• December 21, 2004. The Brits block proposed fishing restrictions in the North Sea.

  • December 20, 2004. The environmental evils of shrimp farming (and of shrimp eaters). National Geographic News. Previous stories:

  • December 17, 2004. Latest on the new Alaskan oil spill. Seattle Times. Previous story: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 14, 2004.

  • December 11, 2004. Shark finning. Short article in Science News. Previous stories:

  • December 8, 2004. Latest "good fish" list. Perspective in Christian Science Monitor

  • November 29, 2004. Mystery stranding of whales in Tasmania. BBC News OnL:ine

  • November 15, 2004. New coelacanth finds up the East African coast. Planet Ark

  • November 11, 2004. Singing through the hurricane (if you are a sand sea trout, anyway). Press release

  • November 11, 2004. A robot swimming in the Gulf Stream. Press release

  • November 10, 2004. Life in a lobster community: Vinalhaven, Maine. Christian Science Monitor

  • November 8, 2004. The Japanese dolphin hunters. BBC News OnLine

  • November 6, 2004. The colors of reef fishes. Science News. The colors may NOT be for display!

  • November 5, 2004. Alleged conspiracy to overfish California groundfish. The Oregonian

  • November 3, 2004. Antarctic krill are in serious decline. BBC News OnLine. This is really bad news for the Antarctic ocean ecosystem.

  • October 29, 2004. Tsunami danger from the Canaries is "overhyped". BBC News OnLine

  • October 26, 2004. Wave action reworks beach sands: sometimes for fun and profit. Seattle Times

  • October 26, 2004. Britain looks to wave energy. Planet Ark site

  • October 26, 2004. Lawsuit claims that the Government has failed to protect the North Pacific right whale adequately. Seattle Times

  • October 22, 2004. Alvin retires. BBC News OnLine

  • October 20, 2004. Big squid die-off along the coast of Washington. The Oregonian

  • October 20, 2004. An English village falling into the sea. BBC News OnLine. For previous story, see October 7, 2004. This is Happisburgh, which is pronounced "Hays-burrow".

  • October 19, 2004. Beach erosion: another round of discussion over who pays, and for what? Christian Science Monitor

  • October 15, 2004. The human disaster among the Miskito lobster divers of Nicaragua and the lobster disaster among the lobsters they are catching! On Earth. Read this before you go to Red Lobster.

  • October 7, 2004. Erosion on the East coast of England. The Independent

  • October 6, 2004. Turtle hatching. Christian Science Monitor

  • October 1, 2004. Oceanographer wins IgNobel prize for research on fish farting. Nature news

  • September 29, 2004. Large toxic bloom of algae off the coast of Washington. Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  • September 27, 2004. North Sea fish decline. BBC News OnLine

  • September 27, 2004. This is likely to be the costliest year ever for hurricane damage. National Geographic News

  • September 26, 2004. Building sea defenses doesn't work very well. BBC News OnLine. This is not news. Coastal geomorphologists say it all the time, and yet coastal defenses keep on being built.

  • September 17, 2004. Catching fish for fishmeal is devastating seabird populations in the North Sea. BBC News OnLine

  • August 30, 2004. Pollution by ships. USA Today

  • August 27, 2004. Think the Exxon Valdez oil spill has gone away? Think that Exxon paid for the damage? Think again! E magazine on ENN site

  • August 27, 2004. Recreational fishermen preferentially target endangered fish. AP story on ENN site

  • August 27, 2004. Desalination in Tampa Bay. Story in OnEarth magazine. Apart from the problems the article discusses, there's no mention of the fact that a desalination plant uses huge amounts of energy. Energy prices in the US have been very low for years, but that situation has ended, perhaps for a long time...

  • August 25, 2004. The Barents Sea fisheries and ecology are in trouble. BBC News OnLine, referring to a new UN report.

  • August 24, 2004. The secret life of lobsters. National Geographic News. You can't make up stuff like this.

  • August 24, 2004. Mystery problem for lobsters along the East Coast. AP story on ENN news

  • August 18, 2004. Wave erosion is increasing rather dramatically on Britain's west coast. BBC News OnLine

  • August 12, 2004. Natural gas rig catches fire off the Egyptian coast. AP story on ENN site

  • August 11, 2004. A Federal judge strikes down the attempt by the Bush administration to weaken tuna-labelling regulations. San Francisco Chronicle. Previous stories:

  • August 11, 2004. A megatsunami from the Canary Islands: the scare story comes round again.

