The new study, published in Global Environmental Change, found that both Europeans and Australians were highly concerned about the human health impact of marine plastic pollution, ranking it top of 16 marine-related threats in terms of cause for concern, including chemical or oil spills, marine biodiversity loss and climate change related effects such as sea-level rise and ocean acidification.
E-Mail When herring are filleted, more than half their weight becomes a low-value side stream that never reaches our plates - despite being rich in protein and healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Now, scientists from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a special dipping solution, with ingredients including rosemary extract and citric acid, which can significantly extend the side streams shelf life, and increase the opportunities to use them as food.
Techniques for upgrading these side-streams to food products such as minces, protein isolates, hydrolysates and oils are already available today, and offer the chance to reduce the current practices of using them for animal feed, or, in the worst cases, simply throwing them away.
Deep down in the ocean, valuable raw materials are stored, such as nodules of manganese. These resources could help meeting our increasing demand for rare metals. In addition to the nodules, there is another treasure down there: A complex ecosystem we barely understand. Researchers from Bremen and the Netherlands have discovered that sponges settling on the nodules provide a home for many other animals. Without nodules, diversity in these deep-sea regions would be significantly lower.
The researchers found incompatibilities between mammals and amphibians in the relation between body size and extinction risk.
The researchers found that the females of smaller amphibians, such as rain frogs (Eleutherodactylus), produce a smaller number of offspring per clutch.