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Researchers have discovered that Lake Bardawil in Egypt is the preferred foraging spot for female turtles that lay eggs at key rookeries in Cyprus.

Situated at the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula, Lake Bardawil is a large, shallow lagoon with an artificial opening that connects to the sea. Initially created as a fishery in the 1950s, it became an ideal seagrass habitat for adult green turtles.

The discoveries in the Baltic Sea are unprecedented and have revealed shipwrecks hundreds of years old. Two of them are with great certainty cargo vessels from the Netherlands, while the third and largest is supposed to be a Scandinavian vessel.

All three shipwrecks stand like ghost ships almost unscathed in total darkness on the seabed at a depth of approximately 150 meters and beyond the reach of modern fishing vessels.

In order to obtain the best footage, two Swedish photogrammetry experts Ingemar Lundgren and Fredrik Skorg from the company Ocean Discovery took part in the expedition. An underwater robot equipped with an advanced camera brought thousands of images to the surface and reproduces with great precision a virtual image of the wrecks as they actually appear.

The pictures are so detailed that you get the feeling of being able to walk around a ship that sank hundreds of years ago.

Although manta rays are readily capable of long-distance movements of hundreds if not thousands of kilometres, most populations appear to be philopatric (tending to return to or remain near a particular site or area—ed.) with few examples of long-distance dispersal.

Oceanic manta rays, the largest ray species, were listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2018. In 2019, their threat category increased from vulnerable to endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

In 2015 and 2016, researchers observed and filmed instances in which gloomy octopuses (Octopus tetricus) in Jervis Bay, Australia threw debris around themselves and sometimes at other octopuses.

This was the first time such throwing behavior has been observed in octopuses.

What was going on? Were these intelligent creatures merely rough-housing or having a pillow fight?

Imagine you are riding the waters on your trusty surfboard, savouring the rush of emotions and feeling totally alive, when you glance down into the waters and you spot a shark swimming by. 

Does your heart skip a beat and you immediately look for the fastest way to get back to dry land?

Or do you continue what you are doing, feeling more at one with the elements?

Well, if you are like more than 50 percent of surfers, you would simply continue surfing, according to a survey of 391 surfers, conducted by the University of South Australia.

Part of sea turtle conservation involves monitoring when turtle hatchlings emerge from the nest and ensuring that they make it safely to the oceans. This method currently involves much manpower and cost, as we cannot predict the exact day and time of this occurrence.

At the time of the spring tide (new moon and full moon), thousands of puffer fish around the world head for the coastlines to spawn. There, they gather at the water’s edge and vigorously tremble their bodies to spawn.

Scientists have long wondered how the puffer fish were able to synchronise their spawning with the lunar cycle.

A paper published in a recent issue of the Current Biology journal has the answers.