#ocean

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Stability in turbulent waters: What China's approach to ocean governance offers

The oceans are no longer a quiet backdrop to great-power competition. Climate stress, collapsing fish stocks, plastic pollution and intensifying disputes over resources and sea lanes have made maritime governance a visible test of whether the international system can still manage shared problems. At a recent international forum on ocean cooperation and governance in China, foreign participants repeatedly noted something easily missed amid the noise of strategic rivalry: Beijing is one of the few major powers injecting a measure of continuity and practicality into a domain that is otherwise fragmenting. That observation is worth unpacking. China's evolving approach to ocean governance is not best understood as a simple defense of its maritime claims, nor as an attempt to rewrite the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is closer to a deliberate effort to reframe the purpose of ocean order itself — shifting the emphasis from who controls what to whether the system as a whole can remain functional for development, ecological stability and basic predictability. At the center of this reframing is a straightforward but consequential premise: the health of marine ecosystems is a shared condition of human survival, not an externality that individual states can...

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Blue and Green Woodland #trees #walkingtour #nature #mindfulness #forest

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The ocean can be our best bet vs climate change. It's finally at the heart of COP31.

MANILA, Philippines – World leaders, lobbyists, and advocates are coming together in Antalya, Turkey, for the annual United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference (COP31), which is being pegged as the “Blue COP” for its focus on the ocean. Turkey is leading this year’s climate negotiations with Australia, pushing forward the concerns of Pacific Island countries vulnerable to rising seas, ocean warming, and acidification. Ocean action is also among Turkey’s top priorities, with the goal of “enhancing the climate resilience of coastal and marine ecosystems.” Australian Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen, the president of negotiations at COP31, called the ocean “nature’s greatest climate regulator.” “COP31 is an opportunity to show what cooperation can deliver at this crucial time for both our climate and global energy security,” Bowen said in a statement Thursday, November 5. “It will be about unlocking finance and investment, cheaper energy for households, accelerating electrification, and boosting action on the ocean, nature’s greatest climate regulator.” The UN, meanwhile, called the ocean “the world’s greatest ally against climate change,” a great stabilizer of the Earth’s climate, but one that is suffering damage because of hotter global temperatures. This year’s COP will also focus heavily on electrification...

www.sciencedaily.com

Hidden climate superpower: Why some ocean "snow" carries six times more carbon

As this material sinks, it carries enormous quantities of carbon from the upper ocean toward the seafloor. Researchers estimate that marine snow removes more than 10 gigatons of carbon from surface waters each year. Yet only about two gigatons reach depths where that carbon can remain stored for hundreds or even thousands of years. Why so much carbon fails to make it into the deep ocean has long puzzled scientists. Now, researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Lincoln have identified a surprisingly important factor: how sticky the marine snow is. Their findings, published October 8 in the journal Science, show that the viscosity, or thickness and gooeyness, of marine snow influences how quickly bacteria break it apart and how far it can sink. According to the researchers, the stickiest particles can transport more than six times as much carbon to the deep ocean as particles with a thinner, less viscous consistency. How Ocean Slime Helps Store Carbon Marine snow plays an important role in Earth's carbon cycle, the natural movement of carbon among the atmosphere, oceans, land, and living organisms. By transporting carbon into deep water, sinking particles can keep some of it...

www.sciencedaily.com

An ancient ocean full of giant predators reveals a surprising twist in evolution

Scientists from McGill University and the Centro de Investigaciones Paleontológicas (CIP) identified this unusual pattern while studying fossils from Colombia's Paja Formation. The ancient marine ecosystem preserves an exceptional mixture of surviving Jurassic lineages and emerging Cretaceous groups, offering a rare glimpse into a period of profound biological change. Drawing on these findings, McGill biology professor Hans Larsson and PhD graduate Dirley Cortés have proposed a new concept called a "Biotic Inflection." The term describes an evolutionary turning point when older groups nearing extinction coexist with newer lineages that are beginning to expand and diversify. A Perfect Storm for Ancient Ocean Biodiversity The researchers believe an unusual combination of environmental conditions helped make this remarkable coexistence possible. Warm greenhouse temperatures, elevated sea levels, and coastal waters rich in nutrients may have supported an unusually diverse range of marine life. Another important factor was the emergence of new ocean connections between the eastern Pacific and the early Atlantic through the region that is now Colombia. Together, these conditions likely created opportunities for different groups of animals to thrive within the same ecosystem. Many of these environmental influences continue to shape biodiversity around the world today. "The Paja Formation records an extraordinary...