When a tourist boat left port in the spring of 2024, passengers probably didn’t expect to bear witness to a rare scene where sharks of two species that usually don’t occupy the same habitats flocked to a heavily decayed carcass and fed peacefully for a day. The sharks didn’t exhibit any aggressive behavior towards each other, or the tourist operators and photographers who observed the event. This kind of observation can help scientists better understand inter-species relations and social interactions between some of the oceans’ biggest hunters.

A survey of Oman's marine waters has revealed over 100 species of ribbon worms (Nemertea), marking the first systematic study of these marine predators in Arabian waters.

Humans were making tools from whale bones as far back as 20,000 years ago, according to a study conducted by scientists from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and the University of British Columbia. This discovery broadens our understanding of early human use of whale remains and offers valuable insight into the marine ecology of the time. 

Support from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Ocean Shot Research Grant program will enable an interdisciplinary team to advance a creative approach combining robotics, imaging, and genetic analysis to illuminate the world of deep-ocean animals.

A study conducted by researchers from the University of Plymouth and Plymouth Marine Laboratory, who have spent more than a decade examining the impact of artificial light at night (ALAN) on the world’s coasts and oceans, has shown that more than one-fifth of the global ocean – an area spanning more than 75million sq km – has been the subject of ocean darkening over the past two decades. Ocean darkening occurs when changes in the optical properties of the ocean reduce the depth of its photic zones, home to 90% of all marine life and places where sunlight and moonlight drive ecological interactions.

Contrary to widespread assumptions, the largest shark that ever lived – Otodus megalodon – fed on marine creatures at various levels of the food pyramid and not just the top, as an international research team led by Goethe University Frankfurt has now discovered. The scientists analyzed the zinc content of a large sample of fossilized megalodon teeth, which had been unearthed above all in Sigmaringen and Passau, and compared them with fossil teeth found elsewhere and the teeth of animals that inhabit our planet today.

Jellyfish cyborgs may sound like something straight out of science fiction. But harnessing jellyfishes’ natural locomotion provides an efficient and environmentally-friendly means to monitor coral reefs, track oil spills or observe climate change. Now,  a team from Tohoku University’s Department of Robotics has successfully modulated the swimming behavior of jellyfish using gentle electric pulses and generated a means of measuring it via AI. In doing so, they have created a gentle way to harness the powerful swimming mechanisms of jellyfish.