Burrowing shrimp, native to Washington, create problems for shellfish farmers. As their name suggests, these creatures burrow in marine sediments, and the excavated material piles up on the surface, which can smother oysters and clams growing there. State-funded research led by the University of Washington offers a new, non-chemical approach to controlling shrimp populations in shellfish-growing areas.

Can “snow” fall in the ocean and influence the climate of the entire planet? It turns out that it can. Research conducted by scientists from the Faculty of Physics at University of Warsaw, published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics, helps us understand how microscopic “flakes” of dead organic matter collide and sink into the deep ocean, transporting vast amounts of carbon and affecting the pace of global warming.

A widely used method for measuring how well streams absorb excess nutrients has a hidden flaw: it systematically overestimates uptake length under high-nutrient conditions. Researchers at Duke Kunshan University have derived a corrected zero-order analytical approach that better captures stream nutrient processing when nutrients are abundant, improving the accuracy of tools used to assess river health and guide restoration decisions.

A group of researchers in the UK have shown how the distributions of Pseudo-nitzschia and Dinophysis - two phytoplankton groups known to produce natural toxins that can halt shellfish harvesting – have changed in the North East Atlantic over the last six decades. The research was led by scientists from the University of Plymouth and the Marine Directorate of the Scottish Government, in conjunction with Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), the Marine Biological Association (MBA), and the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS).