Scientists report that a living reef coastal defense system can reduce wave power significantly, suggesting the approach could offer a new way to protect shorelines from storms and rising seas.

Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by an international team that included nine Rutgers University researchers, provide one of the most detailed tests to date of whether a hybrid reef system combining living organisms with artificial structures can function as coastal protection infrastructure.

Few studies have investigated coastal marine plankton and aggregate abundance and diversity with high frequency over a long time period. Here, a group of researchers deployed a cabled marine Oshima Coastal Environmental data Acquisition Network System (OCEANS) observatory in 20 m of water off the coast of Oshima Island in Japan to establish plankton diversity and plankton and aggregate abundance as a function of ocean turbulence during two 4-month periods spanning 2014 to 2016.

The real climate risks to Ireland from changes to the Atlantic currents that sustain our mild climate are obscured by exaggerated claims in media headlines and movies.

That’s according to Dr Gerard McCarthy, a Maynooth University (MU) oceanographer at the Irish Climate Analysis and Research UnitS (ICARUS) in the Department of Geography, who has led a new article for Nature Climate Change.

The latest paper is a retrospective on a landmark 2015 study led by Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, which identified long-term Atlantic cooling as a sign that the Atlantic Meridional Circulation (AMOC) was weakening.

When the option is to adapt or starve, animals are no stranger to getting scrappy in the face of climate change. Researchers conducted fieldwork in East Antarctica, where they revealed an underdocumented link in the food web of the Southern Ocean: Adélie penguins and their shelled pteropod consumption. Shelled pteropods, specifically Thecosomata, are a suborder of free-swimming sea snails. The study aimed to better understand Adélie penguin foraging behaviour and, in doing so, provided the first clear video evidence of Adélie penguins actively feeding upon shelled pteropods during their foraging sessions.