An international scientific expedition in Mexico's Gulf of California has spotted up to 25 critically endangered vaquita marina, the world's smallest porpoise. The sightings occurred during the first 20 days of the Vaquita Expedition 2015, which commenced on September 26th. However, scientists caution that some individuals may have been counted more than once.
Currently known only from whaling and stranding specimens primarily from the western Pacific and eastern Indian Oceans, there exist no confirmed field observations or ecological/behavioural data.
The tiny Pacific nation of Palau has approved the establishment of a marine sanctuary twice the size of Mexico. Conservationists said the 500,000 sq. km sanctuary would be the world’s sixth-largest fully protected area. The move follows a series of announcements on new marine parks, by Chile, New Zealand and the UK, to protect vast swaths of oceans from overfishing.
In pairs of coral reef rabbitfishes (f. Siganidae), one fish frequently assumes an upright vigilance position in the water column, while the partner forages in small crevices in the reef substratum. Both behaviours are strongly coordinated and partners regularly alternate their positions, resulting in a balanced distribution of foraging activity.
Are Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) meeting their ecological goals? Marine scientists from the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) monitoring the rocky reef and kelp forest communities in California state waters around the northern Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara finds positive results. Their study represents one of the first opportunities marine biologists have had to examine a network of MPAs, rather than a single location.
They exhibited no signs of having been beached. Instead, they swam around and frolicked amongst themselves. "You can even see some of he bigger orcas swimming alongside the calves as if they're showing them what to do," said an employee of a nearby business.
Although unusual, this behaviour was normal.
Originally believed to be a minke whale, a postmortem revealed it to be a fin whale. It was the fifth fin whale to be stranded in the county for the last 25 years.
Scars on its 10.7m (36ft) body brought forward the possibility that the whale might have been struck by a ship's propeller, but this has not yet been confirmed. A spokesman from the Coastguard said that the propeller wounds were probably caused by a collision with a ship after it died.
Instead, he offered another possibility: "It probably died of contamination after eating a plastic bag or something similar."
Image at the top: Great Barrier Reef, Australia. An intertidal 'micro-atoll'. Photo: Isobel Bennett.
Coral colonies of P. cylindrica have a unique internal solution to the problem of forming their skeletons and building reef structures in the face of rising ocean acidification.
Haemoglobin (Hb) is one of the most well-studied proteins to date and is key to blood oxygen (O2) transport in nearly all vertebrates and some invertebrates, as it increases the total O2 that can be transported in the blood and optimizes tissue O2 delivery.
Rising temperature of the ocean west of the Antarctic Peninsula - one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet - should make it possible for king crab populations to move to the shallow continental shelf from their current deep-sea habitat within the next several decades, researchers from Florida Institute of Technology find
Using advanced diving technology to survey coral reefs at depths up to 300 feet, scientists could observe rarely seen ecosystems, during the expedition that took place aboard NOAA Ship Hi'ialakai within Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The fish surveys at these depths revealed an extremely high abundance of species found only in the Hawaiian Islands. At some of the deep reefs surveyed, 100 percent of the fishes recorded were endemic.
The shipwreck was first discovered in 2013. It was first code-named "Dandong No.1" and has been tentatively identified as the Cruiser Zhiyuan.
On 17 September 1894, during Battle of the Yalu River - the largest naval engagement of the First Sino-Japanese War, involving ships from the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Chinese Beiyang Fleet - the Zhiyuan came under attack from Japanese cruisers. It was hit in the bow by a Japanese shell after which the Chinese cruiser rapidly sank with the loss of 245 officers and crewmen out of a complement of 252 complement.
