Chromosphaera perkinsii is a single-celled species discovered in 2017 in marine sediments around Hawaii. The first signs of its presence on Earth have been dated at over a billion years, well before the appearance of the first animals. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has observed that this species forms multicellular structures that bear striking similarities to animal embryos. These observations suggest that the genetic programs responsible for embryonic development were already present before the emergence of animal life, or that C. perkinsii evolved independently to develop similar processes. Nature would therefore have possessed the genetic tools to “create eggs” long before it “invented chickens”. This study is published in the journal Nature. 

An epidemiological study found that 56% of a large breeding colony of Caspian terns died from a 2023 outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza at Rat Island in Washington state. Since then, no birds have successfully bred on the island, raising concerns that the outbreak may have had a significant impact on an already declining Pacific-coast population. As part of the study, researchers also documented that the avian flu virus H5N1was transmitted to harbor seals for the first time in the northeastern Pacific. While there has not been another large coastal wildlife outbreak of H5N1 since, researchers estimated that about 10-14% of the Caspian tern population in the Pacific flyway have been lost to H5N1 infections.

The presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in all the world’s oceans but one has been in steady decline since 2001, when 152 countries agreed on a comprehensive global ban. The exception has been the Arctic Ocean, which has seen a sharp rise in POPs in its frigid waters over the past several decades. A new study in Science Advances says ocean and air currents are transporting POPs northwards, where cold waters extend their half-lives. This could impact the overall health of the fragile Arctic ecosystem as it permeates the food web.

Dr. Yaqing Jin, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Dallas, was recently named an Early-Career Fellow of the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for his research on offshore wind turbine safety. He is one of five fellows joining the Offshore Energy Safety Track, where their work will focus on contributing to the understanding, management and reduction of systemic risk in offshore energy activities.

 Plesiosaurs once roamed Earth’s waters, using four equal flippers to propel their elongated bodies through the water. Fossils from these Mesozoic marine reptiles do not preserve the muscle tissue needed to explain how they maneuvered. Yet a group of researchers have harnessed a bio-inspired control system, creating a plesiosaur-like robot that reveals key insights into how they once traversed the oceans. The model could be used in the future to shed light on the movement of other extinct animals.

In a breakthrough study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have shown that, contrary to most projections, coral reefs are not inevitably doomed, but have the potential to persist and adapt over time, if carbon emissions are curbed and local stressors are addressed.

The Amazon region is a global hotspot of biodiversity and plays a key role in the climate system because of its ability to store large amounts of carbon and its influence on the global water cycle. The rain forest is threatened, however, by climate change as well as by intensified deforestation activities. An international team of researchers that includes scientists from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, the Faculty of Geosciences, and the Institute of Environmental Physics of the University of Bremen, have investigated how a change in Atlantic circulation would impact the Amazon Rain Forest. Their results were now published in Nature Geoscience journal.

A German-American research team has discovered two remarkable species of bacteria in the tissue of two deep-sea corals from the Gulf of Mexico. These previously unknown symbionts of the corals have an extremely small genome and can't even produce energy from carbohydrates, the team reports in the journal Nature Communications. The bacteria species belong to a new family.

A new publication launched by leading European Ocean scientists, titled Navigating the Future VI (NFVI), highlights our lack of understanding of saltwater intrusion into coastal freshwater systems under current and future climate scenarios, and its impacts for coastal communities. How much salt water is reaching those systems? Are climate change impacts such as higher sea levels, and warmer weather leading to increased use of underground freshwater reserves, making that intrusion more likely? Written by a team of experts from the marine sciences, the Navigating the Future VI makes it clear that we can no longer consider and manage the Ocean and fresh water separately. Water resilience has already been identified as a key focus for the new European Commission college of Commissioners, and as they start their official hearings, we highlight the important role of the Ocean in ensuring it.