A male pilot whale struggled for five days to stay alive in Thailand near the Malaysian border after rescuers found it with 17 pounds of plastic bags in its stomach, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, but it ultimately succumbed to its illnesses.
Mo Brooks is just a plain-spoken man from Alabama with some theories on climate change. Luckily, because everything is terrible, he’s a congressman and sits on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee so he has a platform to float some of his entirely unfounded ideas like, for instance, sea levels are rising…
At 78 feet tall, and churned by a fierce storm, it’s the largest wave ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, New Zealand scientists report.
Hawaii legislators approved a bill on Tuesday that would ban the sunscreen containing the ingredients oxybenzone and octinoxate, an ingredient in 3,500+ of the world’s most popular brands that has been linked to the death of coral reefs.
For years, scientists have been tracking a large accumulation of floating trash, mostly bits of plastic, in the north Pacific ocean called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” or the “trash vortex.” This region, according to the latest research, has more lost and discarded plastic inside it than previous surveys…
The ocean covers more than two-thirds of our planet, and there’s so much of it left unexplored. How are we humans supposed to blend in to uncover all of its secrets, when our observation tools are hooked to clunky vehicles with fish-scaring propellers and jets?
You’re familiar with the food chain: little fish eats plankton, bigger fish eats the little fish, then a seal eats the bigger fish, thus consuming the energy from all three smaller animals. But what if the little fish had also eaten an indigestible piece of plastic? New evidence demonstrates the plastic could make it…
Last year brought what seemed like a disturbing omen to communities surrounding Europe’s North Sea: a whole lot of beached sperm whales. As Gizmodo reported at the time, the whales entered the sea’s shallow waters, where their internal sonar-like systems stopped working, causing them to become stranded and die. But…
Lots of creatures glow in the ocean’s depths, where sunlight is slim to nil. But while most of these abyssal lightbulbs use their neon powers to hunt or avoid being hunted, deepwater corals may have beat everything else down there in terms of evolutionary creativity. New research indicates these corals glow in order…
Before yesterday, Claire&Max’s latest short film—which shows what New York City would look like if climate change continued, unabated, and sea levels rose high enough to flood it—was already unsettling. But with the US officially abdicating the Paris Agreement, this is now looks like a peek at a future that seems more…
In 2009, Kerry McPhail descended Jacques Cousteau-style towards the Axial Volcano, inside the cramped, 30-year-old little submarine DSV Alvin, with a pilot and another scientist. Three hundred miles off the coast of Oregon, they were collecting tubeworms, bacterial mats and bivalves living near a deep sea volcanic…
Great news, everyone! We’re getting better at measuring the changing temperature of the ocean. Unfortunately, the data shows that they are warming more rapidly than researchers thought.
As currents shift in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, they bring an abundance of nutrients and plankton to the region, luring predators of all sizes. Swarms of anchoveta arrive first for an easy meal, but soon find themselves having to come up with unique ways to fend off larger predators like sharks and tuna. The…
As if the ocean wasn’t already full of nightmares, researchers at MIT have developed a soft and flexible robot made of hydrogel, a material composed mostly of water. The new bot is quick, strong, and almost completely invisible when submerged, allowing it to snatch up fish before they even realize they’re being…
Animals, like humans, communicate in lots of different ways. One of those ways, in animals as in humans, involves urinating on one another.
Over thirteen thousand feet below the surface, hundred-foot hydrothermal vents spew black, 690 degree fluid like chimneys from the ocean floor. Tiny crabs, shrimp and limpets scuttle beneath the smokestacks, and a remotely-operated vehicle named SuBastian went down there recently to join them.
This year may have been a rough one up here on Earth’s dry surface, but beneath the waves ocean life flourished and dazzled. The world’s most prestigious underwater photography competition has just announced its winning images for 2016—and they’re absolutely spellbinding.
A remotely operated sub has captured stunning images of the Antarctic seafloor, revealing a surprisingly dynamic and colorful world filled with spidery starfish, coconut-shaped sponges, and dandelion-like worms.
In case you thought we’d figured out life in the oceans even a little bit, a new study published in Nature Communications sets the record straight. For the first time, scientists have found experimental evidence of underwater pollination. There are bees in the sea—or at least creatures that perform the same kind of…
