Science

TEL AVIV, Israel — As Egypt marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Suez Canal, marine biologists are bemoaning one of the famed waterway’s lesser known legacies — the invasion of hundreds of non-native species, including toxic jellyfish and aggressive lionfish.

California’s coastal waters are acidifying twice as fast as the global average, according to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

For the first time, indigenous communities living around the Bering Sea were invited to share their perspectives of the changing Arctic for the 2019 edition of NOAA’s annual Arctic Report Card.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Common murres look like skinny penguins but fly like F-15 fighter jets.

Our latest paper, led by Marta Ribó, is out today in Nature Scientific Reports. With this new research, we can now identify which sections of the East Australian coast are likely to have a future and ongoing sand supply sand which sections are inherently vulnerable to erosion due to a lack of sand supply thousands of years ago.

A new study identifies the non-native species most likely to invade the Antarctic Peninsula region over the next decade. It provides a baseline for all operators in the region to look at mitigation measures. The study is published in the journal Global Change Biology today, January 13, 2020.

How did the monstrous giant squid—reaching school-bus size, with eyes as big as dinner plates and tentacles that can snatch prey 10 yards away—get so scarily big?

Local shark researchers are waiting on the release of anticipated federal funding to conduct a two-year study which will attempt to identify when water conditions are ripe for an increased presence of white sharks.

The unprecedented death of nearly one million birds between 2015 and 2016, whose remains washed ashore in Alaska, US, was brought on by a severe and long-lasting marine heatwave, a new study says.l

US atmospheric agency also says that ocean heat content is the highest in recorded history.

TCarta Marine, a provider of marine geospatial products, is commercializing a new technique to derive highly accurate shallow-water bathymetry measurements from NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite data. The new methodology is being developed with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2018, NSF awarded the company a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to commercialize new satellite-derived bathymetric (SDB) measurement technologies. Referred to as Project Trident, the research focused on leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) - machine learning and computer vision - to determine shallow-water seafloor depth in variable water conditions.

Two small islands in South Sumatra have disappeared as a result of rising sea levels driven by climate change, while four other islands are already on the brink of vanishing, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has claimed.

Following the success of the DYNAREV experiment in the summer of 2017, a second Bath-led laboratory experiment on a low cost style of dynamic revetment was carried out in collaboration with researchers from institutions in both Europe and Brazil, supported by GCRF funding.

The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters announced on Jan. 14, 2020, the seven recipients of the 2020 Academy Fellows Award. Among them was UW-Green Bay Prof. Emeritus Hallet J. ‘Bud’ Harris (NAS), who has dedicated his career and life’s work to scientific solutions to Great Lakes issues.

The rate of coastal erosion around the UK is expected to increase substantially in the future, according to a new study by the University of Plymouth.

Turns out that “my relative” is on the dinner menu for some hammerhead sharks in Australia!

The results of an 18-year study of Atlantic tarpon by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science revealed that these large silvery fish take extensive seasonal migrations--1,000s of kilometers in distance--beyond U.S. borders. The new findings can help protect the fish, which is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN--International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the main draw of a more than $6 billion catch-and-release sport fishing industry in the United States.

As sea levels rise, the planet's natural bulwarks against the ocean could help protect the coastline. But these very habitats are also under threat.

Do the thousands of drivers who zip down N.C. 191 through Bent Creek each day know they are passing through one of the rarest habitats in the state, and possibly the country?

The world's oceans are now heating at the same rate as if five Hiroshima atomic bombs were dropped into the water every second, scientists have said. A new study released on Monday showed that 2019 was yet another year of record-setting ocean warming, with water temperatures reaching the highest temperature ever recorded.

Just as local researchers received news of a third right whale calf sighted off the Georgia coast, a pair of the critically endangered whales were spotted in Cape Cod Bay.

A research team has found five new species of birds and five more subspecies in Wallacea, in what can be considered a big leap in terms of finding new bird species in the past 20 years.

A coastal stewardship coordinator with the Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation says ice cover on Lake Huron can vary dramatically from year to year and this year the ice cover on Lake Huron, at this point, is well below the average.

Local researchers hope to turn the liquid beauty of rolling surf into hard data.

A recent Scientific American article indicates the acidification of the ocean will have a dramatic effect on the economy of the Virgin Islands.

Mexican environmental authorities said Thursday that 292 sea turtles found dead on the country's southern Pacific coast since Christmas died as a result of a red tide algae bloom.

