New exploratory research reveals dramatic mesozooplankton differences across bays and within single embayments less than 1 km apart, challenging uniform plankton monitoring practices.

Glaciers are key indicators of climate change, but their movement is difficult to measure in remote and harsh environments. A review in Geodesy and Geodynamics examines how synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging geodesy helps scientists monitor glacier velocity from space. The article explains major SAR-based methods, with particular attention to pixel offset tracking, which is well suited to fast and large glacier movements. The review also highlights future needs for greater efficiency, accuracy, three-dimensional monitoring, and broader capability worldwide.

Human activities are fundamentally altering the chemical makeup of local coral reefs, according to a new study. The research team discovered that 25 contaminants from agricultural, industrial, and pharmaceutical sources accumulated in the soft tissues of coral around Maui, Hawai‘i. Additionally, in areas impacted by human activities, the energy and nutrient availability within the coral’s tissue decreases, making them significantly less resilient to environmental stressors such as warmer or acidic waters.

Ports connect cities, economies, and supply chains, but they also create environments where marine ecosystems interact intensely with shipping, wastewater, and coastal development. A new global study has revealed that these pressures leave measurable signatures in the microscopic communities living in port waters.

Researchers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and Kiel University (CAU) have examined immune system function in an early branching animal – a sea anemone. They discovered that the immune system of these animals is capable of selectively distinguishing between different microorganisms and thus protecting beneficial over harmful bacteria – an ability, which has only been attributed to vertebrates to date. So-called “nematosomes” play an important role in this, as the researchers now describe in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The findings emerged from work in the Collaborative Research Centre CRC 1182.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Barcelona, in collaboration with the University of the Aegean and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, has uncovered evidence showing that a massive outflow of low-salinity water from the Black Sea into the Aegean Sea during the Early Holocene (approximately 11,000-6,000 years ago) played a much more important role in shaping the Eastern Mediterranean than previously thought.

Hydrothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean host a broad range of rare and unusual ecosystems. They can be spread very far apart, and yet there will often be overlap in the creatures which inhabit them. Researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, answer a long-standing question in this field about how creatures migrate between hydrothermal vents. Their process involves inspecting the chemical nature of limpet shells to reconstruct their likely journeys, yielding some surprising results. 

The study, published in Movement Ecology, found that tarpon do not feed randomly across their range. Instead, they rely on distinct "foraging landscapes" that act as fueling stations during migration.

An Osaka Metropolitan University research team found that sperm from medaka that had spawned consecutively swam approximately 20% more slowly during the first 30 seconds after activation compared to sperm from males that had spawned only once.