EurekAlert! - Science News: Marine Science Portal

Public Release: 21-Dec-2011

Aquatic Conservation
Belize protected area boosting predatory fish populations
A 14-year study by the Wildlife Conservation Society in an atoll reef lagoon in Glover's Reef, Belize has found that fishing closures there produce encouraging increases in populations of predatory fish species. However, such closures have resulted in only minimal increases in herbivorous fish, which feed on the algae that smother corals and inhibit reef recovery.

Public Release: 21-Dec-2011

Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Study examines how diving marine mammals manage decompression
How do marine mammals, whose very survival depends on regular diving, manage to avoid decompression sickness or "the bends?" Do they, indeed, avoid it? A workshop held by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Marine Mammal Center brought together the world's experts in human diving and marine-mammal diving physiology to discuss the issue of how marine mammals manage gas under pressure.

Public Release: 21-Dec-2011
NOAA Research covered the globe in 2011
NOAA scientists plumbed the deep ocean, probed the heights of the stratosphere, and surveyed some of the fiercest storm systems on Earth in meeting 2011's scientific challenges. Their discoveries are paying off in longer storm warning lead times, better understanding of our climate, and new knowledge about environmental disasters.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Public Release: 20-Dec-2011

Proceedings of the Royal Society B
'Head-first' diversity shown to drive vertebrate evolution
A new analysis of two adaptive radiations in the fossil record found that these diversifications proceeded "head-first." Head features diversified before body shapes and types. This suggests that feeding-related evolutionary pressures are the initial drivers of diversification.

National Science Foundation, Paleontological Association, Paleontological Society, American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Evolving Earth Foundation, Natural Environment Research Council, Fell Fund of Oxford, Environmental Protection Agency

Public Release: 19-Dec-2011
Sensing the deep ocean
Sensorbots are spherical devices equipped with biogeochemical sensors, that promise to open a new chapter in the notoriously challenging exploration of earth's largest ecosystem -- the ocean.

Public Release: 19-Dec-2011
University of Nevada, Reno using new technology to record Antarctic Ocean, ice temperatures
Half-mile long thermometers have been dropped through the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica that will give the world relevant data on sea and ice temperatures for tracking climate change and its effect on the glacial ice surrounding the continent. The study based at the University of Nevada, Reno is funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs and other NSF grants.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 19-Dec-2011
Will Antarctic worms warm to changing climate?
Researchers at the University of Delaware are examining tiny worms that inhabit the frigid sea off Antarctica to learn not only how these organisms adapt to the severe cold, but how they will survive as ocean temperatures increase.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 19-Dec-2011

Nature Geoscience
In hot water: Ice Age findings forecast problems
The first comprehensive study of changes in the oxygenation of oceans at the end of the last Ice Age has implications for the future of our oceans under global warming.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research

Public Release: 19-Dec-2011
National Science Foundation awards major grant to Cary Institute
The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies has received a $1.6 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop an innovative graduate training program. The multi-year project builds on the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), an international, grassroots collaborative of more than 300 scientists, technology experts, engineers, and citizens using environmental monitoring to understand how human actions and extreme weather impact lakes.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 19-Dec-2011

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Evolution at warp speed: Hatcheries change salmon genetics after a single generation
The impact of hatcheries on salmon is so profound that in just one generation traits are selected that allow fish to survive and prosper in the hatchery environment, at the cost of their ability to thrive and reproduce in a wild environment. Researchers were surprised by the speed of evolution and natural selection.

Bonneville Power Administration

Public Release: 18-Dec-2011

Nature Geoscience
Upper atmosphere facilitates changes that let mercury enter food chain
New research shows that the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere work to transform elemental mercury into oxidized mercury, which can easily be deposited into aquatic ecosystems and ultimately enter the food chain.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 16-Dec-2011

Marine Biology
Barracuda babies: Novel study sheds light on early life of prolific predator
In the journal Marine Biology, lead author Dr. Evan D'Alessandro and University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science colleagues Drs. Su Sponaugle, Joel Llopiz and Robert Cowen shed light on the larval stage of this ocean predator, as well as several other closely related species.

Public Release: 15-Dec-2011

Science
Researchers assess effects of a world awash in nitrogen
Humans are having an effect on Earth's ecosystems but it's not just the depletion of resources and the warming of the planet we are causing. Now you can add an over-abundance of nitrogen as another "footprint" humans are leaving behind. The only question is how large of an impact will be felt.

