Celebrating marine moms for mother's day.

We honor mothers above waves and below

Nick Pyenson excavating toothed whale fossils

FEATURE STORY

Where have all the reef sharks gone?

FEATURE STORY

Oil Spill Two Years Later

Oily seaweed in the Gulf of Mexico

Our Ocean Planet - Earth Day 2012

A satellite image of Earth.

Amazing Ocean Mobile App

Screen shots from the new Amazing Ocean mobile app

Smithsonian Scientists Describe a New Fossil Whale, Bohaskaia monodontoides

An illustration of an extinct fossil whale, Bohaskaia monodontoides, that was recently named by scientists

X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out, a Smithsonian Exhibit of Fish X-Rays

An image gallery of fish X-rays

Multispecies Communities of Seacows

An illustration of an extinct multispecies community of dugongs or seacows

The Perfect Underwater Photo

A wrought iron butterflyfish being cleaned by a small wrasse in the waters of Japan's Ogasawara Islands.

Latest From The Blog

Nicholas D. Pyenson - May 11, 2012

A researcher holds an arm bone from a "toothed" mysticete whale from Vancouver Island.
Editor's note: Read Nick's first blog post about "toothed" baleen whales to see what their team is excavating on Vancouver Island.  

Nicholas D. Pyenson - May 7, 2012

A Smithsonian scientist points to an ancient whale fossil
The whales that we see in today's world can broadly be split into two groups: those with teeth (odontocetes), and those that have baleen (...

Hannah Waters - Apr 27, 2012

<p>Large numbers of grey reef sharks were observed at Jarvis Island, an uninhabited Pacific island, during the 2010 Pacific RAMP expedition of the NOAA Ship <em>Hi'ialakai</em>.</p>
Reef sharks rarely get any love. These sharks, comprising several species, loiter around coral reefs, snacking on small fish, squids and...

Hannah Waters - Apr 20, 2012

Mark Dodd, a wildlife biologist from Georgia's Department of Natural Resources, surveying oiled sargassum seaweed in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
Two years ago last week, on April 20, 2010, an explosion on the oil-drilling rig Deepwater Horizon caused the largest marine oil spill in...

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Today's Featured Content

Male northern elephant seals face off on the beach for the best territory for mating season.
Robert Schwemmer, CINMS, NOAA

Male northern elephant seals face off on the beach by vocalizing through their extended noses, called proboscises. Every winter, when the seals return to the beach where they were born to breed, males arrive first to tussle for territory. The winners of these fights are the "alpha" males, and they get the biggest and best territories. After the beachfront property is divvied among the alpha males, the females arrive for breeding. Learn about how scientists track elephant seals with satellite tags at the Census of Marine Life.