When a chartered fishing boat strewed 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the ocean off western Canada last July, the goal was to supercharge the marine ecosystem. The iron was meant to fertilize plankton, boost salmon populations and sequester carbon. Whether the ocean responded as hoped is not clear, but the project has touched off an explosion on land, angering scientists, embarrassing a village of indigenous people and enraging opponents of geoengineering.

Rich in fish, minerals and scientific potential, the seas around Antarctica are among the planet’s most pristine waters — but fishing vessels are already moving in. Next week, negotiators at a meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR, pronounced ‘cam-lar’) may try to contain the accelerating rush to access the region’s natural resources. At stake is one of the planet’s last great wildernesses — as well as the credibility of the international body set up to protect Antarctica’s marine life.

Estimation of nutrition profile of edible fishes is essential and thus a bio-monitoring study was carried out to find out the nutritional composition of commonly available fishes in Agatti Island water of Lakshadweep Sea. Protein, carbohydrate, lipid, ash, vitamin, amino acid and fatty acid composition in the muscle of ten edible fish species were studied.

This study develops a wide-ranging index to assess the many factors that contribute to the health and benefits of the oceans, and the scores for all costal nations are assessed.

The European Union Council Regulation on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing states that, exports of fish and fishery products from those countries which do not comply with its articles would be rejected by the EU from 1 January 2010 onwards. Since the EU is the major seafood market for developing countries, this regulation is of great significance to trade in fish and fishery products.

Antimicrobials used in salmon aquaculture pass into the marine environment. This could have negative impacts on marine environmental biodiversity, and on terrestrial animal and human health as a result of selection for bacteria containing antimicrobial resistance genes. We therefore measured the numbers of culturable bacteria and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in marine sediments in the Calbuco Archipelago, Chile, over 12-month period at a salmon aquaculture site approximately 20 m from a salmon farm and at a control site 8 km distant without observable aquaculture activities.