Fish make hanging motionless in the water column look effortless, and scientists had long assumed that this meant it was a type of rest. Now, a new study reveals that fish use nearly twice as much energy when hovering in place compared to resting. This more robust understanding of how fish actively maintain their position could inform the design of underwater robots or drones.

A contribution of 1 per cent of all global investments in offshore wind projects by 2050 is sufficient for large-scale restoration of marine nature. That was revealed by an international study led by The Rich North Sea program (De Rijke Noordzee) and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), and published in the scientific journal Bioscience on 7 July.

A new autonomous underwater vehicle imaged a previously unexplored portion of the seafloor in ultra-deep waters near the Mariana Trench. Operationalizing this technology for the first time was part of a mission led by the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, based at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

A tiny single-celled organism may have a big impact on how the world’s basic chemical building blocks cycle between living things and the non-living environment. Called Polarella, the algal genus is a dinoflagellate that was once thought to be restricted to polar regions of Earth, but a team has revealed that it is abundant and influential in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico.

 

Positively and neutrally buoyant microplastics mainly outflow from the Seto Inland Sea into the Pacific Ocean, whereas negatively buoyant MPs hardly leave the Seto Inland Sea and are primarily deposited and degraded near river mouths. Traditional microplastics are difficult to degrade quickly and thus remain in the marine environment for long periods. However, the use of biodegradable microplastics can significantly reduce microplastic pollution in the marine environment, especially in sediments.

A chemical commonly found in sunscreen could be making plastic in oceans even harder to break down, according to University of Stirling research.

New research has revealed alarming coral mortality rates of 92 per cent after last year’s bleaching event at Lizard Island on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef, marking one of the highest coral mortality rates ever documented globally.  

- University of Leicester scientists analyse the chemical composition of corals to spot the signs of deforestation

- Corals absorb trace elements in water into their skeletons, which provides a proxy for nearby soil erosion

- Fills a huge gap in environmental data on deforestation impacting coastal ecosystems

Scientists have conducted a study of the predatory behavior of sharks in deep-sea ecosystems. This research provides insights into the behavior and distribution range of Pacific sleeper sharks. The research is published in the journal Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research on June 1, 2025.

For the first time, scientists from Utrecht, the UK and the US have been able to determine how sea level must have varied on thousand-year timescales during the last 540 million years.