Ocean Conservation & Tidalpunk

A study led by Associate Professor Kelton McMahon at University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography has found that food webs on tropical reefs are more fragile than we once thought. Instead of being part of a highly connected system where species can easily switch food sources, many reef creatures in these incredibly biodiverse ecosystems rely on surprisingly narrow, specialized energy pathways that link specific species to distinct sources of primary production.

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The talks, in Jamaica, are before the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the only organization that can legally approve mining in ocean areas beyond countries’ national jurisdictions, according to an international treaty called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Other studies have highlighted non-plastic textiles lasting for two months or more in rivers and oceans, where they break up into hundreds of thousands of microfibers.

These microfibers are so prevalent in waterways that they have contaminated animals across the food chain, from filter-feeding mussels and oysters to top predators such as sharks and the seafood we eat.

They are also found in remote locations as far away as the Arctic seafloor and deep sea, thousands of miles from civilization. These discoveries highlight that non-plastics last longer than we think.

We do not yet know how much of a threat these materials are to the environment. Only the manufacturers know exactly what's in the textiles we use.

Something remarkable is happening beneath the waves off the coast of Rhode Island. What began as an offshore energy project has quietly turned into a massive, unexpected win for marine life. According to Chris Buxton, writing for Daily Kos, the five wind turbines near Block Island have triggered a boom in fish populations, transforming turbine foundations into thriving artificial reefs.

Fishermen were skeptical at first. But after the turbines went up in 2016, local Captain Hank Hewitt noticed black sea bass returning in record numbers. Within two years, their population had increased tenfold near the turbine sites. Other species like porgies and cod followed, drawn to the mussel-covered pylons and protected underwater spaces.

Science backs the fishermen’s stories. A seven-year study monitoring over 600,000 fish from 61 species found no harm to marine life—only growth. Similar results have been seen in Europe, where Danish and Belgian wind farms now host booming underwater communities.

A new study finds there are 27 million metric tons of invisible plastic particles in the North Atlantic alone.

In the oceans, the most widespread type of plastic pollution may be the kind you can’t see.

A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature estimates that the North Atlantic Ocean alone contains 27 million metric tons of nanoplastic — plastic particles 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. That figure is 10 times higher than previous estimates of plastic pollution of all sizes across all the world’s oceans, according to the study’s authors.

Microplastics range in width between 0.001 millimeters and 5 millimeters, making them up to 5 million times bigger than nanoplastics.

Submerged in about 40 meters (44 yards) of water off Scotland’s coast, a turbine has been spinning for more than six years to harness the power of ocean tides for electricity — a durability mark that demonstrates the technology’s commercial viability.

Keeping a large, or grid-scale, turbine in place in the harsh sea environment that long is a record that helps pave the way for bigger tidal energy farms and makes it far more appealing to investors, according to the trade association Ocean Energy Europe. Tidal energy projects would be prohibitively expensive if the turbines had to be taken out of the water for maintenance every couple of years.

Tidal energy technologies are still in the early days of their commercial development, but their potential for generating clean energy is big. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, marine energy, a term researchers use to refer to power generated from tides, currents, waves or temperature changes, is the world’s largest untapped renewable energy resource.

• In September 2024, Churna Island and the sea surrounding it became Pakistan’s second designated marine protected area, home to a variety of corals and serving as a nursery for fish.
• It followed the 2017 designation of the country’s very first MPA around Astola Island, a haven for coral, birds and sea turtles to the east.
• While Pakistan’s first two MPAs are small and have yet to be fully implemented, they represent baby steps in the country’s nascent effort to protect its marine environment.
• The country still has a long way to go to protect 30% of its ocean by 2030, as mandated by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24232325

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The study

‘Solar-powered’ sea slugs have specialized depots in their cells that store photosynthetic equipment looted from algae, a study reports. These depots provide just the right chemical environment to keep the stolen apparatus, called chloroplasts, alive and working to turn sunlight into nutrients.

“It was the wildest thing that we had seen,” says study co-author Nicholas Bellono, a biologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The authors also found that, in lean times, the slugs can raid these compartments to consume chloroplasts.

The compartment “is basically like a moving refrigerator of chloroplasts where, after a period of starvation, the slugs can switch from storage to consumption to survive”, Bellono says.

The findings were published in Cell.

• Scientists have known for decades that soaring atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are causing changes in ocean chemistry, threatening marine life and ecosystems.
• In June 2025, a study found that ocean acidification has passed a safe threshold across large swathes of the world’s marine environment, not only near the sea surface, but also up to 200 meters (656 feet) deep. The effect is especially severe in polar regions.

The study

We have recently revised the temperature threshold. Up to 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the tipping point for coral reefs would occur when warming is between 1.5C and 2C above preindustrial levels. But in 2023, we revised that to between 1C and 1.5C. The world is already close to that upper limit and it will certainly come within the next 10 or 20 years as a result of committed climate change – which comes from cumulative emissions that have already gone into the atmosphere. So have we already gone past the tipping point for coral reefs in global terms? Perhaps.

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