Public Release: 15-Dec-2011

Science
Study of skates and sharks questions assumptions about 'essential' genes
Biologists have long assumed that all jawed vertebrates possess a full complement of nearly identical genes for critical aspects of their development. But a paper in the December 16 issue of Science with Benjamin King of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory as lead author shows that elasmobranchs, a subclass of cartilaginous fishes, lack a cluster of genes, HoxC, formerly thought to be essential for proper development.

Maine INBRE

Public Release: 15-Dec-2011

Science
Nitrogen from humans pollutes remote lakes for more than a century
Nitrogen derived from human activities has polluted lakes throughout the Northern Hemisphere for more than a century and the fingerprint of these changes is evident even in remote lakes located thousands of miles from the nearest city, industrial area or farm. The findings are based on historical changes in the chemical composition of bottom deposits in lakes using an approach similar to aquatic archeology.

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Alberta Water Research Institute, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, National Science Foundation, Canada Foundation for Innovation

Public Release: 14-Dec-2011

ZooKeys
140 new species described by California Academy of Sciences in 2011
In 2011, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added 140 new relatives to our family tree. The new species include 72 arthropods, 31 sea slugs, 13 fishes, 11 plants, nine sponges, three corals, and one reptile. They were described by more than a dozen Academy scientists along with several dozen international collaborators.

Public Release: 14-Dec-2011

Nature Climate Change
Blue marlin blues: Loss of dissolved oxygen in oceans squeezes billfish habitat
A new scientific paper in Nature Climate Change shows that expanding "ocean dead zones" (areas of low oxygen) driven in part by climate change makes that science even more complex. The study included the use of satellite tags processed by University of Miami scientist Jiangang Luo.

Public Release: 13-Dec-2011

Dissertations and Features
Life on Kosterhavet's seabed analyzed
Kosterhavet National Park was created to provide a haven for both protected species and nature lovers. Now researchers at the University of Gothenburg have analyzed species living on the seabed (benthic species) in the marine national park to determine which marine areas require special protection.

Public Release: 13-Dec-2011
Picture book portrays a 'hoppy' future for endangered frogs
Move over Kermit. ASU microbiologist and author Elizabeth Davidson offers kids (and their parents) a pollywog hero and a forum for global environmental solution-building in "The true adventures of Cheery, a Chiricahua Leopard Frog."

Arizona Game and Fish Department

Public Release: 13-Dec-2011
Elephant seal travels 18,000 miles
The Wildlife Conservation Society tracked a southern elephant seal for an astonishing 18,000 miles -- the equivalent of New York to Sydney and back again.

Public Release: 12-Dec-2011

Conservation Letters
Hundreds of threatened species not on official US list
Many of the animal species at risk of extinction in the United States have not made it onto the country's official Endangered Species Act list, according to new research from the University of Adelaide.

Public Release: 12-Dec-2011

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
A small step for lungfish, a big step for the evolution of walking
The eel-like body and scrawny "limbs" of the African lungfish would appear to make it an unlikely innovator for locomotion. But its improbable walking behavior, newly described by University of Chicago scientists, redraws the evolutionary route of life on Earth from water to land.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 11-Dec-2011

Molecular Ecology
A lake fauna in a shot-glass
Danish research team leads the way for future biodiversity monitoring using DNA traces in the environment to keep track of threatened wildlife – a lake water sample the size of a shot-glass can contain evidence of an entire lake fauna.

Public Release: 9-Dec-2011

PLOS ONE
New study provides comprehensive view of the status of Atlantic bluefin tuna
Bluefin populations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have declined precipitously since 1950, according to the study published today in the peer-reviewed online journal PLoS ONE. The model estimates the number of Atlantic bluefin tuna remaining in the ocean and projects future population sizes based on alternative management scenarios. The new model is revolutionary in its ability to account for population overlap (mixing) of this highly migratory animal on the North Atlantic foraging grounds.

Public Release: 9-Dec-2011

Environmental Science & Technology
Scientists assess radioactivity in the ocean from Japan nuclear power facility
With current news of additional radioactive leaks from the Fukushima nuclear power plants, the impact on the ocean of releases of radioactivity from the plants remains unclear.

National Science Foundation