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Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Live green by conserving water, eating organic food, being vegetarian, and buying non-toxic products can help lessen global warming, which is causing water temperatures to rise, upsetting the oceans’ delicate balance.

Take Your Car To The Carwash

Washing your car at home not only uses 60%-percent more water than a commercial car wash, but the untreated detergent runoff ends up in streams, lakes, and the ocean.

Pick Up After Pets

A recent U.S. Geological Survey study of streams and creeks in Kansas showed that pet-waste germs made up approximately a quarter of the bacteria in samples collected from local waterways. When enough bacteria get into the ocean, they can cause beach and shellfish-bed closures and threaten the drinking supply.

Watch What You Wash Down The Drain

Cooking grease, excessive food waste, and trash in sink drains and disposals can accumulate in city sewer lines and cause blockages that create sewage overflows into the ocean. Only use the disposal for organic waste.

Use Natural Personal-care And Laundry Products

Everything you put on your body eventually goes down the drain when you shower, as does the water from your washing machine. Waste-water treatment plants are not equipped to filter out these types of chemicals.

Be A Green Boater

Use nontoxic cleaning products and paints over a drop-cloth, recycle used oil, and schedule regular maintenance to avoid fuel and lubricant leaks.

Organize Clean-Ups Of Nearby Beaches

Last year, volunteers collected almost 18,000 pounds of debris from 130 miles of coastline, according to Coastsweep, a UMass-Boston group that organizes statewide cleanups.

Use Cloth Shopping Bags

Plastic bags cause the deaths of 100,000 marine animals each year when the animals mistake them for food, so if you must use them, always recycle them in the bin at your supermarket.

Choose Your Fish Carefully

Many marine species are over-fished, and some have high levels of mercury and PCBs. Buy only “ocean-friendly seafood”.

Cut Up Mono-filament Fishing Line, String, And Rope Before Discarding

Seabirds and other creatures can get tangled in lines, and marine mammals often mistake balloons for food.

Vote With The Environment In Mind

Lobby your legislators to end harmful fishing methods, set tougher safety standards for oil spills, and keep shoreline development in check, among other things.

Use Less Plastic And Always Recycle

According to Greenpeace, about 10 million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean annually; much of it has collected in a spiral in the north Pacific. The “garbage vortex” is the size of Texas, and it’s not getting any smaller.

Help Prevent Air Pollution

Air pollution contributes to water pollution and increases acidity in oceans and lakes. You can reduce your output by avoiding aerosols and driving less, for starters.

Use Only Natural Lawn Products, Landscape Your Property To Lessen Erosion

About 60 percent of soil that’s washed away ends up in waterways, bringing pesticides, fertilizer, and terrestrial bacteria with it.

Don’t Flush Unused Or Expired Medications

Hormones, antidepressants, painkillers, and other drugs are showing up in our water supply and harming aquatic life. Crush unused pills and throw them away in kitty litter, used coffee grounds, or other unpalatable items.

If You Have A Saltwater Fish Tank, Buy Only Marine Aquarium Council-certified Fish, Never Return Them To The Ocean

Pacific Lionfish is just one species that has proliferated in the southern Atlantic and Caribbean after hobbyists released the fish when they got too big for their tanks. A single Lionfish can reduce recruitment of other fish on a reef by a staggering 85%-percent, and these apex predators are threatening both commercial fishing and tourism.

Flex Your Consumer Power

Learn about companies’ environmental policies and buy only from those that promote green practices. Don’t buy products that exploit the oceans, such as coral calcium, shark cartilage supplements, and coral jewelry, and if you take fish oil, you can substitute equally healthy flaxseed oil.

Don’t Throw Trash In Waterways

Cigarette butts, which take up to five years to break down in saltwater, can kill birds and aquatic animals that mistake them for food.

Don’t Use Antibacterial Soap

Its most common ingredient, triclosan, is not completely removed during waste-water treatment, and is toxic to marine organisms.

