Earthweek: a diary of the planet
For the week ending Friday, July 7.
The last resort
Mexican officials announced that they will enlist minehunting dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy to help save the last few remaining vaquita marina porpoises still living in the northern Gulf of California. Only about 30 of the world’s smallest porpoises are believed to have survived the gill nets illegally used to catch prized totoaba fish. The totoaba’s swim bladder can fetch $20,000 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) in China for use in a soup believed to increase fertility. The Navy dolphins will join boats and aircraft to track down the vaquitas and herd them for relocation to a large pen. Conservationists then plan to breed them and increase their population, but such a technique has yet to prove effective
Ill winds
New research confirms that airborne dust can affect the health of people and ecosystems by transporting attached bacteria hundreds of miles across the landscape during windstorms. Yinon Rudich and colleagues at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science found that some of those bacteria could even carry genes for antibiotic resistance. The researchers found that during a dust storm, the concentration of bacteria and number of bacteria species in the air rises sharply, meaning people walking outdoors during these storms are at a higher risk of infection.
A hotter Europe
Heat waves that have scorched many parts of Western Europe and Britain this summer have been made more intense by climate change, scientists say. The heat caused deadly wildfires in Spain and Portugal, and brought France its hottest June night ever. An international coalition of scientists ran weather simulations with and without factoring in man-made climate change. They found that heat waves in southern Europe are now 10 times more likely because of human-related global warming.
Brief Ebola
The Democratic Republic of the Congo declared its outbreak of Ebola over after 42 days without any new cases. Only eight people are believed to have contracted the hemorrhagic disease since it emerged in May, with four fatalities. Immediate door-to-door intervention in the country’s remote forests is credited with keeping it from spreading. The latest outbreak came a year after Ebola spread across a wide stretch of West Africa.
Java eruption
Dozens of people were injured while fleeing a volcano that suddenly erupted on the Indonesian island of Java. Lava and ash spewed without warning. The subsequent crash of an arriving rescue helicopter killed eight.