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”.

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.