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'Virgin Birth' By Shark Confirmed: Second Case Ever ScienceDaily (Oct. 10, 2008) — Scientists have confirmed the second-ever case of a “virgin birth” in a shark, indicating once again that female sharks can reproduce without mating and raising the possibility that many female sharks have this incredible capacity. Lead author Dr. Demian Chapman, shark scientist with the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, Beth Firchau, Curator of Fishes for the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, and Dr. Mahmood Shivji, Director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute and Professor at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, have proven...

A new white humpback has been sighted off Byron Bay on the east coast of Australia. The newcomer, which was filmed by a television news helicopter, has excited marine scientists who think it may be related to Migaloo - to date, the only known all-white humpback whale.

With a tremendous splash and a profound thud, 30 old subway cars were dropped into the ocean off the coast of Cape May this morning, enlarging the nation's most extensive artificial reef system. State officials say the 18-ton cars -- stripped of their windows, wheels, axles and flooring -- will soon become home to a variety of ocean species. "They provide a very good habitat for marine life," said Hugh Carberry, the state Department of Environmental Protection's reef coordinator.Workers dump New York City subway cars into the ocean off of Cape May on Monday. After a five year moratorium, New...

26 dead, 297 injured and two left traumatised. Matt Clarke takes a look at 19 painful incidents involving fish from the depths of the news archives... We've scoured the Practical Fishkeeping news archives to dredge up some of the weird and terrifying incidents involving fish that we've covered in the past few years... Attack of the 'willy fish'The legendary candiru, or 'willy fish' as it sometimes less politely called, is known about well outside its native range in the freshwater rivers of the Amazon basin. These small catfish are parasites and normally live in the gills of very large catfishes,...

SAN FRANCISCO—The U.S. Navy agreed in a settlement approved Tuesday to limit where it operates certain sonar systems criticized by environmentalists as a threat to whales and other marine mammals. The settlement approved Tuesday by a federal judge in San Francisco restricts the Navy's use of low-frequency sonar to specific military training areas near Hawaii and in the western Pacific Ocean.

The Canadian military is sending a long-range Aurora aircraft to investigate reports of a mysterious explosion along Canada's Northwest Passage that may have killed several whales. The drama apparently began in the early-morning hours of July 31, when an Inuit hunting party at an outpost camp at Borden Peninsula on northeastern Baffin Island was alerted to the sound of an explosion, followed by a cloud of black smoke. An Inuit member of the Canadian Rangers, a military reservist unit stationed in the far North, reported the incident, and said a hunter at the camp saw several dead whales on shore...

Marine biologist Milton Love drives a hybrid car, displays a banner of left-wing revolutionary Che Guevara on his laboratory wall - and has backing from Big Oil. The reason: his finding that oil platforms off California's central coast are a haven for species of fish whose numbers have been dramatically reduced by overfishing. That is good news to oil executives, who are looking for reasons not to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to remove the platforms once the crude stops flowing. Environmentalists say oil companies are simply trying to escape their obligations. "Just because fish are there doesn't mean...

Experts on invertebrates have expressed "profound shock" over a government report showing a decline in zooplankton of more than 70% since the 1960s.The tiny animals are an important food for fish, mammals and crustaceans. Figures contained in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) document, Marine Programme Plan, suggested a fall in abundance. Charity Buglife said it could be a "biodiversity disaster of enormous proportions". They said it could have implications for creatures all the way up the food chain, from sand eels to the seabirds, such as puffin, which feed on the fish. Defra described the Marine...

Boat passengers witness shark attack June 28, 2008 CHATHAM — Fourteen passengers on a seal watch boat saw a shark attack and kill a seal yesterday during a cruise to Monomoy Island. The island, which is a national wildlife refuge, is home to hundreds of seals and also a favored feeding ground of several species of sharks. Capt. Bob Littlefield is sure the shark he saw rip a seal in half yesterday afternoon was a great white. "It was a quite a bloody mess," said Littlefield, who has been a captain on Cape Cod for 32 years. Littlefield was steering...

