Restoring Seabird Populations Can Help Repair the Climate – Inside Climate News

Puffins on the coast of Fife, Scotland (by Magnus Hagdorn CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr).

The number of ocean going birds has declined 70 percent since the 1950s. New research shows how projects bringing them back can also bolster ocean ecosystems that sequester carbon.

Seabirds evolved about 60 million years ago, as Earth’s continents drifted toward their current positions and modern oceans took shape. They spread across thousands of undisturbed islands in the widening seas. And as flying dinosaurs and giant omnivorous sea reptiles died out, seabirds also started filling an ecological niche as ecosystem engineers…

Climate Change Enables the Spread of a Dangerous Flesh-Eating Bacteria in US Coastal Waters, Study Says – Inside Climate News

False color scanning electron micrograph of w:en: Vibrio vulnificus bacteria (courtesy of CDC Image Library / James Gathany (PHIL #7815), Public domain, via Wikimedia).

Cases of a potentially fatal infection from a seawater-borne pathogen have increased off the U.S. Atlantic coast as ocean waters warmed over the last 30 years, and are expected to rise further in future because of climate change, according to a study published on Thursday by Scientific Reports, an open-access journal for research on the natural sciences and other topics…

The Red Sea Could be a Climate Refuge for Coral Reefs – Inside Climate News

A flat fan at Elphinstone Reef, Red Sea, Egypt (by Derek Keats CC BY 2.0 via Flickr).

When Lina Challita dives along Egypt’s coast, she doesn’t just see a colorful array of corals and fish. She sees hope. Against the grim backdrop of climate models that project most coral reefs dying by the end of this century in overheating oceans, the northern end of the Red Sea may end up being one of the last places on Earth where those critical ocean ecosystems can survive, at least at least for a while, and perhaps longer if countries of the world manage to cap global warming and stabilize the climate…