While the Discovery Channel's annual shark week event has given the public more familiarity with the species, there is much about sharks—from their mysterious love lives to how their eating habits bring them into conflict with recreational anglers—that remains a mystery to scientists. Now, two new studies led by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst peer into these important aspects of shark biology to help guide real-world conservation strategies.

Seawater zinc-air batteries (SZAB) could provide safe, high-energy power for marine applications, but Cl⁻ in seawater can poison the catalysts that drive oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Researchers from Hainan University and collaborators designed an FeSn dual-single-atom catalysts (FeSn-DSACs) in which Sn neighbors tune Fe active sites through p-d orbital hybridization. The catalyst simultaneously accelerates ORR and suppresses Cl⁻ adsorption and corrosion. In SZAB, it delivered a peak power density of 255.6 mW cm⁻² and operated for more than 500 h, offering a design strategy for durable seawater ORR catalysis.

A new study in Macao reveals that stormwater drains carry significant microplastic pollution into coastal waters. Concentrations reached over 53 particles per litre, with hazardous polymers like PVC posing high ecological risks. The research highlights how land use and rainfall drive this pollution pathway in subtropical coastal cities.

Smoke from African agricultural fires brightens clouds over the southeast Atlantic—but new research from scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science shows that the same weather pattern carrying the smoke also thins and reduces cloud cover, effectively offsetting its cooling effect.

Plasticorals, the latest type of plastiglomerate to be described, is created when polymers from household plastic melt and seep into the skeletal pores of coral rubble. Found on beaches throughout the subtropical island of Okinawa, Japan, including within a protected natural park, they are a lasting reminder of human interaction with these threatened ecosystems and may pose a distinct chemical and physical threat to corals and their reef habitats.

Where giant salamanders sit in the food web, the conservation value of China’s fengshui forests and more from ESA’s journals.

How deep is the deepest ocean—and how precisely can we actually measure it? A Japanese research team has mapped the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench using the EM124 multibeam echosounder aboard the research vessel Hakuho-maru.