Posts Tagged: ‘oceans’

You may have gone through life without ever hearing about a fish called menhaden. But it is one of those things like algae and plankton that the ocean cannot do without. This article points out the problem: A Fish Oil Story From the article: – Menhaden are currently caught by the billion for fish oil [...]

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Blue whales have changed their songs, and the reason why is a mystery: Blue Whale Song Mystery Baffles Scientists All around the world, blue whales aren’t singing like they used to, and scientists have no idea why. The largest animals on Earth are singing in ever-deeper voices every year. Among the suggested explanations are ocean [...]

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It is hard to imagine sharks ever going extinct. Sharks have been roaming the oceans for millions and millions of years. Unfortunately, human beings are putting so much pressure on them from so many angles that many species are already endangered. What kind of human threats do sharks face? Let us count the ways: First [...]

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This week on Stuff You Should Know Josh and I talked about two pretty interesting topics. On Tuesday, we dived into the oceans (see what I did there) to determine who owns them. As it turns out we all own the ocean, in a way. The United Nations passed the Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1994, which leaves the oceans open for all to enjoy. It also established new rules for how far out a country’s boundaries extend into the ocean. It made me feel better knowing that the highs seas are still open for business, but I worry about what might happen to those rights in the future as land oil runs out and we become more dependent on pulling petrol from the seas.

Yesterday’s show was all about aphrodisiacs. We discussed the strange history of aphrodisiacs, including such oddities as Montezuma downing 40 goblets of

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Scientists are getting ready to try one of the first large-scale tests of ocean fertizlization: ‘Climate fix’ ship sets sail with plan to dump iron Here’s the basic idea: Within weeks, the ship’s crew hope to dump 20 tonnes of ferrous sulphate into the Southern Ocean. Plankton need iron to grow, and the aim of [...]

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If you have been reading news articles like this one: Carbon dioxide presence in atmosphere highest to date You know that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising rapidly. There have been lots of ideas and inventions to remove the CO2. Several of them were listed in this PopSci article: How Earth-Scale Engineering Can Save [...]

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