Researchers have discovered scleractinian corals that are brightly fluorescent at depths of 50–60 m. Many of them glow brightly with fluorescent colours, ranging from green over yellow to red. The encounter of such a rainbow of coral colours in deep waters was unexpected since their shallow-water counterparts in the same reef contain only green fluorescent pigments.
At the time of its sinking, Rio de Janeiro was carrying a contingent of German soldiers meant for the invasion of Norway, which occurred on the following day, 9 April 1940. Of the 380 onboard, 50 were crew, the rest were soldiers. Of these numbers, almost 200 lost their lives, but 183 survived and were helped by the locals. Survivors told officials they were heading to Bergen, and even though they were wearing military uniforms, the Norwegian government failed to realize that a German invasion was imminent.
Animals are endowed with the capacity to repair injuries. Some animals simply heal the wound, whereas others are able to regenerate lost parts.
A new study now documents yet another and previously unidentified strategy of self-repair, where moon jellyfish respond to injuries by reorganizing existing parts, and rebuilding essential body symmetry, important for them to stay balanced as they travel around the ocean, without regenerating what is lost.
To track the sharks over a long period of time, researchers fitted 20 males and 4 females with satellite tags. These tags sent information about an individual’s position when it came to the water surface.
The basic role of Mx genes is to make proteins that fight viral infections such as HIV, measles and flu.
'We compared the whole-genome sequence of four toothed whales, a baleen whale and dozens of related mammals like cows and humans,' said Gill Bejerano, Ph.D., associate professor of developmental biology. 'When we looked carefully at the genome sequences, it was very clear that the Mx genes are completely messed up only in the toothed whales.'
Corals depend on symbiotic algae to survive and build coral reefs. Increased ocean temperatures due to climate change can cause these symbiotic algae to be expelled from the coral, an event known as bleaching, which often leads to death.
Scientists from University of Miami placed corals in tanks and subjected them to increased water temperatures to gain insights into how they may react to global warming by replicating ocean conditions that would lead to both mild and severe coral bleaching.
Within a day’s drive from New York City is a wreck junkie heaven, with numerous shipwrecks to explore along the St. Lawrence River on the US-Canadian border, in the area called the Thousand Islands. Larry Cohen and Olga Torrey give a sampling of the wrecks in the region popular with both the American and Canadian diving communities.
The central African country of Gabon is providing an invaluable nesting ground for a vulnerable species of sea turtle. During a survey of nearly 600 km of Gabon's coastline, scientists from the University of Exeter uncovered the Atlantic’s largest breeding colony of olive ridley turtles. Study results estimate that there could be up to 9,800 turtle nests per year, compared with around 3,300 in French Guiana and 3,000 in Brazil.
The smalltooth sawfish is the first documented examples of viable parthenogens living in a normally sexually reproducing wild vertebrate.
The researchers analysed telltale markers called microsatellites in 190 sawfish that reveal how related their parents are. In seven fish, the markers suggested their parents were identical to them. The analysis revealed that the seven fish came from three different mothers.
In many cases, stock assessment is based on fishery-dependent data generated from fish markets or creel surveys. The assumption is: that the lower the catches in a certain unit of time, the smaller the stock of fish should be.
However German researchers have just shown that some fish species show enhanced gear-avoidance behaviour in regions with high angling intensity compared to fish exposed to low levels of exploitation near marine protected areas. The consequence is the impression that there are fewer fish in the sea, which does not necessarily agree with underwater reality.
Although seagrass meadows occupy less than 0.2 percent of the world's oceans, they are responsible for more than 10 percent of all carbon buried annually in the sea, according to a research paper published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The paper, "Seagrass Ecosystems as a Globally Significant Carbon Stock," is the first global analysis of carbon stored in seagrasses.
