#marine-biology

#marine-biology

These reefs are living, breathing snapshots of a watery world that you can peek into: refreshing oases where the noise of the land falls away; in its place, an intricate and utterly at-ease slice of life that you're lucky enough to witness.

Longnose spurdog sharks, locally known as kalb al-bahr, are sold on Libyan fish markets. Fishermen catch them even though they are carrying eggs, driven by economic necessity.

Few transformations in the history of life have been as extreme as the embrace of the ocean by seagrass. Like whales and dolphins, modern seagrasses descend from land-dwelling ancestors.

Each nudibranch in this archive is three inches long, grown-up size, as the artist puts it, and each one is a faithful replica of a real species. The cerata, those finger-like projections on a nudibranch's back that serve as gills and defensive organs, are recreated individually in wool, each in the right shape and color for its species.

I was surrounded by 200 marine biologists and students living and working together on a small island. That summer changed everything. It was there that I first learned about nudibranchs-these impossibly colorful sea slugs with shapes and patterns that looked like they came from another planet.

But as he swept his flashlight through the dark waters, something unexpected emerged. Inching through the beam of light, an alien creature crawled across the surface of the sand, resembling an inch-long cluster of ghostly leaves fringed with silvery filigree and capped with a pair of antennae-like stalks. It immediately caught my eye, said Gosliner, Invertebrate Zoology Curator for the California Academy of Sciences. I've been diving there for 30 years and this one immediately struck me as different.

"Shark teeth, despite being composed of highly mineralized phosphates, are still vulnerable to corrosion under future ocean acidification scenarios,"

The Haenyeo, or 'women of the sea', are South Korean female divers who can dive up to 65 feet and spend around 56% of their day underwater.

The moon jellyfish is 'typically harmless,' but in the last two decades, the moon jellyfish on Cape Cod have been stinging people and have grown to a large size.

Leopard sharks were once abundant in the waters of Indonesia's Raja Ampat archipelago but have been nearly wiped out due to commercial fishing and the lucrative shark trade.

Dr. Hugh Carter hopes the preserved Antarctic urchins collected over a century ago will illuminate how modern environmental changes are impacting marine life.

But this sand dollar is just an empty husk ... a skeleton.

A decade after the onset of a sea star wasting disease epidemic, researchers have identified Vibrio pectenicida as the microbial culprit responsible for the decline of sunflower sea stars.

The bathypelagic zone of the ocean lies 1,000 to 4,000 meters below the surface, often referred to as the midnight zone due to the absence of sunlight.

When I saw it on the beach, I instantly knew what it was, but I was in complete shock. I would never expect to see one washed up in San Diego. The odds of that are so slim.

"When a shark investigates something, they use their mouth. Even a gentle investigatory bite from a large shark can be devastating to a human."

The challenges of studying dolphins in their natural habitat are profound, involving unexpected behaviors and technical issues that often thwart the best-laid plans of researchers.

Local wildlife advocates have urged caution among boaters after a 700-pound leatherback sea turtle washed ashore on Martha's Vineyard, marking a worrying seasonal stranding.

Giant viruses, measuring over 1,000 nanometres, emerged recently in scientific study, threatening aquatic ecosystems and potentially influencing extensive marine and terrestrial life.

The recent outbreak of bird flu has decimated the southern elephant seal population in Argentina, raising alarms for the vulnerable northern elephant seals along the Pacific Coast.

The phenomenon of milky seas, vast glowing patches in the ocean, has captivated sailors for centuries, yet little scientific understanding existed until recently.