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Corals, like all animals, must eat to live. The problem is that most corals grow in tropical waters that are poor in nutrients, sort of like ocean deserts; it’s this lack of nutrients that makes the water around coral reefs so crystal clear. Because food is not readily available,... -
An upsurge of matter from deep beneath the Earth’s crust could be pushing the continents of North and South America further apart from Europe and Africa, new research has found. The plates attached to the Americas are moving apart from those attached to Europe and Africa by four centimetres... -
A team of marine scientists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has confirmed that southern Africa’s most threatened endemic shark — the Critically Endangered shorttail nurse shark (Pseudoginglymostoma brevicaudatum) – has been found to occur in Mozambique; a finding that represents a range extension of more than 2,000... -
Scientists at Stanford University have discovered a surprising shift in the Arctic Ocean. Exploding blooms of phytoplankton, the tiny algae at the base of a food web topped by whales and polar bears, have drastically altered the Arctic’s ability to transform atmospheric carbon into living matter. Over the past... -
A massive global study of the world’s reefs has found sharks are ‘functionally extinct’ on nearly one in five of the reefs surveyed. Professor Colin Simpfendorfer from James Cook University in Australia was one of the scientists who took part in the study, published today in Nature by the Global FinPrint... -
A groundbreaking study using molecular genetic techniques and field studies brings together decades of research into the complex relationships among beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) that spans 10 locations across the Arctic from Alaska to Canada and Russia to Norway. The behavior of these highly gregarious whales, which include sophisticated... -
University of Sydney scientists have modelled how carbonate accumulation from ‘marine snow’ in oceans has absorbed carbon dioxide over millennia and been a key driver in keeping the planet cool for millions of years. The study, published in Geology, also helps our understanding of the ocean’s future capacity to... -
Warming ocean temperatures over the next 40 years are predicted to create novel combinations of marine life on deep ocean reefs that are unlike deep reef communities today. In research published in the journal Nature Climate Change, a team of Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) scientists studied... -
Founder of the Fortescue Metals Group, Andrew Forrest, has announced he will contribute $100 million to his Minderoo Foundation to extend its activities to the protection of the ocean. Mr Forrest said the funding would support the Minderoo Ocean Research Initiative, a new global research program to be undertaken... -
An international study led by University of Queensland scientists has found that only 13 per cent of the ocean can still be classified as wilderness. Researchers from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences and international collaborators identified marine areas devoid of intense human impacts by analysing 19 stressors including commercial shipping, sediment runoff...
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