Tag Archives: Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research
MPA’s: Trawlers allowed to fish in E.U. marine (un)protected areas – “We were surprised to find this,” said Boris Worm
Marine Protected Areas appear to not be particularly protected. At least not around Europe. A study released Thursday in the journal Science found that trawling efforts were about 36 per cent higher inside European Union Marine Protected Areas than it was outside of them. It also found that abundance of species often caught as bycatch in trawls, like sharks, skates and rays, was lower inside the heavily fished marine protected areas than outside. “We were surprised to find this,” said Boris Worm, a Dalhousie University marine ecologist who was also a senior author of the study. >click to read<19:45
The Squid That Sink to the Ocean’s Floor When They Die
While the lives of squid are mysterious in many ways, one gruesome truth is that after mating comes death. First the male dies. Next the female, after making a little pouch of eggs, begins to starve. “She is unable to feed because the egg mass is in front of the mouth,” explains Henk-Jan Hoving, a deep sea biologist at Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. “She probably gets energy from the breakdown of her own tissue, either from the liver or the mental tissue. This is how she stays alive, basically.” Then, once the female is dead and the eggs have hatched, her body will often float to the ocean’s surface and get eaten by birds. >click here to read< 17:43
