Earth ChangesS


Binoculars

New garbage patch discovered in Indian Ocean

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© NOAAMap of the five ocean gyres
Scientists recently announced the existence of a garbage patch in the Indian Ocean - the third major collection of plastic garbage discovered in the world's oceans. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located in the North Pacific Ocean gyre, is well known. And more recently scientists confirmed the existence of a second garbage patch in the North Atlantic gyre.

Marcus Eriksen, cofounder of 5 Gyres Institute, reports that all of the 12 water samples collected in the 3,000 miles between Perth, Australia, and Port Louis, Mauritius (an island due East of Madagascar), contain plastic.

"We did find another large concentration of plastic debris," says the marine scientist who co-founded 5 Gyres Institute with his wife, Anna Cummins, to research plastic pollution in the world's oceans. The team works in collaboration with Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Pangaea Explorations.

Bizarro Earth

Scientists Discover and Image Explosive Deep-Ocean Volcano

underwater volcano
© NOAA and NSFROV Jason gets a close view of magma explosions and lava flows on West Mata volcano (May 2009).
Scientists funded by NOAA and the National Science Foundation recorded the deepest erupting volcano yet discovered, describing high-definition video of the undersea eruption as "spectacular." Eruption of the West Mata volcano, discovered in May, occurred nearly 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, in an area bounded by Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.

Imagery includes large molten lava bubbles approximately three feet across bursting into cold seawater, glowing red vents explosively ejecting lava into the sea, and the first-observed advance of lava flows across the deep-ocean seafloor. Sounds of the explosive eruption were recorded by a hydrophone and later matched to the video footage.

"We found a type of lava never before seen erupting from an active volcano, and for the first time observed molten lava flowing across the deep-ocean seafloor," said the mission's Chief Scientist Joseph Resing, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Washington who collaborates with NOAA through the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean. "Though NOAA and partners discovered a much shallower eruption in 2004 in the Mariana Arc, the deeper we get, the closer the eruption is to those that formed most of the oceanic crust."

Bizarro Earth

US: Earthquake Magnitude 5.3 - Off Coast of Oregon

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© USGS
Date-Time:
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 16:12:06 UTC

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 09:12:06 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
43.770°N, 125.802°W

Depth:
10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Region:
OFF THE COAST OF OREGON

Distances:
135 km (85 miles) WNW of Coos Bay, Oregon

170 km (105 miles) SW of Newport, Oregon

210 km (130 miles) WNW of Roseburg, Oregon

255 km (160 miles) WSW of SALEM, Oregon

Bug

Britain "Facing Tarantula Invasion," RSPCA Warns

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© CascadeRebecca Hall holds the Chilean rose tarantula at Smithills Open Farm
Britain could be facing a tarantula invasion after a number of the spiders were discovered in gardens in some parts of the country, wildlife experts have warned.

The RSPCA has issued an alert urging people to be on their guard amid fears a large batch of the spider has escaped in the north of the country.

The alert came after two separate incidents involving 10cm-wide Chilean Rose tarantulas in Bolton, Greater Manchester.

The rare arachnids, capable of blinding people by spitting hairs in their eyes, were both found in back gardens within two miles of each other.

Both spiders are the same age, breed and gender.

Bizarro Earth

New Zealand: Snapper Wash Up in Mystery Incident

Mystery Incident
© Stuff.co.nzFish Supper: A seagull feasts on one of the hundreds of snapper washed up on Oneroa Beach.

The Ministry of Fisheries is asking for help from Waiheke residents after hundreds of fish were washed up on one of the island's beaches.

Walkers on Oneroa Beach last Thursday were stunned to discover dead snapper "every couple of steps".

While seagulls enjoyed a five-star feast, an honorary fisheries officer visited the beach to count and check the size of the specimens.

Ministry field operations manager Greg Keys says the incident is under investigation but there are many possible causes.

To rule out one possibility - whether the fish had been poisoned by algae - some of them will be tested for poison.

But Mr Keys says the fish could have escaped from a split net from a commercial fishing boat. Mr Keys says he has heard reports of similar occurrences on the Coromandel.

