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The National
3 days ago
- Politics
- The National
What can the UK's muddy shores tell us about marine conservation in the Gulf?
The history of the ocean seabed could be central to the future health of planet Earth, say scientists. Seabeds capture carbon from the remains of marine life. But when the ocean floors are disturbed by trawling or coastal development, the carbon is released from the sea into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Scientists also believe that the seabed's ability to capture carbon could be used to cut global CO2 emissions by up to 6 per cent of the amount needed to cap the rise in global temperatures at 1.5°C. Carbon stores have been mapped around the world, but scientists are hoping they can go deeper to understand with greater accuracy the human and animal behaviours that cause seabeds to release or capture the gas. 'We will write a new history of the ocean, telling the story of how the seabed has been changed over centuries by human activities,' said Professor Callum Roberts, a marine biologist who is leading the Convex Seascape Survey at the University of Exeter. 'We're figuring out where are the most, the deepest and the most rich deposits of carbon in the seas,' he said, of the project which also involves the Blue Marine Foundation, a UK charity. 'At the moment, we don't have really strong science to give us robust answers,' he told The National. 'We're recreating the oceanography back to 17,000 years ago and we can turn back the clock.' The comprehensive survey, which also brings in researchers from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Jeddah among other institutions, could alter how coastal seas are managed and protected. 'When we think about marine protection, we protect certain things like habitats or species, but not typically the sediments and the organic matter and carbon that's contained within (them),' said Zoe Roseby, a marine geologist at the University of Exeter who is part of the five-year project. Shallow seabeds of the Gulf Although most the research has taken place in the UK, the findings will be of relevance to the Arabian Gulf, a shallow sea where urban development and commercial shipping increase at a rapid pace. 'We're focused on continental shelves, the underwater extensions of land masses. They go down to about 200 metres, which means the entirety of the Arabian Gulf is continental shelf,' said Prof Roberts, who has written about coral reefs in Saudi Arabia, which he helped to map in the 1990s. Although most fishing in the Gulf does not disturb the seabed, the increase in trawling, and the need to create deeper sea routes for commercial shipping could put the area at risk. 'We need to understand that impact, at least because we would need to incorporate this international carbon budgets, so that decision makers know that it's happening and they know that they need to include this in net zero calculations,' he said. Studies had shown there were benefits and negative side-effects to energy infrastructure such as offshore oil wells and wind farms. But Prof Roberts also suggests that shallow sea-beds could be disturbed so as to move the carbon to the deep sea, where there is little chance of it escaping into the atmosphere. 'If you're stirring up carbon from the seabed, then if there is a flow of water off the shelf, then that carbon could be taken into the deep sea, which is a long-term carbon store,' he said. Little is known about this process, and it is one of the possibilities that the project hopes to find an answer to. 'If some of that carbon is going down into the deep sea, then disturbance could actually contribute to long term storage. It's a paradox that we don't know scientifically what the answer is,' he said. Prof Roberts believes the Gulf could be a good test case for this because of the interaction between the freshwater Euphrates and Tigris rivers that feed into the sea, and the sea water from coming in from the other side through the Straits of Hormuz. 'That's one of the things that's keeping the Arabian Gulf habitable for marine life, is that you get this big exchange of water coming in,' Prof Roberts said. 'It could be that disturbing carbon in the Arabian Gulf is leading to the transport of that carbon through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea and deep water,' he said. 'There is possibly a way in which that carbon could be transported to somewhere it is more secure and less likely to come back into the atmosphere,' he said. Antarctica samples go to Jeddah The research is already expanding to other parts of the world. A recent expedition to Antarctica, led marine ecologist Professor Carlos Duarte who is based at KAUST, will seek to establish the role that whales play in maintaining the ocean's ability to sequester carbon. The survey looking back 500 years will examine the changes in carbon stores in periods when whales thrived on the peninsula, compared to those when whale hunting led to their near extinction. "We hope to either validate or reject the hypothesis that great whales contribute to carbon sequestration by keeping the ecosystem in a highly productive stage," Prof Duarte told The National. The samples extracted earlier this year will arrive in Jeddah in June month for eDNA testing. "If the hypothesis is correct, then when whales were being hunted down, we expect to see that ... the organic carbon content of the sediment will decline, ... along with the decline in productivity in plants," he said. "We can reconstruct a record of how the Antarctic ecosystem responded to the massive depletion of whales," he said. North west coastal research Scientists are finding the richest carbon stores around the UK and Ireland by looking at deep history all the way back to the end of the last Ice Age. The melting of ice sheets 17,000 years ago changed the shape of the coastline, as well as the tidal currents. A team led by Dr Sophie Ward developed a model that could trace the changes in coastal shapes, and tidal currents through this time, in order to identify the places with the most carbon-rich mud stores, and how vulnerable they are to disturbance. 