Background Articles

As a debate is underway on culling as many as 250,000 reindeer due to overgrazing, Research Professor Bruce C Forbes warns against some proposed solutions.

B.C salmon farms last year were besieged by sea lice, according to a new University of Toronto study, which also found a dangerously steep rise of infestation among young wild salmon who swam nearby.

Contagious cancers occur in clams and other bivalves, and some can even spread between different species of bivalves.

Populations of marine wildlife have plummeted by a half on average over the past 40 years with some species suffering far greater declines as a result of habitat loss, overfishing, rising sea temperatures and worsening ocean acidity, a major report has found.

The "unprecedented" warm water in the Pacific caused a massive toxic algae bloom from California to Alaska.

Scientists first caught on to the strange event when they found thousands of purple sea urchins and other organisms dead in their laboratory tanks. Their theory: The mass deaths were caused by a huge bloom of algae.

Study finds genetic evidence of climate-change adaptation.

Our results showed that local fisheries have negatively impacted the marine biodiversity of the ecosystem causing sharp declines of common dolphins and major fish stocks and weakening the robustness of the marine food web.

A parasitic isopod that scientists identified five years ago has all but decimated mud shrimp populations in coastal estuaries ranging from British Columbia to northern California - with the exception of a handful of locations in Oregon from Waldport to Tillamook.

Once one of the most common cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea, the short-beaked common dolphin has declined throughout the region since the 1960s and in 2003 this population was classified as Endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Here, we document the species’ precipitous decline in eastern Ionian Sea coastal waters across 13 yr. While 150 animals were present in the study area (1050 km2) in 1996, only 15 were observed in 2007. A 12 mo assessment of fishing effort and catch, together with circumstantial evidence, suggests that the decline was caused largely by prey depletion resulting from overfishing. We analyzed the impacts of various fishing gear and estimated the degree of resource overlap between common dolphins and local fisheries. The total biomass removed annually by 308 fishing boats in the study area averaged 3571 t, while that consumed by common dolphins was 17 t. Resource overlap between common dolphins and fisheries—expressed as an average Pianka index of 0.5—differed according to fishing gear, being higher for purse seiners (0.7) and beach seiners (0.4) and lower for bottom trawlers (0.1), trammel boats (0.2) and longliners (0.0). Only about 10 active purse seiners (4% of the total active fishing fleet) were responsible for 33% of the biomass removal, and likely had the greatest impact on prey of common dolphins. This study indicates a high risk of local disappearance of common dolphins in the very near future, unless fishery management measures are implemented immediately. Purse seining should be the main management target.

July 23, 2007 – Over the last five years, large, predatory Humboldt squid have moved north from equatorial waters and invaded the sea off Central California, where they may be decimating populations of Pacific hake, an important commercial fish.

All persons practicing veterinary medicine in North Carolina shall report these listed diseases and conditions to the State Veterinarian's office by telephone within two hours after the disease is reasonably suspected to exist.

Winton remembers when this flu came to Wales.Lots of people died from this flu. Both his parents died at that time. He was about eleven years old when this happened in Wales. His father was Deland Kikitaaq and his mother was Kate Autasiyak. Winton's sister, Lucy Nagozruk, a retired school teacher is now living in Nome. His brother, Dwight Tevuk died five years ago at Nome.

When I asked my father a question about the flu, you can feel him withdraw into himself, see him dose his eyes, become very quiet, even start saying some names and block out (showing any emotions) when someone that was close to him dies. l have seen this in almost all the Elders who's parents died during the flu.

Demonstration of how easy ponderosa pine tree tops can be broken due to the effects of climate change.

"We never know for sure how they died, but it does seem like a lot of the evidence points to killer whale predation," Steve Ferguson, a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said Thursday.

The king crab harvest survey could indicate a second bleak year for crabbers in Washington, Oregon and Alaska as warm water affects the number of adult crabs.

City construction leaves trees weaker long after the construction project is over and the trees have less of a positive impact on the urban environment.

Low stocks have prompted the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) to cancel the red king crab fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea.

"White-nose syndrome" was found in Ontario and Quebec caves, mines and attics in the winter of 2009-2010. A decade after a devastating fungus first appeared in Ontario, wiping out up to 95 per cent of the province’s bats, scientists are beginning to see encouraging signs that bats may be on the rebound.