Guide of SEA PLANTS

Ireland: Pollution of the Irish Sea
The Issue Sellafield Nuclear Plant is located on the Northwest Coast of England on the Irish Sea.
Nuclear waste from this facility had turned the Irish sea into one of the most radioactive bodies of water in the world.
This pollution threatens the health of the British people as well as inhabitants of Ireland across the Irish Sea.
This is a controversial issue because of the environmental degradation of the Irish Sea.
Since 1952, Sellafield has been dumping radioactive waste into the Irish Sea.
This sea is now considered one of the most radioactive bodies of water in the world.
Fish, shellfish, and sea plants in the Irish Sea contain substantial amounts of radiation.
Spray from the Irish Sea turns into radioactive dust, and can be found on beaches and in people's homes.(1) Increased rates of cancer have been reported on the east coast of Ireland and west coast of England.
In the village of Seascale, near Sellafield, there has been a disproportionate amount of cancer reported among the population.
Leaks of radioactive waste are dangerous due to its half life of 24, 000 years.(6) This means that this waste will always be present in the Irish Sea.
The first of these was in 1957, when a large fire at the reactor core forced the operators to flood the core with water, and then entomb the fuel piles with concrete.(10) As a result of the fire, a highly radioactive cloud traveled south-east over England and Europe.(11) More recently in 1983, it was discovered that on three separate occasions, a mixture of radioactive waste, solvent, and water was directly discharged into the Irish Sea.


SEA PLANTS

Top Story - SEAWIFS SENSOR MARKS FIVE YEARS - 07/31/2002
The Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS), aboard the OrbView-2 satellite, has given researchers an unprecedented view of the biological engine that drives life on Earth -- the countless forms of plants that cover the land and fill the oceans.
SeaWiFS has enabled us, for the first time, to monitor the biological consequences of that change -- to see how the things we do, as well as natural variability, affect the Earth's ability to support life, " said Gene Carl Feldman, SeaWiFS project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Right now, almost half the oxygen you breathe is made by tiny single celled sea plants called phytoplankton.
With the launch of the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) five years ago on board the Orbview 2 satellite scientists had a new tool for studying how these plants interact with the world.
Using fives years of continual data from an orbiting instrument called SeaWiFS, NASA scientists have amassed a first look at how carbon moves through the biosphere.
Carbon is one of the most essential elements for life, and experts say that this research is a major step in the effort to monitor overall planetary health, from climate change to the rhythms of life in oceans and on land.

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info: SEA PLANTS


Photo by www.deepseaimages.com

:KIDS\' ZONE::Electricity:
Its light and warmth are necessary for humans, animals and plants to exist on planet Earth.
Millions of years ago, miniscule sea plants and animals gradually became part of the ocean floor.
Buried under enormous amounts of sand and silt, and subject to lots of pressure and heat, these plants and animals were gradually transformed into natural gas .
For millions of years, tiny sea plants have converted the sun's energy into living matter , which is then consumed by microscopic sea animals .
Eventually all of these plants and animals sink to the bottom of the sea, get stuck in the mud and turn into fossils.
In this case, it was plants, trees and ferns that stored and converted the sun's energy into living matter .
The same immense pressure throughout time turns the fossilized plants into coal, which is mined and then also burned to produce heat energy and boil water.

Benefits



Chapter 5: The Healing Power of Chemistry
That is precisely what biomedical researchers look for—chemicals that will poison bothersome types of fungi that can be dangerous to people infected with them..
Due in part to the disease and part to the treatment, illnesses like AIDS and cancer often set the stage for the body to become overwhelmingly infected by microbes that otherwise would be rejected at the door.
Looking to Sea The vast, largely unexplored seas are another promising source for medicines.
Scientists are plumbing the oceans' depths to discover novel molecules in organisms such as marine sponges, snails, and a wealth of other sea-worthy creatures.
It may seem surprising that, in general, fast swimmers and successful predators are not what the researchers are after.
On the contrary, scientists have come to appreciate the extraordinary chemical richness lying in wait inside the tastiest, most brightly colored 'couch potatoes' of the seas—the so-called filter feeders that stick to rocks and coral.
Scientists have discovered that some of these potent chemicals show tremendous promise for treating cancer and other diseases.
Researchers are finding one way around this dilemma by devising ways to make the compounds in their labs, but there are significant obstacles to efficiently synthesizing usable quantities of many of these chemicals.

SEA PLANTS: