Tag: oceans

The giant oil spill caused by an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico is wreaking ecological havoc on the Gulf Coast.

A Coast Guard report that the leak could be five times bigger than previously thought has sparked fears that this may become the “biggest oil spill in the world”, far worse than the Exxon Valdez spill. [1]

This heart-wrenching disaster highlights the danger of President Obama’s plan to open vast expanses of pristine ocean for the massively polluting oil industry.

Tell President Obama not to open 167 million acres of ocean to offshore drilling.

If you’ve already sent a letter, invite 5 friends to take action to protect our oceans.

President Obama’s plan to open the ocean to Big Oil will mean more emissions, more spills, and more pollution of our irreplaceable ecosystems.

It’s not just whales and birds that are threatened by offshore drilling expansion – it’s the entire planet.

Tell President Obama today: don’t open 167 million acres of ocean to offshore drilling!

Notes:

1. “Gulf of Mexico oil slick said to be five times bigger.” BBC, April 29, 2010.

A Lionfish

Some bad news from underwater in the Caribbean.  Indo-Pacific Lionfish have apparently been spotted on the Mayan Riviera, the stretch of coast from Cancun in the north to Tulum in the south, of Quintana Roo, Mexico, and throughout much of the rest of the Caribbean.  These fish don’t belong there.  It’s not their natural habitat, and they’re predators to most other reef species.  They are voracious.  And to top it off, their spines are also toxic to humans.

Let’s go for a swim.

The 1976 Viking lander would have likely found water ice on Mars if it had probed just 4 inches deeper.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed frozen water hiding just below the surface of mid-latitude Mars. The spacecraft’s observations were obtained from orbit after meteorites excavated fresh craters on the Red Planet.

By FishOutofWater

Water ice, never seen before in Mars’ “temperate” zone, was discovered in a shallow crater that was made in 2008. The ice reveals that Mars was warmer and wetter in the relatively recent past.

The finds indicate water-ice occurs beneath Mars’ surface halfway between the north pole and the equator, a lower latitude than expected in the Martian climate.

This ice is a relic of a more humid climate from perhaps just several thousand years ago.

said Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Mars has large variations in its tilt that cause its climate to change even more strongly that the changes from glacial to interglacial on earth. However, Mars lost most of its atmosphere to space because Mars lacks the mass (size) to hold on to its upper atmosphere when it interacts with energetic particles in the solar wind. With only 1% of the atmospheric pressure of the earth, the Martian surface is uninhabitable to humans.

 

We are killing the world’s coral reefs and their situation is virtually hopeless.

“The future is horrific,” says Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world’s foremost expert on coral reefs.

“There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world’s marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct.”

Or, as David Adam explains in his Guardian article about Why coral reefs face a catastrophic future:

Within just a few decades, experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jewelled corset will reduce to rubble. Giant piles of slime-covered rubbish will litter the sea bed and spell in large distressing letters for the rest of foreseeable time: Humans Were Here.

They are not alone in their bleak outlook for the future of the world’s coral reefs.

Since 1995 the number of oceanic dead zones, masses of oxygen depleted water deadly to most marine life, has grown from 44 to 169. The International Whaling Commission reported that dead zones are killing the world’s coastlines, increasing by a third in the last two years.  

Mississippi flood waters, fouled with run off of sewage and fertilizer, are forecast to cause a record dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico later this summer.


By IWC