Video recommendation.

"Im Meer gibt es immer mehr Stellen, in denen es kaum noch Sauerstoff gibt: sogenannte "Todeszonen". Wir erklären euch, warum das ein Problem ist."

Source: ZDF
 

watch the video here.

A Story of the Collaborative Research Centre "Climate-Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean"

After 12 years of intensive research, the Collaborative Research Centre 754 "Climate-Biogeochemical Interactions in the Tropical Ocean" ended in winter 2019 with a final symposium in Heiligenhafen.

More than 100 scientists involved in the large-scale project over its entire running time were able to gain numerous new insights into the processes of nutrient cycling, the interaction between ocean and atmosphere and the ecosystems in the tropical oceans. Above all, however, they drew attention to a phenomenon that affects the entire ocean: global oxygen loss and the spread of oxygen minimum zones in the ocean. With this video, the SFB 754 now draws a conclusion and at the same time points out the new research tasks that have resulted from its work. These include improved ocean observation and the question of how to prevent further oxygen loss.

For more information please look at www.sfb754.de

For a german version of the video please follow this link.

"A type of anaerobic bacteria responsible for more than 50 percent of nitrogen loss from marine environments has been shown to use solid-state matter present outside their cells for respiration. The finding by KAUST researchers adds to knowledge of the global nitrogen cycle and has important energy-saving potential for wastewater treatment. [...]"

Source: Phys.org

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"Researchers from the University of Michigan, the Chesapeake Bay Program and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science are forecasting a slightly smaller-than-average Chesapeake Bay “dead zone” this year, due to reduced rainfall and less nutrient-rich runoff flowing into the bay from the watershed this spring. [...]"

Source: University of Michigan

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"NOAA scientists are forecasting this summer’s Gulf of Mexico hypoxic area or “dead zone” – an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and other marine life – to be approximately 6,700 square miles, larger than the long-term average measured size of 5,387 square miles but substantially less than the record of 8,776 square miles set in 2017. The annual prediction is based on U.S. Geological Survey river-flow and nutrient data. [...]"

Source: NOAA

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"An estimated 38% of the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries met clean water standards for clarity, oxygen and algae growth between 2016 and 2018. This score is lower than the record high 42% from the previous reporting period, but is still the fifth highest estimate of water quality standards attainment since 1985. This four percentage point decrease is due in large part to a decline in dissolved oxygen in the open waters of the Bay, those areas beyond the shoreline and shallows. Dissolved oxygen is necessary for the survival of the Bay’s aquatic species, and is a factor in the annual dead zone. [...]"

Read the full article here.

"Every year, the Mississippi River dumps around 1.4 million metric tons of nitrogen into the Gulf of Mexico, much of it runoff from agricultural fertilizer. This nitrogen can lead to algal blooms, which in turn deplete oxygen concentrations in the water, creating hypoxic dead zones. The nitrogen cycle is a phenomenon environmental scientists would really like to understand better. “As humans, we do put a lot of reactive nitrogen compounds into the ocean, especially in coastal regions, by…river runoff,” said Katharina Kitzinger of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany. “It’s really crucial to understand how microbes turn over this excess nitrogen that we put into the environment. [...]”"

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"In March, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered its most widespread bleaching event to date. Sixty percent of the reef underwent moderate to severe bleaching, and some corals may never recover.

The cause of this bleaching event was climate change, which brought unusually warm waters to the Great Barrier Reef in February, and disrupted the delicate, symbiotic relationship between the corals and their life-sustaining algae. In general, when sea temperatures rise, corals become stressed and expel algae from their tissues. Without this algae, the corals turn ghostly white and slowly starve. [...]"

Source: Mongabay

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"In a new study, Stanford researchers have strongly bolstered the theory that a lack of oxygen in Earth's oceans contributed to a devastating die-off approximately 444 million years ago. The new results further indicate that these anoxic (little- to no-oxygen) conditions lasted over 3 million years—significantly longer than similar biodiversity-crushing spells in our planet's history. Beyond deepening understandings of ancient mass extinction events, the findings have relevance for today: Global climate change is contributing to declining oxygen levels in the open ocean and coastal waters, a process that likely spells doom for a variety of species. [...]"

Source: Phys.org

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"A new research led by MPhil student Miss Yu Yan Yau and supervised by Dr Benoit Thibodeau from the Department of Earth Sciences and the Swire Institute of Marine Science, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), highlighted the importance of reducing fossil fuel combustion not only to curb the trend of global warming, but also to improve the quality of China’s coastal waters. The findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Environmental Science & Technology. [...]"

Source: The University of Hong Kong

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"As the human onslaught against life on Earth accelerates, no part of the biosphere is left pristine. The simple act of consuming more than we actually need drives the world’s governments and corporations to endlessly destroy more and more of the Earth to extract the resources necessary to satisfy our insatiable desires. In fact, an initiative of the World Economic Forum has just reported that ‘For the first time in history, more than 100 billion tonnes of materials are entering the global economy every year’ – see ‘The Circularity Gap Report 2020’– which means that, on average, every person on Earth uses more than 13 tonnes of materials each year extracted from the Earth. [...]"

Source: GlobalReasearch

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First seagrass restoration in Britain will capture carbon rapidly and offer habitat for lost marine life

 

“We think this whole bay was once carpeted with seagrass,” says Evie Furness, waving across the sparkling, sunlit waters of Dale Bay in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The underwater meadow is long gone though, a victim of past pollution and shipping. So from a boat half a mile from shore, Furness is feeding a long rope into the water, which carries a little hessian bag of seagrass seeds every metre. “We’ve passed the 800,000 seed mark now,” she says. [...]"

Source: The Guardian

Rad the full article here.

"New York / Geneva, 10 March 2020 - The tell-tale physical signs of climate change such as increasing land and ocean heat, accelerating sea level rise and melting ice are highlighted in a new report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization and an extensive network of partners. It documents impacts of weather and climate events on socio-economic development, human health, migration and displacement, food security and land and marine ecosystems. [...]"

