Marine Science

Deep water coral reefs are not the places of refuge for shallow reef organisms that some scientists have considered them to be, a new report suggests.

Hundreds of scientific publications now show that microplastics contaminate the world's oceans, yet scientists have only just begun to document and study microplastics in freshwater and terrestrial systems.

Nitrogen runoff has created a massive oxygen-deprived 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico, but even if the runoff was completely eliminated, it would still take at least 30 years for the area to recover, a new study estimates.

A new study suggests that by 2050, most coral reefs around the world are at risk of experiencing constant depletion of one of their building blocks - calcium carbonate sediments.

More than half of the world's oceans are exposed to industrial fishing activities, a new study, conducted at unprecedented scale, reveals. Peak fishing activity, the study goes on to report, is more affected by cultural and political events such as holidays and closures than by changes in economic factors, or environmental ones.

Pacific coast marshes, particularly those in California and Oregon, are highly vulnerable to climate change, according to a new modeling analysis. Under higher-range sea level rise scenarios estimated to impact this region by the end of the century, all high- and mid-marsh habitats are projected to be lost. Only the low marsh habitat is likely to survive under such