Feature Channels: Marine Science

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The free event will showcase the Bristlemouth open ocean connectivity standard and feature a hands-on workshop, keynote talks from ocean innovators, and more.

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USC Dornsife researchers studying a common Caribbean coral’s ability to adapt to rising temperatures turn up an unexpected result

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By: Trisha Radulovich | Published: October 16, 2023 | 12:07 pm | SHARE: A new project led by Nasrin Alamdari, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, will help communities throughout Florida fight the harmful blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) that plague freshwater lakes across the state.

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Ocean tides may be rising, but a new tide forecast model created by a team of University of Miami scientists holds the promise of helping coastal communities to prepare.

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About 30 miles off the coast of eastern North Carolina stands Frying Pan Tower, a local maritime relic that looms over a frying pan-shaped, sandy ridge known as Frying Pan Shoals. Treacherous for boaters yet a saltwater angler’s dream, the shoals are known for strong currents and shallow waters that have caused hundreds of shipwrecks through the years, but also harbor a thriving, high-producing ecosystem that includes an elaborate web of marine life from microscopic phytoplankton to shrimp, crab, and baitfish, to sea birds, loggerheads and porpoise, to grouper, billfish and sharks.

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Dynamic and changing Arctic Ocean conditions likely caused three major mortality events in the eastern North Pacific gray whale population since the 1980s, a new study has found.

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By: Patty Cox | Published: October 12, 2023 | 11:02 am | Florida State University scientists have uncovered answers to a conundrum in Earth’s history: Why did marine life experience an extraordinary boom millions of years ago?Scientists have long been puzzled about what triggered this explosion of life and a remarkable increase in the diversity of marine species during the Ordovician Period roughly 487 to 443 million years ago.

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Evolutionary biologists have for the first time decoded the genetic lineage of a famous killer whale and a pod that once worked alongside whale hunters off the coast of New South Wales.

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Tens of thousands of endangered sharks and rays are caught by small-scale fisheries off the Republic of the Congo each year, new research shows.

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Under normal conditions, the floating macroalgae Sargassum spp. provide habitat for hundreds of types of organisms. However, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB) that emerged in 2011 has since then caused unprecedented inundations of this brown seaweed on Caribbean coastlines, with harmful effects on ecosystems while posing challenges to regional economies and tourism, and concerns for respiratory and other human health issues.

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Killer whales are some of the oceans’ top predators, but even they can be exposed to environmental pollution. In the largest study to date on North Atlantic killer whales, researchers in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology report the levels of pollutants in 162 individuals’ blubber.

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Scientists using natural tracers off Queensland’s coast have discovered the source of previously unquantified nitrogen and phosphorous having a profound environmental impact on the Great Barrier Reef.

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Genes sfrp and smoothened are crucially important for regeneration of lost organs. Scientists have found out that regeneration of sea cucumbers depends on genes sfrp (sfrp1/2/5, sfrp3/4) and gene smo.

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Biologists have analyzed about 200 articles dedicated to composition of connective tissue (Extracellular Matrix) of echinoderms. That has enabled them for the first time to compare the composition of extracellular matrix of echinoderms and vertebrates.

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The “Margaritaville” in Jimmy Buffett’s famous song isn’t a real place, but it’s long been associated with the Florida Keys. This string of tropical islands is home to the only living coral barrier reef in the continental US, along with many animals found nowhere else in the world.

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A team of researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Campinas in Brazil has found that tropical forest ecosystems are more reliant on aquatic insects than temperate forest ecosystems and are therefore more vulnerable to disruptions to the links between land and water.

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The Gulf Stream is intrinsic to the global climate system, bringing warm waters from the Caribbean up the East Coast of the United States. As it flows along the coast and then across the Atlantic Ocean, this powerful ocean current influences weather patterns and storms, and it carries heat from the tropics to higher latitudes as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. A new study published today in Nature Climate Change now documents that over the past 20 years, the Gulf Stream has warmed faster than the global ocean as a whole and has shifted towards the coast. The study, led by Robert Todd, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), relies on over 25,000 temperature and salinity profiles collected between 2001 and 2023.

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Details of past climate conditions are revealed to researchers not only by sediment samples from the ocean floor, but also by the surface of the seafloor, which is exposed to currents that are constantly altering it.

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Acoels have been found to host a wide diversity of symbiotic, photosynthetic microalgae.

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New study shows signs of early creation of modern human identities. Ancestors collected eye-catching shells that radically changed the way we looked at ourselves and others.

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Laden with dissolved salt, Antarctic waters can hover just above freezing and even dip below it. Temperatures this low would likely kill the animals that prosper in warmer waters further north. Yet, some creatures have found ways to live in this inhospitable cold.

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RUDN University biologists and colleagues from Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the first to study the effect of nanoparticles of the natural polymer chitosan on the fish's health in aquaculture. It turned out that chitosan nanogel increases the resistance to a dangerous yeast by 22%. It increases the productivity of fisheries.

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A new device, currently being designed by a University of Adelaide PhD candidate, could help to close a loophole currently being exploited by illegal wildlife traffickers.

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During a recent review of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recovery plans for more than 200 endangered and threatened vertebrate species in the United States, Michigan State University researchers made an interesting discovery.

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Scientists from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University have found out unique properties of Asian plant, that help to struggle with vermin at fish farms.

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ASU BIOS research unveils zooplankton's vital role in carbon sequestration, crucial for mitigating climate change and preserving ocean health.

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The first-ever look at hammerhead shark development shows how they develop their hammer in stunning detail.

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Protecting large areas of land from human activity can help stem the tide of biodiversity loss, especially for vertebrates like amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, according to a new study in Nature.

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In two recent papers, Saint Louis University researchers report finding high concentrations of microplastics present in a Missouri cave system that had been closed to human visitors for 30 years.

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In a groundbreaking study, a team of Georgia Tech researchers has unveiled a remarkable discovery: the identification of novel bacterial proteins that play a vital role in the formation and stability of methane clathrates, which trap gigatons of greenhouse gas beneath the seafloor. These newfound proteins not only suppress methane clathrate growth as effectively as toxic chemicals used in drilling but also prove to be eco-friendly and scalable. This innovative breakthrough not only promises to enhance environmental safety in natural gas transportation but also sheds light on the potential for similar biomolecules to support life beyond Earth.

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Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent on Sept. 19, 2023, making it the sixth-lowest year in the satellite record, according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

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What makes for a successful climate-resilient fishery, one that sustainably produces resources for human benefit despite increasing climate stressors and human impacts?

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New research, reported in Nature Ecology & Evolution, (25 September 2023) has for the first time validated at scale, one of the theories that has underpinned ecology for over half a century.

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Three researchers from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science are conducting experiments to better determine the important role of fish play in the oceanic carbon cycle, studying everything from how much carbonate fish produce to the path of the minerals in the water column.

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With coral reefs worldwide undergoing unprecedented stressors due to climate change and other human pressures, a large-scale application of innovative techniques shows promise for detecting the health condition of reefs.

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it has awarded a coalition of academic and oceanographic research organizations a second, five-year contract to operate and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI).

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New research shows that mussels are pretty crafty sea creatures: able to withstand marine heatwaves by adjusting their heart rate and other physiological functions, boding well for their survival in future decades as the world heats up.