The need to minimize bycatch of toothed whales (odontocetes) in gillnets has long been recognized, because they are often top predators and thus essential to ecosystem resilience. It is likely that a key to achieving this goal is the improvement of gillnet acoustic visibility, because these species use underwater sonar for orientation. Previous work on increasing gillnet detectability for echolocating

With large-scale human interventions and climate change unfolding as they are now, coastal changes at decadal timescales are not limited to incremental modifications of systems that are fixed in their general geometry, but often show significant changes in layout that may be catastrophic for populations living in previously safe areas. This poses severe challenges that are difficult to meet for existing

Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) is a euryhaline species, occupying fully marine habitats (35 psu) in the North Atlantic, as well as brackish waters (<20 psu) such as in the adjacent Baltic Sea. We co-reared Atlantic purebreds and Atlantic/Baltic F1 hybrids in two salinity regimes (16 and 35 psu) in a common garden experiment for 3 years until their first maturity. This setup enabled for the first

An important yet still not well documented aspect of recent changes in the Arctic Ocean is associated with the advection of anomalous sub-Arctic Atlantic- and Pacific-origin waters and biota into the polar basins, a process which we refer to as borealization. Using a 37-year archive of observations (1981–2017) we demonstrate dramatically contrasting regional responses to atlantification (that part

Peracute underwater entrapment (PUE) is a recognized cause of death associated with anthropogenic trauma in marine mammals. We describe internal lesions likely resulting from extreme agonal exertion in bottlenose dolphins due to entanglement and forced submergence in fishing gear during PUE. We reviewed necropsy findings from bottlenose dolphins with known PUE statuses in Virginia, United States from

Fluctuations in the ambient oxygen concentrations represent a major stressor for aerobic organisms causing ATP deficiency during hypoxia and excessive production of reactive oxygen species during reoxygenation. Modulation of the mitochondrial electron transport system activity was proposed as a major mechanism involved in both the mitochondrial injury and adaptive response, but the mechanisms of ETS

Remineralization of organic matter at the seafloor is an important ecosystem function, as it drives carbon and nutrient cycling, supplying nutrients for photosynthetic production, but also controls carbon burial within the sediment. In the Arctic Ocean, changes in primary production due to rapid sea-ice decline and thinning affect the export of organic matter to the seafloor and thus, benthic ecosystem

Realistic predictions of climate change effects on natural resources are central to adaptation policies that try to reduce these impacts. However, most current forecasting approaches do not incorporate species-specific, process-based biological information, which limits their ability to inform actionable strategies. Mechanistic approaches, incorporating quantitative information on functional traits

The importance of the role of cephalopods in marine ecosystems and commercial fisheries has increased over recent years. There is now evidence that the distribution of cephalopods is expanding latitudinally. Nevertheless, information about the spatial distribution of cephalopods and its implications in the Yellow Sea (YS) is not well known. In an attempt to redress this deficiency, we firstly conducted

Konosirus punctatus inhabits areas of significant commercial importance in Chinese coastal waters. Twelve populations distributed all along the Chinese coast were analyzed using two mtDNA genes. The cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) and cytochrome b (Cytb) genes were amplified from 242 and 259 individuals, respectively, and fragments of 999 and 415 bp sequence in length were used for analysis. COI

The conservation of marine biodiversity is firmly embedded in national and international policy frameworks. However, the difficulties associated with conducting broad-scale surveys of oceanic environments restrict the evidence base available for applied management in pelagic waters. For example, the Oceanic Shoals Australian Marine Park (AMP) was established in 2012 in a part of Australia’s continental

The ingestion of plastic debris has been studied in many marine fish species, although comparisons between species can be difficult due to factors thought to influence ingestion rates, such as habitat preference, feeding behaviours and trophic level. Sardines are found internationally in many coastal environments and represent a potential sentinel species for monitoring and comparing marine plastic

The marine fish farming industry is growing at a significant rate, yet a number of concerns still remain with regards to environmental impacts on the surrounding coastal sea and its biota. Here, we assessed the impact of intensive farming on benthic prokaryotic communities at a Mediterranean sea bass and sea bream intensive aquaculture site over a period of 10 months, in relation to the increase in

The hard clam Meretrix meretrix is ecologically and economically important in the coastal regions of China. We evaluated the genetic diversity and population structure among eight M. meretrix samples from the Yellow Sea (YS) and South China Sea (SCS) using nine microsatellite DNA loci. Both conventional and model-based population genetic analyses suggested significant genetic divergence between YS

Since 2010, the northern Gulf of Mexico (NGoM) has experienced two unique environmental stressors. First, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWH) impacted a broad range of taxa and habitats and resulted in declines of small demersal reef fish over the study area (88.5–85.5°W and 29–30.5°N). Then, from 2011 to 2014 the invasive Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans) underwent exponential population

