Australia

In a joint study, scientists found alarming concentrations of PFAS chemicals in Victoria’s critically endangered Burrunan dolphins. 

These chemicals, widely used in food packaging, firefighting foam and non-stick cookware, are sometimes called “forever chemicals” as they almost never break down in the environment. 

To safeguard the survival of coral reefs around the world, portable aquariums can be set up in remote areas to propagate young corals that can be used for reef restoration.

Known as ReefSeed, this containerised system is being developed by Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in collaboration with the Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMRI). 

Comprising a skilled team of engineers, professional divers, and automobile enthusiasts, this collective recently orchestrated an extraordinary endeavor. They navigated a vintage Land Cruiser 4.3 miles beneath the waters of Darwin, an Australian city, setting a new bar for both the longest and deepest underwater journey.

This historic achievement, as reported by ABC News Australia, saw the vehicle reaching an astounding depth of 98 feet beneath the harbor's surface. This feat demanded more than a mere snorkel to achieve.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1981, narrowly avoided a downgrade to the "in danger" status during a recent meeting of the World Heritage Committee. The decision was made despite the repeated warnings by experts about the escalating impact of climate change on the world's largest coral reef system.

The discovery of chlamydia-like bacteria in corals of the Great Barrier Reef could help scientists understand the coral microbiome and its impact on coral reef health.

Corals are associated with a variety of bacteria, which occur in the surface mucus layer, gastrovascular cavity, skeleton and tissues where they play a critical role in protecting corals against pathogens, cycling nutrients, and producing vitamins and essential amino acids. 

The 44-metre motor vessel (MV) Blythe Star was a coastal freighter that disappeared off Tasmania nearly 50 years ago. On the 13 October 1973 while making a routine trip from Hobart to King Island, the ship began developing a list to the starboard before taking on water and capsizing.

Most sharks give birth to live young, but a few species, known as oviparous sharks, lay eggs. The new species could be identified because researchers noticed something interesting about its egg cases, pouches that attach to a surface in the ocean and hold onto a fertilized shark eggs as it develops.

Large, perennial, seagrass meadows of the Poseidon’s ribbon weed and the wire weed (Amphibolis antarctica) dominate much of the marine ecosystem in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Shark Bay, Australia.

Two years ago, scientists discovered some of the seagrass there was a clone of a Poseidon’s ribbon weed (Posidonia australis) that had 40 chromosomes instead of the typical 20. They think half those chromosomes may come from the ribbon weed and half from an unknown species.

Researchers from the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Primary Industries (DPI) and Deakin University fitted an adult male shark with a pop-up satellite tag and tracked it for more than five months.

After being tagged, the shark swam more than 20km out to sea, then headed north to Queensland. 

It roamed between 80 and 280km offshore between Agnes Water and the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, before heading to the cooler waters in southern NSW, Victoria and Tasmania. 

While on a mission to map the volcanic geography of Cocos (Keeling) Islands Marine Park off Western Australia, researchers aboard the vessel Investigator also surveyed the deep-sea life in the Indian Ocean Territories.

In doing so, they came face-to-face with many fascinating, and some previously unknown, species.

Besides filming videos of the vast marine life amidst the summits of seamounts, the team also collected specimens from depths as deep as five kilometres below the surface.

We have discovered an amazing number of potentially new species living in this remote marine park

Dr Tim O’Hara, Chief Scientist of the expedition and Senior Curator, Marine Inveterbrates at Museums Victoria Research Institute