More than 20 years of continuous measurements and a dose of "belief" yield discovery of subtle ocean currents that could dramatically improve forecasts of climate, ecosystem changes

Biologists examining ecosystems similar to those that existed on Earth more than 3 billion years ago have made a surprising discovery: Viruses that infect bacteria are sometimes parochial and unrelated to their counterparts in other regions of the globe

Scientists will embark this week from Punta Arenas, Chile, on the tip of South America, to spend 42 days amid the high winds and waves of the Southern Ocean. Here they hope to make groundbreaking measurements to explain how huge fluxes of climate-affecting gases move between atmosphere and sea, and vice-versa.

The rise of oxygen and the oxidation of deep oceans between 635 and 551 million years ago may have had an impact on the increase and spread of the earliest complex life, including animals, according to a study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online Early Edition during the week of February 25 – 29.

More than 30 scientists will embark next week on a research mission to the Southern Ocean. Researchers will battle the elements to study how gases important to climate change move between the atmosphere and the ocean under high winds and seas.

It is clear that the health of our ocean and coastal environment is intimately linked to our health. New ocean and coastal related diseases are emerging. Our beaches and coastal waters are increasingly contaminated.

Brown University marine conservation scientist Heather Leslie will explain how the fast-growing field of resilience science can produce more effective ocean protection policies at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society.

Climate change is rapidly transforming the world’s oceans by increasing the temperature and acidity of seawater, and altering atmospheric and oceanic circulation, reported a panel of scientists this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston.

Putting theory into practice to manage complex and closely linked social and ecological systems along our coasts is a challenge, but one NOAA researcher Anne Guerry says can be addressed by a new approach to managing the value of our ocean resources.

Humans live in the midst of a seething, breathing microbial world. Microorganisms populate every conceivable habitat, both familiar and exotic, from the surface of the human skin, to rainforest floors, to hydrothermal vents in the ocean floors.

More than 40% of the world’s oceans are heavily affected by human activities, and few if any areas remain untouched, according to the first global-scale study of human influence on marine ecosystems.

The third expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE) completed its mission off the Kii Peninsula today.