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Help us get our Umbra back

So I’m getting ready to make my Christmas wreath and I’m wondering whether there’s someplace I can get organic pine cones and I go to check it out with my […]

Holy December, Batman!

It’s snowing!

Rogue flying fish and the ‘big, blue rubbish bin’

Ireland was poised to ask the European Union to permanently ban deep-sea fishing off the country's Atlantic coast to protect coldwater coral reefs ...

... the E.U. completed negotiations with non-E.U. member state Norway for 2008, allowing Norway and the E.U. to increase their North Sea cod catch by 11 percent in exchange for the E.U. reducing its cod discards, or unwanted bycatch, to 10 percent ...

... a marine scientist called for a worldwide oceans monitoring system, including tagged marine creatures and robot submarines, in order to protect humanity from an ocean-based disaster ...

House Democrats agree to raise auto fuel economy to 35 mpg

Democratic leaders in the U.S. House reached a deal late Friday night to raise fuel-economy standards for cars and light trucks to an average of 35 miles per gallon by […]

Friday music blogging: Alice Smith

Alice Smith is a gorgeous new singer out of Brooklyn, doing a variant of R&B that somehow manages to sound both idiosyncratic and traditionalist, modern and timeless. Her debut album […]

More than a quarter of U.S. bird species are endangered

It’s not a good time to be a bird in the U.S. The Watch List 2007, published by the National Audubon Society and American Bird Conservancy, finds that 178 bird […]

Gray wolves in Southwest aren’t faring well

Mexican gray wolves are running into all kinds of trouble in the American Southwest. The wolves were hunted to the brink of extinction in the early 1900s; reintroduction began in […]

FEMA sets deadline for Katrina trailer park closures

What’s worse than being a storm victim housed in a formaldehyde-soaked trailer that makes you sick? How about getting kicked out of said dwelling? FEMA has announced an accelerated schedule […]

EPA sued by 12 states over relaxed toxic-chemical rule

The U.S. EPA’s moves to relax the nation’s toxics reporting rule will not go unchallenged. Twelve states have announced they’re suing the agency over rule changes to the Toxics Release […]

An influx of jellies in strange places is not so hard to explain

Over Thanksgiving, I came across a news story that may represent the perfect storm of issues plaguing the oceans. A salmon farm in Northern Ireland was wiped out by a huge swarm of mauve stingers (Pelagia noctiluca), a jelly usually found in the warm Mediterranean sea.

In a 35-foot-deep, 10-square-mile swath, the jellies stung and killed 100,000 salmon before workers could reach the pens. It must have been quite a sight. The jelly's scientific name means "light of the sea," and the creatures give off an eerie, purple-red glow. I can only imagine that, at that scale, the sea looked possessed.

The incident may seem strange and isolated, but it touches on three major issues facing the oceans.