Co-authored USF study identifies ‘surprising’ cause of sargassum blooms in Caribbean
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 28-Apr-2025 12:08 ET (28-Apr-2025 16:08 GMT/UTC)
Researchers identified a strong negative North Atlantic Oscillation in 2009–2010 as the tipping point that pushed sargassum into the tropical Atlantic, confirming vertical mixing, not rivers, as the primary nutrient source fueling the massive blooms since 2011.
Pollution by marine litter of anthropogenic origin –that comes from human activity– is currently one of the biggest environmental concerns given its increasing magnitude, especially due to the considerable amount of plastics present in the marine environment.
A study carried out by the University of Malaga and the Oceanographic Centre of the Balearic Islands (COB-IEO/CSIC) highlights the importance of making accurate estimates of the amount of these contaminants to face this challenge, which not only affects the scientific community but also the general publicIn JASA, researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution combine acoustic monitoring with a neural network to identify fish activity on coral reefs by sound. They trained the network to sort through the deluge of acoustic data automatically, analyzing audio recordings in real time. Their algorithm can match the accuracy of human experts in deciphering acoustical trends on a reef, but it can do so more than 25 times faster, and it could change the way ocean monitoring and research is conducted.
A new study by scientists and graduates at the University of Plymouth has investigated one aspect of how the future environmental conditions created by the changing global climate might affect earliest development within Christmas Island’s red crab population
Bacteria and other single-celled microorganisms in the seas around Antarctica are strongly influenced by water temperature and the amount of sea ice. This is shown by coordinated measurements taken off the coast of the west Antarctic Peninsula. "Even at two locations that are only 400 km apart on the peninsula – a very short distance on oceanographic scales – we found striking differences in the composition and relative abundances of microorganisms. These differences seem to be related to the differences in local climate", says NIOZ computational microbiologist Dr. Julia Engelmann. The results of this study by an international team of scientists led by NIOZ, are published in the journal Environmental Microbiome.
Researchers used in situ pH measurements and in situ UV-Vis spectroscopy to investigate the kinetically controlled growth of Co(OH)₂. They discovered that Co polyhedra with unconventional coordination play a crucial role in the formation process of Co(OH)₂, reshaping our understanding of the formation process.