News by Subject Earth Science

Microplastic pollution in marine environments is concentrated most highly in coastal habitats, especially fjords and estuaries, according to a new review article published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.

In a study published recently in Ecology and Evolution, an international team of researchers focused on what can happen to ocean ecosystems when fishing pressure increases or decreases, and how this differs between tropical to temperate marine ecosystems. The team, led by Elizabeth Madin, researcher at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology in the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, found ecosystems do not respond universally to fishing.

The "Global Reef Expedition: Solomon Islands Final Report" summarizes the foundation's findings from a monumental research mission to study corals and reef fish in the Solomon Islands and provides recommendations on how to preserve these precious ecosystems into the future.

Modeling shows that coral reefs off the east coast of Saudi Arabia have a vital role in protecting the coastal zone.

Using state-of-the-art ocean robots and scientific sensors attached to seals, researchers in Marine Sciences at the University of Gothenburg have for the first time observed small and energetic ocean currents in the Southern Ocean. The currents are critical at controlling the amount of heat and carbon moving between the ocean and the atmosphere -- information vital for understanding our global climate and how it may change in the future.

For the endangered Atlantic sturgeon and the commercially important striped bass, the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia coastal shelf serves as an important spring and fall migratory route. Researchers suggest that the development of wind farms on the DelMarVa coastal shelf may alter the migratory behavior of these fish as new wind turbines in this otherwise featureless region could create habitat around which fish linger.

Could the cure for melanoma - the most dangerous type of skin cancer -- be a compound derived from a marine invertebrate that lives at the bottom of the ocean? A group of scientists led by Alison Murray, Ph.D. of the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno think so, and are looking to the microbiome of an Antarctic ascidian called Synoicum adareanum to better understand the possibilities for development of a melanoma-specific drug.

Melting of Arctic ice due to climate change has exposed more sea surface to an atmosphere with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide. Scientists have long suspected this trend would raise CO2 in Arctic Ocean water. Now University of Montana researcher Michael DeGrandpre and his patented sensors have helped an international team determine that, indeed, CO2 levels are rising in water across wide swaths of the Arctic Ocean's Canada Basin.