Search Results for: Ocean

Large quantities of Saharan dust are helping to fertilize the massive plankton blooms that occur in the tropical eastern Atlantic, a research project has confirmed.

A team including researchers from the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia has been studying the desert dust, which is rich in nitrogen, iron and phosphorus, and its effect on the ocean’s nutrients, plankton production and the food chain.

The £600,000 project, is part of the Sur

Much of what scientists learn about the evolution of Earth’s first animals will have to be gleaned from spherical embryos fossilized under very specific conditions, according to a new study by Indiana University Bloomington and University of Bristol researchers in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Purported animal embryo fossils have been reported continuously over the last 12 years, mainly by paleontologists working in China. Scientists di

Let us suppose that a new fruit fly species is observed on an island in the southwestern Indian Ocean. As soon as the information is confirmed, it is released on the Internet. This type of alert can now be issued from five Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) islands – Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion, Seychelles – involved in the regional crop protection programme (PRPV). This is thanks to a website, www.prpv.org, to which crop protection professionals now have access.

The programm

Oxygen depletion in the world’s oceans, primarily caused by agricultural run-off and pollution, could spark the development of far more male fish than female, thereby threatening some species with extinction, according to a study published today on the Web site of the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology. The study is scheduled to appear in the May 1 print issue of the journal.

The finding, by Rudolf Wu, Ph.D., and colleagues at the City University of Ho

Scientists from around the world joined this Greek island’s 250 residents and countless visitors Wednesday in cheering the drama of the Moon totally blocking the Sun, revealing the dancing glow of its corona.

“It was even more fabulous than we expected,” said Jay Pasachoff, professor of astronomy at Williams College (in Williamstown, Mass.) who observed his 42nd solar eclipse. “All the technical equipment worked perfectly, the corona shone brightly, and the activity aroun

Proposals by environmentalists to declare small areas of the North Sea as ’no-fishing’ zones would not save our flagging fish stocks, suggests a new report by Newcastle University for the British Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. (DEFRA).

Marine protected areas (MPAs) would need to be tens of thousands of square miles in size – at least as big as the size of Wales – and would need to be established for decades to restore levels of c