Feature Channels: Marine Science

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The Gulf of Mexico Alliance (Alliance) released the Governors’ Action Plan III For Healthy and Resilient Coasts today. This is the third major effort by the Alliance, approved by all five U.S. Gulf Coast State governors. The states of Alabama and Mississippi issued proclamations, declaring support for the plan and emphasizing the vision to improve the health and sustainability of our coastal areas. They noted millions of people depend on it – to live, work, and vacation. In the plan, the Alliance addresses six major regional issues: coastal resilience; data and monitoring; education and engagement; habitat resources; water resources; and wildlife and fisheries.

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Microbiologists have concocted an artificial seawater medium that can be used to successfully cultivate abundant marine microorganisms, many of which have not been genetically characterized before.

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The move from life on land to life in the sea has led to the evolution of a new sense for sea snakes, a University of Adelaide-led study suggests.

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Fish species that are both economically and ecologically important in South America live mysterious lives. A new study reports on the use of chemical analysis of ear-stones or “otoliths” as a way to tease out a fish’s life story, potentially revealing its migratory routes and the environments it encountered in its travels.

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Researchers describe the use of chemical analysis of ear-stones or “otoliths” to tease out details of a fish’s life story, potentially revealing the migratory routes and environments the fish encountered in its travels.

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One of the longest and largest studies of coral reef health ever undertaken finds that corals are declining worldwide because a variety of threats -- overfishing, nutrient pollution and pathogenic disease -- that ultimately become deadly in the face of higher ocean temperatures.

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University of Delaware researchers are using “fingerprints” left by strong storms on the ocean floor to better understand storms that have already happened and to model and predict how future storms will behave.

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With coral bleaching prevalent worldwide — and recently breaking records off Australia — U.S. scientists are eager to learn how their home reefs will weather the summer heat. Now, Mote Marine Laboratory is seeking volunteers to monitor for heat-driven bleaching in the Florida Keys, home to the largest coral reef system along the continental U.S.

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Click here to go directly to the Ecology and Animals News Source

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New research from the University of British Columbia finds that rogue fishing vessels are able to secure insurance including those that have been flagged by international watchdogs for unlawful activity.

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Vanderbilt biologist Kenneth Catania has accidentally discovered that can electric eels make leaping attacks that dramatically increase the strength of the electric shocks they deliver and, in so doing, has confirmed a 200-year-old observation by famous 19th century explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.

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The water around Antarctica has not seen the atmosphere for centuries, since long before the machine age. New observations and model simulations suggest this may be the last place on Earth to feel climate change.

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In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers, including FSU Professor of Oceanography Jeff Chanton, lay out their findings that contaminants released during the spill combined with a bloom of phytoplankton to create what has been called a “dirty blizzard.” That blizzard then sank to sea floor and essentially stayed put.

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A tiny marine crustacean with a great big claw has shown that not only does size matter, but left or right-handedness (or in this case, left or right-clawedness) is important too.

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Indonesian government agencies, supported by the Wildlife Crimes Unit (WCU) of the Wildlife Conservation Society, confiscated and released back into the wild two illegally caught whale sharks from a major supplier of large marine megafauna to the international wildlife trade.

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The toxic dinoflagellate, Alexandrium fundyense, is a photosynthetic plankton--a microscopic organism floating in the ocean, unable to swim against a current. New research by scientists at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) suggests that ingestion of this dinoflagellate changes the energy balance and reproductive potential of a particular copepod--a small crustacean--in the North Atlantic, which is key food source for young fishes, including many commercially important species.

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A new study indicates that sharks of the same species can have different personalities.

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Mammals have an exquisitely tuned sensory system that tells them whether they are smelling an orange or a rose. Like keys on a piano keyboard, each component of an odor blend strikes only one chord of olfactory neuron activation. These chords are combined to form a melody that is “heard” in the brain as distinctly citrusy or sweet and flowery.

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A new three-year $1.1 million grant from NASA is helping several organizations fine-tune current red tide forecasts in the Gulf of Mexico with the goal of offering public health managers, coastal residents and visitors a forecast that better reflects coastal conditions on more localized scales.

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Clownfish became a household name over a decade ago when Disney released the movie “Finding Nemo.” The colorful fish are now at risk due to bleaching of their sea anemone homes in the Indo-Pacific, which has increased due to rising ocean temperatures. University of Delaware researcher Danielle Dixson has co-authored a paper demonstrating how vulnerable clownfish are to the increased frequency of bleaching events.

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A symbiotic relationship that has existed since the time of the dinosaurs is at risk of ending, as habitat loss and environmental change mean that a species of Australian crayfish and the tiny worms that depend on them are both at serious risk of extinction.

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Study shows that sea urchins defy aging, regardless of lifespan.

