, she was there for the annual spawning of the corals. However, she was armed, not with expensive photographic equipment, but small plastic containers rigged with tubing.
Her mission? To collect the gaseous chemicals released by the corals (as well as their algal and bacterial symbionts) before, during and after the spawning event.
Blue Nature Alliance aims to restore 18 million km² of ocean
Research suggests protecting at least 30% of the ocean is required to maintain biodiversity and marine ecosystems.
IUCN update finds sharks increasingly threatened
The Lost Shark, Carcharhinus obsoletus, is already extinct, and others that are expected to follow soon include four species each of hammerhead and angel sharks, from the world’s most threatened shark families. In spite of all the press that shark conservation has received in the past two decades, no effective protection of sharks has been established, no sharks have been saved, and their decline into extinction is ever more apparent.