Year: 2011
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Still no ice on Hudson Bay
Update: The maps from the Environment Canada site indicate some freezing up along the shore which matches up with what I saw on my last day in Churchill (last Thursday) when the air temp. dropped to 0F (it is currently -9F! but forecasted to warm up substantially later in the week):
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Arctic sea ice update
No matter how you look at it, Arctic sea ice trends this fall are grim. Arctic sea ice extent (spatial coverage) this fall is still tied with 2007 as the lowest on record (upper left) and the extent anomalies (values compared with the 1979-2000 mean) continue to decline (upper right): Minimum sea ice area is also…
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Beluga whales 1, Sarah Palin 0
From the Center for Biological Diversity – my new favorite NGO: There’s huge news today out of Alaska: A federal judge just rejected the state’s attempts to deny Endangered Species Act protection for Cook Inlet beluga whales. Today’s ruling is a major victory in our decade-long battle to protect the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale,…
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Blue shark wins Ocean in Focus contest
Grand-Prize winner of this year’s Marine Photobank’s Ocean in Focus conservation photo contest is Terry Goss with this image of a blue shark snagged on a longline hook in waters off Rhode Island, US. In an interview with Marine Photobank, Terry said: When I started shooting underwater, it was immediately apparent that every shark image…
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Why are we still eating bluefin tuna?
From Paul Greenberg in Salon: If you eat fish regularly, you’ve probably grown used to regularly being told by conservation groups — or that slightly irritating, politically correct friend — that certain fish shouldn’t be eaten: American striped bass, Atlantic swordfish, Chilean sea bass and Caspian sturgeon have all been the focus of vocal consumer…
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Coral Sea could become world’s largest marine reserve
Next week, the Australian Government is expected to announce plans to protect the Coral Sea, a huge area of ocean (around 1 million square kms) between Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Conservationists are hoping the government will grasp the opportunity to fully protect this extraordinary piece of…
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Polar bears and climate change
My research usually takes me to tropical places where you can’t drink the water. But this week I’m in a very cold northern place. I came to Churchill, Canada to work with Polar Bears International on their Tundra Connections project, helping to spread the word about how climate change is impacting marine critters like polar bears. The arctic…
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Orca thinks he’s an outboard engine
If you haven’t already watched (and listened!) to this video clip then you’re missing out. Apparently this is Luna, a lone male killer whale, who lived in the waters around Vancouver Island until his untimely death in a tugboat collision in 2006. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b2U5r7Jwkc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] HT to the Huffington Post
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Polar bear scuffle
The antarctic may have Zena’s fighting penguins, but the arctic has male polar bear scuffling. You tell me which is more spectacular (although, I must admit, those lady birds really go at it!). [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32095860[/vimeo] This post was made possible by Polar Bears International and their Tundra Connections project, the Tundra Buggy Lodge and Canada Goose for…
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Marine biodiversity: The tip of the iceberg
Who doesn’t love whales, beautiful fishes, octopuses, corals — even sharks? You know that we do here at SeaMonster. But those charismatic megafauna, as they are rather cumbersomely known in the conservation science-geek community, are only the tip of the biodiversity iceberg. Down in the jumbled rubble on the floor of the reef, among the…