As an essential parameter for all kinds of aquatic life, light influences life cycles and the behavior of various marine organisms. However, its primary role is that of a driver for photosynthesis and thus primary production, forming the basis of the marine food web. As a simplification when dealing with light, a common measure (e.g., used in biogeochemical models) is the photosynthetically active

Fishers “local ecological knowledge” (LEK) can be used to reconstruct long-term trends of species that are at very low biomass due to overfishing. In this study, we used historical memories of Sicilian fishers to understand their perception of change in abundance of cartilaginous fish in the Strait of Sicily over the last decades. We conducted interviews with 27 retired fishers from Mazara del Vallo

The relationships between infaunal diversity and ecosystem function of biogenic structures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic remain poorly documented. Our study investigated the influence of sponge gardens at the Frobisher Bay site (137 m) and bamboo corals at the Baffin Bay site (1007 m) on the infaunal community structure and benthic ecosystem functioning. The occurrence of both types of biogenic structure

Changes in airborne high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) measurements of scattering, depolarization, and attenuation coincided with a shift in phytoplankton community composition across an anticyclonic eddy in the North Atlantic. We normalized the total depolarization ratio (δ) by the particulate backscattering coefficient (bbp) to account for the covariance in δ and bbp that has been attributed to

The composition, spatial structure, diversity and abundance of Antarctic nematode and copepod meiobenthic communities was examined in shallow (5–25 m) marine coastal sediments at Casey Station, East Antarctica. The sampling design incorporated spatial scales ranging from 10 meters to kilometers and included testing for human impacts by comparing polluted (metal and hydrocarbon contaminated sediments

Given the biogeochemical functions of marine microbes, the structure and functional diversity of bacterioplankton communities could be regarded as bioindicators that reflect environmental quality. The habitat of the large yellow croaker (Pseudosciaena crocea) is suffering from widespread degradation, but the study of the croaker habitat is still insufficient. Here, we used 16S rRNA gene sequencing

Monitoring the spatio-temporal variations of surface chlorophyll-a concentration (Chl, a proxy of phytoplankton biomass) greatly benefited from the availability of continuous and global ocean color satellite measurements from 1997 onward. These two decades of satellite observations are however still too short to provide a comprehensive description of Chl variations at decadal to multi-decadal timescales

In the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean ca. 30 billion tonnes of polymetallic nodules, rich in metals critical for frontier technologies, lay on the sediment surface over an area of 4–5 million square kilometres. For this reason, there is accelerating interest in deep-sea mineral mining in the CCZ. Few data exist concerning marine biodiversity in this enormous region

Zooplankton occupy a key place in the ocean ecosystems as they constitute a link between primary producers and upper trophic levels, with many commercially important fisheries relying on the presence of zooplankton to sustain fish stocks. Moreover, zooplankton have an important role in supporting primary production as they can recycle large amounts of micronutrients such as iron, facilitating its retention

Investigating responses of organisms to stressful or new environments with selection pressure is one of the crucial problems in evolutionary biology, and it is of importance to understand the phenotypic and molecular mechanism underlying thermal tolerance under the context of the climate change. The Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, inhabiting the environment with high variation in temperature, is

The term vulnerable marine ecosystem (VME) was introduced to facilitate the spatial management of deep-seas, identifying those habitats vulnerable to anthropogenic disturbance, such as trawling. Consistent interpretation of the VME definition has been hampered by an underlying paucity of knowledge about the nature and distribution of deep-sea habitats. Photographic and video platforms yield data rich

Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry can be used with digital underwater photographs to generate high-resolution bathymetry and orthomosaics with millimeter-to-centimeter scale resolution at relatively low cost. Although these products are useful for assessing species diversity and health, they have additional utility for quantifying benthic community structure, such as coral growth and fine-scale

The dynamics of the particulate organic carbon (POC) pool in the ocean are central to the marine carbon cycle. POC is the link between surface primary production, the deep ocean, and sediments. The rate at which POC is degraded in the dark ocean can impact atmospheric CO2 concentration. Therefore, a central focus of marine organic geochemistry studies is to improve our understanding of POC distribution

The short-term variabilities in temperature, salinity, nitrate, chlorophyll a (Chl a), and carbonate chemistry data (i.e., pH, partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2), total alkalinity, and dissolved inorganic carbon) were concurrently investigated in the shallow (∼50 m) and deep (∼300 m) water areas around Dongsha Atoll of the northern South China Sea (NSCS). The results show that surface temperature and pCO2

Distributing fishing mortality across the widest possible range of species, stocks, and sizes in proportion to their natural productivity (i.e., balanced harvest, BH) has been suggested as a new paradigm of fisheries management to minimize the effects of fishing on the ecosystem structure while maximizing overall yield. Models that have been used to test the effects of BH, however, usually concentrate