  • August 10, 2004. Rogue waves: the truth may be much more scary than the legends.

  • August 10, 2004. More about dead zones.

  • August 10, 2004. A dead zone off the Oregon coast.

  • August 5, 2004. More deep-sea creatures new to science. National Geographic News

  • August 4, 2004. The dead zone off the Mississippi delta may be causing more shark bites on the Texas coast. BBC News OnLine. It sounds reasonable, difficult to prove.

  • August 4, 2004. Plans for generating wave power on the California coast. San Francisco Chronicle

  • August 4, 2004. ?Permanent? changes to the Gulf of Maine ecosystem. Press release, University of Maine

  • July 29, 2004. A worm that lives on, and is exquisitely adapted to, dead whale bones. Nature news service. It's a neat story, and the paper itself is very well written. It is in Science: Rouse G. W., et al. 2004. Science 305: 668-671, so will eventually be freely available on the Web.

  • July 27, 2004. The Maldives: first nation to slip under the waves since Atlantis. A prospective from BBC News Online .

  • July 26, 2004. The humming toadfish again. Press release. Previous story: San Francisco Chronicle July 19, 2004.

  • July 24, 2004. The world's tiniest vertebrate (a fish). BBC News OnLine

  • July 23, 2004. The IWC votes (but not by a wide margin) to continue the ban on commercial whaling. ENN site. Recent stories:

  • July 22, 2004. El Niņo effects are very quickly felt on the sea floor. Nature news service

  • July 22, 2004. The clean-up of the sunken tanker Prestige is going well. ENN site. For the spill, see stories on February 6, 2003.

  • July 21, 2004. Poor outlook for Pacific tuna. ENN site

  • July 21, 2004. The complex games played by Australian fiddler crabs. Nature news service

  • July 19, 2004. The sewage on American beaches. Scientific American. If you want to keep this, download it now: I don't know how long it will stay up.

  • July 15, 2004. Most of the "red snapper" sold in stores (and presumably in restaurants) is not: it's some other fish. Press release. This is not "unintentional": certainly fishermen and fish buyers and fish wholesalers know the difference. This is reminiscent of the situation in Japan, where much of the meat sold as "whale" is not. The red snapper-eating public is being ripped off, of course, but they deserve it, in my judgment, because they choose to try to eat a fish that they know (or ought to know) is being grossly overfished. People with too much money tend to buy goods for a prestige name, whether or not they actually like what they are getting: it happens in many foods, wines, cars, and shoes, for example.

  • July 14, 2004. Plankton make clouds. NASA press release. This has been suggested, but this new work provides much more evidence. The plankton are not being atruistic, of course: they are protecting themselves from the Sun's UV.

  • July 13, 2004. The greatest shoal on Earth (2004 version). BBC News OnLine. This is the annual sardine run on to South African beaches. National Geographic featured it in 2002, with the same title. It is one of the great Events of the Ocean Year.

  • July 7, 2004. Israeli fish farming is killing off the coral reefs of Eilat. ENN site. In any sane biological, ecological, or ethical mind set, this is a disaster. It may even be economically stupid, depending on the longterm prospects for ecotourism vs fish farming. On the other hand, ecotourists may instead go to the Jordanian and Egyptian resorts on the Red Sea that have not yet wrecked their reefs.

  • July 7, 2004. Hurricanes stir the ocean enough to set off plankton blooms.

  • July 2, 2004. Penguin guano. A fascinating historical story about this marine-derived resource. National Geographic News

  • July 1, 2004. Fishing for deep-sea whiting around Europe: bad idea. (Especially when they are mostly ground up for feeding farmed salmon!). BBC News OnLine

  • June 30, 2004. Japanese fish poachers nailed by Russian patrol boat. AP story on ENN site. Well this is good news: however, the cynic in me suggests that they simply wouldn't or couldn't come up with a big enough bribe...

  • June 30, 2004. Continuing bad news about European fisheries. BBC News site. Previous stories:

  • June 24, 2004. Continuing bad news from the Galapagos. ENN News. Stories from earlier this year:

  • June 24, 2004. The venom of the cone snail. Why and how to collect and study it. Nature news service.

