Uncategorized

Rogue flying fish and the ‘big, blue rubbish bin’

Ireland was poised to ask the European Union to permanently ban deep-sea fishing off the country's Atlantic coast to protect coldwater coral reefs ...

... the E.U. completed negotiations with non-E.U. member state Norway for 2008, allowing Norway and the E.U. to increase their North Sea cod catch by 11 percent in exchange for the E.U. reducing its cod discards, or unwanted bycatch, to 10 percent ...

... a marine scientist called for a worldwide oceans monitoring system, including tagged marine creatures and robot submarines, in order to protect humanity from an ocean-based disaster ...

House Democrats agree to raise auto fuel economy to 35 mpg

Democratic leaders in the U.S. House reached a deal late Friday night to raise fuel-economy standards for cars and light trucks to an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 — a 40 percent increase from today’s standard of 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for SUVs and pickups. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi […]

Friday music blogging: Alice Smith

Alice Smith is a gorgeous new singer out of Brooklyn, doing a variant of R&B that somehow manages to sound both idiosyncratic and traditionalist, modern and timeless. Her debut album has been re-released this year to capitalize on the growing buzz. The debut, For Lovers, Dreamers and Me, mixes R&B, rock, jazz, and pop, with […]

More than a quarter of U.S. bird species are endangered

It’s not a good time to be a bird in the U.S. The Watch List 2007, published by the National Audubon Society and American Bird Conservancy, finds that 178 bird species in the continental U.S. and 39 in Hawaii are vulnerable to extinction. That’s almost all of Hawaii’s non-migratory native birds and more than a […]

Gray wolves in Southwest aren’t faring well

Mexican gray wolves are running into all kinds of trouble in the American Southwest. The wolves were hunted to the brink of extinction in the early 1900s; reintroduction began in 1998, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service originally predicted that by now there would be a self-sustaining population of 100 wolves and 18 breeding […]

FEMA sets deadline for Katrina trailer park closures

What’s worse than being a storm victim housed in a formaldehyde-soaked trailer that makes you sick? How about getting kicked out of said dwelling? FEMA has announced an accelerated schedule for moving 3,700 families out of trailers set up to house Hurricane Katrina refugees, pledging to be “with them every step of the way” as […]

EPA sued by 12 states over relaxed toxic-chemical rule

The U.S. EPA’s moves to relax the nation’s toxics reporting rule will not go unchallenged. Twelve states have announced they’re suing the agency over rule changes to the Toxics Release Inventory that allow companies to file less-informative reports and escape reporting if they release less than 5,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, up from the previous […]

An influx of jellies in strange places is not so hard to explain

Over Thanksgiving, I came across a news story that may represent the perfect storm of issues plaguing the oceans. A salmon farm in Northern Ireland was wiped out by a huge swarm of mauve stingers (Pelagia noctiluca), a jelly usually found in the warm Mediterranean sea.

In a 35-foot-deep, 10-square-mile swath, the jellies stung and killed 100,000 salmon before workers could reach the pens. It must have been quite a sight. The jelly's scientific name means "light of the sea," and the creatures give off an eerie, purple-red glow. I can only imagine that, at that scale, the sea looked possessed.

The incident may seem strange and isolated, but it touches on three major issues facing the oceans.

Chinese officials deny Three Gorges Dam role in landslide

Since a landslide killed 31 people near China’s Three Gorges Dam last week, officials have been rushing to cover their bums. While acknowledging that the massive energy project’s effect on geologic activity must be monitored, a project bigwig pledged that “there will not be any major damage to the life and property of the people […]

U.N. hails success of billion-tree planting program

Nature-lovin’ nations around the world planted more than 1 billion trees during 2007, meeting a kinda arbitrary goal set by the U.N. last November. The effort, boosted by Ethiopia’s planting of 700 million trees, “is a further sign of the breathtaking momentum witnessed this year on the challenge for this generation — climate change,” said […]