Hawai‘i oceans will become more acidic than ever, and that's bad news for coral reefs
Goat saved: Stranded goat on Hawi cliff side has been rescued
The acidification process happens as the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This endangers our coral reefs and other marine organisms.
'The results show the potential conditions of acidification that corals may experience; however, the extremity of the conditions varies based on the climate scenario that the world follows,' said Brain Powell, UH Mānoa Professor.
Researchers remain optimistic, for some organisms have shown signs of adapting to previous changing waters.
'In the best case, corals will be impacted, but it could be manageable,' said Powell. 'This study is a big first step to examine the totality of changes that will impact corals and other marine organisms and how it varies around the islands.'
Download the free KHON2 app for iOS or Android to stay informed on the latest news
These studies are significant to researchers, conservationists, and policymakers to help them understand how to preserve these vital ecosystems for generations to come.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
12 hours ago
- Fox News
Ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs reappear on Oahu beach after shifting tides
Seasonal tides and ocean swells have uncovered ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs on Oahu, exposing over two dozen human-like carvings last seen years ago.
CNN
16 hours ago
- CNN
Thousands of mosquitoes are being dropped by drone over islands in Hawaii. Here's why
In June, dozens of biodegradable pods fell from the sky over the forests of Hawaii. Each one, delivered by drone, contained about 1,000 mosquitoes. These weren't just any mosquitoes — they were non-biting, lab-reared male mosquitoes carrying a common bacterium that results in eggs that don't hatch when the males mate with wild females. The hope is that they will help to control the archipelago's invasive mosquito population, which is decimating native bird populations, such as rare Hawaiian honeycreepers. The birds, which are key pollinators and seed dispersers and also play a central role in Hawaiian culture, are in dire straits. There were once more than 50 known species of honeycreepers in Hawaii, but today there are only 17 left, most of which are endangered. Last year, the 'akikiki, a small gray bird, went functionally extinct in the wild, and less than 100 of the yellow-green ʻakekeʻe are estimated to remain. Development and deforestation have had an impact, but according to Dr. Chris Farmer, Hawaii program director for the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), the 'existential threat' is avian malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes. The insects are not native to Hawaii, but were first reported in 1826, likely unintentionally carried over by whaling vessels. 'They caused waves of extinction,' says Farmer, as many native birds, such as the honeycreepers, had no resistance to the disease. Since mosquitoes thrive in the warmer tropical habitats in the low elevations of Hawaii's islands, the remaining honeycreepers found a refuge higher up in the mountains of islands such as Maui and Kauai, he explains. Now, this is changing. 'With climate change, we are seeing warmer temperatures and we're watching the mosquitoes move up the mountains,' he says. '(In places like Kauai) we're watching the populations of birds there just completely plummet.' 'It's a constant march of mosquitoes moving up as the temperatures allow them and the birds getting pushed further and further up until there's no habitat left that they can survive in. 'If we don't break that cycle, we're going to lose our honeycreepers,' he adds. Conservationists have been searching for a solution to control mosquito populations and provide a lifeline to the honeycreepers. But dealing with mosquitoes on a landscape scale is difficult, says Farmer, who explains that the use of pesticides, for instance, would also damage native insect populations such as damselflies and fruit flies that are vital to ecosystems. Because mosquitoes are also such a huge threat to human health, spreading human malaria, dengue fever and the zika virus, among others, scientists have been studying the problem for decades, coming up with various solutions, including the incompatible insect technique (IIT). This involves releasing male mosquitoes that have a strain of naturally occurring bacteria called Wolbachia, which causes non-viable eggs when they mate with wild females. Over time, with repeated releases, the wild population should decline as a result. Related article The world's smallest elephants are facing extinction. One woman has a plan to save them In 2016, ABC, together with Birds, Not Mosquitoes, a multi-agency partnership dedicated to protecting Hawaiian honeycreepers, decided IIT had the best chance of succeeding in Hawaii and started to investigate how to apply the same technique to mosquitoes transmitting avian malaria. 