Feb 2
Posted on
Thursday, February 2, 2012 in
ArticlesA GOP-led House committee has approved bills that open the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve to oil drilling, encourage oil shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and push new oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast.
Republicans say the measures provide energy security and a source of revenue to help pay for roads and bridges, but it was the offshore oil lease sales that sparked the most spirited debate. Any discussion of offshore oil drilling among Californians revolves around the 1969 spill off the Santa Barbara coast that dumped 200,000 gallons of crude across 35 miles of coastline.
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KPCC report by Kitty Felde
Jan 31
Posted on
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 in
ArticlesFederal regulators designated nearly 42,000 square miles of ocean along the West Coast as critical habitat for the Pacific leatherback turtle Friday, far less than originally proposed but still the largest protected area ever established in American waters.
The protected area is the first permanent safe haven in the waters of the continental United States for endangered leatherbacks, which swim 6,000 miles every year to eat jellyfish outside the Golden Gate.
Jan 23
Posted on
Monday, January 23, 2012 in
ArticlesCalifornia beach cities are vying for corporate sponsors to advertise their business on lifeguard towers, trash cans, warning signs, vending machines and volleyball nets up
LOS ANGELES, January 15, 2012
This place used to sell itself.
The sun-kissed coastline, the glassy waves and the tens of millions of visitors who descended onto the spacious sand like clockwork. They were the magical ingredients that beach cities in California could bank on to bring in a steady stream of corporate dollars.
For exclusive rights to put company logos on lifeguard towers, trash cans, warning signs, vending machines and volleyball nets up and down the Los Angeles County coast, the bidding would start at $700,000.
But every wave must crash.
Precisely when government officials from San Diego to Santa Cruz are most eager to tap some much-needed revenue by considering logos on almost anything — even ads imprinted onto the sand itself — the still-lumbering economy has taken the sparkle right out of the seashore.
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Dec 28
Posted on
Wednesday, December 28, 2011 in
Articles
How cool is this?? Read how “sensorbots” will help scientists monitor the ocean in this article from MSN.
-Your friends at Caostal CODE
Washington, Dec 21 (IANS) Scientists have discovered sensorbots equipped with bio-geo-chemical sensors that will monitor key events in the ocean like underwater earthquakes and hydrothermal vents. The device promises to open a new chapter in the exploration of the earth’s largest ecosystem.
The globe shaped devices are being designed and developed in the lab of Deirdre Meldrum, a professor at the Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute.
The Sensorbots will enable continuous monitoring of key elements in the ocean and the ability to respond to events such as underwater earthquakes and hydrothermal vents.
Much of Meldrum’s genomic research focuses on deep ocean environments and leverages her extensive technology development for human health and disease, a university statement said. (more…)
Oct 24
Posted on
Monday, October 24, 2011 in
ArticlesA lethal and highly contagious marine virus has been detected for the first time in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, researchers in British Columbia said on Monday, stirring concern that it could spread there, as it has in Chile, Scotland and elsewhere.
A farm-raised salmon, the type hit hardest by infectious salmon anemia. The spread to the wild in the Pacific Northwest was reported by researchers in British Columbia.
Farms hit by the virus, infectious salmon anemia, have lost 70 percent or more of their fish in recent decades. But until now, the virus, which does not affect humans, had never been confirmed on the West Coast of North America.
The researchers, from Simon Fraser University and elsewhere, said at a news conference in Vancouver that the virus had been found in 2 of 48 juvenile fish collected as part of a study of sockeye salmon in Rivers Inlet, on the central coast of British Columbia. The study was undertaken after scientists observed a decline in the number of young sockeye.
Richard Routledge, an environmental scientist at the university who leads the sockeye study, suggested that the virus had spread from the province’s aquaculture industry, which has imported millions of Atlantic salmon eggs over the last 25 years, primarily from Iceland and Scandinavia. He acknowledged that no direct evidence of that link existed, but noted that the two fish had tested positive for the European strain of infectious salmon anemia.
The virus could have “a devastating impact” not just on the region’s farmed and wild salmon but on the many species that depend on them in the food web, like grizzly bears, killer whales and wolves, Dr. Routledge said. “No country has ever gotten rid of it once it arrives,” he said in a statement.
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Posted on New York Times By: Cornelia Dean
