The open ocean is a veritable soup of tiny critters, including newborn fishes. It’s hard to learn about them, though, because they are mere millimeters long and semitransparent. When netted…
Category: Oceans
Some bacteria are suffocating sea stars, turning the animals to goo
The mysterious culprit behind a deadly sea star disease is not an infection, as scientists once thought. Instead, multiple types of bacteria living within millimeters of sea stars’ skin deplete…
How kelp forests off California are responding to an urchin takeover
Joshua Smith has been diving in kelp forests in Monterey Bay along the central coast of California since 2012. Back then, he says, things looked very different. Being underwater was…
Earth’s oceans are storing record-breaking amounts of heat
Pandemic-related shutdowns may have spared Earth’s atmosphere some greenhouse gas emissions last year, but the world continued to warm. Water temperature measurements from around the globe indicate that the total…
