EurekAlert! - Science News: Marine Science Portal

Public Release: 14-Mar-2013

PLOS ONE
Discards ban could impact seabird populations
Species of seabirds could successfully return to their natural foraging habits following changes to European fisheries policies, scientists have suggested.

National Environment Research Council

Public Release: 14-Mar-2013
CITES makes historic decision to protect sharks and rays
CITES plenary today accepted Committee recommendations to list five species of highly traded sharks under the CITES Appendices, along with those for the listing of both manta rays and one species of sawfish.

Public Release: 14-Mar-2013

Journal of Heredity
Study questions the role of kinship in mass strandings of pilot whales
Pilot whales that have died in mass strandings in New Zealand and Australia included many unrelated individuals at each event, a new study concludes, challenging a popular assumption that whales follow each other onto the beach and to almost certain death because of familial ties.

Royal Society of New Zealand/Marsden Fund, Australian Marine Mammal Centre

Public Release: 14-Mar-2013

Journal of Heredity
Oh mother, where art thou?
Recent research has shed some light on whether family relationships play a role in beachings of otherwise healthy whales. Investigators used genetic data to describe the kinship of individual long-finned pilot whales involved in mass strandings. The study found that stranded groups are not necessarily members of one extended family, contradicting the hypothesis that stranding groups all descend from a single ancestral mother. Further, many stranded calves were found with no mother in evidence.

Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Australian Marine Mammal Centre

Public Release: 14-Mar-2013

Science
Energy from the interior of the Earth supports life in a global ecosystem
The Earth's oceanic crust covers an enormous expanse, and is mostly buried beneath a thick layer of mud that cuts it off from the surface world. Scientists now document life deep within the oceanic crust that appears to be sustained by energy released from chemical reactions of rocks with water.

Public Release: 13-Mar-2013
2 new marine protected areas created on Argentina's southern coasts
The Wildlife Conservation Society applauds the Government of Argentina for creating two enormous marine protected areas in Patagonia, a region filled with majestic shorelines and abundant wildlife.

Public Release: 13-Mar-2013

Nature
Strange phallus-shaped creature provides crucial missing link
Christopher Cameron of the University of Montreal's Department of Biological Sciences and his colleagues have unearthed a major scientific discovery -- a strange phallus-shaped creature they found in Canada's Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park. The fossils were found in an area of shale beds that are 505 million years old.

Public Release: 13-Mar-2013

PLOS ONE
Bottlenose dolphin leaders more likely to lead relatives than unrelated individuals
Traveling into uncharted territory in search of food can be a dangerous undertaking, but some bottlenose dolphins may benefit by moving through their habitat with relatives who may be more experienced or knowledgeable. It turns out that leaders in bottlenose dolphin groups in the Florida Keys are more likely to be related to the dolphins that follow them, according to research published March 13 by Jennifer Lewis and colleagues from Florida International University.

Public Release: 13-Mar-2013

Journal of Experimental Biology
Whale's streaming baleen tangles to trap food
Many whales filter food from water using racks of baleen plates in their mouths, but no one had ever investigated how baleen behaves in real life. According to Alexander Werth from Hampden-Sydney College, USA, baleen was viewed as a static material, however, he discovered that baleen streams in water just like long hair and fringes from adjacent baleen plates tangle to form the perfect net for trapping food at natural whale swimming speeds.

Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges

Public Release: 12-Mar-2013

Methods in Ecology and Evolution
Marine diversity study proves value of citizen science
Citizen science surveys compare well with traditional scientific methods when it comes to monitoring species biodiversity – according to new research from the University of East Anglia. Research published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution shows that methods to record marine diversity used by amateurs returned results consistent with techniques favored by peer-reviewed science.

Public Release: 12-Mar-2013
Launch of Chinese-German Center for Bio-Inspired Materials at Mainz University Medical Center
A German research team led by Professor Dr. Werner E. G. Müller of the Institute of Physiological Chemistry at the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences have launched a Chinese-German Joint Center for Bio-Inspired Materials. Here, the researchers will be able to work closely together on projects in the field of regenerative medicine.

Public Release: 12-Mar-2013

Molecular Ecology
Cryptic clams: U-M biologists find species hiding in plain view
Cryptic comments seem to have an ambiguous, obscure or hidden meaning. In biology, cryptic species are outwardly indistinguishable groups whose differences are hidden inside their genes.

Malacological Society of Australia Molluscan Research Grant, University of Michigan/Rackham International Research

Public Release: 12-Mar-2013
University of Miami student awarded grant by the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science graduate student Erica Towle was awarded a grant to study Acropora cervicornis, or staghorn corals, by the Mohamed bin Zayed Conservation Fund.

Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund

Public Release: 12-Mar-2013

Scientific Reports
Fluorescent light revealed as gauge of coral health
Coral reef decline in recent years due to a variety of threats -- from pollution to climate warming -- has lent urgency to the search for new ways to evaluate their health. A new study by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego scientists has revealed that fluorescence, the dazzling but poorly understood light produced by corals, can be an effective tool for gauging their health.

National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research's Natural Materials, Systems and Extremophiles

Public Release: 12-Mar-2013

PLOS ONE
When hungry, Gulf of Mexico algae go toxic
When Gulf of Mexico algae don't get enough nutrients, they focus their remaining energy on becoming more and more poisonous to ensure their survival, according to a new study by scientists from North Carolina State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Public Release: 11-Mar-2013

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Remote clouds responsible for climate models' glitch in tropical rainfall
New research shows that cloud biases over the Southern Ocean are the primary contributor to the double-rain band problem that exists in most modern climate models.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 11-Mar-2013

2013 GSA Southeastern Section Meeting
Puerto Rico, Haiti, Florida & the Caribbean: GSA's 2013 Southeastern Section Meeting
Geoscientists from across the southeastern U.S., Puerto Rico, and beyond will convene in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on 20-21 March to discuss infrastructure, earthquakes, sustainability, waste-water management and sanitation, and coastal vulnerability and take time to explore the area's stunning geology and history. Puerto Rico's wide variety of geologic and geographic settings includes a world-class karst province, limestone cliffs, a central mountain range, and the only tropical rain forest in the US National Forest system.

Public Release: 11-Mar-2013
SwRI, University of New Hampshire collaborate on new Space Science Department
Southwest Research Institute and the University of New Hampshire have signed a research collaboration agreement enabling the organizations to augment their areas of expertise and seek opportunities in astrophysics, Earth and ocean science, and larger and more complex space science missions.

Public Release: 11-Mar-2013

Nature Geoscience
Glaciers contribute significant iron to North Atlantic Ocean
A new study by biogeochemists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution identifies a large, unexpected source of iron to the North Atlantic – meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets, which may stimulate plankton growth during spring and summer. This source is likely to increase as melting of the Greenland ice sheet escalates under a warming climate.

WHOI Clark Arctic Research Initiative, National Science Foundation, WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute

Public Release: 11-Mar-2013

Ecology and Evolution
Environmental change impacts on migratory shorebirds differ for males and females
Extensive shell fishing and sewerage discharge in river estuaries could have serious consequences for godwits. But the males are more likely to suffer, research from the University of East Anglia shows.

Natural Environment Research Council

Public Release: 11-Mar-2013
University of Miami geologists to address the mystery of an evolution gap in reef corals
National Science Foundation funds UM project to study the evolution of corals along the southern coast of the Dominican Republic. It is one of the few areas that contain a record of coral reefs from a period of climatic change that occurred between one and two million years ago.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 11-Mar-2013
KU Leuven lab coordinates €9m effort to find new deep-sea drugs
KU Leuven scientist Camila Esguerra and the Laboratory for Molecular Biodiscovery (headed by Prof. Dr. Peter de Witte) are coordinating a €9.5 million, EU-funded project to collect and study marine microbes extracted from some of the ocean's deepest, most extreme – and as-yet-unexplored – biomes. In addition to coordinating the project, Esguerra and her colleagues will screen 18,000 crude extracts and pure compounds for novel molecules that could lead to new therapeutics against epilepsy and other central nervous system disorders.

Public Release: 8-Mar-2013
Oysters safer to eat with improved purification method
Researchers have improved an old method of making oysters safer to eat so that more bacteria are removed without sacrificing taste and texture. The improved process nearly clears their digestive tracts of the bacteria Vibrio parahaemolyticus, which can cause gastroenteritis, an infection marked by severe abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea.

US Department of Agriculture

Public Release: 8-Mar-2013

ZooKeys
New fish species described from the streams of Manyas Lake basin, Turkey
A new fish species, Alburnoides manyasensis, has been described from the Koca Stream drainage of Lake Manyas, Marmara Sea basin in Anatolia and is currently associated with only this specific locality. The new species belongs to the very large and widely distributed Cyprinidae family, which includes carps and the minnows and their related species. The study was published in the open access journal Zookeys.

Public Release: 7-Mar-2013

Science
How to thrive in battery acid and among toxic metals
In the movie Alien, the title character is an extraterrestrial creature that can survive brutal heat and resist the effects of toxins. In real life, organisms with similar traits exist, such as the "extremophile" red alga Galdieria sulphuraria. In hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, Galdieria uses energy from the sun to produce sugars through photosynthesis.

National Science Foundation