of scuba diving off the Honduran island of Roatán, Vance Solseth was down about 40 feet in crystalline water when he paused to look up. “The water was so clear I could even see the clouds above, like looking straight into the sky,” he says. At that moment, he spotted a green sea turtle about to glide overhead. Anticipating a...
"Dead zone" is a more common term for hypoxia, which refers to a reduced level of oxygen in the water. At 6,334 square miles, the 2021 hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the 16th largest ever measured in the 35-year record, measured from July 25 to August 1. Red area denotes 2 milligrams per liter of oxygen or...
Colorful soft corals (above) provide food and shelter for a school of Diana’s hogfish on a productive and diverse reef in Egypt’s Red Sea. A hermit crab (below) peers out from hump coral in the Solomon Islands. (Photo above by Birgitte Wilms/Minden Pictures) SWARMING WITH COLORFUL LIFE-FORMS that can dazzle the eyes and overwhelm the senses, the coral reefs of...
The South Padre Island Convention Center opened its doors and took in thousands of sea turtles cold-stunned during the Valentine's Week Winter Storm. UT Marine Science Institute The Valentine's Day winter storm of 2021 left Texans shivering in the dark, but that didn't stop intrepid volunteers from heading out into the suddenly frigid waters of the Gulf Coast to save thousands...
Researchers counted particles in seaballs that washed up on beaches in Spain. Underwater seagrass in coastal areas appear to trap plastic pollution in natural bundles of fibre known as “Neptune balls”, researchers have found. With no help from humans, the swaying plants – anchored to shallow seabeds – may collect nearly 900m plastic items in the Mediterranean alone every year, a...
