"City of Gonads" Jellyfish Discovered
Sporting a reproductive “skyline,” a new species of jellyfish is like nothing else known under the sea, a new study says.
Shaped like flying saucers, both males and females of the new jellyfish have gonads on the outsides of their bodies, unlike any of the approximately 3,000 other jellyfish species known to science.
Gonads are the reproductive glands that produce sperm in males and eggs in females.
Gulf oil spill. Source: BBC
US coastguard says 5,000 barrels a day of oil are spewing from a well beneath site of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.
Five times more oil a day than previously believed is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from the blown-out well of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, the US coastguard has said. Coastguard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) experts now estimate that 5,000 barrels a day of oil are spilling into the gulf – far more than the previous estimate of 1,000 barrels a day. Robot submarines have so far failed to shut off the flow, 1,500m (5,000ft) below the surface, but the coastguard said a test burn on an isolated area of the spill was successful.
Watch the video on Guardian
10 animals at risk from the spill
A pod of bottlenose dolphins off the coast of Florida have developed a remarkable hunting strategy in order to catch fish. Another awesome thing about this technique is that only one female in the pod can create this ring.
From the first episode (Challenges of Life) of the new BBC series Life. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lbpcy
Lena river delta (NASA)
Most of the world’s major river deltas are sinking, increasing the flood risk faced by hundreds of millions of people, scientists report.
Damming and diverting rivers means that much less sediment now reaches many delta areas, while extraction of gas and groundwater also lowers the land.
Rivers affected include the Colorado, Nile, Pearl, Rhone and Yangtze.
About half a billion people live in these regions, the researchers note in the journal Nature Geoscience.
They calculate that 85% of major deltas have seen severe flooding in recent years, and that the area of land vulnerable to flooding will increase by about 50% in the next 40 years as land sinks and climate change causes sea levels to rise.
Arctic Northeast Passage
Two German ships set off on Friday on the first commercial journey from Asia to western Europe via the Arctic through the fabled Northeast Passage – a trip made possible by climate change. Niels Stolberg, president and CEO of Bremen-based Beluga Shipping, said the Northern Sea Route will cut thousands of nautical miles off the ships’ journey from South Korea to the Netherlands, reducing fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse gas.
© 2010 Green Earth Facts · Proudly powered by WordPress
&
Green Park 2
by Cordobo.
Part of the New Media Network.
