As the saying goes, you are what you eat. Researchers at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station are using this adage to better understand the life history of the salmon shark. An important apex predator and cousin of the great white, this far-ranging species roams the entire North Pacific Ocean, from Alaska to the warm sub-tropics of Hawaii and the Baja Peninsula
Scientists have known that humpback whales have a trick or two when it comes to finding prey at the bottom of the ocean, but how they locate a meal at night with little or no light has remained a mystery.
A new study has analyzed the importance of specific auditory cues that the creatures emit as they search the deep ocean for prey. 'Humpback whales are known to cooperate with others to corral prey near the surface,' said Professor Susan Parks of Syracuse University. “Recent studies suggest they may cooperate [with each other], when feeding on bottom prey, as well”, she added.
A recent study by James Cook University has revealed tourists are more worried about an oil spill ruining the Great Barrier Reef than it being stripped of its World Heritage status. A team of researchers from JCU’s Business School, led by tourism expert Professor Bruce Prideaux, surveyed 980 visitors to Far North Queensland between September 2013 and February 2014.
The study explored Cairns tourists’ thoughts as to how the marine park may be affected by a range of threats, including oil spills, coral bleaching and UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee listing the site as “in danger”.
Travellers will be pleased that plummeting oil prices are set to have a positive impact on airline ticket prices. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has announced an improved outlook for industry profitability in its Economic Performance of the Air Transport Industry report.
On a per-passenger basis, airlines will make a net profit of $7.08 in 2015, more than double the $3.38 earnings achieved in 2013. As lower industry costs and efficiencies are passed through, consumers are set to benefit substantially.
In order to understand the rich genus diversity in Turkey, a group of researchers from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Faculty of Fisheries collected samples from more than 200 localities throughout the country between 2004 and 2014. The resulting paper, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, focuses only on the Salmo species distributed in the Alakır Stream drainage, from where the new species was described. It as named Salmo kottelati after Maurice Kottelat, who contributed to the knowledge of the fish fauna of Europe and Asia.
A new study has revealed that humpback whales residing in the Arabian Sea are the most genetically distinct humpbacks in the world. Unlike other humpbacks distinguished by their epic 9,000km migrations, the Arabian Sea population has remained separate from other humpbacks for possibly 70,000 years.
The brew was reproduced thanks to elaborate research by Finnish and Belgian scientists who teamed up after the wreckage was discovered off Finland's Aaland Islands in 2010.
Divers exploring 40 feet down found only five bottles of beer next to 145 champagne bottles -- confirmed as the world's oldest drinkable bubbly -- in the long-lost wreck. The Government of the autonomous Åland Islands is the owner of the findings and had the beers analyzed at VTT Technical Research Center in Finland.
About 50 baleen whales live in an underwater canyon off the Florida Panhandle, making them the only resident baleen whales in the Gulf of Mexico, have long been classified as Bryde's whales. Several other baleen species visit the Gulf, but this group is the only one known to live there year-round and new tests have now shown that these whales are unlike any other of their species. Their genetic makeup makes them different enough to be considered a distinct subspecies of Bryde's — or a new species altogether.
The first symptom is white lesions that appear on the surface of the starfish and spread rapidly, followed by decay of tissue around the lesions. Eventually, the sea stars' bodies begin to break down; Limbs pull away from the sea stars' bodies and organs exude through their skin and the starfish dies within a few days.
In a paper in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, microbiologist Ian Hewson of Cornell University and colleagues present the results of genomic analysis of the virus prevalent in symptomatic sea stars.
Coral reefs make up some of the most biologically diverse habitats on Earth and face many threats such as coastal pollution, dredging and disease. However, some of their most widespread threats involve warming ocean temperatures, solar radiation and increased ocean acidification. It is from these threats that corals are finding refuge under the red mangroves.
So I asked leading shark ethologist and behaviourist, Professor Samuel 'doc' Gruber to elaborate. After pointing out how much pain women feel when they give birth, making the point that suffering has no effect on reproduction, he reminded me that sharks evolved their mating behaviours and the physical structures involved, separately from other animals.
Although humpbacks migrate between their polar feeding grounds and the warmer waters where they breed, the exact routes they take have remained a mystery. By studying the types of scars on humpback whales and how recently they were made, researchers from the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute can now determine routes the whales took before arriving in their breeding grounds off the west coast of South Africa, Namibia and Gabon.