'We've used this case study to look at the carbon stock of the surface elements of that area, to consider the amount of carbon that's being stored in this elements, but also the kind of quality, the reactivity of that carbon as well," Dr Roseby said. "So, how vulnerable is that carbon to disturbance from human pressures, such as trawling." The study published last month found that while mud was still accumulating in places like the Western Irish Sea Mud Belt and the Celtic Deep, in the North Sea's Fladen Ground above Scotland, the mud floor was ancient, formed after the end of the last Ice Age and preserved for millennia by low tidal currents. She hopes the model will allow them to predict the location of muds in other lesser studied seas, such as those on the coast of Patagonia, where the team will be heading next. Their findings will remain open source so that other scientists can access them, she said. The data that we produce in our projects is going to be open access, so other members of the scientific community will be able to utilise our model and data outputs for like, any you know, ongoing work that they're doing,' she said. Sedimentologist Torsa Sengupta showed how she was able to trace the amount of carbon in a muddle samples from the laboratories at Exeter University's Penryn campus in Cornwall. Sediment cores several metres long were extracted from the North Sea corers, then cut into metre-long samples and analysed in laboratories. The deeper the sediment, the older the carbon deposits in there will be. The mud is first dried and then mortared make a fine powder. Then an acid is poured onto it to remove the inorganic carbon that comes from sea shells. The resulting powder, which has isolated the organic carbon, is then put into a carbon analysis machine. 'We use this course to identify the total amount of carbon, and the difference in the proportion between organic and inorganic carbon, and how did the amount and the types of organic carbon change through time,' she said. 'This is mainly to find out the natural organic carbon, or the natural carbon reservoirs deep down in ocean sediments which can spread,' she said. The research can take months of this painstaking work. Yet Ms Sengupta said she is compelled to do it because of the rise in climate-related migration, which affects the developing world the most. 'Even when humans had no control over the climate, the natural climate has driven large human populations to migrate,' she said. 'That motivated me to find out, where is this total source of carbon?'.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
CO2 engineers of deep sea: Cod, eel save environment by storing carbon in ocean
New research reveals that many of the fish species we eat are vital to maintaining the seabed — and by extension, the climate. Experts at the Convex Seascape Survey analyzed the role of fish in bioturbation, which is the stirring and reworking of sediments in the shallow seas around the UK and globally. The results also underscore the ecological importance of species like the Atlantic cod, Atlantic hagfish, and European eel, which were the region's highest-ranked 'ecosystem engineers'. Altogether, the researchers identified 185 fish species contributing to bioturbation, 120 targeted by commercial fisheries. 'Ocean sediments are the world's largest reservoir of organic carbon – so what happens on the seabed matters for our climate,' said University of Exeter PhD student Mara Fischer, who led the study. 'Bioturbation is very important for how the seabed takes up and stores organic carbon, so the process is vital to our understanding of how the ocean absorbs greenhouse gases to slow the rate of climate change. 'Bioturbation is also important for seabed and wider ocean ecosystems. We have a good understanding of how invertebrates contribute to global bioturbation – but until now, we have been missing half the story. Our study is the first to attempt to quantify the bioturbation impact of fish, and it shows they play a significant, widespread role.' Co-author Callum Roberts said, 'We also found that species with the highest bioturbation impacts are among the most vulnerable to threats such as commercial fishing." 'Many of the largest and most powerful diggers and disturbers of seabed sediments, like giant skates, halibut and cod, have been so overfished they have all but vanished from our seas. These losses translate into big, but still uncertain, changes in the way seabed ecosystems work.' The study analyzed records of all fish species living on the UK continental shelf. Researchers found that over half contribute to bioturbation through various behaviors, including foraging, burrowing, and nest building. To calculate each species' bioturbation impact score, the team considered the different ways fish rework sediment, the size of the fish, and the frequency of these activities. Among the key species identified was the European eel, which burrows into sediment and earned a bioturbation score of 100 out of 125. Critically endangered and primarily caught using traps and fyke nets, the European eel faces climate change, disease, habitat loss, pollution, and fishing threats. Similarly, the Atlantic cod, a vertical excavator with a bioturbation score 100, is classified as vulnerable. Popularly consumed in dishes like fish and chips, cod populations have declined sharply in regions like the North Sea. The Convex Seascape Survey, a collaboration between the Blue Marine Foundation, the University of Exeter, and Convex Group Limited, represents the most ambitious effort yet to deepen scientific understanding of the ocean's role in the Earth's carbon cycle. 'Anyone who has spent time underwater, whether snorkelling or diving, knows that fish are constantly digging up the seabed," said author Julie Hawkins. 'It's hard to believe that such an obvious and important activity has been largely overlooked when it comes to understanding ocean carbon burial.' The study has been published in Marine Environmental Research.
