Florida’s coral reefs are under siege from fast-spreading diseases like Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, yet their hidden structural impacts remain poorly understood. FAU researchers used advanced micro-CT imaging and deep learning to analyze coral skeletons in 3D, revealing subtle changes in porosity, density and thickness with 98% accuracy. This innovative approach offers a powerful new tool to rapidly assess reef health and better guide conservation strategies in the face of escalating environmental threats.

Researchers have unlocked the secrets behind the extraordinary maneuverability of the black ghost knifefish, a freshwater species known for its effortless forward, backward, and hovering movements. By systematically analyzing the fin’s unique morphology and wave-like motion, the team has established a comprehensive kinematic database that could bridge the gap between biological propulsion and bio-inspired robotic design, potentially revolutionizing underwater vehicle performance in complex environments.

In the deserts of southeastern Arizona, harvester ants congregate with serrated jaws agape outside the nests of much smaller cone ants. However, the nests’ inhabitants are not threatened. Instead, they crawl all over the harvester ants and lick and nibble their body surfaces—the first known example of an ant that cleans a much larger ant species. The unusual behavior, described for the first time this week in the journal Ecology and Evolution, was observed by entomologist Mark Moffett, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

New evidence shows melt ponds in the northern parts of the Arctic may be biological sources of ice-nucleating particles, a key ingredient for cloud formation that has been largely overlooked.

Scientists have developed a new method to measure ocean surface currents over large areas in greater detail than ever before. Called GOFLOW (Geostationary Ocean Flow), the approach applies deep learning to thermal images from weather satellites already in orbit.

Common human painkillers also work on Norway lobsters, according to research from the University of Gothenburg. This is further evidence that crustaceans may feel pain and that more humane methods of killing them need to be developed.

Few studies have investigated coastal marine plankton and aggregate abundance and diversity with high frequency over a long time period. Here, a group of researchers deployed a cabled marine Oshima Coastal Environmental data Acquisition Network System (OCEANS) observatory in 20 m of water off the coast of Oshima Island in Japan to establish plankton diversity and plankton and aggregate abundance as a function of ocean turbulence during two 4-month periods spanning 2014 to 2016.

The climate crisis seems to be altering gray whales’ access to food, leading them to change their migration paths and forage in San Francisco Bay — a busy shipping area with a narrow bottleneck both whales and boats must cross. Scientists surveying these whales suspect that many don’t survive to leave the bay: of the 114 individuals they identified, only four were seen in more than one year between 2018 and 2025, and 21 were found dead, giving a minimum mortality rate of 18%. Many deaths were caused by vessel strike injuries, while some others are due to starvation. 

The real climate risks to Ireland from changes to the Atlantic currents that sustain our mild climate are obscured by exaggerated claims in media headlines and movies.

That’s according to Dr Gerard McCarthy, a Maynooth University (MU) oceanographer at the Irish Climate Analysis and Research UnitS (ICARUS) in the Department of Geography, who has led a new article for Nature Climate Change.

The latest paper is a retrospective on a landmark 2015 study led by Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, which identified long-term Atlantic cooling as a sign that the Atlantic Meridional Circulation (AMOC) was weakening.

In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences, a research team systematically interpreted the key scientific issues such as the DO threshold, structural characteristics, distribution patterns, formation and maintenance mechanisms, and driving factors of the OMZ in the context of global change. It may provide important scientific basis for further exploring the coupling relationship between global change and oceanic OMZ, and for understanding marine hypoxia and deoxygenation issues from a global perspective