Fishing practices that selectively remove large parrotfish could put corals at risk

Fecal samples among options for important hormone analysis, researchers say

The two Atlantic Category 5 hurricanes and three Northwest Pacific Category 5 super typhoons of 2019 set records

This photo taken by an aerial survey team for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission shows an injured right whale calf swimming alongside its mother about 8 miles off the coast of Georgia on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020. Conservationists say the newborn right whale was suffering from deep cuts on either side of its head, dismaying conservationists who closely monitor the southeast U.S. coast during winter for births among the critically endangered species.

NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and the ocean data and technology company Ocean Infinityoffsite link have announced a new agreement to develop deep-water autonomous technologies that can gather ultra-high-resolution ocean information.

University of North Carolina undergraduates at coastal campuses spent the fall semester undertaking projects to answer pressing environmental questions, making their capstone presentations in December. This is the first of two reports stemming from presentations on water quality.

BOCA GRANDE — Only one water sample throughout Florida — 15 miles off Collier County’s Gulf coastline — has shown any signs of the toxic red tide algae in 2020. The counts may be low, but the subject, and the worries over red tide, have not dissolved from the public’s mind.

Shipwrecks and rocky reefs off the coast of North Carolina are home to many commercially and recreationally important fish species. Scientists with NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science are researching how and when fish use these artificial and natural reefs.

Microplastics (plastic particles under 5 mm) are an abundant type of debris found in salt and freshwater environments. In a Limnology & Oceanography Letters study, researchers demonstrated the transfer of microplastics through the food chain between microscopic prey and larval fish that live in coastal ecosystems. They also found that microplastic ingestion interferes with normal growth in fish larvae.

After recent declines, a new breeding program could help safeguard the cockle's future as a food source for tribes like the Suquamish.

We’re a week into the new year and a species has already been declared extinct: the giant Chinese paddlefish.

Students at two Charleston County elementary schools will have the opportunity to collect data and help scientists at NASA and NOAA who are analyzing data for an international climate change study.

American white pelicans breed in Canada and the upper Midwest, and they typically winter near the Gulf of Mexico and coastal Southern California. However, more of these enormous wetland birds are wintering in Arizona because of the state’s prime living conditions.

An effort to reconnect Louisiana wetlands to historical levels is taking place at Louisiana State University, where a 10,000-square-foot replica of the Mississippi Delta is now housed. Researchers are working to understand how man-made changes are impacting the Mississippi River and surrounding wetlands. Nexus Media News’ Josh Landis reports as part of our climate change series, "Peril & Promise."

The rocky island of Redonda, once stripped of its flora and fauna by invasive species, makes an astonishingly quick comeback. What’s the secret to its recovery?

In first-of-its-kind research, NOAA scientists and academic partners used 100 years of microscopic shells to show that the coastal waters off California are acidifying twice as fast as the global ocean average — with the seafood supply in the crosshairs.

This decade was likely the hottest on record. As it comes to a close and another begins, one glaring question is: Can the world make up for this lost time?

Rice University-led study shows only rapid reduction of greenhouse gases will let banks thrive

Rice-led scientists show grain size, not speed of water, sets silt and sand transport

The environment will likely be a top story in Florida in the upcoming year. 2019 has been one of the hottest on record. King tides were some of the highest recorded. And, while Hurricane Dorian skirted along the Atlantic coast, it was a reminder of how vulnerable Florida is as climate change fuels more intense and wetter storms.

Because sharks are jawsome.

In October I wrote about a large area of much warmer than normal water in the north Pacific. The warm area of water influenced our storm track in October and November. Now the large area of warm water has been fading fast over the past month. The water temperatures now in the Pacific appear to be allowing a whole different storm track to emerge.

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Coastal wetlands provide stunning views and are hosts to a vast biodiversity. But they provide another service to the warming Earth: they capture carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in their sediment at high rates.

When climate change started killing the Pacific Northwest's oysters by the millions, scientists and growers taught the world how to safeguard an ecosystem.

University of Miami researchers are leading a massive undertaking to plant 150,000 coral colonies on reefs decimated by disease, pollution and rising temperatures using corals grown at UM and partner organizations.

In August 2017, a marine accident occurred in the Pearl River Estuary where a cargo vessel accidentally released about 1,000 tons of palm stearin into the sea, where over 200 tons reached the southwest coasts of Hong Kong. Subsequently a research team launched an 18-month investigation on the degradation, bioaccumulation, and toxicity of the palm stearin through bother field- and laboratory-based investigations.

