Scientists logged a 58-foot rogue wave off Vancouver Island
A buoy measured a wave three times taller than its neighbours off British Columbia in 2020. Researchers still cannot say for certain what builds one.
category archive
Oceans.
Coasts, deep water and the stories linking land and sea.
Clownfish keep their anemones breathing at night
The anemone shields the fish with stinging cells. In return the fish cleans, feeds and, a 2013 study found, fans oxygen through its host after dark.
Ecuador widened the Galápagos reserve to guard a shark highway
Ecuador added 60,000 sq km to the Galápagos Marine Reserve to protect a migration route to Costa Rica's Cocos Island, and to push back fishing at the edge.
Russia's late yes made the Ross Sea the world's largest reserve
The Ross Sea off Antarctica became the world's largest marine protected area in 2016, after years in which China and then Russia held out against a deal.
Humpbacks tune their bubble nets, and may learn them from others
Humpbacks blow a rising curtain of bubbles to pen krill and fish, tune it as it tightens, and seem to learn the trick by watching other whales.
New robot submersibles aim to explore the ocean's hadal zone
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NASA built Orpheus, a small robot submarine meant to survey the ocean trenches below 6,000 metres.
Coral polyps build reefs from the skeletons they leave behind
A coral reef is limestone laid down by tiny animals. Each polyp builds a skeleton from calcium carbonate, and the skeleton stays in the reef after it dies.
Seabed 2030 has mapped 28.7% of the world's ocean floor
An international project has charted 28.7% of the seabed in detail, adding five million square kilometres of new data in a year.
Kelp forests slow waves and cut coastal erosion
Kelp forests drag on currents, calm the waves that reach the shore and shelter young fish. Urchins, warming seas and pollution can strip a forest bare.
Much ocean plastic sinks or washes ashore within a month
Most sea plastic sinks or beaches within a month. What escapes drifts in a gyre, or breaks into fragments small enough to reach a fish.
A dead whale feeds the seafloor for a century
Sharks, hagfish and bone-eating worms work through a sunken whale for 30 years or more. A stranded one can explode before anyone moves it.
The first US commercial deep-sea mining permit is under review
NOAA is weighing a bid from The Metals Company USA to mine seabed nodules beyond US waters. No company has ever held such a US recovery permit.
How Darwin said atolls form, and what drilling found
Darwin said a reef round a sinking volcano becomes a barrier reef, then an atoll. Drilling confirmed the sinking, but two geologists now credit sea level.