Coral Reefs Suffer Fourth Global Bleaching Event
;extreme" levels of bleaching in nearly half of surveyed reefs in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park area.That makes this the fifth bleaching event in the Great Barrier Reef in just nine years - far more frequent than the twice per decade that scientists expected by the 2030s.Indian Ocean reefs off Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and the Seychelles have also suffered bleaching, though not as severely as in 2016 thanks to an early change in this year's monsoon leading to cooler conditions, Obura said."The stress experienced by corals in the region is likely less than it could have been, which is
Coral Reefs off East Africa Could Die Out in 50 Years -Study
Coral reefs in the western Indian Ocean are at risk of extinction by 2070 due to warming temperatures and overfishing, according to a new study.A roughly 12,000 sq km expanse of coral reefs stretching down the eastern coastline of Africa and around Madagascar is facing ecosystem collapse, threatening a range of species and the livelihoods of over a million people who work in the fishing and tourism industries. These reefs make up around 5% of the planet's total coral reef area."When an ecosystem collapses, we might still see individual fish or corals but the whole system is no longer effective
Fiber Optic Sensing and Mining an Ocean of Data
could evolve to share spectrum with in-use fibres, enabling DAS to run in a cable without disrupting its main use, i.e. data transfer.Still there is hope. The new Fly-Lion3 submarine fibre optic cable is being laid to provide internet connectivity to the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, northwest of Madagascar. It’s also been agreed that scientists will be able to use it to detect earthquakes related to a newborn submarine volcano near the island.Oregon State University has also got funding to install fibre that can be used for DAS work. It’s due to be installed off North Carolina next fall
'Elusive' Omura Whale Spotted
more than one hundred sightings of what once seemed to be a species of ghost whale. For decades, the only available specimens to be found were the remains obtained from strandings or from Japanese whaling. In 2013, Cerchio discovered a resident population of Omura’s off the northwest coast of Madagascar. His live images of these sleek whales and his authoritative description of the species opened the eyes of the marine mammal research community to what had often been misidentified or just plain mysterious whales. For decades, they were mistakenly classified as small Bryde’s whales.When first
Persistent Profiling of the Greater Agulhas Current
upper ocean. For this reason, many of the mooring lines were topped with uplooking Teledyne RDI ADCPs.On a side note—ADCPs have a long history in these waters. In the mid-1980s, Prof. Fritz Schott (University of Miami) made early use of uplooking ADCPs atop moorings off Africa, including the E. Madagascar Current.Agulhas Current Sources Experiment (ACSEX): 2000-2001By the late 1990s, scientists were uncertain that a continuous boundary flow existed off Mozambique to supply the Agulhas. To clarify the issue, Dutch scientists conducted the Agulhas Current Sources Experiment (ACSEX) in 2000-2001. The
Australian Bio-Robots to Explore in the Indian Ocean
CSIRO will be releasing a fleet of floating bio-robots between Christmas Island and Madagascar next week to measure biological indicators in the Indian Ocean including dissolved oxygen, nitrate, organic matter and particles. A bio-robot is a robot which can measure properties relevant to biology like organic matter. Four bio-robots, each worth up to $100,000, are being dropped into masses of spinning water. It will be the first time CSIRO has used the new BioArgo robotic floats to measure this massively under-sampled part of the world. "These can tell us about the
A New Era of Antarctic Exploration: AUVs in Polar Science
leap forward in our efforts to understand how this vital component of the climate system is responding to change,” Dr. Williams. Kira Coley is a freelance writer with a Marine Biology degree from University of Portsmouth and experience as a Field Scientist in various locations including Madagascar, Sicily, and Scotland. She is now a PhD researcher and regularly publishes articles and technical papers discussing key research topics in the marine sciences, oceanography and offshore industry. (As published in the January/February 2015 edition of Marine Technology Reporter - http://www.marinetechnol
Warm Oceans May Mean Major Coral Bleaching -NOAA
the Pacific, thermal stress has already reached levels that cause bleaching in the nations of Nauru, Kiribati, and the Solomon Islands, and is expected to spread to Tuvalu, Samoa, and American Samoa in the next few months. In the Indian Ocean, thermal stress may reach levels that cause bleaching around Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, and parts of Indonesia and western Australia. NOAA scientists in American Samoa are already seeing the start of bleaching on their shallow reefs. “In the coming months, we will be watching to see if the model predicts conditions that can cause bleaching in
Seismic Specialists TGS: Revenue Up, New Survey Contracts
Norway-based TGS, report record high late sales in the fourth quarter of 2013, and inform of four new multi-client surveys: a 3D survey in offshore Northwest Australia, two 2D surveys offshore Madagascar and a 3D survey onshore Alberta, Canada. Net revenues Based on preliminary reporting from operating units, TGS management expects net revenues for the fourth quarter of 2013 to be approximately USD 270 million, bringing total estimated net revenues for 2013 to approximately USD 882 million. The company has previously guided full year revenues of USD 810 - 870 million, and the positive deviation is
February 2024
