Massive quantities of pelagic sargassum have been washing up along Caribbean shorelines this year, significantly disrupting local fishing, tourism and community activities. This ongoing event recently received considerable attention via the GCFINET LISTSERV. Those correspondences are providing extremely valuable information on this region-wide phenomenon.

 Scientists with the University of Southern Mississippi – Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL) and their collaborators are assessing critical aspects of this event (as with the 2011 Caribbean mass sargassum strandings event), including the source and causes. In 2012 the GCRL developed a website (with user-friendly online reporting form) designed specifically to accommodate the reporting of large quantities of pelagic sargassum throughout the Caribbean region. This site serves as a data reporting/collection center and represents a service available to individuals, organizations and fisheries agencies throughout the region for contributing their 

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A new study has found alarmingly high levels of pesticides in the urine of pregnant Costa Rican women working in and living near the banana industry in Matina, Limón. The chemical ethylene thiourea (ETU) found in the fungicide mancozeb, which is sprayed over banana plantations here, can be detrimental to fetal brain development, according to the report released Monday in Environmental Health Perspectives. Read more.

As fungus kills bats, MN timber industry winces: Minneapolis Star and Tribune| 8-19-14
A cave fungus that’s killing millions of bats across the country is threatening to become a big problem for Minnesota’s timber industry.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide next spring whether to add the northern long-eared bat, which is being wiped out in places by the disease called white nose syndrome, to the endangered species list.

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PARROTFISH eat algae and seaweed. These brightly colored fish with beaklike mouths inhabit coral reefs, the wellsprings of ocean life. Without them and other herbivores, algae and seaweed would overgrow the reefs, suppress coral growth and threaten the incredible array of life that depends on these reefs for shelter and food.

This was happening in Bermuda, until the government in 1990 banned fish traps that were decimating the parrotfish population. Today, Bermuda's coral reefs are relatively healthy, a bright spot in the wider Caribbean, where total coral cover has declined by half since 1970.

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An annotated list of 83 scale insect species (Hemiptera: Sterorrhyncha: Coccoidea) recorded from Saint Lucia is presented, based on data gathered fro...

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