The dramatic proliferation of jellyfish in oceans around the world, driven by overfishing and climate change, is a sure sign of ecosystems out of kilter, warn experts. "Jellyfish are an excellent bellwether for the environment," explains Jacqueline Goy, of the Oceanographic Institute of Paris. "The more jellyfish, the stronger the signal that something has changed." Brainless creatures composed almost entirely of water, the primitive animals have quietly filled a vacuum created by the voracious human appetite for fish. Dislodging them will be difficult, marine biologists say. "Jellyfish have come to occupy the place of many other species," notes Ricardo Aguilar,...

A stingray that kills its prey with a giant electric shock has been found off the coast of Britain, it emerged today. The ocean monster, which generates a power surge so strong it is like being plugged into the mains, normally lives in the warmer waters of the Mediterranean. Now experts fear shoals of marbled stingray - a relative of the fish that killed Australian crocodile hunter Steve Irwin - will invade Britain this summer due to global warming. One of the predators, which can grow up to 5ft long and kill a man with a single touch, was discovered...

Thousands of new plant and animal species were discovered in 2007, though only 10 were bizarre enough, lethal enough or just plain cool enough to garner spots on a new Top-10 list. Each year, the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) at Arizona State University issues the Top 10 New Species list, which spotlights flora and fauna described during the previous year, so in this case 2007. The new list includes lethal animals like a box jellyfish (Malo kingi) - named after Robert King, who apparently died after he was stung by this species - and the Central Ranges Taipan...

It's the basement apartment like no other. Life has been found 1.6 kilometres beneath the sea floor, at temperatures reaching 100 °C. The discovery marks the deepest living cells ever to be found beneath the sea floor. Bacteria have been found deeper underneath the continents, but there they are rare. In comparison, the rocks beneath the sea appear to be teeming with life. John Parkes, a geobiologist at the University of Cardiff, UK, hopes his team's discovery might one day help find life on other planets. He says it might even redefine what we understand as life, and, bizarrely, what...

US researchers say they have developed an effective way to kill unwanted plants and animals that hitch a ride in the ballast waters of cargo vessels. Tests showed that a continuous microwave system was able to remove all marine life within the water tanks. The UN lists "invasive species" dispersed by ballast water discharges as one of the four main threats to the world's marine ecosystems. The findings will appear in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Shipping moves more than 80% of the world's commodities and transfers up to five billion tonnes of ballast water internationally each year, data...

Earth's first animal was the ocean-drifting comb jelly, not the simple sponge, according to a new find that has shocked scientists who didn't imagine the earliest critter could be so complex... scientists analyzed massive volumes of genetic data to define the earliest splits at the base of the animal tree of life... The new study surprisingly found that the comb jelly was the first animal to diverge from the base of the tree, not the less complex sponge, which had previously been given the honor... Unlike sponges, comb jellies have connective tissues and a nervous system, and so are more...

The future food security of millions of people is at risk because over-fishing, climate change and pollution are inflicting massive damage on the world's oceans, marine scientists warned this week. The two-thirds of the planet covered by seas provide one fifth of the world's protein -- but 75 percent of fish stocks are now fully exploited or depleted, a Hanoi conference that ended Friday was told. Warming seas are bleaching corals, feeding algal blooms and changing ocean currents that impact the weather, and rising sea levels could in future threaten coastal areas from Bangladesh to New York, experts said. "People...

The region of the ocean known as "the desert of the sea" has expanded dramatically over the past decade, according to a new study. Scientists looking at the color of the ocean from space have found that vast areas that were once green with plankton have been turning blue, as marine life becomes scarcer. If it's linked to global warming, as they suspect, this could be another blow for the world's fisheries. Just as plants make up the base of the food web on land, tiny green phytoplankton in the ocean are a critical foodstuff for life in the oceans....

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A boater who was killed when a ray jumped out of the water in the Florida Keys and hit her face died of skull fractures and brain injuries, not from the animal’s poisonous barb, a medical examiner said Friday. Judy Kay Zagorski, 57, of Pigeon, Mich., was in the front of a boat going 25 mph on Thursday when a 75-pound spotted eagle ray leapt from the water and hit her in a freak collision. Monroe County’s medical examiner, Dr. Michael Hunter, determined that the cause of death was "blunt force" head injury and that...

