Fogbow

Antarctica is likely warming at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world and faster than climate change models are predicting, with potentially far-reaching implications for global sea level rise, according to a scientific study.

Scientists analysed 78 Antarctic ice cores to recreate temperatures going back 1,000 years and found the warming across the continent was outside what could be expected from natural swings.

In West Antarctica, a region considered particularly vulnerable to warming with an ice sheet that could push up global sea levels by several metres if it collapsed, the study found warming at twice the rate suggested by climate models.

Climate scientists have long expected that polar regions would warm faster than the rest of the planet – a phenomenon known as polar amplification – and this has been seen in the Arctic.

Thousands of emperor penguin chicks across four colonies in Antarctica died in a ‘catastrophic breeding failure’ in late 2022, according to new research
Emperor penguins: thousands of chicks in Antarctica die due to record-low sea ice levels

Dr Mathieu Casado, of the Laboratoire des Science du Climat et de l’Environnement in France and lead author of the study, said they had found “direct evidence” that Antarctica was also now undergoing polar amplification.

Killer whales sink yacht in 45-minute attack, Polish tour agency says

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/ar ... ocialshare

A group of orcas managed to sink a yacht off the coast of Morocco last week, after its 45-minute attack on the vessel caused irreparable damage, a Polish tour company said.

The incident happened Tuesday, Oct. 31, as a crew with the boat touring group sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar. The narrow waterway bridges the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, which separates the southern tip of Europe from northern Africa.

A pod of orcas, colloquially called killer whales, approached the yacht and "hit the steering fin for 45 minutes, causing major damage and leakage," the tour agency Morskie Mile, which is based in Warsaw and operated the yacht, wrote on Facebook in a translated post.

Although its captain and crew were assisted by a search-and-rescue team as well as the Moroccan Navy, the yacht could not be salvaged. It sank near the entrance to the port of Tanger-Med, a major complex of ports some 30 miles northeast of Tangier along the Strait of Gibraltar. None of the crew members were harmed, said the Polish tour agency, adding that those on board the sunken yacht were already safe and in Spain by the time their Facebook post went live.

Many of these wrecks have been lying on the seabed for well over a century, and have served as a deterrent to fishers who use bottom towed trawling to secure their catches.

As a result, while many areas of the seabed have been damaged significantly in areas of heavy fishing pressure, the seabed in and around shipwrecks remains largely unblemished.

The new research found that the average density of marine life in areas still open to trawling was 240% greater within wreck sites than in sites actively being used for bottom towed fishing.

In parts of the seabed within a 50m radius of the wrecks, the difference was even greater with the density of marine life 340% greater than in the control sites.

Flatpoint High wrote: ↑Sun Nov 26, 2023 10:21 pm Found this rather interesting article over @ sciencedaily.com:

Many of these wrecks have been lying on the seabed for well over a century, and have served as a deterrent to fishers who use bottom towed trawling to secure their catches.

Hmmm. This sounds like a job for Greenpeace. Collect and clean old clunkers that can stay afloat long enough to be towed to a breakup yard, then accidently scuttled before it gets there.

If you catch my drift.

Animation of Antarctic sea ice coverage 1978-2023

Australian Antarctic Program Partnership
30 Nov 2023

The annual cycle of the Southern Ocean freezing and melting is like a heartbeat for Earth. This animation shows Antarctic sea ice coverage pulsing between winter and summer over the 45 years since satellite records began in 1978.
Credit: Owen Kaluza, Australian Earth System Simulator (ACCESS-NRI)
Data: National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC)

New Jellyfish Species Discovered May Have an Arsenal of Unique Venoms

Published Feb 06, 2024 at 8:30 AM EST Updated Feb 07, 2024 at 1:08 PM EST
By Jess Thomson Science Reporter

A new species of jellyfish has been discovered deep below the waves, and it may possess venoms that we have never seen before.

The new species, named Santjordia pagesi, was discovered at a depth of 2,664 feet near Japan's Ogasawara Islands, floating around a deep-sea volcano known as the Sumisu Caldera.

The new jellyfish, which has been sighted only twice, is an umbrella-shaped medusa species, measuring around 4 inches across and with a red cross in the center of its body, according to a paper in the journal Zootaxa. This inspired its common name: the St. George's Cross Medusa.
new jellyfish species

The jellyfish was captured from the depths and had its DNA analyzed, which revealed that it was so distantly related to all other species of jellyfish that scientists needed to designate not only a new species name but a whole new genus and subfamily.

"We discovered and described a new species of deep-sea jellyfish, which has currently only ever been recorded from inside a single, mineral-rich undersea volcanic caldera," paper co-author Dhugal Lindsay told Newsweek.

"It was so different to anything else yet described that we needed to erect not only a new genus but also a new subfamily to contain it

Lindsay is a researcher at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

Because this new species is so evolutionarily different from other species that scientists have discovered, they suggest it may contain a cocktail of venoms drastically different in chemical makeup from anything previously seen.

