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LONG BEACH - A male fish off the Southern California coast is getting in touch with its feminine side. And that has some scientists worried. Kevin Kelley, a professor of environmental endocrinology at Cal State Long Beach, is part of a team studying a species of male flatfish in Southern California waters that has been found to have high levels of estrogen, which appear to be causing feminization. Kelley and other researchers believe that the treated wastewater draining through underground pipes into waters off Santa Monica, Huntington Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula contains human estrogen hormones expelled in human...

Please read note in first comment. "It may seem strange that so much effort* is being focused on an animal that 25 years ago was known to only a handful of Antarctic scientists and that went by the ungainly name of Patagonian toothfish. But Chilean sea bass today have become the signature species in a battle of global proportions. Put in very blunt terms, the world is running out of fish. According to a study published in July in Science, marine species diversity has declined by 10 to 50 percent in the last half-century, and a 2003 report found that...

Marine Organisms Threatened By Increasingly Acidic Ocean Corals and Plankton May Have Difficulty Making Shells Every day, the average person on the planet burns enough fossil fuel to emit 24 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, out of which about nine pounds is then taken up by the ocean. As this CO2 combines with seawater, it forms an acid in a process known as ocean acidification. A new study by an international team of oceanographers published in the September 29, 2005 issue of Nature reports that ocean acidification could result in corrosive chemical conditions much sooner than previously thought....

Hurricane Katrina was barely gone when the anti-God crowd was already at it. Smugly asking things like, “If there was a designer then what about this destructive hurricane?” As usual they were asking questions not caring if there was an answer and they obviously didn’t bother to look. There has been a lot of talk about how the fundamental constants of the universe and everything they control are fine-tuned to allow life here on Earth. Just a minute change in any one of hundreds of such constants and life would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. If all such constants...

SEATTLE — With a record number of dead seabirds washing up on West Coast beaches from Central California to British Columbia, marine biologists are raising the alarm about rising ocean temperatures and dwindling plankton populations. "Something big is going on out there," said Julia Parrish, an associate professor in the School of Aquatic Fisheries and Sciences at the University of Washington. "I'm left with no obvious smoking gun, but birds are a good signal because they feed high up on the food chain." Coastal ocean temperatures are 2 to 5 degrees above normal, which may be related to a lack...

Whether or not it contributes to global warming, carbon dioxide is turning the oceans acidic, Britain's leading scientific organization warned yesterday. In a report by a panel of scientists, the organization, the Royal Society, said the growing acidity would be very likely to harm coral reefs and other marine life by the end of the century. "I think there are very serious issues to be addressed," the panel's chairman, Dr. John Raven of the University of Dundee in Scotland, said in an interview. "It will affect all organisms that have skeletons, shells, hard bits that are made of calcium carbonate."...

Washington, Jun 13 (Prensa Latina) A California University study suggests that oceans will solve global warming in the long term, Science magazine published in its latest issue. Experts say the carbon dioxide (CO2) that comes from fossil fuels will be absorbed by oceans and that will eradicate the problem of global warming. However, the problem with that long process is that it will take a thousand centuries to be completed, as happened with the last warming this planet went through 55 million years ago. The scientific hypothesis is based on the analysis of marine sediments deposited during the global warming...

"Sovereignty. The issue is huge. The mere mention of Kofi Annan in the U.N. caused the crowd to go into a veritable fit. The coalition wants America strong and wants the American flag flying overseas, not the pale blue of the U.N." So George W. Bush confided to friend Doug Wead before he declared his candidacy. And, twice, President Bush has acted to defend U.S. sovereignty gainst the encroachments of global government. He rejected both the International Criminal Court, which would have ceded power to prosecute U.S. soldiers, and a Kyoto Treaty that would have subjected our economy to the...

LOS ANGELES – Actor Ted Danson, who served drinks on the TV show "Cheers," used a bottle of bubbly to christen a ship that will search the high seas for signs of pollution and threatened marine life. Danson on Friday christened the 71-foot catamaran Ranger at Marina del Rey. He is a board member of the conservation group Oceana, which plans to sail the vessel on a five-month, 11,000-nautical mile voyage to areas of Central America, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe that are threatened by pollution and overfishing. "Ranger will be Oceana's eyes and ears in the oceans," Danson said....

Direct Link Discovered Between Agricultural Runoff And Algal Blooms In SeaScientists have found the first direct evidence linking large-scale coastal farming to massive blooms of marine algae that are potentially harmful to ocean life and fisheries. Researchers from Stanford University's School of Earth Sciences made the discovery by analyzing satellite images of Mexico's Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California - a narrow, 700-mile-long stretch of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Mexican mainland from the Baja California Peninsula. Immortalized in the 1941 book Sea of Cortez, by writer John Steinbeck and marine biologist Edward Ricketts, the...

