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Rowley Shoals Marine Park
The Rowley Shoals is a group of three atoll-like coral reefs south of the Timor Sea, about west of Broome on the northwestern Australian coast, centered on , on the edge of one of the widest continental shelves in the world. Each atoll covers an area of around within the rim of the reef, including the lagoons, while the land areas are negligible. They belong to Western Australia. They all rise steeply from the surrounding ocean floor. To the northeast lie the Scott and Seringapatam Reefs which are located on the same undersea platform. Naming and history The Rowley Shoals were so named by Captain Phillip Parker King in 1818 in honour of Captain Rowley who first sighted the ''Imperieuse Reef'' in 1800. It is believed that the Rowley Shoals reefs have been visited by fishermen from Indonesia, from at least the mid-18th century. The fishermen were also collecting or hunting for Trepang (holothurians or sea cucumbers), turtle shell, trochus shell and shark fin. These early visit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which scientific research is conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics, and other fields. The ISS is suited for testing the spacecraft systems and equipment required for possible future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars. The ISS programme evolved from the Space Station ''Freedom'', a 1984 American proposal to construct a permanently crewed Earth-orbiting station, and the contemporaneous Soviet/Russian '' Mir-2'' proposal from 1976 with similar aims. The ISS is the ninth space station to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turtle
Turtles are an order of reptiles known as Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked turtles), which differ in the way the head retracts. There are 360 living and recently extinct species of turtles, including land-dwelling tortoises and freshwater terrapins. They are found on most continents, some islands and, in the case of sea turtles, much of the ocean. Like other amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals) they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. Turtle shells are made mostly of bone; the upper part is the domed carapace, while the underside is the flatter plastron or belly-plate. Its outer surface is covered in scales made of keratin, the material of hair, horns, and claws. The carapace bones develop from ribs that grow sideways and develop into broad flat plates th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reefs Of The Indian Ocean
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock outcrops, etc.—but there are also reefs such as the coral reefs of tropical waters formed by biotic processes dominated by corals and coralline algae, and artificial reefs such as shipwrecks and other anthropogenic underwater structures may occur intentionally or as the result of an accident, and sometimes have a designed role in enhancing the physical complexity of featureless sand bottoms, to attract a more diverse assemblage of organisms. Reefs are often quite near to the surface, but not all definitions require this. Earth's largest coral reef system is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, at a length of over . Biotic There is a variety of biotic reef types, including oyster reefs and sponge reefs, but the most massive and widely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indian Ocean Atolls Of Australia
Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asian ethnic groups, referring to people of the Indian subcontinent, as well as the greater South Asia region prior to the 1947 partition of India * Anglo-Indians, people with mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in the Indian subcontinent * East Indians, a Christian community in India Europe * British Indians, British people of Indian origin The Americas * Indo-Canadians, Canadian people of Indian origin * Indian Americans, American people of Indian origin * Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas and their descendants ** Plains Indians, the common name for the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains of North America ** Native Americans in the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Underwater Diving
Underwater diving, as a human activity, is the practice of descending below the water's surface to interact with the environment. It is also often referred to as diving, an ambiguous term with several possible meanings, depending on context. Immersion in water and exposure to high ambient pressure have physiological effects that limit the depths and duration possible in ambient pressure diving. Humans are not physiologically and anatomically well-adapted to the environmental conditions of diving, and various equipment has been developed to extend the depth and duration of human dives, and allow different types of work to be done. In ambient pressure diving, the diver is directly exposed to the pressure of the surrounding water. The ambient pressure diver may dive on breath-hold (freediving) or use breathing apparatus for scuba diving or surface-supplied diving, and the saturation diving technique reduces the risk of decompression sickness (DCS) after long-duration deep dives ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deep Sea
The deep sea is broadly defined as the ocean depth where light begins to fade, at an approximate depth of 200 metres (656 feet) or the point of transition from continental shelves to continental slopes. Conditions within the deep sea are a combination of low temperatures, darkness and high pressure The deep sea is considered the least explored Earth biome, with the extreme conditions making the environment difficult to access and explore. Organisms living within the deep sea have a variety of adaptations to survive in these conditions. Organisms can survive in the deep sea through a number of feeding methods including scavenging, predation and filtration, with a number of organisms surviving by feeding on marine snow. Marine snow is organic material that has fallen from upper waters into the deep sea. In 1960, the bathyscaphe ''Trieste'' descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench near Guam, at , the deepest known spot in any ocean. If Mount Everest () were submerged there, it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argo-Rowley Terrace Marine Park