"This jellyfish is most certainly venomous, as the tentacles were covered in stinging cells. No work has yet been done on its venom, but if funding were available we would love to look into it. All venoms are possible medicines and since this species is so different from others, one could surmise that the venom could be novel," Lindsay said.



https://www.newsweek.com/new-jellyfish- ... nd-1867258

Spotting of World's Largest Iceberg Highlights Krill Crisis
Tuesday, 06 Feb, 2024

On the 27th of January 2024, the Sea Shepherd ship Allankay navigated past the world’s largest iceberg, named A23a, as it drifts north between the Antarctic Peninsula and Coronation Island, where Sea Shepherd crew are shadowing six supertrawlers capturing krill, a small crustacean that is a foundation species of the Antarctic ecosystem and the primary food sources for baleen whales such as fin and humpback whales.

It took Allankay more than eight hours to motor past the frozen walls of the gargantuan iceberg—nearly 4,000 sq kilometers in size and three times the size of New York City—as crew sought shelter from heavy weather that made monitoring the krill fishery impossible.

A23a is ocean bound while record warm temperatures have resulted in the lowest levels of sea ice recorded around the Antarctic continent. Juvenile krill are entirely dependent on sea ice for shelter and food, feeding on algae that grows beneath the sea ice. They have a limited temperature tolerance.

It’s believed that by 2100, krill numbers could halve due to climate change alone.

“A23a is a monument to the threat that climate change poses to krill populations, a towering reminder of why it’s critically important to ban the krill fishery. The krill fishery produces unnecessary products that nobody needs, while adding a needless threat to the Antarctic ecosystem that compounds the damage already being wrought by warming waters in polar regions”, said Captain Bart Schulting who is in command of the Allankay.

The effects on species that depend on krill for their survival are already being felt with humpback whale pregnancies down and chinstrap penguin populations reduced by 53% over the past forty years. The body mass of fur seals has declined by almost 10% over the past three decades due to a reduction in available krill to eat.

“The krill fishery makes a bad problem worse, increasing pressure on Antarctic wildlife. It is incumbent upon us to remove every other additional risk factor facing krill, so that the ecosystem has increased resilience to withstand climate pressures."

Idoia Chicoy, Marine biologist and Second Officer on the Allankay

When weather improves, Allankay will reengage with the krill fishing fleet.


https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/lates ... erg-krill/

Gay, lesbian and intersex whales: our queer sea has much to teach us
The first documented sex between two male humpback whales is just the latest challenge to our presumptions about sexuality

Philip Hoare
Fri 1 Mar 2024 13.50 CET

Whales are extraordinarily sensuous creatures. Those blubbery bodies are highly sensitive, and sensitised. At social meetings, pods of sperm, humpback and right whales will roll around one another’s bodies for hours at a time. I’ve seen a group of right whales engaged in foreplay and penetration lasting an entire morning.

I have also watched a male-female couple so blissfully conjoined that they appeared unbothered by our little fishing boat as they passed underneath it. And in what may sound like a career of cetacean voyeurism, I have also been caught up in a fast-moving superpod of dusky dolphins continually penetrating each other at speed, regardless of the gender of their partner.

That’s why this week’s report of the first scientifically documented male-to-male sexual interactions between two humpback whales off the coast of Hawaii is not surprising.

The remarkable image of a two-metre whale penis entering another male “leaves little room for discussion that there is a sexual component to such behaviour”, as one whale scientist, Jeroen Hoekendijk at the Wageningen Marine Research institute in the Netherlands, notes drily.

In fact, one of the whales was ailing and there has been speculation that the encounter may not have been consensual or that the healthy whale was actually giving comfort to the other. Whatever the truth, such “flagrant” acts also expose many of our human presumptions about sexuality, gender and identity.

Off the north-west Pacific coast of the US, male orcas often leave family pods to rub their erections against each other’s bellies. But females have also reportedly been seen engaging in sexual contact with one another, too.

Indeed, the graphic accounts of male-to-male behaviour may mask many “unseen” female-to-female sexual interactions.



https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -sexuality

Flatpoint High wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:09 am this is why science needs to be in schools
2goyi9zddrwc1.jpeg

northland10 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 7:04 am

Flatpoint High wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:09 am this is why science needs to be in schools
2goyi9zddrwc1.jpeg

Science is taught and those commentors most likely took it but they choose to ignore it.

And trolls say anything to get a rise out of others.

Following years of research, a team of biologists, government officials and marine industry representatives have released their findings on just why one particular Orcinus orca group has developed this destructive streak. And it turns out, orcas – especially the kids and teens – just want to have fun. The report reveals that a combination of free time, curiosity and natural playfulness has led to young orcas adopting this 'trend' of boat-bumping, which is not at all surprising for a species that has been known to adopt odd, isolated behaviors from time to time.
"In addition, climate change could be playing a role, leading to these tuna being in the Gulf of Cádiz continuously rather than seasonally," the scientists noted. "This year-round abundance means that there appears to no longer be a need for the whales to pursue every fish encountered."

Analyzing data collected from individual orcas and through observation, the scientists found that the 'attacks' on vessels usually involved a couple of animals at a time, from a core group of 15 that have so far been observed messing with boats. But these 'attacks' are anything but – from the orcas' perspective, at least.

Most of the 15 were male juveniles and teens, the "most curious and exploratory" of an orca population, suggesting that what started as playful head-bumping on boat rudders has escalated as the animals have grown larger. The team notes that this rudder-bumping behavior was observed around 2017, but the interactions didn't result in any boat damage. Now that the orcas are larger, their game has become a lot more powerful.