Earlier this week, a pod of about nine Bowhead whales were seen off the northern coast of Savoonga but young ice conditions around St. Lawrence Island prevented hunting. If local hunters hauled a whale out onto young ice, it would break apart.
Following another year of stark climate impacts in the Arctic, scientists warned Tuesday of a new scourge hitting the region: marine trash. With the region warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, sea ice that has long blanketed the Arctic Ocean is disappearing, opening new routes to shipping.
A seawall planned for Utqiagvik is aimed at protecting residents from extreme storms while preserving their connection to the ocean.
Extremely high winds blew over Northwest Alaska this weekend, pushing away ice cover and cutting power in some communities. The storm is expected to be 100 miles west of Utqiagvik by 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning and continue to weaken and drift north after that.
The Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST) has found evidence of infectious salmon anaemia (ISA) in an open-net salmon farm in Reyðarfjörður fjord, East Iceland. ISA is a highly infectious viral disease that has no treatment and causes high mortality in farmed Atlantic salmon.
Fuel shipments normally take place during autumn from departure ports such as Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. However, last fall saw a sudden freeze-up and quickly accumulating sea-ice on the Northern Sea Route, including the Kara Sea. Of the two rescued barges, one contained 7,000 tons of diesel fuel, while the other was loaded with 170 tons of kerosene.
Quickly accumulating sea ice along the Northern Sea Route is creating a potentially critical situation along Russia’s east Arctic coast. For several weeks, a number of ships have been trapped in thick sea ice. Several ships have also been waiting to sail into the area.
Current sea ice extent in Northern Alaska waters is the highest it’s been since November 2001.
Scientists now say that the harmful alga will survive the winter and that it will probably turn green in the Oslo fjord next year as well.
Over the past years, ice conditions in late October and early November have allowed extensive shipping along the vast Russian Arctic coast. This year, however, large parts of the remote Arctic waters were already covered by sea ice by late October.
Winter will never be the way it was, according to scientists. Towards the end of the century, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute predicts that the winter weather will gradually disappear from Oslo.
This morning it was as hot in Narvik as in Rome and Istanbul, and far warmer than countries in southern Europe. However, the mild air is on the wane.
The largest wave was a 60-foot 4-inch beast that hit Astoria, Oregon on Sunday. It was a record for the station, which is part of Scripps’ Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP).
Scotland’s only working nuclear power plant at Torness shut down in an emergency procedure this week when jellyfish clogged the sea water-cooling intake pipes at the plant. To protect marine life and avert nuclear disasters, scientists are investigating the use of drones to provide estimates of jellyfish locations, amounts, and density.
Vetle Berntsen and the others on the trawler understood little when the black fish ended up on board. No wonder – the fish actually live in deep water around the equator. It turned out to be Diretmichthys parini, also known as ducat fish, one of three documented in Norway.
The oil likely will continue to encroach on Orange County beaches for the next few days, officials said.
It would be an obscure sighting of the species. The closest beluga population, which lives at least 1,400 miles away in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, is endangered and covered under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Hundreds of guillemots go astray in the Oslo fjord every autumn. Many are now starving in the food-poor fjord.
Karen Dunmall, a biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said pink salmon normally prefer warmer waters than the Arctic has been able to provide. But with the Arctic warming at up to three times the rate of the rest of the world, its waters are becoming more approachable for newcomers like this species.
If upwelling starts a month earlier than usual, the amount of oxygen, already low, has to last until the fall when storms promote mixing which adds oxygen back into the system. As of late September this year, upwelling is still occurring and low levels of oxygen are still persisting.
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