EurekAlert! - Science News: Marine Science Portal

Showing releases 176-200 out of 432 releases.
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Public Release: 9-Jul-2009

Science
Methane-eating microbes can use iron and manganese oxides to 'breathe'
Iron and manganese compounds, in addition to sulfate, may play an important role in converting methane to carbon dioxide and eventually carbonates in the Earth's oceans, according to a team of researchers looking at anaerobic sediments. These same compounds may have been key to methane reduction in the early, oxygenless days of the planet's atmosphere.

National Science Foundation, NASA Astrobiology Institute

Public Release: 8-Jul-2009
World's largest ocean observatory takes shape
Canada is taking the world on a 25-year nonstop research expedition -- into the deep ocean. Over the next two-and-a-half months, a team of scientists and marine engineers are completing the installation off British Columbia of NEPTUNE Canada, the world's largest and most advanced cabled ocean observatory.

Public Release: 3-Jul-2009
China environmental phenomena monitored from space
China is in a very seismically active area and has had many catastrophic earthquakes during its history. A joint European-Chinese team is using satellite radar data to monitor ground deformation across major continental faults in China to understand better the seismic cycle and how faults behave.

Public Release: 2-Jul-2009

Geophysical Research Letters
AGU journal highlights -- July 2, 2009
Featured in this release are research papers on the following topics: Ancient supervolcano's eruption caused decade of severe winters; Understanding fault movement during Wenchuan earthquake; First direct measurement of lunar backscatter from solar wind; Reducing uncertainty in estimates of global sea level rise; Boost in freshwater content of Arctic Ocean; Data gaps in records hinder detection of climate trends; Glaciers cause seismic activity in Iceland; and more.

Public Release: 2-Jul-2009
All in sight
A new measurement system for the detection of whales is used for the first time on board of the research vessel Polarstern. Visual sightings of whales by marine mammal observers are usually based on observations of the spout, the condensing and warm breathing cloud. It rises between one meter and ten meters over the water surface and remains visible for only a few seconds. A thermal imaging camera now uses the heat of this spout.

Public Release: 2-Jul-2009

Journal of Biogeography
Evolution: Crabs go deep to avoid hot water
Researchers from the National Oceanography Center, Southampton, have drawn together 200 years' worth of oceanographic knowledge to investigate the distribution of a notorious deep-sea giant -- the king crab. The results, published this week in the Journal of Biogeography, reveal temperature as a driving force behind the speciation and radiation of a major seafloor predator -- globally, and over tens of millions of years of Earth's history.

National Environment Research Council and Royal Society

Public Release: 2-Jul-2009
Nursery programs for corals receive TLC from NOAA this Independence Day
As the nation celebrates its birth on the 4th of July, University of Miami Prof. Diego Lirman and fellow coral nursery scientists will be celebrating as well. NOAA announced that the Nature Conservancy and its partners' staghorn and elkhorn coral recovery projects, including Lirman's nursery in Biscayne National Park, will receive $350K in stimulus support from the ARRA to further develop large-scale, in-water coral nurseries and restore reefs along Florida's southern coast and in the US Virgin Islands.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Public Release: 1-Jul-2009

Nature Geoscience
Earth's most prominent rainfall feature creeping northward
The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years. If the band continues to migrate at just less than a mile a year, which is the average for all the years it has been moving north, then some Pacific islands near the equator may be starved of freshwater by midcentury or sooner.

National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Gary Comer Science and Education Foundation

Public Release: 30-Jun-2009
Researchers survey Mid-Atlantic ridge looking for new life forms, clues to deep-sea communities
An international team of researchers is surveying the Mid-Atlantic Ridge halfway between Iceland and the Azores to determine its biodiversity and perhaps discover new species and clues to deep-sea food webs. The project is part of a 16-nation effort to determine if the underwater mountain chain in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean has its own distinct animal communities.

NOAA Fisheries Service, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Public Release: 30-Jun-2009

Society for Experimental Biology Annual Main Meeting
Your own private global warming
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey subjected species found in Antarctic waters to increasing levels of water temperature to learn how well they would cope with a warmer ocean. The study, to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting on Tuesday, June 30, shows that several of these species are already living really close to their upper temperature range, and that further increases could easily provoke serious ecological imbalances in this region.

British Antarctic Survey

Public Release: 29-Jun-2009
NSF provides $3.4 million to study climatically important Agulhas Current
The National Science Foundation is funding a study with the goal of building a multi-decadal time series of Agulhas Current transport. Led by Dr. Lisa Beal of the University of Miami, the three-year, $3.4 million study will shed light on the seasonal to decadal variability of the Agulhas, which effect African rainfall rates, and which may have played a role in triggering the end of the last Ice Age.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 29-Jun-2009
First riser-drilling research operations undertaken
IODP drilling vessel CHIKYU has resumed operations in the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone off the Kii Peninsula of Japan using riser technology successfully for the first time in scientific ocean research.

National Science Foundation, Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

Public Release: 29-Jun-2009
Little-known marine decomposers attract the attention of genome sequencers
The US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute announced today that they will sequence the genomes of four species of labyrinthulomycetes. These little-known marine species were selected for sequencing as the result of a proposal submitted to the competitive JGI Community Sequencing Program by a team of microbiologists led by Dr. Jackie Collier, assistant professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.

US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute

Public Release: 25-Jun-2009

Science
High carbon dioxide levels cause abnormally large fish ear bones
Rising carbon dioxide levels in the ocean have been shown to adversely affect shell-forming creatures and corals, and now a new study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California -- San Diego has shown for the first time that CO2 can impact a fundamental bodily structure in fish.

Public Release: 23-Jun-2009

International Whaling Commission's 61st Annual Meeting

Animal Conservation
'Bycatch' whaling a growing threat to coastal whales
Scientists are warning that a new form of unregulated whaling has emerged along the coastlines of Japan and South Korea, where the commercial sale of whales killed as fisheries "bycatch" is threatening coastal stocks of minke whales and other protected species.