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Parrotfish make sleeping cocoons to “tuck themselves in” and remain protected from parasites, scientists say.

The fish make the cocoons from a mucus secreted from glands near their gills.

This behaviour has long been a source of fascination for divers and this is the first study to examine its function.

The scientists published their findings in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Dr Alexandra Grutter from the University of Queensland in Australia led the research.

“The bullethead parrotfish (Chlorurus sordidus) takes about 45 to 60 minutes to produce its cocoon,” explained Dr Gutter.

The mucus-producing glands behind their gills are about the size of a 10 pence piece; large organs for a fish that grows to a maximum length of 40cm.

To find out if the sleeping cocoons had a protectiv...

Indonesia has declared the coral-rich waters around Bali — a popular scuba diving spot which is home to the giant Mola-Mola ocean sunfish — a protected zone.

The 20,000-hectare area around Nusa Penida, Nusa Ceningan and Nusa Lembongan islands will be protected from destructive fishing, waste dumping and coral mining, project leader Marthen Welly said.

“Destructive fishing is carried out by fishermen using cyanide and explosives,” Welly, of the conservation group The Nature Conservancy (TNC), told AFP on Sunday.

“Many ships also throw anchors on the coral reefs and hotels and households dump wastes causing water pollution. Now they can’t do these anymore,” he said.

Guidelines for marine tourism will also be drawn up and zones carved out for various activities including fishing, tourism and ...

A collision between a Japanese whaling vessel and a high-tech protest boat off Antarctica was the fault of both captains, New Zealand has ruled.

The 6 January collision cut the bow off the protest boat.

But Maritime New Zealand said that there was no evidence either side deliberately caused the collision, instead blaming poor seamanship.

It occurred as protesters from the Sea Shepherd environmental group sought to thwart Japan’s annual whale hunt.

Japan abandoned commercial whaling in 1986 after agreeing to a global moratorium.

But it says that whaling is part of its culture and catches hundreds of whales each year as part of what it calls a scientific research programme.

Conservationists say the whaling is a cover for the sale and consumption of whale meat...

Paris and Brussels are presently seeing skirmishes over the fate of what’s become the oceans’ most iconic creature – the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

This week and next, the French capital hosts the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat) – the organisation charged with ensuring this species and many others are fished sustainably, but which has in conservationists’ eyes so badly mismanaged its task over the years as to garner the alternative appellation of the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tunas.

Earlier this year, Iccat’s scientific advisers said continuing at this year’s catch level of 13,500 tonnes was feasible but only carried about a 60% chance of rebuilding stocks by 2022.

You can call this a 40% chance of failure, if you want.

A new species of squid has been discovered by scientists during a research cruise in the southern Indian ocean.

The 70cm-long specimen is a large member of the chiroteuthid family.

Squid from this group are long and slender with light-producing organs, which act as lures to attract prey.

It was found during analysis of 7,000 samples gathered during last year’s Seamounts cruise led by the conservation group IUCN.

The project started a year ago when marine experts embarked on a six-week research expedition in the Indian Ocean.

The aim of the cruise was to unveil the mysteries of seamounts – underwater mountains – in the southern Indian Ocean and to help improve conservation and management of marine resources in the area.

“For 10 days now 21 scientists armed with microscopes have been workin...

Great white sharks in the Mediterranean may have first arrived from the seas around Australia 450,000 years ago, genetic studies have suggested.

Researchers writing in Proceedings of the Royal Society B believe the arrival may have been simply a migratory “wrong turn” by a few pregnant females.

A tumultuous climate between ice ages may have been the cause.

The species – Carcharodon carcharias would have remained in the Med because it returns to spawn where it was born.

It was previously assumed that the great whites in the Mediterranean were most closely related to their nearby cousins in the Atlantic Ocean.

But now, a team led by Les Noble of the University of Aberdeen has examined the several groups of sharks’ mitochondrial DNA – genetic material passed through the maternal line that is ...

Over 10,000 marine turtles are being killed in one region of Madagascar for food every year, according to a new study in Animal Conservation.

Although fishing for marine turtles is illegal, it has not stopped local artisanal fishermen from pursuing four different endangered marine turtle species.

“We conducted this study because we know this small-scale, artisanal fishing is going on despite it being illegal to catch turtles under Malagasy law,” Annette Broderick, from the Center for Ecology and Conservation (Cornwall) at the University of Exeter, said in a press release.

“Because turtles are an endangered species, it’s important for us to know what’s going on in the region so we can work with the local community to find a sustainable way forward.”

699 marine turtles were landed in 12 c...

A new science-based blueprint for the country

Leatherback turtles, the ocean’s deepest-diving reptiles, control their buoyancy simply by breathing in, scientists have found.

Researchers describe in the Journal of Experimental Biology how the turtles regulate their dives through the volume of air in their lungs.

This allows them to glide and forage for food at a variety of depths.

Scientists believed that the animals would exhale before diving, to avoid gas bubbles forming in their bodies.

US and UK scientists monitored the turtles’ diving by attaching small data loggers to the animals’ backs.

Sabrina Fossette from the University of Swansea in Wales led the study.

She and her colleagues attached the data loggers to five female leatherbacks in a wildlife refuge in the Caribbean.

“In addition to the depth, we could measure their accelera...

It’ll likely be quite some time before we see the full ramifications of the BP oil spill, but it looks like we can add coral to the long list of those affected.

Scientists have discovered a large number of dead or dying coral, which has likely been caused by the oil spill.

“The coral were either dead or dying, and in some cases they were simply exposed skeletons,” researcher Timothy Shank told National Geographic.

“I’ve never seen that before. And when we tried to take samples of the coral, this black–I don’t know how to describe it–black, fluffylike substance fell off of them.”

Around 40 different groups of coral were looked at, and 90 percent of them were either dead or dying.

Because so many have been affected at the same time, this is unlikely to be a natural occurrence...