The Argo-Rowley Terrace Marine Park (formerly known as the Argo-Rowley Terrace Commonwealth Marine Reserve) is an Australian marine park offshore of Western Australia. It encompasses the protected areas of the Rowley Shoals, about north-west of Broome. The marine park covers an area of and is assigned IUCN management category VI. It is the largest of the 13 parks managed under the North-west Marine Parks Network. Conservation values Species and habitat *Important foraging areas for migratory seabirds and the endangered loggerhead turtle. *Important area for sharks, which are found in abundance around the Rowley Shoals relative to other areas in the region. *The reserve provides protection for the communities and habitats of the deeper offshore waters of the region in depth ranges from to over . Bioregions and ecology *The reserve provides protection for many seafloor features including aprons and fans, canyons, continental rise, knolls/abyssal hills and the terrace and con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parks Australia
Director of National Parks is a government-owned corporation of the Australian government responsible for the management of a portfolio of terrestrial and marine protected areas proclaimed under the ''Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999'' (''EPBC Act''). The agency is a corporation sole. Parks Australia (formerly the Australian Nature Conservation Agency and the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service) is a division of the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment which supports the Director of National Parks in the management of six Commonwealth national parks, the Australian National Botanic Gardens, and Australian marine parks. Legal status and history The Director of National Parks was established under the EPBC Act as a corporation sole, i.e. the corporation is constituted by the person appointed to the office named the Director of National Parks. It was established on 17 July 2000 upon the proclamation of the EPBC Act and is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Marine Park
Australian marine parks (formerly Commonwealth marine reserves) are marine protected areas located within Australian waters and are managed by the Australian government. These waters generally extend from three nautical miles off the coast to the outer limit of Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone at 200 nautical miles while marine protected areas located closer in-shore are the responsibility of the states or the Northern Territory. History Under the Howard Government the world’s first Oceans Policy was developed. It included the creation of the Great Australian Bight Marine Park in 1998, greatly increased protection of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and in 2007, established a series of large marine parks in Australia's south-east, now collectively known as the South-east Marine Parks Network. 2012 marine parks In 2012, the Australian government under Labor/Kevin Rudd revealed plans to create the world's largest marine reserve network, made up of five main zones i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mermaid Reef Marine Park
The Mermaid Reef Marine Park (previously known as the Mermaid Reef Marine National Nature Reserve) is an Australian marine park in the Rowley Shoals, located approximately north-west of Broome, Western Australia. The marine park covers an area of and is assigned IUCN category II. It is one of 13 parks managed under the North-west Marine Parks Network, and lies adjacent to the Argo-Rowley Terrace Marine Park Conservation values Species and habitat *Important areas for sharks including the grey reef shark, the whitetip reef shark and the silvertip whaler. *Important foraging area for marine turtles. *Important area for toothed whales, dolphins, tuna and billfish. *Important resting and feeding sites for migratory seabirds *The reserve, along with the adjacent Rowley Shoals Marine Park, provides the best geological example of shelf atolls in Australia Ecology and bioregion * Mermaid Reef has national and international significance due to its pristine character, coral formatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychrolutes Occidentalis
''Psychrolutes occidentalis'', also known as the western Australian sculpin or western blobfish, is a species of deep-sea fish of the family Psychrolutidae. It is a bathydemersal fish found along the continental slope to the west of Australia. Distribution Individuals have only been discovered in the Eastern Indian Ocean, around the Rowley Shoals off of northwestern Australia and well as Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi .... They live in depths ranging from 350–700 meters deep. The discovery of psychrolutes occidentalis in this location was unusual as psychrolutes are not typically found in tropical waters. Biology The species is found on the continental slope, and is a demersal fish, living near the bottom of the ocean. It grows to standard length. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Lighthouses mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals, reefs, rocks, and safe entries to harbors; they also assist in aerial navigation. Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and has become uneconomical since the advent of much cheaper, more sophisticated and effective electronic navigational systems. History Ancient lighthouses Before the development of clearly defined ports, mariners were guided by fires built on hilltops. Since elevating the fire would improve the visibility, placing the fire on a platform became a practice that led to the development of the lighthouse. In antiquity, the lighthouse functioned more as an entrance marker to ports than as a warning signal for reefs a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
