Conservation biologists want in on the 3-D printing revolution.
John Barnes of Australia’s national science agency CSIRO is designing and printing titanium fish tags to help marine biologists study big fish such as marlin, sharks, and tuna. The tags the biologists had been using before were rather crude, one-size-fits-all devices. Now, 3-D printing can […] Read More »
By Richard Conniff
The small town of Reedville, Virginia, on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, is a 1950s, Norman Rockwell sort of place. Bunting hangs from a white picket fence ahead of a holiday weekend, and there’s a tire swing in a front yard. The big, handsome houses on Main Street have wraparound […] Read More »
If you build it, they will come. The flood of jellyfish in ocean waters may be due in part to the expansion of man-made structures, according to a new study. The ocean-wide sprawl of docks, moorings, and rigs provides a strong foundation for jellyfish nurseries, which bud and inundate the water with medusas.
Thousands […] Read More »
On September 29, 2006, on board Oceanus, a 177-foot research vessel out of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, acoustic engineer Nicholas Makris captured an unusual reflection on his sonar screens. At first, a dark speck appeared off the northern flank of Georges Bank. The speck grew and grew, transforming into a teeming mass that stretched for […] Read More »
Around the world, warming seas are turning massive coral reefs into bone-white ghost towns. When the water gets too warm, stressed corals often respond by expelling the symbiotic algae, or zooxantehellae, that live within their tissues. The algae provide the coral with nutrients—and with color, causing the corals to “bleach” when they evict their […] Read More »
Eco-sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor is founder and creator of two underwater museums that double as artificial reefs. His sculptures, which are made of pH-neutral, environmentally friendly cement, attract corals, sponges, fish, and other marine life. He works with marine biologists to create optimal spaces for aquatic flora and fauna, and he “plants” some of his […] Read More »
Carbon dioxide can do more than tickle your tongue—it can damage your brain, if you are a fish. Rising ocean concentrations of CO2 could interfere with a fish’s ability to hear, smell, turn, and evade predators, experiments have revealed.
“For several years, our team has been testing the performance of baby coral fishes in […] Read More »
It’s been one of the enduring mysteries of the massive 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: Where did all the goop go? Try the microbes in the deep sea with a taste for hydrocarbons, suggests a recent modeling study.
Millions of barrels of oil and cubic feet of natural gas […] Read More »
When hunters spotted nearly 100 narwhals trapped in a tiny patch of ice-enclosed ocean off Greenland in the fall of 2009, the news attracted little notice. To narwhal specialists, however, it seemed a little strange. Although ice entrapments were known to routinely kill narwhals on their wintering grounds in the early spring, the Greenland […] Read More »
Your nice, clean clothes may be having a surprising effect on ocean pollution. Household washing machines appear to be a major source of so-called “microplastic” pollution—bits of polyester and acrylic smaller than the head of a pin.
Microplastic debris “is accumulating in marine habitats,” Mark Anthony Browne and colleagues report in Environmental Science & […] Read More »
And who says regulations don’t work? The number of sea turtles accidentally caught and killed in fishing gear in U.S. coastal waters has declined by an estimated 90 percent since 1990, according to an analysis of fisheries data.
Before rules to reduce such bycatch by fishing boats were set, more than 300,000 turtles became […] Read More »
Warmer seas could mean more diverse fish schools in the northeast Atlantic Ocean. Rising water temperatures have already led to major shifts in the abundance of commercially important stocks, according to a new study that, for the first time, considers the absolute abundance of fish species and not just their presence or absence.
“We see […] Read More »
Although often called “pristine,” researchers know that the Arctic hasn’t been spared from pollution. Air and water currents have imported plenty of smutz from far off smokestacks and sewer pipes, imperiling sensitive species. A new effort to track Arctic pollution over the last 25 years, however, finds that efforts to control some of these pollutants […] Read More »
Fish ranching—where the animals are free to roam but trained to return to a certain point so they can be caught—could one day become a significant part of global fisheries, fitting between traditional catching and aquaculture, says Björn Björnsson, the lead author of a study published in Marine Policy. (1) It could even reduce […] Read More »
Engineering, it has been said, is that art of taking ideas out of thin air and expressing them in steel and concrete. Now, some engineers are demonstrating how to incorporate ecological concepts into heavy-duty coastal building projects, using items as simple as concrete flower pots to create more habitat for algae, shellfish and starfish.
Thick […] Read More »
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