Source: World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

Read the full article here.

"Fishing boats that drag nets along the sea floor to catch seafood can indiscriminately harm marine life and destroy habitat. Now, a new study suggests “bottom trawling” can also disrupt the ability of microbes in sediment to remove excess nutrients in coastal waters, potentially increasing that pollution. “This is one of the first papers to look at actual biogeochemical effects of bottom trawling,” says Sebastiaan van de Velde, a marine biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved. “The whole angle is very novel.” [...]"

Source: Science

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"Could pumping oxygen-rich surface water into the depths of lakes, estuaries, and coastal ocean waters help ameliorate dangerous dead zones? New work says yes, although they caution that further research would be needed to understand any possible side effects before implementing such an approach. [...]"

Source: Science Daily 

Read the full article here.

"Sweden has become the newest member of the UK’s Global Ocean Alliance, which looks to help drive urgent action towards the 30by30 target, which would safeguard 30% of the ocean by 2030 and so helping to protect marine wildlife.

“Sweden together with Fiji, hosted the first UN ocean conference in 2017, and we firmly believe we need more international cooperation and substantially increased ambitions to help our ocean survive under the increasing pressures of overfishing, pollution and climate change,” said Swedish Minister for Environment and Climate, Isabella Lövin. [...]"

Source: Oceanographic

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"Study finds Earth's oceans contain just the right amount of iron; adding more may not improve their ability to absorb carbon dioxide

Historically, the oceans have done much of the planet's heavy lifting when it comes to sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Microscopic organisms known collectively as phytoplankton, which grow throughout the sunlit surface oceans and absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, are a key player.

To help stem escalating carbon dioxide emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels, some scientists have proposed seeding the oceans with iron -- an essential ingredient that can stimulate phytoplankton growth. Such "iron fertilization" would cultivate vast new fields of phytoplankton, particularly in areas normally bereft of marine life. [...]"

Source: Sciencedaily

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"Participants at the 2020 UN Ocean Conference Preparatory Meeting highlighted the importance of a healthy ocean in implementing and achieving the SDGs and stressed that 2020 must be a year of concrete action for the ocean. The 2020 Ocean Conference is one of the first milestones of the UN Secretary-General’s Decade of Action for the SDGs and is expected to provide inputs into the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) and the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. [...]"

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"This new decade starts at a critical moment for the future of the Ocean. There is strong agreement among experts that decisions taken in the next ten years will be critical for the future of the Ocean. The current ecological crisis demands a radical shift in the way we treat the marine environment, its precious wildlife, and its invaluable natural resources. We are witnessing continued loss of biodiversity, overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution, and many other serious impacts from human activities – all compounded by climate change, Ocean deoxygenation and acidification. [...]"

Source: International Institute for Sustainable Development

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"For the past 25 years, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection have been diligently collecting water samples each month in Long Island Sound (LIS). Recently, the data have been compiled and analyzed, by UConn associate professors of Marine Science Penny Vlahos and Michael Whitney, and other team members, who have begun the task of digging into the data to better understand the biogeochemistry of the Sound. Part of the analysis, called "Nitrogen Budgets for LIS," has been published in the journal Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science. [...]"

Source: Phys.org

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"“Life under water is essential to life on land”, said Tijjani Muhammad-Bande. The ocean produces “half of the oxygen we breathe” and provides food for millions of around the world, playing a “fundamental role in mitigating climate change as a major heat and carbon sink”. The Ocean Conference, which will run in Lisbon from 2 to 6 June, aims to propel science-based innovative solutions in the form of global ocean action. The worldwide ocean economy is valued at around $1.5 trillion dollars annually, as aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector and 350 million jobs world-wide are linked to fisheries. [...]"

Source: UN News

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Climate models that do not account for anaerobic microbial activity may underestimate future expansion of oxygen-depleted waters.

"Certain parts of Earth’s oceans are so oxygen depleted that they can hardly sustain life. Climate models predict that these “dead zones” will expand as global warming progresses, affecting ecosystems, fisheries, and the climate itself. Now Lengger et al. provide new evidence that such predictions do not adequately account for the activity of anaerobic microbes that consume inorganic carbon within dead zones. [...]"

Source: EOS.org

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"A new analysis shows the world's oceans were the warmest in 2019 than any other time in recorded human history, especially between the surface and a depth of 2,000 meters. The study, conducted by an international team of 14 scientists from 11 institutes across the world, also concludes that the past ten years have been the warmest on record for global ocean temperatures, with the past five years holding the highest record. [...]"

Source: EurekAlert!

Read the full article here.

"“Dead zones” are rapidly appearing in the world’s oceans as they lose oxygen at an unprecedented rate due to climate change, sewage pollution and farming practices, presenting an existential threat to marine life and ecosystems, according to a vast new study.

The overall level of oxygen in the oceans has dropped by roughly 2 per cent, while the number of known hypoxic “dead zones” – where oxygen levels are dangerously low – has skyrocketed from 45 known sites in the 1960s to at least 700 areas now dangerously devoid of the life-giving compound, some encompassing thousands of square miles. [...]"

Source: The Independent

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"The world’s oceans are gasping for breath, a report issued Saturday at the annual global climate talks in Madrid has concluded.

The report represents the combined efforts of 67 scientists from 17 countries and was released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It found that oxygen levels in the world’s oceans declined by roughly 2 percent between 1960 and 2010. The decline, called deoxygenation, is largely attributed to climate change, although other human activities are contributing to the problem. One example is so-called nutrient runoff, when too many nutrients from fertilizers used on farms and lawns wash into waterways. [...]"

