A Finnish brewery has recreated a Belgian beer from bottles that sank 170 years ago on a merchant ship in the Baltic Sea

Wreck beer recreated

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.

File photo of Bryde's whale (shot taken in Thailand)

Possible new whale species

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.

A starfish suffering from the wasting disease has begun to fall apart

Virus cause of sea star wasting disease

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.

A free-standing red mangrove tree growing in shallow water in the Everglades National Park

Mangroves protect coral from climate change

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.