GOMAEEN News Archive
These stories reflect Gulf news from June 2009 forward.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 | NOAA Announces Fishing Rules to Protect Gag and Red Grouper NOAA’s Fisheries Service has announced a temporary rule that will prohibit recreational fishing for gag grouper in Gulf of Mexico federal waters. The six-month rule becomes effective on January 1, 2011, and can be extended an additional six months if necessary. more info |
| Geological Survey report: Corn crops for biofuels may have unintended consequences for the gulf A new report by the U.S. Geological Survey shows that growing corn for biofuel production is having unintended effects on water quality and quantity in northwestern Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. more info |
| Pilot program will remove hazardous anchors used to secure oil spill boom The permits also require that within 30 days of receiving a permit, the permittee provide the corps with a restoration plan to remove the boom. more info |
| Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone: Mitigating the Damage This article will profile hypoxia and present simple solutions that can be found in keener agriculture practices, in US environmental policymaking, and in public awareness and enthusiasm to amend the problem. more info |
| Fishing Banned in Stretch of Gulf Tests are under way to determine whether the tar balls from the shrimper’s net are from the BP spill, which released about 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf. more info |
| Was the Sea Turtle Rescue Operation in the Gulf a Success? Yet the fate of the loggerhead, Kemp’s ridley, and green turtle hatchlings that swam into open water is unknown. The government agencies working on the rescue decided not to notch the hatchlings’ shells before releasing them, leaving researchers no way to identify the individuals if they were ever found again. There were so few turtles that finding the ones rescued from the oil spill “would be akin to finding a needle in a haystack,” says MacPherson. more info |
| In wake of oil spill, damage in the deep The search for what the BP oil well blowout did to the Gulf of Mexico already has gone to extraordinary lengths: more than 125 research cruises covering hundreds of square miles and taking thousands of water and sediment samples. more info |
| USDA Funds Conservation Projects for Water Quality Improvements in the Mississippi River Basin Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will fund existing conservation projects in 41 eligible watersheds in 12 states this fiscal year as part of its Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative. The initiative supports USDA's continuing efforts to help landowners and farmers protect and improve water quality in the Mississippi River Basin in selected watersheds from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. more info |
| Ask A Scientist Question: What is the process of bioremediation? more info |
| Novel Ocean-Crust Mechanism Could Affect World’s Carbon Budget The researchers are not sure just how much of these greenhouse gases remain in the sediment and the water, how much they affect the biological communities, and how much CO2 and methane escapes into the atmosphere. But they do know they have observed a novel mechanism in creating ocean crust. more info |
| Deep-Water Dive Reveals Spilled Oil On Gulf Floor We see this brown stuff on coral fans, hit like pine trees along a dusty dirt road. More slimy brown stuff hangs over some of the odd formations of frozen natural gas here half a mile below the surface. Crabs here normally pick at worms that actually live in this methane ice. more info |
| Dauphin Island Sea Lab's Skimmer Newsletter for November 2010 Scientists at Alabama's Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) confirmed a telling impact of the oil on the coastal marine food web in a recent scientific report titled "Oil carbon entered the coastal planktonic food web during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill," published today in the scientific journal IOP Publishing's Environmental Research Letters. more info |
| Living to fish another day The need for caution and common sense among mariners was a central topic discussion on the docks and boat launch ramps last week after a deadly pair of boating accidents off the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts claimed the lives of two men, a recreational crab fisherman and a kayaker. more info |
| How Do You Teach Kids to Live Sustainably on an Island? Sandra Tapia, CDRC's Education Specialist, wanted to integrate more environmental education into the public education system in the Galapagos, which is overseen by the government on Ecuador's mainland. So she started developing a curriculum that was focused on not just teaching kids about sustainable living and the environment, but about sustainable living and the environment on an island. more info |
| Our Gulf art show in Lakewood Ranch Finally, she decided that maybe artists could join in an art show to benefit some facet of the recovery process. more info |