"It can happen accidentally from split nets or when there are too many fish and they spill over the side of the net, or the fishing boat might dump them."

Meanwhile, Department of Conservation marine ranger Guy Toogood says he understands the fish were too small to have come from a commercial take.

Bizarro Earth

US: Oil spill could reach Lake Michigan by Sunday

Kalamazoo River
© John Grap/Battle Creek EnquirerOil from the spill is clearly visible in the Kalamazoo River between the Ceresco Dam and Historic County Bridge Park today in Battle Creek.

Battle Creek area residents are being warned to stay away from the Kalamazoo River because of a major oil spill.

An estimated 840,000 gallons of oil leaked into a creek Monday that feeds into the river.

Area media were reporting that odor from the spill hung heavy over Battle Creek this morning.

"It is unknown at this time how far the spill has traveled and exactly what areas have been affected. It is assumed due to the current level of the Kalamazoo River and the speed of the current that the entire Emmett Township area and beyond has been affected," according to an advisory issued today by the Emmett Township Public Safety Department.

Bizarro Earth

US: Michigan Oil Spill Among Largest In Midwest History: Kalamazoo Spill SOAKS Wildlife (VIDEO)

Michigan oil spill

As the Gulf Coast deals with the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, the Midwest is now facing an oil spill of its own.

A state of emergency has been declared in southwest Michigan's Kalamazoo County as more than 800,000 gallons of oil released into a creek began making its way downstream in the Kalamazoo River, the Kalamazoo Gazette reports.

The trouble began Monday at 9:45 a.m., when an oil pipeline owned by Enbridge Liquids Pipelines sprung a leak in Marshall Township. Enbridge Energy is a subsidiary of Calgary, Canada based Enbridge Inc., the Detroit Free Press reports. According to the company, it is the largest transporter of oil from western Canada.

Bizarro Earth

Haiti's homeless on the move again as hurricanes loom

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© Unknown
Julie, her face a grimace of anguish, waits with her five children for a ride to their next shelter, to where more than 1,000 homeless Haitians have been ordered to go as hurricane season ramps up.

They are packed and anxious and bound for Corail, a camp 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the capital on oven-hot scrubland that the United Nations has deemed safer than areas around Port-au-Prince, where hundreds of thousands of destitute refugees live in squalor six months after an earthquake ravaged the city.

The 58-year-old mother and her family have lived in wretched conditions in an impromptu shantytown on the side of a road since shortly after the earthquake rocked western Haiti, killing more than 250,000 people and injuring 300,000, leaving 1.5 million homeless and unleashing a trail of destruction.

Like thousands of others, Julie clings to the hope of soon finding more permanent housing. Today she has little idea of what awaits her at the end of her ride out of town.

Attention

Oil spewing from well near Louisiana marsh

Louisiana marsh area
© UnknownOil and natural gas from the ruptured well is seen Tuesday near a Louisiana marsh area.
20-foot-high plume seen; tug boat hit well before dawn, officials say

Adding insult to the Gulf's injury, a wellhead hit by a tug boat is now spewing oil near a Louisiana marsh area, officials said Tuesday.

The oil is shooting up 20 feet into the air, the office of Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said.

"We cannot catch a break," Deano Bonano, Jefferson Parish emergency management director, said in a note to parish officials.

The well is in inland waterways on the border of Plaquemines and Jefferson parishes, about 65 miles south of New Orleans; it's marsh area not accessible by road.

Butterfly

How Monarchs Fly Away Home

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© UnknownBiologists had suspected that monarchs fly back from Mexico west-to-east over the Appalachians but no evidence existed to support the theory.
Monarch butterflies - renowned for their lengthy annual migration to and from Mexico - complete an even more spectacular journey home than previously thought.

New research from the University of Guelph reveals that some North American monarchs born in the Midwest and Great Lakes fly directly east over the Appalachians and settle along the eastern seaboard. Previously, scientists believed that the majority of monarchs migrated north directly from the Gulf coast.

The study appears in the recent issue of the scientific journal Biology Letters.

"It's a groundbreaking finding," said Ryan Norris, a Guelph professor in the Department of Integrative Biology who worked on the study with his graduate student Nathan Miller and two researchers from Environment Canada.