From yesterday's #IceBridge flight: A tabular iceberg can be seen on the right, floating among sea ice just off of… https://t.co/MOc3UjFRUQ— NASA Ice (@NASA Ice)1539794700.0
We usually think of icebergs as craggy chunks like the one from Titanic, but IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck caused a stir after he captured photos of the flat, sharp-cornered specimens.
"I thought it was pretty interesting; I often see icebergs with relatively straight edges, but I've not really seen one before with two corners at such right angles like this one had," Harbeck said in a NASA post.
These nature-made frozen slabs have an official name: "tabular icebergs." Because of its smooth surface and clean edges, the rectangular berg likely only recently broke off the Larsen C ice shelf, which famously released a Delaware-sized chunk of ice last year, now dubbed A68.
"The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf," NASA tweeted.
In the new photo (at the top of this article), Harbeck captured a slightly less rectangular iceberg around the same area. Look closely and you can see a corner of the now-classic rectangular iceberg as well as A68 in the distance.
"I was actually more interested in capturing the A68 iceberg that we were about to fly over, but I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and fairly photogenic, so on a lark, I just took a couple photos," Harbeck added in the NASA post.
Massive Iceberg Finally Breaks Off: #Antarctic Landscape 'Changed Forever' https://t.co/S5KiGgMJ86 @greenpeaceusa @Greenpeace @MIDASOnIce— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1499862899.0
These calving events are like a long fingernail that eventually snaps off at the end, University of Maryland Earth scientist Kelly Brunt explained to LiveScience.
Such a break can create nearly perfect geometric edges, similar to when a glass plate shatters and creates straight edges, sea ice specialist Alek Petty told NPR.
Operation IceBridge Mission Scientist John Sonntag explains more about the tabular icebergs. Watch here:
New #IceBridge video: Mission Scientist John Sonntag provides commentary on footage from an Oct. 16 flight over the… https://t.co/aglmginyXF— NASA Ice (@NASA Ice)1540400402.0
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2. Most Expensive Hurricane Season Ever
Perhaps the most apropos follow-up to the item above on this top 10 list is hurricanes. This year's hurricane season yielded a total of 17 named storms and 10 hurricanes in the Atlantic, with three Category 4 storms hitting the U.S. for the first time on record. In aggregate, disaster modelers assessed damages from 2017's hurricanes at just over $200 billion—the most expensive season on record for the U.S. While no single hurricane can be attributed directly to climate change, observed increases in overall hurricane activity and intensity in the Atlantic may be linked to climate change.
3. Vaquita vs. Extinction
2017 saw the launch of a bold and desperate collaborative plan, VaquitaCPR, to save the very small and very endangered vaquita porpoise from extinction. With perhaps only 30 vaquita (Phocoena sinus) left on Earth, VaquitaCPR spent months attempting to capture members of the elusive species with the aim of keeping them safe and perhaps breeding them in captivity until the danger of extinction had passed. But after the death of a captured vaquita, the VaquitaCPR team ended the program and called for renewed focus on enforcing a Mexican ban on gillnets, the leading cause of vaquita deaths in the animal's tiny home range in the upper Gulf of California.
4. Plastic Pollution
This year brought a number of notable advances in our understanding of how plastic pollution is affecting our oceans, as well as a surge in action to address this growing threat to ocean health and human health. This summer, researchers produced the first global assessment of all mass-produced plastics ever manufactured. They concluded that a whopping 8 billion metric tons of virgin plastics have been produced to date. Perhaps even more alarmingly, they determined that only 9 percent of our global plastic waste is recycled, an issue that may be exacerbated by China's announcement this summer that it would drastically curtail the import of plastics and other waste for recycling. On the bright side, philanthropists, celebrities and the United Nations created a series of exciting campaigns to reduce single-use plastics and innovation prizes to reduce plastic waste. On the policy side, 2017 also saw California ban carry-out plastic bags, many states in Malaysia ban Styrofoam products, and Kenya enforced a nationwide ban on plastic bags.
5. Iceberg A-68
At some point between July 10 and 12, 2017, a chunk of ice weighing more than a trillion metric tons broke free from the Antarctic Peninsula. While this particular calving event did not raise the sea level, there is great interest in what events like this may mean for the future of the Antarctic ice sheet and global sea-level rise. It remains to be seen whether the calving of the iceberg known as A-68 is a "normal" calving event or if it instead foretells the weakening or collapse of the Larsen C ice shelf to which it was once attached.
6. Spying on Coral Reef Destruction
In a year of yin and yang, marine researchers made exciting advances in our technological capacity to observe from space how people are impacting oceans, and in so doing learned more about just how dire the scope is. In one notable 2017 study, for example, researchers developed techniques to use flocks of new shoebox-size satellites and documented that military base construction in parts of the South China Sea had led to the reduction of regional coral reefs by up to 70 percent.
7. First Large-Scale Seabed Mining
This was also the year that humans broke ground on the world's first large-scale mineral extraction project in the ocean. The project, led by Japan, was launched 70 nautical miles (130 kilometers) from the island of Okinawa at a depth of about 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) near an inactive hydrothermal vent. Japan plans to begin commercially mining this site for ore that includes zinc, gold, copper and lead by 2020. The activities of mining vessels associated with this project, along with all seabed mining exploration worldwide, can now be tracked online. Also of note this year, the International Seabed Authority made important advances in developing a global Mining Code for the high seas, taking the world a step closer to bringing full-scale seabed mining into international waters.
8. Arctic Fishing Ban
Historically, thick ice has prevented commercial fishing in the central Arctic Ocean. However, recent accelerated loss of summer sea ice has raised questions about the future of fishing in these delicate polar regions. In a prescient move, nine countries and the European Union agreed in late November 2017 to make the central Arctic Ocean off-limits to fishing for at least 16 years until more can be learned about the ecology and sensitivity of potential fisheries in the region.
9. New Mega Marine Parks
Another bright spot in 2017 ocean news was the establishment of massive protected areas in the ocean. Mexico created a protected area larger than Greece around a series of volcanic islands in the Revillagigedo Archipelago that host manta rays, sharks and sea turtles. The government of Chile and the people of Rapa Nui confirmed the establishment this year of an even larger marine protected area, roughly the size of the Chilean mainland, that was first announced in 2015. And the Mongolia-size Ross Sea Marine Protected Area near Antarctica, established in 2016, came into force on Dec. 1.
10. Steps Toward a High-Seas Treaty
This year saw the United Nations take promising steps toward safeguarding marine life on the high seas, the immense stretches of open water beyond countries' jurisdictions that comprise two-thirds of global oceans. In July, a UN planning committee officially recommended that treaty negotiations begin. To close out 2017, on Dec. 24 the body resolved to kick off the treaty-negotiation process and planned a series of four meetings between 2018 and mid-2020. The treaty's final text is anticipated by late 2020. Hopefully this process will lead to the adoption of improved strategies and the creation of new policy tools, such as internationally sanctioned protected areas, that will help protect high-seas biodiversity.
Reposted with permission from our media associate Mongabay.
Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.