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Ocean
United Nations members gather Monday in New York to resume efforts to forge a long-awaited and elusive treaty to safeguard the world's marine biodiversity. Nearly two-thirds of the ocean lies outside national boundaries on the high seas where fragmented and unevenly enforced rules seek to minimise human impacts. The goal of the U.N. meetings, running through March 3, is to produce a unified agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of those vast marine ecosystems. The talks, formally called the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, resume negotiations suspended last fall without agreement on a final treaty. The ocean is the life support system of our planet, said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada's Dalhousie University. For the longest time, we did not feel we had a large impact on the high seas. But that notion has changed with expansion of deep sea fishing, mining, plastic pollution, climate change, and other hu
The Centre is likely to come out with a 'Blue Economy' policy, aimed at harnessing ocean resources, in the next couple of months, a senior official said on Friday. The contribution of 'Blue Economy' to the country's GDP currently stands at approximately four per cent and the policy aims to increase it to double digits by 2047, M Ravichandran, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, told PTI here. "...how do we harness ocean resources for the country's economic growth? This is the objective of the proposed policy," he said. The government had earlier rolled out the draft blue economy policy in the public domain, inviting suggestions and inputs from various stakeholders. The senior official was speaking on the sidelines of a seminar on 'Recent trends in space sector: New India' organised by the Academy for Science, Technology and Communication, Hyderabad jointly with National Academy of Sciences, India - Hyderabad Chapter. Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan, who was the chief
A US-French satellite that will map almost all of the world's oceans, lakes and rivers rocketed into orbit Friday. The predawn launch aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California capped a highly successful year for NASA. Nicknamed SWOT short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography the satellite is needed more than ever as climate change worsens droughts, flooding and coastal erosion, according to scientists. "We're going to be able to see things that we could just not see before ... and really understand where water is at any given time, said Benjamin Hamlington at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. About the size of an SUV, the satellite will measure the height of water on more than 90 per cent of Earth's surface, allowing scientists to track the flow and identify potential high-risk areas. It will also survey millions of lakes as well as 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometres) of rivers, from headwater to mouth. The satellite w
Tropical Storm Fiona, the season's sixth named storm, formed in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday evening and forecasters at the US National Hurricane Center issued tropical storm warnings for several islands. Tropical Storm Fiona was located about 650 miles (1,046 kilometers) east of the Leeward Islands, and tropical storm watches were issued for Saba and St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, and Anguilla, forecasters said. Interests in the Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico should monitor the progress of this system," the agency said. At 11 pm EDT, the depression was moving at 16 mph (26 kph) with maximum sustained winds of about 50 mph (85 kph), forecasters said. On the forecast track, the center of the system is forecast to move through the Leeward Islands on Friday or Friday night and be near the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico this weekend," the hurricane center advisory said.