Morecambe Bay: Volunteers find 18,000 shark egg cases on beaches
"The Irish Sea is such an important place and we really need to protect it," he told BBC Radio Lancashire.The cases protect the embryos of sharks and skates as they develop. Once empty, they often wash up on beaches.
The Morecambe Bay group found 30% of all egg cases across the UK last year.The cases are rehydrated, categorised and counted - which helps scientists understand the population make up of our oceans.The data showed that the small-spotted catshark and the thornback ray were the most commonly found by the group.
Rachel Glascott from the Bay Group said it was "great for [volunteers] to be recognised for the work that they do".The Bay shared the Marsh Volunteer Award with Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust's beach clean volunteers.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
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BBC News
3 days ago
- BBC News
Morecambe Bay: Volunteers find 18,000 shark egg cases on beaches
Volunteers who survey shark eggs in Morecambe Bay counted nearly 18,000 egg cases last Wildlife Trust's The Bay Group have earned a national award for the findings, being recognised at the Marsh Volunteer Awards for Marine volunteers search for old egg cases on the shoreline, take photographs of them, and upload them to the Shark Trust's Wright from Lancashire Wildlife Trust said: "I don't think people realise what we've got in the Irish Sea. We've got things like dolphins, porpoises, giant basking sharks, humpback whales." "The Irish Sea is such an important place and we really need to protect it," he told BBC Radio cases protect the embryos of sharks and skates as they develop. Once empty, they often wash up on beaches. The Morecambe Bay group found 30% of all egg cases across the UK last cases are rehydrated, categorised and counted - which helps scientists understand the population make up of our data showed that the small-spotted catshark and the thornback ray were the most commonly found by the group. Rachel Glascott from the Bay Group said it was "great for [volunteers] to be recognised for the work that they do".The Bay shared the Marsh Volunteer Award with Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust's beach clean volunteers. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
The Independent
5 days ago
- The Independent
In disaster-prone Vanuatu, photos show sea animals returning to battered reefs. Can recovery happen?
Beneath the turquoise waters of Vanuatu, amid a graveyard of broken coral, a moray eel peers from the branches of a staghorn colony. Nearby, the feathered arms of a yellow sea lily sway in the current and a turtle grazes on algae growing along the reef. These flickers of life hint at a slow but hopeful recovery. For the past decade, the South Pacific island nation's coral reefs have faced one punishing blow after another. Cyclone Pam in 2015 hit from a direction that left one reef particularly exposed. 'The way the waves came in actually smashed the coral,' said John Warmington, a longtime resident of Vanuatu who's been diving the reef for more than 10 years. 'I can remember our first dive after the cyclone and my friends and I were all in shock. Coral heads turned over, smashed staghorns — all laid bare.' In the days that followed, heavy rains washed sediment into rivers that emptied into the sea, blanketing corals in a thick debris that blocked the sunlight they need to survive. Other threats followed. Crown-of-thorns starfish — natural coral predators whose populations can surge after heavy rains wash nutrients into the sea — swept in to devour what remained. Though native to the region, they can multiply into outbreaks that decimate hard corals, especially vulnerable species like staghorns and plate corals. In 2023, two cyclones struck within days of each other, flattening swaths of reef that had just begun to regrow. And in December 2024, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake shook the seafloor. 'The whole reef slid down into the deep like an underwater landslide,' Warmington said. 'We just saw heartbreak.' Vanuatu, which is home to about 300,000 people spread across 83 islands, is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Here, rising seas and saltwater intrusion are reshaping coastlines and disrupting daily life. Since 1993, sea levels around Vanuatu's shores have risen by about 6 millimeters (.24 inches) per year — significantly faster than the global average — and in some places, tectonic shifts have doubled that pace. Despite all the disaster and hardships, some shallows are bouncing back. Clownfish take refuge inside anemones. Schools of silver mono fish flicker in the sun. A kaleidoscope of hard and soft corals have begun to root themselves to the reef once again. Still, in one of the world's most disaster-prone regions, that recovery remains fragile. 'We're seeing new corals coming through, but do they get a chance to actually grow before another insult comes and damages them?' said Christina Shaw, CEO of the Vanuatu Environmental Science Society, a local NGO. 'Whether that's overfishing, crown-of-thorns, man-made pollution, or increased runoff from natural disasters — the insults to our marine system keep coming. And I think that's why our reefs might well be in trouble.' ___ ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
