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Computers decide when to stop searches at sea
Researchers at Portsmouth University and the US Coast Guard are working together to develop a computer model that will predict how long someone will survive when lost at sea. The Search and Rescue Survival Model has been designed to take the pressure off rescuers making difficult decisions about when a search and rescue mission should be stopped.
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Why a speeding shark is like a golf ball
Shortfin mako sharks can shoot through the ocean at up to 50 miles per hour (80 kilometres an hour). Now a trick that helps them to reach such speeds has been discovered - the sharks can raise their scales to create tiny wells across the surface of their skin, reducing drag like the dimples on a golf ball. Tiny vortices or whirlpools formed within the cavities between the scales. These vortices form a kind of "buffer layer" between the skin's surface and the fast moving fluid, preventing a turbulent wake from forming behind the shark.
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Japan's whaling fleet sets out for Antarctic
The main ship in Japan's whaling fleet set out for the Antarctic on Monday for its first hunt in the region since limping home with just over half its planned catch in April following clashes with militant anti-whaling activists, environmentalist group Greenpeace said.
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Sea snakes drink only freshwater
It has been the long-standing dogma that the roughly 60 species of venomous sea snakes worldwide satisfy their drinking needs by drinking seawater, with internal salt glands filtering and excreting the salt. Experiments published this month with three species of captive sea kraits captured near Taiwan, however, found that the snakes refused to drink saltwater even if thirsty - and then would drink only freshwater or heavily diluted saltwater.
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Update: Diving in the Maldives
More dive sites and dive companies in the Maldives are now listed on the SCUBA Travel guide to diving around the world.
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Oceans predict climate change
In a November special issue of the journal Ecology, a group of scientists report that if current patterns of change in the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans continue, alterations of ocean circulation could occur on a global scale, with potentially dramatic implications for the world's climate and biosphere.
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Recipe for rescuing our reefs
If current emission trends continue, we could see a doubling of atmospheric CO2 in as little as 50 years. This would lead to an unprecedented acidification of our oceans that coral reefs would be unlikely to survive. That would lead to the death of countless marine species as well as the devastation of economies dependent on ocean health and productivity. It would also mean the end of an era for coral reef and scuba diving aficionados around the world. So says Rod Salm writing on the BBC web site. He adds a list of practical measures that can be taken to protect the reefs. "We need to find ways to convince people to take action, but that is a major challenge."
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A million tonnes of North Sea fish discarded every year
A million tonnes of fish and other sea creatures caught in the North Sea are thrown overboard every year, according to a new report from WWF-Germany. The study, Sea Creatures Are Not Rubbish, shows that one-third of North Sea catch is discarded and calls for a gradual ban on the practice of discarding in the European Union.
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UN chief urges climate change help despite slowdown
United Nations Secretary-General urged developed countries not to neglect climate change as they tend to a global economic slowdown and called on rich nations to help poor countries prone to global warming. "The leaders of the developed countries should not neglect the issue of global warming," he said.
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Update: Diving the Cook Islands
"There's something very cool about knowing you're the only divers in the ocean for 2000 miles."
Just one of the comments on the diving in the Cook Islands now on the SCUBA Travel guide.
"Good reefs, warm water, huge viz, some big life"...Diving was fantastic in the blue ocean."
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Ink squirts make squid swim for their lives
Squid can't shout out in alarm to their comrades when danger threatens, but they certainly can squirt out, and this, it seems, serves the same purpose. It is assumed that the main reason squid squirt ink is to have a "cloaking device", allowing them to escape from predators - but other squid may pick up on it as well.
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Typhoons bury vast amounts of carbon dioxide at sea
In just a few days a single typhoon can dump the same amount of carbon to the bottom of the ocean as an entire year of rain. The storms do this by ripping mud and decaying vegetation off the land, and flushing it down rivers in huge floods and out to sea.
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New SCUBA Bestsellers List
The list of the bestselling SCUBA books and DVDs of the last quarter is now up. Raising the Dead: A True Story of Death and Survival by Philip Finch is one of the new entries. An account of cave diving in the Kalahari Desert. Dive Atlas of the World keeps its top spot yet again, and the Blue Planet DVD set makes a reappearance.
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Life in the abyss is no protection from bad weather
It's a long way from atmospheric clouds to the floor of the Pacific Ocean, but the two are intrinsically linked. In fact, the climate controls the fate of animals dwelling at the bottom of the abyss, 4 kilometres beneath the surface, new research reveals.
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Stark new assessment warns of mass extinctions and the "rise of slime"
When certain species have been decimated to the point of joining the endangered species list, measures are taken to more effectively conserve and revive their population bases.
To Jeremy Jackson, ocean ecosystems around the globe similarly have been degraded to the point that they should also be considered "endangered."
the effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, ocean warming, increased acidification, and massive nutrient runoff as culprits in a grand transformation of once-complex ocean ecosystems. Areas that had featured intricate marine food webs with large animals are being converted into simplistic ecosystems dominated by microbes, toxic algal blooms, jellyfish, and disease. Jackson has labeled the ongoing transformation "the rise of slime".
