According to this article, Venice, Italy has been experiencing some extremely high waters. On November 30, 2009 Venice “was flooded by waters rising more than 4 feet above normal.” These high waters immersed the city with up to 43% of the city’s surface under water. Meteorologists predicted that the height of the water was to return that evening with the high tide and were expected to continue the rest of that week. They also warned that with the heavy rains typical in the month of December, Venetian water levels could potentially be pushed to almost 5 feet above average.
In any other city, a little bit of flooding wouldn’t be much concern to a city. However, since Venice is considered the “sinking city”, flooding is a little bit more of a concern. According to this article, Venice was built on millions of wooden piles pounded into marshy ground and has been sinking about seven centimeters a century for the past 1,000 years. In the past 100 years, though, the sinking has increased to 24 centimeters. With the rate of the city’s sinking depth increasing, constant flooding doesn’t help.
Do you think there is any way Venetians can attempt to slow their sinking city?
How long do you think it will take Venice to sink completely?
Normally, seahorses will stay close to shore, blended into their surroundings. But according to this article, a tiny lined seahorse (Hipocampus erectus) was found about 3,100 miles from home. Discovered by a fisherman in the Azores archipelago in the eastern Atlantic, the seahorse was turned over to researchers. They identified it as a lined seahorse, which is native to the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic coasts of North, Central, and South Americas.
Researchers say that this is the first documentation of lined seahorses in the Eastern Atlantic. They believe that the seahorse may have attached itself to seaweed or some other floating object with its tail, and was then “carried by prevailing Gulf Stream currents away from the American coast and across the Atlantic to the Azores.” After all, other seahorses have been seen out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, attached to seaweed before. However, because this is only one sighting, the researchers cannot come to “the conclusion that there are more H. erectus in the Eastern Atlantic.” As Dr Lucy Woodall from Royal Holloway, University of London says, “We just don’t know.”
Do you think it is possible that the seahorse got to the Azores some other way?
There is a possibility that there may be more of these lined seahorses in the Azores and Europe. Why do you think that the population could be spreading?
In a recent global climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark major legislators and diplomats from all over the world discussed solutions for the planet’s diminishing coral reefs. Today coral reefs make up less than .25% of the ocean floor and that miniscule figure is getting smaller due to changes in the marine habitat brought on by climate change. For example in the Florida Keys, “the live coral cover has diminished by 50 to 80 percent in the past 10 years,” says Margaret Miller, a coral reef researcher at the National marine Fisheries Service.
At the meeting in Copenhagen scientists and researchers suggested freezing coral samples in liquid nitrogen. This would allow researchers to save several samples of coral species and possibly reintroduce them if conditions become suitable for coral in the future. ”Well it’s the last ditch effort to save biodiversity from the reefs which are extremely diverse systems,” says Simon Harding from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). The reefs are important in many aspects of the marine ecosystem and are indicators of the overall health of shorelines.
It’s clear that many of the world’s coral reefs are disappearing and some kind of solution must be administered. This is undeniably a creative solution but the method and details of carrying out the plan must be carefully thought out. It seems that if samples were saved with the goal of reintroducing them later, that the process of reconstructing a reef would be very difficult. Also, if conditions in the ocean are changing chemically as well as changing in temperature (and therefore killing coral) how would conditions in the future return to those which are suitable for reefs in the first place?
Mexico’s ‘giant underwater museum’ describes a huge scientific and historical undertaking. Jason de Caires Taylor is heading up the creation of an underwater museum. In this museum, there will be statues depicting Mexican history that are made of a pH neutral concrete, which will promote algae growth. One of the main ideas of this project “is to reduce the pressure on the natural habitat in other areas of the park by luring tourists away from existing coral reef, which has suffered damage from hurricanes and human activity,” says Jaime Gonzales, the region park manager of the underwater park where the statues will be placed. The effect of these statues is to hopefully lure tourists away from the coral reefs that have been damaged by hurricanes and human activity.
This project is very beneficial to Cancun’s offshore environment. Having been to the Yucatan penninsula, I saw how high the tourist and native populations are and I know that they are damaging to the environment. Every little bit helps. When I saw this article, I read it because I was interested in how Mexico was trying to fix their environment.
What type of plant/animal life can benefit from this project?
Will the pH-neutral concrete erode more than what normal concrete does?
Late summer is turtle season near the waters of Canada. They are tropical turtles that move up into colder water at these times. Mariners see many Leatherback turtles that are enormous, they weight up to 900 pounds. When a few were examined they found out that it was the only Turtle able to survive in such drastic climate change and that it ate lots of jellyfish, stinging tencta
cles and all. They have three inch spines in their gullets facing inward to hold down the jelly.
The numbers used to be very large, but today they have started to die off and become critically endangered. They become tangled and drown in fishing gear, sometimes choke on plastic bags and other trash, are struck by moving ships, caught and cut up for meat and at times their nests are found and the eggs stole to be sold on market as a delicacy.
Click here to view actual article.
How and why do these turtles become so large?
What else do they feed on other than jellyfish, in both environments?
![california-kelp-forest[3]](http://blogs.cordovasd.org/marinebio/files/2009/12/california-kelp-forest3-150x150.jpg "california-kelp-forest[3]")
Who knew that southern California’s primitive kelp forests are “some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on the planet.” Recently, Science Daily found in a study that the kelp beds are not flourishing like they were previously. Rick Grosberg, a professor at UC Davis, Michael Grahm (Moss Landing Marine Laboratory) and Brian Kinlan, a professor at US Santa Barbara conducted the study and say from about 20,000 to 7,500 years ago the kelp forests were thriving. Why are they decreasing now then?
The kelp forests are decreasing because the climate shifted in the kelp ecosystem causing people to use the kelp. Scientists normally reconstruct the history of a forest by examining the pollen or leaves, however kelp do not make pollen. The researchers were able to reconstruct potential kelp habitat in a nontraditional way by using depth charts and past knowledge from sediment cores on the accessibility of nutrients.
I found it interesting how the scientists pieced together the past and the reason the kelp was dropping by using depth charts and information on the nutrients. How exactly did they use this information to find out so much history on the kelp forest? Also, what kinds of effects come along with the dwindling kelp beds? What else has caused the kelp forest to diminish? How will they protect the kelp that is left?
Additional Information: Science Mag Article, UC Newsroom
![california-kelp-forest[3]](http://blogs.cordovasd.org/marinebio/files/2009/12/california-kelp-forest3.jpg "california-kelp-forest[3]")