'The mosquito that transmits avian malaria is different from the one that transmits human malaria,' explains Farmer, so they began testing various strains of Wolbachia within the southern house mosquitoes found in Hawaii to determine which one was most effective. The process took several years, due to 'a combination of the science, community engagement and the regulatory process,' says Farmer, adding that, naturally, 'whenever you say, 'I want to release millions of mosquitoes in the forest,' people have a lot of very legitimate questions.' In 2022 they started ramping up production, rearing millions of mosquitoes with the chosen Wolbachia strain in a laboratory in California. The following year, they started releasing the insects in areas where the honeycreepers live in Maui, dropping them in biodegradable pods from helicopters. 'We have a rough estimate for how many mosquitoes there are in the wild, and we try to release 10 times as many of these Wolbachia mosquitoes, so (that they) find these females and are able to mate with them, and then their eggs don't hatch,' says Farmer. 'Right now, we're releasing 500,000 mosquitoes a week on Maui and 500,000 mosquitoes a week on Kauai,' he adds, using both drones and helicopters. According to Farmer, it's the first example globally of IIT being used for conservation purposes. If successful, he hopes it will inspire uses elsewhere. He warns, however, that while in Hawaii they felt confident using the technique because mosquitoes are an invasive species that have only been around for 200 years and therefore play no major ecological role, in other countries where they are native, the technique could have unintended repercussions to the ecosystem. One of the major barriers to releasing the insects in Hawaii has been the remote, mountainous terrain, prone to strong winds and unpredictable weather. The program has had to rely mainly on helicopters for releases, but these are expensive to run and there are a limited number on the archipelago, with competing needs for firefighting, safety and tourism, says Farmer. Often, missions have had to be called off last minute due to weather, he adds. This is where drones come in. After months of testing the aerial vehicles in demanding conditions, checking their range, and designing protective, temperature-controlled parcels that can safely carry mosquitoes and be fixed onto the body, they successfully started deploying mosquitoes by drone in June. It is the 'first known instance of specialized mosquito pods being dropped by drones,' says Adam Knox, project manager for ABC's aerial deployment of mosquitoes. 'We have more flexibility with deployment timing in areas that generally have very unpredictable weather and it's safer because no humans need to ride in the aircraft to deploy the mosquitoes.' It also 'reduces costs, team flight times, emissions and noise, which in turn means cheaper, more sustainable deployments,' he adds. Farmer expects it to be a year or so before they will see the results of the deployments and whether the IIT technique is working. However, he is hopeful that it will help 'buy time' for the birds to recover. A recent study from San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute found there is still time to save honeycreepers like the ʻakekeʻe from extinction if IIT mosquito control efforts are successful. Christopher Kyriazis, postdoctoral researcher from San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and lead author of the report, told CNN that their modeling demonstrated the urgency of the situation: 'If you wait even a couple years, the window narrows really quickly.' While IIT is 'ambitious' and has never been used on this scale for these sorts of conservation aims before, he believes 'there is hope for the species, if it can be effective.' If mosquito populations were under control, there is the possibility that the honeycreepers would have time to replenish populations and with more genetic diversity, and may even develop their own resistance to avian malaria. There are already signs of that happening with one honeycreeper species, the 'amakihi, on Hawaii Island, says Farmer. Related article The fish collectors hoping to save rare species from extinction However, Kyriazis cautions that 'even if a (protective) mutation did arise at this point, for it to be able to spread through the population fast enough to save it is very unlikely.' A safer environment would also give the opportunity to reintroduce captive populations of birds like the 'akikiki; although it is extinct in the wild, some are being bred at bird conservation centers in Hawaii. For Farmer, being at the forefront of this effort and seeing birds go extinct is 'soul shattering.' But it also drives him. 'We have the ability to save these species,' he says. 'If we don't save these birds in this decade, then they probably won't be here for the future. And so the ability to make a difference in the world, make a difference in the future, motivates us all.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
