Using blushing coral star and genomic DNA analyses, researchers have uncovered vital links between coral populations at varying depths. They identified four distinct genetic lineages, finding strong connectivity between shallow and mesophotic populations. Shallow-specific lineages showed reduced genetic diversity and higher inbreeding compared to depth-generalist lineages. Importantly, mesophotic reefs emerged as crucial reproductive sources, particularly in the Lower and Upper Keys. Corals from these deeper zones hold significant potential to replenish and restore the declining shallow reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/23/2024 - 10:00
There’s a war brewing between those who want to plan for future challenges and those who want to turn back the tide
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The leadership of Australian farming is a club that has strict rules. Like the classic movie Fight Club, the first rule about farm club is you don’t talk about farm club.
But that doesn’t always work out well for farmers. There are clever people in the leadership club who are loath to speak out.
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09/23/2024 - 09:53
State had already banned thin plastic shopping bags, but new measure bans all plastic bags starting in 2026
“Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed on Sunday by the governor, Gavin Newsom, that bans all plastic shopping bags.
California had already banned thin plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and other stores, but shoppers could purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.
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09/23/2024 - 09:48
First-of-its-kind suit comes as climate experts claim that fossil fuel producers are deceiving public about plastics
California has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil for allegedly deceiving the public about the plastic pollution crisis, the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, announced on Monday.
“For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,” Bonta said in a statement.
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09/23/2024 - 08:27
Search for rat that may not exist is part of effort to keep invasive species off remote but ecologically diverse islands
A purported sighting of a rat wouldn’t get much attention in many places around the world.
But it caused a stir earlier this year on Alaska’s Saint Paul Island.
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09/23/2024 - 08:22
Move comes after weeks of uncertainty over reports of financial problems as green vehicle sector struggles
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The Swedish batterymaker Northvolt is to cut 1,600 jobs, in response to “headwinds” blowing through the electric car industry.
The battery company announced redundancies across three of its sites on Monday, including 1,000 in Skellefteå, in northern Sweden, where it is suspending the expansion of Northvolt Ett, Europe’s first homegrown battery gigafactory.
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09/23/2024 - 07:05
Firms underreported true scale of sewage pollution for 10 years, which allowed them to set higher bills, tribunal told
Six water companies overcharged customers between £800m and £1.5bn by “significantly or systematically” underreporting the true scale of their sewage pollution of rivers and waterways, a tribunal has heard.
In the first environmental competition class action against water companies in England, lawyers argued that the privatised firms had abused their monopoly position to mislead regulators over the amount of sewage they were discharging from their assets over the past 10 years.
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09/23/2024 - 05:26
Requiring key sectors to switch to clean energy by specific times could trigger benevolent cascades, report claims
In the terminology of the climate and ecological crises the phrase “tipping point” is loaded with dreadful implications.
It evokes a climate breakdown supercharged by the mass escape of methane locked in Siberian permafrost, or the great currents of the oceans smothered by freshwater melting from the Greenland ice sheet, or the Amazon turning from great rainforest to parched savannah after the felling of one too many trees.
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09/23/2024 - 05:00
The Hollywood actor and activist backs Harris for president as she warns of climate emergency and talks Taylor Swift
Young people’s understandable unhappiness with the Biden administration’s record on oil and gas drilling and the war in Gaza should not deter them from voting to block Donald Trump from again becoming president of the United States, the Hollywood actor and activist Jane Fonda has warned.
“I understand why young people are really angry, and really hurting,” Fonda said. “What I want to say to them is: ‘Do not sit this election out, no matter how angry you are. Do not vote for a third party, no matter how angry you are. Because that will elect somebody who will deny you any voice in the future of the United States … If you really care about Gaza, vote to have a voice, so you can do something about it. And then, be ready to turn out into the streets, in the millions, and fight for it.’”
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09/23/2024 - 03:16
Coalition’s lack of costings and absence of detail has been seized upon by critics of Australia’s potential landmark energy shift
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Peter Dutton continues to refuse to release costings for the Coalition’s plan to build seven nuclear plants, saying he will announce details “in due course” before the next election.
There was “zero chance of the Albanese government reaching net zero by 2050, using renewables alone” and so nuclear energy had to be in the grid, Dutton said in a speech at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia in Sydney.
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