Source: The New York Times

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"Ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and marine heatwaves are all pressing marine issues that are quietly intensifying around the world. These challenges are diverse and occur on a massive scale, making it difficult for people to understand the full extent of the problem. To shed some light on this topic, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) spoke with Mr. Tsunoda, Senior Research Fellow at the Ocean Policy Research Institute (OPRI). [...]"

Source: Sasakawa Peace Foundation

Read the full article here.

"An international team of researchers led by the University of Exeter suggests that a wide variety of marine species could be used for monitoring the world's oceans. Using electronic tags, scientists could exploit the natural behavior of sharks, penguins, turtles, seals and other species to fill gaps in our knowledge of the seas.

With three-quarters of the Earth's surface covered with water, having a comprehensive understanding of the oceans is very important in dealing with everything from fishing quotas to climate change. The problem is that the oceans are much bigger than most people realize and many parts aren't easily, if at all, accessible."

Source: New Atlas

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"TOMBWA, Angola — His ancestors were Portuguese colonialists who settled on this otherworldly stretch of coast, wedged between a vast desert and the southern Atlantic. They came looking for the one thing this barren region had in abundance: fish.

By the time Mario Carceija Santos was getting into the fishing business half a century later, in the 1990s, Angola had won independence and the town of Tombwa was thriving. There were 20 fish factories strung along the bay, a constellation of churches and schools, a cinema hall built in art deco, and, in the central plaza, massive drying racks for the tons upon tons of fish hauled out of the sea. [...]"

Source: The Washington Post

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"An annual model-based report on "dead-zone" conditions in the Chesapeake Bay during 2019 indicates the total volume of low-oxygen, "hypoxic" water was on the high end of the normal range for 1985 to 2018, a finding that scientists consider relatively good news.

 

Dr. Marjy Friedrichs, a Virginia Institute of Marine Science professor and report card co-author, says "Even with environmental conditions that favor severe hypoxia, including record-high river input and light winds, our analysis shows that the total amount of hypoxia this year was within the normal range seen over the past 35 years."

Source: Phys.org

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"In an effort to reverse the decline in the health of the world's oceans, the United Nations (UN) has declared 2021 to 2030 to be the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. One key requirement for the scientific initiative is data on existing global ocean conditions. An important trove of data is already available thanks to the Tara Oceans expedition, an international, interdisciplinary enterprise that collected 35,000 samples from all the world's oceans between 2009 and 2013. The samples were collected by researchers aboard one schooner, the Tara, at depths ranging from the surface to 1,000 meters deep. [...]"

Source: Science Daily

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"They were also able to link this event with a shift in the Benguela upwelling system, and an associated intensification of the oxygen minimum zone in this region. The team has now published their findings in the journal Geology.

Known as 'ecosystem engineers', cold-water corals play an important role in the species diversity of the deep sea. The coral species Lophelia pertusa is significantly involved in reef formation. [...]"

Source: EurekAlert!

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"THE  fish kill in the coastal areas of Las Piñas and Parañaque was not caused by blast fishing but from the poor level of oxygen and high levels of ammonia and phosphates in said water body.

Based on the tests conducted by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources-National Fisheries Laboratory Division and BFAR 4A on the water quality in three sampling areas, it showed that there is a poor level of dissolved oxygen and higher levels of ammonia and phosphates than the standard level. The  sampling areas were in San Dionisio and Bay City, both in Parañaque. [...]"

Read the full article here.

"Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is being added to the atmosphere through both natural processes and human activities, such as energy production and agriculture.

To predict the impacts of human emissions, researchers need a complete picture of the atmosphere’s methane cycle. They need to know the size of the inputs—both natural and human—as well as the outputs. They also need to know how long methane resides in the atmosphere.

To help develop this understanding, Tom Weber, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester; undergraduate researcher Nicola Wiseman ’18, now a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine; and their colleague Annette Kock at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany, used data science to determine how much methane is emitted from the ocean into the atmosphere each year.  [...]"

Source: University of Rochester

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"ATLAS is one of these projects you can’t do justice to in a single-page article. For over 3.5 years now, a consortium of multinational industries, SMEs, governments and academia have been sailing across the Atlantic to assess its deep-sea ecosystems. In doing so, they’ve already managed to deeply enhance our understanding of the consequences of climate change as well as inform the development of better management policies and practices. [...]"

Source: Cordis

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"The importance of the ocean in climate regulation is enormous—yet undervalued. The ocean is estimated to have absorbed 93 percent of the excess heat generated by human activities since the 1970s, acting as a buffer against the global warming we've seen to date. The majority of the global carbon cycle circulates through the ocean, through marine food-webs and other processes, and carbon is locked-away in coastal and marine habitats and deep in ocean sediments. Coastal ecosystems alone sequester more carbon than terrestrial forest per unit area. [...]"

Source: Phys.org

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"More than two-thirds of the planet is covered by ocean, but these waters have not received their due in terms of research dollars or public attention. That means the dangers that the seas face from climate change — and the solutions that they offer — are often overlooked. [...]"

Source: Nature
Authors: Janis Searles Jones
DOI: 10.1038/d41586-019-02832-w

Read the full article here.

"Investigations are underway following the report of a fish kill at the Jurien Bay Marina, where large numbers of dead fish from a range of species have been found.

Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development officers are investigating the event, to gather information and assess the extent of the fish kill. They have also gathered suitable fish and water samples for laboratory testing. [...]"

Source: Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (Australia)

Read the full report here.

"Chinese scientists have developed an online system to monitor marine-biochemical elements, according to Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, who led the project. The research team developed the online monitoring instruments by integrating three measurement modules namely, the chlorophyll module, productivity module and dissolved oxygen module, which are all developed by the team itself. [...]"

Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences

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"For years, scientists struggled to connect a mechanism to this mass extinction, one of the 10 most dramatic ever recorded in Earth's history. Now, researchers have confirmed that this event, referred to by scientists as the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction, was triggered by an all-too-familiar culprit: rapid and widespread depletion of oxygen in the global oceans. [...]"

