Feature Channels: Marine Science

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Woods Hole, Mass. and Wilmington, Mass. (April 20, 2021) - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Analog Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADI) today launched the Ocean and Climate Innovation Accelerator (OCIA) consortium. ADI has committed $3 million over three years towards the consortium which will focus on advancing knowledge of the ocean’s critical role in combatting climate change as well as developing new solutions at the intersection of oceans and climate.

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Scientists at the University of Southampton have conducted a study that highlights the importance of studying a full range of organisms when measuring the impact of environmental change - from tiny bacteria, to mighty whales.

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Today, over 1,200 coastal scientists, managers, and professionals from federal and state agencies, academia, non-profits, and industry came together for a virtual event launching the new Gulf of Mexico Conference (GoMCon). The Gulf of Mexico Alliance hosted this event in partnership with the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative and Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies.

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In a new project, a research team from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will build biosensors using bacteria that can sense and communicate levels of nutrients in a body of water with enhanced levels of sensitivity, scalability, and versatility. The effort, supported by a nearly $375,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, is being led by Shayla Sawyer, an associate professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer.

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Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who championed the theory of evolution, noted that corals form far-reaching structures, largely made of limestone, that surround tropical islands. He didn’t know how they performed this feat. Now, Rutgers scientists have shown that coral structures consist of a biomineral containing a highly organized organic mix of proteins that resembles what is in our bones. Their study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, shows for the first time that several proteins are organized spatially – a process that’s critical to forming a rock-hard coral skeleton.

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As the Rhode Island legislature considers designating the Northern Star Coral an official state emblem, researchers are finding that studying this local creature’s recovery from a laboratory-induced stressor could help better understand how to protect endangered tropical corals.

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Plastics cycle through the oceans and roadways and become plastic dust, which rides the jet stream across continents.

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An international development team, led by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, has created a user-friendly software program that can process sound data collected from the world’s oceans in a more standardized format that will enhance research and collaboration and help understand the global sea soundscape dynamics, including the impact of COVID-19 when travel and economic slowdowns put a halt to human activities in the ocean.

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Sandia National Laboratories researchers are beginning to analyze the first seafloor dataset from under Arctic sea ice using a novel method. They were able to capture ice quakes and transportation activities on the North Slope of Alaska while also monitoring for other climate signals and marine life.

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Harmful algal blooms (HABs) occur in all 50 U.S. states and many produce toxins that cause illness or death in humans and commercially important species. However, attempts to place a more exact dollar value on the full range of these impacts often vary widely in their methods and level of detail, which hinders understanding of the scale of their socio-economic effects.

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Overfishing likely did not cause the Atlantic cod, an iconic species, to evolve genetically and mature earlier, according to a study led by Rutgers University and the University of Oslo – the first of its kind – with major implications for ocean conservation.

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Local alternative seafood networks (ASNs) in the United States and Canada, often considered niche segments, experienced unprecedented growth in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic while the broader seafood system faltered, highlighting the need for greater functional diversity in supply chains, according to a new international study led by the University of Maine.

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Cone snails use a previously undetected set of small molecules that mimic the effects of worm pheromones to drive marine worms into a sexual frenzy, making it easier to lure them out of their hiding places so the snails can gobble them up.

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Water quality management in the ocean often targets visible pollution sources such as sewage, rivers or ships. A new global study, led by researchers at the University of Gothenburg, reveals that invisible groundwater discharges may be just as important driving nitrogen into coastal waters.

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A new study published in the journal Environmental Science and Policy addresses the impacts of COVID-19 and Cyclone Harold on Indo-Fijians engaged in small scale fisheries.

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Climate change is altering the world we share with all living things. But it's surprisingly difficult to single out climate change as an extinction threat for any one particular species protected under the Endangered Species Act. To date, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has only formally considered impacts from climate change in listing actions for four animal species and one alpine tree.

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Eagle and waterfowl deaths occur in late fall and winter within reservoirs with excess invasive aquatic weeds, and birds can die within five days after arrival.

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Floating solar farms could help to protect lakes and reservoirs from some of the harms of climate change, a new study suggests.

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With a total length of up to 5.5m, the tiger shark is one of the largest predatory sharks known today. This shark is a cosmopolitan species occurring in all oceans worldwide. It is characterized by a striped pattern on its back, which is well marked in juveniles but usually fades in adults. An international team of researchers led by Julia Türtscher from the University of Vienna examined the fossil record of these apex predators and found out that modern tiger sharks are older than previously thought and that several tiger shark species existed in past compared to the single species living today.

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The Gulf of Mexico Alliance is pleased to share several new projects as part of its ongoing Gulf Star Program. This year’s projects focus on supporting coastal resilience, underrepresented and underserved communities, citizen science water and marine debris monitoring, living shorelines, wildlife conservation, and regional data sharing.

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A study offers the first fine-scale analysis of vertical movement of baby white sharks in the New York Bight. Their 3D movements along with oceanographic features like sea surface temperature show they traverse variable oceanographic features across the continental shelf in the New York Bight, but certainly have their habitat preferences. More than 90 percent of them were positioned within 20 kilometers of Long Island’s southern shoreline, which further confirms the importance of this region to baby white sharks.

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An international research collaboration has used an omnidirectional camera attached to humpback whale to reveal how these creatures rest underwater.

