Marine biology

Watch A Pod of Orcas Stalk, Attack, and Feast on A Tiger Shark

They don’t call them killer whales for nothing. In this gorgeous footage from filmmaker Edwar Herreño, a pod of six orcas make a meal out of a tiger shark in the waters off Costa Rica. Herreño isn’t just a photographer and filmmaker, he’s also a marine biologist. His work has appeared on CNN, Animal Planet,…

Biology Jason G. Goldman Sep 10

Bizarre Sea Creatures Force Scientists To Create New Category Of Life

Marine biologists have identified two new species of sea-dwelling, mushroom-shaped creatures that don’t belong to any known taxonomic classification. Say hello to a completely new genus: Dendrogramma. Back in 1986, the authors of the new study pulled two distinct organisms from depths of 400 and 1,000 meters along the south-east Australian continental slope. The mushroom-like…

io9 George Dvorsky Sep 4

This Microscopic Footage Shows What Happens When A Jellyfish Stings You

Cnidarians like anemones and jellyfish extend nematocysts, stinging organelles capable of shooting venom into another creature. The nematocysts are too small and move too quickly to be seen by the naked eye—but now they’ve been captured through a microscope with a high-speed camera. Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day took the necessary camera equipment down…

io9 Lauren Davis Aug 18

Shark Week Lied to Scientists to Get Them to Appear in “Documentaries”

Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” is misleading the public again this year with several documentaries. So why are scientists allowing themselves to be featured in these pseudoscience disasters? There’s a simple reason: Shark Week producers have been lying to them. Jonathan Davis, who now works for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, was studying the bull…

Television David Shiffman Aug 11

Is Saving The Whales Key To Mitigating Climate Change?

The great whales, once under the threat of death from most seafaring nations (and now only a scant few), are some of the largest creatures to ever grace our planet. The group includes all the aptly named Mysteceti, the whales who filter plankton and krill through the plates of baleen that line their jaws, and…

Climate Change Jason G. Goldman Aug 6

How Whales Will Save The World – If We Let Them

For a thousand years humans systematically hunted whales for their meat, oil, and bone. Some whale populations were reduced by as much as 90%. But now that they’re being protected, scientists are realizing the critical role that whales play in balancing marine ecosystems. Here are four ways they keep oceans healthy. Header image: Humpback whale…

io9 Jason G. Goldman Aug 6

Sixth-Grader May Have Stolen Credit For Marine Biologist’s Lionfish Research

There’s a new development in the story about 12-year-old Lauren Arrington’s remarkable science fair project about the invasive potential of lionfish. A marine biologist is now claiming that the project was based on published work he did back in 2011 — and that the girl is the daughter of his former supervisor’s best friend. https://gizmodo.com/sixth-graders-science-fair-project-rattles-ecologists-1608333632…

io9 George Dvorsky Jul 22

Shark Week Doubles Down On Its Lies

Last week, Youtube user “Fisher86” posted what appeared to be a video shot with a camera phone of a shark in Lake Ontario. It resulted in mainstream news coverage and official government warnings. It was all a hoax created to drum up interest in Shark Week. And to scare people. It took Discovery Channel a…

Biology Jason G. Goldman Jul 16

Three Ways to Reduce the Ocean’s Garbage Gyres (And One Way Not To)

You’ve heard about the ocean’s garbage patches, swirling with tiny pieces of plastic. Now there are several organizations and inventors working on cheap, simple ways to reduce ocean garbage — and some of them are already working. Photo of inner harbor water wheel by Andrew Thaler. Over at Deep Sea News, Kim Martini has a…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jul 14

The Healthiest Corals Are Also the Fattest

The survival of many ocean species depends on the survival of coral reefs. But with many species of coral threatened by climate change, some scientists believe we should focus our preservation efforts on those most able to adapt—the fattest ones. Corals are essentially colorless; the brilliant greens, yellows and browns that we associate with them…

io9 Mark Strauss Jul 9

Intense Video About the Mystery of What Ate This Great White Shark

A group of marine biologists off the coast of Australia tagged a healthy great white shark. Then, a few months later, the tag washed ashore. When researchers analyzed data from the tag, they were confronted with a mystery that was deeply weird, and slightly terrifying. In this video, we learn what the researchers found on…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jun 6

