As 2020 winds down, the world has a new marine sanctuary, the largest in the Atlantic Ocean and the fourth-largest in the world. Centered around the South Atlantic's remote Tristan da Cunha archipelago, the new marine sanctuary "will protect tens of millions of native and migratory birds, rare migratory sharks, whales, seals, golden undersea forests of kelp, and penguins—collectively valued as a UNESCO World Heritage Site—from illegal mining, fishing, and other extractive activities." www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tristan-da-cunha-biggest-marine-protected-area/
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Although not obvious from most maps of Japan, Japan extends most of the way to Taiwan because of the Ryukyu Islands, the archipelago that includes Okinawa and stretches nearly 800 miles south of Japan's four main home islands. Archaeological evidence suggests the Ryukyu Islands were settled more than 30,000 years ago, but recent research mapping ocean currents suggests those early settlers would had to have set out for the Ryukyu Islands intentionally because ocean currents would not have carried drifting boats near the islands. www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-humans-sea-voyage-japan-ryukyu-island-migration
Today, Alaska's glaciers, the melting of which has already fueled about 30% of global sea level rise, are all that remains of the Cordilleran ice sheet that once covered the northwestern quadrant of North American down into what is today Idaho and Washington. Researchers are now finding, to their surprise, that temperature changes in the North Pacific, rather than the Atlantic, are perhaps a better leading indicator of global climate changes as diverse as a weakening of Asian monsoons, melting in Antarctica, and a drop in salinity in the Atlantic. www.sciencenews.org/article/north-pacific-ice-sheets-climate-change
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal ran an article on the first documented trans-Atlantic journey by a mini-sub carrying narcotics -- in this case, 3 tonnes of cocaine worth $100 million -- from South America to Europe. (There likely have been previous journeys not thwarted by first bad weather and then authorities.) This map, from The Wall Street Journal, shows the sub's route, as re-created by Spanish police. (from www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-first-narco-submarine-caught-after-crossing-the-atlantic-11603033200)
Spring has returned to the Southern Hemisphere. In the Southern Ocean, as in the rest of the world's oceans, illegal fishing accounts for a significant proportion of all fishing activity. In the Crozet Islands, in the far southern Indian Ocean not far north of the Antarctic Convergence (the point at which cold polar water sinks beneath slightly warmer subantarctic waters, creating a churning of nutrients and a biological and hydrological "moat" encircling Antarctica), researchers fitted albatrosses with radar devices. Because albatrosses are naturally drawn to fishing ships and can spot them from as far as 30 km away, albatrosses carrying radar sensors were used to identify fishing ships that had illegally turned off their automatic identification systems. More than a quarter of the ships albatrosses detected in the waters around the Crozet Islands, which are a French-protected marine sanctuary, had turned off their AIS as had 37% of the albatross-detected fishing ships in nearby international waters. www.popularmechanics.com/science/a30694308/bird-cops-illegal-fishing
NASA is investigating a growing area over the South Atlantic where the earth's magnetic field is mysteriously weakening, already posing a problem for satellites that fly over the region. "On average, the planet's magnetic field has lost almost 10% of its strength over the last two centuries - but there is a large localised region of weakness stretching from Africa to South America. Known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, the field strength in this area has rapidly shrunk over the past 50 years just as the area itself has grown and moved westward." news.sky.com/story/nasa-investigates-mysterious-south-atlantic-anomaly-12051548
On April 1, the U.S. Coast Guard ordered cruise ships in U.S. waters to be sequestered indefinitely to prevent the spread of COVID-19. As of earlier this month, more than 12,000 crew members remain stuck on cruise ships in U.S. waters, most unable to go home because of travel restrictions. According to a report by USA Today, the Coast Guard continues to track "57 cruise ships moored, at anchor, or underway in vicinity of a U.S. port, or with potential to arrive in a U.S. port." www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2020/08/08/cruise-ships-us-have-12000-crew-members-amid-covid-19/5574288002/
The Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius, considered part of Africa, usually derives much of its income from tourism, with its pristine beaches and coral reefs being the big draw. For the last six months, though, tourism has plummeted, and now Mauritius faces what may be a more long-lived threat to its tourism: heavy bunker fuel spilling out of a Japanese tanker that ran aground on a reef off Mauritius's east coast and is beginning to break apart. This map shows the tanker's route heading to Brazil from Singapore through the Strait of Malacca and across the Indian Ocean straight into a coral reef: specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5f32255b76f5a4d456105eb2/960x0.jpg Mauritius has declared a state of emergency, and residents are trying to stop the oil with homemade booms of hair, straw, tights, plastic bottles, and sugar cane leaves. (The map is from a great Forbes article on how satellite technology is being deployed in this situation: www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/08/09/how-satellites-traced-the-fateful-journey-of-the-ship-that-led-to--mauritius-worst-oil-spill-disaster/#7db02e345b42.)