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Natural colour underwater photographs
Taking good photos underwater requires a good white light source such as a flash or spotlight. But some wavelengths of light penetrate water more easily than others, and the result is a heavy blue cast. The tint gets progressively deeper as subjects get further from the camera, meaning that corrective filters only work for a narrow range of distances from the lens. A new patent application suggests the solution is to use a camera with a battery of different flashes. Each produces a different wavelength of light, which penetrates water to different extents. A sensor records that effect, making it possible to work out the distance to a subject in the image.
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SCUBA News #101 Now Online
Issue 101 of SCUBA News (ISSN 1476-8011) is now available online at http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/scubanews101.html.
With articles, marine facts, your letters and the diving news from around the world.
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Strategy to Reduce Ship Strikes to North Atlantic Right Whales
NOAA officials today issued a regulation that will implement new measures to protect
endangered North Atlantic right whales.
The regulation will, for the first time, require large ships to reduce speeds to ten knots in
areas where the whales feed and reproduce, as well as along migratory routes in between. The
goal of the regulation is to reduce the risk of ship collisions with the whales.
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Fifty Places to Dive Before You Die
Compiled from the favourite destinations of diving "experts" - includes Raja Ampat (West Guinea), Lembognan (Indonesia), Maine (USA) and Myanmar.
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Europe should spend now to avoid climate catastrophes
Europe is warming faster than the world average, creating conditions that are making the Mediterranean region dryer and the north wetter, according to a report studying the impact of global warming on Europe.
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27% Off Dive Magazine
DIVE magazine is the UK's most popular scuba diving publication and is now being offered with 27% off for 12 issues. It contains the latest news, equipment reviews, photography, features on where to dive and tips to improve your skills. Delivered world-wide but discount only available in the UK.
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Marine 'dead zones' leave crabs gasping
It's not easy being a fish these days, but it could be even harder being a crab. Research into marine "dead zones" around the world suggests that crustaceans are the first to gasp for air when oxygen levels get low.
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Film of fishermen dumping catch causes uproar
British trawler has sparked an international incident after being filmed taking a boatload of endangered fish caught in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea and then dumping the majority overboard in UK waters.
Norwegian government coastguards filmed the crew of the Prolific, a Shetland-based trawler, openly discarding more than 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish, or nearly 80% of its catch.
It is illegal to discard fish in Norwegian waters, but boats are forced to do so in European Union waters if they have caught the wrong species of fish or fish that are too small. Last year the EU estimated that between 40% and 60% of all fish caught by trawlers in the North sea is discarded. The practice of dumping is widely recognised as unsustainable but inevitable given the present EU quota system.
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Acidifying oceans are brewing up an underwater din
The ocean is getting noisier. Sound can now travel further than it did a century ago, thanks to carbon emissions that have made the oceans more acidic. Researchers have known for some time that acidity can influence how far sound travels in seawater. Oceans are becoming more acidic because of rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which dissolves in seawater to form carbonic acid.
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Underwater Photo Gallery: Italy
SCUBA Travel have a new room in their Photo Gallery, dedicated to the marine life and dive sites of Italy.
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Secrets of Effective Communication beneath the Sea
An acoustic signal is sent horizontally through ocean waters from one point to another. Along the way the sound is bouncing off a "ceiling" of choppy, wind-whipped seas and seafloor that could be craggy rock or smooth sand. If researchers can better understand how physical conditions like these distort sound as it travels through the ocean, they could send data underwater faster and with less power and could make it much easier for networks of sensors to talk to each other simultaneously. They could improve wireless communications from commonly used ocean instruments such as Doppler current profilers and potentially eliminate the need for vehicles and gliders to surface just to transmit modest amounts of data. With these goals on the horizon, a science team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography have successfully completed a three-week study of waters west of the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
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Reef Search Finds Hundreds of New Species
Hundreds of new kinds of animal species surprised international researchers systematically exploring waters off two islands on the Great Barrier Reef and a reef off northwestern Australia - waters long familiar to divers. The discoveries were made at Lizard and Heron Islands (part of the Great Barrier Reef), and Ningaloo Reef in northwestern Australia. The found about 300 soft coral species, up to half of them thought to be new to science.
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Greenland seeks whaling breakaway
Greenland is attempting to remove its whale hunt from the jurisdiction of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Its whalers are angry that the IWC has twice declined to permit the addition of humpback whales to its annual quota.
The move could make Greenland the only state outside the IWC to systematically hunt the "great whales".
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Climate: New spin on ocean's role
New studies of the Southern Ocean are revealing previously unknown features of giant spinning eddies that have a profound influence on marine life and on the world's climate.
These massive swirling structures - the largest are known as gyres - can be thousands of kilometres across and can extend down as deep as 500 metres or more, a research team led by a UNSW mathematician, Dr Gary Froyland, has shown in the latest study published in Physical Review Letters.
"The water in the gyres does not mix well with the rest of the ocean, so for long periods these gyres can trap pollutants, nutrients, drifting plants and animals, and become physical barriers that divert even major ocean currents," Dr Froyland says.
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Aqua Lung Recalls Scuba Regulators and Adaptors
Aqua Lung USA are recalling Titan DIN 1st Stage Scuba Regulators and Titan/Conshelf DIN Scuba Adaptors. All owners of TITAN DIN regulators whose serial number is lower than 6062501 or TITAN/CONSHELF DIN adaptors that are marked 300 BAR MAX should return their regulator to their Aqua Lung retailer for an upgrade.
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