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It was a turning point for the Earth's geological and climatic history.
A fish has no face.
The starfish are worse for the reefs than bleaching and disease combined.
It is not looking good.
It's even worse than we thought.
Microbeads are slowly killing off oceanic wildlife -- and that's affecting us as well.
It's like the ocean is having a heart attack.
Sorry, no good news.
The oceans are as beautiful as they are bizarre.
Given the sheer size of whales, it should be no surprise that they make some very important contributions to ecosystems.
They call it the "Jacuzzi of Despair" and rarely has a name been so fitting.
They've collected staggering amounts of data.
The sub will be used to explore Titan's oceans.
Whales > Judges.
The consequences are not known at the moment.
We all know the pain and harrowing loneliness of losing a loved one, and it seems whales do too.
Human activity has been wreaking havoc on ocean life. One group however seems to thrive where others struggle to survive: new evidence shows that cephalopods' numbers have significantly increased over the last six decades.
If you've ever seen one up close you probably know that corals are insanely beautiful, but not exactly action packed -- these animals live at their own pace, one so slow that to a human being they might seem frozen in time. But what would coral look like if it lived in 'normal' speed?
Ken Buesseler studies marine radioactivity. He uses radioactive elements such as thorium that are naturally occurring in the ocean as a technique to study the ocean’s carbon cycle, as well as fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing and recently, the sources of radionuclides from Fukushima Dai-ichi in 2011. Following the 2011 earthquake in Japan and the subsequent tsunami, […]
The voracious reputation of sharks might soon change as marine biologists uncover that most coral reef sharks eat pray smaller than a cheeseburger.
Carbon dioxide acts like a greenhouse gas and can heat a planet's atmosphere - nothing new so far. But it can be so potent...
The global fish stocks are depleting at alarming rates, much faster than reported by the UN, a study found.
South Korean designer Jeabyun Yeon has just unveiled his new concept of a scuba mask that would allow anyone to breathe underwater without requiring air tanks. His design, named the Triton, includes two arms linked to a mouth piece. The branching arms are designed to extract free oxygen atoms from the water and supply breathable air directly to the user. But I'm not sold on it just yet.
The full extent of Japan's 2011 Fukushima meltdown is still being uncovered, with measured levels of contamination increasing in previously identified sites throughout the North American coast. While it's still too low to threaten human or ocean life, this confirms that the power plant continues to leak radioactive isotopes researchers report.
Bad news for us -- and fish.
The Antarctic Ocean has been sucking more and more carbon dioxide - and this is both good news and bad news. For the Ocean's inhabitants, it's bad news because it increases acidity, which is extremely harmful; for everyone else, it's good news, because it mitigates the effects of climate change.
Scientists have reported the break of a huge part of Jakobshavn Glacier, one of the largest ones in Greenland. A chunk of it roughly the size of Manhattan broke some time between August 13 and August 19.
Coral populations are crucial to the health of oceanic environments, but corals are also extremely vulnerable to changing conditions. Researchers warn that warming waters and ocean acidification lead to coral bleaching which can cause massive damage across both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
We'll take a look at the Man of War and see what you should do to stay safe on the beach.
In what's perhaps one of the most amazing marine science study, a team of researchers scoured the world's oceans fishing for microbes, viruses and other tiny life during a three and a half year trip aboard a schooner. The trip was long and arduous for sure, but ultimately it paid out - big time! The team collected 35,000 samples at 210 stations over the voyage, and found 35,000 species of bacteria, 5,000 new viruses and 150,000 single-celled plants and creatures. Most of these are new to science. Only a small fraction of the newly discovered and known species alike had been genetically sequenced, but results so far show just how interconnected and symbiotic marine life is. It also means it's also vulnerable in the face of environmental changes, particularly climate change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Obama administration and California lawmakers have announced a doubling of the size of the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones national marine sanctuaries off Northern California. “NOAA is expanding the boundaries of Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary (CBNMS) and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS) to […]
Using both modern and historic measurements, researchers now have a more extensive view of how the Arctic sea ice has changed in the past few decades, finding that the ice is melting much faster than previously expected. The ice in the central Arctic Ocean thinned 65 percent between 1975 and 2012, from 11.7 feet (3.59 meters) to 4.1 feet (1.25 m).
We often say that you only see 10% of the iceberg, the rest being underwater. US photographer Alex Cornell actually got the chance to see that - during a trip to Antarctica, he managed to take pictures of an extremely rare phenomenon: a flipped iceberg.
President Obama has signed a proclamation which will make the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument the largest marine reserve in the world. Up until now, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was a group of unorganized, mostly unincorporated United States Pacific Island territories managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. They host many important species, including corals, […]
Ice melting means waves have more room to develop and grow, and scientists aren't really sure what the consequences will be.
You’ve probably heard it a few times: the climate is indeed warming up, but it’s all good, because the rate at which it is warming up is slowing down. But a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters analyzing ocean warming (which represents 90% of global warming) claims otherwise. Accelerating global warming Contrary to the […]
NASA has, for the first time, released a global map of ocean salinity. The first thing that popped up for me was the pulse of freshwater gushing from the Amazon, but other major features are worth noticing. An invisible seam divides the salty Arabian Sea from the fresher waters of the Bay of Bengal and […]
Every bottlenose dolphin makes its own distinctive sound, a high-pitched “eeee” through which they announce their presence. However, dolphins are also great at mimicking sounds, being able to copy even intricate computer generated sounds; this made researchers curious to see if dolphins can in fact mimic each other’s sound, and how they use this ability […]
Why would the El Niño be important for the rest of us that don’t live in the western part of South America? Well because it also influences the climate in North America, Asia, Australia, Africa, even Europe perhaps.. so that basically means the whole world. The El Niño-the southern oscillation or ENSO is a sort of a […]
Who doesn’t dream of a deserted tropical island..sandy beaches made of coral sand, with crystal clear water, blue like the sky – you know what I mean. And let’s say it would be somewhere off the coast of Australia, maybe near New Calledonia. That sounds perfect.. it’s a great place, a great place to imagine. Well, […]
The world’s oceans are teeming with life, a new census estimating almost 1 million species out there; but marine life is declining, with the main causes being overfishing, ocean acidification and coastal damage. Avoiding a crisis The new numbers are just estimates, but they are much lower than previous studies, which put the number of […]
The natural world sometimes has a magnificent way of dealing with its own problems – and this is exactly the case here. Coral threatened by toxic seaweeds emit a chemical signal which draws fish to eat away the danger. When Acropora nasuta corals come into contact with the toxic seaweed Chlorodesmis fastigiata, they scream for […]
Deep in the Mariana Trench, about seven miles below the surface, researchers found huge single celled amoebas, making them not only completely surprisng and amazing, but also the creatures living at the biggest depth found so far. The team from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego studied and catalogued these xenophyophores, single-celled animals […]
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 […]
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 […]
