Oceans

More Stories in Oceans

  1. A photo of several tents set up on in Antarctica.
    Climate

    Many Antarctic glaciers are hemorrhaging ice. This one is healing its cracks

    Scientists have explored the recesses of an Antarctic glacier that is currently stable, helping improve predictions of the continent’s fate.

    By Douglas Fox
  2. photo of a seal with a plastic bottle in the ocean
    Oceans

    50 years ago, scientists discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

    In 1973, plastic bottles adrift in the North Pacific alarmed scientists. Fifty years later, more than 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic litter the area.

    By Demian Perry
  3. A photo of a researchers camp on Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier.
    Climate

    Rapid melting is eroding vulnerable cracks in Thwaites Glacier’s underbelly

    Thwaites is melting slower than thought, but the worst of it is concentrated in underbelly cracks, threatening the Antarctica glacier’s stability.

    By Douglas Fox
  4. An illustration of a large, predatory fish known as coelacanths and eel-like conodonts swimming in the ocean.
    Paleontology

    In the wake of history’s deadliest mass extinction, ocean life may have flourished

    Ocean life may have recovered in just a million years after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, fossils from South China suggest.

    By Nikk Ogasa
  5. A purple octopus as it sits on the ocean floor.
    Science & Society

    Sea life offers a lens for self-exploration in ‘How Far the Light Reaches’

    In a collection of essays profiling 10 marine animals, author Sabrina Imbler mixes in stories of their own family, self-discovery, sexuality and healing.

    By Aina Abell
  6. An underwater photo of a tiger shark with an orange camera on its side
    Ecosystems

    Tiger sharks helped discover the world’s largest seagrass prairie

    Instrument-equipped sharks went where divers couldn’t to survey the Bahama Banks seagrass ecosystem.

    By Nikk Ogasa
  7. Fishers pull in a large Atlantic bluefin tuna from choppy seas
    Oceans

    Sharks face rising odds of extinction even as other big fish populations recover

    Over the last 70 years, large ocean fishes like tuna and marlin have been recovering from overfishing. But sharks continue to decline toward extinction.

    By Jake Buehler
  8. Iceberg A68a in the Southern Ocean during July 2020
    Climate

    Here’s what happened to the Delaware-sized iceberg that broke off Antarctica

    The powerful pull of currents in the Southern Ocean probably pulled apart the largest remnant of a massive iceberg that split off Antarctica in 2017.

    By Carolyn Gramling
  9. photo shows mangrove trees in the foreground and a beach with boats on the water in the background
    Environment

    Mangrove forests expand and contract with a lunar cycle

    The carbon-sequestering trees grow in a roughly 18-year cycle according to tides influenced by the moon’s orbit, a study in Australia finds.

    By Katherine Kornei