Tag Archives: Sea

The Sun powers almost all life on Earth, but chemosynthetic life is the fascinating exception. These organisms find fuel in chemical reactions, allowing them to flourish in places where the Sun doesn’t shine—like the deep sea. Now, scientists have discovered chemosynthetic animals, such as foot-long tubeworms and mollusks, nearly six miles beneath the ocean surface, deeper than these ecosystems have …

In a remarkable turn of events, a temporary volcanic island formed and quickly vanished in the Caspian Sea. Captured by NASA satellites, the “ghost island” emerged in early 2023 following an underwater eruption near Azerbaijan’s coast. The island, created by the eruption of the Kumani Bank mud volcano, measured approximately 1,300 feet in width but soon eroded and disappeared by …

Sea urchins don’t understand predators the way we do. They have no brains, no hearts – just raw instinct. When a sunflower sea star approaches, they don’t need complex reasoning to sense danger – they simply steer clear. This is the conclusion of a new study that examined how sunflower sea stars affect sea urchin behavior. The research was conducted …

Kelp forests, critical underwater ecosystems, have been in peril for years due to the unchecked grazing of sea urchins. The recent discovery that sunflower sea stars could hold the key to restoring these habitats has sparked excitement within the scientific community. dfffecologists, alongside undergraduate researchers, have uncovered fascinating evidence that these “eerie” sea creatures could potentially reverse the damage done …

NEW YORK — An underwater voyage has revealed a network of creatures thriving at the bottom of deep-sea ocean trenches. In these extreme environments, the crushing pressure, scant food and lack of sunlight can make it hard to survive. Scientists know that tiny microbes prosper there, but less is known about evidence of larger marine life. Researchers traveling along the …

QUICK FACTS Where is it? Kumani Bank, Caspian Sea [39.5666672, 49.5898615] What’s in the photos? The emergence and rapid disappearance of a volcanic “ghost island” Which satellites took the photos? Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 When were the photos taken? Nov. 18, 2022; Feb. 14, 2023; and Dec. 25, 2024 A striking series of satellite photos shows the brief lifespan …

Much of Earth’s ancient past lies beneath the sea. Professor Jerome Dobson of the University of Kansas coined the term “aquaterra” to describe now-submerged lands once inhabited by early humans who used them to migrate. These regions vanished as sea levels rose after the last ice age. In collaboration with Giorgio Spada of the University of Bologna and Gaia Galassi …

Overpumping groundwater, worsening droughts and more rapid evaporation due to higher temperatures have caused a drastic decline in the amount of available freshwater, according to a new study. “Continental drying” has redirected the planet’s total water to the oceans to such degree that it has now surpassed melting ice sheets as the biggest contributor to global sea level rise, the …

Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket expansion “Wisdom of Sea and Sky” will launch on July 29 at 11:00 p.m. PT / July 30 at 2:00 a.m. ET, The Pokemon Company announced. The description reads: “In Wisdom of Sea and Sky, players can encounter Pokemon from the beloved Johto region, first discovered in the Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver video games, …

An unusual fossil brain suggests that the ancestors of spiders and other arachnids may have once scuttled around the sea, rather than on land as was long thought, a new study finds. The fossil shows that certain features of the brain of a now-extinct animal known as Mollisonia symmetrica are arranged backward compared with those of most modern arthropods, a …