Feature Channels: Marine Science

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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.

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Scientists have little understanding of the role fishes play in the global carbon cycle linked to climate change, but a Rutgers-led study found that carbon in feces, respiration and other excretions from fishes – roughly 1.65 billion tons annually – make up about 16 percent of the total carbon that sinks below the ocean’s upper layers.

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Current models wrongly assume icebergs melt uniformly in warming oceans

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A new USC study puts ocean microbes in a new light with important implications for global warming.

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Around the world, coral reefs are under pressure from a host of stressors, including global warming, pollution, and disease events. Now, two leading groups – Nova Southeastern University and the Coral Restoration Foundation™ – are teaming up to establish a new “coral ark” for critically endangered coral species where genetically diverse corals will be housed to bank and protect their important genetic diversity.

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Far underneath the ice shelves of the Antarctic, there's more life than expected, finds a recent study in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

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A new observation network under development by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will offer round-the-clock data about the ocean twilight zone - a dimly lit region roughly 200–1000 meters (650–3200 feet) below the surface, containing the largest amount of fish biomass on Earth. Encompassing 250,000 square kilometers (roughly 155,300 square miles) of the northwest Atlantic Ocean, the new network will offer unprecedented insight into this little-known, yet vitally important region of the sea, an area largely unexplored by scientists.

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Climate change is bleaching and killing corals, but researchers from Michigan State University and the University of Hawaii are investigating how some can stand up to a warming world.

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Under increasing global warming, tropical fish are escaping warmer seas by extending their habitat ranges towards more temperate waters. But a new study shows that the ocean acidification predicted under continuing high CO2 emissions may make cooler, temperate waters less welcoming.

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A new study in Frontiers in Marine Science provides a first-of-its-kind evaluation of which regions of southern European seas are in the most need of fishing restrictions.

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As glacial ice melts, what happens to the freshwater and how it is affecting coastal systems in Antarctica becomes an important question. The University of Delaware’s Carlos Moffat has been awarded a five-year, $787,528 National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Faculty Career Development Award.

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Researchers have found new evidence that global warming is affecting the size of commercial fish species, documenting for the first time that juvenile fish are getting bigger, as well as confirming that adult fish are getting smaller as sea temperatures rise.

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The findings of a new study examining the behaviours of alligator and caiman hatchlings have enhanced our understanding of how we can conserve, and increase, the population of endangered crocodilian species.

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Single-celled organisms in the open ocean use a diverse array of genetic tools to detect light, even in tiny amounts, and respond. The discovery of these new genetic "light switches" could also aid in the field of optogenetics, in which a cell's function can be controlled with exposure to light.

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New research out of the University of Chicago has found evidence that the lobe-finned fish species Tiktaalik roseae was capable of both biting and suction during feeding, similar to modern-day gars. These results provide evidence that bite-based feeding originally evolved in aquatic species and was later adapted for use on land.

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Global warming. Climate change. Coral bleaching. These are a few issues that are negatively impacting our marine world. And now you can add underwater heatwaves to the list - something an NSU Researcher is studying.

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A new University of Washington paper published Jan. 11 in Nature Sustainability quantifies the tradeoffs between hydroelectric generation capacity and the impacts on river connectivity for thousands of current and projected future dams across Brazil. The findings confirm that small hydropower plants are far more responsible for river fragmentation than their larger counterparts due to their prevalence and distribution.

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A study has revealed for the first time the ancient origins of one of the world’s most important ecosystems by unlocking the mechanism which determined the evolution of its mountains and how they shaped the weather there as well as its flora and fauna.

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A team of marine scientists has confirmed that southern Africa’s most threatened endemic shark – the Critically Endangered shorttail nurse shark (Pseudoginglymostoma brevicaudatum) – has been found to occur in Mozambique; a finding that represents a range extension of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles).

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“Shell-crushing,” an explosive sound, occurs when marine animals crack open hard shells like clams to eat the edible tissue. There hasn’t been any data to support this feeding noise, until now. A study is the first to quantify these sounds using underwater acoustics in a marine animal in a controlled setting. Scientists know what type of shell a ray is eating based on the sound it makes and show it’s audible above ambient noise in lagoons out to 100 meters.

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A nuclear war could trigger an unprecedented El Niño-like warming episode in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, slashing algal populations by 40 percent and likely lowering the fish catch, according to a Rutgers-led study. The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, shows that turning to the oceans for food if land-based farming fails after a nuclear war is unlikely to be a successful strategy – at least in the equatorial Pacific.

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The Ganges River - with the combined flows of the Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers - could be responsible for up to 3 billion microplastic particles entering the Bay of Bengal every day, according to new research.

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It's mid-January 2021, and the first gray whales from the eastern North Pacific population have started to arrive in the breeding lagoons in Baja California, Mexico.

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Sixteen years of remote sensing data reveals that in Earth’s largest freshwater lakes, climate change influences carbon fixation trends.

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New research led by BirdLife International, the University of East Anglia (UEA) and British Antarctic Survey highlights how a proposed network of marine protected areas could help safeguard some of the most important areas at sea for breeding Antarctic penguins.

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Scientists have discovered how bacteria commonly responsible for seafood-related stomach upsets can go dormant and then "wake up".

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The Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University in collaboration with Chula Unisearch, the Plant Genetic Conservation Project under the Royal Initiative of Her Royal Highness (HRH) Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn and the Naval Special Warfare Command, Royal Thai Navy, jointly publicized the discovery of the world’s rare and newly discovered species of soft coral. The discovery indicates the abundance and ecological diversity of the Thai seas and one of the new species has received HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn’s gracious permission to be named “Sirindhornae“. The other was named “Cornigera“. The discovery and names of the two new soft coral species found in the Thai seas have been published in the international research journal, Zootaxa, in 2020.