Source: ScienceDaily

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"The last two years MV Columbia records the ocean’s vitals every three minutes, along a 1,600-kilometer route through the Inside Passage. This includes the coastal region from Puget Sound to the Alaska Panhandle. The ship measures the sea's temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen content, and carbon dioxide concentration, aiming to monitor ocean acidification. [...]"

Source: Safety4Sea

Read the full article here.

"What will the ecology of the Salish Sea look like in the year 2095?

It's an important question for millions of people who live along and near the shores of this intricate, interconnected network of coastal waterways, inlets, bays, and estuaries that encompasses Puget Sound in Washington state and the deep waters of southwest British Columbia. A research team from PNNL found that the inner Salish Sea is resilient, and that future response to climate change—while significant—will be less severe than the open ocean. [...]"

Source: phys.org

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"Ocean acidification is bad news for shellfish, as it makes it harder for them to form their calcium-based shells. But climate change could also have multiple other impacts that make California bays less hospitable to shelled organisms like oysters, which are a key part of the food web.

Changes to water temperature and chemistry resulting from human-caused climate change could shrink the prime habitat and farming locations for oysters in California bays, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis. [...]"

Source: Science Daily

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Hurricane Barry dampens initial size predictions

"This year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone”— an area of low oxygen that can kill fish and marine life — is approximately 6,952 square miles, according to NOAA-supported scientists. The measured size of the dead zone, also called the hypoxic zone, is the 8th largest in the 33-year record and exceeds the 5,770-square-mile average from the past five years. [...]"

Source: NOAA

Read the full article here.

"In 2019, predictions indicate that the Gulf of Mexico will retain the dubious distinction of having the second-largest low-oxygen dead zone on Earth (the Baltic Sea remains firmly in first place). By the end of the summer, the hypoxic region on the seafloor at the mouth of the Mississippi River is expected to occupy over 22,000 square kilometers—an area the size of the state of Massachusetts. [...]

Source: Earth & Space Science News
Author: Mary Caperton Morton
DOI: 10.1029/2019EO128019

Read the full article here.

"The oceans are losing oxygen. Numerous studies based on direct measurements in recent years have shown this. Since water can dissolve less gas as temperatures rise, these results were not surprising. In addition to global warming, factors such as eutrophication of the coastal seas also contribute to the ongoing deoxygenation. [...]"

Source: Phys.org

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"Researchers have presented support for the theory that marine invertebrates with larger body size are generally more sensitive to reductions in oxygen than smaller animals, and so will be more sensitive to future global climate change. However, evolutionary innovation can to some extent offset any respiratory disadvantages of large body size. [...]"

Source: Science Daily / University of Plymouth

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"JUST OFF THE coast of Louisiana and Texas where the Mississippi River empties, the ocean is dying. The cyclical event known as the dead zone occurs every year, but scientists predict that this year's could be one of the largest in recorded history. Annual spring rains wash the nutrients used in fertilizers and sewage into the Mississippi. That fresh water, less dense than ocean water, sits on top of the ocean, preventing oxygen from mixing through the water column. Eventually those freshwater nutrients can spur a burst of algal growth, which consumes oxygen as the plants decompose. [...]"

Source: National Geographic

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"NOAA scientists are forecasting this summer’s Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone or ‘dead zone’ – an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and other marine life – to be approximately 7,829 square miles, or roughly the size of Massachusetts. The annual prediction is based on U.S. Geological Survey river flow and nutrient data. [...]"

Source: NOAA

Read the full article here.

"Armed with better data than ever before, scientists have in recent months sounded the alarm over the rising pace of global warming and the parlous state of Nature. But there is another area of concern, one that covers two thirds of the planet and plays a crucial role in absorbing dangerous greenhouse gases and regulating everything from food chains to weather patterns. Oceans are crucial to life on Earth, yet they frequently only feature in the environment debate when plastic pollution or fish-stock declines are discussed. But experts believe that might be changing. “We have an important opportunity over the next 18 months to do something for oceans,” said Dan Laffoley, from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. [...]"

Source: France24

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"The year's widespread flooding has made it likely that a big, oxygen-starved "dead zone" off Louisiana's coast will form this summer, the head of the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science said Thursday. Preliminary computer model runs "indicate a large to very large year," for the area where there's too little oxygen to support marine life, Steven Thur told the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force during a meeting livestreamed from Baton Rouge. [...]"

Source: The New York Times

Read the full article here.

 

"COLOMBO, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's Marine Environment Protection Authority on Thursday urged countries along the Bay of Bengal to draft stronger laws against polluting the oceans due to the formation of a dead zone in the center of the Bay of Bengal.

General Manager of the Marine Environment Protection Authority, Dr. P.B. Teney told Xinhua that authorities had discovered the formation of a dead zone in the Bay of Bengal which had spread across a 6000 square kilometer area and was 100 meters to 400 meters in depth. [...]"

Source: XinhuaNet

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Widespread and sometimes drastic marine oxygen declines are stressing sensitive species—a trend that will continue with climate change

"Escaping predators, digestion and other animal activities—including those of humans—require oxygen. But that essential ingredient is no longer so easy for marine life to obtain, several new studies reveal.

In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are,” he says. [...]"

Source: Scientific American
Author: Laura Poppick

Read the full article here.

"Growing populations and tightening water supplies have spurred people in many places—including the Middle East, Australia, California and China—to look to the oceans and other salty waters as a source of new drinking water. But desalination plants are energy intensive and create a potentially environment-harming waste called brine (made up of concentrated salt and chemical residues), which is dumped into the ocean, injected underground or spread on land.

Despite the ecological threats, “there was no comprehensive assessment about brine—how much we produce,” says Manzoor Qadir, assistant director of the United Nations University Institute on Water, Environment and Health. So he and his colleagues calculated that figure and found it is 50 percent greater than the desalination industry’s previous rough estimate. In fact, it is enough to cover Florida with 30 centimeters of brine every year. [...]"

