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Viruses, pollution and warming ocean temperatures have plagued corals in recent years. The onslaught of abuse has caused mass bleaching events and threatened the long-term survival of many ocean species. While corals have little chance of surviving through a mass bleaching, a new study found that when corals turn a vibrant neon color, it's in a last-ditch effort to survive, as CBS News reported.
<p>Rather than going through a bleaching where the coral turns white, many reef regions around the world have seen coral reefs go through a "colorful bleaching," where the coral turns brilliant hues of bright purple, pink, and orange. The colors appear as a survival technique as the corals face stress from increased ocean temperatures and a lack of nutrients, according to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/coral-reefs-dying-climate-change-oceans-seas-bleaching-a9529261.html" target="_blank">The Independent</a>.</p><p>The new <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(20)30571-6.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982220305716%3Fshowall%3Dtrue" target="_blank">study</a> led by researchers from the University of Southampton in the UK was published in the journal <em><a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30571-6#secsectitle0090" target="_blank">Current Biology</a></em>. Scientists had first spotted the neon coral a decade ago, but they were stumped as to why the vibrant colors appeared.</p>
<p>In coral bleaching, the algae that live in healthy coral try to flee from rising ocean temperatures. Their symbiotic relationship can end if ocean temperatures rise just 1 degree Celsius. The warmer temperatures cause the algae to escape the shelter provided by the coral, leaving behind a bleached skeleton.</p><p>However, in colorful bleaching events, the coral add an extra protective layer to help them endure difficult ocean conditions. That new layer is made up from pigments similar to the green fluorescent protein that makes some jellyfish glow, according to <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/coral-reefs-glow-neon-colors-in-an-effort-to-survive/" target="_blank">CNET</a>. The glowing pigment is produced through the algae's interaction with sunlight.</p>
<p>To perform the study, researchers at the University of Southampton's Coral Reef Laboratory analyzed 15 colorful bleaching events between 2010 and 2019. They identified the trends that caused them and recreated those conditions in their lab. They noticed that the color comes out to protect the coral from the sun's harmful rays, effectively making it a sunscreen layer. That display of glowing color is an attempt to signal the algae to come back, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dying-coral-reefs-colorful-bleaching-survival-effort-climate-change/" target="_blank">CBS News</a> reported.</p><p>"Our research shows colorful bleaching involves a self-regulating mechanism, a so-called optical feedback loop, which involves both partners of the symbiosis," lead researcher professor Jörg Wiedenmann of the University of Southampton said in a <a href="https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2020/05/colourful-corals.page" target="_blank">press release</a>.</p>
<p>"The resulting sunscreen layer will subsequently promote the return of the symbionts. As the recovering algal population starts taking up the light for their photosynthesis again, the light levels inside the coral will drop and the coral cells will lower the production of the colorful pigments to their normal level."</p><p>Bleaching is not always a death sentence for corals, the coral animal can still be alive," said Dr. Cecilia D'Angelo, professor of molecular coral biology at Southampton, as <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/coral-reefs-dying-climate-change-oceans-seas-bleaching-a9529261.html" target="_blank">The Independent</a> reported. "If the stress event is mild enough, corals can re-establish the symbiosis with their algal partner.</p><p>"Unfortunately, recent episodes of global bleaching caused by unusually warm water have resulted in high coral mortality, leaving the world's coral reefs struggling for survival."</p><p><a href="https://earth.google.com/web/@-22.3116493,166.2806091,2.21258836a,0d,60y,286.28320394h,95t,0r/data=CkoSSBIgY2EwYzk0ZGNhN2I4MTFlN2I1ZDBiNzRhMWFlNGU2MDMiJGVmZWVkX29jZWFuX2FnZW5jeV9jb3JhbF9ibGVhY2hpbmdfNCIwCixBRjFRaXBNV1VMNTBRSWIxYmMzNkdmb2JmV3JrSU9rWmtGWEZiTExDeW5kVRAF" target="_blank">The Ocean Agency</a> describes the process as a "chilling, beautiful and heartbreaking" final cry for help as the coral attempts to grab the algae's attention, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dying-coral-reefs-colorful-bleaching-survival-effort-climate-change/" target="_blank">CBS News</a> reported.</p>
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A baby humpback whale tail slaps in the Pacific Ocean in front of the West Maui Mountains. share your experiences / Moment / Getty Images
The depths of the oceans are heating up more slowly than the surface and the air, but that will undergo a dramatic shift in the second half of the century, according to a new study. Researchers expect the rate of climate change in the deep parts of the oceans could accelerate to seven times their current rate after 2050, as The Guardian reported.
<p>The study, published in the journal <em><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0773-5" target="_blank">Nature Climate Change</a></em>, found that different parts of the ocean undergo change at different rates as the extra heat from increasing levels of greenhouse gases moved through the vast ocean depths, making it increasingly tricky for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/marine-life" target="_self">marine life</a> to adapt, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/26/climate-change-in-deep-oceans-could-be-seven-times-faster-by-middle-of-century-report-says" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>The researchers saw grim prospects for marine life after looking at a metric called climate velocity, which measures the speed and direction a species shifts as their habitat warms, according to <a href="https://www.coastfm.co.uk/news/technology/deep-ocean-life-faces-escalating-threat-from" target="_blank">Sky News</a>.</p>
<p>The scientists, led by Isaac Brito-Morales, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Queensland in Australia, used data from 11 different climate models to predict what the rest of the 21st century will look like, as <a href="https://www.coastfm.co.uk/news/technology/deep-ocean-life-faces-escalating-threat-from" target="_blank">Sky News</a> reported. Brito-Morales and his team looked at the past 50 years of data and projections for future greenhouse gas emissions.</p><p>"This allowed us to compare climate velocity in four ocean depth zones — assessing in which zones <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self">biodiversity</a> could shift their distribution the most in response to climate change," said Brito-Morales, in a University of Queensland <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-05-deep-ocean-slowlybut.html" target="_blank">statement</a>.</p>
<p>The researchers looked at future rates of change in three different scenarios, one where emissions start to fall, another where they start to fall by the middle of this century, and a third where emissions continued to rise up to 2100.</p><p>The study found "a rapid acceleration of climate change exposure throughout the water column" in the second half of the century, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/26/climate-change-in-deep-oceans-could-be-seven-times-faster-by-middle-of-century-report-says" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported.</p><p>Professor Jorge García Molinos, a climate ecologist at Hokkaido University's Arctic Research Center in Japan, and a co-author of the study, said to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/26/climate-change-in-deep-oceans-could-be-seven-times-faster-by-middle-of-century-report-says" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, "Our results suggest that deep sea biodiversity is likely to be at greater risk because they are adapted to much more stable thermal environments."</p><p>"The acceleration of climate velocity is consistent through all tested greenhouse gas concentration scenarios," Moinos added, as <a href="https://www.aninews.in/news/science/climate-change-can-affect-deep-sea-biodiversity-slowly-study-finds20200526181939/" target="_blank">ANI News</a> in India reported.</p>
<p>So far, ocean water surfaces are experiencing climate velocity about twice the rate of the lower regions. Consequently, life in the depths of the ocean has been less affected than, say, coral, which are much closer to the surface of the water.</p><p>"However by the end of the century, assuming we have a high-emissions future, there is not only much greater surface warming, but also this warmth will penetrate deeper," said Brito-Morales in a <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-05-deep-ocean-slowlybut.html" target="_blank">statement</a>. "In waters between a depth of 200 and 1000 meters, our research showed climate velocities accelerated to 11 times the present rate.</p><p>"And in an interesting twist, not only is climate velocity moving at different speeds at different depths in the ocean, but also in different directions which poses huge challenges to the ways we design protected areas," he added.</p><p>Several problems exist for marine life such as tuna. First, although they live in the depths, the plankton they eat are near the surface, meaning tuna will have to go through changing water to find food. Secondly, fish in the depths of the ocean are accustomed to a highly stable environment. They are extremely vulnerable to any slight changes in ocean temperatures, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/26/climate-change-in-deep-oceans-could-be-seven-times-faster-by-middle-of-century-report-says" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported.</p>
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A young monk seal underwater in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. NOAA / PIFSC / HMSRP
By Tara Lohan
The Sargasso Sea, an area of the Atlantic Ocean between the Caribbean and Bermuda, has bedeviled sailors for centuries. Its namesake — sargassum, a type of free-floating seaweed — and notoriously calm winds have "trapped" countless mariners, including the crew of Christopher Columbus's Santa Maria.