Feeding strategy strongly influences their size cap, but all whales depend on rich ocean resources to be big

The story of accelerating sea level rise and its human impact unfolds on the most recent edge of a 200-million-year-old timeline. The longer tale begins with the birth of the Atlantic ocean, and it includes a record of how people have responded to the encroaching water for centuries.

For some years, Australia has been on notice: the world is watching how we care for the Great Barrier Reef. The iconic natural wonder is the largest living organism on the planet. But its health is deteriorating.

AMHERST, Mass. - A new analysis of the changing character of runoff, river discharge and other hydrological cycle elements across the North Slope of Alaska reveals significant increases in the proportion of subsurface runoff and cold season discharge, changes the authors say are "consistent with warming and thawing permafrost."

DNA-based biomonitoring relies on species-specific segments of organisms DNA for their taxonomic identification and is rapidly advancing for monitoring invertebrate communities across a variety of ecosystems. The analytical approaches taken vary from single-species detection to bulk environmental sample analysis, depending largely on the focus of data generation. However, for freshwater systems, there is often a lack of consideration as to the optimal sample type for maximising detection of macroinvertebrates.

Using historical data from tide gauges that line US coasts, researchers created an extreme sea level indicator

Wetsuit still zipped up to his neck from an earlier dive, Ross Cunning stands amid dozens of chunks of coral in the saltwater live well on board the Coral Reef II, the research vessel owned by his employer, Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.

A similar bill filed last year never made it out of committee

Bobtail squid (order Sepiolida) are small cephalopods found in shallow coastal waters of the Indo-west Pacific, the east Atlantic coast, and the Mediterranean Sea.

Ocean acidification has been found to be a threat to Long Island’s shellfish population and its coastal health. A New York State task force is finalizing a report that has some solutions to the problem.

Killer whales prefer to eat only the biggest, juiciest Chinook salmon they can find. The larger the fish, the more energy a whale can get for its meal.

Exposure to underwater pile driving noise, which can be associated with the construction of docks, piers, and offshore wind farms, causes squid to exhibit strong alarm behaviors, according to a study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers published Dec. 16, 2019, in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.

The impact of an asteroid or comet is acknowledged as the principal cause of the mass extinction that killed off most dinosaurs and about three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species 66 million years ago.

Special report: After the Ice -- This is the third installment of a Seattle Times series exploring climate change in the northern Bering Sea region. The series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s Connected Coastlines reporting initiative. For more information, go to pulitzercenter.org/connected-coastlines

MONTEREY — Rescue organizations in southern California are finding sea lion pups sick and emaciated, stranded on beaches without their mothers months earlier than in previous years. This may not bode well for marine mammals in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties.

The Belgian coastal dunes, a protected habitat of high conservation value, are getting severely impacted by one of its worst enemies amongst invasive species: the Oregon grape. To help mitigate the detrimental effect of this North American shrub invader, Belgian scientists carried out an experiment to assess the effectiveness of different management methods.

Florida has an underappreciated secret weapon to help heal its ailing reefs: prickly sea urchins.

This year's report card highlights the impact global warming has on daily life in Alaska.

A team of researchers from the University of Delaware has mapped the seafloor where an atomic blast created a crater back in 1946 during a test. The team has given a presentation outlining their findings at this year's fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Using high-resolution sonar, the team created depth maps that showed not only the crater created by the blast but the test ships that were used to measure its power.

According to experts, these zones result from the loss of oxygen, and they are expanding due to climate change and pollutants from agricultural wastes

There's a mystery lurking in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Big Sur, California. An underwater survey has found thousands of small, round divots scooped out of the soft sediment on the seafloor.

More than 300 scientists from 19 nations are engaged in planned two- to three-month stints locked in polar ice on the German icebreaker RV Polarstern. Over the winter, researchers face constant darkness, frigid temperatures plunging to -45 degrees Celsius, and the threat of hungry polar bears near their research camps.

The oceans, covering 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, have taken the brunt of global warming. However, a recent study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) shows that the ocean’s absorption of 90 percent of the heat linked to greenhouse gas emissions came at great cost.

Vast amounts of pumice can be created in volcanic eruptions. The pumice raft produced by Volcano F initially spanned 136.7 square kilometres (52.8 square miles, about three-quarters of the size of Washington DC), although it subsequently fluctuated a little. The estimated minimum volume of the pumice is 8.2 million to 41 million cubic metres.

