Group items tagged

'Seahorses endangered due to rising demand, fishing nets'.

Assemblée Nationale : Eric RAOULT demande une "battue contre les requins mangeurs d'hommes" à la Réunion.

Pirates demand ransom for oil tanker captured off coast of Somalia.

Sand is everywhere and we hardly notice it. Yet it is also in great demand worldwide - and not just in the construction industry. It also plays an important role in the manufacturing of glass and semiconductors and in water treatment. Due to this intensive use in recent years, sand has become a scarce resource that is traded internationally. The effect of the depletion of this resource on coastal regions and the people that live there is the topic of a new research project at the Max PLANCK Institute for Social Anthropology (MPI). Titled "Sand - The Future of Coastal Cities in the Indian Ocean", the project is funded by a 1.3 million euro grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Ports and neighbouring cities function as connectors between land and water and have long accommodated a substantial flow of goods and services. Port cities in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region and the Global South (GS) are rapidly and inevitably expanding as the demand for global trade increases. However, this expansion has numerous impacts on the surrounding marine ecosystem and the socio-economic livelihoods of local communities. We propose a framework to evaluate the sustainability of port cities in the WIO region and more broadly for cities in the GS. Through an exploratory approach, a systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken to identify existing themes on port city and marine ecosystem sustainability indicator frameworks. The results revealed a strong bias towards sustainability publications designed for port cities in Global North. The approach developed from this study focuses on the socio-economic and environmental attributes relevant to ports in the WIO region and for GS countries. This draws from the Drivers, Pressures, States, Impacts and Responses (DPSIR) framework and includes 78 indicators. The indicators are designed to identify and report on the complex land and sea interdependencies of port cities. To test the validity of these indicators their interdependencies were examined through a Causal Network (CN) structure which identified 12 priority DPSIR CN. These were also mapped to the UNSDGs enabling the wider applicability and transferability of the framework. The resulting framework enables port cities in emerging economies to establish robust sustainable reporting systems and provides a framework that offers a unique lens for evaluating interactions embedded in the land and sea continuum.

A planned artificial reef (AR) deployment program as part of a fisheries enhancement might be a useful tool for managers to supplement traditional ways to utilize available space and augment local productivity. Several AR deployment initiatives have been carried out globally, but they are rarely subjected to a rigorous site selection process. We created a site selection procedure in this study that includes systematic stages including exclusion mapping, underwater visual transect, benthic composition, seawater quality, and comparative visual mapping. This research focused on restoring the fishing grounds for artisanal fishermen by deploying AR along the southeast coast of India. The results of each stage in the procedure enabled us to choose suitable locations at a target depth with low wave action, no slope, and a good substrate capable of supporting an AR. Analysis of variance (ANOVA-one way) showed significant (p < 0.05) spatial variation for depth, slope, seawater current, salinity, chlorophyll-a, benthic density, and diversity. The geographical information system (GIS) based model output showed space allocation for AR deployment. The GIS methodology for site selection was developed to be easily adaptable to the demands of diverse artificial reef programs. The integrated strategy has proven to be a successful regulatory intervention for AR deployment practices in order to facilitate coastal restoration and management.

The Swarnamukhi river estuary (SRE), and the surrounding sea in Nellore, southeast coast of India, is one of the least studied marine environments, notably for physicochemical characteristics. Seawater samples were collected from five stations every month from 2014 to 2017 to assess physicochemical characteristics. The open sea (OS) station was significantly different from the inner stations, according to non-metric multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. The variability was shown by strong factor loadings of atmospheric temperature (0.87), water temperature (0.84), biochemical oxygen demand (0.77), ammonia (0.85), and total nitrogen (0.78). Furthermore, one-way ANOVA and box-whisker plots facilitated simplifying and corroborating multivariate results that showed high concentration in the inner stations. Based on the N/P and Si/N ratios, nitrate and silicate were the key limiting factors in this study. The findings are critical for establishing reference conditions for comparison studies with other comparable ecosystems in the tropical region for better environmental conservation and management.

Deep-sea hydrothermal vent fields are among the most pristine and remarkable ecosystems on Earth. They are fueled by microbial chemosynthesis, harbor unique life and can be sources of precipitated mineral deposits. As the global demand for mineral resources rises, vent fields have been investigated for polymetallic sulfides (PMS) and biological resources. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has issued 7 contracts for PMS exploration, including 4 licenses for vent fields in the Indian Ocean. Here, we provide a summary of the available ecological knowledge of Indian vent communities and we assess their vulnerability, sensitivity, ecological and biological significance. We combine and apply scientific criteria for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) by FAO, Particular Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSAs) by IMO, and Ecologically or Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) by CBD. Our scientific assessment shows that all active vent fields in the Indian Ocean appear to meet all scientific criteria for protection, and both the high degree of uniqueness and fragility of these ecosystems stand out.

Southeast Asia is home to some of the planet's most carbon-dense and biodiverse mangrove ecosystems. There is still much uncertainty with regards to the timing and magnitude of changes in mangrove cover over the past 50 years. While there are several regional to global maps of mangrove extent in Southeast Asia over the past two decades, data prior to the mid-1990s is limited due to the scarcity of Earth Observation (EO) data of sufficient quality and the historical limitations to publicly available EO. Due to this literature gap and research demand in Southeast Asia, we conducted a classification of mangrove extent using Landsat 1-2 MSS Tier 2 data from 1972 to 1977 for three Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia. Mangrove extent land cover maps were generated using a Random Forest machine learning algorithm that effectively mapped a total of 15,420.51 km2. Accuracy assessments indicated that the classification for the mangrove and non-mangrove class had a producer's accuracy of 80% and 98% user's accuracy of 90% and 96%, and an overall accuracy of 95%. We found a decline of 6,830 km2 between the 1970s and 2020, showing that 44% of the mangrove area in these countries has been lost in the past 48 years. Most of this loss occurred between the 1970s and 1996; rates of deforestation declined dramatically after 1996. This study also elaborated on the nature of mangrove change within the context of the social and political ecology of each case study country. We urge the remote sensing community to empathetically consider the local need of those who depend on mangrove resources when discussing mangrove loss drivers.

Shark finning on rise in Kerala's Kochi despite ban: Fins cut, sharks tossed back into sea.

Protecting the Mantas of Mozambique.