Environmental News August 8 to August 25, 2016

Quote for the week

"It is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live."
— Dalai Lama

Sea temperature and the lunar cycle predict the arrival of jellyfish in Israel
Date: August 25, 2016
By: University of Haifa
Large swarms of jellyfish reach the coast of Israel when the sea temperature ranges between 28.2 and 30 degrees Celsius and during the full moon, according to a new study. The study reveals, for the first time, the link between sea temperature and the lunar cycle and the arrival of swarms of Jellyfish along the coast of Israel.
Read more here.

Well-wrapped feces allow lobsters to eat jellyfish stingers without injury
Date: August 25, 2016
By: Hiroshima University, EurekAlert
Lobsters eat jellyfish without harm from the venomous stingers due to a series of physical adaptations. Researchers examined lobster feces to discover that lobsters surround their servings of jellyfish in protective membranes that prevent the stingers from injecting their venom. The results are vial for aquaculture efforts to sustainably farm lobsters for diners around the world
Read more here.

Seals Help Plug Antarctic Water Mystery
Date: August 25, 2016
By: Macquarie University, Technology.org
Elephant seals have helped scientists to demonstrate that fresh water from Antarctic’s melting ice shelves slows the processes responsible for the formation of deep-water ocean currents that regulate global temperatures.
Read more here.

Arctic gives clues on worst mass extinction of life
Date: August 24, 2016
By: University of Tromso
Extreme global warming 252 million years ago caused a severe mass extinction of life on Earth. It took life up to 9 million years to recover. New study finds clues in the Arctic as to why this recovery took so long.
Read more here.

Ocean Acidification threatens cod recruitment in the Atlantic
Date: August 24, 2016
By: GEOMAR, Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Increasing ocean acidification could double the mortality of newly hatched cod larvae. Researchers quantified mortality rates of cod at conditions which the fish may experience towards the end of the century. They integrated results of two experiments in model calculations on stock dynamics. The scenarios showed that the recruitment could decrease to between one quarter and one twelfth of last decades’ recruitment — a strong call for action for fisheries management.
Read more here.

A mutual breakdown: Species relationships devolve from jointly beneficial to competitive in benign environments
Date: August 24, 2016
By: Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
Nature abounds with examples of mutualistic relationships. Think of clownfish and sea anemone. Each species benefits the other, and together their changes of survival are better than if they lived apart. Now scientists have found that such mutualistic relationships aren’t always set in stone.
Read more here.

Nanofur for Oil Spill Cleanup
Date: August 23, 2016
By: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Some water ferns can absorb large volumes of oil within a short time, because their leaves are strongly water-repellent and, at the same time, highly oil-absorbing. It is now used as a model to further develop the new Nanofur material for the environmentally friendly cleanup of oil spills.
Read more here.

Seagrass restoration threatened by fungi
Date: August 23, 2016
By: Radboud University
Seagrass seed is killed by waterborne fungi that are related to the well-known potato blight, biologist have discovered. These fungi, which have not previously been found in seawater, hinder seed germination and thus prevent the restoration of seagrass.
Read more here.

Whales in the Desert
Date: August 23, 2016
By: The Geological Society of America
In Cerro Colorado, located in the Ica Desert of Peru, sedimentary sequences dating back nine million years have been found to host the fossil skeletons of hundreds of marine vertebrates.
Read more here.

Reef castaways: Can coral make it across Darwin’s “impassable” barrier?
Date: August 23, 2016
By: University of Bristol
An international team of researchers have shown that vulnerable coral populations in the eastern tropical Pacific have been completely isolated from the rest of the Pacific Ocean for at least the past two decades.
Read more here.

Rising sea temperatures could enhance and accelerate radiation induced DNA effects in marine mussels
Date: August 23, 2016
By: Plymouth University
Increased sea temperatures could have a dramatic effect on radiation-induced damage in marine invertebrates, a new study suggests.
Read more here.

Circumstances leading to formation of rare earth resources on the sea floor
Date: August 23, 2016
By: University of Tokyo, Technology.org
A research group at the University of Tokyo has demonstrated that sufficiently slow build-up of deposits on the sea floor is necessary for mineral resources rich in rare earth elements and yttrium (REY) to form.
Read more here.

In the ocean, clever camouflage beats super sight
Date: August 22, 2016
By: Duke University
Some fish blend seamlessly into their watery surroundings with help from their silvery reflective skin. Researchers have long assumed that squid, shrimp and other ocean animals could see through this disguise, thanks to an ability to detect a property of light — called polarization — that humans can’t see. But a new study find that not even polarization vision helps animals spot silvery fish from afar.
Read more here.

Ice sheet’s past reveals warming risk
Date: August 22, 2016
By: The University of Edinburgh
Fresh understanding of West Antarctica has revealed how the region’s ice sheet could become unstable in a warming world
Read more here.

Scientists find surface ponds forming on East Antarctic glacier
Date: August 22, 2016
By: Lancaster University, Technology.org
A team of scientists from Lancaster and Durham Universities has monitored, for the first time, the evolution of meltwater ponds on the surface of a glacier at the coast of East Antarctica.
Read more here.

NASA Monitors the “New Normal” of Sea Ice
Date: August 19, 2016
By: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
This year’s melt season in the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas started with a bang, with a record low maximum extent in March and relatively rapid ice loss through May. One NASA sea ice scientist describes this as “the new normal.”
Read more here.

Recent connection between North and South America reaffirmed
Date: August 17, 2016
By: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Eurekalert
Long ago, one great ocean flowed between North and South America. When the Isthmus of Panama joined the continents, it also separated the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean. If this took place much earlier than the accepted date of 3 million years ago as recently asserted by some, the implications for both land and sea life would be revolutionary. A new paper firmly set the date at 2.8 million years ago.
Read more here.

Tropical sea urchins caught between a rock and a hot place
Date: August 15, 2016
By: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Science Daily
The balmy waters of the Caribbean could turn into a deadly heat trap for countless tiny creatures. Authors of a new study have discovered that microscopic sea urchin eggs and larvae may suffer stunting or death when the water temperature spikes just a couple of degrees above normal, adding to the impact of climate change in already warm tropical oceans.
Read more here.

Caught in the act: fist videos of coral bleaching behavior
Date: August 12, 2016
By: Queensland University of Technology
Coral researchers have for the first time captured the specific behavior of a coral as it’s bleaching. While scientists have known for some time that coral bleaching occurs when the relationship between the coral and their Symbiodinium breaks down as ocean temperatures rise, new research show for the first time how this coral removes the algae.
Read more here.

Global Warming’s Next Surprise: Saltier Beaches
Date: August 11, 2016
By: New Jersey Institute of Technology
Batches of sand from a beach on the Delaware Bay are yielding insights into the powerful impact of temperature rise and evaporation along the shore that are in turn challenging long-held assumptions about what causes beach salinity to fluctuate in coastal zones that support a rich network of sea creatures and plants.
Read more here.

New meta-analysis shows engineered hard shorelines are a threat to ecosystems
Date: August 10, 2016
By: American Institute of Biological Sciences, EurekAlert
Artificial shoreline hardening is often used to protect human structures from coastal hazards, but the practice may negatively affect coastal ecosystems, say researchers.
Read more here.

Specialized life forms abound at arctic methane seeps
Date: August 8, 2016
By: CAGE - Center for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Climate and Environment
Methane seeps have strong effects on the community structure at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.
Read more here.