It transports far more than 100 times as much water as all of the Earth's rivers combined: The Antarctic Circumpolar Current rushes around the southern continent unhindered by land masses and is therefore a fundamental component of the climate system. In a recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute describes how and when this mighty ring current developed in Earth's history. Surprising finding: it took more than the opening of the ocean passages between Antarctica, and South America and Australia.

Scientists have found a new way to detect subtle chemical signatures in seawater—revealing previously invisible details about the ocean’s chemistry from data continuously collected by thousands of autonomous robotic floats drifting across the seas.

Meteor impacts may have helped spark life on Earth, creating hot, chemical-rich environments where the first living cells could take shape, according to research integrated by a recent Rutgers University graduate.

“No one knows, from a scientific perspective, how life could have been formed from an early Earth that had no life,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology and fisheries management from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025. “How does something come from nothing?” Cinquemani is the lead author of a scientific review, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, examining where life may have first formed on Earth. The paper focuses on hydrothermal vents, places where hot, mineral-rich water flows through rock and emerges into surrounding water, creating the chemical conditions and energy gradients needed for complex reactions.

The discovery of changes to a 200-million-year-old gene in a mutant clownfish with a unique pattern provides a central clue to the mystery of how nature can create sharply defined boundaries: clear communication. This new research upends our understanding of the mathematical rules that pigmentation cells follow, and suggests a common mechanism shared across species.

An international team of researchers has investigated the biting capabilities of extinct predatory marine reptiles, revealing how these formidable predators could coexist within the same ecosystem. This work sheds new light on the hunting strategies of long-extinct predators that dominated the seas during the Age of Dinosaurs.

Researchers from the University of Maine, in partnership with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, analyzed more than two decades of fishery survey data from the Gulf of Maine to assess how environmental change is reshaping coastal marine ecosystems. The study identified an increase in bottom and surface water temperatures between 2010 and 2012 and used that shift to compare ecosystem conditions before and after the warming period. The researchers found that many species are moving deeper and farther northeast, while the community of dominant, fishery-relevant species has become less diverse. The work also evaluates how environmental change may influence the effectiveness of long-running fishery surveys and offers a framework for adapting monitoring methods used to guide science-based management of key marine resources.