Don’t Use Soap In Or Near Open Water

Only three parts per million can kill sea urchin embryos, for example.

Dispose Hazardous Waste Properly

Take motor oil, paint, antifreeze, pesticides, and solvent containers and leftovers to a hazardous waste drop-off site rather than pouring them into storm drains or sewers. Clean up spills rather than hosing them into the street.

Service Your Septic System

Make sure your septic system operates properly by having it inspected and pumped at least every three to five years.

Take Up Scuba Diving

It’s safe and will help you appreciate the underwater world.

Use Waterproof Sunscreen

Don’t be a one-person oil spill. Greasy, oily sunscreen leaves a sheen of residue on everything including the ocean.

Use Newspaper Or Popcorn As Packing Material

Never use plastic peanuts and make sure to recycle all plastic material you receive from shipping boxes.

Use Organic Fertilizer

Using compost and organic fertilizers in your lawn and garden keeps rivers and streams clean and free of toxic chemicals.

Carpool

Ride your bike, walk, use public transportation or carpool to cut down on carbon emissions.

Support Save The Whales, Save The Shark Campaigns

We rely on the top predators of the sea in order to keep eco-systems in balance including carbon consuming plankton.

Say No To Drilling

Offshore drilling results in a wide range of health and reproductive problems for fish and other marine life.

Make A Donation

If you can, provide financial support.

“Ten new possible species could change everything about the way we think about deep-sea life in the Atlantic Ocean.

The images were captured by researchers from the University of Aberdeen during more than 300 hours of diving with a remotely operated vehicle between 2,300 feet and 12,000 feet deep along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the largest mountain range on Earth, which runs down the center of the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and Africa on the east and the Americas on the west.

Three of the species, which look like colorful wavy worms, belong to a group of creatures called Enteropneust, which is believed to be the evolutionary link between backbone and invertebrate animals. Previously only a few specimens of the group, from the Pacific Ocean, were known to science.

“They have no eyes, no obvious sense organs or brain but there is a head end, tail end and the primitive body plan of backboned animals is established,” said Monty Priede, one of the lead researchers on the project, part of the Census of Marine Life.

One of the most surprising observations by the researchers was how different the species are on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, just tens of miles apart. “[The two sides of the ridge are] mirror images of each other,” Priede said. “but that is where the similarity ended.”

“It seemed like we were in a scene from Alice Through the Looking Glass,” Pried said. “This expedition has revolutionized our thinking about deep-sea life in the Atlantic Ocean. It shows that we cannot just study what lives around the edges of the ocean and ignore the vast array of animals living on the slopes and valleys in the middle of the ocean.” “

Airing on the Science Channel 08/09 - 08/24.

Vampyroteuthis, the “vampire squid from hell”, a ‘living fossil’.

Wikipedia:

“At a maximum 30 cm (1 ft) in total length, the vampire squid is no threat to humans. Its 15 cm (6 inch) gelatinous body varies in color between velvety jet-black and pale reddish, depending on location and lighting conditions. A webbing of skin connects its eight arms, each lined with rows of fleshy spines or cirri; the inside of this “cloak” is black. Only the distal half (farthest from the body) of the arms have suckers. Its limpid, globular eyes; which appear red or blue, also depending on lighting; are proportionately the largest in the animal kingdom at 2.5 cm (1 inch) in diameter.^{[citation needed]}

Dorsal view Oral view

Mature adults have a pair of ear-like fins projecting from the lateral sides of the mantle. These fins serve as the adult’s primary means of propulsion: vampire squid “fly” through the water by flapping their fins. Their powerful beak-like jaws are as white as ivory. Within the webbing are two pouches wherein the tactile velar filaments are concealed. The filaments are analogous to a true squid’s tentacles, extending well past the arms; however, they are a different arm pair than the squid’s tentacles. Instead, the filaments are the same pair that were lost by the ancestral octopuses.”