Source: Scientific American

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"Climate change is causing significant changes to phytoplankton in the world's oceans, and a new MIT study finds that over the coming decades these changes will affect the ocean's color, intensifying its blue regions and its green ones. Satellites should detect these changes in hue, providing early warning of wide-scale changes to marine ecosystems. [...]"

Source: ScienceDaily

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Oceanographers at the University of Rhode Island have found that even slight levels of ocean oxygen loss, or deoxygenation, have big consequences for tiny marine organisms called zooplankton.

Zooplankton are important components of the food web in the expanse of deep, open ocean called the midwater. Within this slice of ocean below the surface and above the seafloor are oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), large regions of very low oxygen. Unlike coastal “dead zones” where oxygen levels can suddenly plummet and kill marine life not acclimated to the conditions, zooplankton in OMZs are specially adapted to live where other organisms – especially predators – cannot.

Source: Whats up newp

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"Sea level rise, heat transport, ocean acidification, these ocean processes, well known in the public sphere, play out on a regional to global scale. But less well known are more localized processes that bring some ecological niches together, keep others separated, and help sustain ocean life by circulating nutrients.

Physical processes in the ocean that take place over intermediate and small scales of space and time play a key role in vertical seawater exchange. They also have significant effects on chemical, biological, and ecological processes in the upper ocean. [...]"

Source: EOS

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"Not every marine scientist has the same origin story. Some are instantly enthralled by the ocean and its many inhabitants at a ripe young age. For others, a lightbulb goes off while sitting in an undergraduate class. Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar Kate Hewett grew up on the islands of Micronesia, but did not consider a career in marine sciences until graduate school. While working as an environmental engineer in Boston, Massachusetts, she decided to go back to school to develop a deeper understanding of the environmental problems she encountered at work. In her classes, the complicated physics associated with coastal zones pulled at Hewett’s engineering heartstrings. [...]"

Source: NOAA

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"Upwelling hinders an efficient method to estimate a key measure of biological productivity in coastal waters, but accounting for surface temperatures could boost accuracy.

 

Although coastal waters make up only about 10% of the surface area of the ocean, they harbor most of its life. Measuring biological activity in these regions can reveal their impact on fisheries, low-oxygen dead zones, and the global carbon cycle, but coastal zones remain understudied. Now new research by Teeter et al. suggests how to improve the accuracy of a method that uses oxygen and argon measurements to quickly estimate marine biological activity. [...]"

Source: EOS

Read the full article here.

"The Gulf of Maine’s location at the meeting point of two major currents, as well as its shallow depth and shape, makes it especially susceptible to warming.

Late last month, four endangered sea turtles washed ashore in northern Cape Cod, marking an early onset to what has now become a yearly event: the sea turtle stranding season. These turtles—in last month’s case, Kemp’s ridley sea turtles—venture into the Gulf of Maine during warm months, but they can become hypothermic and slow moving when colder winter waters abruptly arrive, making it hard to escape. “They are enjoying the warm water, and then all of a sudden the cold comes, and they can’t get out fast enough,” said Andrew Pershing, an oceanographer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine. [...]"

Source: eos.org

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"Coastal regions with low dissolved oxygen (known as hypoxia) can lead to poor water quality and harm regional fisheries. These areas of low dissolved oxygen are expanding and expected to continue growing in coming years due to human impacts on the environment.

A recent article published in Continental Shelf Research explores aspects of the environmental conditions that can potentially lead to hypoxia in the Mississippi Bight region of the northern Gulf of Mexico. This area extends from Apalachicola in Florida to the Mississippi River Delta. [...]"

Source:  EurekAlert!

Read the full article here.

"In den tropischen und subtropischen Meeren existieren in mittleren Tiefen riesige sauerstoffarme Zonen. Im Zuge des Klimawandels dehnen sie sich immer stärker aus. Auch in Küstenregionen entstehen durch Stickstoffbelastung aus der Landwirtschaft lebensfeindliche Zonen ohne Sauerstoff – mit verheerenden Folgen für das marine Ökosystem [...]"

Source: Spektrum.de

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The german Internet and TV channel HYPERRAUM.TV published two reports in collaboration with the SFB754 experts Martin Visbeck and Andreas Oschlies.

German speaking users may find the videos online by using one of the two links:

Report 1: Fische in Atemnot

Report 2: Sauerstoff-Transporte

"Scientists say warming ocean temperatures mean Oregon’s coastal waters now have a low-oxygen season, or hypoxia season, just as the state’s forests have a fire season.

Hypoxia is a condition in which the ocean water close to the sea floor has such low levels of dissolved oxygen that the organisms living down there die.

Some of the first signs came in 2002 when dead crabs were hauled up in crab pots. Since then, scientists and crabbers say things have worsened."

Source: earthfix.info
Author: Kristian Foden-Vencil

Read the full article here.

"The Gulf of St. Lawrence has warmed and lost oxygen faster than almost anywhere else in the global oceans. The broad, biologically rich waterway in Eastern Canada drains North America’s Great Lakes and is popular with fishing boats, whales and tourists.

A new study led by the University of Washington looks at the causes of this rapid deoxygenation and links it to two of the ocean’s most powerful currents: the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current. The study, published Sept. 17 in Nature Climate Change, explains how large-scale climate change already is causing oxygen levels to drop in the deeper parts of this waterway."

Source: University of Washington
Author: Hannah Hickey

Read the full article here.

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"A carbon cycle anomaly discovered in carbonate rocks of the Neoproterozoic Hüttenberg Formation of north-eastern Namibia follows a pattern similar to that found right after the Great Oxygenation Event, hinting at new evidence for how Earth's atmosphere became fully oxygenated.