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A large gathering of fish tempts harbour porpoises to search for food around oil and gas platforms, even though the noise from these industrial plants normally to scare the whales away. Decommissioned platforms may therefore serve as artificial reefs in the North Sea.

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Every year 600-900 million tons of carbon flow through rivers to the ocean either as particles or in dissolved form.

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Marine heatwaves are dramatically affecting the marine ecosystems of the world and the Mediterranean is no exception. In the Mediterranean, these extreme climate episodes and its resulting massive mortality of species are getting more and more intense and frequent.

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Thanks to 20 years of observations from thousands of citizen scientists, University of Washington researchers have discovered distinct patterns in the mass strandings of by-the-wind sailors, also called Velella velella. Specifically, large strandings happened simultaneously from the northwest tip of Washington south to the Mendocino coast in California, and in years when winters were warmer than usual.

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Certain brightly colored coral species dotting the seafloor may appear indistinguishable to many divers and snorkelers, but Florida State University researchers have found that these genetically diverse marine invertebrates vary in their response to ocean warming, a finding that has implications for the long-term health of coral reefs.

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Sea-based fish farming systems using net pens are hard on the environment and fish. A closed cage can improve fish welfare, but seawater must be continuously circulated through the cage. However, waves can cause the water to slosh inside the cage, creating violent motions and endangering the cage and fish. A study using a scale-model containment system is reported in Physics of Fluids and shows why violent sloshing motions arise and how to minimize them.

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A collaboration between Buffalo State College’s Great Lakes Center and the Environmental Protection Agency has led to a new, quicker way to monitor invasive mussel populations in the Great Lakes.

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NSU's Guy Harvey Research Institute Melded Fun with Research, Technology, Business and Sharks!

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Pretty soon Broward County, Florida's beaches will be filled with the "pitter-patter" of little flippers on the sand as it's the 2021 Sea Turtle Nesting Season!

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More Antarctic meltwater is surfacing than was previously known, modifying the climate, preventing sea ice from forming and boosting marine productivity- according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).

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Scientists have identified a widespread coral bleaching event on shallow, inshore reefs that had been previously thought to be less reactive to climate stress.

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The oceans are becoming more acidic because of the rapid release of carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by anthropogenic (human) activities, such as burning of fossil fuels.

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The Deepwater Horizon disaster began on April 20, 2010 with an explosion on a BP-operated oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers.

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A new study highlights that women fishers’ contributions to small scale fisheries have been undercounted leading to uninformed small-scale fisheries (SSF) policies and management.

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New research has found that shrimp like creatures on the South Coast of England have 70 per cent less sperm than less polluted locations elsewhere in the world.

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Researchers in the U.S. and Germany decided to explore which pathways transport debris to the middle of the oceans, causing garbage patches, as well as the relative strengths of different subtropical gyres and how they influence long-term accumulation of debris. In Chaos, they report creating a model of the oceans' surface dynamics from historical trajectories of surface buoys. Their model describes the probability of plastic debris being transported from one region to another.

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Rutgers scientists for the first time have pinpointed the sizes of microplastics from a highly urbanized estuarine and coastal system with numerous sources of fresh water, including the Hudson River and Raritan River. Their study of tiny pieces of plastic in the Hudson-Raritan Estuary in New Jersey and New York indicates that stormwater could be an important source of the plastic pollution that plagues oceans, bays, rivers and other waters and threatens aquatic and other life.

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A common barnacle could be used to help trace missing persons lost at sea, according to research by UNSW Science.

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The Beaufort Sea, the Arctic Ocean’s largest freshwater reservoir, has increased its freshwater content by 40 percent over the last two decades, putting global climate patterns at risk.

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North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered and declining. Climate change, vessel strikes, entanglements and noise engender poor health and reproductive failure, and are major threats to individuals and the species. Trauma reduction measures and applying new tools to assess and enhance their health, are critically important.

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An unprecedented bulge of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean will travel through the Canadian Archipelago to the Labrador Sea, affecting local marine environments and global ocean circulation.

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A study conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Center for Conservation Bioacoustics aims to understand how resilient bearded seals can be to changes in ambient underwater noise.

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Evolution and extinction of an ancient mollusk, informs the research of Dr. Peg Yacobucci

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But in the rapidly changing Arctic soundscape, where noise from industrial activities is predicted to dramatically increase in the next 15 years, bearded seals may need to adjust their calling behavior if they are going to be heard above the noise generated by ships and commercial activities.

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A new study has for the first time explored the rate at which the world's largest fish, the endangered whale shark, can recover from its injuries.

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It's made for long-distance travel, yet movement patterns of the whitespotted eagle ray remain a mystery. Between 2016 and 2018, scientists fitted 54 rays with acoustic transmitters and tracked them along both the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts of Florida, which differ in environmental characteristics. Results of the study reveal striking differences in travel patterns on the Atlantic coast compared to the Gulf coast. Findings have significant conservation and adaptive management implications for this protected species.

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In nature, there are examples of animals helping one another and living in mutually beneficial relationships that have helped shape the world’s landscapes and biodiversity. New research from the University of Delaware has found one of these domesticator-domesticate relationships undersea, in the waters off Belize, where damselfish provide multigenerational support/protection to mysid shrimp in exchange for a resource or service that benefits both species.