Water quality within the greater Suva urban marine environment through spatial analysis of nutrients and water properties.

Coastal ecosystems in Pacific Island Countries and Territories are vital to local livelihoods, yet increasingly face pressures from urbanization. In Fiji, the Greater Suva Urban Area, where one-third of the nation's population live, exemplifies these challenges. This study examines spatial and temporal water quality variations in the coastal zone, focusing on physicochemical, nutrients, and clarity parameters.

The massive 2016 marine heatwave in the Southwest Pacific: An "El Niño-Madden-Julian Oscillation" compound event.

El Niño typically induces cooling in the Southwest Pacific Ocean during austral summers, usually leading to decreased marine heatwave frequency and severity. However, the 2016 extreme El Niño unexpectedly coincided with the longest and most extensive marine heatwave ever recorded in the region. This heatwave, spanning over 1.

Three-dimensional conservation planning of fish biodiversity metrics to achieve the deep-sea 30×30 conservation target.

Accelerating rate of human impact and environmental change severely affects marine biodiversity and increases the urgency to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 30×30 plan for conserving 30% of sea areas by 2030. However, area-based conservation targets are complex to identify in a 3-dimensional (3D) ocean where deep-sea features such as seamounts have been seldom studied mostly due to challenging methodologies to implement at great depths. Yet, the use of emerging technologies, such as environmental DNA combined with modern modeling frameworks, could help address the problem.

Unveiling the global influence of tropical cyclones on extreme waves approaching coastal areas.

Tropical and extra-tropical storms generate extreme waves, impacting both nearby and remote regions through swell propagation. Despite their devastating effects in tropical areas, the contribution of tropical cyclones (TCs) to global wave-induced coastal risk remains unknown. Here, we enable a quantitative assessment of TC's role in extreme waves approaching global coastlines, by designing twin oceanic wave simulations with and without realistic TC wind forcing.