Oceans also have food deserts: regions where nutrient levels are too low to fuel the growth of phytoplankton or any other life. Consequently, there is very little organic matter to sink through the water column or settle on the seafloor. Researchers studying one of these ocean food deserts -- the abyssal plain 3700 to 5700 meters beneath the South Pacific Gyre -- were surprised to find microbes in the sediment of this food desert, some more than 100 million years old, that began to metabolize and reproduce when supplied with nutrients. www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-seafloor-microbes-woke-up-after-over-100-million-years
Coral bleaching occurs when unusually warm water temperatures lead to coral polyps' eviction of their symbiotic algae. But some of the world's most spectacular coral reefs are located in the hot, saline waters of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. Scientists based in the UAE are studying local reef ecology to try to understand how corals and other fauna can withstand the extreme conditions. www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/06/united-arab-emirates-coral-reef-fauna-climate-change.html
Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands have been in the news this week, having been hit by a massive late-season Category 5 cyclone. (In the southern hemisphere, the tropical storm season is reversed because the seasons are reversed. In both hemispheres, fall generally brings cooling waters and an end to the tropical storm season.) Lying northeast of Australia, the Republic of Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands are both volcanic archipelagos in the region of the South Pacific between the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn known as Melanesia. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Oceania_UN_Geoscheme_-_Map_of_Melanesia.svg/1920px-Oceania_UN_Geoscheme_-_Map_of_Melanesia.svg.png
Tomorrow is the beginning of daylight savings time in those parts of the United States that adopt daylight savings time. Another time oddity is the International Date Line, the imaginary line that roughly corresponds to a longitude of 180°. The west side of the line is a day ahead of the east side of the line. Although the line jogs around certain political entities, it still creates for some curious situations, especially as far as islands are concerned. In the South Pacific, clocks in Tonga and American Samoa, for example, will show precisely the same time, but Tonga is a day ahead of American Samoa because, even though they share a time zone, Tonga is on the west side of the International Date Line. In the North Pacific, Big Diomede and Little Diomede are two islands that sit 2.5 miles apart in the Bering Strait but are separated by the International Date Line (and geopolitics). Big Diomede, part of Russia, is a day ahead of Little Diomede, which is part of Alaska, leading to their respective nicknames Tomorrow Island and Yesterday Island. static01.nyt.com/images/2012/07/31/opinion/31borderlines/31borderlines-blog427.jpg
Although we tend to think we are connected by satellites, in fact 99% of all data that zips back and forth across oceans and around the world travels by submarine fiberoptic cable. This map shows this submarine cable network. (Cables shown in light gray have been contracted for but are not yet operational.)
www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ezb49y/map_of_the_submarine_cables_that_make_the/ As sea ice in the Arctic recedes, channels are opening connecting the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. While this is normally discussed in terms of navigation and geopolitics, this article considers these channels as unprecedented avenues for the exchange of marine microbes. geographical.co.uk/nature/wildlife/item/3542-channel-hopping
I must admit, this article had me at the title -- "Six Books to Inspire the Next Generation of Geographers" -- but all of these books look really interesting. Because Geographical is a UK publication, the prices are in pounds, but all of the books are available in the U.S. too. (Rachel Ignotofsky's book has been published in the U.S. as The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth: Understanding Our World and Its Ecosystems instead of the title in the article.) geographical.co.uk/reviews/books/item/3501-young-geography-books
Take a virtual field trip to Hawaii's unusually colored beaches: black sand (from eroded lava) is found on several islands, most prominently the Big Island; red sand (from eroded iron-rich lava) is found on Maui; green sand (from eroded olivine) is found on the Big Island; orange sand is found on Molokai; and white sand (from eroded coral) is found on several islands, most prominently Oahu. (A sharp observer may recognize Hawaii's green sand beach from the home page of my website.) www.onlyinyourstate.com/hawaii/colored-sand-beaches-in-hi/
Most of the Hawaiian islands are fringed by coral reefs, providing Hawaii with the best snorkeling in the United States. This photo was taken near where British explorer Captain James Cook met his demise. (Kidnapping a local chief and holding him hostage for supplies turned out not to be a good idea.)
