Article: Warmest Oceans on Record Adds to Hurricanes, Wildfires Risks

The world’s seas are simmering, with record high temperatures spurring worry among forecasters that the global warming effect may generate a chaotic year of extreme weather ahead. Parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans all hit the record books for warmth last month, according to the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information. The high temperatures could offer clues on the ferocity of the Atlantic hurricane season, the eruption of wildfires from the Amazon region to Australia, and whether the record heat and severe thunderstorms raking the southern U.S. will continue. In the Gulf of Mexico, where offshore drilling accounts for about 17% of U.S. oil output, water temperatures were 76.3 degrees Fahrenheit (24.6 Celsius), 1.7 degrees above the long-term average, said Phil Klotzbach at Colorado State University. If Gulf waters stay warm, it could be the fuel that intensifies any storm that comes that way, Klotzbach said.

- Bloomberg

"Let's protect it, together."

Jeff Bezos is creating a $10 billion fund to fight climate change. He announced the new initiative via Twitter...

Article: Overfishing harming Honduran reefs

[Google translation] Overfishing is the ‘titanic challenge’ in which Honduras must concentrate ‘more efforts’ to recover and ensure the health of its corals, national scientists and conservationists warned, during the presentation of the report ‘Mesoamerican Reef Health’ in Tegucigalpa.

After two years of research, the Healthy Reefs Initiative (HRI) revealed the results of its monitoring to 73 coral sites in the northern and insular regions of the country.

Ian Drysdale, coordinator of this international scientific organization in Honduras, explained that the objects of study were the live coral cover per square meter, the amount of algae and the biomass (quantity and size) of the fish. This methodology is known as the Reef Health Index (ISA).

Overfishing significantly affected the ISA of Honduras will fall from the highest in the regional rating according to the 2018 report, from “regular to bad” (3.0 to 2.5), and “it is the first time a country has fallen”, ensures the same report and the scientist based in Roatán, Bay Islands.

- La Tribuna (Spanish) 

More Greta

Here's an example of how climate change and sea level rise are affecting me and all Bay Islanders.

Person of the Year: Greta Thunberg

I concur!

Here's an example of how climate change and sea level rise are affecting me and all Bay Islanders.

Article: Oceans running out of oxygen as temperatures rise

Climate change and nutrient pollution are driving the oxygen from our oceans, and threatening many species of fish. That's the conclusion of the biggest study of its kind, undertaken by conservation group IUCN. While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate change is making the lack of oxygen worse. Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s. Researchers say the depletion is threatening species including tuna, marlin and sharks.

- BBC News 

Article: Rising sea levels threaten hundreds of millions -- and it's much worse than we thought

Global sea levels are expected to rise between two to seven feet (0.6 meters to 2.1 meters) -- and possibly more -- over the course of the 21st century. And by 2050, land that is currently home to about 300 million people will fall below the elevation of the average annual coastal flood -- meaning they could face severe floods at least once a year. By 2100, land that is home to 200 million people could sit permanently below the high tide line, rendering those coastal areas all but unlivable. "The results indicate that, yes, a great deal more people are on vulnerable land than we thought," said Benjamin Strauss, one of the study's co-authors and CEO of non-profit organization Climate Central. He added that these affected regions need to take immediate action to avoid the impending "economic and humanitarian catastrophe."

- CNN

Greta Thunberg

"We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about it money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth - how dare you?"

Love her!

Global Climate Strike: September 20-27

Paya Bay Resort supports the Global Climate Strike!  #climatestrike

video: Climate change causes Islands to disappear

Article: "Canary Islands beach choked by tiny bits of plastic"

From far away, it almost looks as though the beach is covered in seafoam. But the white bands washing ashore in Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands, are in fact piles of tiny bits of plastic, the latest example of the human-made pollution impacting the world's oceans.

"I’ve never seen the beach like this,” said María Celma Argaluza, a 37-year-old teacher and founder of the Océano Limpio Tenerife (Clean Oceans Tenerife) campaign, in a video of the waste she posted on Facebook on March 24. “It makes me want to cry.”

