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Executive Order--Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Purpose. The ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes provide jobs, food, energy resources, ecological services, recreation, and tourism opportunities, and play critical roles in our Nation's transportation, economy, and trade, as well as the global mobility of our Armed Forces and the maintenance of international peace and security. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and resulting...

Two years ago, the Pacific Sun, a cruise ship out of Australia, hit rough waters, and dozens were injured in the process. The ship’s troubles were serious enough that some wondered how safe we are traveling by sea in general, but for the most part that was the end of it. Until this week. Because this week, the internet came in, as two videos surfaced demonstrating just how bad the Pacific Sun’s situation was – bad enough that mainstream media started taking notice. From Postmedia News, via the Montreal Gazette: In one video, passengers and crew are sent careening violently...

This one might be really easy, because I imagine if you've seen this one you wouldn't forget where it is. But that would mean somebody actually saw this (or at least a picture of it indicating where it is). Anyway, it's one of the most picturesque sea arches I've ever seen. The other arch (bottom 2 pictures) is located nearby. Click all for full-size.

I'll do this a bit differently; click the image and go to where you can click on a bigger version. Text accompanying the first: Etretat is well known for its cliffs, including a famous natural arch, which some call "The needle's eye." These cliffs and the beach next to them, attracted many artists (Eugène Boudin, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet). Étretat was the birthplace of Elie Halévy (1870-1937), philosopher and historian. In the French coast in the department of Seine-Maritime, Upper Normandy, are the spectacular cliffs of Etretat, only two hours from Paris by car. These are two views of the...

NASA's Earth Observatory put up this remarkably low-cloud view of the Arctic. The linked article has a smaller size labeled image. (Click for full-size, 10x bigger)

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

PARIS (AFP) – A huge, potentially life-giving sea likely covered more than a third of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a study released Sunday. Spread over an area the size of the Atlantic Ocean, it would have straddled the north pole and contained the equivalent of a tenth of the water on Earth. For decades scientists have argued as to whether the Red Planet once harboured bodies of water big enough to help nourish a true hydrological cycle marked by evaporation and rainfall. Recent evidence suggests as much, but doubts remained. To dig deeper, Gaetano Di Achille...

A rescue effort has been launched in hope of finding Abby Sunderland, 16, who set off her emergency beacon locating devices from the southern Indian Ocean early this morning. Sunderland, who had been attempting to sail around the world alone, endured multiple knockdowns in 60-knot winds Thursday before conditions briefly abated. snip Abby is hundreds of miles from land. The nearest ship was about 400 miles away. The rescue effort is being coordinated by the French-controlled Reunion Islands and Australia. Sunderland had been sailing in 50- to 60-foot seas and it was dark when the EPIRB devices were activated. snip...

A rescue effort has been launched in hope of finding Abby Sunderland, 16, who set off her emergency beacon locating devices from the southern Indian Ocean early this morning. Sunderland, who had been attempting to sail around the world alone, endured multiple knockdowns in 60-knot winds Thursday before conditions briefly abated. However, her parents lost satellite phone contact early this morning and an hour later were notified by the Australian Coast Guard that both of Sunderland's EPIRB satellite devices had been activated. One is apparently is attached to a survival suit or a life raft and meant to be...

The only thing FUnnier than the title of this DUmmie THREAD, "Cheney killed the ocean!" is the graphic posted there which is why I am using it above. Yup! Send out an APB. Dick Cheney killed the ocean. Meanwhile do nothing Obama, the biggest recipient of BP political donations had absolutely nothing to do with being nearly inactive in the face of the biggest oil spill in history. Nope. We need to blame DICK CHENEY who hasn't been in office for over a year. So let us now watch the DUmmies place all the blame on Cheney while giving...

The Newport Aquarium has upgraded its exhibit of bizarre sea creatures to include more than a dozen new species. Some of those include Japanese spider crabs, electric flame scallops and spotted garden eels. Chris Pierson, the aquarium's husbandry director, said the purpose of renovating the Bizarre and Beautiful Gallery is to make things "more family-friendly, more kid-friendly." The gallery re-opened Friday with a new configuration allows more visitors. It also gives children better access to the exhibits by putting some tanks closer to the floor. The aquarium also used the renovation to upgrade equipment and reduce energy costs.

