Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Forty divers have removed abandoned fishing nets covering coral reefs in a protected area in the Gulf of Thailand in a two-day operation ending on Sunday.
Removal of the nets by a group of volunteer divers and the Coastal Resources Research Centre, helped by the Royal Thai Navy, revealed long lines of coral bleaching inside the protected area around Ko Losin, a small rocky islet in the southern waters of the gulf.
"Ghost nets are a big problem in Thailand," said a diver belonging to the volunteer SOS Group, Wannapa Thammasangwan, referring to fishing nets lost or discarded in the sea.
The divers tied plastic bags filled with air to the net to get it to float to the surface, carefully cutting the parts caught in the coral. The divers carried out six trips over the weekend to complete the operation.
"The hardest part of this operation was removing the fishing net from staghorn coral because it was full of branches and fragile," said Chanchot Piriyasatit, a dive master volunteer.
Wannapa said the nets, which were 2,750 sq m (29,601 sq ft) in size, had been in the area around Koh Losin, about 72 km (45 miles) off the coast of Thailand's southern Pattani province, for a month and a half. Wannapa estimated these nets could cost over a million baht (US$32,000).
"This one was not the biggest. Every year we remove nets like this here," said Wannapa.
Wannapa and other divers spend a lot of time investigating reports of fishing nets choking reefs in Thai waters, making at least five removal expeditions a year at their own expense.
After the nets were removed on Sunday - from depths ranging from 13 m to 26 m - about 500 sq m of bleached reef was discovered.
The reef is expected to recover in two to three months.
About 640,000 tonnes of fishing nets end up in the ocean globally every year, becoming ghost gear, according to the United Nations.
(USD$1 = 31.56 baht)
(Editing by Tom Hogue)
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.