By using the Hüttenberg Formation, which formed between a billion and half a billion years ago, to study the time between Earth's change from an anoxic environment (i.e. one lacking oxygen) to a more hospitable environment that heralded the animal kingdom, a team of researchers led by Dr. Huan Cui of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison discovered a sustained, high level of carbon. This influx of carbon, coupled with changes in other elements, indicates how changing levels of oceanic oxygen may have lent a helping hand to early animal evolution. [...]"

Source: Phys.org

Read the full article here.

"Scientists have shown that coastal waters and river estuaries can exhibit unique vulnerabilities to acidification than offshore waters. This acidification, detected in waters off the United States West Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, can lead to disorientation and cognitive problems in some marine fish species, such as salmon, sharks, and cod. This work is presented at the Goldschmidt Conference in Boston.

 

Scientists have recently discovered that marine creatures can be adversely affected by hypercapnia, a condition of too much dissolved CO₂ in seawater (CO₂ partial pressure, or pCO₂). When this level rises above 1000 micro atmospheres (1000 μatm), some fish species suffer cognitive problems and disorientation, such as losing their way or even swimming towards predators. Surface ocean CO₂ partial pressures tend to be around 400 μatm, so until now scientists have thought that hypercapnia was a problem which would only become apparent over time in subsurface waters. [...]"

Source: Phys.org

Read the full article here.

Summary:

Researchers are looking to the geologic past to make future projections about climate change. Their research focuses on the ancient Tethys Ocean (site of the present-day Mediterranean Sea) and provides a benchmark for present and future climate and ocean models.

Source: Science Daily

Read the full article here.

"In the course of global climate change, scientists are observing the increase of low-oxygen areas in the ocean, also termed oxygen minimum zones (OMZs). Large-scale OMZs exist, for example, in the Pacific off the coast of South America or in the Indian Ocean. Since little to no oxygen is present in these regions - depending on the depth of the water - organisms whose metabolisms is independent of oxygen have a distinct advantage. These organisms include some representatives of the foraminifera: unicellular, shell-forming microorganisms, which have a nucleus and thus belong to the eukaryotes. Their life style involves a particular metabolic pathway termed anaerobic respiration. In the absence of oxygen, they convert nitrate present in the water into molecular nitrogen. [...]"

Source: Kiel University

Read the full article here.

 

 

"Earth scientists exploring how ocean chemistry has evolved found similarities between an event 55 million years ago and current predicted trajectories of planet temperatures, with regards to inputs of CO2 into the atmosphere and oxygen levels in the oceans. As the oceans warm, oxygen decreases while hydrogen sulfide increases, making the oceans toxic and putting marine species at risk."

Source: Science Daily (University of Toronto)

Read the full article here.

In the waters of the Arabian Sea, a vast "dead zone" the size of Scotland is expanding and scientists say climate change may be to blame. In his lab in Abu Dhabi, Zouhair Lachkar is labouring over a colourful computer model of the Gulf of Oman, showing changing temperatures, sea levels and oxygen concentrations.His models and new research unveiled earlier this year show a worrying trend.Dead zones are areas of the sea where the lack of oxygen makes it difficult for fish to survive and the one in the Arabian Sea is "is the most intense in the world," says Lachkar, a senior scientist at NYU Abu Dhabi in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Source: phys.org

Read the full articlere here.

 

"The melting of glaciers on one side of the globe can trigger disintegration of glaciers on the other side of the globe, as has been presented in a recent paper by a team of AWI scientists, who investigated marine microalgae preserved in glacial deposits and subsequently used their findings to perform climate simulations. The study highlights a process with alerting consequences for modern ice sheets: continuous warming of the ocean can result in a massive loss of polar ice mass, and consequently to rapid sea level rise."

Source: Science Daily

Read the full article here.

"Tremendous – and deserved - attention has been paid for the last few years to the scourge of ocean plastics pollution, which we now know reaches the farthest depths of the ocean and can have impacts on ocean life from the smallest plankton to the largest whales.  We know (Jambeck et al., 2015) that some 4.8 million to 12.7 million metric tonnes of plastic enter the ocean each year. UN Environment has estimated the socio-economic costs of ocean plastics pollution at about US$13 billion per year.  We are only beginning to explore and understand the potential human health impacts of plastics in the oceanic food chain. [...]"

Source: United Nations Development Programme
Author: Andrew Hudson

Read the full article here.

"Ecologists from the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science are forecasting a larger-than-average Chesapeake Bay "dead zone" in 2018, due to increased rainfall in the watershed this spring.

 

This summer's Chesapeake Bay hypoxic or dead zone, an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and other aquatic life, is expected to be about 1.9 cubic miles (7.9 cubic kilometers), according to the forecast released today by the two universities. [...]"

Source: Phys.org

Read the full article here.

"Scientists have predicted the dead zone, or area with little to no oxygen in the northern Gulf of Mexico, will become larger than the state of Connecticut by the end of July. The dead zone will cover about 6,620 square miles of the bottom of the continental shelf off Louisiana and Texas. While there are more than 500 dead zones around the world, the northern Gulf of Mexico dead zone is the second largest human-caused coastal hypoxic area in the world."

Source: Phys.org

Read the full article here.

"New research sheds light on first of five major mass extinctions

For decades, scientists have conducted research centered around the five major mass extinctions that have shaped the world we live in. The extinctions date back more than 450 million years with the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction to the deadliest extinction, the Late Permian extinction 250 million years ago that wiped out over 90 percent of species. [...]"

Source: EurekAlert!

Read the full article here.

At the Ocean Risk Summit in Bermuda, experts gathered to advance a new model for how insurance and reinsurance companies can leverage their products and balance sheets to restore marine ecosystems and slow climate change impacts.

"When Hurricane Irma smashed into the British Virgin Islands last September at speeds faster than a jumbo jet at takeoff, the devastation was total. The storm caused damage valued at three times more than the Caribbean islands’ entire gross domestic product, while the territory’s economy – including its biggest industry, tourism – shut down for months. [...]"

