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Dockworker Marcy Ingall saw a giant wave in the distance last Tuesday afternoon and stopped in her tracks. It was an hour before low tide in Maine's Boothbay Harbor, yet without warning, the muddy harbor floor suddenly filled with rushing, swirling water. Squall-line surges and rogue waves In 15 minutes, the water rose 12 feet, then receded. And then it happened again. It occurred three times, she said, each time ripping apart docks and splitting wooden pilings.

Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing. Such is the prognosis of Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, in a bold new assessment of the oceans and their ecological health. Publishing his study in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Jackson believes that human impacts are laying the groundwork for mass extinctions in the oceans on par...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Scientific detective work has uncovered a decades-old glitch in ocean temperature measurements and revealed that the world's seas are warming and rising faster than previously reported. Fellow report author John Church said he had long been suspicious about the historical data because it did not match results from computer models of the world's climate and oceans. "We've realigned the observations and as a result the models agree with the observations much better than previously," said Church, a senior research scientist with the climate centre.

A joint American and European oceanography satellite designed to continue a growing legacy of monitoring changes in sea levels and the impacts on the global climate awaits an overnight blastoff Friday morning from California.

Has An Ocean Circulation Collapse Been Triggered?Geoscientists warn that there can be a considerable delay between the triggering of a collapse of the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and the actual collapse. (Credit: iStockphoto/Emmanuelle Combaud) ScienceDaily (Feb. 25, 2008) — Predictions that the 21st century is safe from major circulation changes in the North Atlantic Ocean may not be as comforting as they seem, according to a Penn State researcher. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it is very unlikely that the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) will collapse in the 21st century. They predict a probability...

New evidence supports premise that Earth produces endless supply ------------------ A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a "fossil fuel" derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs. The lead scientist on the study – Giora Proskurowski of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle – says the hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - In what some scientists see as another alarming consequence of global warming, thousands of Pacific walruses above the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes earlier this year after the disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in extraordinary numbers. The deaths took place during the late summer and fall on the Russian side of the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska from Russia. "It was a pretty sobering year — tough on walruses," said Joel Garlach-Miller, a walrus expert for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Unlike seals, walruses cannot swim indefinitely. The giant,...

A rift that opened in Africa after a massive earthquake last September could be the beginning of a new Ocean, scientists say. The crack in the ground appeared along a fault line in the Afar desert in Ethiopia. The crack is heading for the Red Sea. If it makes it that far, it would carve a new ocean that would separate Eritrea and part of Ethiopia (both of which lie on the Arabian plate) from the rest of the continent, creating a new island.Satellite data collected since the quake shows that the rift is widening at an unprecedented rate, according...

An enormous underwater landslide 60,000 years ago produced the longest flow of sand and mud yet found on Earth. The landslide off the coast of north-west Africa dumped 225 billion metric tonnes of sediment into the ocean in a matter of hours or days. The flow travelled 1,500km (932 miles) - the distance from London to Rome - before depositing its sediment. The work, by a British team of researchers has been published in the academic journal Nature. The massive surge put down the same amount of sediment that comes out of all the world's rivers combined over a period...

Science Daily — More than a mile beneath the Atlantic's surface, roughly halfway between New York and Portugal, seawater rushing through the narrow gullies of an underwater mountain range much as winds gust between a city's tall buildings is generating one of the most turbulent areas ever observed in the deep ocean. In fact, the turbulence packs an energy wallop equal to about five million watts -- comparable to output from a small nuclear reactor, according to a landmark study led by Florida State University researcher Louis St. Laurent and described in the August 9 edition of the journal Nature....

A drill will be used to extract samples of the exposed mantle Scientists are to sail to the mid-Atlantic to examine a massive "open wound" on the Earth's surface.Dr Chris MacLeod, from Cardiff University, said the Earth's crust appeared to be completely missing in an area thousands of kilometres across. The hole in the crust is midway between the Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The team will survey the area, up to 5km (3 miles) under the surface, from ocean research vessel RRS James Cook. The ship is on its inaugural voyage after being...