Surface dispersion properties give an immediate characterization of the spreading of passive and active tracers in the ocean, like pollutant and marine species. The Mediterranean sub-basins (Tyrrhenian, Adriatic, Ionian, Levantine and Aegean) are known as complex dynamic regions due to the presence of coherent structures on different motion scales. This paper focus on dispersion of the surface Mediterranean

Fishers, and the communities they support face a range of challenges brought on by complexity and uncertainty in their social-ecological systems (SESs). This undermines their ability to achieve sustainability whilst hampering proactive planning and decision-making. To capacitate fishers to apply risk aversion strategies at smaller scales of operation and for managers to apply inclusive management approaches

Settling marine aggregates, such as zooplankton fecal pellets and marine snow, transport organic matter from the surface ocean to the deep sea and are largely responsible for the ocean’s sequestration of carbon. However, our understanding of the functioning of the biological pump and the distribution of particulate organic matter in the water column often hinge on limited bulk data from sediment traps

Turbulence induces rotation in the living and the non-living materials in the ocean. The time scale of rotation for a living organism is important in understanding an organism's feeding efficiency, mating, prey capture rate, etc. This time scale is also crucial for understanding the migration of non-living materials such as microplastics. Herein, we investigate the tumbling motion of mesoscale particles

Climate change alters environmental conditions that are expected to have a profound effect on the biodiversity, community composition, and metabolic processes of microeukaryotic plankton in Arctic and Subarctic coastal waters. The molecular biodiversity [large subunit (LSU) rRNA gene] of three plankton size-fractions (micro-, nano-, and picoplankton) from coastal waters of ice-influenced west Greenland

Over the past three decades, lionfish (Pterois volitans and Pterois miles) from the Indo-Pacific have invaded the northwest Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. As generalist predators with a broad diet, they could pose a major threat to economically and ecologically important species and, therefore, the overall health of coral reef ecosystems and the communities that rely on them

Proliferation of urban structures and mangrove forests in estuaries are altering the shading of intertidal sediments. Urbanization also tends to increase nutrient loads in estuaries, which can have numerous direct and indirect effects on estuarine flora and fauna. Mangrove canopy shades the sediment and provides nutrients to the ecosystem via leaf litter. Microphytobenthos, macrofauna, sediment erodibility

Bar-built coastal lagoons are dynamic ecosystems at the land-sea interface that are important habitats for a variety of species. This study examined the habitat ecology of two lagoon species, the endangered Tidewater Goby (Eucyclogobius newberryi) and the Prickly Sculpin (Cottus asper) by reconstructing individual life histories from patterns in the concentration of the element Sr (as ratioed to Ca;

Glider vehicles are now perhaps some of the most prolific providers of real-time and near-real-time operational oceanographic data. However, the data from these vehicles can and should be considered to have a long-term legacy value capable of playing a critical role in understanding and separating inter-annual, inter-decadal, and long-term global change. To achieve this, we have to go further than

Mass coral bleaching has increased in intensity and frequency and has severely impacted shallow tropical reefs worldwide. Although extensive investigation has been conducted on the resistance and resilience of coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean, the unique reefs of the South Atlantic remain largely unassessed. Here we compiled primary and literature data for reefs from three biogeographical

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a new social and academic reality to researchers worldwide. The field of marine science, our own topic of interest, has also been impacted in multiple ways, from cancelation of laboratory and field activities to postponement of onboard research. As graduate researchers, we have a time-sensitive academic path, and our current situation may constrain our

Because Halophila nipponica has only recently been reported in the temperate coastal waters of the northwestern Pacific, the recolonization dynamics of this species have not yet been investigated in temperate seagrass meadows. H. nipponica typically occurs in monoculture or in mixed meadows with Zostera marina, the most abundant seagrass species in this region. In this study, un-bordered and bordered

Growth rates often measured as linear extension rates can serve as a proxy for organismal performance across environments, yet few estimates of these growth rates exist, and fewer are reported from multi-year monitoring. We studied the effect of species, depth, exposure, and life stages on the linear extension rates of common octocorals inhabiting Caribbean reefs. We monitored 16 species from the families

Mediterranean red coral Corallium rubrum is considered the most precious coral worldwide. Harvesting activities are performed by licensed scuba divers and managed through the recent pan-Mediterranean management plan issued by General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) along with measures locally enacted, imposing limits on licenses, harvesting season, minimum depth of dive, and size

The inland silverside, Menidia beryllina, is a euryhaline fish and a model organism in ecotoxicology. We previously showed that exposure to picomolar (ng/L) levels of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can cause a variety of effects in M. beryllina, from changes in gene expression to phenotypic alterations. Here we explore the potential for early life exposure to EDCs to modify the epigenome in

Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure (ARMS) are standardized devices for sampling biodiversity in complex marine benthic habitats such as coral reefs. When coupled with DNA sequencing, these devices greatly expand our ability to document marine biodiversity. Unfortunately, the existing workflow for processing macrofaunal samples (>2-mm) in the ARMS pipeline—which involves Sanger sequencing—is expensive

Understanding how organisms respond to environmental change is one of the most pressing grand challenges of organismal biology. In the vast oceans that cover 71% of Earth’s surface, remote sensing technologies have created unprecedented opportunities to create new knowledge and deliver integrated understandings of marine organism-environment interactions via long-term monitoring. Using historic whaling

The St. Lawrence is a vast and complex socio-ecological system providing a wealth of services that sustain numerous economic sectors. This ecosystem is subject to significant human pressures that overlap and potentially interact with climate-driven environmental changes. Our objective in this paper was to systematically characterize the distribution and intensity of drivers of environmental change

Antarctic krill inhabit areas of the Southern Ocean that can exceed 4.0°C, yet they preferentially inhabit regions with temperatures of −1.5 to ≤1.5°C. Successful embryonic development and hatching are key to their life cycle, but despite the rapid climatic warming seen across their main spawning areas, the effects of elevated temperatures on embryogenesis, hatching success, and nauplii malformations

Deep-sea corals are a highly diverse group of marine organisms, several of which are characterised by slow growth and extreme longevity up to thousands of years. Due to their fragile forms, skeletal composition, and location, they are vulnerable to various anthropogenic threats, with some groups expected to have little to no ability to recover. Within the New Zealand region an understanding of age

Many regions of Antarctica are classified as high nutrient low chlorophyll (HNLC) areas. In these, iron availability is limiting primary productivity and subsequent carbon export. Domoic acid (DA) has previously been detected in the Southern Ocean and suggested to act as a ligand that facilitates iron assimilation for Pseudo-nitzschia spp., species that contribute to Antarctic diatom blooms. An incubation

The marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pool is an important player in the functioning of marine ecosystems. DOC is at the interface between the chemical and the biological worlds, it fuels marine food webs, and is a major component of the Earth’s carbon system. Here, we review the research showing impacts of global change stressors on the DOC cycling, specifically: ocean warming and stratification

Understanding the effects of bottom-trawling induced changes in benthic community structure, diversity and ecosystem functioning across different benthic-size components is imperative to determine the future sustainability of bottom-trawling fisheries in deep-sea regions. In this study, we combined field sampling observations with a pulse-chase experiment on sediments obtained from two stations of

Mesoscale eddies frequently observed in the northern slope region of the South China Sea (SCS) significantly modulate the biological and biogeochemical behavior of organic carbon (OC). There have been few comparative studies on biological and biogeochemical processes in a pair of anticyclonic eddies (ACEs) and cyclonic eddies (CEs) in continental slope. In our research, an ACE–CE pair was observed

Black corals (Anthozoa: Antipatharia) are an ecologically and culturally important group of deep-sea cnidarians. However, as the majority of species inhabit depths >50 m, they are relatively understudied. The inaccessibility of well-preserved tissue for species of interest has limited the scope of molecular analysis, and as a result only a small number of antipatharian mitochondrial genomes have been

Changes in zooplankton community and distribution have significant influences on fishery resources due to their vital role in the marine food web. Seasonal variations in zooplankton community structure, abundance, and biomass of major taxa and distribution pattern in the Yellow Sea, China, were analyzed to obtain the current status of secondary production. A total of 73 taxa (mostly at the species

The Mediterranean Sea is subject to multiple human pressures increasingly threatening its unique biodiversity. Spatially explicit information on the ecological status of marine ecosystems is therefore key to an effective maritime spatial planning and management, and to help the achievement of environmental targets. Here, we summarized scientific data on the ecological status of a selection of marine

The microbiota of four Antarctic sponges, Dendrilla antarctica, Sphaerotylus antarcticus, Mycale acerata, and Hemigellius pilosus, collected at two South Shetland Islands and at two locations in the Antarctic Peninsula separated by ca. 670 km, were analyzed together with surrounding seawater. We used high throughput sequencing of the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene common to Bacteria and Archaea to

Climate change-related effects threaten species worldwide; within-species populations may react differently to climate-induced stress due to local adaptation and partial isolation, particularly in areas with steep environmental gradients. Populations of the marine foundation seaweed Fucus vesiculosus are established over a steep salinity gradient at the entrance of the brackish water in the Baltic

Iridocytes, containing multiple stacks of proteinaceous platelets and crystalized guanine, alternating with thin cytoplasm sheets, are specialized cells that act as multilayer nano-reflectors. Convergence evolution led to their arising across a broad range of organisms, including giant clams of the Tridacninae subfamily – the only sessile and photosymbiotic organism, among animals known to possess