North Wales Chronicle
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- North Wales Chronicle
Ratify ocean treaty and ban destructive fishing in protected areas, PM urged
The heads of Greenpeace UK, Oceana UK and Blue Marine Foundation have written to Sir Keir Starmer urging him to prioritise ratifying the Global Ocean Treaty to conserve the high seas and help protect 30% of the world's oceans. And he must implement a full ban on bottom trawling and other forms of destructive fishing in all UK marine protected areas to deliver conservation efforts domestically, they say. Ocean with David Attenborough, released in cinemas to mark the renowned naturalist and TV presenter's 99th birthday, highlights the need to protect nearly a third of the oceans so they can recover from overfishing and habitat destruction, secure food for billions of people and tackle climate change. The film includes dramatic footage of the devastation fishing practices such as bottom trawling wreak on the seabed and its wildlife, including before and after footage of scallop dredging off Scotland's Isle of Arran. And in one sequence the camera follows a bottom trawl – where nets are dragged with a metal beam across the seabed to catch fish – as it travels over the ocean floor, destroying the habitat, stirring up silt which releases carbon, and scooping up species indiscriminately. But the film, narrated by Sir David, also offers a message of hope that if protected from damage such as intensive and destructive fishing, the oceans can recover, and backs the call to protect 30% of the world's marine areas by 2030, known as 30X30. In the letter to the PM, the conservationists point to the footage in the film and say: 'Britain's marine life is under huge threat from bottom trawling, the most destructive form of fishing, that has had a devastating impact on marine ecosystems in UK domestic waters for decades. 'Fully banning bottom trawling in English MPAs (marine protected areas) would mean these areas could recover and tangibly deliver on our 30×30 goal in practice, not just on paper,' they urge. The letter to the PM from Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK and Clare Brook, chief executive of Blue Marine Foundation, comes ahead of a key UN ocean conference in France next month. The letter argues the conference is a 'key opportunity for the UK to be a global leader on ocean protection'. And the conservationists point towards Foreign Secretary David Lammy's speech eight months ago in which he said the UK was 'completely committed' to ratifying the high seas treaty, as part of global efforts on 30X30. But no parliamentary progress on ratifying the treaty has been made, and continued delay 'risks embarrassment' at the conference, as well as the opportunity to have a voice and proactively shape the deal's implementation, they argue. They urge the PM: 'The story we tell about the world's ocean could be very different by the end of this Parliament if you and the Government seize on opportunities now to push for and implement real marine protection, both here in the UK and across the world. 'As Sir David says, 'The ocean can recover faster than we can ever imagine: it can bounce back to life' and you have a chance to be part of that recovery. 'Act now to ban catastrophic practices like bottom trawling from UK waters and around the world, and ensure we have the protection the world's ocean needs,' the conservationists write.
