This morning NOAA released a report from its dolphin health assessment following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Their investigation shows the effects of the spill on dolphins in Barataria Bay, including a higher prevalence of lung disease and adrenal effects. One of the worst sights I’ve ever seen was the Gulf Oil Spill, but the […]
Tag: marine animals
Over 700 species added to the threatened categories on the IUCN Red List (photos)
In another sign of the global biodiversity crisis, the IUCN Red List has added 715 species to its threatened categories of Vulnerable, Endangered, and Critically Endangered in this year’s update. Some of these species were evaluated by the IUCN Red List for the first time while others saw their conditions deteriorate, such as the the […]
Manta ray tourism worth 28 times more than killing them for Traditional Chinese Medicine
A new study in the open access journal PLoS ONE estimates that manta rays are worth $140 million a year in tourism across 23 countries, significantly outweighing the worth of manta ray gill plates, which have become the newest craze in Traditional Chinese Medicine. “As an example in Indonesia, revenue to fishermen from manta gill […]
Whales teach each other new feeding behavior
Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), popularly known for their majestic and alluring underwater mating songs and acrobatic breaches, have shown that they can adapt to changing prey variability by passing on new hunting techniques to each other. According to new findings in the journal Science, a team of researchers have revealed the cultural spread of new […]
Are seagulls killing whales in Patagonia?
It sounds ludicrous, but it could just be true: scientists say seagulls may be responsible for hundreds of southern right whale moralities off the Argentine coastline. Since 2003, scientists have documented the deaths of 605 southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) near Península Valdés which the whales use as a nursery. Notably, 88 percent of these […]
Featured video: saving sea turtles in Mexico’s Magdalena Bay
A new short film, Viva la tortuga documents the struggle to save loggerhead and green sea turtles in Magdalena Bay, Mexico. Once a region for a massive sea turtle meat market, the turtles now face a new threat: bycatch. Loggerhead sea turtles are drowning in bottom-set gillnets, unable to escape from the nets once entangled. […]
Munching on marine plastic kills sperm whale
What do children’s toys, balloons, mattresses and plastic bags have in common? They can, along with more non-biodegradable pollutants, be found in the belly of a sperm whale, the topic of a new study in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. The same whale that swallowed Jonah from the Bible, Geppetto from Collodi’s Pinocchio, and the crew […]
Ice Age bowhead whales’ survival surprises scientists
Ancient DNA shows that bowhead whales bucked the trend to survive the last Ice Age, say scientists. The demise of cold-adapted land mammals such as mammoths has been linked to rising temperatures around 11,000 years ago. But researchers were surprised to find a contrasting population boom for whales living off the coast of Britain. Their […]