There have been sightings of white whales sporadically over the last few decades, but the only white killer whales (Orcinus orca) were young, including one with a rare genetic condition that died in a Canadian aquarium in 1972. A group of Russian scientists and students on a research cruise off Kamchatka made the sightings of [...]

In Shark Bay, Australia, the male dolphins are well known to marine biologists for their messy social entanglements. These relationships are so unique, that they’re more like intricate webs of the way that the Cosa Nostra and the Mafia work than the typically vertical hierarchies of chimpanzees. A team of scientists argues in a recent [...]

The Great Barrier Reef is under attack by a disease and new data shows that the Black Band Disease can migrate at a rate fast enough to kill entire coral colonies and put the population size of many coral species at risk for drastically decline. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology along [...]

The world’s biggest squid species have developed over time huge eyes to give them advanced warning of approaching sperm whales. Colossal (15m) and giant squid (13m) have eyes that measure 27cm (11″) across, which is much bigger than any fish on record. The only benefit of such huge eyes in the murky depths of the [...]

Bottlenose dolphins can understand the meaning and order of words, which can be conveyed through human hand gestures. It appears that now humans are also beginning to understand the language of dolphins as more than just a series of clicks, pulses and whistles. A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society [...]

Many creatures in the sea glow in the depths of the deepest trenches of the oceans. Bioluminescence is even observed in some marine bacteria, which emit a steady light once they have attained a certain level of concentration of organic particles in ocean waters, which is known as quorum sensing. In a new article published [...]

A new study, using high-speed photography, shows that squids can save energy by flying rather than swimming. Some species of Cephalopoda can launch themselves into the air using the jet-propulsion system that they use to swim. Until now, researchers have thought that this sort of ‘flight’ was used by Cephalopoda to avoid predators, but the [...]

Researchers from University of Aberdeen and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) discovered ‘supergiant’ amphipods while exploring the Kermadec Trench, north of New Zealand. These explorers were searching for deep sea snailfish , but at depths of approximately 7000 meters, they discovered these amphipods that are nearly ten times that of ‘normal’ amphipods. [...]

Last year, surfers were surprised at the amount of stinging moon jellyfish, some of which reached the size of bicycle wheels, which washed towards shore in Florida. The swarms of blobs grew so quickly that they forced a Florida nuclear plant to shut down temporarily because operators were concerned that the jellies would clog its [...]

Jacques Cousteau warned that humans were having a negative impact on coral reefs. Some three decades later, ecologist and biology professor Phil Dustan has witnessed widespread coral reef degradation and bleaching from up close. By using tools that he helped build, like a handheld spectrometer, Dustan has been monitoring and watching the reefs deteriorate at [...]

In nature, you’ll find animals that undergo vast transformations, becoming almost unrecognizable in their new forms. Examples like caterpillars becoming butterflies and tadpoles becoming frogs almost look like distinct animals in the different stages of their evolution. While this might sound amazing, all stages of these animals still belong to the same biological taxonomic rank, [...]

It’s a well-known fact that noises carry a lot further underwater than in the air, but recently marine biologists noticed that underwater noises might disturb whales even if they are 120 miles away. The pulsing sounds made by the technology that’s used to monitor fish stocks has been affecting how whales communicate, even at great [...]