Leader Live
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Leader Live
Ratify ocean treaty and ban destructive fishing in protected areas, PM urged
The heads of Greenpeace UK, Oceana UK and Blue Marine Foundation have written to Sir Keir Starmer urging him to prioritise ratifying the Global Ocean Treaty to conserve the high seas and help protect 30% of the world's oceans. And he must implement a full ban on bottom trawling and other forms of destructive fishing in all UK marine protected areas to deliver conservation efforts domestically, they say. Ocean with David Attenborough, released in cinemas to mark the renowned naturalist and TV presenter's 99th birthday, highlights the need to protect nearly a third of the oceans so they can recover from overfishing and habitat destruction, secure food for billions of people and tackle climate change. The film includes dramatic footage of the devastation fishing practices such as bottom trawling wreak on the seabed and its wildlife, including before and after footage of scallop dredging off Scotland's Isle of Arran. And in one sequence the camera follows a bottom trawl – where nets are dragged with a metal beam across the seabed to catch fish – as it travels over the ocean floor, destroying the habitat, stirring up silt which releases carbon, and scooping up species indiscriminately. But the film, narrated by Sir David, also offers a message of hope that if protected from damage such as intensive and destructive fishing, the oceans can recover, and backs the call to protect 30% of the world's marine areas by 2030, known as 30X30. In the letter to the PM, the conservationists point to the footage in the film and say: 'Britain's marine life is under huge threat from bottom trawling, the most destructive form of fishing, that has had a devastating impact on marine ecosystems in UK domestic waters for decades. 'Fully banning bottom trawling in English MPAs (marine protected areas) would mean these areas could recover and tangibly deliver on our 30×30 goal in practice, not just on paper,' they urge. The letter to the PM from Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK and Clare Brook, chief executive of Blue Marine Foundation, comes ahead of a key UN ocean conference in France next month. The letter argues the conference is a 'key opportunity for the UK to be a global leader on ocean protection'. And the conservationists point towards Foreign Secretary David Lammy's speech eight months ago in which he said the UK was 'completely committed' to ratifying the high seas treaty, as part of global efforts on 30X30. But no parliamentary progress on ratifying the treaty has been made, and continued delay 'risks embarrassment' at the conference, as well as the opportunity to have a voice and proactively shape the deal's implementation, they argue. They urge the PM: 'The story we tell about the world's ocean could be very different by the end of this Parliament if you and the Government seize on opportunities now to push for and implement real marine protection, both here in the UK and across the world. 'As Sir David says, 'The ocean can recover faster than we can ever imagine: it can bounce back to life' and you have a chance to be part of that recovery. 'Act now to ban catastrophic practices like bottom trawling from UK waters and around the world, and ensure we have the protection the world's ocean needs,' the conservationists write.
Rhyl Journal
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Rhyl Journal
Ratify ocean treaty and ban destructive fishing in protected areas, PM urged
The heads of Greenpeace UK, Oceana UK and Blue Marine Foundation have written to Sir Keir Starmer urging him to prioritise ratifying the Global Ocean Treaty to conserve the high seas and help protect 30% of the world's oceans. And he must implement a full ban on bottom trawling and other forms of destructive fishing in all UK marine protected areas to deliver conservation efforts domestically, they say. Ocean with David Attenborough, released in cinemas to mark the renowned naturalist and TV presenter's 99th birthday, highlights the need to protect nearly a third of the oceans so they can recover from overfishing and habitat destruction, secure food for billions of people and tackle climate change. The film includes dramatic footage of the devastation fishing practices such as bottom trawling wreak on the seabed and its wildlife, including before and after footage of scallop dredging off Scotland's Isle of Arran. And in one sequence the camera follows a bottom trawl – where nets are dragged with a metal beam across the seabed to catch fish – as it travels over the ocean floor, destroying the habitat, stirring up silt which releases carbon, and scooping up species indiscriminately. But the film, narrated by Sir David, also offers a message of hope that if protected from damage such as intensive and destructive fishing, the oceans can recover, and backs the call to protect 30% of the world's marine areas by 2030, known as 30X30. In the letter to the PM, the conservationists point to the footage in the film and say: 'Britain's marine life is under huge threat from bottom trawling, the most destructive form of fishing, that has had a devastating impact on marine ecosystems in UK domestic waters for decades. 'Fully banning bottom trawling in English MPAs (marine protected areas) would mean these areas could recover and tangibly deliver on our 30×30 goal in practice, not just on paper,' they urge. The letter to the PM from Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK and Clare Brook, chief executive of Blue Marine Foundation, comes ahead of a key UN ocean conference in France next month. The letter argues the conference is a 'key opportunity for the UK to be a global leader on ocean protection'. And the conservationists point towards Foreign Secretary David Lammy's speech eight months ago in which he said the UK was 'completely committed' to ratifying the high seas treaty, as part of global efforts on 30X30. But no parliamentary progress on ratifying the treaty has been made, and continued delay 'risks embarrassment' at the conference, as well as the opportunity to have a voice and proactively shape the deal's implementation, they argue. They urge the PM: 'The story we tell about the world's ocean could be very different by the end of this Parliament if you and the Government seize on opportunities now to push for and implement real marine protection, both here in the UK and across the world. 'As Sir David says, 'The ocean can recover faster than we can ever imagine: it can bounce back to life' and you have a chance to be part of that recovery. 'Act now to ban catastrophic practices like bottom trawling from UK waters and around the world, and ensure we have the protection the world's ocean needs,' the conservationists write.
