Chemistry Human impacts Pollution
Oil Spill Sleuths use Chemical Fingerprinting to Identify Sources of Tar Balls
Tar balls are small globules of thick, sticky oil that can be found on some shorelines. In order to mitigate…
Category: Human impacts
Chemistry Coastal Management Hazards Human impacts Policy Pollution
Are coastal waters receiving drugs? Are the rivers distributing them?
Pollution is not new news. It is common to hear discussion about air pollution and trash pollution, and more recently…
Chemistry Human impacts
Measuring “Roundup” in the Great Barrier Reef
Scientists estimated the degradation time for glyphosate, an herbicide in "Roundup", in the Great Barrrier Reef. This is the first…
Ecology Fisheries Human impacts Pollution
Cartilaginous Conundrum: Are Sharks and Skates Safe to Eat?
While smooth dogfish may not be on your list of favorite seafood, cartilaginous fish (mainly sharks and skates) may increasingly…
Climate Change Ecology Human impacts Ocean Acidification
Damselfish in distress: on ocean acidification and suicidal reef fish
Fish are rebelling. What's the cause?
Biology Coastal Management Ecology Fisheries Human impacts Policy Pollution
The Ghastly Impacts of Ghost Fishing Gear
Derelict fishing traps, or DFTs, are abandoned traps that may still be actively capturing marine organisms, in a phenomenon known…
Ecology Fisheries Human impacts
Are MPA’s the best way to conserve the seahorse population?
While Marine Protected Areas do a great job of preserving essential marine habitats, and decreasing fishing pressure, they may not…
Biology Climate Change Ecology Human impacts Physiology Pollution
Keep it Down!: Eels Having Problems Avoiding Predators in Noisy Waters
We don't traditionally think of our ships making noise that will disrupt animal behavior, but this study, looking at eels…
Climate Change Human impacts Pollution
An accidental find: Large quantities of microplastics are in Arctic sea ice!
Multiyear sea ice formation in the Arctic Sea uptakes microplastics from seawater, effectively acting as a sink for these man-made…
Biology Chemistry Fisheries Hazards Human impacts Pollution
The Hairy Truth: Using Grizzly Bear hair to study mercury levels
A large portion of the North American Grizzly Bear population call Western Canada home. The diet of these bears ranges…
Biology Book Review Chemistry Coastal Management Hazards Human impacts Policy Pollution
MAYDAY! MAYDAY! We’ve Run Aground!!…Assessing the early impacts of the Costa Concordia wreck
A week ago, on July 23, 2014, the Costa Concordia was finally towed away from its wreck site near Giglio…
Ecology Fisheries Human impacts
Beware! Shellfish are taking over the fishing industry
Overfishing has created a cascading effect in the marine food web. Once, large apex predators, such as cod, dominated the…
Biogeochemistry Biology Chemistry Climate Change Human impacts
Fight of the Century: CO2 vs. Calcifying Phytoplankton
From the very first sentence of the abstract, these scientists make clear they are not messing around, "Ocean acidification is…
Biology Human impacts
Are whale sharks in trouble?
A recent study at the global scale suggests that there are two distinct populations of whale shark (Indo-Pacific and Atlantic…
Climate Change Human impacts
Could increasing CO2 be decreasing human nutrition?
The increase in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations may be causing major food crops, like wheat, to have lower amounts of…
Biology Ecology Human impacts
Tethered Lunch: How conditioning native predators can help control invasive species.
It’s dark. It’s silent. A small ripple appears in a glass of water. The ripple starts to grow, becoming more…
Biogeochemistry Chemistry Ecology Hazards Human impacts Pollution
Time for an oil change: How filter feeders avoid feeding on oil
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Here, a pair of researchers investigates the…
Biology Book Review Hazards Human impacts Pollution
Juvenile Pacific albacore party where the activity is hot: Studying the links between Fukushima-derived radionuclide distribution and fish migration
Radioactive particles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor entered the Pacific food chain in less than a month after the…
Human impacts Pollution
How Much Garbage is in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
There’s been a lot of news floating around about “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, the region of the Pacific Ocean…
Biology Ecology Human impacts
One species’ trash is another species’ refuge: Investigating the biodiversity associated with floating plastic debris.
The poster child for human pollution of the ocean has to be floating plastic bottles and soda rings, right? Once…