MARINE BIOLOGY NEWS FOCUSING ON RESEARCH, CONSERVATION AND EDUCATION
A rare nautilus called Allonautilus scrobiculatus has been sighted for the first time in three decades. Until now, only two people had ever laid eyes on it. Peter Ward, a biologist at the University of Washington and colleague Bruce Saunders of Bryn Mawr College identified Allonautilusin 1984, and Saunders made another brief sighting in 1986, but it […]
Whales may be able to develop decompression sickness, the same ailment experienced by scuba divers who surface from a dive too rapidly, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington investigated how marine mammals’ tissues – specifically, fat deposits in the jaws of toothed whales that are used in echolocation – absorb […]
For the first time, scientists have sequenced the genome of an octopus species, revealing surprising clues about the evolution of the cephalopod’s brain and behaviour. Researchers from the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Heidelberg in Germany and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan assembled and published […]
Researchers from James Cook University have investigated how environmental conditions can be linked to dispersal and movement patterns in coral reef fish. Their study showed that fish retreat to deeper water to escape warm water temperatures, a finding that throws light on what to expect if predictions of ocean warming come to pass. The redthroat emperor fish was the chosen species […]
A researcher from Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography has discovered a never-before seen anglerfish species living in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Tracey Sutton, Ph.D., is one of NSU’s experts on deep-sea life and he teamed up with Theodore Pietsch, Ph.D. from the University of Washington to formally […]
Divers off the coast of Turkey recently stumbled across a 4-meter wide gelatinous mass floating in the water column, which they soon discovered to be a massive ball of squid eggs. The egg-mass was spotted 22 meters deep, off Fethiye, a Mediterranean town on the coast of Turkey. The diaphanous sphere studded with tiny white eggs was probably […]
Researchers in Southeast Alaska have broken the record for the longest re-sighting of a humpback whale. On July 12, researchers aboard a ship called the Northern Song spotted a humpback in Frederick Sound, Alaska. To the crews amazement, they soon recognised the humpback to be none other than a whale named ‘Old Timer’, an individual that has been renowned in the […]
