Tag archives for Pacific Ocean
Earth Day Opinion: Helping Coral Ecosystems Survive a Changing Climate
Posted by Wildlife Conservation Society on April 22, 2013 With corals across the globe bleaching due to advancing ocean temperatures, many of the world’s coral reef experts believe these centers of marine biodiversity may become the first casualty of climate change. But while the news on corals has been largely grim, it is not beyond hope.
Posted by The annual arrival of spring chinook salmon to inland rivers makes March an eagerly anticipated time of year for fishermen and seafood lovers on the Pacific Coast. Anglers wait all year for the chance to land a hulking silvery chinook, commonly known as a king salmon, and consumers enjoy eating this tasty fish. When it…
Posted by 
There’s no place like home—and now scientists have figured out how salmon get there.
From Supizae to Taro to Ysabel
Posted by Nicole Levins on November 20, 2012 The Climate Challenger Voyage is a community initiative inspired by The Nature Conservancy’s Manuai Matawai, who dreamed of building a traditional long voyage canoe and sailing around the Pacific to connect communities grappling with climate change through culture and conservation Two years later, Manuai and nine other crew members—members of the Titan tribe of Papua New Guinea—are…
Posted by Some 250,000 giant tortoises once roamed the Galapagos islands. But taken for meat by pirates and whalers, their populations collapsed to near extinction. We visit the Charles Darwin Research Research Center to see how the giant tortoise has been restored, and we visit scores of wild tortoises in their natural habitat in the highlands of Santa Cruz Island.
In 1835 Charles Darwin arrived on Floreana Island in the Galapagos, noting in his journal that it had long been frequented, first by buccaneers, latterly by whalers–and then political dissidents exiled from mainland South America. The giant tortoises Darwin saw on Floreana have since been extirpated from the island and the prisoners and pirates exist only in history. But the scenery he described remains much the same, and a tradition of leaving mail in a “post office barrel” for collection and delivery by passing ships has endured for two centuries.
Posted by 
For the last few days, fully inured to life-a-tilt and the complex movements of the sea, we have plied south and southwest winds to continue sailing west. We’re 1,500 miles and 25 days out from California, with 900 miles and 12 days left at sea. Within a day we plan to turn south toward Hawaii. …
Bewitched, enchanted, beguiling. Those are just some of the terms explorers across five centuries have used to describe the Galapagos, an unmatched archipelago of islands drifting in the vastness of the open ocean, in the middle of nowhere.
The Climate Challenger Voyage: The Journey Begins
Posted by Nicole Levins on October 26, 2012 The Climate Challenger Voyage is a community initiative inspired by The Nature Conservancy‘s Manuai Matawai, who dreamed of building a traditional long voyage canoe and sailing around the Pacific to connect communities grappling with climate change through culture and conservation. Two years later, Manuai and nine other crew members—members of the Titan tribe of Papua New Guinea—are…
We’re ten days and 690 nautical miles out from the nearest land in California. In that time, we’ve conducted 21 net deployments to collect and analyze plastic. We’ve counted a total of 3,190 pieces of plastic, most of it in the North Pacific subtropical gyre. Here in this gigantic eddy-like “trap,” the concentration of floating…
Three days and almost 400 miles west of California, the rail is now free of slumped crew feeding the fish. From my aft berth, I can hear the deck being scrubbed above. Even though we’ve passed beyond the shallow edge of the continental shelf, we’re still amid cold, northern currents. With the exception of today’s…
Sea Otters Slow Comeback May Be Tied to “Dietary Guilds”
Posted by Cathy Hunter on August 24, 2011 California sea otters were nearly hunted to extinction until a treaty in 1911 banned the fur trade. Since then, the animals have made only a modest comeback, and one scientist thinks it may be due to specialized diets followed by different groups of otters. For all the latest science news, check out National Geographic Library’s…
Beluga whales in the Cook Inlet in Alaska have been listed as an endangered species, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today. “In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering,” said James Balsiger, acting assistant administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. Photo courtesy NOAA
Photo courtesy of M. Hornbach On the Pacific island Tongatapu a line of enormous coral boulders hundreds of feet from the sea is said by local legend to have been flung ashore by the god Maui in an attempt to kill a giant man-eating fowl. But now scientists think that the seven boulders, which are…
A new iguana has been discovered on Fiji, an island country in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Named Brachylophus bulabula (bula means “hello” in Fijian), the colorful new species joins only two other living Pacific iguana species, one of which is critically endangered, U.S. Geological Survey scientists said today. Brachylophus bulabula female on Kadavu…
