The loss of biological diversity is one of the greatest challenges of our time. At the fourth World Biodiversity Forum in Davos, leading biodiversity researchers are joining participants from politics, business, civil society and the arts to develop a common approach for biodiversity protection.

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) will lead a new national effort to grow and strengthen America’s seafood supply through aquaculture research. After a highly competitive application process, UNH, which has a long history of innovation in the farming of aquatic species, was selected to oversee the first-of-its-kind NOAA Cooperative Institute Fostering Aquaculture Research and Markets (CIFARM). With approximately $13.5 million in initial funding, CIFARM will support research and partnerships that will make it safer, more environmentally friendly and cost-effective to produce seafood domestically. 

Marine wildlife trafficking is big business, raking in billions of dollars every year and threatening species’ survival and the health of ecosystems. But trafficked sea creatures are often concealed in ordinary travelers’ luggage or packages, which makes it hard to spot and seize illicit shipments. Now scientists have used a neural network, a form of AI, to teach an algorithm to spot three commonly trafficked products — shark fins, sea cucumbers, and dried seahorses — in CT scans of bags like those taken at airports. The algorithm, which had a 92% success rate in testing, could help detect marine wildlife trafficking at scale and stop the trade in progress.

A three-year study has cracked open the hidden biology behind coral reproduction, revealing hormone cycles that echo those of humans and other animals, and a new way to detect reef distress before it's too late.

New research from Canada's University of Victoria has found that some kelp forests around Vancouver Island were disappearing far earlier than previously thought.

A newly discovered fossil site in Egypt is reshaping scientists’ understanding of how marine ecosystems recovered after the asteroid impact that ended the Age of Dinosaurs. In a study published in Science Advances, researchers report that compositionally modern marine fish communities were already established just 4 million years after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

The site, known as Qreiya 3 and dated to 62.2 million years ago, preserves an exceptionally diverse offshore marine ecosystem from the early Paleocene. Hundreds of fossil fishes recovered from the site include more than 20 groups of ray-finned fishes, making it the richest and most diverse Danian fish assemblage yet discovered.

The fossils reveal that many fish groups common in today’s oceans—including early relatives of tunas, mackerels, jacks, moonfishes, and pipefishes—had already diversified shortly after the extinction event that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs. At the same time, several predatory fish groups dominant in Cretaceous seas are notably absent, suggesting a rapid ecological turnover in marine ecosystems.

Led by researchers from the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center in collaboration with the University of Michigan and KU Leuven, the study provides some of the clearest fossil evidence yet that modern-style marine fish faunas emerged remarkably quickly after one of Earth’s greatest mass extinctions.

A new Dartmouth study shows octopuses can use mirrors to find food out of sight, demonstrating spatial cognitive abilities. The results are published in Current Biology.

Fossils from 520-million-year-old rocks in China provide the first clear evidence that bryozoans were part of the Cambrian explosion. Bryozoans are tiny, filter-feeding colonial animals common in today’s oceans, but their early history has long been unclear because they did not appear in the fossil record until about 50 million years after most major animal groups. These newly discovered fossils fill that gap, showing that bryozoans emerged during the Cambrian explosion alongside other early animal groups.