Meet The Scariest Inhabitant Of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Quite a few strange ocean critters have made homes for themselves among the trash vortex—millions of small and microscopic pieces of plastic floating over a roughly 5,000 sq km area of the Pacific. Marine biologist Miriam Goldstein has spent years studying these creatures, and recently came across one that alarmed her. And, no, it’s not…

io9 Mark Strauss May 16

Deep Sea Probe Accidentally Uncovers Unique ‘Graveyard’ Ecology

The unexpected discovery of four unique deep sea fish-falls off the coast of Angola has revealed a feeding ecosystem considerably different than those typically associated with large animal carcasses. Without sunlight, most creatures in the deep ocean are dependant on detritus from the surface as their primary source of food, such as dead plankton and…

io9 George Dvorsky May 13

Watching This Sea Anemone Eat A Bird Will Completely F@#k You Up

One afternoon, while looking through a photo archive, oceanographer Kim Martini saw an image that looked like “a purple Butterball turkey being attacked by a lime green scrunchie.” Her co-worker, Lisa Guy, corrected her: It’s a baby seabird being consumed by a sea anemone. In fact, Guy — who researches marine ecosystems at the Joint…

io9 Mark Strauss May 7

There’s Garbage in the Deepest, Most Remote Parts of the Ocean

Our planet’s oceans are huge and mysterious, and there are still stretches of the ocean floor that remain unexplored. But that doesn’t mean they’re pristine and untouched: a new study found even the deepest, most remote areas of the oceans contain man-made litter. As a species, we’re just a bunch of slobs. An international team…

Tech News Bob Sorokanich May 1

Video Reveals the Secret Lives of Carnivorous Sponges

Sponges are generally filter feeders, living off of bacteria and single-celled organisms sieved from the surrounding water. But some are more aggressive about obtaining their food. Researchers have recently discovered four new species of carnivorous sponges living on the deep seafloor. The undersea critters—found in an area spanning the Pacific Northwest to Baja California—look like…

io9 Mark Strauss Apr 30

What Would Happen If You Turned Megalodon into Shark Fin Soup?

A group of marine biologists watched the new Syfy movie Mega-Shark vs. Mecha-Shark, which made them wonder what would happen if megalodon actually were alive today. Likely, it would be hunted to near-extinction for its fins — which would, they estimated, make 70,456 bowls of shark fin soup. They reached this estimate by looking at…

io9 Annalee Newitz Apr 28

Diving in Shark-Infested Waters — for Science!

Sharks are rapidly dying out, and scientists desperately need more data to estimate the extinction risks for these threatened species. Now, marine researchers in Australia say that dive guides and amateurs can help fill some significant gaps in their knowledge. All the researchers really need are people who can count the sharks that they see.…

io9 Mark Strauss Apr 28

At Last, We Know What Those Mysterious, Undersea “Bio-Duck” Noises Are

The “bio-duck” noise is a mysterious sound that submarine operators and scientists have been hearing in Antarctic waters since the 1960s. Nobody was sure what generated the repeated, quack-like pulsing sound — until now. Photo by Ulrich Peter Here’s a sample of the bio-duck noise. In a paper to be released tomorrow in Biology Letters,…

io9 Annalee Newitz Apr 22

Our first glimpse of ocean life at the bottom of an unexplored trench

Using a robotic lander, scientists have captured the first-ever footage of marine life at the bottom of the previously unexplored New Hebrides trench in the Pacific. At depths reaching 4.5 miles, the ecology was unlike anything the marine biologists had ever seen. The 30-day expedition was conducted by the University of Aberdeen’s Oceanlab and the…

io9 George Dvorsky Mar 3

Watch A Pod of Orcas Stalk, Attack, and Feast on A Tiger Shark

Bizarre Sea Creatures Force Scientists To Create New Category Of Life

This Microscopic Footage Shows What Happens When A Jellyfish Stings You

Shark Week Lied to Scientists to Get Them to Appear in “Documentaries”

Is Saving The Whales Key To Mitigating Climate Change?

How Whales Will Save The World – If We Let Them

Sixth-Grader May Have Stolen Credit For Marine Biologist’s Lionfish Research

Shark Week Doubles Down On Its Lies

Three Ways to Reduce the Ocean’s Garbage Gyres (And One Way Not To)

The Healthiest Corals Are Also the Fattest

Intense Video About the Mystery of What Ate This Great White Shark

Meet The Scariest Inhabitant Of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Deep Sea Probe Accidentally Uncovers Unique ‘Graveyard’ Ecology

Watching This Sea Anemone Eat A Bird Will Completely F@#k You Up

There’s Garbage in the Deepest, Most Remote Parts of the Ocean

Video Reveals the Secret Lives of Carnivorous Sponges

What Would Happen If You Turned Megalodon into Shark Fin Soup?

Diving in Shark-Infested Waters — for Science!

At Last, We Know What Those Mysterious, Undersea “Bio-Duck” Noises Are

Our first glimpse of ocean life at the bottom of an unexplored trench

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