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The penguin population of Antarctica is under pressure from global warming, according to a WWF report. The report, Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change, shows that the four populations of penguins that breed on the Antarctic continent - Adelie, Emperor, Chinstrap and Gentoo - are under escalating pressure. For some, global warming is taking away precious ground on which penguins raise their young. For others, food has become increasingly scarce because of warming in conjunction with overfishing
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The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) asked the Department of Tourism on Monday to reconsider its endorsement of the Manila Ocean Park. PETA maintained that marine parks present a distorted view of wildlife. It also urged the public to boycott the facility to show their objection to keeping sea animals in captivity. In a letter to Tourism Secretary Joseph Ace Durano, PETA-Asia Pacific campaigns manager Rochelle Regodon said the only thing marine parks taught people was that "it is acceptable to keep animals in captivity -- bored, restricted, lonely and far from their natural homes"
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This morning, in the grey swells of the Southern Ocean, a pirate ship will enter the waters of the Australian Antarctic Territory. It is a black ship, bearing a black pirate flag, the Jolly Roger. For the past five days it has sailed south, so that it can take position and wait for its prey. The prey is expected to arrive on Saturday, the day when Japanese whaling ships, operating under the patronage of the Japanese Government, are scheduled to begin hunting minke whales, humpbacks and fin whales in southern waters. This is an area where Australia has declared an exclusive economic zone extending 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from the Antarctic coastline in a large swath of Antarctic waters. This is prime whale territory
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In a few years' time, instead of fiddling with needle and thread, surgeons may simply use glue to connect implants to living tissue. They took their idea from mussels, which can stick to any surface, be it porous rock or the smooth hull of a ship
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Sharks are more spread out in the winter waters of the Gulf of Mexico, so the 24-hour expedition was a gamble. The team of scientists set out on a boat with four satellite transmitter tags in search of silky and dusky sharks. Once attached, the tags would log the sharks' location, the water temperature and depth every minute, and then pop off weeks or months later and transmit the data to a satellite. The data would become a virtual map of shark travels, a way to "swim" beside them from a lab chair
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Conviction for largest ever illegal importation of coral to NZ 55 year old Charles Yip Mou Lam was convicted in Auckland District Court yesterday for attempting to illegally import 700kg of tropical and sub-tropical coral into New Zealand. The consignment represents New Zealand's biggest single seizure of illegally imported coral to date. Lam was fined $8,500 and ordered to pay costs totalling $1,880 for one charge of "trading in (by importing) specimens of a threatened species", namely, stony corals, under the Trade in Endangered Species Act 1989
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For time beyond memory on this remote bay of neon fish and underwater gardens, people have avoided the "masalai," taboo waters, where a monster octopus might lurk or spirits dwell in coral caves. Now it's science that wants no-go zones in Kimbe Bay, and it's because of a new fear. From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean to the central Pacific, global warming and the sea's rising temperatures have been "bleaching" and killing the world's coral reefs
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We're always excited and proud when our fellow underwater photographers, friends and partners help to expand the boundaries of underwater imagery. Our good friend David Pilosof and the Red Sea Sandisk Competition have done just that
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South Korea deployed more than 100 ships and thousands of troops on Sunday to clean up the worst oil spill in its history, which has blackened beaches, coated birds in tar and cast a foul smell over a nature reserve. The slick has washed up in an area spanning 17kms (11 miles) of the west coast, about 100km southwest of Seoul, that is home to popular tourist beaches, a national park and oyster beds. The spill is threatening to become a major environmental disaster
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Fossil skeletons of an unusual land-roaming Cuban crocodile, a tortoise and 25 species of birds including a raptor known as a caracara are among the ancient treasures recently discovered in a sinkhole in the Bahamas. Expert diver Brian Kakuk and his colleagues retrieved these fossils, along with the bones of a lizard, snakes, humans and bats, along the floor and walls of Sawmill Sink, a saltwater cavern of a type called a blue hole on Abaco Island
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