Mesmerizing Sea Life

Did the first whales pick up where the mosasaurs left off when 66 million years ago all the large marine predators became extinct? The University of Liège's EDDyLab (Belgium) developed this research to investigate whether there were morphological and behavioral convergences between whales and mosasaurs which was published in Paleobiology. We are familiar with modern whales and dolphins, but the extinct predecessors of these modern marine animals closely resembled ancient aquatic animals, especially the mosasaurs, a group closely related to snakes and lizards. "Superficial similarities have long been noted, but the idea that these two groups might be functionally similar has never been rigorously tested," explains Rebecca Bennion, a doctoral student at ULiège's EDDyLab and first author of the study. The research, which has just been published in the journal Paleobiology and was carried out by an international team of scientists based in Europe, the USA, and New Zealan...

Countless marine animals rely on noise to survive, for e.g: to detect predators, for echolocation, and as a means of communication with the co-species. In recent decades, the sounds caused by human activities are affecting marine species, especially the sounds emitted by cargo ships, loud explosions, and seismic surveys. A study by the Alfred-Wegener institute showcases that the sounds may impact the functioning of the ocean floor. Invertebrates such as mussels, crustaceans, and worms(referred to as ecosystem engineers) frequently sediment the area they live in by burrowing, feeding, aerating, and fertilizing with their excreta. These activities play a vital role in the nutrient cycle in the ocean, allowing more carbon from the dead organic material to be stored on the sea floor and nutrients to be recycled.  Sound can travel long distances underwater, sometimes hundreds and even thousands of kilometers whereas light can travel only tens of meters.  A research team from the Al...

Natural History Museum unlocked 30 new species living at the bottom of the sea. Using a remotely operated vehicle collected specimens from the abyssal plains of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Central Pacific. Previously, creatures from this area had been studied only through photographs.  What surprises is out of 55 specimens recovered, 48 of them were new. The animals include segmented worms, invertebrates from the same family as centipedes, marine animals from the same family as jellyfish, and different types of coral. 17 were found at between 3,095 and 3,562 meters deep, two were collected on a seamount slope at 4,125 meters, and Thirty-six specimens were found at more than 4,800 meters deep. Dr. Guadalupe Bribiesca-Contreras, of the Natural History Museum, the study’s lead author said “the research is important not only due to the number of potentially new species discovered but because these megafauna specimens have previously only been studied from seabed images and added...

In bubbling vents off the coast of Ischia, a volcanic island in the Gulf of Naples lives a curious population of black sea urchins. For at least 30 years, they have lived in these low pH, carbon dioxide-rich environments -- a proxy for climate change-induced acidic oceans. Now, University of Sydney researchers have determined they can also tolerate unprecedentedly warm sea temperatures -- another climate change by-product. This means that these urchins, already one of the most abundant animals in the Mediterranean Sea, will likely plunder further afield as oceans continue to warm and become more acidic. The researchers have described their findings in Biology Letters, a publication of the Royal Society. The Mediterranean Sea is warming 20 percent faster than the global average, with predicted warming of up to 5.8°C by 2100. "Given their ability to withstand a large temperature range, these sea urchins are likely to continue spreading throughout the Mediterranean Sea, with serious ...

Killer whales don't hesitate to hunt from herring to great white sharks. For the first time, gory footage reveals that orca pods can even bring down an adult blue whale. While past reports reveal that they were attempted attacks on blue whales, no one has observed orcas complete the job until March 19th, 2019. The series of events has been taken off on the southwestern coast of Australia from 2019 to 2021. The three separate attacks were described in the journal Marine Mammal Science. “This is the biggest predation event on the planet,” says study coauthor Robert Pitman, a cetacean ecologist to Science News’s Anna Gibbs. “We haven’t seen things like this since dinosaurs were here, and probably not even then.” In each attack, the orcas—also called killer whales—relied on strength in numbers. Between 50 and 75 orcas took part in each hunt, and more than a dozen of the same individuals were involved in all three events. The orcas employed different tactics to take down the whales, inc...

When a team of subsea explorers completed the deepest ever dive to a shipwreck earlier this year, the news was broadcast around the world. A team from Caladan Oceanic found the USS Johnston , which sank during an intense naval battle in 1944, to be astoundingly well-preserved, its guns still pointing in the direction of the enemy. A few days before making their record-setting trip, however, the explorers had carried out another descent to the seafloor, a dive that ended up being a few kilometers off the mark. Though they failed to find the wreck that day, they did find something else. Once footage from the excursion came in, Alan Jamieson, a deep-sea researcher from the University of Western Australia, sat in his office aboard the expedition ship scrolling through frame after uneventful frame, searching for anything that might be of interest. The two-person submersible, piloted by Victor Vescovo, the American investor who founded Caladan Oceanic, appeared to have glided past little mo...