Ocean Exploration & Research: Related Content

  • Tagging and Tracking Animals Underwater

    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.  

  • New Archaeocetes from Peru Are the Oldest Fossil Whales from South America

    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. 

  • Alaska Vulnerable to Invasive Species from Warmer Waters

    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.

  • Scientists Call New Eel Species A Living Fossil

    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 in its classification as a new species belonging to a new genus and family.

  • On Biodiversity: Understanding its Meaning and Importance

    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 living in the dark deep sea.

  • Searching for Cancer Drugs in the Ocean

    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).

  • The JASON Project Live from the Shedd Aquarium

    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.

  • Diving for Crabs in the Deep Sea

    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.

  • A Sub and a Sea Toad

    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.

  • Tunas and Marlins Officially Classified as Threatened

    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. 

  • Summer in a Sub: DROP Down to Discovery

    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 pilots, and engineers to help document the biodiversity of marine life off of Curaçao, a small island in the southern Caribbean, just north of Venezuela. 

  • Listening for Clues About Sonar’s Effects on Marine Mammals

    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 through the marine realm sometimes disrupting these animals’ behavior.

  • Peanut Butter and Jellyfish

    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 them aboard. Where are these stinging menaces coming from and why are they everywhere?

  • This Flu Season, Thank a Horseshoe Crab

    Fever. Aching muscles. Coughing. Sniffling. It’s flu season. Have you had your shot? If so, thank a horseshoe crab.

  • Seafood for Thought

    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.

  • Do Sharks Smell in Stereo?

    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 judge relative distance. Objects get smaller and blurrier with distance and parallel lines appear to converge, principles that painters mastered in the 13th and 14th centuries in their quest to turn a 2-D canvas into a 3-D experience.

  • A Tale of Sex and Stress in the Ocean

    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 of marine life forms and their weird and wonderful ways of getting by.

  • The Ingredients for a Hurricane

    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 of events that we observe, and they lead to a hurricane. There is usually very little explanation of why it’s happening or the physics behind it.

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