EurekAlert! - Science News: Marine Science Portal

Public Release: 30-Sep-2012

Nature Climate Change
Fish getting smaller as the oceans warm: UBC research
Changes in ocean and climate systems could lead to smaller fish, according to a new study led by fisheries scientists at the University of British Columbia.

Public Release: 28-Sep-2012
Time bomb: Military ordnance in Gulf poses threat to shipping, says Texas A&M proffesor
Millions of pounds of unexploded bombs and other military ordnance that were dumped decades ago in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as off the coasts of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, could now pose serious threats to shipping lanes and the 4,000 oil and gas rigs in the Gulf, warns two Texas A&M University oceanographers.

Public Release: 28-Sep-2012
Songs in the key of sea
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have used special algorithms to create musical patterns from data collected from microbes in the western English Channel.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Sep-2012

PLOS ONE
URI scientists: Marine plants can flee to avoid predators
Scientists at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography have made the first observation of a predator avoidance behavior by a species of phytoplankton, a microscopic marine plant. The scientists made the unexpected observation while studying the interactions between phytoplankton and zooplankton.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 28-Sep-2012

ECSA's Research & Management of Transitional Waters international symposium
Venice Lagoon research indicates rapid climate change in coastal regions
Research undertaken by the University of Southampton and its associates in Venice has revealed that the sea surface temperature in coastal regions is rising as much as ten times faster than the global average of 0.13 degrees per decade.

Public Release: 28-Sep-2012

PLOS ONE
White shark diets vary with age and among individuals
White sharks, the largest predatory sharks in the ocean, are thought of as apex predators that feed primarily on seals and sea lions. But a new study by researchers at UC Santa Cruz shows surprising variability in the dietary preferences of individual sharks.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 27-Sep-2012

Journal of Fish Biology
New fish species offers literal take on 'hooking up'
A new species of freshwater fish described by a North Carolina State University researcher has several interesting -- and perhaps cringe-inducing -- characteristics, including a series of four hooks on the male genitalia.

Public Release: 27-Sep-2012

Science
New clues about ancient water cycles shed light on US deserts, says Texas A&M-led study
The deserts of Utah and Nevada have not always been dry. Now a team led by a Texas A&M University researcher has found a new water cycle connection between the U.S. southwest and the tropics, and understanding the processes that have brought precipitation to the western US will help scientists better understand how the water cycle might be perturbed in the future

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 27-Sep-2012

Proceedings of the Royal Society B
UCSB scientists capture clues to sustainability of fish populations
Thanks to studies of a fish that gives birth to live young and is not fished commercially, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that food availability is a critical limiting factor in the health of fish populations.

Public Release: 27-Sep-2012

Science
Now in Science: It's not too late for troubled fisheries
A study published in Science magazine and co-authored by Bren School Sustainable Fisheries Group researchers and their colleagues confirms suspicions that thousands of "data-poor" fisheries, representing some 80 percent of the world's fisheries, are in decline but could recover with proper management.

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012

2012 GSA Annual Meeting & Expositions - Geosciences: Investing in the Future
2012 GSA Annual Meeting technical program & events -- media advisory 2
The program for GSA's 124th Annual Meeting & Exposition is now set and searchable online. Highlights include a Pardee Keynote Symposium on the work of the Mars rover, Curiosity, and sessions on sea-level rise, hydrofracking, and the 2011 Virginia earthquake. Notable speakers include Bill McKibben, this year’s GSA President’s Medal recipient; Scott Tinker, who will also present a screening of his energy film, SWITCH; and Julie Brigham-Grette, who will describe her work in Arctic Russia.

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012

Nature
Extreme climate change linked to early animal evolution
An international team of scientists, including geochemists from UC Riverside, has uncovered new evidence linking extreme climate change, oxygen rise, and early animal evolution. Their work provides the first real evidence for a long speculated change in oxygen levels in the aftermath of the most severe climatic event in Earth's history -- one of the so-called "Snowball Earth" glaciations. The researchers analyzed concentrations of trace metals and sulfur isotopes in mudstone collected in South China.