The newest member of the Solar System, Ammonite? It was discovered by a wide-lens, 870MP camera that weighs more than three tons
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Typically, telescopes are synonymous with bringing far-off objects close, but the newest member of the solar system was discovered using wide-field imaging. The Subaru Telescope has spotted a distant orbiting Sedonite called 2023 KQ14, nicknamed Ammonite by researchers. Ammonite isn't a planet, but a member of distant orbiting objects called Sednoids, which are objects beyond Neptune's orbit with a non-circular orbit around the sun. Ammonite is the fourth Sednoid discovered, but has an orbit that's significantly different than the earlier three Sednoids. First spotted in 2023, Ammonite was officially shared with the public when researchers published the data on July 14, 2025. Ammonite is 71 times farther from the sun than the Earth – and that's at its closest point in the celestial object's orbit. So how did researchers spot the Sednoid? The newest member of the Solar System was first spotted by researchers using the Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (ASIAA). Located in Hawaii at the top of a volcano, the Subaru Telescope is 8.2 meters / 26.9 feet and weighs more than three tons. The telescope's Hyper Suprime-Cam first spotted the new sednoid using its 870MP sensor and 1.5-degree field of view. That wide field-of-view scans large sections of the sky, looking for faint, slow-moving objects, and in the summer of 2023, picked up on the movement of Ammonite. Ammonite's existence was then confirmed by observations with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in 2024. While researchers using the Subaru Telescope were the first to spot the Sednoid by noting its movement, researchers have now found evidence of Ammonite by digging through 19 years of archival images taken from multiple observatories, including the Dark Energy Camera and data from Kitt Peak National Observatory. Gathering data spanning nearly two decades has allowed scientists to create a more accurate picture of Ammonite's orbit, and researchers now believe that Ammonite's orbit has been stable for 4.5 billion years. While the discovery of Ammonite highlights the advancement of telescope and camera technology, it also disrupts Planet Nine, the theory that a ninth planet exists beyond the orbit of Pluto, the dwarf planet that was reclassified and lost its label as the ninth planet in 2006. Data on Ammonite lowers the probability of a ninth planet, researchers believe, although a ninth planet could still exist farther out than first thought. Above: video animation shows the orbit of a newly discovered sednoid, 2023 KQ₁₄ 'The fact that 2023 KQ14's current orbit does not align with those of the other three sednoids lowers the likelihood of the Planet Nine hypothesis,' said Dr. Yukon Huang of NAOJ. 'It is possible that a planet once existed in the Solar System but was later ejected, causing the unusual orbits we see today.' The Subaru Telescope made the discovery as part of a project nicknamed FOSSIL, or the Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy. The survey, led by scientists from Japan and Taiwan, uses the telescope's wide-field imaging to scan the sky, looking for objects in the outer solar system. The researchers are looking specifically at the icy outer Solar System for evidence of how the Solar System was formed. FOSSIL Lead Dr. Fumi Yoshida said the Subaru Telescope is one of the few equipped to make distant discoveries like the existence of Ammonite. "Ammonite was found in a region far away where Neptune's gravity has little influence,' Yoshida said. 'The presence of objects with elongated orbits and large perihelion distances in this area implies that something extraordinary occurred during the ancient era when Ammonite formed." "Understanding the orbital evolution and physical properties of these unique, distant objects is crucial for comprehending the full history of the Solar System," Yoshida continued. "At present, the Subaru Telescope is among the few telescopes on Earth capable of making such discoveries. I would be happy if the FOSSIL team could make many more discoveries like this one and help draw a complete picture of the history of the Solar System." You may also like The largest camera in the world is also a camera designed to scan the skies. Or, to photograph the stars with a camera that you can hold in your hands, browse the best cameras for astrophotography or the best tripods. Solve the daily Crossword