<p>For the past 500 years, most of the stories that have come from the Sargasso have been about stranded ships and sunken vessels. But in recent years scientists have rewritten the sea's narrative. It's not a life-stealing sea, but a life-giving one. The seaweed alone helps support 100 species of invertebrates, 280 species of fish and 23 species of birds.</p><p>That's one of the reasons why a team of scientists from 13 universities and institutions included the Sargasso Sea as one of 10 biodiversity hotspots in the high seas — areas of the ocean outside of national boundaries — that their research indicates should be considered for designation as marine protected areas.</p><p>Their <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X19309194#!" target="_blank">recommendations</a>, published earlier this year in the journal <em>Marine Policy</em>, took more than a little bit of work to develop.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/ocean-biodiversity-mpa/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>. </em><em></em></p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzMxMzEwNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5OTkwNzAyM30.Np_V-1lN3jiRrejo8GI3dZ0C7rzIbgCQr2vaV-U3-Xk/img.jpg?width=980" id="ef11e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a71193b1578c9a9b1b6edd21ccdbd716" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Results from the global data-driven conservation planning analysis showing priority areas to be considered for protection (green) in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction. Visalli et al
Quantifying the Great Unknown
<p>The high seas make up two-thirds of the ocean, much of which is remote. Scientists are still learning about the diversity and complexity of life there.</p><p>"We're discovering new species in the high seas all the time," said Morgan Visalli, lead author of <em>Marine Policy</em> study and a project scientist with U.C. Santa Barbara's <a href="https://boi.ucsb.edu/" target="_blank">Benioff Ocean Initiative</a>.</p><p>But at the same time, her colleague and study coauthor Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative, said there's also a lot we <em>do</em> know that can help guide conservation.</p><p>They began their study by reaching out to networks of colleagues across the world to help gather data.</p><p>"I was really impressed by how much we actually know — how much data we have for what is out there, biologically speaking," he said. "And also what people are doing in that space. We can't fall back on the excuse of not knowing enough."</p><p>The researchers ended up analyzing 22 billion data points — a huge data-processing challenge — to identify areas of the high seas that could warrant protection.</p><p>That included looking at indicators such as seafloor habitat, ocean productivity, diversity and richness of species, and extinction risks. They also identified certain physical features — like seamounts and hydrothermal vents — where changes in elevation and temperature help foster biodiversity.</p><p>Their results identified <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2020/03/a-path-to-creating-the-first-generation-of-high-seas-protected-areas" target="_blank">priority regions</a> in nearly all the major ocean basins, with the largest areas in the South Pacific Ocean. Key areas also included the Sargasso Sea, as well as the Costa Rica thermal dome in the Pacific Ocean; the South Tasman Sea; the Emperor Seamount Chain northwest of the Hawaiian Islands; the Mascarene Plateau in the Indian Ocean; and the Walvis Ridge, an undersea mountain range off southwestern Africa.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzMxMzEwNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNDI4NDYwN30.QFfMyJCTEjL8D37O12PIkoBxHP_Pb9DNEnRV6eiEiKo/img.jpg?width=980" id="9c6dd" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7261fcecfef2fae3263eb06f1e3f8b1c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
UCSB analysis; Marineregions.org; Natural Earth. © 2020 The Pew Charitable Trusts
<p>Their model avoided areas of high fishing activity in order to avoid what the study calls "real or perceived negative socioeconomic impacts" of setting aside conservation areas. It also took into consideration how climate change could alter biodiversity by selecting areas critical today and ones likely to be important in the future as well.</p>The Need for Protection
<p>The research comes at a critical time for the future of the ocean — and the high seas, specifically.</p><p>A new United Nations treaty to protect and conserve biodiversity in the high seas is<a href="https://therevelator.org/high-seas-treaty/" target="_blank"> currently being negotiated</a>, and a focus of those talks is how to create a framework for establishing marine protected areas outside of national waters. This could help ensure that unique ecosystems like the Sargasso Sea and others identified in the <em>Marine Policy</em> study aren't overexploited.</p><p>The current law that governs the high seas, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, was finalized in 1982. But since then, our collective impact is starting to reveal gaps in governance.</p><p>Marine shipping traffic is up 1,600 percent and plastic pollution has increased 100-fold. At least one-third of fish stocks are being overharvested, and many migratory fish species, such as tuna, have declined more than 60 percent. Technological advances have led to more prospecting in the ocean's depths for minerals and other genetic resources, as well as more destructive practices, like trawling along the ocean floor. Climate change, which is warming waters and increasing acidification, poses even more risks to ocean life.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzMxMzEwOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzE3NTg0MX0.Hg5Z-qf8B0rThFdYtITYNyBUPqsoWm8f-xxVHKV0MhY/img.jpg?width=980" id="2c686" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="60a28fa3ad6adf7e3397251af13e1ccf" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Coral bleaching in the Gulf of Thailand. Petchrung Sukpong / CC BY-SA 2.0
<p>This has all taken a toll.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/" target="_blank">landmark report</a> last year from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found massive declines in biodiversity globally — including in the ocean, with one-third of all reef-forming corals and marine mammals threatened with extinction.</p><p>A recent study in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2146-7" target="_blank" style="">Nature</a>, published just a few days after the <em>Marine Policy</em> study, suggests that we've come to a critical crossroads.</p><p>"We are at a point at which we can choose between a legacy of a resilient and vibrant ocean or an irreversibly disrupted ocean, for the generations to follow," wrote the researchers, led by Carlos Duarte, a professor of marine science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.</p><p>They posited that with enough resources and global will, we can see a "substantial recovery of the abundance, structure and function of marine life" by 2050. But to do that, we need to scale up efforts to protect vulnerable species and habitats, reduce pollution and — most critically — curb climate change.</p><p>That's why Visalli and McCauley believe efforts like the emerging high seas treaty are important.</p><p>So far fully implemented marine protected areas span just 5 percent of the ocean. And the vast majority of these reserves are in national waters, which are only one-third of the ocean. But a high seas treaty would help create a framework to more easily set aside conservation-rich areas in a much greater expanse.</p><p>"Even though there is industry out there and it has been increasing over the past several decades," said Visalli, "there is still a lot of wilderness in the high seas, and we are at this moment where we have an opportunity to protect these wild places before industry continues to expand even further."</p><p>To truly protect and restore ocean health, scientists have been calling for a bare minimum of 30 percent of the ocean to be protected. More protected areas in the high seas are important for meeting that goal. But just as crucial as how much space, is also <em>where</em> that space is.</p>The Need for Protected Spaces