The Guardian
05-08-2025
- The Guardian
Great Barrier Reef suffers biggest annual drop in live coral since 1980s after devastating coral bleaching
The Great Barrier Reef has suffered its biggest annual drop in live coral in two out of three areas monitored by scientists since 1986, a new report has revealed. The Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) report is the first to comprehensively document the devastating impacts of the early 2024 mass coral bleaching event – the most widespread and severe on record for the Great Barrier Reef. In the months that followed that event, scientists described a 'graveyard of corals' around Lizard Island in the north and a study recorded the death of 40% of corals at One Tree Island in the south. Aims has conducted annual in-water surveys of the world's biggest reef system since 1986, checking the health and extent of corals. Sign up: AU Breaking News email This year's survey report found that in the reef's northern section – between Cooktown and the tip of Cape York – bleaching, two cyclones and associated flooding had caused coral cover to fall by 25%. In the southern section, from Mackay to just north of Bundaberg, coral cover had fallen by 30%. The northern and southern zones suffered the highest annual drops on record. Coral cover fell by 13% in the central section, which had escaped the worst of the heat in 2024. Dr Mike Emslie, who leads the long-term reef monitoring program at Aims, said coral cover was becoming more volatile. 'It has been a pretty sobering year of surveys with the biggest impacts I have seen in the 30-plus years I have been doing this,' he said. 'This volatility is very likely a sign of an unstable system. That's our real concern. We're starting to see record highs in coral cover that quickly get turned around to record falls.' Coral bleaching describes a process whereby the coral animal expels the algae that live in its tissues and give it its colour and much of its nutrients. Without its algae, a coral's white skeleton can be seen through its translucent flesh, giving off a bleached appearance. Mass coral bleaching over large areas, first noticed in the 1980s around the Caribbean, is caused by rising ocean temperatures. Some corals also display fluorescent colours under stress when they release a pigment that filters light. Sunlight also plays a role in triggering bleaching. Corals can survive bleaching if temperatures are not too extreme or prolonged. But extreme marine heatwaves can kill corals outright. Coral bleaching can also have sub-lethal effects, including increased susceptibility to disease and reduced rates of growth and reproduction. Scientists say the gaps between bleaching events are becoming too short to allow reefs to recover. Coral reefs are considered one of the planet's ecosystems most at risk from global heating. Reefs support fisheries that feed hundreds of millions of people, as well as supporting major tourism industries. The world's biggest coral reef system – Australia's Great Barrier Reef – has suffered seven mass bleaching events since 1998, of which five were in the past decade. With relatively benign impacts from cyclones and bleaching in the five years before the 2024 event, coral cover had reached record levels in some places. But that recovery, Emslie said, was largely driven by fast-growing acropora corals that were more susceptible to heat stress. 'We had said it could all get turned around in one year and, low and behold, here we are,' he said, adding that coral cover was now mostly back in line with long-term averages. The 2024 and 2025 events were part of an ongoing global mass coral bleaching event that led to more than 80% of the planet's reefs being hit with enough heat to cause bleaching, affecting corals in at least 82 countries and territories. A study last year found ocean temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef were likely at their hottest for at least 400 years and were an 'existential threat' to the Unesco World Heritage-listed reef. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Widespread mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef was first seen in 1998 and happened again in 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025. Emslie said: 'These impacts we are seeing are serious and substantial and the bleaching events are coming closer and closer together. 'We will ultimately get to a tipping point where coral cover can't bounce back because disturbances come so quickly that there's no time left for recovery. 'We have to mitigate the root causes of the problem and reduce emissions and stabilise temperatures.' The Aims report comes a month before the federal government is due to reveal its emissions reduction target for 2035. The Albanese government promised Unesco last year it would 'set successively more ambitious emissions reduction targets' that would be 'in alignment with efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5C'. Last week, the Climate Change Authority, which will advise the government on what target to set, released a report that said holding warming 'as close as possible to 1.5C' was key to addressing the threats facing the reef. Richard Leck, head of oceans at WWF Australia, said the government needed to set a target consistent with 1.5C. 'This is the one action the government can take to give the reef a fighting chance.'
