Category News

The foundation of massive, flashy and dazzling coral reefs may be a group of fish almost too small to see. New research suggests a group of fish species called cryptobenthics are the fuel that feeds coral reef ecosystems. Most cryptobenthic fish weigh just a fraction of a gram each—but they make up more than half of all fish flesh consumed on reefs each year, says study leader Simon Brandl, a postdoctoral researcher in marine ecology at Simon Fraser University.

Millions of humans rely on bigger reef fish for food, but how reef ecosystems sustain such a bounty of species in tropical oceans that are low in plant nutrients has been a longstanding mystery that the new work could help explain.

“It’s actually frustrating how little we know as scientists about coral reef ecosystems,” s...

Ocean scientists are concerned about dead gray whales that have washed up on the US West Coast this year at the highest rate in almost two decades. As of Thursday night, 58 gray whales have landed ashore from California to Alaska, compared to 45 for all of last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Some were underweight, leading scientists to think they did not have enough food.”Why these whales are malnourished is the mystery we are trying to unravel,” NOAA spokesman Michael Milstein said.

“Something is going on.”The last time researchers saw such high numbers was in 2000, when 131 deaths were documented.Climate change could be contributing, Milstein said. “That’s an angle they’re investigating,” he said. “We don’t know anything for sure at this time...

On the beaches of the tiny Cocos (Keeling) Islands, population 600, marine scientists found 977,000 shoes and 373,000 toothbrushes.

A comprehensive survey of debris on the islands – among the most remote places on Earth, in the Indian Ocean – has found a staggering amount of rubbish washed ashore. This included 414m pieces of plastic, weighing 238 tonnes.

The study, published in the journal Nature, concluded the volume of debris points to the exponential increase of global plastic polluting the world’s oceans and “highlights a worrying trend in the production and discharge of single-use products”.

The lead author, Jennifer Lavers from the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, said remote islands without large populations were the most effe...

Thirty hammerhead sharks captured on the Great Barrier Reef and exported to a French aquarium over an eight-year period have all died in captivity and the Australian government says it knows nothing about it.

The deaths, which are the subject of legal action by Sea Shepherd France, could put a spotlight on the trade of threatened sharks caught in Australian waters because of a federal law that allows them to continue to be commercially fished.

The scalloped hammerheads were at Europe’s biggest aquarium, the Nausicaá aquarium in the French port of Boulogne, near Calais, and were imported in two groups, the first in 2011 and the second in 2018.

The last of the 30 sharks died two weeks ago, but the precise timeline and cause of all of the deaths is unclear.

Nausicaá has told E...

Plans to create octopus farms in coastal waters round the world have been denounced by an international group of researchers. They say the move is ethically inexcusable and environmentally dangerous, and have called on private companies, academic institutions and governments to block funding for these ventures.

The researchers say that farming octopuses would require the catching of vast amounts of fish and shellfish to feed them, putting further pressure on the planet’s already threatened marine livestock.

The group, led by Professor Jennifer Jacquet of New York University, argues that octopuses are highly intelligent, curious creatures. Farming them intensively would probably cause large numbers of deaths from stress...

Researchers may have just found the devil’s maternity ward… devil rays, that is. While taking a marine conservation field course in the Gulf of California as an undergraduate at Duke back in April 2014, Leo Chan Gaskins saw gillnets full of dead giant devil rays being hauled out of the ocean.

Based out of a small-scale fishing community in northern Sonora, the now doctoral student in marine science and conservation at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment watched as the fishers were unable to return the animals back to the watery domain due to just how big they were.

A large species, giant devil rays (Mobula mobular) can grow to 17 feet (5.18 m) long and are famous for beauty and graceful swimming that looks like they are flying underwater...

The US is a hotbed of climate science denial when compared with other countries, with international polling finding a significant number of Americans do not believe human-driven climate change is occurring.

A total of 13% of Americans polled in a 23-country survey conducted by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project agreed with the statement that the climate is changing “but human activity is not responsible at all”. A further 5% said the climate was not changing.

Only Saudi Arabia (16%) and Indonesia (18%) had a higher proportion of people doubtful of manmade climate change.

Americans were also more likely than any other western country polled to say they did not know whether the climate was changing or people were responsible – a total of 13% said this.

But desp...

One million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction, with alarming implications for human survival, according to a United Nations report released Monday.

The landmark report by seven lead co-authors from universities across the world goes further than previous studies by directly linking the loss of species to human activity. It also shows how those losses are undermining food and water security, as well as human health.

More plants and animals are threatened with extinction now than any other period in human history, it concludes. Nature’s current rate of decline is unparalleled, and the accelerating rate of extinctions “means grave impacts on people around the world are now likely,” it says.

In a prepared statement, Robert Watson, a British chemist who serve...

Reef corals in equatorial regions are going to start moving toward the poles as climate change takes hold, scientists have said. By analyzing the ranges of reefs from the fossil record, researchers are able to build a picture of how these systems respond to climate change—and then project how they might respond under future global warming.

Findings show that, under two climate change scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reefs are likely to expand their poleward range—in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres—and decline in the regions they currently occupy. This will mean a fundamental change to the locations of reef corals in the future.

The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, examines the fossil record for ho...

Europe’s biggest aquarium faces legal action over the deaths of 30 hammerhead sharks, which a marine conservation group alleges were mistreated. Sea Shepherd France announced at the weekend that it would file a lawsuit on Monday against the Nausicaá aquarium in the French port of Boulogne, near Calais. The last of the 30 sharks, which were introduced into the aquarium in 2011 and 2018, died on Thursday.

Sea Shepherd accuses the aquarium of “serious mistreatment” of the sharks and “breaches of environmental law”.

Philippe Vallette, the manager of Nausicaá, rejected the allegations and the claim that they died because they were kept in captivity...