<p>The major driver for changing and threatening biodiversity in the long term is climate change, said McCauley, which makes protecting these spaces vital in the short term.</p><p>"We are already seeing the first manifestation of these threats and we need to think about climate change and always manage the oceans — from fishing regulations to ocean parks — with that in mind," he said. "Climate change is changing where biodiversity will be in the high seas, and we can use data to plan for that."</p><p>Duarte and authors of the <em>Nature</em> study wrote that "Climate change is the critical backdrop against which all future rebuilding efforts will play out." But well-managed marine protected areas, they said, can help ecosystems be better equipped to handle threats from climate change, like warming temperatures and changing ocean chemistry.</p><p>Getting there won't be cheap. A global network of marine protected areas that conserves 20–30 percent of the ocean could cost $5–19 billion a year, the researchers write in <em>Nature</em>.</p><p>But supporting local economies, feeding communities, and fostering biodiversity don't have to be mutually exclusive. The money spent on conservation will be more than returned in economic gains from the new jobs, revenue from ecotourism, restored fisheries, and protections for coastal areas, their research found.</p><p>But establishing the policy and international agreements, like the high seas treaty, to set plans in motion will require a lot of compromise, said McCauley.</p><p>"We need that space to have an ocean economy and we need that space to have biodiversity," he said. "Can we find a sweet spot?"</p>From Your Site Articles
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A biologist looks at microplastics found in sea species at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research near Athens, Greece on Nov. 26, 2019. LOUISA GOULIAMAKI / AFP via Getty Images
New research suggests there may be far more microplastics in the ocean than initially estimated.
<p>Microplastics, which breakdown into miniscule pieces of plastic are notoriously tricky to catch. Their small size allows them to get buried in <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans">ocean</a> sediment and to escape through nets.</p><p>Now, a team of researchers, led by scientists at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England, used a finer net to get a more accurate picture of the amount of plastic in the ocean. Their research suggests the seas may be holding as many as 125 trillion microplastic particles, according to the study published in the journal <em><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749120310253#!" target="_blank">Environmental Pollution</a></em>, as <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/microplastics-ocean-vastly-underestimated-125-trillion-particles-floating-around-1505404" target="_blank">Newsweek</a> reported.</p>
<p>Microplastics are usually defined as tiny pieces of plastic that measure less than five millimeters across. However, despite the abundance of microplastics in the ocean, scientists have actually had a difficult time quantifying and classifying them. Usually, researchers gather samples with nets with a mesh size of 333 micrometers, or 0.333 millimeters, but these do not account for smaller pieces of plastic debris, as <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/microplastics-ocean-vastly-underestimated-125-trillion-particles-floating-around-1505404" target="_blank">Newsweek</a> reported.</p><p>The Plymouth Marine Laboratory scientists, along with researchers from the University of Exeter, used nets with a mesh size of 100 micrometers, or 0.1 millimeters, to get a more accurate picture of the microplastics swirling around coastal waters, according to a University of Exeter <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-05-underestimating-microplastics-marine-environment.html" target="_blank">press release</a>.</p>
<p>"It is quite well known what impact larger pieces of plastic have on marine animals, like turtles eating plastic bags mistaking them for jellyfish, but we wanted to know if microplastics are a problem to smaller marine animals like mussels or zooplankton," said Pennie Lindeque, lead author of the study from Plymouth Marine Laboratory, to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/microplastics-ocean-vastly-underestimated-125-trillion-particles-floating-around-1505404" target="_blank">Newsweek</a>.</p><p>"However, first we needed an accurate picture of how many small microplastics there are in the sea, and what sort of plastic they are. We are interested in really quite small microplastics—around 100 micrometers in size, similar to the width of a human hair—and suspected that the standard sampling methods using a net with pores about 333 micrometers in size, wouldn't give an accurate picture."</p>
<p>The researchers compared the efficacy of a 100 micrometer net to what's collected by a 333 micrometer net and a 500 micrometer net. They found that their net collected 2.5 times as much microplastics as the 333 micrometer mesh net. It collected 10 times more microplastic than a 500 micrometer net, according to the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749120310253" target="_blank">study</a>.</p><p>The scientists then extrapolated that data to determine that there are roughly 3,700 pieces of microplastic in one cubic meter. That means that previous global estimates of 5 to 50 trillion particles of microplastics are severely low. The true number, according to the data in the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749120310253" target="_blank">study</a>, is somewhere between 12.5 and 125 trillion particles.</p>
<p>"There is often a mismatch between the number and type of microplastics used in experimental studies and those found in the natural environment," said Rachel Coppock, Marine Ecologist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and a co-author on the study, in a <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-05-underestimating-microplastics-marine-environment.html" target="_blank">statement</a>. "This study confirms that microplastic concentration increases with decreasing size and also provides a framework for determining microplastic concentrations in exposure studies, particularly with animals such as zooplankton that eat micron-sized food."</p><p>The researchers focused on coastal water since that is where microplastics are likely to have the greatest impact on marine life. They sampled the water on both sides of the Atlantic, choosing a spot off the coast of Maine and another in the English Channel, according to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/microplastics-ocean-vastly-underestimated-125-trillion-particles-floating-around-1505404" target="_blank">Newsweek</a>.</p><p>"I was surprised at the extent that we had been underestimating the microplastic abundance in the marine environment; I was also surprised how consistent the results were on both sides of the North Atlantic, the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and the southwest coast of the UK," Lindeque told <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/microplastics-ocean-vastly-underestimated-125-trillion-particles-floating-around-1505404" target="_blank">Newsweek</a>.</p>
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More than 700 New Yorkers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on April 18, 2019 to demand Governor Andrew Cuomo block the controversial Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) Pipeline, which would carry fracked gas through New York Harbor. Erik McGregor / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images
New York state has rejected the controversial Williams pipeline that would have carried fracked natural gas from Pennsylvania through New Jersey, running beneath New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean before connecting to an existing pipeline system off Long Island.
