Oceanography

Strollers along the San Diego shoreline experienced their own kind of Northern Lights these past few days, only the western coast equivalent is less about skyline astral projections, and more about a grand neon blue light show luminating from within the ocean’s waves. And less cold. The event is actually a bioluminescence  phenomenon and is [...]

A team of researchers have shown in a recently released paper published in the journal Royal Society Biology Letters that dolphins actually communicate with each other through a process much in the way humans use. What has been mistaken for a long time as plain whisteling has now been proven to be a much more [...]

Bacteria and small plants at the bottom of the ocean require significant quantities of iron to survive and grow, just like us humans do. But their situation is extremely different, and they can’t just opt for an iron rich diet. So where does their iron come from ?   Pyrite, or fool’s gold (as it [...]

This amazing snailfish is just one of the animals new to science that have been uncovered by Oceanlab scientists; the expedition was studying one of the world’s deepest trenches, an environment thought to be void of fish of any kind, but researchers were surprised to find out that even the bottom of the trench was [...]

When you think of Antarctica, pristine white icebergs usually come to mind; probably the last thing you’d expect are humbug-like striped icebergs, with blue, green, yellow and even brown. The different colours appear due to various reasons, but generally speaking they appear because some layers of ice form in special conditions. Blue stripes are the [...]

Mark Benfield from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge was undertaking a survey when he spotted this amazing oarfish at about 10 meters long. The fish is one of the longest in the world, and it’s general aspect resembles that of a serpent, so it’s possible it lies at the basis of some sea serpent myths. [...]

I was surprised to talk to a bunch of people today and find out they didn’t know about this, so I figured this is definitely something worth knowing. Here’s the deal. There’s a whole lot of garbage floating around; a whole lot ! Some are above the surface, some are below. What happens is they [...]

Blue whales are not only the biggest living creatures in the world right now, but the biggest ever to have ‘walked’ the face of the earth; they’re also the loudest for that matter. After recovering from near extinction in the beginning of the 20th century, blue whales are finally getting a part of the respect [...]

The researchers from the Census of Marine Wildlife have accomplished a truly amazing task; they have inventoried a fantastic abundance of marine species, more specifically deep sea species that live below the point where sunlight can penetrate the water, creatures that live more than 5 km below sea level, in a cold and dark environment. [...]

So, microorganisms and other humans aside, what do you think is the deadliest creature in animal kingdom? A snake, perhaps a lion or bear, a scorpion perhaps? Neah, not even close. The deadliest creature in the world is actually called a sea wasp. Specialists use the term ‘deadliest’ when they refer to venomous creatures, that [...]