The hunt for Soviet submarines, a 5-foot-long shipworm, the impossibilities of deep-sea mining, and more! Massive Monday Morning Salvage: March 5, 2018.

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • The secret on the ocean floor: the wild, weird origin of the modern deep-sea mining industry, complete with spies, Soviet submarines, and Howard Hughes. How much is real? How much is emergent from this first fake venture? If you only read one thing about deep-sea mining, read this.

We really misled a lot of people and it’s surprising that the story held together for so long”

source.

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Biodiversity Wednesday – The Sundarbans

http://www.somen2020world.com/

This week for Biodiversity Wednesday, we bring you to the Sundarbans of Bangladesh and eastern India. They’re wild, wet, and full of mangroves and tigers. In fact, it’s the world’s largest mangrove forest at 140,000 hectares and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for cultural and ecological value. The area is perhaps most famous for housing the charismatic Bengal tiger, estuarine crocodile and Indian python among a habitat of endangered flora and fauna.

The Sundarbans are protected primarily for their unique ecological processes, making it on our list for their special kind of biodiversity. These processes include monsoon rains, flooding, delta formation, tidal influence, and plant colonization that are all part of the life of a dynamic mangrove forest.

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Biodiversity Wednesday – The Western Ghats

This year, we’re going to change around our Biodiversity Wednesday series. Instead of posting a YouTube clip of some various organism or region, we’re going to highlight a lesser known region of biodiversity importance and discuss related conservation and management issues.

Located along the west coast of India, the Western Ghats are a 1600-km mountain range formed when the Indian sub-continent split from Gondwana approximately 150 million years ago. These basalt mountains are rich in iron ore and, to a lesser extent, bauxite, making them prime candidates for mineral extraction. Due to the position of the mountains, the Western Ghats interact with the annual monsoon season to generate high amounts of rainfall. Nearly 40% of all Indian river systems drain through the Western Ghats.

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