The Scanner: Sobering Studies Edition - Oceana USA
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May 29, 2009

The Scanner: Sobering Studies Edition

Happy Friday! Spoiler alert: this edition of the scanner is a tad depressing. But there is one bright spot: Oceana has joined Twitter! Follow us at http://twitter.com/oceana for the latest ocean news and victories. If you’re an active tweeter yourself, use the hash tag #worldoceansday on World Oceans Day, June 8. If you use the tag and mention us in your tweets on June 8 we’ll try to re-tweet you. This week in ocean news,…According to a new study by the U.S.G.S., the level of methylmercury contamination in Pacific fish has increased 30 percent since 1990 as a result of mercury atmospheric emission rates from Asia, and is expected to increase 50 percent by 2050. Tuna from the Pacific comprises 40 percent of human mercury exposure in the U.S. …A new study by the Nature Conservancy reports that 85% of oyster reefs have been lost worldwide, and in North America, Europe and Australia, oysters are “functionally extinct.”…A new study in Science predicts that there will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by 2050 if current trends continue. One piece of good news: the study shows that marine protected areas work, so creating more of them would protect existing stocks….New predictions show that Greenland’s melting ice sheet could drive more water than previously thought toward the northeast coast of the U.S. and Canada.