Experts say about 700 sites had been identified globally with low oxygen levels, up from only 45 in the 1960s. The loss of oxygen from the ocean due to climate change and nutrient pollution risks “dire effects”…
Browsing Category Blue Planet
World Bank launches $208bn bond for clean water awareness
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) a subsidiary of the World Bank, launched a 7-year $208 billion Sustainable Development Bond to engage with investors to raise awareness for water and ocean resources. The…
A crisis in the water is decimating this once-booming fishing town
His ancestors were Portuguese colonialists who settled on this otherworldly stretch of coast, wedged between a vast desert and the southern Atlantic. They came looking for the one thing this barren region had in abundance:…
There’s at least one place on Earth with water but no life
A recent paper by a team of scientists refuted earlier findings about the geothermal Dallol area in Ethiopia. According to the team, there can be sterile water and harsh conditions there that may make life…
Troubled Water: Why the World’s Oldest Wetland Trees Aren’t in a State Park
A century ago, a riverboat captain traveling down the Black River to trade goods in Wilmington would do anything possible to avoid getting tangled in the knotted burls and fallen limbs of the Three Sisters…
Bali: The tropical Indonesian island that is running out of water
Indonesia’s fabled island is running out of water, with monsoon rains delayed and the tourist industry expanding. The people of Bali have shared water resources through “subak” – a sophisticated irrigation system that diverts water…
The Antique Technology Still Taking the Ocean’s Pulse
The Continuous Plankton Recorder has been measuring the ocean’s plankton (almost) continuously since the 1930s. In the winter of 2013, a mass of warm water began to spread throughout the eastern Pacific Ocean. The Blob…
Increasing ocean temperature and local difference causing falling lobster population
Studies reveal that warming waters, local differences affect lobster population. Recent studies reveal that increasing temperature of the ocean and local differences probably is the reason for falling lobster populations along the coast from southern…
Total immersion: re-imagining the ocean
Two timely, urgent books offer different takes on the state of the seas. Boris Worm lauds both. Neptune’s Laboratory: Fantasy, Fear, and Science at Sea Antony Adler Harvard University Press (2019) Reef Life: An underwater memoir Callum Roberts Profile…
Bringing the Ocean Home
Is it fanciful to discern a faint shadow of these glories in a poor Polype? Bernd Brunner on the English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse and how his 1854 book The Aquarium, complete with spectacular illustrations and…