By Ryan Johnson Corals are considered not only as one of the most important creatures in oceans for they do not only add beauty to it but they also provide homes for different marine animals especially fish. In fact, a small percent of coral reefs envelops the ocean bed and supports 30% of known marine […]

By Christopher Thompson Choosing a safe but effective sunscreen is becoming a pain in the brain. While we spent decades happily applying the sunscreen of our choice, the chemical ingredients that manufacturers used to fight the sun have been under attack. The latest salvo: a study by the US Food and Drug Administration showing that […]

By Christopher Thompson From native species to Indigenous land management and water efficiency: Australia’s role in the extinction crisis A devastating new UN report shows the planet is in serious danger from the accelerating decline of the Earth’s natural life-support systems. Here we look at 10 of the key points from the report – and […]

Drone imagery of coral patches along the coast of Maunalua Bay, Oʻahu, where researchers in the Marko Lab use coral DNA from filtered seawater to assess coral cover on local reefs. Photo courtesy of Patrick K. Nichols. Scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Biology have developed a technique for measuring the […]

The deadly back-to-back bleaching events that hammered Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017 led to a collapse in the recruitment of new corals, severely affecting the ecosystem’s ability to recover from the devastation. That’s according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, which found that the number of juvenile corals […]

Scientists have completed the first comprehensive assessment of UV-filters in surface seawater, sediment, and coral tissue from multiple coral reefs around the island of Oahu, Hawaii. UV-filters are active ingredients in sunscreens, but are also added to many other products, including textile, plastics, and paint to prevent photo degradation. The UV-filters oxybenzone and octinoxate have […]

Hawaii’s coral reefs are dying, and researchers are a few steps closer to figuring out just how much environmental changes and human interaction affect the ocean’s coral reefs. Researchers from the Ocean Tipping Points project published a new study Thursday after analyzing 10 years of data that examined how sedimentation, development and fishing affect coral reefs in […]

Some environmental advocates would like to add another item to Southwest Florida’s things-to-worry-about list: sunscreen. Actually, they’re specifically targeting octinoxate and oxybenzone, two common ingredients in many sun-blocking products. They’ve been blamed for harming the Keys’ cherished coral reef, the only one in the continental United States, and may also accumulate in plankton, the tiny […]

By Alex Mardikian Hawaii has passed a bill to ban sunscreens that contain oxybenzone and octinoxate. These chemicals have beenproven as being extremely harmful to Hawaii’s marine ecosystems. Waikiki is just one of the many areas to have suffered from exceedingly high levels of oxybenzone and octinoxate. The coral reefs of Hawaii are a major […]