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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 17 February 2011
Tons of throw-away plastic and massive runoff from chemical fertilizer are choking the world’s oceans, the UN’s environmental watchdog warns.
 Just how much plastic has been discarded into the sea in unknown. Taken together, the two sources of pollution threaten biodiversity, harm water quality, poison fish stocks and undermine coastal tourism, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in its annual Year Book report.
Released ahead of a key meeting next week of environment ministers in Nairobi, the report highlights the need to protect marine environments already rendered fragile by over-exploitation and acidification caused by climate change.
Only better waste management and a coordinated shift towards cleaner engines of economic growth can insure the future health of the planet’s aquatic commons, it said.
“The phosphorus fertilizer and marine plastic stories bring into sharp focus the urgent need … to catalyze a global transition to a resource-efficient Green Economy,” UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said.
Recent research suggests that both problems are more widespread — and deleterious — than once thought.
In the United States alone, for example, the costs associated with phosphorus pollution are estimated at more than two billion dollars a year, with the global tally in the tens of billions. Continue reading Choking the oceans
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 20 December 2010
Increasing acidity in the sea’s waters may fundamentally change how nitrogen is cycled in them, say marine scientists who published their findings in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
 Ocean acidification will have widespread effects on marine ecosystems. Credit: iStockphoto/Dirk-Jan Mattaar Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients in the oceans. All organisms, from tiny microbes to blue whales, use nitrogen to make proteins and other important compounds.
Some microbes can also use different chemical forms of nitrogen as a source of energy.
One of these groups, the ammonia oxidizers, plays a pivotal role in determining which forms of nitrogen are present in the ocean. In turn, they affect the lives of many other marine organisms.
“Ocean acidification will have widespread effects on marine ecosystems, but most of those effects are still unknown,” says David Garrison, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Biological Oceanography Program, which funded the research along with NSF’s Chemical Oceanography Program.
“This report that ocean acidification decreases nitrification (the amount of nitrogen) is extremely important,” says Garrison, “because of the crucial role of the nitrogen cycle in biogeochemical processes-processes that take place throughout the oceans.”
Very little is known about how ocean acidification may affect critical microbial groups like the ammonia oxidizers, “key players in the ocean’s nitrogen cycle,” says Michael Beman of the University of Hawaii and lead author of the PNAS paper. Continue reading Ocean acidification affects important nutrients
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 08 December 2010
The once-vibrant coral reef shielding these sun-soaked beaches from the wrath of the sea is withering away under the stress of pollution and warmer water.
 Coral bleaching - a “hideous” sight for veteran scuba divers It’s not likely to get much help from world governments meeting in Cancun for talks on a new climate pact. Their so-far elusive goal to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 F) is too little too late, says coral expert Roberto Iglesias.
“That represents the end of the coral reefs in the world,” says the Mexican scientist, who works at a marine research station in Puerto Morelos, about 20 kilometres south of the beach resort hosting the annual UN climate conference.
Coral reefs are like underwater jungles that host 25 percent of marine species and provide food and income to hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the developing world. They also serve as shock absorbers to storm surges whipped up by hurricanes.
But many reefs, including the one off this hotel-packed coastline, have been damaged by water pollution and overfishing, leaving them vulnerable to a warming ocean that “bleaches” corals and sometimes kills them, Iglesias said.
This year, preliminary reports show global coral bleaching reached its worst level since 1998, when 16 percent of the world’s reefs were killed off, said Mark Eakin, a coral reef specialist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Clearly, we are on track for this to be the second worst (bleaching) on record,” he said. “All we’re waiting on now is the body count.” Continue reading On track for the second worst coral bleaching on record
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 18 August 2010
In this tour, Ted Danson and Oceana guide you through the problems that the Arctic Ocean is facing due to climate change, and introduce you to the positive changes that have been made due [...]
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 26 July 2010
The icy Arctic waters around Norway’s archipelago of Svalbard may seem pristine and clear, but like the rest of the world’s oceans, they are facing the threat of growing acidity.
 The European Centre for Arctic Environmental Research in Ny-Ålesund Oceans have always absorbed part of the carbon dioxide, or CO2, present in the air, which in turn makes them acid. But with CO2 levels soaring, the scientific community is getting worried about acidification harming marine life.
Off the coast of Ny-Aalesund, a tiny coalmine village turned scientific outpost just 1 200km from the North Pole, researchers from nine European countries conducted in July an unprecedented effort to analyse the phenomenon.
To do so, they submerged nine tubes, each weighing two tonnes and the height of two double-decker busses, in the icy waters of the remote fjord framed by snow-capped mountains.
They then injected the watertight tubes, called mesocosms, with CO2, to reproduce sea life under different acidity levels expected from now until 2150 with the aim of studying the potentially disastrous effects of acidification on marine life.
“It’s here in the Arctic that the ocean will become corrosive the fastest,” Jean-Pierre Gattuso, with France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, said, explaining why the researchers chose to turn these waters thick with icy slush into a laboratory. Continue reading Arctic faces growing threat of acidification
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