Page 5 - Ocean Image News Today

As mass coral bleaching events grow in frequency and intensity, scientists are finding out more about how corals, which make up the physical foundation of reefs, respond during times of heat stress. But what is less well known is how mass bleaching events affect other components of reef ecosystems, such as their amazingly colorful array […]

When the United Nations began negotiations on a legally binding treaty to protect and regulate the high seas, one diplomat pointedly remarked: “It’s a jungle out there”—characterizing a wide-o

More than a third of all elasmobranch (shark and ray) species are at risk of extinction due to overfishing. Indonesia is both a hotspot of elasmobranch biodiversity and one of the leading shark and ray exporters in the world, putting already critically endangered species such as hammerhead sharks and wedgefish under great pressure. Reducing that […]

New research has found that carefully managed fisheries can help dwindling shark and ray populations recover, illustrating a pathway for protecting species from fishing pressure. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study analyzed several decades’ worth of trends in fishing pressure, fisheries management, and population status of 26 shark and […]

Scientists remember the years between 2014 and 2017 as a particularly bad time for coral reefs. Elevated temperatures fueled by an El Niño climate pattern harmed about three-quarters of the world’s reefs in both hemispheres, forcing corals to release their life-sustaining zooxanthellae and turning them ghostly white in a process known as coral bleaching. About […]

BANGKOK – A few dawns into 2022, authorities raided a shophouse in the heart of Thailand’s capital city. Officers from the Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Division of the Royal Thai Police and the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources discovered the shop was breeding coral and selling it on Facebook for as little as $4 […]

Imagine showers of little green sand grains drifting through the ocean: collecting on coral reefs, rolling off the backs of whales, sprinkling schools of tuna — and helping to save all those creatures, and humanity, too. At least that’s the idea. These green showers are crushed olivine, an abundant volcanic mineral, delivered by a fleet […]

Damselfish can be fastidious farmers. They prune and cultivate small patches of algae, often no more than half a square meter (5 square feet) in area, ensuring they have a steady food source. One species in the Caribbean even herds tiny mysid shrimp around their underwater “gardens,” which the shrimp dose with their fecal fertilizer. […]

Stuart Sandin’s first impression of Palmyra Atoll, a remote island in the central Pacific Ocean, during a visit in 2004, was troubled. There were seabirds, but their presence was fragmented, likely because of the rats that had hitched a ride on board military ships and invaded the atoll during World War II. On walks through […]

With the world busy evaluating the conclusion of the latest meeting under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal (COP15), and the publication of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, it’s easy to forget that just a few short weeks ago the decision text of the United Nations Climate Change conference (COP27) was the […]