Sources of mercury contamination in aquatic systems were studied in a comprehensive literature review. The results show that the most important anthropogenic sources of mercury pollution in aquatic systems are: (1) atmospheric deposition, (2) erosion, (3) urban discharges, (4) agricultural materials, (5) mining, and (6) combustion and industrial discharges. Capping and dredging are two possible...

In recent decades, coral reef ecosystems have declined to the extent that reefs are now threatened globally. While many water quality parameters have been proposed to contribute to reef declines, little evidence exists conclusively linking specific water quality parameters with increased disease prevalence in situ. Here we report evidence from in situ coral health surveys confirming that chroni...

ods produce a model from a set of examples. Despite the maturity of these algorithms, decisions that result from models are unlikely to be correct if data have been used indiscriminately. This is part of the so-called data-dredging problem (Smith and Shah 2002). Figure 1 shows a bemusing example: U.S. spending per annum on science, space, and technology is highly correlated with suicides by han...

Patterns in community structure of meiofauna and macrofauna in relation to Portuguese clam dredging were compared during a 2-y-period o¡ Lagos and Vilamoura, south Portugal. SCUBA divers randomly sampled corer and quadrat samples before and immediately after simulating commercial dredge ¢shery. Univariate measures (abundance, number of taxa, evenness, diversity and biomass) and multivariate ana...

December 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 12 | e418 Most governments around the world set conservation policy based on the assumption that resource exploitation and species protection can co-exist in the same place. These policies have led to Orwellian “marine protected areas” that host commercial fi shing operations, leading one to wonder who’s protecting whom. A new study reveals the danger of this ap...

December 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 12 | e418 Most governments around the world set conservation policy based on the assumption that resource exploitation and species protection can co-exist in the same place. These policies have led to Orwellian “marine protected areas” that host commercial fi shing operations, leading one to wonder who’s protecting whom. A new study reveals the danger of this ap...

December 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 12 | e418 Most governments around the world set conservation policy based on the assumption that resource exploitation and species protection can co-exist in the same place. These policies have led to Orwellian “marine protected areas” that host commercial fi shing operations, leading one to wonder who’s protecting whom. A new study reveals the danger of this ap...