<p>The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) <a href="https://www.dec.ny.gov/press/120414.html" target="_blank">announced</a> the decision Friday, arguing that pipeline construction would have harmed <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/water" target="_self">water</a> quality and threatened <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/marine-life" target="_self">marine life</a>.</p><p>"New York is not prepared to sacrifice the State's water quality for a project that is not only environmentally harmful but also unnecessary to meet New York's energy needs," DEC spokesperson Erica Ringewald said in a statement <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2020/05/15/cuomo-administration-cites-new-climate-law-in-denying-controversial-new-york-new-jersey-pipeline-1284299" target="_blank">reported by POLITICO</a>.</p><p>The decision is a victory for grassroots activists who have long campaigned against the pipeline. After Oklahoma-based company Williams submitted its most recent application, New Yorkers sent in more than 25,000 comments opposing the pipeline in two weeks, <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bc942dbb10f255d8dde1e5c/t/5ebf10266fb5fa69a13fd327/1589579814146/%5BPRESS+RELEASE%5D+2020+Williams+NESE+Pipeline+Denial+With+Prejudice.pdf" target="_blank">according to the Stop the Williams Pipeline Coalition</a>.</p><p>"We know [New York State Gov. Andrew] Cuomo only did this because we pressured him to do so," anti-pipeline campaigner Lee Ziesche told <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/cuomo-williams-pipeline_n_5ebdbe5dc5b6c9c1874157a6?ri18n=true" target="_blank">HuffPost</a>. "At the end of the day, he still needs to make a plan to get New York off of gas."</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1261418760218521600" id="twitter-embed-1261418760218521600" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1261418760218521600&created_ts=1589580643.0&screen_name=NoNYHarborPipe&text=WE+STOPPED+THE+WILLIAMS+PIPELINE%21+%0A%0ARead+our+full+stament+here%3A+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FZVPbkPmfeh%0A%0A%23StopTheWilliamsPipeline+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F001XBpamwf&id=1261418760218521600&name=Stop+the+Williams+Pipeline" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="dd090adf94140b51fb0658d858929fbe"></iframe>
<p>The rejection comes a little less than a year after New York state passed ambitious <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/grassroots-climate-campaign-new-york-2638905712.html" target="_self">climate legislation</a> requiring the state to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. That deadline is one of the reasons that NYSDEC rejected the pipeline, according to POLITICO.</p><p>"While the Department recognizes that many building assets in the State currently rely on natural gas for heating and other energy uses, the continued long-term use of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" target="_self">fossil fuels</a> is inconsistent with the State's laws and objectives and with the actions necessary to prevent the most severe impacts from <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate change</a>," DEC wrote in a <a href="https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/permits_ej_operations_pdf/nesewqcdenial05152020.pdf" target="_blank">letter</a> explaining its decision. "Without appropriate alternatives or GHG mitigation measures, the Project could extend the amount of time that natural gas may be relied upon to produce energy, which could in turn delay, frustrate, or increase the cost of the necessary transition away from natural gas and other fossil fuels."</p>
<p>NYDDEC also said that construction would disturb toxic sediments like copper and mercury and harm habitats like shellfish beds.</p><p>Williams disagreed with New York's assessment.</p><p>"We continue to believe that the fundamentals of our project align with New York's clean energy goals because it would have improved local air quality and, at the same time, supported economic development and led to lower heating bills," Williams said in a statement <a href="https://www.nj.com/news/2020/05/ny-rejects-controversial-pipeline-across-raritan-bay-nj-could-soon-do-the-same.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=tweet&utm_campaign=NESE" target="_blank">reported by NJ.com</a>.</p><p>New York utility National Grid has argued that the pipeline is necessary to meet growing demand, according to HuffPost, but a study released in April by the <a href="https://ieefa.org/ieefa-report-proposed-nese-gas-pipeline-may-stick-nys-ratepayers-with-one-billion-dollar-cost/" target="_blank">Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis</a> found no evidence this was the case.</p>
<p>While the Williams pipeline, officially called the Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline, has been rejected before by both New York and New Jersey officials, this rejection is more final, HuffPost explained. The previous rejection was without prejudice, meaning the pipeline owners were invited to reapply if they addressed environmental concerns. Friday's rejection was with prejudice.</p><p>"That's the end of the line," anti-pipeline campaigner and former NYSDEC regional director Suzanne Mattei told HuffPost. "A denial with prejudice means the department has determined the environmental impacts of the pipeline are unacceptable and that the company has not given it reason to believe that it can make changes to its proposal that would convert it into an acceptable proposal."</p><p>The project received yet another blow later Friday, when New Jersey also denied the pipeline the permits it would have needed to cross the state, NJ.com reported.</p>
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<p>"This month, new reporting from New York indicated that the energy needs proposed to be served by this project could be met through existing infrastructure, energy efficiency, and other means," the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said in a statement Saturday. "With no compelling public need demonstrated, and a denial issued by New York, DEP denied approvals for the project on May 15, 2020."</p>
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Cocoa Beach saw a huge spike in trash as cleanup crews collected more than 13,000 pounds strewn across the sand over the weekend. Jeffrey Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
When beaches in Florida reopened last week, people flocked to them to absorb the sun, sand and water. Unfortunately, many forgot to take their trash with them when they left.
