Achilles Tang

Scientists have found the mechanism that controls the number of salmonids found each year in Cantabrian rivers. Their method has been to monitor population numbers in relation to river flow in March, when the juvenile fish emerge. They have concluded that environmental conditions change each year and that modified river flow, positively or negatively affects survival rates. This information throws light on a long debate within ecological theory about the mechanisms that regulate the size of animal populations. View the full article

Aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report by an international team of researchers. And while the industry is more efficient than ever, it is also putting a significant strain on marine resources by consuming large amounts of feed made from wild fish harvested from the sea, the authors conclude. View the full article

What happens when traits no longer give creatures a competitive edge? In a recent review, researchers teamed up to take a closer look at the evolutionary fate of useless traits. View the full article

Scientists have suspected that spare parts in the genome -- extra copies of functional genes that arise when genes or whole genomes get duplicated -- might sometimes provide the raw materials for the evolution of new traits. Now, researchers report that they have discovered a prime example of this in fish. View the full article

The world?s fastest ambush has been caught on film. Behind the attack is a copepod which must be ?faster than its shadow? to capture its prey in water thicker than syrup. View the full article

What do abrupt changes in ocean circulation and Earth's climate, shifts in wildlife populations and ecosystems, the global finance market and its system-wide crashes, and asthma attacks and epileptic seizures have in common? According to new research, all share generic early-warning signals that indicate a critical threshold of change dead ahead. View the full article

After more than a decade of inquiry, a team of scientists has turned the tables on a long-standing controversy to re-establish an old truth about nitrogen mixing in the oceans. View the full article

Two related research expeditions by NOAA scientists to track the habitat preferences and movements of fish at Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary may help managers protect overfished species such as red snapper and grouper. View the full article

Historical records show that rivers worldwide once held many more fish and other fauna than they do today. Overharvesting seems to have been one principle cause of steep declines in recent centuries. Although it is hard to estimate historical numbers of freshwater wildlife with accuracy, efforts to determine earlier levels of abundance may help planners avoid using falsely low estimates as baseline assumptions. Restoration programs could investigate the effects of reintroducing extirpated species. View the full article

Fish in US waters from Cape Hatteras to the Canadian border have moved away from their traditional, long-time habitats over the past four decades because of fundamental changes in the regional ecosystem, according to a new report. The report also points out the need to manage the waters off the northeastern coast of the United States as a whole rather than as a series of separate and unrelated components. View the full article

Oceanographers find that mercury levels in pelagic fish found around Hawaii are influenced by depth. View the full article

Researchers have developed a new, more efficient way of cloning zebra fish, a breakthrough that could have implications for human health research. View the full article

Group B Streptococcus is a versatile pathogen that affects a variety of animals. Now studies are revealing new information about this pathogen. View the full article

Scientists have just completed an unprecedented journey into the vast and little-explored "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch." The researchers encountered a large amount of debris including a large net entwined with plastic and various marine organisms. View the full article

Biophysicists in Germany are leading an effort to develop and apply models of the so-called lateral-line system found in fish and some amphibians. This sensory organ enables an animal, even in murky water, to map its surroundings and recognize other animals. In a new study, the researchers report mathematical models that capture essential elements of the system, agree with experimental data, and could be easy to implement technically, as in robots. View the full article

A novel natural product yields potential new ways to fight diseases. Researchers have deciphered the highly unusual molecular structure of a naturally produced, ocean-based compound that is giving new understanding of the function of mammalian nerve cells. View the full article

The green mussel is known for being a notoriously invasive fouling species, but scientists have just discovered that it also has a very powerful form of adhesion in its foot. The stickiness of the mussel's foot could possibly be copied to form new man-made adhesives. View the full article

Fast growing transgenic fish can revolutionize commercial fish farming and relieve the pressure on overexploited fish stocks. But what happens in the natural environment if transgenic fish escape? Researchers in Sweden have studied transgenic fish on behalf of the European Union and are urging caution. View the full article

Scientists from the U.S. have teamed up with Israeli and Jordanian researchers to protect the Gulf of Aqaba, a strategic waterway whose fragile marine ecosystem is vital to both Israel and Jordan. Participants in the NATO-funded project say they are bridging the Arab-Israeli political divide for the sake of science, peace and environmental conservation. View the full article

Watermelon juice can be a valuable source of biofuel. Researchers have shown that the juice of reject watermelons can be efficiently fermented into ethanol. View the full article

Marine biologists have shown that young lemon sharks born in Bimini, Bahamas, tend to stay near their coastal birthplace for many years. Knowledge about these intermediate-aged animals -- the breeders of tomorrow -- has been limited. Thus, tropical island-nations that sacrifice their nursery habitats to coastal development are therefore likely to lose both babies and much older sharks, with potentially dire effects on the surrounding ecosystem. View the full article

During a cave diving expedition to explore the Tunnel de la Atlantida, the world's longest submarine lava tube on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, a team of scientists and cave divers have discovered a previously unknown species of crustacean, belonging to the remipede genus Speleonectes. View the full article

A team of German and British scientists have used fossilised shark teeth to reconstruct the climate of the North Sea during the Palaeogene period, between 40 and 60 million years ago. The results suggest that the North Sea was for a brief period isolated from surrounding oceans, resulting in surface-water freshening and a significant reduction in the diversity of life. View the full article

In the latest proof that the oceans continue to offer remarkable findings and much of their vastness remains to be explored, scientists have discovered a unique group of worms that live in the depths of the ocean. Orbs lobbed by the mysterious worms burst into brilliant light, thought to be a defensive measure. View the full article

The oldest complex life forms -- living in nutrient-rich oceans more than 540 million years ago -- likely fed by osmosis, new research shows. View the full article