Latest Biological oceanography Stories

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Scientists studying the annual growth of tiny plants in the North Atlantic Ocean have discovered that this year’s growth spurt began before the sun was able to offer the light needed to fuel the yearly phenomenon. The annual growth spurt of plankton, which is known as the North Atlantic Bloom, takes place each Spring, and results in an immense number of phytoplankton bursting into existence -- first "greening," then "whitening"...

Some coral reef fish may be better prepared to cope with rising CO2 in the world’s oceans – thanks to their parents. Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) today reported in the journal Nature Climate Change, encouraging new findings that some fish may be less vulnerable to high CO2 and an acidifying ocean than previously feared. “There has been a lot of concern around the world about recent findings that baby fish are highly vulnerable to...

The pico is a very small unit, even smaller than the nano as it is the equivalent of 10-12. The biologist Aitor Alonso has devoted himself to studying green algae of this imperceptible size existing in the Bilbao estuary, paying particular attention to the area beyond the Nervión estuary. This has enabled him to identify six genera and eleven nano- and picoplanktonic species that until now had not been catalogued in these waters. He has also put forward some measures designed to optimize the...

Acting through links between four trophic levels and across two ecosystems, purple loosestrife altered life in nearby ponds An elementary school science activity asks children who have each been assigned a wetland plant or animal to connect themselves with string and tape to other “organisms” their assigned plant or animal interacts with in some way. Once an ecosystem web has been created, the teacher describes an event that affects one “organism.” That “organism” tugs on...

LANDOVER, Md., June 8, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation celebrates World Oceans Day today with two live webcasts from their research ship in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. Both webcasts will be shown on the Foundation's website. www.livingoceansfoundation.org The Foundation will reach out to high school students with an educational webinar conducted by Chief Scientist Dr Andrew Bruckner. At 10:00 a.m. EDT he will speak from the...

[ Watch the Video ] redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports NASA officials announced on Thursday that an expedition they sponsored had uncovered a massive bloom of phytoplankton in the ice-capped waters of the Arctic Ocean -- a discovery which the U.S. space agency has called "as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert." The findings, which came as part of Impacts of Climate on EcoSystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment (ICESCAPE)...

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. A NASA-sponsored expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice to find waters richer in microscopic marine plants, essential to all sea life, than any other ocean region on Earth. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) The finding reveals a new...

Environmental change is the selective force that preserves adaptive traits in organisms and is a primary driver of evolution. However, it is less well known that evolutionary change in organisms also trigger fundamental changes in the environment. Yale University researchers found a prime example of this evolutionary feedback loop in a few lakes in Connecticut, where dams built 300 years ago in Colonial times trapped a fish called the alewife. In a study published May 23 in the journal...

Michael Crumbliss for RedOrbit.com This week new research was published that points to seagrasses as a solution to climate change. Seagrass can store up to twice the carbon of the world’s terrestrial forests. The paper, "Seagrass Ecosystems as a Globally Significant Carbon Stock," is the first global analysis of carbon stored in seagrasses and was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.  The research was led by James Fourqurean of Florida International University, in partnership...

A new study has found that each step of the marine food chain is clearly controlled by the trophic level below it – and the driving factor influencing that relationship is not the abundance of prey, but how that prey is distributed. The importance of the spatial pattern of resources – sometimes called “patchiness” – is gaining new appreciation from ecologists, who are finding the overall abundance of food less important than its density and ease of access to it. Results of the...