19 February 2025/Kiel. Animal populations from urban areas show significantly higher resilience to stressful environmental conditions. This was found by an international team of researchers led by Dr Elizabeta Briski from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany. The mussel and crustacean species studied were able to adapt to disturbed environments, making them more resistant to environmental changes such as climate and land-use change. The study is published today in the journal Ecology Letters.

Researchers at the University of Plymouth and Plymouth Marine Laboratory are examining the environmental effects of sunscreen chemicals, with a new study - published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin - highlighting there are significant gaps in our understanding of how they might affect marine ecosystems

A major £4.25m project will aim to understand and predict ‘tipping points’ in marine ecosystems, and their consequences and opportunities for the UK, particularly for the fishing industry.

Northern elephant seals may hold the key to unlocking the secrets of the open ocean’s twilight zone (~200 – 1,000 meters deep). According to a new study, these deep-diving creatures can help estimate fish abundance by providing a rare window into the elusive prey dynamics in one of the planet’s most mysterious and remote ecosystems. Ecosystems are dynamic, with resource fluctuations – natural or human-induced – shaping species interactions and food webs. These processes are well studied in terrestrial ecosystems but not in deep, open ocean ecosystems, which hold the majority of global fish biomass. It is unclear whether deep-sea populations undergo cascading fluctuations like those seen on land. Monitoring this region is hindered by technological constraints, as data collection is costly, sporadic, and surface-focused. Wildlife have long been recognized as vital sentinels of ecosystem health, however, offering insights into human impacts and environmental changes that are otherwise challenging to quantify. However, no dedicated deep-ocean sentinel species exists. Here, Roxanne Beltran and colleagues evaluated whether northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) could be used as ecosystem sentinels to monitor the health of the northeast Pacific Ocean twilight zone. Elephant seals primarily feed on twilight zone fish across large areas of the open ocean. Using data from satellite-tagged seals, Beltran et al. discovered a strong correlation between seal foraging success and long-term oceanographic conditions measured at the ocean’s surface. Notably, fluctuations in seal mass gain corresponded with changes in these conditions observed two years earlier, suggesting they serve as valuable proxies for prey availability in the twilight zone. This connection enabled the hindcasting of prey abundance over the past 45 years and forecasting two years into the future, highlighting distinct periods of high and low fish populations. The findings suggest that prey populations in the twilight zone experience rapid fluctuations, with cycles of abundance and scarcity occurring every three to five years – patterns otherwise impossible to measure through direct observation.