  • June 17, 2004. Alaska fishermen win an international award for wise fishing. ENN News.

  • June 17, 2004. Potential hazards of tankers negotiating the Bosphorus. ENN News

  • June 17, 2004. Two huge red tides affect the coast of China. ENN site

  • June 15, 2004. Australia declares a no-fishing zone for a huge stretch of the Great Barrier Reef. Nationa Geographic News

  • June 15, 2004. The "Great Conveyor Belt" and the productivity of the oceans. National Geographic News

  • June 4, 2004. The suspicious role played by Palau in opposing a Pacific refuge for whales. ENN site

  • June 4, 2004. The promise, and peril, of cold-water corals. BBC News OnLine

  • June 2, 2004. Iceland backs off a lot on its whaling plans (but not to zero). ENN site. Previous stories:

  • May 21, 2004. A new world-record heat-loving microorganism. It's Strain 121 from a deep-sea hot vent, and it lives and grows in water up to 121° C. National Geographic News National Geographic has the headline badly wrong: the whole point is that the water at these vents does NOT boil because it's under such pressure.

  • May 21, 2004. A new underwater volcano near Antarctica. ENN News

  • May 19, 2004. Norway wants to kill three times as many whales as it does already. ENN News. Previous stories:

  • May 13, 2004. The Swedes are building the first stealth ship (that anyone knows about). The Guardian

  • May 11, 2004. Penguins chew on mollusc shells the way your pet parrots chew on the cuttlebones you give them: to get calcium for strong egg shells. Press release

  • May 7, 2004. The Canadians are ready to take drastic action against fish poachers from Europe. ENN News

  • May 6, 2004. We knew there was a global problem with floating plastic junk in the oceans. However, we didn't know how pervasive microscopic particles of plastic are. National Geographic News.

  • May 5, 2004. The sneaky games played by male sand gobies. Press release

  • May 5, 2004. Tuna and sharks have evolved similar mechanisms for high-performance swimming. It may be "remarkable" but it's not a miracle: just an adaptation for the same way of life. The paper is in Nature so you won't see it on general access on the Web.

  • May 5, 2004. Chinese poaching Malaysian sea turtles. ENN News

  • May 3, 2004. Peruvian seabird populations are a fraction of what they used to be (before intensive offshore fishing began). Press release. Of course, this is not a surprise, but it is good to have it documented.

  • April 23, 2004. The gribbles are eating at Seattle. National Geographic News

  • April 18, 2004. Hydrogen sulfide upwelling off the coast of Namibia. Satellite image and caption

  • April 15, 2004. Better forecasting of El Niņo (and the whole ENSO system). Nature news service

  • April 12, 2004. The Canadians are having a BIG seal hunt this year. BBC News OnLine

  • April 8, 2004. The Greenland ice sheet is in worse shape than we thought. National Geographic site. The paper is in Nature, so it's not generally available on the Net. This is bad news, not just for the Greenland ice sheet, but for all of us. The melting water may affect the climate of the whole North Atlantic region, and the sea level may rise faster than we had projected.

  • April 6, 2004. The Australians are being overwhelmed by Indonesian poachers (reading between the lines of this story). ENN site

  • April 5, 2004. The happy ending to the story of Peter the Penguin. BBC News OnLine

  • March 25, 2004. The British announce drastic fishing cuts to try to save their fisheries. The Guardian

  • March 24, 2004. A new dragonfish species. Press release. In the great cosmic scheme of things, this is no big deal, but it IS interesting.

  • March 24, 2004. A new type of turbine for harnessing tidal power. Nature news service

  • March 18, 2004. Fifteen years on, the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill still linger. National Geographic news

  • March 12, 2004. The US bans longline fishing for swordfish in the Pacific waters that it controls. ENN site. This may be a futile attempt to save sea turtles, but it is the right thing to do.

  • March 9, 2004. Another update on those Red Crabs marching along the coast of Norway. National Geographic News. Previous stories:

  • March 9, 2004. The dangers of building your research station on an ice floe. Nature news service

  • March 5, 2004. Craig Venter finds many new genes in ocean microbes. ENN News. Now he'd like the taxpayer to fund a round-the-world sailboat cruise to find some more.

