Environment

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program announced today the funding of 15 grants totaling more than $2.2 million through the jointly managed Coral Reef Conservation Fund (Coral Fund). The grants will help prevent further negative impacts to coral reefs by educating local communities and improving management effectiveness.

A larger facility to focus on Great Lakes issues opened today following a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) in Pittsfield Township, Mich.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's space agency will launch a satellite later this month to monitor greenhouse gases around the world, officials said Wednesday, hoping the data it collects helps global efforts to combat climate change.

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile (Reuters) - A yellow robot submarine will dive under an ice shelf in Antarctica to seek clues to world ocean level rises in one of the most inaccessible places on earth.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan aims to expand the "green business" market and create up to 1 million new jobs, the environment ministry said on Wednesday, to simultaneously fight climate change and boost the economy amid a global downturn.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Japanese whalers accused hardline anti-whaling activists on Wednesday of disrupting a search for a missing sailor believed to have drowned after toppling overboard in stormy and frigid seas close to Antarctica.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Climate change and rising sea levels pose one of the biggest threats to security in the Pacific and may also spark a global conflict over energy reserves under melting Arctic ice, according to Australia's military.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km) of the Pacific ocean on Tuesday as a protected region, White House officials said, making the areas hands-off for oil drilling or other extraction procedures.

NOAA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware are seeking public comment on a restoration plan to repair and improve shoreline and habitats of the Delaware River damaged by a vessel oil spill in 2004.

U.S. commercial and recreational fishing generated more than $185 billion in sales and supported more than two million jobs in 2006, according to a new economic report released by NOAA's Fisheries Service.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km) of the Pacific ocean on Tuesday as a protected region, White House officials said, making the areas hands-off for oil drilling or other extraction procedures.

Manila, Philippines - Two brave fishermen from the Philippines began the year by saving the life of a trapped dugong or sea cow, the ancient sea mammal generally credited with being the origin of the mermaid myth.

On the afternoon of 1 January Henry Barlas, from the coastal barangay of Maruyogon in Puerto Princesa, noticed something unusual as he gazed at the shallow lagoon fronting his home. Less than 10 metres from shore a 2.6m long dugong lay trapped and weakened by the tide, clearly fighting for life.

Without hesitation he called his colleague Paquito Abia and with the aid of volunteers pushed the refrigerator-sized animal to safety. Since the creature was too weak to fight the ebb tide, the two fishermen fastened a rope around its midriff - it was to survive the swells that drove it ashore the animal needed to recuperate in waist-high water.

In the morning Barlas immediately notified both local officials and WWF-Philippines of the stranding before heading off to check on the dugong. When WWF assessed that the animal was fit enough for release, its ropes were untied and the animal was gradually coaxed out of the lagoon. Cheering onlookers flocked ashore to bid farewell to the wondrous creature brought in by the tide.

WWF Project Manager Mavic Matillano said: “The best part was that we barely needed to do anything. Both Henry and Paquito acted out of instinct and for this we are doubly proud. It seems that the long years of conducting dugong awareness campaigns have once again paid off.”

Trapped under similar conditions, another dugong was rescued by a 15-year old boy in 2007. “Marine mammal strandings are uncommon occurrences but they do happen,” said resident WWF dugong expert Sheila Albasin. “Fortunately it seems people know what to do when a stranding does take place.”

The gentle dugong or sea cow inhabits shallow waters of the Indo-Pacific, wherever seagrass is most abundant. It is the fourth member of the order Sirenia, alongside the three manatee species. A fifth, the gigantic eight-metre long steller’s sea cow, was completely wiped out in 1768, just 30 years after being discovered.

Sizeable herds of dugong - the source of popular mermaid lore - once plied the Philippine archipelago until hunting and habitat degradation reduced overall numbers. When seen from above, the top half of a dugong can appear like that of a human woman. Coupled with the tail fin, this produced an image of what mariners often mistook for an aquatic human.

Thriving populations are now protected in Isabela, Southern Mindanao and Palawan, keeping seagrass meadows cropped, healthy and productive. Dugongs are thought to live up to 70 years, but give birth to a only single calf every three to five years. They are classified by the IUCN as vulnerable and it is one of the flagship species that WWF protects in the Philippines.

In the last decade WWF helped establish a Roxas-based marine-mammal rescue network which has been monitoring strandings and spearheading rescues of dugongs accidentally entangled in fishing gear. Awareness drives to protect not just dugongs, but dolphins and whales, are still conducted regularly.

Juliana P. Blackwell has been named the new director of NOAA’s Office of National Geodetic Survey where she will oversee NOAA's responsibilities for the nation's spatial reference system. She is the first woman to head the nation's oldest federal science agency which was established by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807 as the Survey of the Coast.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - A biodiversity researcher has found a huge basalt rock formation in the Taiwan Strait, resembling a city wall and rivaling similar monoliths on land.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny diamonds sprinkled across North America suggest a "swarm" of comets hit the Earth around 13,000 years ago, kicking up enough disruption to send the planet into a cold spell and drive mammoths and other creatures into extinction, scientists reported on Friday.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Oil from the seeds of a poisonous shrub helped power a New Zealand airliner in a test flight, at a time when airlines hit by high oil prices and pressured over the impact of planes on the environment seek greener fuels.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Chinese companies on Friday announced plans to build a solar power plant in northwestern China that could one day be the largest photovoltaic solar project in the world.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Hardline anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said it has been forced to temporarily abandon its pursuit of Japan's whaling fleet in the Antarctic while its ship refuels.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Chinese companies on Friday announced plans to build a solar power plant in northwestern China that could one day be the largest photovoltaic solar project in the world.