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Australian researchers recently reported a sharp decline in the abundance of coral along the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists are seeing similar declines in coral colonies throughout the world, including reefs off of Hawaii, the Florida Keys and in the Indo-Pacific region.
The widespread decline is fueled in part by climate-driven heat waves that are warming the world s oceans and leading to what s known as coral bleaching, the breakdown of the mutually beneficial relationship between corals and resident algae.
But other factors are contributing to the decline of coral reefs, as well, including pollution and overfishing.
According to a new study, Local conditions magnify coral loss after marine heatwaves, published in the journal
NOAA Keeps Deploying Fishery Observers But With Limits Amid Pandemic - Honolulu Civil Beat
NOAA Keeps Deploying Fishery Observers But With Limits Amid Pandemic
The NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Regional Office maintained full observer coverage of swordfish but had to temporarily cease observer coverage in American Samoa. Reading time: 5 minutes.
Considered essential workers, federal fishery observers have continued monitoring Pacific commercial operations during the pandemic, but COVID-19 restrictions have forced them to reduce or even cease operations in some areas.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dispatches observers to travel aboard fishing vessels to monitor the crew’s practices and what they catch – including any bycatch of endangered species. The goal is to preserve fish stocks and protect maritime ecosystems.
Expedition recovers tons of ‘ghost nets’ and plastic from remote Hawaiian atolls Published 2 days ago
In this April 5, 2021 photo provided by Matthew Chauvin, a juvenile Hawaiian monk seal rests on top of a pile of ghost nets on the windward shores of Laysan Island in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. A crew has returned from the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands with a boatload of marine plastic and abandoned fishing nets that threaten to entangle endangered Hawaiian monk seals and other marine animals on the tiny, uninhabited beaches stretching for more than 1,300 miles north of Honolulu. (Matthew Chauvin, Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project via AP NOAA/NMFS Permit No. 22677)
Credit: Brian Sidlauskas, Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Four decades after their capture more than a half-mile below the ocean s surface, three snailfish species have received their scientific names, two of them from school children on Guam in the island s native Chamorro language.
The rare specimens of liparids were collected in the early 1980s in traps set in the Mariana Archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean, deposited with NOAA s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Hawaii and did not get examined until recently, when they were noticed during the center s move to a new location.
Oregon State alumnus Bruce Mundy, retired from the National Marine Fisheries Service, learned of the liparid specimens from Robert Moffitt, the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center biologist who collected them.