Smithsonian.com

The overfishing of tuna caused a flurry of stories this summer, from United States officials pointing fingers at Europe for surpassing annual International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) fishing quotas to Japan considering substitutes like deer and horse for the sushi staple.

But the European Commission recently banned the fishing of endangered bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean for the rest of the year. The ban affects Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Spain. Italy and France (deemed one of the main culprits by WWF) have already closed down tuna fisheries for 2007. One of the main causes of diminishing tuna stocks is the under-reporting of catches, according to the EU.

It’s not as though the United States doesn’t contribute to the low numbers. Carl Safina, president of the Blue Ocean Institute, and other tuna experts fess up to our faults, according to the New York Times. Safina is reportedly calling for an Atlantic-wide, five-year ban and the closing of bluefin spawning areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a step in the right direction, San Diego-based American Albacore Fishing Association became the world’s first sustainable tuna fishery this month. Certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, the fishery adheres to methods that avoid overfishing and the bycatch of seabirds, sea turtles and other fish. The WWF reports that consumers will be able to buy the MSC-certified tuna in stores nationwide later this year.

About a third of carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed into the oceans, which heats them up and makes them more acidic. So acidic that ocean water in 2050 will have the pH of industrial waste, reports a Stanford team today.

Luckily, the acidity won’t affect fish because they’ll all be dead by 2050, according to last year’s report in the journal Science.

The pH process–called “ocean acidification”–especially affects small shells and corals in shallow coastal waters (the ones you see in postcards): the Caribbean, South East Asia, Hawaii.

The good news is that the ocean will be really really really clean. Antibacterial clean. It’s a bit like throwing out the baby with the bath water–if it were a baby capable of providing food and water to the world’s population. But man, the postcards will be beautiful in the future. All that windex-blue, burns-to-the-touch water.

After gains in the 1990s, loggerhead sea turtle nesting surveys reveal declines over the last five years, according to the New York Times.

The 300-pound reptiles, with heads and necks out of proportion to their bodies, nest from North Carolina to Texas. Only the females come out of the water onto the beach to lay their eggs.

Though researchers can’t give a definite reason for the decline, they said increased commercial fishing may have something to do with it. Loggerheads get caught in nets and caught on baited hooks intended for other fish.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted a 7 to 23-inch rise in sea level by the end of the century in its first of four climate change reports back in February. But this rising of the seas is hard to perceive–that is, if you’re not a Tuvaluan.

Tuvalu, a group of nine coral atolls located in the South Pacific halfway between Hawaii and Australia, could easily disappear. According to one study, the island group, standing at less than two meters above sea level, could be underwater in the next 30 to 50 years.

Meanwhile, seawater is seeping into the underground water table, causing problems for farmers and threatening the drinking supply. The government appealed to New Zealand and Australia in 2000 to take in the 11,000 or so Tuvaluans should there be need for an evacuation. And just weeks ago at a global warming symposium in Seoul, Korea, Tuvalu Deputy Prime Minister Tavau Teii urged the world to do more to combat global warming.

The continuing increase in temperatures has been seen across the globe, but perhaps nowhere so visually as in the Arctic.

As permafrost melts, it’s revealing valuable fossils from mammoths and other prehistoric animals, worth tens of thousands of dollars, and often sold to museums. Finding and selling the remains can be a much-needed cash flow in impoverished Arctic villages, like this one in Siberia.

But the thawing permafrost doesn’t only give up valuable mammoth tusks and skulls: it also exposes mammoth stools to the air, releasing a stink not smelled for millennia. And the stink isn’t even the bad part: as microbes in the feces warm up and become active again, the ancient dung releases carbon dioxide and methane, contributing even further to global warming.