Ocean Conservation & Tidalpunk

last year, a dive by Oceangate’s Titan sub went tragically wrong. The vessel suffered a catastrophic failure as it neared the sea floor, killing all five people onboard.

On board were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

Rush said he had “grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation” and dismissed warnings that he would kill someone as “baseless”.

Most operators opt to have their deep-sea subs certified - but it is not mandatory.

Rush described his sub as “experimental” and, in a blog post in 2019, he argued that certification “slowed down innovation”.

The passengers on Titan paid up to $250,000 (£191,135) for a place.

A new study highlights the connected nature of the Southern Ocean dynamic system, the research priorities needed to understand its influence on climate change, the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations.

The Coral Triangle, often referred to as the "rainforest of the ocean," is home to over 2,000 species of fish and 600 species of hard coral, making it one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world's oceans. The area’s vibrant marine ecosystems, however, face increasing threats from illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, climate change, and pollution.

A new U.N. report finds that the southwest Pacific region faced more extreme drought and rainfall than average last year, and dozens of disasters.

Makes me happy to see these working so well.

NASA is developing autonomous robots that can attach themselves to the underside of polar ice and measure the rate of ice shelf melt.

Moored on the Nuku’alofa wharf was a boat – the Uto ni Yalo – built both to honour and in the style of the great Pacific seafarers of centuries past.

Its crew had sailed from Fiji, a seven-day voyage given unkind winds, for a different sort of climate protest.

“It is a gentle but powerful reminder of what our ancestors, our forefathers, were able to achieve without fossil fuels to navigate our ocean, vast ocean,” Rufino Varea, a climate activist from the Fijian island of Rotuma said.

“Our Torres Strait Island communities are suffering the same fate as many to Pacific islands. Our houses flooded, our cemeteries being washed away and salt water contaminating drinking water."

“It’s not some vague future threat. It’s here right now.”

“Like we are talking to a wall, just a bunch of cement blocks.

Located in the Pacific Ocean 900 miles (1,448 kilometers) off the coast of Chile, the seamount is 1.9 miles (3,109 meters) tall and part of an underwater mountain range that is home to sponge gardens, ancient corals and rare marine species — including a type of squid that was filmed for the first time..

Details of the newly discovered species will be shared with the Ocean Census, an ambitious international collaboration to record marine life hidden in the world’s oceans. It aims to identify 100,000 unknown species in the next 10 years, allowing scientists to better understand and protect the deep-sea ecosystem.

According to environmentalists, DSMF’s mining operation was illegal and went beyond the exploration phase permitted under its current license. However, a government official has denied the operation’s illegality, although he said the company’s activities caught his agency and the provincial government by surprise. The exact nature of the seabed mining and the conditions of the company’s license remain unknown.

Piped / Invidious

Arresting Paul Watson: “Wanted for the crime of being a fucking legend.”

🐋 Free Paul Watson: https://www.freepaulwatson.org

Invidious link