Science Media Centre

Scientists are frustrated with the International Whaling Commission over the lack of science in Japan’s scientific whaling programme, and are calling for a new review system.  Japanese whalers are back in the Southern Ocean, aiming to kill 333 minke whales this year – purportedly for scientific purposes. In a correspondence article in this week’s Nature, […]

The Antarctic Ross Sea will remain open to fishing in all areas following the failure of an international meeting to reach agreement on the establishment of Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean. After 11 days of intense talks, the meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) in Hobart, concluded […]

Northern hemisphere researchers who put tonnes of iron into the Southern Ocean say it not only triggered a massive algal bloom, but that dying phytoplankton carried carbon from the atmosphere into the deep ocean. The experiment, published in the journal Nature, counters previous research findings which raised questions about the efficiency of  fertilising algal blooms […]

Will the Southern Ocean carbon sink hold? Ice core records show there was a sharp rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – a nearly 50% increase – at the end of the last ice age. Scientists have long puzzled over the origin of all the extra CO2 that appeared as the great ice sheets […]

Ice core records show there was a sharp rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — a  nearly 50% increase — at the end of the last ice age. Scientists have long puzzled over the origin of all the extra CO2 that appeared as the great ice sheets melted. Now, new evidence published in Science (with accompanying Perspective) […]