| Oyster production could rise with new method Researchers John Supan, with the Louisiana Sea Grant and LSU AgCenter, and Bill Walton, with Auburn University, aim to get Louisiana to adopt off-bottom oyster culturing methods to supplement the state’s traditional harvest. They say the method produces more efficient and faster harvests. more info |
| Fishing Nations Fail to Safeguard Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Government delegates from 48 fishing nations today failed to protect the spawning grounds of the vanishing Atlantic bluefin tuna, either in the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean, although they did approve some protections for whitetip and hammerhead sharks. more info |
| Iowa receives $8.4 million to improve Mississippi River Basin U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced Monday that more than $43 million will be provided to 12 states along the Mississippi River to help fund more than 70 existing conservation projects in 41 eligible watersheds. The initiative supports the USDA’s continuing efforts to help landowners and farmers protect and improve water quality from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. more info |
| Healing Journey: A Costly Coastal Legacy for the Gulf of Mexico . National Geographic Education Fellow Jon Waterhouse writes from Louisiana's Gulf Coast that, for some residents who rely on marine life for a living, reports that we're past the worst of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill's consequences don't ring true. more info |
| Farm drainage partly to blame for dead zones in Gulf The tile drainage systems in upper Mississippi farmlands -- from southwest Minnesota to across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio -- are the biggest contributors of nitrogen runoff into the Gulf of Mexico, reports a Cornell/University of Illinois-Urbana study. more info |
| Exploration - balance a must Even after memories of the Gulf spill pale or Haynesville Shale hoopla dissipates, there will still be oil and gas wells, pipelines and other infrastructure crisscrossing Louisiana lands and waters. All need to be maintained and monitored with sufficient oversight to assure the safety of our citizenry and the integrity of our environment. more info |
| Flooding predictions have dramatic implications for Grand Isle Grand Isle and similar low-lying locations along Louisiana's central coastline could be inundated with floodwaters for half of each year by the end of the century, thanks to the effects of rapidly sinking soils and rising water levels in the Gulf of Mexico, according to new estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. more info |
| Are farmers hurting the Gulf of Mexico more than BP? One solution, according to the authors, may be installing artificial wetlands to filter the farm waste. Another possibility is fertilizing in the spring instead of the fall. more info |
| NOAA’s Enforcement Actions in the Gulf of Mexico Help Ensure Safe Seafood Eight shrimp trawlers have been charged by NOAA with allegedly fishing this summer in the area of the Gulf of Mexico that was closed due to the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. The notices of violation and assessment (NOVAs) were issued as part of NOAA’s effort to help ensure the seafood reaching America’s dinner tables was safe – and to protect the livelihoods of Gulf fishermen who were respecting the closures. more info |
| Questions linger about seafood safety, but FDA says consumers have little to fear Every Gulf fish that the government has tested since workers shut off the oil spewing from BP’s ruptured well in mid-July has shown toxins far below what is dangerous, federal authorities say. more info |
| Scientists start to piece together damage puzzle of BP spill In recent weeks, scientists have reported finding a garden of dead and dying corals covered in brown gunk, and evidence that petroleum compounds moved up the food chain from bacteria to plankton. More research voyages are planned, and labs are busy as scientists try to pull together a more complete picture of the damage below the surface and chart a recovery plan. more info |
| Researchers Use Bacteria as Environmental Sensor A UT Dallas student team has harnessed common bacteria to quickly detect the presence of potentially hazardous petrochemicals in water or seafood. more info |
| NOAA's first tests show clean shrimp Royal red shrimp pulled up from the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico show no traces of hydrocarbons according to the preliminary test. NOAA tells FOX 10 News the samples are being sent to Seattle for further testing. The results should be back by mid-week. more info |
| Aberdeen to host international oil and gas technology summit this week Senior executive from global firms will meet to discuss technology gaps and challenges for the industry going forward more info |
| Experts: Gulf Coast seafood industry faces perception problem Walker and Calvin Walker, a toxicologist at NOAA's National Seafood Inspection Laboratory in Pascagoula, spoke to scientists from 28 countries attending a conference this month in Biloxi. more info |