  With huge chains and honking cranes, that's how. Example: This Republic of Korea Navy's corvette—half of it, actually—floating over the sea's surface. And before you cry "PHOTOSHOP!", check out the scene from a distance.It's the Cheonan, a South Korean Pohang-class corvette that broke in two on March 26. According to an international investigation, the cause was a torpedo fired from a North Korean Yeono class miniature submarine, killing 46 crew members. A few weeks later, on April 15, the South Korean Navy recovered the stern part from the bottom of the sea using a giant floating crane. On April 24,...

Sunken battleships, leviathans, dark depths - such is the stuff of the deep and endless sea, at least in popular imagination. And few of us can fathom how much water is contained in all the oceans, which cover 71 percent of planet and account for 97 percent of its water. At least, until now. There are 1,332 billion cubic kilometers of ocean water on Earth. Yes, that's kilometers.

We have been hearing a lot about what the oil spill is doing to the ocean. But something else which is also concerning is the condition the ocean was in, even prior to the spill. We live in a finite world. Our continued mistreatment of the ocean, the reduced fish population, and the disappearance of large fish in the last 50 years are all serious concerns. Jeremy Jackson is the Ritter Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In this talk, Professor Jackson lays out the shocking state...

JERUSALEM (AFP) - – The appearance of a grey whale off the coast of Israel has stunned scientists, in what was thought to be the first time the giant mammal has been seen outside the Pacific in several hundred years. The whale, which was first sighted off Herzliya in central Israel on Saturday, is believed to have travelled thousands of miles from the north Pacific after losing its way in search of food. "It's an unbelievable event which has been described as one of the most important whale sightings ever," said Dr Aviad Scheinin, chairman of the Israel Marine Mammal...

Direct observations of these creatures from submersibles are very rare. It has been previously videoed by scientists off the Pacific coast of the US and by ROVs off Japan. However, this is the first time the giant jelly has been recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. The researchers reported four chance encounters with jellyfish between 2005 and 2009, during the routine underwater work the energy companies carried out on their underwater structures. The footage shows the reddish purple coloured jellyfish at depths ranging from 996m to 1747m. Trap prey The scientists observed the jellyfish attaching itself to the subsea equipment...

OIL AND GAS SEEPAGE FROM OCEAN FLOOR REDUCED BY OIL PRODUCTIONNovember 18, 1999 (Santa Barbara, Calif.) Next time you step on a glob of tar on a beach in Santa Barbara County, you can thank the oil companies that it isn't a bigger glob. The same is true around the world, on other beaches where off-shore oil drilling occurs, say scientists, although Santa Barbara's oil seeps are thought to be among the leakiest. Natural seepage of hydrocarbons from the ocean floor in the northern Santa Barbara Channel has been significantly reduced by oil production, according to two recently published peer-reviewed...

PARIS (AFP) – An iceberg the size of Luxembourg knocked loose from the Antarctic continent earlier this month could disrupt the ocean currents driving weather patterns around the globe, researchers said Thursday. While the impact would not be felt for decades or longer, a slowdown in the production of colder, dense water could result in less temperate winters in the north Atlantic, they said. The 2550 square-kilometre (985 square-mile) block broke off on February 12 or 13 from the Mertz Glacier Tongue, a 160-kilometer spit of floating ice protruding into the Southern Ocean from East Antarctica due south of Melbourne,...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The creatures living in the depths of the ocean are as weird and outlandish as the creations in a Dr. Seuss book: tentacled transparent sea cucumbers, primitive "dumbos" that flap ear-like fins, and tubeworms that feed on oil deposits. A report released Sunday recorded 17,650 species living below 656 feet, the point where sunlight ceases. The findings were the latest update on a 10-year census of marine life. "Parts of the deep sea that we assumed were homogenous are actually quite complex," said Robert S. Carney, an oceanographer at Louisiana State University and a lead researcher...

Albatrosses fly many hundreds of kilometers across the open ocean to find and feed upon their prey. Despite the growing number of studies concerning their foraging behaviour, relatively little is known about how albatrosses actually locate their prey. Here, we present our results from the first deployments of a combined animal-borne camera and depth data logger on free-ranging black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophrys). The still images recorded from these cameras showed that some albatrosses actively followed a killer whale (Orcinus orca), possibly to feed on food scraps left by this diving predator. The camera images together with the depth profiles showed...