<p>While pollution and emissions have precipitously dropped worldwide, Cocoa Beach saw a huge spike in garbage as cleanup crews collected more than 13,000 pounds strewn across the sand over the weekend, as <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/497183-more-than-13000-pounds-of-trash-collected-at-florida-beach-just" target="_blank">The Hill</a> reported.</p><p>The beaches, which reopened on April 21, will remain open, but authorities will start to crack down on litter by increasing the fines and enforcement, according to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2020/05/09/coronavirus-reopenings-cocoa-beach-florida-cracks-down-litter/3104430001/" target="_blank">Florida Today</a>. Littering will now come with a $250 fine.</p>
<p>"As restrictions are becoming more relaxed during this pandemic, the City of Cocoa Beach is beginning to see an influx of day-trippers to our beaches, along with piles of unlawfully discarded trash in their wake," Cocoa Beach Police Department wrote in a notice, according to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2020/05/09/coronavirus-reopenings-cocoa-beach-florida-cracks-down-litter/3104430001/" target="_blank">Florida Today</a>. "This will not be tolerated."</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CocoaBeachPoliceFire/photos/a.135655014526966/228991078526692/?type=3&theater" target="_blank">Facebook post</a>, the Cocoa Beach Police Department stated that they will be "focusing on litter violations in the days and weeks ahead in an effort to educate the public and mitigate this repulsive and disrespectful behavior."</p>
<p>This weekend's litter collection surpassed the previous weekend's total of roughly 12,000 pounds. Two weekends ago, cleanup crews collected 297 bags of trash, which weigh roughly 40 pounds per bag. Bryan Bobbitt, executive director of Keep Brevard Beautiful, told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/florida-beach-litter-pandemic-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> that the true number would be higher since they did not collect many larger items like tent poles and beach chairs that were left behind.</p><p>This weekend's total was 305 bags of trash, according to Bobbitt. Volunteers and observers have noticed that the discarded items are often single-use <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastics">plastics</a>.</p>
<p>"People will come from out of town and leave an umbrella, a tent or chairs because it's a onetime use," said Bobbitt to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/florida-beach-litter-pandemic-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>. "Chip bags, plastic straw wrappers and anything can get blown into the dunes."</p><p>Cocoa Beach Police Chief Scott Rosenfeld said in a statement that the local community works "very hard to be stewards of environmental sustainability," as <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/497183-more-than-13000-pounds-of-trash-collected-at-florida-beach-just" target="_blank">The Hill</a> reported.</p><p>"If I need to relocate critical resources during our peak season to combat litterers, we are no longer asking our visitors to comply with our litter laws, we expect it, and there will be consequences for offenders," he added.</p>
<p>The litter poses a threat to Florida's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/marine-life">marine life</a> and to the beach environment. Keep Brevard Beautiful says the goal of their cleanup efforts is to keep the environment safe for humans and for animals.</p><p>"When we see something that can be a choking hazard to marine life, we make it a point to get that stuff as well," Bobbitt said to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/florida-beach-litter-pandemic-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>. "If we don't pick it up, it gets blown into the water. We've all seen the photo of the straw stuck in a sea turtle's nose or a 6-pack ring around a bird's neck."</p>This past weekend, the police only issued one citation for littering. Noting some of the challenges in issuing a litter violation, Cocoa Beach Detective Sgt. Thomas Cooper told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/florida-beach-litter-pandemic-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>, "You have to say they're the person who legally left that trash. The officers are stuck."
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The green sea turtle's range extends throughout tropical and subtropical seas around the world. Constanza S. Mora / CC BY 2.0
By Tara Lohan
Most of us have never been to the world's immense last wilderness and never will. It's beyond the horizon and often past the limits of our imaginations. It contains towering underwater mountain ranges, ancient corals, mysterious, unknown forms of life and the largest seagrass meadow in the world.
<p>Yet it begins just 200 nautical miles off our shores. Technically referred to as "areas beyond national jurisdiction," these remote expanses are known to most people simply as "the high seas."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/high-seas-treaty/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>. </em><em></em></p>
<p>Their vast, dark waters encompass roughly two-thirds of the ocean and half the planet and are the last great global commons. Yet just 1 percent are protected, leaving these <a href="https://therevelator.org/ocean-outlaw-book-urbina/" target="_blank">vital but relatively lawless expanses</a> open to overfishing, pollution, piracy and other threats.</p><p>That could change soon.</p><p>In 2018, after more than a decade of groundwork at the United Nations, negotiations officially began for a new treaty focused on conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in the waters beyond national jurisdiction.</p><p>The proposed treaty is being developed under the <a href="https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_overview_convention.htm" target="_blank">U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea</a>, which was signed in 1982 and defined nations' rights and responsibilities for use of the world's oceans. The Convention itself is a landmark agreement that established many key environmental protections and policies, but over the years it's become obvious that some gaps in its governance policy have left the ocean's ecosystems open to ongoing and emerging threats.</p>
<p>The new treaty is intended to help fill those gaps, although, as with any international agreement, that presents challenges. Representatives of world governments gathered in 2018 and 2019 for three rounds of negotiations, but many parts of the key issues remained unresolved. Among them are plans to establish a framework for evaluating and implementing area-based management tools, which include marine protected areas, since no such systems exist now for the high seas.</p><p>Other items requiring agreement include establishing uniform requirements for conducting environmental impact assessments; how benefits from marine genetic resources may be shared among nations; and capacity building for management and conservation.</p><p>Many experts hoped the fourth negotiation session, originally scheduled to begin March 23 at the U.N. headquarters in New York, would lead to the finalization of the treaty's text, but the meetings were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p>That pause gives us an opportunity to understand what's at stake a bit better.</p><p>"This is the first time that there's been a treaty process devoted to marine biodiversity in the high seas and the first ocean treaty really to be negotiated in over 30 years," said Peggy Kalas, director of the <a href="http://www.highseasalliance.org/" target="_blank">High Seas Alliance</a>, a coalition of more than 40 environmental nonprofits and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. "It's a big deal, and it's been a long time coming."</p>
<p>But this historic opportunity is also one that could be squandered if the treaty fails to enact protections strong enough to actually safeguard ocean life.</p><p>"It has the potential to be a gamechanger for the oceans," said Douglas McCauley, a professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology at U.C. Santa Barbara and director of the <a href="https://boi.ucsb.edu/" target="_blank">Benioff Ocean Initiative</a>. "But it's still to be determined whether it will be just the treaty version of lip service."</p>
The Need for Protection
<p>We're all connected to the high seas, even if we never actually see them, says Morgan Visalli, a project scientist at Benioff Ocean Initiative at U.C. Santa Barbara. "It's incredibly important for helping to regulate the climate, for providing oxygen, food and jobs."</p><p>Even on land we depend on a healthy ocean. Phytoplankton in the ocean <a href="https://therevelator.org/phytoplankton-climate-change/" target="_blank">generate half our oxygen</a>, and the ocean plays a key role in mitigating climate change — absorbing 25 percent of our CO2 emissions and 90 percent of heat related to those emissions. It's also home to a rich diversity of species, some of which we're still discovering.</p><p>But marine ecosystems face grave threats from an onslaught of abuses: chemical, plastic and noise pollution; deep seabed mining and other kinds of resource extraction; increased shipping; overfishing and illegal fishing; and <a href="https://therevelator.org/ocean-climate-change/" target="_blank">climate change</a>, which is altering both the temperature and chemistry of the waters.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzI2ODY4NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNDA2MDM1N30.-ljbryulwGu6Xug0ADHXyDtXz747eqw65fTq7fTy4uY/img.jpg?width=980" id="26d57" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4db6779cc8a42ec188116ac51f7968a9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Cargo ship at sea. Bernard Spragg / public domain
<p>Numerous strategies are needed to tackle these problems, including the bedrock component of reducing greenhouse gases.</p><p>But a key tool that scientists have identified to help restore biodiversity is establishing reserves, often referred to as ocean parks or marine protected areas.</p><p>We know pretty well how to do this in national waters — there are <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/02/22/how-much-of-the-ocean-is-really-protected" target="_blank">more than 15,000</a> of them already in places like Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the Florida Keys. But few such protected areas exist in the high seas because there is no international framework to guide the process. One such effort to establish a marine protected area in Antarctica's Ross Sea took years of research and diplomacy to implement.</p><p>It's simply not feasible to scale the process — especially in the time we'd need to do it. That's why creating such a framework for marine protected areas in waters outside of national waters is a key part of the new high-seas treaty negotiations.</p><p>And that fits into a larger global vision.</p><p>The participant nations in another international treaty, the Convention on Biological Diversity, are set to convene this fall. The agenda includes a goal of enacting an international framework to protect 30% of the oceans by 2030.</p><p>It's a goal that scientists call a bare minimum. And it's one that may be impossible to meet without the high-seas treaty.</p><p>"The science is clear, if we're going to sustain a healthy, functioning ocean ecosystem, we need to be protecting at least 30% of the world's oceans," said Liz Karan, who leads <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/projects/protecting-ocean-life-on-the-high-seas" target="_blank">efforts to protect the high seas</a> for Pew Charitable Trusts, a member of the High Seas Alliance.</p><p>In anticipation of the treaty's passage, scientists like Visalli and McCauley have already started modeling how new <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X19309194#!" target="_blank">priority areas could be identified</a>.</p><iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1247637692298309632" id="twitter-embed-1247637692298309632" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1247637692298309632&created_ts=1586294980.0&screen_name=UCSBenioffOcean&text=The+high+seas+are+our+last+global+commons+%26amp%3B+essential+to+life+on+earth.+As+the+UN+weighs+a+groundbreaking+%23HighSeas%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FRZM4DToxhU&id=1247637692298309632&name=Benioff+Ocean+Initiative" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="2be6714cacbdb1a5a33ef1e44e7b6e2d"></iframe><p>The other parts of the treaty, including environmental impact assessments and genetic resources, remain vital areas of discussion, but conservation groups have stressed the importance of protected ocean reserves for protecting the planet.</p><p>"If we want the ocean to continue its role in climate adaptation and being able to absorb the excess heat that it does, we need to create areas of resilience for the ocean," said Kalas. "And the best way to do that is marine protected areas."</p>
The Challenges
<p>Of course the devil is in the details.</p><p>While thousands of marine protected areas already exist, they come with varying levels of protections — much like we see with public lands. Some can be very restrictive, like national parks, or continue to allow extractive activities, such as in national forests.</p><p>Current marine protected areas range from no-take reserves that ban all extraction to areas allowing multiple uses — the latter are more common. Not surprisingly, though, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/75/3/1166/4098821" target="_blank">scientific studies</a> have shown that the no-take reserves do a much better job at protecting and restoring biodiversity.</p><p>Whether the treaty will be a landmark conservation effort or enshrine the status quo has yet to be determined, said Karan. "Both potential pathways are currently reflected in the draft treaty text" at this time.</p><p>From a scientific standpoint, McCauley says, marine protected areas should actually protect the wild character of the area and that means no activities — like mining or bottom trawling — that would disturb habitat. And the protections need to extend down from the ocean's surface, through the water column, to the seafloor.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzI2ODY4Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNzg3OTEzMH0.44V4UQHFCCVNqSVetbbgJ9SxA6Ahs1MizLc4PQmJqlw/img.jpg?width=980" id="c7ad5" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="147defbdf27fe8adf69b6db35a7d1d04" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A kelp forest in a marine protected area off the coast of California. Camille Pagniello / CC BY 2.0
<p>To do that means figuring out how the new treaty would fit with a tangle of more than 20 existing governance organizations that regulate seabed mining, fisheries management and shipping regulations.</p><p>"One of our hopes is that this treaty would knit those pieces together and provide a little bit more coherence and compatibility with those issues, particularly with regards to conservation and sustainable use," said Karan.</p><p>There would also need to be a process for scientifically evaluating areas proposed for protections, and how the established reserves would be managed, and the restrictions enforced.</p><p>"The whole process, the whole vision and opportunity to think about doing something smarter and better — for the ocean, for biodiversity, for us — ends if we don't get strong language in the treaty and get that treaty to pass," said McCauley. "There's historical potential for the oceans, but we need to make sure people on the outside are watching the people on the inside [at the United Nations] in New York."</p>Road Ahead
<p>Even though official treaty negotiations are on hold awaiting a decision on rescheduling the talks, work continues among governments as they review and refine their positions on numerous proposals submitted by states and NGOs.</p><p>The United States has been a participant in the talks, but the treaty process has largely flown under the radar among the general public so far. Given President Trump's position on <a href="https://therevelator.org/environment-deregulation-trump-two-years/" target="_blank">environmental protections</a> and distain for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/climate/trump-paris-agreement-climate.html" target="_blank">multilateralism</a> (like the Paris climate agreement), that's been pretty intentional on the part of environmental NGOs.</p><p>But as efforts may be nearing the finish line, this is starting to shift. Karan says there's more interest from legislators about high seas governance and more need to have an engaged public who can advocate for strong conservation protections.</p><p>Things are complicated, though, by the fact that the United States never ratified the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, widely considered a "Constitution" for the ocean.</p><p>There is hope from some of the participants that the United States could ratify the high seas treaty if it comes to fruition, say Karan. But no one is holding their breath for that. Kalas says the goal is that the treaty, once completed, would be widely supported, although it remains to be seen how many countries will sign on. "If only 40 countries ratify it, that wouldn't make it as strong of an agreement as if all the United Nation's 193 nations ratified the agreement," she said.</p><p>But there's a fine line between having an agreement that's universally supported and one that establishes concrete conservation actions and protections.</p><p>"Our concern is that in trying to get everyone in the tent as it were, we're going to wind up with a status-quo agreement," said Karan. "As much as we want a treaty, we want one that will make concrete change on the water."</p><p>And it's worth remembering, we're talking about a lot of water. When the next session convenes, she said, "states will decide the ocean's fate."</p>
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A newly hatched baby leatherback sea turtle makes its way into a sea for the first time at a beach in Phanga Nga district, Thailand on March 28, 2020. REUTERS / Mongkhonsawat Leungvorapan
By Jiraporn Kuhakan
Thailand has found the largest number of nests of rare leatherback sea turtles in two decades on beaches bereft of tourists because of the coronavirus pandemic, environmentalists say.
