National Geographic: Do We Know Enough About The Deep Sea To Mine It?. “The United Nations organisation [International Seabed Authority (ISA)] headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica, is charged with promoting the mining of the ocean floor while, contradictorily, ensuring its protection. That’s about to change. As the ISA meets this month to draft regulations to allow mining to begin, it is set to unveil a public database that contains all environmental data reported by the miners since 2001. For the first time, scientists will be able to analyse the quantity and quality of that information and determine if mining contractors have complied with ISA rules.”
marine life
The Standard: 22 new species on Hong Kong reefs
The Standard: 22 new species on Hong Kong reefs . “A local marine conservation group discovered at least 22 species of fish that are new to Hong Kong and launched the city’s very own comprehensive reef fish web portal yesterday. Bloom Association Hong Kong, along with a volunteer group of recreational scuba divers, spent more than 2,900 hours underwater and recorded nearly 400 species of fish, including several that are threatened, since the project’s inception in 2014.”
UChicago News: Scientists use technology to examine questions around climate, biodiversity
UChicago News: Scientists use technology to examine questions around climate, biodiversity. “clam shell may be a familiar find on the beach, but its intricate curves and markings tell a rich tale. For centuries, biologists have collected, drawn, measured and compared the shells of bivalve species, pursuing knowledge about how the environment and behavior shape biodiversity. Now, University of Chicago scientists are combining high-resolution 3-D imaging with new geometric deep learning approaches to reveal a fuller version of the story hidden in shells.”
Times of India: Network to record stranding of marine animals launched
Times of India: Network to record stranding of marine animals launched . “Of late, the stranding of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) and sea turtles has been reported across the Karnataka coast. Of the 120 odd species of marine mammals found in the world, 30-35 varieties of cetaceans and one variety of sirenian are found in the waters of the Indian subcontinent. However, so far, there has been no documentation of the marine mammals, especially those that have washed ashore in Karnataka.”
Fishackathon: Protecting Marine Life with AI and the Wolfram Language (Wolfram Alpha)
Wolfram Alpha: Fishackathon: Protecting Marine Life with AI and the Wolfram Language. “The first global competition was held in 2014 and has been growing massively every year. In 2018 the winning entry came from a five-person team from Boston, after competing against 45,000 people in 65 other cities spread across 5 continents. The participants comprised programmers, web and graphic designers, oceanographers and biologists, mathematicians, engineers and students who all worked tirelessly over the course of two days. To find out more about the winning entry for Fishackathon in 2018 and how the Wolfram Language has helped make the seas safer, we sat down with Michael Sollami to learn more about him and his team’s solution to that year’s challenge.”
Idaho State University: Idaho Museum of Natural History researchers receive grant to digitally scan bones of California blue whale
Idaho State University: Idaho Museum of Natural History researchers receive grant to digitally scan bones of California blue whale. “The Idaho Museum of Natural History and Idaho State University received a $20,000 award from the National Science Foundation in January to scan the entire skeleton of a blue whale that washed ashore in California. The skeleton is at the Noyo Center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg, California.”
EOS: Coral Reef Video Game Will Help Create Global Database
EOS: Coral Reef Video Game Will Help Create Global Database. “Players dive off a research boat, identify and classify coral reefs using satellite and drone images, and bring marine life back to reefs. In doing so, they help scientists teach a machine to learn.”
DiverNet: Sealife Collection Wants Your Photos
DiverNet: Sealife Collection Wants Your Photos . “Hoping that underwater photographers will be moved to contribute their images to form the ultimate marine-life database is a new Spanish-based online platform called the Sealife Collection. The initiative is being run in partnership with the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), which ‘provides the taxonomic backbone to the database and daily updates to the taxonomy’, according to Sealife Collection’s Director Bernat Garrigós.”
Cision: Government of Canada Makes it Easier for Canadians to Learn about Aquatic Species at Risk (PRESS RELEASE)
Cision: Government of Canada Makes it Easier for Canadians to Learn about Aquatic Species at Risk (PRESS RELEASE). “Fisheries and Oceans Canada has updated and improved its online aquatic species at risk mapping tool. The improved interactive mapping tool allows Canadians to find out where aquatic species at risk and their critical habitat are located across Canada. The tool is now interactive, user-friendly and intuitive. Users can zoom in and out on the data and save their results.”
Atlas Obscura: You Can Now Eavesdrop on Orcas on Your Computer
Atlas Obscura: You Can Now Eavesdrop on Orcas on Your Computer . “An internet app called OrcaSound allows citizen scientists to livestream the ocean sounds of the Pacific Northwest from anywhere in the world, to help gather data about the resident killer whales and their environs. Scott Veirs, the project’s lead researcher, said that hydrophones (underwater microphones) have been in place off Washington’s San Juan Island since the mid-2000s, capturing the submarine goings-on and bringing them to listeners in a rudimentary form. The app relaunched recently, and now offers real-time streaming, as well as sounds from an all-new hydrophone station off Whidbey Island, just to the southeast of the the older ones.”
King5: Young orca’s death inspires health database for surviving whales
King5: Young orca’s death inspires health database for surviving whales. “After an intervention to save a dying killer whale calf, one veterinarian is compiling electronic medical records for all of her family members. J50 was declared dead after a month of efforts by scientists to administer antibiotics and even try to feed her. The young whale looked severely emaciated, but no one was sure exactly why. In the aftermath, one of the team members is compiling a database for the whales that survive her.”
Imperial College London: Marine ‘biodiversity crisis’ tackled with new database of conservation plans
Imperial College London: Marine ‘biodiversity crisis’ tackled with new database of conservation plans. “… researchers led by James Cook University, Imperial College London and the University of Maine have taken the first step towards a global repository by launching a database of marine conservation plans. A description of the database is published today in Biological Conservation.”
ISSD: Fisheries Statistics, Ocean Database to Support Marine Resource Management
ISSD: Fisheries Statistics, Ocean Database to Support Marine Resource Management. “The UN Environment Programme (UNEP, or UN Environment) World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) launched Ocean+Data, an online library of ocean-related data resources meant to inform decision making. In parallel, the Asia-Pacific Commission on Agricultural Statistics launched the Pacific Strategic Plan for Agricultural and Fisheries Statistics (P-SPAFS). Both data collection mechanisms were announced as the UK published a report calling for improved data collection to support a growing ocean economy.”
UC Magazine: Diving deep for data (Marine Biodiversity Photography)
University of Cincinnati Magazine: Diving deep for data. “Paleobiologist David Meyer took his first underwater photograph in 1967, the year he got into diving…. Fifty years later, Meyer has accumulated a library of images documenting marine species around the world to understand the ancient ones from the Ordovician Period 450 million years ago that he studied as a geologist in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences. Now Meyer is sharing his life’s work with the public in UC’s digital repository for scholarly works, Scholar@UC. He is converting his old photographic slides to digital images for UC’s new Global Marine Biodiversity Archive.” There isn’t a lot in the archive yet, but enough that I’m looking forward to seeing what gets added.
Google Adds Street View Imagery From Komodo Islands
But up on Google Street View over a week ago and I missed it: imagery from the Komodo Islands, Indonesia. “Beyond taking a virtual walk with dragons, you can also explore the rich marine life surrounding Komodo Island, with the launch of 11 new underwater sites from Indonesia, thanks to XL Catlin Seaview Survey and The Ocean Agency.”