Food Shortages Threaten Antarctic WildlifeAntarctic whales, seals and penguins could be threatened by food shortages in the Southern Ocean. Numbers of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), a shrimp-like crustacean at the heart of the food chain, are declining. The most likely explanation is a dramatic decline in sea-ice. The results are published this week in the journal Nature. Sea-ice is a vital feeding ground for the huge number of krill in the Southern Ocean. The new research shows that krill numbers have dropped by about 80% since the 1970's. Less sea-ice during the winter is likely to be the cause and...

No-take reserves are not a cure-all -- they do not address problems such as pollution and rising temperatures -- but several recent studies suggest they can help restore fish populations and damaged ecosystems. In 1994, after fisheries collapsed in the Gulf of Maine's Georges Bank, for example, federal authorities prohibited groundfish fishing and dragging for scallops in three areas spanning 6,600 square miles. Within five years, haddock and witch flounder stocks rebounded, while scallops grew bigger and became nine to 14 times more dense than in fished areas.

During its years in the Navy, the surveillance ship Stalwart patrolled the Atlantic, searching the silent waters for signs of Russian submarines. Its end came not from enemy fire, but old age and budget cuts, according to Navy documents. In all, it was a decent but unremarkable military career. But in a berth beneath the Throgs Neck Bridge, the empty, rust-scabbed ship has found its second life as a floating classroom and cargo-security laboratory. It is now being converted into the new headquarters of the New York State Strategic Center for Port and Maritime Security. Besides serving as office space...

U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy To Submit Final Report To Congress Sept. 20 3:00 p.m. Monday, Sept. 20, Room 192 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg. Event Open to Media and Public Washington, D.C. -- The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy will present its Final Report, An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century, to Members of Congress at 3:00 p.m. on Monday, September 20, 2004, in Room 192 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The event is open to the media and the public. Along with Commission Chairman Admiral James D. Watkins, USN (Ret.), the following Members of Congress will attend and...

Corals are adapting to the world's warming climate with a kind of living heat shield. Corals typically house symbiotic algae, which convert sunlight into food and paint reefs vivid colors. But in recent years, warming waters have triggered many corals to eject those algae, bleaching reefs white and often killing the coral in the process. Now some corals have found a way to survive current global warming trends. Andrew Baker of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York sampled corals before, during, and after the 1997-98 El Niño brought warm waters to the Pacific Ocean. He reports in the journal...

In the past year, two landmark reports have provided stark evidence that the oceans are in a serious biological decline. Both reports have also provided plausible road maps for recovery. As a rule, reports like these, however exhaustive and worthy, cause a momentary stir and then sink from view. It is thus heartening to find that several bills inspired by these reports have recently been introduced in Congress. There is not enough time left for Congress to pass them this year, but their very existence should provide momentum heading into next year. And, who knows, they may even persuade a...

Opening section: "Where's Teddy Roosevelt when we need him? Nearly a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt showed his passion for the outdoors and his vision for the future by preserving millions of acres of wild land as national forests and parks for the benefit of all Americans. He made science the basis of land management and turned back the tide of rapacious short-term exploitation. Now such a tide besets our oceans. Populations of some important species, such as tuna, swordfish and shark, have been reduced by 90 percent [since 1950]. Agricultural chemicals flowing downstream have created a dead zone the...

Response to U.S. Commission report on the state of the oceans J. Geubtner 24 May 2004 On April 20, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (appointed by President Bush in 2001) released their report on the state of the world’s oceans. The report came 35 years after the last global ocean study by the Stratton Commission in 1969. The current Commission calls for legislative and regulatory changes to improve marine management and promote long-term sustainable uses of the oceans. AFS testified on fisheries issues for the Commission when it began its work in 2001. Prior to the release, AFS had...

WASHINGTON — Like a desert bursting into flower after a rare rainstorm, seemingly barren stretches of the ocean bloom with plankton after hurricanes pass by. The bursts of life were measured by satellite studies following 13 hurricanes from 1998 to 2001. "I was pleasantly surprised," said Steven Babin of Johns Hopkins University, who led the research. Babin said sudden blooms of phytoplankton — tiny plants that float in the ocean — have been reported in areas of ocean upwelling where rising water brings nutrients to the surface. He said similar effects from hurricanes had not been widely studied. "Some parts...

Did comets flood Earth’s oceans? Did comets flood Earth's oceans? 16 June 2004 Did the Earth form with water locked into its rocks, which then gradually leaked out over millions of years? Or did the occasional impacting comet provide the Earth’s oceans? The Ptolemy experiment on Rosetta may just find out… The Earth needed a supply of water for its oceans, and the comets are large celestial icebergs - frozen reservoirs of water orbiting the Sun. Did the impact of a number of comets, thousands of millions of years ago, provide the Earth with its supply of water? Finding hard...