Source: Oceans Deeply

Read the full article here.

"Computer simulations show that areas of the ocean that have low levels of dissolved oxygen will expand, but then shrink, in response to global warming — adding to an emerging picture of the finely balanced processes involved.

Global warming has reduced the amount of dissolved oxygen in the ocean by 2% since 1960. A major concern is that the rate of loss of dissolved oxygen has already increased by up to 20% in tropical waters, expanding the volume of regions called oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), where levels of dissolved oxygen are already very low. [...]"

Source: nature.com

Read the full article here.

"New research reveals a growing 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Oman. Little data has been collected in the area for almost 50 years because of piracy and geopolitical tensions. The area devoid of oxygen was confirmed by underwater robots. Reasearchers found an area larger than Scotland with almost no oxygen left. The environmental disaster is worse than expected with dire consequences for fish and marine plants, plus humans who rely on the oceans for food and employment. "

Source: Science Daily

Read the full article here.

"Ocean expert Nancy Rabalais tracks the ominously named "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico -- where there isn't enough oxygen in the water to support life. The Gulf has the second largest dead zone in the world; on top of killing fish and crustaceans, it's also killing fisheries in these waters. Rabalais tells us about what's causing it -- and how we can reverse its harmful effects and restore one of America's natural treasures."

Watch the full TED Talk here.

"Nitrogen is essential to marine life and cycles throughout the ocean in a delicately balanced system. Living organisms--especially marine plants called phytoplankton--require nitrogen in processes such as photosynthesis. In turn, phytoplankton growth takes up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and helps regulate global climate. [...]"

Source: EruekAlert

Read the full article here.

 

"Scientists are studying the oxygen-deprived waters of the Black Sea to help answer questions about the deepest parts of the ocean and Earth’s climate.

 

A new study led by researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science found that even in the absence of oxygen, the chemical and biological processes occurring in the Black Sea resemble those in the oxygenated deep ocean. [...]"

Source: University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science

Read the full article here.

"NCCOS is working with the Northern Gulf Institute (NGI) and Gulf of Mexico State partners to develop a robust and sustainable Gulf of Mexico-wide monitoring program for hypoxia. At the 7th Annual Hypoxia Research Coordination Workshop, planning continued for a Cooperative Hypoxia Assessment and Monitoring Program.

The Cooperative Hypoxia Assessment and Monitoring Program (CHAMP) is a bottom-up effort comprised of State (LA, AL/MS, TX) and issue-based workgroups. Eight workgroups (Fisheries, Louisiana-Mississippi/Alabama-Texas state monitoring, autonomous vehicles, Hypoxia Task Force, Oil/Gas and Ocean Acidification, and Gulf Restoration) identify and pursue leveraging and support opportunities within their local focus areas, benefiting the entire Gulf region. [...]"

Source: National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS)
Author: Alan Lewitus

Read the full article here.

"Achieving water quality goals for the Gulf of Mexico may take decades, according to findings by researchers at the University of Waterloo.

The results, which appear in Science, suggest that policy goals for reducing the size of the northern Gulf of Mexico's dead zone may be unrealistic, and that major changes in agricultural and river management practices may be necessary to achieve the desired improvements in water quality.

The transport of large quantities of nitrogen from rivers and streams across the North American corn belt has been linked to the development of a large dead zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico, where massive algal blooms lead to oxygen depletion, making it difficult for marine life to survive.

"Despite the investment of large amounts of money in recent years to improve water quality, the area of last year's dead zone was more than 22,000 km2—about the size of the state of New Jersey," said Kimberly Van Meter, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Waterloo. [...]"

Read the full article here.

"Scientists have shown that creatures which develop in hypoxic (low oxygen) conditions in the marine environment could experience previously unseen hindered development, and become compromised as adults. [...]

The prevalence of hypoxic (low oxygen) areas in coastal waters is predicted to increase in the future, both in terms of their scale and duration. And while the adults of many estuarine invertebrates can cope with short periods of hypoxia, it has previously been unclear whether that ability is present if animals are bred and reared under chronic hypoxia.[...]"

Source: Sciencedaily.com (University of Plymouth)

Read the full article here.

"A major study into an ancient climate change event that affected a significant percentage of Earth’s oceans has brought into sharp focus a lesser-known villain in global warming: oxygen depletion. 

The study, just published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), examined a past period of global warming around 94 million years ago, when oceans became de-oxygenated.

This famous period in Earth’s geological history, known as an Oceanic Anoxic Event (OAE), was more severe and on much longer timescales than the current changes. But it has given the scientists studying this period an extreme case-study to help understand how the oceans are effected by high atmospheric CO₂ emissions. [...]"

Source: University of Exeter News

Read the full article here.

When water runs off of farmland and urban centers and flows into our streams and rivers, it is often chock-full of fertilizers and other nutrients. These massive loads of nutrients eventually end up in our coastal ocean, fueling a chain of events that can lead to hypoxic "dead zones" — areas along the sea floor where oxygen is so low it can no longer sustain marine life. In this episode, we're joined by NOAA scientist Alan Lewitus to explore why dead zones form, how the problem of hypoxia is growing worse, and what we're doing about it.

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Author: Troy Kitch

Read the full article here.

"A new research study from a Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO2NE) team of scientists reveals that the number of low- and zero oxygen sites in the world’s oceans have increased dramatically in the past 50 years. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations created the GO2NE working group to provide a multidisciplinary, global view of deoxygenation, with the end goal of advising policymakers on preserving marine resources by countering low oxygen. [...]"

Source: environmental monitor
Author: Karla Lant

Read the full article here.

"Nitrogen monoxide (NO) belongs to the group of nitrogen oxides which are infamous as toxic emissions in urban agglomerations. But NO is also produced in nature and plays a role in the nitrogen cycle. However, from earth's largest ecosystem, the ocean, we have hardly any NO measurements."

