It’s been two years since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill dumped nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve examined some of the consequences of this event earlier, but reverberations from the ecological disaster continue to be felt.

Fishermen in the region are finding significant deformities in large proportions of their catch: eyeless shrimp, fish covered with lesions, missing appendages, and others. As Al Jazeera reports:

“What we found is a very clear, genome-wide signal, a very clear signal of exposure to the toxic components of oil that coincided with the timing and the locations of the oil,” Whitehead told Al Jazeera during an interview in his lab.

According to Whitehead, the killifish is an important indicator species because they are the most abundant fish in the marshes, and are known to be the most important forage animal in their communities.

“That means that most of the large fish that we like to eat and that these are important fisheries for, actually feed on the killifish,” he explained. “So if there were to be a big impact on those animals, then there would probably be a cascading effect throughout the food…

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It might sound like a bad 50s B-movie, but unfortunately it’s not fiction: jellyfish populations appear to be on the rise nearly everywhere.

In a study published in this month’s edition of the journal Hydrobiologia, UBC scientists examined data for numerous species of jellyfish for 45 of the world’s 66 Large Marine Ecosystems. They found increasing jellyfish populations in 62 per cent of the regions analyzed, including East Asia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, Hawaii, and Antarctica.

“There has been anecdotal evidence that jellyfish were on the rise in recent decades, but there hasn’t been a global study that gathered together all the existing data until now,” says Lucas Brotz, a PhD student with the Sea Around Us Project at UBC and lead author of the study.

“Our study confirms these observations scientifically after analysis of available information from 1950 to the present for more than 138 different jellyfish populations around the world.”

Jellyfish directly interfere with many human activities – by stinging swimmers, clogging intakes of power plants, and interfering with fishing. Some species of jellyfish are now a food source in some parts of the world.

“By combining published scientific data with…

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If you’ve been following this blog lately, you’re well aware of ocean acidification – the process by which increased CO2 in the atmosphere is making the oceans more acidiic – and how it negatively affects shell-forming marine life, corals, and other parts of the ecosystem.

We have been sponsoring Jason Hall-Spencer’s ocean acidification research for several years now. He recently appears on a number of programmes to talk about his work, including Australia’s RadioNational and the David Suzuki Foundation blog:

A 30 per cent decrease in the number of species is observed at levels of acidification expected to occur across oceans later this century. Both calcifying and non-calcifying organisms (such as urchins, snails and fish) are adversely affected by acidification, allowing invasive algae to thrive in their place. Transformation of diverse benthic ecosystems into monocultures of invasive algae and seagrass is observed at CO2 vents in Mexico, New Guinea and the Mediterranean, a strong indication of what we can expect to see in the future. Although many large fish species are present in the acidified areas, they have not been observed to deposit their eggs in the algae and eelgrass, opting instead to lay eggs…

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The Save Our Seas Foundation extends our deepest condolences following this tragic incident. Today’s shark fatality leaves us all struggling for answers. Beach safety in Cape Town is a priority issue for the Save Our Seas Foundation and we are committed to open, honest and affirmative cooperation with local communities to make beach-going as safe as possible. These qualities are most important at times of uncertainty and loss. Those affected by this tragedy as well as the whole community deserve a transparent review of this incident and we are confident that this will take place. There is a delicate and sometimes dangerous balance in sharing the ocean with sharks.  We continue to promote education and awareness as essential elements of both beach safety and shark conservation. Again, this is a day of mourning and our hearts go out for this tragic loss of life.

Previous statements (4 April and 12 April) from the Save Our Seas Foundation regarding recent research activities are included below: