Plastic pollution is a global problem. It damages ecosystems, endangers animals, and in the form of nanoplastic particles can also have consequences for human health.  A global agreement to regulate plastic pollution is therefore long overdue. However plastic particles have also become a new habitat for bacteria, viruses, fungi, and algae. The ecological significance of this ‘plastisphere’ for natural communities is the subject of numerous research projects. In this study, for example, researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel have examined bacterial metagenomes. The results show that the genomes of microbes in the plastisphere are larger and contain more gene copies associated with functional processes than those of marine plankton. This adaption ensures their survival, the researchers write in Environmental Pollution.

Access to nutritious food is a fundamental pillar of human success, but such access has been unequal throughout history.  In pre-industrial European societies, meat was a highly sought-after food, and access to it was often related to a higher social status. The ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in human bone collagen can provide data about what a person ate. Nitrogen isotope ratios reflect the amount of meat a person ate, while carbon isotope ratios reveal what proportion of plants a person ate used the C4 carbon fixation photosynthesis pathway, from which one can infer how much low-status millet and variable-status marine foods a person may have consumed. However, comparing isotope ratios across sites is difficult; the use of manure fertilizer, varying climate conditions, and undernourishment can change the context in which raw values are interpreted. Rozenn Colleter, Michael P. Richards, and colleagues work around this constraint by using the interdecile ratio. 

A hydrogen-bond-mediated molecular bridging strategy is proposed to overcome the trade-off in photocathodic protection, enabling round-the-clock corrosion prevention for marine infrastructure through precise interfacial engineering.

Today, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA) and UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography announced a formal partnership through the Agile Restoration & Conservation Hubs (ARCH) initiative. With over 200 years of combined experience in scientific research and public outreach, the two organizations aim to jointly accelerate innovation and expand their global conservation impact.

A new study, published in the Biodiversity Data Journal, provides a profound look at life up to nearly 10 kilometers below the ocean's surface in the Japan, Ryukyu, and Izu-Ogasawara trenches. The research catalogs at least 108 distinct organism groups (morphotaxa), including the deepest-ever observation of a fish and a baffling, unidentified animal that has left global taxonomic experts stumped.

It transports far more than 100 times as much water as all of the Earth's rivers combined: The Antarctic Circumpolar Current rushes around the southern continent unhindered by land masses and is therefore a fundamental component of the climate system. In a recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute describes how and when this mighty ring current developed in Earth's history. Surprising finding: it took more than the opening of the ocean passages between Antarctica, and South America and Australia.

Scientists have found a new way to detect subtle chemical signatures in seawater—revealing previously invisible details about the ocean’s chemistry from data continuously collected by thousands of autonomous robotic floats drifting across the seas.

Golden Sweeper fish, or Parapriacanthus ransonneti, use light to disguise themselves from predators. But these shiny fish do not produce the enzymes responsible for bioluminescence. Much like Kirby inhales the powers of his enemies, these fish steal the enzymes from their prey in a biological phenomenon called kleptoproteinism. For the first time, researchers have used genome sequencing to confirm this process.

Meteor impacts may have helped spark life on Earth, creating hot, chemical-rich environments where the first living cells could take shape, according to research integrated by a recent Rutgers University graduate.

“No one knows, from a scientific perspective, how life could have been formed from an early Earth that had no life,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology and fisheries management from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025. “How does something come from nothing?” Cinquemani is the lead author of a scientific review, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, examining where life may have first formed on Earth. The paper focuses on hydrothermal vents, places where hot, mineral-rich water flows through rock and emerges into surrounding water, creating the chemical conditions and energy gradients needed for complex reactions.

The discovery of changes to a 200-million-year-old gene in a mutant clownfish with a unique pattern provides a central clue to the mystery of how nature can create sharply defined boundaries: clear communication. This new research upends our understanding of the mathematical rules that pigmentation cells follow, and suggests a common mechanism shared across species.