Our Oceans are Under Attack

Earth Song....what about it

...heard this on the radio yesterday and just had to come home and find it on youtube.

...turn on your sound...powerful sound and images


Michael Jackson, Earth Song ....what about it"

Michael Jackson - Earth Song - YouTube

Michael Jackson - Earth Song (Version complète 2009) - YouTube

Corral Can Sense What's Coming

Australian scientists have thrown new light on the mechanism behind the mass death of corals worldwide as the Earth’s climate warms.

Coral bleaching, one of the most devastating events affecting coral reefs around the planet, is triggered by rising water temperatures. It occurs when the corals and their symbiotic algae become heat-stressed, and the algae which feed the corals either die or are expelled by the coral.



...story with photos
http://www.sail-world.com/index.cfm?Nid=91002&refre=y&ntid=30&rid=4

North West Passage Alarm - totally ice free by 2015

It might be appealing to think of sailing through the dreaded North West Passage above Canada, but most cruising sailors would gladly give it a miss if it meant we could reduce the apparently irreversible (if you go by the feeble reactions of many nations) effects of the global warming which is producing it.

The International Energy Agency has just warned that climate change is irreversible by 2017. Arctic Sea ice is shrinking so rapidly that by the summer in as little as four years’ time it could vanish altogether at the top of the globe

'Polar bears depend completely on ice for hunting'


...story with photos
http://www.sail-world.com/cruising/index.cfm?nid=90925&rid=11

International Team to drill beneath glacier in Antarctica

NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded researchers will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea.

The international team undertaking this science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to Pine Island Glacier. It is the area of the ice-covered continent that concerns scientists most because of its potential to cause a rapid rise in sea level. Satellite measurements have shown this area is losing ice and surrounding glaciers are thinning, raising the possibility the ice could flow rapidly out to sea.

http://www.sail-world.com/index.cfm?Nid=90804&refre=y&ntid=30&rid=4

There are some interesting postings being added onto this same conversation subject over here:
Boat Design Forumsunder-attack-27446-12.html

Brian

I was not really trying to bring up the old 'global warming' arguments, but rather:

Anoxic events

...and a possible drilling accident under the Artic Ice Cap like we saw in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shell was getting ready to deploy a rig up there a year or so ago, but it got washed ashore in a storm.
Salvage crews await weather as Shell's grounded Arctic drill rig sways in place | Alaska Dispatch

I believe they are repairing that rig and getting ready to deploy it and several others soon. Sorry I have not been keeping up with the most recent news,...that I am sure they (the oil companies) do not want to draw any attention to. And we have lots of other subjects clogging up the news channels that suppress news of this.

I'm not saying that the area it went aground in was its intended destination, but rather it was in-route to the arctic ocean,...I believe?

Excerpted from that article....

....a recent posting to this same subject on another forum

The 'Blue Heart' of the planet is home to about 97% of life on Earth. The ocean generates the oxygen we breathe, regulates our climate, forms clouds that give us rain, and provides habitat for some of the most incredible creatures in the world. It's our life support system, yet less than 1% of
it is protected.

Meet oceanographer Sylvia Earle. She has been exploring the depths for over 40 years and has spent more than 6,000 hours under the waves. She wants us to know why we should all be concerned about sustaining the health of the ocean.
With 90% of the oceans' large fish now gone, is the answer just to stop eating fish? Not exactly. As Captain Paul Watson has pointed out, the largest predatory ocean bird is now chicken, which eat more fish than puffins and albatross together. The biggest threat to fish populations, wild and farmed, is livestock. Factory farmed animals consume more fish than all humans on the planet.

But it's not too late to act. Simple yet critical decisions we each can make will help restore the balance to Earth's precious life support system. Here's how...
1. Eat for tomorrow
Reducing or eliminating animal products from your diet is the single most powerful thing you can do as a consumer to ease the stress on our oceans. Fish have feelings too and suffer just as much as animals on factory farms. Not only that, fish are fed to pigs, chickens — even other fish in fish farms — in numbers that are wiping out ocean ecosystems.
2. Say NO to plastic bags
Every piece of plastic ever made still exists. There are approximately 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in each square mile of the world's oceans. Think of the marine animals next time you shop.
3. Step up for sharks
Don't support restaurants that serve Shark Fin Soup, and help end cruel shark netting and baiting in Australia by taking action here.
4. Eat organic
It's better for you, and the planet. There are 146 dead zones identified in the world's oceans that are primarily caused by chemical fertilizers in run off.
5. Spread the word
Share this story with your friends.

So how was that stone crab season this past season ?

VERY interesting response NEO56. I'm glad you have become so aware. I'm afraid we are not going to take this science serious until it 'bits us', and that might be a little too late.

NASA found a way to track ocean currents from space. What they saw is troubling


There has been growing concern, of late, that one predicted consequence of a changing climate — the slowing of the great “overturning” circulation in the Atlantic Ocean — is already starting to happen.

Some scientists have already suggested that the odd cold “blob” pattern on the map above, featuring record cold North Atlantic temperatures on an otherwise quite hot planet, may be attributable to this development. The gigantic circulation, technically termed the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC, carries warm water northward even as it also sends cold salty water back south at depth. Thus, changes here can reverberate around the globe — one recent study even found that a full AMOC shutdown could trigger a temporary period of global cooling.

Now, in a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Texas at Austin use a new and sophisticated tool — the “Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment” satellites, or GRACE — to confirm some pretty odd behavior in the circulation in 2009 and 2010 that has also been linked to a sudden and extreme 4-inch sea-level rise on the East Coast.

The new satellite technique, the researchers say, holds great promise to determine if — as feared — the circulation is indeed slowing down. “A lot of the evidence that has been amassed is indirect, and what we’re trying to do is provide a way to really observe the AMOC across all latitudes,” says Felix Landerer, a researcher with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is lead author of the study.

To understand how the researchers achieved this, it’s first important to describe — and profusely praise — the GRACE satellites that made it all possible. These satellites are not only a fascinating tool but, frankly, a testament to the stunning power of science — and they’re already responsible for a huge number of new insights into the workings of our planet.

....more here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...orrying-ocean-circulation-changes-from-space/