Renewable ocean energy harnesses the power of the oceans to produce electricity. This can be done in several ways, but the resources that have the most immediate potential in terms of energy production…
Recent plans to clean plastics from the five massive ocean garbage patches could do more damage to the environment than leaving the plastic right where it is. There is no doubt that the focus on cleaning…
With the global population now well over seven billion people there are few remaining parts of the world relatively untouched by human activity. We assess the current state and future prospects of five…
As many as 21 species of giant squid live and die under the surface of our oceans. At least, that’s what we thought. A paper published today by my colleagues and I in Proceedings of the Royal Society B…
Seabirds: the poster children for ocean health. Fishers use them to identify fishing hot spots. Environmental and marine scientists use them as indicators of the condition of the ocean environment due…
Ocean acidification - where the ocean becomes less alkaline as it absorbs excess CO2 from the atmosphere - has been described as the evil twin of global warming. Yet, remarkably, it is only over the past…
Dan Ovando, University of California, Santa Barbara
Many fisheries around the world are in bad shape and getting worse. Solving this problem will require innovative monitoring and management tools, but we can provide tremendous benefits if we act now to…
For overwhelming economic, social, cultural and environmental reasons the LNG precinct proposed for Walmadany (James Price Point) should not be built…In sum, such a project is against the national interest…
A recent report on coral loss from the Great Barrier Reef has pointed the finger at cyclones and Crown of Thorns starfish. The real culprit is human activity, and until we reduce port activity and pollution…
John Bruno, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
There is a myth about Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, that goes like this: because it is so big, biodiverse, so well-managed and generally bloody awesome, the GBR is immune to climate change and other…
CSIRO recently announced that energy from the ocean could supply 11% of Australia’s demand by 2050. That is enough to power a city the size of Melbourne. It is a bold claim, but it’s time for Australia…
One of the ambitions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is galvanising the international community to avoid dangerous interference with Earth’s climate. To do this, it…
A paper released today in the journal PNAS provides a new estimate of microbial abundance, in light of new information, from the sub-seafloor realm (the so-called “deep biosphere”). As such, we now have…
Recently, members of the fishing industry staged a protest about Australia’s new network of marine parks. But when Environment Minister Tony Burke announced the parks on July 11 2012, he noted the reserves…