Scientists are embarking on a new project for the U.S. Department of Energy that targets some of the biggest uncertainties in projecting the evolution of coastal environments. The Integrated Coastal Modeling project, led by Kraucunas, focuses on developing and integrating computational models that can simulate coastal processes.

Scripps wave monitoring program provides real-time data for everyone from scientists to surfers

Understanding ocean noise is important for conservation efforts, researchers say

In April next year, a team of 60 scientists and crew from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will come to the Mariana Islands aboard the NOAA ship Rainier to map the seafloor of the Marianas and do coral reef research. NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey and Office of Marine and Aviation Operations will be working together to perform the ocean surveys to measure the depths of water, the regional online newspaper the Saipan Tribune reports.

Deep within the Tongass National Forest, the rain was just heavy enough to need an umbrella—and to wash away a light dusting of snow coating the mountains above Juneau, Alaska.

(CNN) The bomb cyclone that pounded the West Coast last week brought with it some of the tallest waves ever recorded off the California coast.

Scientists attending a national gathering of Arctic researchers are outlining a widening range of climate change risks for so-called "sentinel" species, such as ringed seals and beluga whales, which have sustained Inuit for millennia.

Climate negotiators in Madrid are trying to avoid 2 meters of sea level rise, but research suggests 10 times that — 65 feet — is already inevitable.

Corals are dying but science could be able to help them fight back from the brink.

In the first study of its kind, an IMAS-led research team estimates that around 570 000 hermit crabs have been killed on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean and Henderson Island in the Pacific after being trapped in plastic debris.

The researchers found that across the 11 western states, of the $50.8 billion of total estimated flood damages during 1978 to 2017, atmospheric rivers accounted for 84% of these damages, exceeding 99% in some areas of the coastal states.

Proposals for North Carolina Sea Grant’s Community Collaborative Research Grant program are being accepted now through Jan. 20, 2020.

Bounding the southern approach to New York harbor, New Jersey's low, narrow Sandy Hook peninsula is home to an extremely rare forest: a 65-acre patch of eastern holly and red cedar trees, some of which date to the early 1800s. Close to sea level, rooted in nutrient-poor sand and exposed to wind from all directions, such forests once covered much of the East Coast. These few trees have survived the development that has swallowed nearly everything around them, along with countless storms, and—so far—rising sea levels. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy tore through, killing many trees with saltwater inundation and wind. The skeletons of the dead now whiten in the sun. With the slow inland march of rising ocean waters, and the increasing climate-driven potential for future powerful storms like Sandy, how much longer the rest may exist is an open question.

A few days after a full moon on a sultry summer evening, a light current and sea water temperature of about 85 degrees created the perfect conditions for coral sex in the Florida Keys.

A postgraduate researcher is investigating the biotoxin production potential of Azadinium and related species in Irish waters, particularly in estuaries used for shellfish aquaculture such as Killary Harbour and Bantry Bay.

New marine life has formed in pools at a black sand beach created by the Kilauea volcano eruption, according to researchers in Hawaii.

"I am in love with this sea. I live for it and I live off it. If they took it away from me, I would die," says Pedro Martinez-Banos, gazing out across the sparkling waters of Spain's Mar Menor.

The University of East Anglia (UEA) is leading a pioneering international project to sequence the DNA of marine microbes in the Arctic Ocean.

A conveyor belt of ocean water that loops the planet and regulates global temperatures could be heading for a tipping point.

Millions of years before Colombia won its independence from Spain at the historic Battle of Boyacá, the site was covered by an inland ocean inhabited by marine invertebrates. Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and collaborators discovered a new fossil species of comma shrimp that was remarkably well preserved in mid-Cretaceous rocks of Boyacá, now part of the Colombian Andes, allowing them to fill a 160 million-year gap in the evolution of these crustaceans.

Scientists at Northumbria University led the study with NASA jet propulsion specialists

Oysters once dominated the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Bay to return to full ecological health without restoring Crassostrea virginica to its glory days as the Chesapeake’s apex filterer.

Carey Schafer’s graduate research finds her waist deep in Florida waters, covered in mud and battling mosquitoes.

An Oregon State University anthropologist has been awarded $750,000 by the National Science Foundation to research issues facing coastal communities exposed to repetitive flooding, and the effectiveness of federal disaster response policies.