Diving News

The threat of the grey nurse shark's extinction is scarier than sharing a dive with it, writes Genevieve Swart. I am 20 metres underwater, gazing at three grey nurse sharks and breathing heavily into my scuba gear. The three-metre sharks hang in a current, drifting with the immense grace and lazy power of a sleek predator. To the casual observer, it might not be clear who is most endangered in this situation. The answer is unequivocally the sharks. With fewer than 500 grey nurses surviving off the east coast, future generations of Australians may never see these critically endangered creatures anywhere other than an aquarium. I've come to South West Rocks, five hours' drive north of Sydney, to dive with the sharks - a trip inspired by the book Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine
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THE controversial practice of transferring tonnes of crude oil between tankers will not be covered by a UK Marine Bill, it emerged yesterday, sparking fury among environmentalists. It was expected that the bill would regulate industry in the sea and ensure that potentially hazardous activities were carried out in the most appropriate place. This issue has been highlighted by the lack of regulations covering a proposal to transfer Russian crude in the Firth of Forth, where any spill could harm important seabird colonies, whales, dolphins and other wildlife
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Queensland's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says a protected coral reef off the far north Queensland coast has been deliberately damaged. EPA officers visited Hicks Island 600 kilometres north of Cairns after hearing allegations the coral reef that surrounds it, which is within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, had been damaged. They found a channel had been deliberately dug out, but the EPA will not comment on its size or how it may have been created
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The ocean's cerulean, aquamarine and emerald hues offer more than artistic inspiration-they reveal how sea biology is struggling with climate change. NASA's Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) has constantly measured ocean color as an indicator of sea life productivity since the satellite reached orbit in 1997. Combined with ocean temperature data, the observations suggest climate change is playing a big role in negatively altering ocean ecosystems. A new video made from the decade of data illustrates how blooms of phytoplankton, which form the base of the oceanic food chain, are gradually thinning. In the video, purples and blues indicate low concentrations of chlorophyll, which plants and phytoplankton use to gather light energy, whereas yellows, oranges and reds show the highest concentrations
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A cataclysm 50 million years ago changed the face of the planet from the Hawaiian Islands to Antarctica, according to new research. The collapse of an underwater mountain range in the Pacific Ocean turned Australia into a warm and sunny continent instead of a snowbound wasteland and created some of the islands that dot the South Pacific today
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A fossil of a new crab species reveals the itsy-bitsy crustaceans inhabited towering sponge reefs during the Jurassic Period, where they made tasty snacks for ichthyosaurs and other ancient reptiles. The fossil was discovered in eastern Romania within cylindrical reef structures about 100 feet (30 meters) across and just as tall, which were once blanketed by deep ocean. It represents a new species within the oldest lineage of true crabs that lived 150 million years ago when dinosaurs walked the Earth
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THE multibillion-dollar Japanese southern bluefin tuna scandal is worsening under closer Australian Government scrutiny. An official investigation has already found that over 20 years Japanese fishers hid an $8 billion overcatch of the highly prized sashimi fish that migrates around southern Australia. But an international meeting has been told the scale of the overcatch is climbing, Japan's figures still do not add up, and Tokyo is stonewalling attempts to regulate fishing of the critically endangered species
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Further evidence for the decline of the oceans' historical role as an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide is supplied by new research by environmental scientists from the University of East Anglia. Since the industrial revolution, much of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere has been taken up by the world's oceans which act as a strong 'sink' for the emissions. This has slowed climate change. Without this uptake, CO2 levels would have risen much faster and the climate would be warming more rapidly
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Five defendants are set to stand trial in the Magdalen Islands Thursday, accused of violating their observation permits during the 2006 East Coast seal hunt. The defendants are representatives of the Humane Society International and Humane Society of the United States. After documenting the commercial seal hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in March, 2006, from their vessel, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) charged them with violating a 10-metre barrier restriction around sealing vessels and sealers. The defendants - Canadians Rebecca Aldworth and Andrew Plumbly, Americans Chad Sisneros and Pierre Grzybowski, and British citizen Mark Glover - were present on the ice floes to bear witness to the annual cruelty of the seal slaughter, providing video evidence of baby seals being clubbed and skinned alive to concerned citizens around the world. The charges against them are part of an effort by the Canadian government to close the curtain on this gruesome enterprise. The defendants look forward to the trial, in which their counsel will introduce video evidence disproving the charges
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Shaun & Beth Tierney compiled a fantastic travel guide for Christmas Island, a tiny dot in the Indian Ocean that is barely known and even less explored...
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