Antarctic Treaty meet steps up efforts to save marine ecology

Scientists and policy-makers at a 10-day Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting, held in Edinburgh, have agreed upon new measures to reduce the risk of non-native species being introduced into both marine and terrestrial ecosystems in Antarctica.

USS Oriskany is now a marine abode

The world's largest artificial diving reef and habitat for marine life was recently created by sinking a decommissioned us warship off the Florida coast. The 300-metre us Navy warship, the uss Oriskany, which served in the Korean and Vietnam wars, was commissioned in 1950.

Mysterious dolphin deaths in Zanzibar

Even weeks after about 600 bluenose dolphins were washed ashore at Zanzibar's Nungwi beach, a popular tourist destination, scientists are still clueless. Experts say the dolphins might have been hurt by oil pollution, poisonous seaweed or simply a fast-receding tide, reports Reuters. Others hint that sonar from us submarines might be the cause since similar cases had occurred earlier. A us Navy task force patrols the East Africa coast as part of counter-terrorism operations. The deaths have injured Zanzibar's tourism industry.

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corrosive oceans: Increased carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly making the world's oceans more acidic. If this continues it could cause mass extinction of marine life similar to that which occurred 65 million years ago when dinosaurs disappeared, according to Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.

Avian disaster

A recent major oil spill off Estonia's northwestern coast has damaged the marine ecosystem in the Baltic Sea and its delicate bird population, authorities said. The spill was located in the coastal areas of Laane and Harju counties, some 100 km southwest of the capital, Tallinn. It was caused by an unidentified ship, which might have deliberately leaked the oil, according to Estonia's environment ministry.

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quake forecast: Researchers at Yale and the University of Washington, both in the US, suggest a new way to forecast severe earthquakes. They say that big earthquakes, like the 2004 Sumatra earthquake, may be caused by the build-up of sediment on top of subduction zones -- the boundaries where two tectonic plates collide. The scientists used computer simulations to identify specific areas within a subduction zone that will produce the most severe damage when they rupture.

Cast away

The decommissioned French aircraft carrier Clemenceau is heading for India after being released by the Egyptian authorities. It is to be dismantled at the ship-breaking yards of Alang in Gujarat pending the Supreme Court (sc) decision on February 13, 2006, on whether the ship should be allowed to enter the Indian waters at all.

No more baits

The Taiwanese government has announced that it will dismantle 120 tuna longline vessels, about five per cent of its fleet. Environmentalists praised this reduction as a boon for marine animals injured and killed in large numbers by longlines in the Pacific Ocean.

Karachi fish kill

a huge quantity of dead fish recently washed ashore at Karachi coast in Pakistan, with scientists attributing the mass death to pollution by the July 2003 oil spill from tanker Tasman Spirit, off the Karachi coast. They also blame dumping of by-catch by foreign trawlers into the sea for the mishap. Concerns have been heightened by the possibility of the dead fish, containing harmful pollutants, having been fed to poultry.

The seabirds have flown