  • March 1, 2004. The water on the floor of the Pacific Ocean is too warm. San Francisco Chronicle

  • February 21, 2004. The Great Barrier Reef is doomed, say the Australians. BBC News OnLine

  • February 20, 2004. The Japanese appetite for sea food. Reuters report from the ENN site

  • February 19, 2004. You can't do just one thing: the changing ecology of skuas in the North Sea.

  • February 17, 2004. High tide at Tuvalu. ENN site

  • February 17, 2004. Destroying the biology of seamounts. Article by Ed Hunt on Tidepool site.

  • February 11, 2004. Offshore wind turbines on the Swedish coast also act as refuges for marine life. ENN site

  • February 10, 2004. Australia nails more toothfish poachers. Reuters report on ENN News site. Previous story, 2004: Poaching is so rife in the Southern Ocean that those fisheries are probably doomed. BBC News OnLine, January 23, 2004.
    For 2003 stories, see October 3, 2003.

  • February 9, 2004. A completely new family of jellyfish discovered. Nature news service

  • February 6, 2004. The biology of pilot whales off Hawaii. National Geographic News

  • February 4, 2004. Why mangroves are important in maintaining coral reef diversity. National Geographic News

  • January 30, 2004. Mexican poachers massacre nesting turtles. ENN site

  • January 30, 2004. Insight into penguin biology from CritterCam. National Geographic News

  • January 29, 2004. Whale explodes in Taiwanese city. BBC News OnLine. I know I have a twisted sense of humor, but I think this story is hilarious.

  • January 28, 2004. Fishing offshore in the Pacific Northwest: a dangerous business. National Geographic News

  • January 27, 2004. Update on manatees in Florida. Smithsonian article on the ENN site

  • January 26, 2004. Feature article on the mola, the largest living teleost (bony fish). National Geographic News

  • January 26, 2004. Iron fertilization for the ocean: a new large-scale experiment. Nature News Service

  • January 26, 2004. Where were ancient ships built? Nature news service

  • January 24, 2004. Why do underater landslides travel so far? Science News

  • January 23, 2004. The end of the albatross. ENN News feature article. REQUIRED READING.

  • January 23, 2004. Sharks vs. dugongs in Shark Bay, Western Australia. National Geographic News.

  • January 23, 2004. More insight into great white shark attacks. National Geographic News.

  • January 23, 2004. A Connecticut tanker company deliberately spilled oil into the ocean from one of its ships. ENN site. So what about the other 35? Are they squeaky clean? What would you guess?

  • January 20, 2004. "The rise of slime": an interview with Jeremy Jackson. California Wild, Winter 2004

  • January 20, 2004. A dugong caught off the coast of Tanzania. BBC News OnLine. Why is this news? It's the first one seen in 70 years. Too bad they offed it.

  • January 16, 2004. St. Croix is so polluted that a cruise ship cancels a visit to the US Virgin Islands (and heads for the British ones instead). ENN News.

  • January 12, 2004. Disaster on the Pacific island of Niue. The Guardian, january 12, 2004.

  • January 12, 2004. How mussels glue themselves to rocks.. It's an organic glue, but we've just discovered that it has iron in it. Now the ruch is on to get out a commercial product based on this concept.

  • January 9, 2004. PCB levels in farmed salmon.

  • January 8, 2004. The built-in flashlight of the bobtail squid. National Geographic News.

  • January 8, 2004. Sleeper sharks apparently eat giant squid (dead or alive) in deep dark water. BBC News OnLine.

  • January 7, 2004. Another reminder that some Pacific islands are particularly prone to sealevel rise as the Earth warms. The Independent. Previous stories about Tuvalu:

  • January 2, 2004. Small oil spill near Seattle: but it's important locally. Seattle Times. In fact, many small oil spills harm the world's oceans about as much as a few giant ones do.

    FOR STORIES FROM 2003, go to 2003 news archives

    FOR STORIES FROM 2002, go to 2002 news archives

    FOR STORIES FROM June to December 2001, go to June to December 2001

    FOR STORIES FROM January to June 2001, go to Jan-June 2001

    FOR STORIES FROM 2000, go to 2000 news archives

    FOR STORIES FROM 1999, go to 1999 news archives

    For current stories, go to this page

    [For Geology in the News, see Geology in the News

    [For Paleontology in the News, see Paleontology in the News

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