The deepest spot on Earth is a surprisingly noisy place, scientists from Oregon discovered when they lowered a hydrophone almost seven miles below the ocean surface into the Challenger Deep. Listen to what they found.
Source: Ocean’s deepest spot a noisy place, Oregon scientists find
Climate-related changes are affecting the nation’s valuable living marine resources and the people, businesses and communities that depend on them. From warming oceans and rising seas, to droughts and ocean acidification, these impacts are expected to increase with continued changes in the planet’s climate system.
Marine and coastal fisheries generate approximately $200 billion in sales and support 1.7 million jobs in the U.S. each year. Coastal habitats help defend coastal communities from storms and inundation, and provide the foundation for tourism and recreation-based economies in many coastal communities.
Source: NMFS Climate Science Strategy
From Prozac to caffeine to cholesterol medicine, from ibuprofen to bug spray, researchers found an alphabet soup of drugs and other personal-care products in sewage-treatment wastewater and in the tissue of juvenile chinook in Puget Sound.
Source: Cocaine, Prozac, other drugs found in Puget Sound salmon from tainted wastewater | The Seattle Times
Earlier this month, meteorologist blogger Cliff Mass announced the death of the “blob” in the northeast Pacific Ocean.
The “blob” refers to the large area of very warm waters that helped set up a bulging area of high pressure over Alaska, around which the jet stream flowed, directing impressive cold over the U.S. for the past two winters and blocking storms from hitting the West Coast.
Source: The Pacific ‘blob’ loses. El Niño wins. What comes next? – The Washington Post
The speed of vessels operating near endangered killer whales in Washington is the most influential factor – more so than vessel size – in how much noise from the boats reaches the whales, according to a new study published today in the online journal PLOS ONE.
The new study by scientists from the University of Washington and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries is the first to examine how much noise from individual boats reaches the whales in the inland waters of Washington and British Columbia, where they are a popular attraction for recreational and commercial whale watching vessels.
Source: Vessel speed biggest factor in noise affecting killer whales | UW Today
