marine-biology

Imagine piloting a robot through complete darkness more than two miles beneath the ocean. Then your cameras pick up something sticking out of the seafloor. It isn’t a strange rock. It’s part of a whale. During the final dive of a NOAA-led expedition near the Cook Islands, scientists discovered a fossilized whale jaw resting approximately 3,600 […]

Ancient sea sponges have no brain, yet somehow know to chemically rewire their cells at dusk, positioning themselves for the crucial moment of settling into stone.

Nature Sustainability, Published online: 01 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41893-026-01932-6 The livelihood of people in poor coastal areas depends directly on local ecosystems, but such reliance is not well documented. With data from across 156 Indo-Pacific communities, this study examines the relationship between seagrass-associated fishing and household poverty.

Seals, dolphins and orcas reveal a striking evolutionary pattern: beyond one aquatic stage, the road back nearly vanishes.

We've made some drastic changes to ocean ecosystems in the past century. One of the...

This Earth of ours still holds untold wonders, even if it can sometimes feel like...

Imagine getting a phone call asking if you have room for a few rescued fish. Then imagine finding out “a few” actually means nearly 500 live animals. That’s essentially what happened to the Aquarium of the Pacific after wildlife officials intercepted two major shipments of illegally trafficked marine life in Southern California. Suddenly, hundreds of animals […]

We have important ocean news to report. There are currently two extremely fluffy baby penguins waddling their way toward adulthood at the Tennessee Aquarium. That’s it. That’s the story. Okay, there’s actually a little more to it. The Aquarium is celebrating what it calls a summertime “penguin baby boom” after two Gentoo penguin chicks hatched […]

Buried beneath the seafloor near Antarctica for 68 million years, a single fossil egg is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about ancient reptiles. It has no skeleton, no obvious owner, and a shape that doesn't match anything paleontologists expected to find there.

On August 30, volunteers gathered in Veracruz to give local sea turtle hatchlings a fighting chance.

Did you know not every sea turtle is interested in traveling thousands of miles across the ocean? Scientists studying green sea turtles in the Galápagos just discovered a group that seems perfectly happy staying close to home. Researchers tracked female green turtles after they finished nesting and found something unexpected. While many began the long […]

Marine biology junior Joshua Carr spent his summer investigating a rare behavior in wildlife research: gray wolves hunting and consuming sea otters.

Sea-spray bacteria and endotoxins changed innate-immune signalling in cultured human cells. The mechanism is plausible, but no study has yet shown that ordinary coastal exposure improves health in residents.

1973, former Army diver Eric Shaw looked at Gibraltar’s largely sandy seabed and saw an opportunity to give marine life somewhere to settle, hide and breed. His solution was unusual: use unwanted boats to build an artificial reef.

In the warming Mediterranean, invasive seaweeds may help replace some ecological functions lost as native species decline, revealing a more complex side of marine bioinvasions.