Achilles Tang

In Arctic Canada, geologists have discovered a surprise fossil: a tropical, freshwater, Asian turtle. The find strongly suggests that animals migrated from Asia to North America not around Alaska, as once thought, but directly across a freshwater sea floating atop the warm, salty Arctic Ocean. View the full article

A part of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which separates Washington state from Canada's British Columbia, is a potential "hot spot" for toxic harmful algal blooms affecting the Washington and British Columbia coasts. View the full article

The best way to survive the ill-effects of climate change and pollution may be to simply sleep through it. (2009-01-29) View the full article

Followers are just as important to good leadership as are the leaders themselves, reveals a new study of stickleback fish. By randomly pairing fish of varying degrees of "boldness," the researchers showed that each member of a pair adopts the role of leader or follower. More importantly, they found, the behavior of each member of the pair is strongly influenced by its partner. View the full article

Making bales with 30 percent of global crop residues -- the stalks and such left after harvesting -- and then sinking the bales into the deep ocean could reduce the build up of global carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by up to 15 percent a year, according to new calculations. View the full article

A possible solution to global warming has been dealt a blow. Fertilizing plankton by the artificial addition of iron has long been proposed as a potential way to geoengineer the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Now, scientists measuring how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is locked away in the deep ocean by plankton when it dies found that it was significantly less than previous estimates. View the full article

Popularized by the 2005 movie "March of the Penguins," emperor penguins could be headed toward extinction in at least part of their range before the end of the century, according to a new article. View the full article

Researchers have discovered new aspects of the salmon immune system. His research looked at the immune cells in the gills of salmon and at immune responses to vaccination. A special type of tissue, rich in immune cells, was found in the gills, and new properties of immune cells that produce brown pigment were discovered. View the full article

Land plants' ability to sprout upward through the air, unsupported except by their own woody tissues, has long been considered one of the characteristics separating them from aquatic plants, which rely on water to support them. Now lignin, one of the chemical underpinnings vital to the self-supporting nature of land plants -- and thought unique to them -- has been found in marine algae. View the full article

An important British seabird has been tracked for the first time using miniature positioning loggers. The results are giving zoologists information that could help conserve wildlife around Britain's shores. View the full article

Unchecked global warming would leave ocean dwellers gasping for breath. Dead zones are low-oxygen areas in the ocean where higher life forms such as fish, crabs and clams are not able to live. Scientists have now shown that unchecked global warming would lead to a dramatic expansion of low-oxygen areas zones in the global ocean by a factor of 10 or more. View the full article

NOAA's Fisheries Service has issued regulations and a letter of authorization to the U.S. Navy that includes measures to protect marine mammals while conducting Atlantic fleet active sonar training off the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. The regulations require the Navy to implement measures designed to protect and minimize effects to marine mammals. View the full article

Biologists are working to conserve and restore endangered horse mussel reefs in Strangford Lough. View the full article

A synthetic chemical version of what male sea lampreys use to attract spawning females can lure them into traps and foil the mating process of the destructive invasive species. A professor of fisheries and wildlife, with colleagues developed a synthetic lamprey pheromone that shows promise for controlling the destructive parasitic species. View the full article

Sea otters living along the central California coast risk higher exposure to disease-causing parasites as a consequence of the food they eat and where they feed. (2009-01-20) View the full article

A new species of catfish from tropical South America combines traits typically found in two related but different catfish families. The new species, Lithogenes wahari, not only has the bony armor of the Loricariidae but has adaptations that allow it to climb like the Astroblepidae. Researchers think that the common ancestor to both families probably combined these traits as well. View the full article

Cantor's Giant softshell turtle, thought to be extinct in Cambodia since 2003 has been rediscovered in a section of the Mekong River almost untouched by humans. View the full article

Coral reefs around the world are in serious trouble from pollution, over-fishing, climate change and more. The last thing they need is an infection. But that's exactly what yellow band disease is -- a bacterial infection that sickens coral colonies. Researchers have found that YBD seems to be getting worse with global warming and announced that they've identified the bacteria responsible for the disease. View the full article

A four-week expedition to explore the deep ocean south-west of Tasmania has revealed new species of animals and more evidence of impacts of increasing carbon dioxide on deep-sea corals. View the full article

Sea otters living along the central California coast risk higher exposure to disease-causing parasites as a consequence of the food they eat and where they feed. View the full article

While many of the world's fisheries are in serious decline, the coastal Mediterranean fishery off the Nile Delta has expanded dramatically since the 1980s. The surprising cause of this expansion, which followed a collapse of the fishery after completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1965, is run-off of fertilizers and sewage discharges in the region. Considered pollutants in the West, discharges help to feed millions in Egypt. View the full article

An intriguing discovery could overturn present thinking about the role of shelf seas such as the English Channel and North Sea in global nitrogen budgets. View the full article

A revised recovery plan for the Northwest Atlantic population of the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) has been issued by NOAA. The species is listed globally as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. View the full article

Until credible sightings popped up three years ago, the scientific world was in agreement that ivory-billed woodpeckers had gone the way of the dodo. A new study reveals that the ivory-billed woodpecker could have persisted if as few as five mated pairs survived the extensive habitat loss during the early 1900's. View the full article

Research reveals the major influence of fish on maintaining the delicate pH balance of our oceans, vital for the health of coral reefs and other marine life. The discovery could help solve a mystery that has puzzled marine chemists for decades. Published in Science, the study provides new insights into the marine carbon cycle, which is undergoing rapid change as a result of global carbon dioxide emissions. View the full article