Search Results for: Ocean

Three of the world’s largest and fastest yachts are in the midst of a non-stop trans-global race, hurtling in excess of 25 knots – 46 kilometres per hour – through the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica. Iceberg collision is a real risk, but ice-sensitive radar satellites are monitoring the area to provide advance warning to crews.

“It has been a huge tactical – and psychological – advantage to planning our track through the Southern Ocean,” says navigator Will Oxley aboa

Spring starts early this year in Norway’s fjords and coastal waters, with sunny weather awakening a colourful bloom of marine phytoplankton. ESA’s Envisat spacecraft is being used to monitor its development.

Microscopic phytoplankton have been called ’the grass of the sea’ – they are the basic food on which all other marine life depends. Provided with sufficient light planktonic algae multiply by absorbing mineral nutrients and converting solar energy into o

A few years ago, NASA researcher Watson Gregg published a study showing that tiny free-floating ocean plants called phytoplankton had declined in abundance globally by 6 percent between the 1980s and 1990s. A new study by Gregg and his co-authors suggests that trend may not be continuing, and new patterns are taking place.

Why is this important? Well, the tiny ocean plants help regulate our atmosphere and the health of our oceans. Phytoplankton produce half of the oxygen generate

The hydrothermal vents were miles from where anyone could have imagined. One massive seafloor vent was an unheard of 18 stories tall. And all were creamy white and gray, suggesting a very different composition than vent systems studied since the 1970s.

Scientists who named the spot Lost City knew they were looking at something never seen before when the field was serendipitously discovered in December 2000 during a National Science Foundation expedition to the mid-Atlantic.

Near the coasts of Peru and Chile, the Humboldt Current ecosystem is the world’s most productive fishing zone. This cold-current zone, with frequent coastal upwellings (2), occupies less than 1 % of the world’s ocean surface and provides 15 to 20 % of global maritime catches.

Unlike other large regions of upwelling, this ecosystem proves to be more exposed to variations in climate. Its geographical location brings it under the direct influence of disturbances generated by the El

New insight for officials setting ecosystem goals, rebuilding fishery remnant

Once a dominant species, the volume of cod on the Scotian Shelf has plunged 96% since the 1850s, according to landmark research published today. In fact, just 16 small schooners of the pre-Civil War era could hold all adult cod currently estimated in the once-rich Scotian Shelf.

Writing in today’s edition of Frontier’s in Ecology (www.frontiersinecology.org), Census of Marine Life researchers