Diving News

Two months after my exciting experience as an Aquanaut of "Progetto Abissi 2007 - The House on the sea bottom 2", I think again and again of the 14 days I spent in Ponza, on the backdrop of Cala Feola together with my 5 buddies, Stefania, Claudio, Luca, Alessandro and Debora and I begin to draw some conclusions
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The shattered remnants of a ship abandoned more than 300 years ago by the storied Captain Kidd have been discovered off a tiny island in the Dominican Republic, a U.S. underwater archaeology team announced Thursday
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JAPAN shrugged off a pledge by Australia's new prime minister to protect whales in a bitter dispute over hunting of the giant mammals
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The Shark Alliance is welcoming the release of the European Commission's consultation document for a Community Plan of Action (CPOA) for Sharks, which, at long last, addresses the plight of sharks and proposes a range of options for improvement
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In what some scientists see as another alarming consequence of global warming, thousands of Pacific walruses above the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes earlier this year after the disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in extraordinary numbers
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The largest living structures on Earth and the millions of livelihoods which depend upon them are at risk, the most definitive review yet of the impact of rising carbon emissions on coral reefs has concluded. In a paper published in the prestigious Science Magazine today, 17 eminent marine scientists reveal that world leaders face a race against time in preparing coral reefs and the coastal communities dependent upon them for the inevitable impact of rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere
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Piranhas inhabit exclusively the fresh waters of South America. Their geographical distribution extends from the Orinoco River basin (Venezuela) to the North, down to that of the Paranu (Argentina) to the South. Over this whole area, which also embraces the entire Amazon Basin, biologists have recorded 28 carnivorous species of these fish (2). In spite of the evolutionary success of this subfamily of fish, the mechanisms that generated the species richness of this group are still insufficiently known
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An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer-a sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One scientist even speculated that summer sea ice could be gone in five years. Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years ago, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by the Associated Press
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Researchers fresh from an eight-week scientific drilling expedition off the Pacific coast of Japan today reported their discovery of strong variation in the tectonic stresses in a region notorious for generating devastating earthquakes and tsunamis, the Nankai Trough. The scientists conducted their expedition aboard the new scientific drilling vessel Chikyu, drilling deep into the zone responsible for past and likely future tsunamis, and collecting physical measurements and images made using advanced borehole logging technology. Their achievement marks the launch phase of the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE), a major research initiative into the triggers and mechanisms of earthquakes and tsunamis supported by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). NanTroSEIZE is expected to continue until 2012, with the ultimate objectives of drilling across the plate boundary fault responsible for magnitude 8 earthquakes to sample the rocks and fluids in the fault, and to place instruments within it to monitor activity and conditions leading up to the next great earthquake
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A large amount of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide is produced by bacteria in the oxygen poor parts of the ocean using nitrites according to Dr Mark Trimmer of Queen Mary, University of London. "A third of the 'denitrification' that happens in the world's oceans occurs in the Arabian Sea (an area equivalent to France and Germany combined)" said Dr Trimmer. "Oxygen levels decrease as you go deeper into the sea. At around 130 metres there is what we call an oxygen minimum zone where oxygen is low or non-existent. Bacteria that produce nitrous oxide do well at this depth"
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