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Emperor penguins may have a supercharged form of a blood protein that allows them to dive underwater for more than 20 minutes on a single breath, a new study suggests. The research showed that penguins in Antarctica return from long fishing excursions under the sea ice with the lowest blood oxygen levels ever recorded in wild animals
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A Hong Kong-registered oil tanker leaked 10,810 tons, or 66,000 barrels, of crude oil off South Korea's stormy west coast today, officials said, in what was estimated to be the nation's largest maritime oil spill. A band of oil about three miles long was snaking slowly toward the coast, which is dotted with scenic beaches, wildlife habitats and oyster and other fishing beds
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Wetpixel associate editor and professional photographer Alex Mustard will be giving a talk at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK at 7:30PM on Thursday, December 6, entitled "Adventures of an underwater photographer - creating images that engage people with the oceans."
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Damming the Red Sea could alleviate growing energy demands in the Middle East, engineers say, but such a massive project could also have untold ecological impacts, like those brought about by other major dams worldwide
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A new and compelling argument for reducing fish harvests - the profit motive - could persuade world fishers to endure the short-term pain of lower catches for the long-term gain of higher returns for their labor, according to authors of a ground-breaking study on fisheries over-exploitation
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New deep-sea images disprove doctrine Thousands of white crabs grazing on an extensive mussel bed: Up to now such high biomasses in the deep sea were only known from hot vents. Now scientists from the MARUM at the University of Bremen have found such scenes at a cold vent off the coast of Pakistan. Another first was achieved by the videos they took of the cold-vent fluids seeping from the sea floor. Furthermore, the scientists were astonished at the wide variety of seep types
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An environmental group is urging companies to drop shark fin from their banquet menus as demand rises in the booming economy ahead of the holiday hospitality season, a media report said Tuesday
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Scientists know this already, but just to give you some idea of the problem, the Greenland ice cap is melting at such a fast rate it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break up. Scientists say the acceleration of melting and subsequent speeding up of giant glaciers could be catastrophic in terms of sea level rise and make previous predictions published this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) far too low. The glacier at Ilulissat, which it is believed spawned the iceberg which sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago
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Manatees remain on the state's endangered species list, for now. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission decided on Wednesday to delay voting on removing the manatee from the list until it reviewed the species classification. The commission did not say when the review might be finished. "Delisting the manatee has basically invoked concerns over the listing process," the commission chairman, Rodney Barreto, said. The commission had been considering whether to reclassify the manatee as threatened instead of endangered
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Unnoticed and unappreciated for five decades, a large female turtle with a stained, leathery shell is now a precious commodity in this city's decaying zoo. She is fed a special diet of raw meat. Her small pool has been encased with bulletproof glass. A surveillance camera monitors her movements. A guard is posted at night. The agenda is simple: The turtle must not die. Earlier this year, scientists concluded that she is the planet's last known female giant Yangtze soft-shell turtle. She is about 80
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