Argaluza criticised the insufficient measures put in place to address the build-up of rubbish along the shores of the Canary Islands.

Because the islands act as a natural barrier to the Gulf Stream and the Canary Current, they become a dumping ground for rubbish floating in the Atlantic Ocean, May Gómez, a biology professor at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, told the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais.

 - France 24

forever is a long time

My friend Luzangel shares my dismay and concerns about plastic...

CNN: Dead whale in Indonesia had swallowed 1,000 pieces of plastic

In just the latest reminder of the dangers of pollution in our oceans, a dead whale in Indonesia has been found with 13.2 pounds (six kilograms) of plastic waste in its stomach. The 31.17-foot sperm whale was found near Kapota Island in Wakatobi National Park, southeast of Sulawesi. Park officials found bags, plastic bottles, sandals and 115 plastic cups in the whale's stomach, as well as a sack containing more than 1,000 pieces of string. "Although we have not been able to deduce the cause of death, the facts that we see are truly awful," said Dwi Suprapti, marine species conservation coordinator at WWF-Indonesia, in a statement to CNN.

- CNN

CNN: The oceans are warming faster than scientists thought

The world's oceans are warming at an accelerated rate and are much warmer than scientists thought -- and things could get a lot worse if nothing is done to stop climate change, according to a new study. The data, published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science, shows that the oceans have experienced consistent changes since the late 1950s and have gotten a lot warmer since the 1960s. The oceans are heating up much faster than scientists calculated in the UN assessment of climate change released in 2014.
[...]
Though a warmer ocean might make for a more pleasant swim, it carries deadly consequences. A warmer ocean causes sea level to rise, bringing problems like dangerous coastal flooding. It leads to the loss of sea ice, heating the waters even further. It can affect the jet stream, allowing cold Arctic air to reach farther south, making winters more intense, and endanger the lives of animals that depend on sea ice like penguins and polar bears. A warmer ocean also contributes to increases in rainfall and leads to stronger and longer-lasting storms like Hurricanes Florence and Harvey.

- CNN

Article: Caribbean island of Dominica bans plastic and Styrofoam

The fight against single-use plastic has been gathering steam over the past months, but the Caribbean nation of Dominica has taken the crusade to another level. The island nation has announced its aim to completely ban common plastics and single-use Styrofoam cups and food containers -- effective January 2019. Announcing this intention in June's budget address, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said his government wanted to help preserve Dominica's famously beautiful natural landscape. "Dominica prides itself as the "Nature Isle". We must in every way deserve and reflect that designation," reads Skerrit's statement. "The issue of solid waste management affects that perception and we continue to grapple with it."

- CNN

Article: 'Stunning' report finds that one-third of Earth's protected areas are being destroyed by people

Giraffes run near a drilling rig.

Turns out a large chunk of what should be the world's most protected areas are anything but. A new study reports that human activities — such as city sprawl, road construction and farming — are wreaking havoc on some 2.3 million square miles of protected land worldwide, an area about twice the size of Alaska. Forests, parks and conservation areas around the globe are all seeing human impacts, with protected areas in Asia, Europe and Africa — places with massive human populations — seeing some of the worst effects, according to the new research.

- USA Today

Inside The Monumental Effort To Rid The World's Oceans From Plastic

CNN: Successful trial of 'coral IVF' gives hope for Australia's Great Barrier Reef

"There's a very clear outcome, the higher the numbers of larvae that you put into the reef system, the more coral recruits you get," Harrison said. "The pilot studies at small scales are giving us hope that we will be able to scale this up to much larger reef scales." The 2,300km-long (1,500 miles) Great Barrier Reef -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- lost around half of its coral in the past few years after two mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, a pattern repeated on coral reefs around the world.

- CNN

"by 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish..."

This video puts the plastic crisis in stark terms.

cnn: greenland is melting