#Fracking - Fracking in Northern Ireland could pose a serious risk to endangered fish species, as a cross-border group of anglers highlighted last weekend.

The Irish Times reports on the protest rally in Enniskillen on Saturday 1 March that has called for a referendum on fracking in the North to coincide with this May's local elections.

Their concerns come on the heels of January's poor assessment of Stormont's regulatory powers over shale gas extraction beneath some of the North's inland waterways by environmental group Friends of the Earth.

“We have the highest degree of protection from the EU, but it would only take one accident to destroy the lake if they start to drill,” said rally organiser Malcolm Finney of Lough Melvin, home to rare species such as sonaghan trout and Arctic char.

Beyond the island of Ireland, meanwhile, fears of an 'ocean catastrophe' are growing as mining interests turn their attentions to the unexplored depths of the world's seas previously thought inaccessible.

As The Guardian reports, marine scientists are alarmed at "the prospect of a race to the bottom of the ocean – a 21st-century high seas version of the Klondike gold rush."

As prices for metals extracted by traditional mining methods rise, the temptation to harvest ore deposits from sea floor sediment only grows - but at what price to the world's marine ecosystem? The Guardian has more on the story HERE.