Source: Science Daily

Read the full article here.

Areas starved of oxygen in open ocean and by coasts have soared in recent decades, risking dire consequences for marine life and humanity

 

"Ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, scientists have warned, while the number of very low oxygen sites near coasts have multiplied tenfold. Most sea creatures cannot survive in these zones and current trends would lead to mass extinction in the long run, risking dire consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the sea. [...]"

Source: The Guardian

Read the full article here.

"A Chinese company is pioneering the nation's first deep-sea thermal-power technology to drive drifting underwater vehicles for an international ocean observation program, reports said Thursday.

Involving 30 countries and regions, the Argo program is a global array of 3,800 free-drifting automated vehicles dubbed "floats" that measure the temperature and salinity of the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, according to the program website.

The new thermal-technology powered float, manufactured by the 710 Institute affiliated to the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation and the School of Meteorologic Oceanography of National University of Defense Technology, offers a kind of perpetual motion to ocean observations, Science and Technology Daily reported on Thursday. [...]"

Source: Asia Pacific Daily

Read the full article here.

"During the summer of 2017, researchers with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) and Louisiana State University mapped the largest dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to date.

The Gulf of Mexico meets the shorelines of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and western Florida and is home to a large fishing industry. Several rivers from the Midwestern watershed flow south into the Gulf, carrying with them sediment, nutrient loads, and pollution from fossil fuel burning and wastewater systems.
The problem isn’t new, but it is expanding. "

Author: Mindy Cooper
Source: Environmental Monitor

Read the full article here.

"A MYSTERIOUS abyss in the ocean known as the “shadow zone” traps ancient water dating back to 400AD. We now know why it’s there.
 

IT’S called the “shadow zone” and it lies around two kilometres below the surface in an ocean abyss where trapped water dates back to the fourth century.

This ancient water, which is between 1000 and 2000 years old, dates back to when the ancient Germanic tribe the Goths instigated the end of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of Medieval Europe. [...]"

Source: new.com.au

Read the full article here.

"Canadian and US Department of Energy researchers have released 50 years’ worth of data chronicling the deoxygenating cycles of a fjord off Canada’s west coast, and detailing the response of the microbial communities inhabiting the fjord.

The mass of data, collected in two new Nature family papers, could help scientists better predict the impact of human activities and ocean deoxygenation on marine environments. Currently, oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) constitute up to 7 percent of global ocean volume. Continued expansion of OMZs in the northeastern subarctic Pacific has the potential to transport oxygen-depleted waters into coastal regions, adversely affecting nutrient cycles and fisheries productivity. [...]"

Source: University of British Columbia (media contact: Chris Balma)

Read the full article here.

 

Ocean acidification combined with warming of the world oceans and loss of oxygen is having a severe impact on key Arctic marine species such as polar cod in the Barents Sea, according to a new study conducted by German scientists.

 

"The eight-year interdisciplinary study, which began in 2009 and involved more than 250 scientist in the German research network on ocean acidification BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification), investigated how different marine species respond to ocean acidification – a change in the ocean chemistry that occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere dissolves in seawater.

In addition to ocean acidification, the study, Exploring Ocean Change: Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification, also examined the cascading effect of other stressors such as ocean warming, deoxygenation, overfishing and eutrophication – the increased concentration of nutrients in estuaries and coastal waters that causes harmful algal blooms, ocean dead zones and fish kills. [...]"

Source: The Independent Barents Observer

Read the full article here.

 

"As a gigantic carbon sink, the ocean has taken up about a third of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere by human activities. But when absorbed by seawater, the greenhouse gas triggers chemical reactions, causing the ocean to acidify. Ocean acidification affects ecosystems and important services the ocean provides to humankind. This includes the regulation of the Earth's climate, food provision, recreation as well as biodiversity as a condition for intact and functioning ecosystems. [...]"

Source: EurekAlert

Read the full article here.

"The rain began on August 25, and it would fall, remarkably, for four more days. We know now that Hurricane Harvey dumped as much as 60 inches of rain over parts of Texas. Twenty trillion gallons in all. The equivalent of the entire Chesapeake Bay. Enough to push the Earth’s crust down two centimeters. [...]

What oceanographers do know about the interface of freshwater and ocean comes from studying rivers that naturally empty into the sea. The key is density. Because freshwater lacks dissolved salt, it is less dense and floats atop seawater. It becomes a barrier between the air and the ocean water, which can have nasty consequences. “The freshwater sitting on the salty water cuts off the oxygen from the atmosphere getting into the ocean, and then you get the dead zone,” says Steve DiMarco [...]"

Source: The Atlantic

Read the full article here.

"A more acidic ocean under climate change threatens to reconfigure entire ecosystems by advantaging some fish species to the detriment of others, a new study has found. The research is one of only a few that go beyond the lab to study how species interactions are changing in nature under more extreme conditions.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide and the University of Hong Kong showed that a higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the oceans, which reacts to turn seawater more acidic, favors common fish species, allowing them to double their populations. But that might also mean the downfall of rarer, subordinate competitors, leading to biodiversity loss and a total restructuring of fish communities, with numerous ecological impacts. [...]"

Source: Mongabay

Read the full article here.

In June, federal scientists predicted a bigger-than-average oxygen-deprived dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay this summer, and it turns out they were right.

Researchers with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who study bay hypoxia announced Monday that the total amount of dead zones this summer was the worst since 2014, and a 10 percent increase over last year.

Source: Daily Press

Read the full article here.

"Every year, we see wildfires wreak havoc on large regions of the West United States, and each year scientists attempt to forecast exactly how bad the upcoming fire season is going to be by assessing things like weather, moisture levels, and a bevy of different factors. [...]"

Source: Mind Guild

Read the full article here.