ANCHORAGE - The white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and the ship's crew scrambling for their cameras. The nearly mythic white whale was real after all. "I had heard about this whale but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it." The whale had been spotted once years ago in the Aleutians but had eluded researchers since, even though they had seen many of the more classic black and white whales...

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Scientists investigating the icy waters of Antarctica said Tuesday they have collected mysterious creatures including giant sea spiders and huge worms in the murky depths. Australian experts taking part in an international program to take a census of marine life in the ocean at the far south of the world collected specimens from up to 6,500 feet beneath the surface, and said many may never have been seen before. Some of the animals far under the sea grow to unusually large sizes, a phenomenon called gigantism that scientists still do not fully understand. "Gigantism is very...

So, scientists find the dead bodies of dozens of dolphins and baby porpoises near Miami, Florida and across the pond along Scotland’s East Coast. These aquatic mammals where literally beaten to death with multiple internal injuries, lacerations, contusions and the like. Back in 1997 the whole C.S.I. treatment was given these animals and guess who these scientists first blamed? You guessed it, the United States Military. It turns out, however, that scientists have now realized that it is the “smartest” fishie on earth that is responsible. Yes, they were surprised to discover that dolphins are outright murderers. So much for...

Killer dolphins baffle marine experts By Nigel Blundell Last Updated: 12:01pm GMT 25/01/2008 It's hard to visualise but the intelligent and ever-friendly dolphin can also be a determined killer. New evidence has been compiled by marine scientists that prove the normally placid dolphin is capable of brutal attacks both on innocent fellow marine mammals and, more disturbingly, on its own kind. Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless mammals -...

State wildlife officials say a destructive species known as the zebra mussel has been discovered in California for the first time. Department of Fish and Game spokeswoman Alexia Retallack says a fisherman found the mollusks while fishing in the San Justo Reservoir in San Benito County. Lab tests conducted Monday confirmed that the creatures were zebra mussels, which are known to clog water pipes and boat engines and alter the chemistry of marine ecosystems. State officials plan to conduct further surveys to determine the extent of the infestation and develop a plan to stop its spread. They're asking fishermen and...

The journal Science has published a paper that is the most comprehensive review to date of the effects rising ocean temperatures are having on the world's coral reefs. The Carbon Crisis: Coral Reefs under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification, co-authored by seventeen marine scientists from seven different countries, reveals that most coral reefs will not survive the drastic increases in global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 unless governments act immediately to combat current trends. The paper, the cover story for this week's issue of Science, paints a bleak picture of a future without all but the most resilient coral species...

Pink 450-Pound Blobs Clog Nets but Spur New Recipes; Pointing Fingers at China (OKI, Japan) -- Fisherman Ryoichi Yoshida pulled in his nets before dawn one morning, hoping for lots of yellowtail and mackerel. But the fish were overwhelmed by a heaving mass of living pink slime. The creatures, called Nomura jellyfish, can measure six feet across and weigh up to about 450 pounds. They have been drifting en masse to places like Oki, a small island 40 miles off the coast, bobbing beneath the surface of the water like pink mines. They rip holes in fishermen's nets, and they...

One night while diving for lobster on the island of Mauritius, an Australian named Ian McCormick was stung on his forearm by what local Creole fishermen call "invisibles": extraordinarily poisonous but hard to see "five-box" jellyfish, in the nomenclature of the trade. Medics were called -- urgently. It was an emergency if ever there is an emergency. "Found in the waters off northern Australia, the box jellyfish Chironex fleckeri is not the only marine invertebrate to use venom, but it is the possessor of arguably the most lethal venom in the world," notes one expert. "In the past half...

Sightings by marine scientists of dolphins in the north Atlantic's Bay of Biscay have dropped off by 80 percent compared to the same period in 2006, a wildlife conservation group said Wednesday. The alarming drop in numbers of the Bay's three most common species of dolphin -- the striped, bottlenose and common -- can be attributed to one or both of two causes, Clive Martin, senior wildlife officer for the Biscay Dolphin Research Programme, told AFP. "We know for a fact that by-catch is killing thousands of dolphins every year," he said, referring to commercial fishing operations in the bay,...

