Swansea University has led an international team of marine scientists and practitioners—spanning 18 countries—in calling for urgent reform to the licensing and regulation of marine and coastal restoration projects.

A research group in Japan has suggested that ash from volcanic eruptions on Nishinoshima Island—part of Japan's Ogasawara Islands—led to a temporary surge in phytoplankton levels in the seawater around Mukojima Island, which is located 130 km northeast of Nishinoshima. The study indicates that ash from the eruptions was transported by wind and ocean currents to the waters around Mukojima, serving as a nutrient source for phytoplankton growth in that area. The findings suggest that volcanic ash can enhance the productivity of marine waters even at considerable distances from the volcanic site.

The University of Gothenburg is establishing the Crown Princess Victoria Professorship in Biodiversity. The professorship is a gift ahead of the Crown Princess's 50th birthday in 2027, in collaboration between Carl Bennet AB and the University of Gothenburg.

The Research Centre in Robotics and Underwater Technologies (CIRTESU) at the Universitat Jaume I conducted this week, at the PortCastelló facilities, wireless communication tests between a surface robot and the award-winning robot fish, recognized as the best work in marine automation nationwide during the Spanish Automation Committee conference held in early September in Cartagena.

The jury particularly valued the combination of advanced mechatronic design and the integration of different systems, which make the robot fish a leading research and aquatic environment inspection platform, tested in real experiments both in the CIRTESU pool and in the waters of the Port of Castelló. With this recognition, the UJI consolidates the research excellence of its teams and projects its impact on sustainable applications in the aquaculture sector.

According to CIRTESU researcher Raúl Marín, “It is essential for us to carry out cyclic and gradual research, first in university facilities and then in a realistic environment, like the Port of Castelló, where the collaboration of the Port Authority staff has been key to achieving the progress made.”

Climate change poses a major threat to the organisms such as plankton that form the base of the marine food web. A team of scientists from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen have used the fossil record to show that only a relatively minor amount of climatic change is needed to affect plankton communities. They have published their findings in Communications Earth & Environment.

Scientists digging through data collected by the Cassini spacecraft have found new complex organic molecules spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This is a clear sign that complex chemical reactions are taking place within its underground ocean. Some of these reactions could be part of chains that lead to even more complex, potentially biologically relevant molecules.

Published today in Nature Astronomy, this discovery further strengthens the case for a dedicated European Space Agency (ESA) mission to orbit and land on Enceladus.

A newly described fossil reveals that leeches are at least 200 million years older than scientists previously thought, and that their earliest ancestors may have feasted not on blood, but on smaller marine creatures. 

The brains of beached bottlenose dolphins in Indian River Lagoon, Florida, show the presence of both cyanobacterial toxins and Alzheimer's-like neuropathology. The concentration of the cyanobacterial toxin 2,4-DAB is 2,900 times greater during cyanobacterial bloom season than other times of the year. During blooms, 536 different genes associated with Alzheimer's are expressed in the dolphin brains. Since dolphins are sentinels for marine toxic exposures, there may be implications of this discovery for human health.