"Maine’s fishing ports are doing well for now, but climate change is destabilizing the Gulf of Maine, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest “State of the Ecosystem” report for New England waters. Federal scientists presented the report to the New England Fishery Management Council in April, and published it online last week."
"In San Francisco Bay, new AI-powered technology aims to help ships dodge whales whose long-haul migration is being disrupted by climate change."
"Transmissible tumors have been reported in a handful of animal species, but never before among fish. Is it possible in humans?"
"Recent studies show that microplastics are already present in a variety of Amazonian environments: Major rivers such as the Amazon, urban streams, floodplain areas and mangroves in the Amazon’s Mouth."
"New protections for endangered right whales in the North Atlantic would be postponed for nearly a decade under a plan that cleared a key hurdle in Washington last week with the full-throated support of the fishing and lobster industries."
"On a pristine Rhode Island beach teeming with noisy seabirds, a group of biologists armed with nets sneak up on a pair of American oystercatcher chicks."
"One day last July, Vernon Spear scratched his forearm on a crab pot as he pulled it out of the Choptank River from his pier in Cambridge, MD. He put hydrogen peroxide on the tiny cuts, thinking that would disinfect them. That night, his forearm swelled up, and he spiked a high fever."
"For decades, fishers, swimmers and environmental groups have complained that mud and silt from dredging operations in the Mobile Bay shipping channel have been smothering seagrasses, choking out oysters and clouding water that was once pristine." "A measure to permanently ban the practice of “thin-layer disposal” of dredged sediment nationwide has advanced through a House committee with bipartisan support."
"The U.S. government plans to auction off massive sections of water surrounding American Samoa for potential deep-sea mining in an unprecedented move that is expected to draw criticism from many countries."
"Deep-sea mining threatens to drive to extinction more than half of the snails and other mollusks that rely on hydrothermal vents, according to the latest update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, the global scientific authority on the status of species."
