Source: CBC News
Author: Paul Withers
In more World Ocean Day news, on June 8 an area off of the coast of Nova Scotia of about 44,000 square kilometres was declared a marine refuge by the Canadian government.
Continue reading Huge deep-water area off Nova Scotia declared a marine refuge
Source: New Scientist
Author: Graham Lawton
From deep-sea mining to industrial-scale fishing, human activities in the oceans are expanding massively in a realm where few rules apply. Only now are we grappling with how to regulate the rush to plunder the seas.
Continue reading How the ‘blue acceleration’ is supercharging ocean exploitation
Source: RNZ
Author: Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor
Palau is the first small island developing state to host a large event like Our Ocean, hosting more than 500 delegates from over 80 countries. As a Pacific island, Palau is on the front line of the potential impacts of deep-sea mining.
Continue reading Palau hosts Our Ocean Conference and speaks out against deep-sea mining
Source: The Guardian
Author: Karen McVeigh
The world has a “once in a lifetime” chance to protect the high seas from exploitation, warned scientists and environmentalists, as negotiators meet at the UN headquarters in New York this week to hammer out a new treaty on the oceans.
Continue reading UN ocean treaty is ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to protect the high seas
Source: Bloomberg
Author: Todd Woody
As the threat of seabed mining looms ever larger for the deep ocean, scientists have discovered that seafloor sediments are home to vast populations of previously unknown organisms that may play a crucial role in carbon sequestration and marine food webs.
Continue reading Deep-Ocean Creatures May Help Combat Climate Change
Source: Science News
Author: Maria Temming
Things are heating up at the seafloor.
Thermometers moored at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean recorded an average temperature increase of about 0.02 degrees Celsius over the last decade, researchers report in the Sept. 28 Geophysical Research Letters. That warming may be a consequence of human-driven climate change, which has boosted ocean temperatures near the surface (SN: 9/25/19), but it’s unclear since so little is known about the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean.
Continue reading Even the deepest, coldest parts of the ocean are getting warmer
Source: Nerdist
Author: Matthew Hart
Free-floating Crinoids, a.k.a. feather stars, are mesmerizing deep-sea creatures that dance in water like stars dance around a black hole: that is to say, gracefully. The smooth-moving feather stars ribbon their limbs through the ocean for motive force, and put on an entrancing show while doing so. The one in the clip immediately below, for example, may possess you with its bizarre fluidity.
Continue reading Undulating Feather Stars Put on a Soothing Deep-Sea Show
Source: ScienceDaily
Author: University of Bristol
The fossilised remains of ancient deep-sea corals may act as time machines providing new insights into the effect the ocean has on rising CO2 levels, according to new research carried out by the Universities of Bristol, St Andrews and Nanjing and published today [16 October] in Science Advances.
Continue reading Deep sea coral time machines reveal ancient CO2 burps
Source: Science News for Students
Author: Stephen Ornes
Last October, a team of marine explorers sent Hercules — a remote-controlled vehicle — to the bottom of the ocean. Its mission: to visit an octopus neighborhood. It was off the coast of central California, near an undersea volcano. Late one night, after scanning a long stretch of empty seafloor, Hercules’ spotlight and camera revealed a parade of curious creatures. First was a slender bottom-feeder called an eelpout. It was half-buried in the sediment. Then came a sea pig — a squishy thing that looks like a living pink balloon, but with tentacles.
Continue reading Whales get a second life as deep-sea buffets
Source: Hakai Magazine
Author: Judith Lavoie
In the northeast Pacific, the upper 3,000 meters of water has lost 15 percent of its oxygen over the past 60 years, and the top 500 meters is simultaneously becoming more acidic at an unprecedented rate, a study by Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientists has found.
Continue reading British Columbia’s Seamounts Are Becoming Uninhabitable
