When light shines through water, colors with longer wavelengths are absorbed by the water, with the longest wavelengths absorbed first. Blue and violet have the shortest wavelengths of visible light, so they are able to penetrate the deepest.
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.
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.
We've documented sightings of glass squids to better understand the remarkable transformations they undergo from hatchlings to adults. This new observation, captured in ultra high-resolution 4K, allowed us to zoom in on a juvenile likely no bigger than a baby carrot and reveal more details than we have been able to see before.
The three-part docudrama Dirty Business, which started on Channel 4 on Monday and concluded midweek, has made the notion of going into the sea in the UK terrifying and unlike Jaws, this story is real. It is an example of what good drama can do that even the best reporting can't quite achieve.
I've wanted to be an ocean swimmer ever since I moved to Sydney. The idea of getting out past the waves and braving the elements excited me. I would tell anyone who would listen: Once I live closer to the beach, I'm going to be out there. Just you wait. I've lived walking distance to the beach for more than a year now. During this time, I've read a lot about ocean swimming: how swimmers overcame challenges or life-altering moments.
The government said the plans would increase the number of England's official bathing sites to 464. An official bathing spot on the Thames in London would mark a "vast transformation" in water quality in the river which was declared biologically dead in the 1950s due to pollution, officials said. Water minister Emma Hardy said rivers and beaches were "at the heart of so many communities, where people come together, families make memories and swimmers of all ages feel the benefits of being outdoors safely".
They turned to wearable shark deterrents, including magnetic ankle bands designed to overwhelm a shark's electroreceptors - the sensitive "sixth sense" pores the predators use to detect the faint electrical heartbeats of nearby prey. Other products on the market rely on electrical currents, while some use scent. Erica Fox, a seasoned triathlete and Kelp Krawlers member, was wearing one such device Dec. 21, 2025, when she was found dead. Her body was discovered along the Davenport shoreline in Santa Cruz County, about 25 miles from where she was last seen. Fox's death - now under investigation and suspected to have involved a shark - has sparked scrutiny among swim club members about whether the devices meaningfully reduce risk. A Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office spokesperson said the agency could not confirm whether an autopsy had been performed or whether Fox had suffered a shark bite. Witnesses reported seeing a shark breach just offshore at Lovers Point that morning, where Fox was leading a group of about a dozen swimmers. Many of them had purchased Sharkbanz-branded products after a 2022 attack injured fellow Kelp Krawlers member Steve Bruemmer, who survived but suffered serious injuries.
"Never fry super-delicate fish, as they fall apart," recommends Chef Becker. This means you should steer clear of frying fish like tilapia, branzino, sole, and flounder. When flipping them over, these fragile fish can easily break apart and overcook faster than you think. You'll either end up with breading that isn't crisp enough or an overly dry interior. Either way, it won't be an enjoyable meal.
Off the deep waters of Kumejima, Japan, Steven Kovacs captured an image that would be awarded Best in Show for the 2025 Ocean Art Photography Contest. Traveling to the Okinawa prefecture in the hopes of encountering a scarcely documented species of larval goosefish, Kovacs spent nearly two weeks blackwater diving before photographing the rare moment. "Unfortunately, this beautiful little fish turned out to be incredibly uncooperative and difficult to photograph," Kovacs says.
For travelers looking to get to know the many-varied charms of the Golden State, discovering it through the best beaches in California is never a bad idea. The state's coastline spans a vast 3,427 miles after all. Among its 420 public beautiful beaches are plentiful opportunities to swim, lay out, look at tide pools, surf to your heart's content, or watch the sunset.
Key Largo's John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, the first undersea park in the United States, remains one of the only places in Florida where you can snorkel or scuba dive among truly healthy coral. I've done the famed Christ of the Abyss dive here, finning through schools of blue tang and parrotfish grazing on brain coral, and it's one of the most awe-inducing underwater experiences in the state.
Authorities confirmed Thursday afternoon that Erica Fox, 55, a swimmer who was found dead last month after a swim in Monterey County, was killed by a shark. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff-Coroner identified Fox as the victim found floating near Davenport a week after she went missing on Dec. 27, 2025, about 25 miles north of Lovers Point in Pacific Grove.
It looked like the silvery blade of a knife. Peering through his goggles, diver Ted Judah had laid eyes on a deep-sea creature rarely encountered by humans. He and wife Linda were diving off McAbee Beach in Monterey County in late December when, near the surface, he spotted the undulating thing. It was some kind of ribbon fish, he wrote in a post on the Facebook group Monterey County Dive Reports. Kevin Lewand solved the mystery.
In Need of Seawater is not simply a documentary about poetry-it is an experience shaped by memory, voice, and lived history. Directed with sensitivity by Richard Yeagley, the film follows poet, writer, and producer Mark Anthony Thomas as he revisits the poems that defined his early adulthood, written between his early twenties and mid-twenties, and now read aloud more than twenty years later.
The animals do, however, have neuronsnerve cells that appear interconnected throughout their body. And now a new study shows that how these animals sleep is surprisingly similar to humans, suggesting that sleep may have evolved before even the most primitive brains. The findings, published on Tuesday in Nature Communications, also help answer one of science's prevailing mysteries: Why do animals sleep?
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.
