A new study of sperm whales highlights the need for ocean conservation that covers large areas – with boundaries redrawn as our climate changes.

Precipitation plays an important role in glaciers and ice sheet behaviour. To establish the relationship between atmospheric climate variation, precipitation patterns and glacier and ice sheet behaviour beyond the observable past, a new MARUM-led study created a precipitation record for southern Greenland. The authors found that positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phases over at least the last circa 5,000 years consistently resulted in cooler but wetter conditions over southern Greenland. This in turn likely influenced local glacier advance or retreat, as well as the mass of the glaciers themselves. Their findings are now published in Nature Communications.

A modular, origami-inspired aquaculture system could help move seaweed farming into the open ocean, where strong currents and scarce nutrients limit scale.

Some of the giant marine reptiles that ruled the seas during the age of dinosaurs were better built for surprise attacks, while their relatives were better suited to chasing prey through open water, according to a Rutgers-led study.

These animals, known as mosasaurs, were a group of lizards adapted to life in the ocean. Researchers reconstructed the bodies of four kinds of mosasaurs from their fossil skeletons, then applied principles of physics to estimate how quickly each could surge forward with a single powerful sweep of its tail. The research was published in the latest edition of Current Biology.

A research team led by Prof. QIAN Peiyuan, Chair Professor of the Department of Ocean Science at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), in collaboration with international partners, has made significant progress in uncovering how deep-sea chemosynthetic symbioses cope with environmental change. The findings reveal that metabolic flexibility in the symbionts, coupled with the host's finely regulated population of bacterial symbionts, mutually sustains the host's energy stability. This provides important in situ evidence of how chemosynthetic holobionts at deep-sea cold seeps remain resilient when energy supplies fluctuate and highlights the key role of a tiered adaptation strategy in sustaining the stability of cold seep ecosystems.

A new study led by researchers at the University of Plymouth (UK) has have produced the first assessment of whether light pollution is posing a threat to 'Good Environmental Status' in our ocean and along out coastlines. The new framework was tested using data available for European waters, with parts of the Adriatic, Baltic, Mediterranean and North seas proving the most likely to be impacted by light pollution.