We summarize results of two independent studies on plastic pollution in the marine environment that overlap in time and space. One study evaluated the abundance of anthropogenic debris on 37 sandy beaches bordering the Salish Sea in Washington State while the other characterized plastic debris in surface waters of the Salish Sea and the Inside Passage to Skagway, Alaska. Both studies concluded ...

Destruction and pollution of coral reefs threaten these marine biodiversity hot stops which shelter more than two thirds of sea snake species. Notably, in many coral reef ecosystems of the Western Pacific Ocean, large populations of sea kraits (amphibious sea snakes) have drastically declined during the past three decades. Protecting remaining healthy populations is thus essential. In New Caled...

This paper presents a multi-agent robotic fish system used for mariculture monitoring. Autonomous robotic fish is designed to swim underwater to collect marine information such as water temperature and pollution level. Each robotic fish has 5 degrees of freedom for controlling its depth and speed by mimicking a sea carp. Its bionic body design enables it to have high swimming efficiency and les...

This paper studies the inter-annual precipitation variations in different regions of East Asia from oceans to interior areas in China during 1979 - 2012. The results computed by Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOF) demonstrate that the annual precipitation changes are mainly related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, East Asian summer monsoon and aerosols. We also found that the increased Sea...

The objective of this article is to find the optimal trajectory of a pumping ship, used to clean oil spots in the open sea, in order to pump the maximum quantity of pollutant on a fixed time period. We use a model previously developed to simulate the evolution of the oil spots concentration due to the coupling of diffusion, transport from the wind, sea currents and pumping process and reaction ...

This paper proposes an advanced navigation decision support system (NAVDEC) mainly to avoid the collision among two or more vessels in sea. More commonly the faults can be occurred by the mistakes of human where it can be avoided by the decision support system. Decision can be taken by the navigator in critical situations with the help of the gathered information from different identification a...

With oil pollution recognized as a major threat to British Columbia's recovering sea otter (Enhydra lutris) population, it is important to distinguish acute from chronic exposures to oil constituent groups in this marine mammal. Concentrations and patterns of alkanes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were determined in blood samples from 29 live-captured sea otters in two coastal area...