A landmark review traces 40 years of changes in pelagic sargassum – free-floating brown seaweed that plays a vital role in the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem. The review takes a deep dive into the changing story of sargassum – how it’s growing, what’s fueling that growth, and why we’re seeing such a dramatic increase in biomass across the North Atlantic. By examining shifts in its nutrient composition – particularly nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon – and how those elements vary over time and space, we’re beginning to understand the larger environmental forces at play.

The accumulation of these algae on beaches can harm health, tourism, fishing, and biodiversity. They are usually collected and disposed of in landfills, but a study by Brazilian researchers has found a use for the biomass: to produce lightweight ceramic clay aggregates.Large quantities of brown algae have been washing up on beaches in northern Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Scientists, led by a student intern at Bigelow Laboratory, have published new research on how sea stars from both coasts are accumulating — and physiologically reacting to — the potent, algae-derived neurotoxin domoic acid.

Underwater optical imaging plays an irreplaceable role in fields such as marine exploration, resource development, environmental monitoring, and underwater archaeology. However in the underwater environment, light is affected by scattering and absorption, which not only leads to blurred image details and reduced contrast, but also severely limits the imaging range, and further makes it difficult for traditional technologies to acquire scene depth information. Since underwater scattered light inherently exhibits partial polarization characteristics, polarization technology can separate the target light and reflected light by analyzing the polarization state of light, thereby effectively suppressing the scattering effect of turbid water. Nevertheless, existing polarization underwater imaging methods mostly focus on "enhancing image clarity" and neglect the hidden depth cues in polarization images. Although binocular imaging is suitable for underwater 3D perception due to its simple hardware and low energy consumption, in turbid water, objects with low texture are prone to failure in feature point matching, resulting in wrong depth information. To address this, this study focus on the depth cues contained in underwater polarization imaging, integrates polarization features into the binocular imaging framework, and improves the accuracy and stability of depth estimation in turbid water, filling the research gap of polarization in underwater three-dimensional imaging utilizing polarization imaging technology.

Climate change is causing the oceans to become notably more acidic. This could become a problem for sharks, as a team of biologists headed by Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has discovered. In the scientific journal Frontiers in Marine Science, the research team describes that a more acidic environment weakens the teeth of sharks, causing them to break more easily, which in turn causes the predators to lose their bite.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in conjunction with the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office (E2O); the Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment; Aerostar; and Lockheed Martin conducted a technical demonstration held at Outlying Landing Field Seagle in Twentynine Palms, California, May 19-21, aiming to develop a technology for Navy vessels to "see over the horizon" using a combination of stratospheric high-altitude balloons (HABs) and unmanned aircraft, both included novel energy solutions.

An international team of scientists led by microbiologists Marc Mussmann and Alexander Loy from the University of Vienna has discovered a new microbial metabolism: so-called MISO bacteria "breathe" iron minerals by oxidizing toxic sulfide. The researchers found that the reaction between toxic hydrogen sulfide and solid iron minerals is not only a chemical process, but also a previously unknown biological process in which versatile microbes in marine sediments and terrestrial wetlands remove toxic sulfide and use it for their growth. These bacteria could prevent the spread of oxygen-free "dead zones" in aquatic environments. The findings have now been published in Nature.

Researchers studied a population of endangered whale sharks in the Bird’s Head Seascape off Indonesian Papua over a period of 13 years. In total, they observed 268 unique individuals, almost exclusively young males. 77% had visible scars or injuries from human-made causes such as rubbing against fishing platforms or boats. Only 17.7% had serious injuries like amputations or lacerations from boat propellers. Simple modifications to fishing platforms and boats should be effective in protecting local whale sharks from injury or scarring.