tagged w/ The Great Barrier Reef
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A coal ship is in danger of leaking nearly 1000 tons of fuel oil onto the coral reefs of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The Chinese ship struck the Douglas Shoal at full speed on Saturday and though an initial oil spill has been cleaned up, the danger of further contamination looms.
Environmentalists have warned that with the high number of ships taking this route, the delicate reef's waters have turned into a "coal highway".
Maritime authorities downplayed the chances of the Shen Neng 1 breaking up and spilling its load of fuel oil and coal onto the reef, although salvage experts remained concerned about a possible environmental catastrophe if the weather worsened.A coal ship is in danger of leaking nearly 1000 tons of fuel oil onto the coral reefs... more
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Destinations around the world are feeling the effects of climate change and the impact of tourism. These are some sites and beautiful places that are disappearing before our eyes. You might want to go see them if possible before they are gone.Destinations around the world are feeling the effects of climate change and the impact... more
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A dream job looking after a tropical island in Australia has attracted over 11,000 applicants -- including Osama bin Laden who failed to make the shortlist.
A spokeswoman for Tourism Queensland said the group had received over 11,000 video applications since advertising the A$150,000 ($96,000) "best job in the world" as caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef.
One of the applications was a 30-second prank video showing the world's most wanted man, with nonsensical sounds dubbed over his real voice.
Using subtitles, bin Laden argues his case for the six-month contract, describing himself as "outgoing," "familiar with sandy areas" and experienced with "large scale event coordination."
He lists his interests as arts, crafts and renovating. Videos showing bin Laden speaking are widely available on the Internet.
A spokeswoman for Tourism Queensland said a person using bin Laden's identity had lodged an official application with required video that has made its way onto video sharing website YouTube, but the application has been rejected.
"While Tourism Queensland encourages people to be creative in their applications, they have to meet the selection criteria, including appropriate content, if they want to be considered for the job," said the spokeswoman.
"The 'Osama bin Laden' application was submitted via the www.islandreefjob.com website but it was rejected because the content was not deemed to be appropriate."
The $1.7 million "best job in the World" marketing campaign has attracted huge international interest, with applicants from 162 countries responding to the opening which closes on February 22.
Queensland's Tourism Minister Desley Boyle acknowledges the campaign was aimed to lure visitors to the islands of the Great Barrier Reef but insists the job offer is also genuine.
The successful applicant will have the chance to live rent free on Hamilton Island for six months in an oceanfront villa, spend their time exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef.A dream job looking after a tropical island in Australia has attracted over 11,000... more
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islek
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added this
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2 years ago
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With the death of the Great Barrier Reef predicted to occur in the next 40 years, the Australian government has announced it will begin regulating chemical run-off from farming and agricultural activities into the reef for the first time. Sure to cause some change problems for farmers, but unbelievable they have been unregulated for so long! The chain reaction of this reef's death on Australian marine life is sure to be massive, even with the new regulations.With the death of the Great Barrier Reef predicted to occur in the next 40 years, the... more
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Global warming has been blamed for dramatic declines in seabird populations on the Great Barrier Reef and surrounding waters.
Tens of thousands of seabirds are failing to breed because warmer water from more frequent and intense El Nino events means there is insufficient food to raise their young, according to research compiled by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
Warm water near the surface forces fish, plankton and other prey into deeper water, where it cannot be reached by seabirds.
The research forms the basis of a report commissioned by the marine park authority and the Queensland Environment Protection Agency to address the impact of climate change on seabirds, and obtained by The Australian under freedom of information laws. "Recent analyses at key sites have revealed significant declines in populations of some of the most common seabird species, which raises concerns regarding the threatening processes acting on these populations," says the report, prepared by C&R Consulting.
The report, Seabirds and Shorebirds in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area in a Changing Climate, says the reef is home to between 1.3 and 1.7million seabirds and half the world's population of several species.
The results of research by Bradley Congdon and five other seabird experts working for the marine park authority have been published in another report, Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef: A Vulnerability Assessment.
The authors concluded that recent climate fluctuations were having significant detrimental impacts on seabird populations.
The two reports paint a grim picture of the predicament for seabirds. In the Coral Sea, populations of great and least frigatebirds declined by 6-7 per cent annually between 1992 and 2004.
Despite a return to more favourable conditions since the severe El Nino event of 1997-98, populations have not recovered.
On Raine Island, in the northern barrier reef, populations of at least 10 of the 14 breeding seabird species have been falling. Numbers of common noddies have fallen by 96 per cent, sooty terns by 84 per cent, bridled terns by 69 per cent, and red-footed boobies by 68 per cent.
The park authority's vulnerability assessment report says there is no evidence of significant human interference or habitat loss on Raine Island, indicating "depletion of marine food stocks linked to changing climate" as the cause.
On the Swain Reefs, in the southern reef, the number of brown booby nests has dropped from 350 in 1975 to less than 30 since 2000.
"The declining trend was consistent throughout the region and was not simply a consequence of inter-seasonal migration between islands," the report says.
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Some may think the affects of global warming/climate change are not important because they are not playing out in their backyards... yet. However, the signs are here and the affects are being felt from one end of the foodchain to the other.Though to some minute, they nevertheless are effecting and will effect us all.Global warming has been blamed for dramatic declines in seabird populations on the... more
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THE world's reefs, including Australia's Great Barrier Reef, will be dead within 30 years unless human activity changes quickly, a leading researcher says.
Addressing the 11th international River symposium in Brisbane, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said it was crunch time for the world's reefs.
Let's say we delay another 10 years on having stern actions on emissions at a global level, we will not have coral reefs in about 30 to 50 years, he said.
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, from the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland, said rising CO2 levels and melting ice caps meant the ocean was becoming uninhabitable for reefs.
This worldwide change in climatic conditions was in addition to land-based pollution spilling from Queensland's coastal river systems, a symposium session into the impacts of river systems on the reef was told.
We're rapidly rising to (CO2) levels which will be unsustainable for reefs in the very near future, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.
If you ask the question, `Will we have coral reefs in 30 years' time?', I would say at the current rate of change and what we're doing to them, we won't. But it's all up to us right now.
We're at the fork in the road. If we take one road - the one we're on right now - we won't have coral reefs.
If we make some very, very, very aggressive actions, if we reform how we do things, both at the global and local level, we'll have a really good chance of bringing coral reefs through in some shape or form, which will still provide the basis for the 100 million people that they support.
He said ice core samples showed CO2 levels were the highest for at least a million years, possibly 20 million years.
That changes the circumstances under which corals form their skeletons, so they become less vibrant, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.
Then if you keep hitting them with things like bleaching events, they just don't bounce back as much.
So we're changing essentially the rules under which biology is trying to operate, and that's the problem.
He also warned that an increasing incidence of coral bleaching was a growing threat.
If we have them (bleaching events) now every four to five years, we're getting to a point where reefs no longer have time to recover.
The impact on Queensland's $6 billion-a-year earnings from reef-based tourism would be enormous, he said.
So we might have an industry that's half the size, but it certainly won't have the pull that it does today, he said.
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This is not natural.THE world's reefs, including Australia's Great Barrier Reef, will be dead... more
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