Source: PressReader
Author: Jin Zhu
Jiaolong, the manned submersible, could put China at the forefront of deep-sea exploration if attempts to dive to 7,000 meters are successful this month, a senior official involved in the project said on Sunday.
Source: EurekAlert
Author: Jan Steffan
Up to now marine scientists investigating complex processes on the ocean floor have had limited choices. If they wanted to examine large areas on the ocean floor, they could do it only for short periods of time, because research vessels are expensive to use. If they wanted to examine long term processes, they could use autonomous observatories, but they would get measurements from only one point in the ocean.
Continue reading First Mission for New Ocean Floor Observatory
Source: Kate Newton
From the depths of the Kermadec Trench, New Zealand scientists have retrieved the largest known examples of a creature that looks like a giant albino flea.
Source: Nature 481, 426–428 () DOI:10.1038/481426a
Author: Jo Marchant
Brendan Foley peels his wetsuit to the waist and perches on the side of an inflatable boat as it skims across the sea just north of the island of Crete. At his feet are the dripping remains of a vase that moments earlier had been resting on the sea floor, its home for more than a millennium. “It’s our best day so far,” he says of his dive that morning. “We’ve discovered two ancient shipwrecks.”
Continue reading Underwater archaeology: Hunt for the ancient mariner
Published by: Natural Environment Research Council, Planet Earth Online
Author: Peter Hurrell
Bottom trawling fishing boats have devastated many cold water coral reefs along the margin of the North East Atlantic Ocean. Now, researchers have found large cold water coral colonies clinging to the vertical and overhanging sides of submarine canyons 1350 metres below the surface of the Bay of Biscay.
Oceanographers exploring some of the most remote deep-sea hot springs ever found have discovered what they say is a “riot of life” in a distinct biological zone that no one knew existed.
Continue reading Whole new marine ecology discoverd at deep water antarctic vents
Source: BBC
A team of scientists has set out on a six-week mission, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, to explore the Indian Ocean’s underwater mountains, or seamounts.
Source: Aljazeera
From a climate change/fisheries/pollution/habitat destruction point of view, our nightmare is here, it’s the world we live in.”
This bleak statement about the current status of the world’s oceans comes from Dr Wallace Nichols, a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences. Al Jazeera asked Dr Nichols, along with several other ocean experts, how they see the effects climate change, pollution and seafood harvesting are having on the oceans.
Deep-sea trawlers from mainland Europe are destroying diverse and fragile coral gardens off the northwest coast of the UK in an industry that is only possible thanks to EU subsidies, a new report has highlighted.
Continue reading EU subsidies finance coral gardens damaged by trawlers from Spain and France
Deep-sea corals area among the most vulnerable ecosystems and the United Nations has called for their protection. Most of these interesting communities have disappeared from large extensions of European waters and the Mediterranean due to bottom trawling, changes in water temperature or natural catastrophic events.
