Ocean Life
Symbiosis in the Deep Sea
Mobs of pale shrimp clamber over each other, jockeying for position in the swirling flow of black-smoker vents on the seafloor where ultra-hot fluids from Earth’s interior meet cold seawater.…
Brown Tides and Redfielders
Come spring, Louie Wurch’s mind turns toward softball and another, less idyllic seasonal phenomenon: brown…
Beneath Arctic Ice, Life Blooms Spectacularly
Scientists have discovered a massive bloom of phytoplankton beneath ice-covered Arctic waters. Until now, sea…
Scientists Discover the “Vitamin B12 Claw”
Scientists have revealed a key cog in the biochemical machinery that allows marine algae at…
Ocean Explorers Probe Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico may be a source of food, fuel, and fun for millions…
Coral Sanctuaries in a Warming World?
Climate scientists have predicted that ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific will rise significantly by…
Exhibit Spotlights Sea Butterflies
Artist Cornelia Kubler Kavanagh is passionate about exploring the ocean’s great unknowns. Via her latest…
Fats In Whales’ Heads May Help Them Hear
For decades, scientists have known that dolphins and other toothed whales have specialized fats associated…
Are Jellyfish Populations Increasing?
Delicate but armed, mindless yet unstoppable, jellyfish sometimes appear abruptly near coasts in staggering numbers…
A Taste of Oceanography
After Genevieve Brett, an undergraduate physics major at Skidmore College, presented her mathematical analysis of…
Marine Microbes vs. Cystic Fibrosis
Microbes that grow in the ocean could one day help doctors combat the deadly disease…
The Great South Channel
When people are hungry, they go to a place where they know they can find…
Clues in Shark Vertebrae Reveal Where They’ve Been
It’s 1963. The escalating arms race and the horrific power of nuclear bombs cause world…
Whale Heads and Tales
It’s a Saturday morning at Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown, Mass., the farthest point on…
Searching for Life on the Seafloor
Smaller than a fingernail, like bits of downy red feathers, baby tubeworms cling to a…
The Latest Fashion in Bowhead Whale Songs
Whales, it turns out, are dedicated followers of fashion. There’s a style to the song…
Tracking an Elusive Chemical: Estrogens
On a crisp October morning, our small boat bobbed gently 10 miles offshore. The sun…
The Ocean’s Tiny Chemists
Once as I was flying cross-country over the middle of the United States, the woman…
Between the Beach and the Deep Blue Sea
Capt. Ken Houtler laughed when I remarked that I didn’t know the sun rose this…
A Drop in the Ocean is Teeming with Life
“The universe is made of stories …“ —Muriel Rukeyser There are countless stories in every…
Psychotherapy for Plankton
The scene: A diatom is out of its oceanic habitat and on a couch, talking…
Of Predators, Prey, and Petroleum
Protists are the Rodney Dangerfields of marine microbes. Although marine bacteria emerged as heroes in…
All the Pretty Jellyfish
<!– –> Pat Lohmann recently traveled to the tiny Western Pacific island nation of Palau…