<p>From wild boars patrolling the Israeli city of Haifa to deer venturing into London suburbs, virus closures are drawing wildlife into the abandoned streets of many cities.</p><p>In Thailand, with 2,765 infections and 47 deaths, travel curbs ranging from a ban on international flights to an appeal to citizens to stay home have brought a collapse in tourist numbers, but freed up the beaches for wildlife.</p><p>The 11 turtle nests authorities have found since last November were the highest number in 20 years, said Kongkiat Kittiwatanawong, the director of the Phuket Marine Biological Center.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE4MTkxNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0ODE4ODQyMH0.9ujdaGOiYruYspVLQ8T1haQ2cmCBT7mpaziV8bmVmdY/img.jpg?width=980" id="f1c56" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5932bc4474ccccc670382bafc6e86df9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Staff at a national park in the southern province of Phanga Nga bordering the Andaman Sea found 84 hatchlings after monitoring eggs for two months. REUTERS / Mongkhonsawat Leungvorapan
<p>"This is a very good sign for us because many areas for spawning have been destroyed by humans," he told Reuters. No such nests had been found for the previous five years.</p><p>"If we compare to the year before, we didn't have this many spawn, because turtles have a high risk of getting killed by fishing gear and humans disturbing the beach."</p><p>Leatherbacks are the world's largest sea turtles. They are considered endangered in Thailand, and listed as a vulnerable species globally by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.</p><p>They lay their eggs in dark and quiet areas, scarce when tourists thronged the beaches. People have also been known to dig into their nests and steal eggs. </p><p>Late in March, staff at a national park in the southern province of Phanga Nga bordering the Andaman Sea found 84 hatchlings after monitoring eggs for two months.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE4MTkyMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTQ0MDU2NX0.PIFHc6O-pgJmlTUaGyvTdY-4LQLs3k-ycUCKVxnQE2M/img.jpg?width=980" id="0476a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0c79c362b3e386dfb2312a67adf1a2fb" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p><em><em>This story originally appeared in</em> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-thailand-turtles/deserted-thai-beaches-lure-rare-turtles-to-build-most-nests-in-20-years-idUSKBN22207G" target="_blank">Reuters</a>.</em></p>Leatherbacks are the world's largest sea turtles and considered endangered in Thailand. REUTERS / Mongkhonsawat Leungvorapan
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On March 2, 2019, the Schiavonea beach in Calabria, Italy is littered with microplastics lifted from the seabed following a storm in the Ionian sea. Alfonso Di Vincenzo / KONTROLAB / LightRocket / Getty Images
Scientists have discovered the highest concentration of microplastics ever recorded on the seafloor—1.9 million pieces in one square meter (approximately 11 square feet) of the Mediterranean.
<p>But the finding, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/29/science.aba5899" target="_blank">published in Science Thursday</a>, suggests a much broader problem as deep-sea currents carry <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastics" target="_self">plastics</a> to microplastic "hotspots" that may also be deep-sea ecosystems rich in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self">biodiversity</a>. For study coauthor professor Elda Miramontes of the University of Bremen, Germany, the results were a call to action.</p><p>"We're all making an effort to improve our safety and we are all staying at home and changing our lives - changing our work life, or even stopping work," she told <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52489126" target="_blank">BBC News</a>, referring to the global response to the new coronavirus. "We're doing all this so that people are not affected by this sickness. We have to think in the same way when we protect our <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">oceans</a>."</p>
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<p>Of the more than ten million tons of plastic that enter the world's oceans every year, less than one percent of it stays on the surface. Researchers at the University of Bremen, IFREMER in France, the universities of Manchester and Durham and the National Oceanography Centre in the UK set out to discover what happens to the remaining 99 percent, a <a href="https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/scientists-find-highest-ever-level-of-microplastics-on-seafloor/" target="_blank">University of Manchester press release explained</a>.<br></p><p>They determined that it doesn't settle on the bottom evenly, but is instead pushed together with other sediments by deep-sea currents.</p><p>"Almost everybody has heard of the infamous ocean 'garbage patches' of floating plastic, but we were shocked at the high concentrations of microplastics we found in the deep seafloor," lead study author Dr. Ian Kane of the University of Manchester said in the press release. "We discovered that microplastics are not uniformly distributed across the study area; instead they are distributed by powerful seafloor currents which concentrate them in certain areas."</p>
<p>Because these currents also distribute oxygen and nutrients, the microplastics may be concentrating in important deep-sea ecosystems.</p><p>Since this is the first study to uncover the connection between these currents and microplastic concentration, it can drive research into other seafloor hotspots and their impact on <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/marine-life" target="_self">marine life</a>. Other studies have shown that toxic chemicals from plastics can block the digestive systems of insects and marine animals, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/toxic-microplastic-hotspots-are-accumulating-on-the-ocean-floor-in-record-levels.html" target="_blank">CNBC pointed out</a>. They can also harm their development and reproductive systems. Microplastics have been found in 114 freshwater and ocean species to date.</p><p>The research took place in the Tyrrhenian basin between Italy, Corsica and Sardinia, but there is nothing unique to that area that could not occur in other ocean regions with strong deep-ocean currents, BBC News explained.</p>
<p>The microplastic fibers on the seafloor mostly come from textiles and clothing, the University of Manchester said. They end up there because wastewater treatment plants do not filter them effectively.</p><p>Roland Geyer, a professor of industrial ecology at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara, was not involved with the current research, but is part of the broader effort to understand how plastics enter the oceans.</p><p>"We still have a very poor understanding of how much total plastic has accumulated in the oceans. There seems to be one emerging scientific consensus, which is that most of that plastic is <em>not</em> floating on the ocean surface," he told BBC News. "Many scientists now think that most of the plastic is likely to be on the ocean floor, but the water column and the beaches are also likely to contain major quantities. We really should all be completely focused on stopping plastic from entering the oceans in the first place."</p>
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A breaching minke whale in Iceland. FEE International / Flickr
No whales will be hunted in Iceland for the second year in a row, and one of the country's two whaling companies is ceasing operations permanently.