New Zealand fishermen may have caught the largest Colossal squid ever found -- weighing around 450kg (992 pounds) and with rings the size of tires.The adult Colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) was caught by fishermen long lining for toothfish in deep ocean off Antarctica, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said on Thursday in announcing the catch.The squid was still alive when caught and was eating a hooked toothfish when hauled aboard, Anderton said in a statement."The squid was almost dead when it reached the surface, and the careful work of the crew was paramount in getting this specimen aboard in...

THE Red Sea is parting in a way that could create a new ocean basin and redraw the map of Africa and Arabia. A huge rift that appeared last year along a fault in the Afar desert in Ethiopia, where the African and Arabian tectonic plates meet, has provided the strongest indication yet of how the plates are separating to create a new sea. Geologists believe that they are witnessing a tectonic process similar to the one that formed the Atlantic Ocean, as adjacent plates push apart over millions of years to alter the shape of the continents. While the...

LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese scientists have taken the first photographs of one of the most mysterious creatures in the deep ocean -- the giant squid. Until now the only information about the behavior of the creatures which measure up to 18 meters (59 feet) in length has been based on dead or dying squid washed up on shore or captured in commercial fishing nets. But Tsunemi Kubodera, of the National Science Museum, and Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association, both in Tokyo have captured the first images of Architeuthis attacking bait 900 meters (yards) below the surface in...

Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet's most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control. "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer. In 2000, Kelley led an expedition using a manned submersible to explore the deep Atlantic Ocean. Her team stumbled upon something never seen before. The researchers discovered a startlingly massive collection of limestone towers located miles away from the tectonic "spreading" cracks in the seafloor that typically produce such structures. Some of these hydrothermal...

Octopus seen walking on two legs like a human   VIDEO   By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Octopuses, known for using camouflage to avoid predators, have been observed apparently trying to sneak away by walking on two arms while pretending to be a bunch of algae. Two kinds of octopus were seen to use different ways of walking along the sea floor, researchers were reporting in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The movements were discovered by Christine L. Huffard of the University of California, Berkeley, who was studying underwater video camera tapes of the...

UK scientists have released images of the ocean floor near the epicentre of December's giant Asian earthquake. They were obtained by the Royal Navy's hydrographic survey ship HMS Scott. The three-dimensional pictures detail the deformed seabed 150km (94 miles) off the Sumatran coast, and reveal huge underwater landslides. Researchers involved in the project believe the images may help in the design of the tsunami early warning system to be built in the region. "There are features which we would think are something like the Grand Canyon would look," Tim Henstock, one of the scientists on board HMS Scott, told BBC...

SINGAPORE (DPA): A U.S. Navy vessel is surveying the seabed in the Malacca Straits' shipping lanes off Indonesia's Aceh province to determine if there have been any depth changes from the massive earthquake and tsunami, a published report said on Wednesday. No problems have been reported so far by the nearly 4,000 commercial ships that have transited the straits since the Dec. 26 tsunami, which devastated coastal communities from Malaysia to Somalia. A warning to mariners from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGIA), published in The BusinessTimes, said, "Major changes have likely occurred in the topography of the coastline and...

WASHINGTON - A new deep-sea research vessel will be able to carry people to 99 percent of the ocean floor, diving deeper than the famed Alvin that pioneered the study of seafloor vents, plate tectonics and deep ocean creatures over the past 40 years. The new American submersible will provide the tools to reach "not for the stars but for the depths," Robert Gagosian, president of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said Friday at a briefing at the National Science Foundation (news - web sites). France, Russia and Japan also operate deep sea research vessels and China is building one,...

Description: Geochemists have uncovered evidence that Earth's ancient oceans were much different from today's. New data shows that Earth's life-giving oceans contained less oxygen than today's and could have been nearly devoid of oxygen for a billion years longer than previously thought.Newswise — As two rovers scour Mars for signs of water and the precursors of life, geochemists have uncovered evidence that Earth's ancient oceans were much different from today's. The research, published in this week's issue of the journal Science, cites new data that shows that Earth's life-giving oceans contained less oxygen than today's and could have been nearly...