Swarms of giant jellyfish are floating along the coastline of the Sea of Japan, and the damage they may cause to fisheries is feared to be the worst in more than a decade.
By Diana Haecker
Researchers stepping off the research vessel Norseman II in Nome last weekend, brought significant news of having found very high concentrations of a phytoplankton called Alexandrium catenella in regional waters. Alexandrium is an algae that can produce saxitoxins, which can cause dangerous paralytic shellfish poisoning in people. The scientists issued an advisory, notifying Norton Sound Health Corporation, UAF Sea Grant and the Alaska Division of Public Health.
The open ocean off Utqiagvik in fall and early winter is evidence of climate change. Remarkably, bowhead whales appear to be thriving, although there are new challenges. Kidney-worm infections have been detected in bowheads, possibly brought by other species of whales coming north. And then there are the killer whales, a natural predators of bowheads now venturing north.
The year is coming to a close with temperatures down to minus 50 °C in parts of northern Siberia.
“My boys told me my cabin went into the river,” said Rita Hulkill, who is 82. “My cabin had been there since the 70s. The water has never been that high ever.”
Staring out into the darkness, she and her husband Ivan saw "an enormous ball of light in the sky to the west. It was moving north to south, and was quite big."
The swelling Tom River in southwestern Siberia has led to a partial dam collapse in the city of Tomsk. This year’s heavy rainfall, combined with abnormally warm spring weather, has led to severe flooding in Russia’s Urals and western Siberia. So far, the floods have submerged around 15,600 homes and 28,000 land plots in 193 Russian towns and cities across 33 regions.
The endangered mammal got tied up to the Nevelsk breakwater from debris and rope that it got caught in.
Intense rainfall in Russia's Far East Primorye region caused floods, power outages, and evacuations, with water levels exceeding the norm by eightfold in some areas, following previous flooding caused by tropical storm Khanun.
Poaching and climate change might be the reasons why more than 1,200 migrating animals did not make it across the wide Arctic waterway.
By Julia Lerner Richard Jessee, a longtime summer miner, survived an aggressive bear attack near his cabin last week.
As experts are expecting that the water level of the Meuse river will continue to rise until noon and the water has starting flowing over the dyke, the mayor of Maaseik in the Limburg province urged people to stay away.
A moose that was killed in Teller last week had been infected with rabies, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game confirmed.
Two landslides near the village of Kuujjuaraapik in Arctic Quebec have been deemed "significant" by authorities but pose no immediate danger to the community. The events happened on Thursday and affected a thick clay soil zone near the village.
The weekend was marked by cold sunny days and stunning aurora displays at night, but then the weather took another turn. By Tuesday morning, an east wind was howling and blowing snow sideways. The week started looking like a repeat of the last.
Most of the major damage from the magnitude-7.3 quake that occurred at 11:07 p.m. on Feb. 13 off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture was concentrated in Fukushima and neighboring Miyagi prefectures. The number of people injured by a powerful earthquake in northeastern Japan two days earlier rose to 153, but no deaths were reported as of Feb. 15.
High winds that pushed water high up on south facing shores of the Seward Peninsula cause shoreline erosion on the Chukchi Sea coast of Shishmaref, last week.
Two more Russian LNG tankers made history earlier this month passing through the North Sea Route, which extends along the northern coast of Russian Asia, in late January, the latest commercial ship
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe catches coho salmon on the free-flowing Elwha River for the first time in over a century since the removal of dams, marking a historic moment for the tribe and the river's recovery.
All Topics
All Countries
Any Date
Apply