<p>"I'm never going to hunt whales again, I'm stopping for good," managing director of company IP-Utgerd Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson told <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2020/04/25/no-whaling-in-iceland-for-second-straight-year.html" target="_blank">AFP Sunday</a>.</p><p>IP-Utgerd specialized in hunting minke whales, which means Iceland's minke whale hunt is officially over. Hvalur, the second Icelandic whaling company that specializes in fin whales, said it was not hunting this year due to difficulties exporting meat and social-distancing measures related to the new <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coronavirus" target="_self">coronavirus</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation" target="_self">Conservation</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/animal-welfare" target="_self">animal welfare</a> groups welcomed the news.</p><p>"This is tremendous news," <a href="https://uk.whales.org/" target="_blank">Whale and Dolphin Conservation</a> (WDC) CEO Chris Butler-Stroud <a href="https://uk.whales.org/2020/04/27/success-icelandic-minke-whale-hunts-end-after-years-of-wdc-campaigning/" target="_blank">said in a statement</a>. "It is also a turning point for Iceland and its people and something that WDC has campaigned for for years. An end to minke whaling, and the end in sight for fin whaling, gives Iceland the chance to position itself as the true green island of the North Atlantic."</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.hsi.org/" target="_blank">Humane Society International</a> CEO Kitty Block also called it a "major turning point in the battle against whaling" on her <a href="https://blog.humanesociety.org/2020/04/iceland-may-have-killed-its-last-whale-whaling-company-says-it-will-hang-up-its-harpoons-for-good.html" target="_blank">blog</a>.</p><p>Hvalur CEO Kristjan Loftsson said the main reason behind the canceled hunt was competition with Japan, which <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/japan-commercial-whaling-2639041011.html" target="_self">restarted commercial whaling in 2019</a>, as AFP reported. The company sells most of its catch to Japan, but the Japanese market is flooded with local government-subsidized production and also requires more tests for whale meat imported from Iceland, <a href="https://www.icelandreview.com/news/no-whaling-in-iceland-for-second-summer-in-a-row/" target="_blank">Iceland Review explained</a>.</p><p>WDC pointed out that whale meat is actually not a popular Icelandic dish, and only 1.5 percent of Iceland's population buys it regularly, a 2016 survey found.</p><p>Loftsson also told The Morning Paper in Iceland that social distancing requirements made the processing of whale meat "almost impossible" since workers need to stand "very closely together," as the <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6735091/iceland-whaling-cancelled-again-this-year/?cs=14232" target="_blank">Australian Associated Press reported</a>.</p><p>However, the CEO did not seem ready to give up on whale meat, saying that research was ongoing into the use of the iron-rich meat to treat anemia patients and into the use of bones and blubber for gelatin.</p><p>Iceland has killed more than 1,700 whales since the 1986 ban on commercial whaling, WDC reported.</p><p>In 2018, the last year it held a hunt, whalers killed 146 fin whales and six minke whales, the Australian Associated Press reported. The 2020 quota was for 200 of each.</p><p>Block, meanwhile, pointed out that the fight against whaling was not over.</p><p>"We now turn our focus to the two remaining outliers who continue to defy the global whaling moratorium, killing hundreds of whales each year: Japan and Norway," she wrote. "Their fleets remain active during the pandemic, even as the market for highly-subsidized whale meat is declining rapidly. It is time for these two nations to join Iceland and hang up their harpoons for good."</p>
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Crabeater seals. Jerzystrzelecki / CC BY 3.0
The western Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming places on Earth. But how will that impact the unique wildlife that call it home?
<p>To find out, researchers tracked the movements of krill-eating crabeater <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/seals" target="_self">seals</a> in the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) to build a model of the future distribution of krill, an important food source for Antarctic animals like <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/penguins" target="_self">penguins</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/whales" target="_self">whales</a>. The results, published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0745-9" target="_blank">Nature Climate Change</a> Monday, showed that krill populations would shrink, shift offshore from northern coastal waters and move towards the south of the WAP, with major implications for the animals that feed on them.</p><p>"It will be challenging for a lot of species," first author Luis Huckstadt of the Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) at UC Santa Cruz said in a <a href="https://news.ucsc.edu/2020/04/crabeater-seals.html" target="_blank">university press release</a>. "Things are changing so fast in Antarctica, the changes we're seeing in our model might be coming sooner than we expected."</p>
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<p>The reason the change in krill location is such a big deal is that it will force animals to travel further from shore for food.</p><p>"The shift in krill habitat away from coastal waters in the north has big implications for species like penguins and fur seals, which can't make long foraging trips because they have to come back to land to feed their offspring," Huckstadt said.</p><p>In addition, the decline in krill near the northern coast is projected to occur mostly during summer, when animals like humpback and minke whales migrate south in search of food. The southern shift of the krill could force them to travel even further in pursuit.</p><p>The researchers were able to use crabeater seal movements to make these predictions because the seals feed "almost exclusively" on krill, the study explained. They also travel near the surface of the water and only dive when they locate krill, which means by tagging the seals it is easy to get a picture of where krill are located, according to the press release. Using data from tracked seals, the researchers were able to build a model of krill distribution in the WAP and then see what happened to the model under changing conditions driven by the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>. The scientists used data from 42 tracked seals collected in 2001, 2002 and 2007, <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/great-climate-change-is-coming-for-these-cute-seal-boy-1843107067" target="_blank">Earther reported</a>.</p><p>It is unclear how the predicted changes would impact crabeater seals themselves. The seals live in Antarctica year-round and don't live in colonies, so it is easier for them to travel further for prey, the press release said. There is also a chance they may find new food sources, according to Earther, but scientists don't know if they could do so fast enough.</p><p>The WAP is rapidly changing. In February, it <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-hottest-temperature-record-2645059660.html" target="_self">recorded</a> Antarctica's highest ever temperature. Its sea ice is shrinking and multiple ice shelves have collapsed, Earther pointed out.</p>
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