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The researchers examined data from research and monitoring reports from the years 2000-2012, to see what chemicals have been analysed in Baltic Sea fish.

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Coral reefs – stunning, critical habitats for an enormous array of prized fish and other species – have survived five major extinction events over the last 250 million years. Now, an international team of scientists led by Rutgers faculty has conducted the world’s most comprehensive analysis of coral genes, focusing on how their evolution has allowed corals to interact with and adapt to the environment. A second study led by Rutgers researchers with colleagues at the University of Hawaii shows – for the first time – how stony corals create their hard skeletons, using proteins as key ingredients.

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Light doesn’t travel very far underwater so the navy uses sound to transmit messages. The speed of underwater sound depends on a combination of temperature, salinity and pressure. Understanding sound speed is crucial for transmitting messages, detecting enemy submarines and avoiding marine animals. As climate change elevates temperatures, understanding underwater sound speed will become increasingly important.

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A dolphin chasing a tasty fish will produce a stream of rapid-fire echolocation clicks that help it track the speed, direction and distance to its prey. Now researchers have developed a model that could yield new insights into how the charismatic marine mammals make these clicks – and it turns out snot may play an important role. The researchers will present their model at the 171st meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

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For the first time, two mathematicians at Canada’s University of Waterloo have created a 3-D simulation of the mass transport capabilities of mode-2 waves. Such models will help define how mode-2 waves can carry materials that are either beneficial (such as phytoplankton and other food sources) or detrimental (such as crude oil and other contaminants) between ecosystems. The simulation is described this week in Physics of Fluids.

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Jumping up a 2-foot waterfall is an impossible task for small fish like minnows and shiners. Such an obstacle can inhibit their ability to feed and spawn upstream. But state and federal wildlife agencies may soon be able to install fish ladders on the downside side of culverts to prevent this from happening.

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New Species of Marine Life Named One of the Year's Best Discoveries

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University of Adelaide environmental researchers have called for a ‘code of best practice’ in using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for wildlife monitoring and protection, and other biological field research.

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Unlike the declining populations of many fish species, the number of cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish and squid) has increased in the world’s oceans over the past 60 years, a University of Adelaide study has found.

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In a new study, University of Washington researchers found that selectively fishing for lingcod in protected areas actually avoided hampering the recovery of other fish, including rockfish species listed as overfished.

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Fifty-nine finfish species have ‘disappeared’ from fishermen’s catches in the world’s most species rich and vulnerable marine region, new research has shown.

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Researchers investigating the commonalities in pitch delivery by presidential candidates, the biological basis for dolphin echolocation, and an early warning system to detect tsunamis will describe their latest findings during a webcast press event on Tuesday, May 24, 2016. The event will be streamed live at 1:00 p.m., EDT, from the 171st meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), which takes place May 23-27 in Salt Lake City. Additionally, the webcast will be available for download 24 hours afterwards.

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Conventional wisdom says removing beach debris helps sea turtles nest; now, as sea-turtle nesting season gets underway, a new University of Florida study proves it.

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In the study, clearing the beach of flotsam and jetsam increased the number of nests by as much as 200 percent, while leaving the detritus decreased the number by nearly 50 percent.

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SAR11, the most abundant plankton in the world's oceans, are pumping out massive amounts of two sulfur gases that play important roles in the Earth's atmosphere, researchers announced today in the journal Nature Microbiology.

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As climatologists closely monitor the impact of human activity on the world’s oceans, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found yet another worrying trend impacting the health of the Pacific Ocean.

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The Ocean Observatories Initiative's data center, which collects and shares data from more than 800 instruments and a transmission network across the Atlantic and Pacific, is operating at Rutgers. The university has an initial $11.8 million contract to design, build and operate the OOI cyberinfrastructure.

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Researchers call for socioeconomic infuences to be factored into future protection policies.

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The University of Chicago, the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory announced today a new partnership called The Microbiome Center that will combine the three institutions' efforts to understand the identity and function of microbes across environments.

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The University of Chicago, the Marine Biological Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory announced today a new partnership called The Microbiome Center that will seek to understand the identity and function of microbes across environments.

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World’s first known multicellular green plant made its debut more than 500 million years ago.

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An unprecedented number of juvenile sea stars have been observed off the Oregon coast over the past several months – just two years after one of the most severe marine ecosystem epidemics in recorded history nearly wiped the population out.

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Scientists from the Charles Darwin Research Station (CDRS) and the National Geographic Society revealed that the northern Galápagos islands of Darwin and Wolf are home to the largest shark biomass reported to date (12.4 tons per hectare).

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Using phylogenetic software to analyze algae from ocean depths of more than 100 meters, UA biologist Dr. Juan Lopez-Bautista discovered multi-cellular structures that diversified more than 540 millions years ago