National Science Foundation, National Air and Space Administration Exobiology Program, National Natural Science Foundation

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012

General and Comparative Endocrinology
New 'Skinny' on Leptin
Leptin -- commonly dubbed the "fat hormone" -- does more than tell the brain when to eat. A new study by researchers at The University of Akron and Northeast Ohio Medical University shows that leptin may play a role in hearing and vision loss. This discovery, made in zebrafish treated to produce low leptin, could ultimately help doctors better understand sensory loss in humans.

National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012

Geophysical Research Letters
Hurricane Irene polluted Catskills watershed
The water quality of lakes and coastal systems will be altered if hurricanes intensify in a warming world, according to a Yale study in Geophysical Research Letters.

Yale Hixon Center for Urban Ecology

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
MBARI researchers discover what vampire squids eat
Over the last 100 years, perhaps a dozen scientific papers have been published on the mysterious vampire squid, but no one has been able to figure out exactly what it eats. A new paper by MBARI Postdoctoral Fellow Henk-Jan Hoving and Senior Scientist Bruce Robison shows for the first time that the vampire squid uses two thread-like filaments to capture bits of organic debris that sink down from the ocean surface into the deep sea.

David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012
Grant to help citizen scientists assess impact of environmental change in the National Park System
A $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation will pair citizen scientists with researchers from the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, National Park Service and the SERC Institute in effort to genetically identify plant and animal species in Acadia National Park and Frenchman's Bay.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012
U of M receives $4.3 million NSF grant to study interactions between water and land-use systems
The University of Minnesota announced today that it has received a $4.3 million Water Sustainability and Climate grant over five years from the National Science Foundation to lead a study on the interactions between climate, water and land-use systems. The grant will specifically examine impacts of land use and climate change on water quality and ecosystem health using the Minnesota River Basin as a prototype.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012
Ocean acidification: Finding new answers through National Science Foundation research grants
With increasing levels of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere and moving into marine systems, the world's oceans are becoming more acidic.

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012
Launch of new center to monitor effects of droughts, floods and land use change
University of Leicester launches its new Centre for Landscape and Climate Research.

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012

Biology Open
Preserving large females could prevent overfishing of Atlantic cod
Cod are among Sweden's most common and most popular edible fish and have been fished hard for many years. One consequence is the risk of serious changes in cod stocks, reveals research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012

Journal of the Royal Society Interface
How is a Kindle like a cuttlefish
Research out today from a multidisciplinary team headed by the University of Cincinnati examines parallels between e-Paper technology (the technology behind sunlight-readable devices like the Kindle) and biological organisms that change color.

Air Force Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, ARL, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Office of Naval Research

Public Release: 26-Sep-2012

Nature
Salt marsh carbon may play role in slowing climate warming, study shows
A warming climate and rising seas will enable salt marshes to more rapidly capture and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, possibly playing a role in slowing the rate of climate change, according to a new study published in the Sept. 27 issue of the journal Nature.

US Geological Survey

Public Release: 25-Sep-2012
Coral hotspots found in deepwater canyons off northeast US coast
For the first time in decades, researchers have conducted an extensive exploration for deep-sea corals and sponges in submarine canyons off the northeastern coast of the US. The survey revealed coral "hotspots," and found that a new coral habitat suitability model could help predict where corals are likely to occur. The model is being developed by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the National Ocean Service's Biogeography Branch.

NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service

Public Release: 25-Sep-2012

Lithosphere
October LITHOSPHERE delivered online
The October issue of Lithosphere covers geology in Wyoming, USA; the California Coast Ranges, USA; the Alpine Fault, New Zealand; the South Atlantic seafloor; the central Himalaya in Nepal; and Sidekan, Kurdistan Region, Iraqi Zagros suture zone. Topics and methods include tectonics, orogeny, hazards, paleogeography, trigonometrics, multiple-point data analysis, LiDAR, oceanic isostasy, computer modeling, and spectroscopy.

Public Release: 25-Sep-2012

Copeia
New UF study shows river turtle species still suffers from past harvesting
University of Florida researchers studying river turtles in Missouri found populations of the northern map turtle have not recovered from harvesting in the 1970s.