AUSTRALIA – Queensland scientists working on the Great Barrier Reef have helped discover the remnants of an ancient undersea landslide more than 30 times the volume of Uluru.

The Gloria Knolls Slide, as it has come to be known, is just one of seven undersea landslides to be discovered by researchers in recent years.

But, with the total volume of the landslide debris being approximately 32 cubic kilometres, it is by far the largest.

James Cook university researcher Dr Robin Beaman said the series of large blocks were first discovered during ocean floor surveys off the coast of Innisfail in 2007.

“It’s taken quite a number of cruises since to actually find the smoking gun that proves where these blocks came from,” Dr Beaman said.

“We now know that they belong to this very old underwater landslide, a huge feature actually – it essentially looks like a massive bite has been taken out of the Australian continent.”

Dr Beaman said fossil corals found on the surface of the blocks suggest the landslide occurred at least 300,000 years ago and could have created a tsunami wave more than 25 metres high.

He said that information raised questions about how often these undersea landslides occurred, and what risk the could pose to the Queensland coastline.

“It seems that there’s a fairly low risk because when we put it into context this is a very old feature, but it’s an area of interest we would like to explore a bit further,” he said.

Despite the harsh, deep conditions on the Gloria Knolls, life continued to flourish there.

“The tops of the underwater debris blocks extend about 30 kilometres outward from the edge of the Great Barrier Reef and are sitting in about 1200 metres of water,” he said.

“It’s completely dark, it’s quite cold, about 4 degrees Celsius, and yet we have a habitat for cold water corals that are attached to rocks buried in the mud.

“When we brought a sample up there was a lot more marine life there than we ever anticipated, so that was a real surprise.”

Dr Beaman was hopeful further research would uncover more of the reef’s mysteries.

“There’s still a lot of the deep Great Barrier Reef yet to be mapped with modern tools, so I think there’s lots of scope for further discovery,” he said.

“We’d like to know more about the deep animals of the Great Barrier Reef because, yes, the shallow water corals are all very important, but we want to understand about the deep marine life too. This is an area that’s really emerging,” Dr Beaman said. - ABC

Remote Vanuatu islands to ban all imported junk food

VANUATU – A group of south Pacific islands are banning all foreign junk food imports in favour of an all-local, organic diet as a way to combat future health problems.

Torba province, part of Vanuatu, aims to impose restrictions on the import of western foodstuffs and instead take advantage of its productive agricultural land and rich natural resources.

Located in the northern part of Vanuatu, Toba is often described as the “forgotten province” and the majority of its 10,000 people are subsistence farmers.

Father Luc Dini, a community leader and head of the local tourism council, said a ban on foreign food imports would improve the health and wellbeing of islanders.

“At the moment we have an infiltration of junk food from overseas,” he said.

“It is easy to boil noodles or rice, but they have almost no nutritional value and there is no need to eat imported food when we have so much local food grown organically on our islands.”

Dini said his province had an abundance of locally grown or sourced food to sustain its population including fish, crabs, shellfish, taro, yams, paw paw and pineapple.

The most popular imported foods consumed in Torba were rice, sweets, tinned fish and biscuits, he said.

“We are Vanuatu’s most isolated province and so far our health has stayed pretty good because of that, but we want to continue to be healthy,” he said.

“In other provinces that have adopted western diets you see pretty young girls but when they smile they have rotten teeth, because the sugar has broken down their teeth.

“We don’t want that to happen here and we don’t want to develop the illnesses that come with a western junk food diet.”

Beginning this week and with the backing of local chiefs Dini has ordered tourism bungalows to serve guests only locally-grown, organic food, with a plan to introduce legislation within the next two years banning the importation of all foreign food. Torba aims to be Vanuatu’s first organic province by the year 2020.

Dini said the central government in Port Vila was supportive of his plan and keen to observe how the ban would be tolerated by locals and visitors.

Whether to include alcohol imports was yet to be decided but there were a number of local kava bars that may be able to meet that demand.

“If you really want to live on a paradise of your own, then you should make do with what you have and try and live with nature,” he said.