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[Michaelangelica]

Beating poverty could save fish
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Developing societies tend to over fish,
leading to a cycle of poverty and reef
destruction.


An international team of researchers has proposed a revolutionary strategy for ending the plunder of the world’s coral reefs and destruction of their fish stocks – beating poverty.

In a major study released today of the western Indian Ocean the team shows that reef fisheries are in far better condition where the society is more highly developed or where there is little or no development – than in places where the society is developing.

Most studies about the human impacts on reefs focus on the negative role of human populations. This novel study went a step further, exploring how socioeconomic development can actually play a positive role in sustaining coral reefs.

Beating poverty could save fish(ScienceAlert)

I have worked out why deep sea creatures are so ugly. That's why they are deep sea creatures.

Deep-sea discovery mission uncovers new species
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
California Institute of Technology

This carnivorous sea squirt was one of the
new species seen during the voyage.
Image: Advanced Imaging and
Visualization Laboratory, WHOI/Jess
Adkins, Caltech

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and an international team of collaborators, including CSIRO researchers, have returned from a month-long deep-sea voyage to a marine reserve near Tasmania, Australia, that not only netted coral-reef samples likely to provide insight into the impact of climate change on the world's oceans, but also brought to light at least three never-before-seen species of sea life.

"It was truly one of those transcendent moments," says Caltech's Jess Adkins of the descents made by the remotely operated submersible Jason. Adkins was the cruise's lead scientist and is an associate professor of geochemistry and global environmental science at Caltech. "We were flying--literally flying--over these deep-sea structures that look like English gardens, but are actually filled with all of these carnivorous, Seuss-like creatures that no one else has ever seen."

The voyage on the research vessel RV Thompson explored the Tasman Fracture Commonwealth Marine Reserve, southwest of Tasmania. The voyage was funded by the National Science Foundation and was the second of two cruises taken by the team, which included researchers from the United States--including scientists from Caltech and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, which owns and operates the submersible Jason--and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The first of those voyages was taken in January 2008, with this most recent one spanning 33 days from mid-December 2008 through mid-January 2009.

Up until now, the area of the reef the scientists were exploring--called the Tasman Fracture Zone--had only been explored to a depth of 1,800 meters (more than 5,900 feet). Using Jason, the researchers on this trip were able to reach as far down as 4,000 meters (well over 13,000 feet).

Deep-sea discovery mission uncovers new species(ScienceAlert)