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Jan 5 2011 - 10:55am
Many animals depend on their eyes to navigate, find food, locate mates, and for other important activities. But marine mammals often rely on sound—sometimes far more than sight—for such critical daily tasks. Increasingly though, boat traffic, energy extraction, and other noisy human activities echo...
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Nov 18 2010 - 4:49pm
Sunday, November 21 marks World Fisheries Day, an annual occasion observed in many fishing communities around the world. It’s a great opportunity—even for those of us who do not fish for a living—to pause and reflect on the importance of maintaining healthy fisheries.
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Jul 2 2012 - 3:24pm
Ships are well-known for their tiny rooms and tight quarters. But have you heard of a sea vessel that has toilets and sinks sticking out of the walls, and staircases and doors on the ceiling? This unique research vessel is real -- and, in June 2012, the Office of Naval Research and Scripps...
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Jul 5 2011 - 2:15pm
You never know where following your passions can take you. I came to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) two years ago as a research intern after graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in biology. I never expected, two years later, to spend a summer working with scientists, sub...
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Jul 8 2011 - 10:25am
Have you ever seen a creature so unusual? This fish (22 cm long) is called a sea toad and studying them requires luck and the opportunity to descend into the deep waters where they live.
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Aug 16 2011 - 1:05pm
The ocean is home to a phenomenal diversity of marine organisms. They have evolved to inhabit warm waters near the equator and the icy waters of the Earth’s poles. Marine life takes advantage of the enormous volume the ocean comprises: from diatoms living near the sunny surface, to octopods...
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Nov 2 2010 - 12:43pm
Animals, on land and in the ocean, live in a 3-D world, and they depend on their sense organs and brains to build the mental constructs that allow them to orient and navigate, which is crucial for hunting and fleeing. The process is far from simple. Humans, for example, use many visual clues to...
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May 16 2012 - 4:35pm
How do we know where ocean animals swim day and night? Scientists are getting snapshots into the daily lives of whales, sharks, and even fish by tagging the animals to track their movements.
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Nov 22 2010 - 11:23pm
Fever. Aching muscles. Coughing. Sniffling. It’s flu season. Have you had your shot? If so, thank a horseshoe crab.
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Aug 9 2011 - 12:00pm
Ever since fourth grade I’ve wanted to explore the creatures and landscapes of the deep ocean in a submersible. It took awhile, but I finally got my chance this summer as part of the Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP).
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Jul 13 2012 - 1:01pm
Imagine: You’re in a small submersible, and you gently settle on the soft muddy bottom at a depth of 12,000 feet. It’s absolutely dark. What will you see when the exterior lights are turned on? Will you discover underwater volcanoes and hydrothermal vents, as some astonished geologists did back in...
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Oct 20 2010 - 7:59am
Welcome to Citizens of the Sea, a new blog series where ocean life comes to life. Our book by the same name came out in September, but no sooner had it gone off to the printer than new ocean stories started streaming in. So every other week, we’ll use this series to explore some interesting aspect...
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Jul 14 2011 - 12:30pm
Last week, Smithsonian research zoologists Dr. Jerry Harasewych and Dr. Martha Nizinski were in Curaçao looking for deep-sea marine gastropods and decapod crustaceans, respectively.
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Aug 17 2011 - 12:09pm
Scientists at the Smithsonian and partnering organizations have discovered a remarkably primitive eel in a fringing reef off the coast of the Republic of Palau. This fish exhibits many primitive anatomical features unknown in the other 19 families and more than 800 species of living eels, resulting...
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Jul 19 2011 - 1:58pm
This week people representing federal, state, and local governments, academia, non-profits, and private industry are in Chicago for the biennial Coastal Zone Conference. This meeting will give more than 1,000 attendees the opportunity to discuss ocean issues, strategies, and solutions.
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Sep 1 2011 - 9:35am
Alaska’s pristine coastline is ripe for an influx of invasive marine species such as the European green crab and the rough periwinkle (an Atlantic sea snail), warns a new study by a team of scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
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Nov 29 2010 - 6:48pm
All over the world, people have been witnessing gigantic blooms of tens of thousands of jellyfish where once there were only a few. Fishers find them clogging their nets and costing them dearly. In Japan, giant jellyfish capable of reaching six feet across even capsized a boat that tried to bring...
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Sep 12 2011 - 4:40pm
The evolution of whales represents one of the great stories in macroevolution. It's a narrative that has mostly benefitted from an extraordinary series of fossils recovered from rocks around the world, including challenging field areas in Egypt, Pakistan, and India.
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Oct 6 2010 - 12:42am
I became interested in weather phenomena when I took physics in high school. At the time, I just wanted to understand how various things in nature worked. Unfortunately, most information about weather and hurricanes, whether in textbooks or on television, is merely descriptive: this is the sequence...
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Jul 7 2011 - 4:20pm
Extinction is a real possibility for three species of tunas. That’s one of the messages from a new study released today online in the journal Science.
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