New Zealand was in the news this week when a volcano just off the northern coast of New Zealand's North Island erupted unexpectedly. There are about a dozen volcanoes on or just offshore the North Island, part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire," as students who have taken my "Hands-On Geography" class may be able to predict. This map shows where the Pacific Plate is subducting under the Australian plate just to the east of the North Island, creating the Kermadec Trench and, about 200 miles to the west, a band of volcanoes, including the one that just erupted. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/NZ_faults.png/800px-NZ_faults.png
Atlas Obscura looks at 12 "ghost islands" around the world, islands that were once inhabited, some supporting large populations, but have been abandoned. Each has an interesting story to tell. www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-incredible-ruins-of-12-abandoned-islands
The island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia was in the news this week. For most people, though, Yap's exact whereabouts were a bit of a head-scratcher. This map shows Yap to be in the Pacific at the far western end of the Federated States of Micronesia, east of the Philippines and southwest of the U.S. territory of Guam. www.visityap.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/whereisyap.jpg
Students in my “Hands-On Geography” class have often noticed the small Juan de Fuca tectonic plate that sits off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. It has long been known that the Juan de Fuca plate is subducting (or sliding beneath) the North American plate to the east. However, scientists now believe that the Juan de Fuca plate is splitting as it does so, which may contribute to unusual seismic activity and volcanism near the surface in the years to come.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/07/tectonic-plate-dying-oregon-why-matter The Imperial Japanese Navy lost 334 ships during World War II. This map captures the final resting place of most of them. worldwarwings.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ships-map.jpg
"More than 80 percent of the world’s oceans are currently unmapped, but a $7 million prize pool to explore the deep sea hopes to change that. The Ocean Discovery XPrize was [recently] awarded to teams using uncrewed deep-sea vehicles to map the ocean floor and trace chemical signals underwater. The goal is to develop a comprehensive atlas by 2030. ... A comprehensive map of the world’s oceans may uncover new species and materials, and find old shipwrecks, says Jyotika Virmani, XPrize’s Ocean Discovery director. 'The deep sea is the world’s largest museum, and we don’t have access to it right now,' she says. Exploring is made notoriously difficult by extreme conditions such as darkness, high pressure, and cold.
"A $1 million bonus prize was also up for grabs for entrants to develop a vessel that could detect a chemical signal – a marine-safe coloured dye – and autonomously track it back to its source. The winning team was Ocean Quest, made up of high school students from San Jose, USA, although their vessel couldn’t sniff out signal back to the source within the allowed timeframe. Virmani says the technology could be used to track fish populations or invasive species. It could also be used in search and rescue missions, such as after planes crash into the ocean." www.newscientist.com/article/2205047-uncrewed-deep-sea-robots-will-help-map-the-worlds-oceans/ People may be familiar with Polynesia ("many islands"), Micronesia ("small islands"), and Indonesia ("islands of the Indies"). Relatively few are familiar with Macaronesia ("islands of the fortunate") and may even assume it is a typo for Macronesia (which doesn't exist). Macaronesia, as this Reddit map shows, refers to the island archipelagos to the west of southern Europe and northern Africa, including the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira, and Cape Verde. www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/b6iuhu/macaronesia_800x1052/
It is anticipated that cities will absorb all of the planet's population growth between now and 2050, but, at the same time, 90% of the world's largest cities are already vulnerable to sea level rise. One possible solution? "A company called Oceanix is building a prototype floating island as an experimental solution for crowded coastal cities threatened by climate change, the company told the United Nations habitat program Wednesday. Such buoyant islands would be linked together into floating, self-sustaining cities that rise with sea levels and are built to withstand hurricanes, according to a group of architects, engineers and developers who met at the U.N. headquarters. The prototype will be a small-scale version that could be ready within months, said Marc Collins Chen, an entrepreneur and former French Polynesian politician who founded Oceanix. Officials at the United Nations welcomed the proposal but have not officially joined the plan to create floating cities. The idea might sound outlandish, but urban coasts are running out of land and becoming increasingly vulnerable as sea levels are projected to rise as much as seven inches by 2030. ... To reclaim shrunken coastlines, Singapore and other seaside megacities already pour sand into the ocean, and sand is quickly becoming a scarce resource. Amina Mohammed, the U.N. deputy secretary general, said the proposal is more unconventional than approaches the United Nations would have taken even four years ago. 'We are trying to adapt,' she said. 'We are trying to think ahead.'" www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/05/seas-rise-un-explores-bold-plan-floating-cities/
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