In the early 1800s, the ocean around New Zealand contained about 27,000 southern right whales – that is, about 30 times more than today. This has been revealed in one of several startling reconstructions of ocean life in olden days and presented at the Census of Marine Life conference on May 26-28, 2009, in Denmark.

Night Fishing with a Lamp and a Net, 11th Century

According to British researchers, while large pods of blue whales and orcas, blue sharks and thresher sharks were plentiful in the waters off Cornwall, England, herds of harbour porpoise chased fish upriver, and dolphins played in waters inshore.

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A research team from British Antarctic Survey and the University of Hamburg have completed the first “comprehensive inventory” of marine life and land species in Antarctica.

While the rest of the world is worried about a recession, the critters on the seabed are teaming. The group’s inventory includes over 1,200 marine and land species. Most of the creatures live on the deep seabed.

Let’s see, deep down in the sea where it’s cold as all cold can be and still we won’t leave them alone … for the sake of counting them, creating a list of what it is we don’t want to bother for fear we’ll cause them to go extinct.

So, here’s the question – How can humankind and creature kind interact without harming one another? I’m happy for the images, but what harm came to them while the list was being made? Who’s going down deep next?

More questions than answers.

Images via XinHuaNet

An Endangered Sea Dragon is Pregnant. That’s the good news. The bad news is we are saying good-bye to the Caribbean monk seal. Also known as the West Indian monk seal, sadly The US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) declared it extinct. Gone. No more.

The cause? Tremendous hunting pressure for food, blubber and research. Research as in how not to drive them extinct? We hope not. The blubber is used as a source of oil to coat ship hulls, lubrication and oil lamps. The Steller’s sea cow, the Japanese sea lion, have preceded the monk seal.

The white river dolphin of the Yangtze river was thought to be extinct, but good news of the discovery of one (dead) is causing watchers to rethink this conclusion.

It is never a happy thought to say good-bye, much less good-bye for good. Let’s not just hope, but rather take action so as to not need to say good-bye to any other marine animals, eh?

Happy Father’s Day to a weedy sea dragon at the Georgia Aquarium. Apparently, the sea dragon, along with sea horses and pipe fish are the only species where the male carries the eggs. And, a Georgia Aquarium sea dragon has about 70 fertilized eggs that he is carrying.

It’s only the third time ever that one of these rare birds, um, sea dragons has become pregnant at a U.S. aquarium. What’s more, researchers don’t know how it happened, or more precisely what got the father in the mood to mate. (Um, I am a father, maybe I can help out here.) Researchers say there is “something biologically or environmentally that triggers them to want to reproduce.” Really?!

During mating, the female lays dozens of eggs and then attaches them to the male’s tail. Survival rate is about 60% for sea dragon’s born in captivity. Let’s see 70 eggs X 60% = 42 more little dragons to star in a future Dr. Seuss book.

Congratulations, Dad! Mom!

[Image source : Yahoo!]

Charles Moore is an oceanographer that spent over a decade investigating the Pacific Ocean. On February 23 he returned from a 5 weeks successful research voyage with terrifying results. Apparently a “garbage island” twice the size of the United States located, located between California, Hawaii and Japan is full of plastics and is held in place by underwater currents.

Warning Sign for Water Quality – picture by Heal the Bay

The samples Moore took from the 2.5 million square miles plastic dump showed that there’s 6 times more plastic than plankton. It’s a a fivefold increase in the amount of plastic between 1997 and 2007. The most common things found are consumer leftovers like plastic bags, bottles and their caps, fast food wrappers or toys.

As GreenTechBlog mentions this kind of pollution can cause damage in many ways. Millions of fish and birds die ever year because they consider plastic as food or we could be faced with an accelerating global warming because the CO2-sucking plankton may not grow naturally anymore. Another important effect is that marine life could be contaminated with PCBs and other toxins plastic contains.

Plastic pollution is a serious problem but considering the size of it Moore said that there’s no technological solution to clean the ocean life. The Pacific plastic dump is unfixable he said so the only thing we can do is to prevent from adding more.