The Enemy Wins One August 9, 2007: A federal judge has managed to wreck the Pacific Fleet's ASW training in the most sweeping ruling concerning Navy sonar to date, prohibiting the Navy from using active sonars through 2009. How has this happened? Simply, put, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a suit demanding a halt to the Navy's use of active medium-frequency sonars. The judge's ruling is a boon to countries that are acquiring advanced diesel-electric submarines like the Amur/Lada, Type 212/Type 214, and Scorpene. This is not the first attack on the Navy's efforts to properly train its sailors...

The rise of mollusks across the globe was a harbinger of doom roughly 250 million years ago, ushering in the most devastating mass extinction in Earth's history, research now reveals.

Two Russian deep-sea submersibles made a test dive in polar waters on Sunday ahead of a mission to be the first to reach the seabed under the North Pole, Itar-Tass news agency said. Tass said it took an hour for Mir-1 and Mir-2, each carrying one pilot, to reach the seabed at a depth of 1,311 meters (4,301 feet), 47 nautical miles north of Russia's northernmost archipelago, Franz Josef Land in the Barents Sea. Tass said Mir-1 resurfaced at around 1030 GMT after five hours underwater while Mir-2 spent some more time on the seabed collecting samples. "It was the...

<p>Stingrays are considered passive creatures, but their venom and their barbed tails can be deadly, experts say.</p> <p>Even so, fatal attacks such as the one that killed television star and naturalist Steve Irwin are extrenely rare.</p> <p>Irwin, 44, died today when a spear-like stingray barb pierced his chest while diving on the Great Barrier Reef, and it's believed he may have had a heart attack.</p>

SANTA BARBARA (AP) - A tentacle and two arms of a giant squid about 20 feet long were snagged by a sport fisherman off Santa Cruz Island. "We just saw something odd floating. We were just kind of stunned, but I saw it and thought, 'We better bring this thing in,'" said Bennett Salvay. The squid parts were found by Salvay, his son and nephew about eight miles off the island on Aug. 11. Salvay, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Tarzana, said they grabbed and pulled at it and it kept "coming and coming.... We kind of...

fisherman snags a rare catch in the Santa Barbara Channel, a tentacle belonging to a giant squid. The 13-foot-long tentacle was found floating near Santa Cruz Island last week. Little is known about the species, it is only the fourth confirmed specimen ever found in Southern California. "They are definitely present off our coast, they are probably not very common here and they probably live in deep water, this one here was caught near the Santa Cruz Basin, which is several thousand feet deep," said Eric Hochberg, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Curator. The tentacle likely surfaced after the...

Biologists have discovered giant invasive oysters that could threaten efforts to restore native oyster species in San Francisco Bay. Government staffers and volunteers removed 256 of the exotic mollusks last week after searching the mudflats between the Dumbarton Bridge and the San Leandro Marina, biologists said Thursday. Scientists have not identified the species, which grow up to 9 inches long and in a variety of shapes. They don't know how the exotic oysters got here or how they could affect the bay if their population expands. Biologists are concerned the monster oysters could take over the best habitat and form...

Maine lobsterman pulls up rare lobster2 hours, 24 minutes ago A rare two-toned lobster is seen in this Thursday, July 13, 2006, photo taken in Bar Harbor, Maine. The lobster caught by Alan Robinson in Dyer's Bay is a typical mottled green on one side; the other side is a shade of orange that looks cooked. Robinson, of Steuben, donated the lobster to the Mount Desert Oceanarium. Staff members say the odds or finding a half-and-half lobster are 1 in 50 million to 100 million. (AP Photo/The Daily News, Abigail Curtis) BAR HARBOR, Maine - An eastern Maine lobsterman caught...

The escalating level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the world's oceans more acidic, government and independent scientists say. They warn that, by the end of the century, the trend could decimate coral reefs and creatures that underpin the sea's food web... The ph level for the world's oceans was stable between 1000 and 1800, but has dropped one-tenth of a unit since the Industrial Revolution, according to Christopher Langdon, a University of Miami marine biology professor. Scientists expect ocean pH levels to drop by another 0.3 units by 2100,...

President Bush has created the world's largest marine reserve. Mr. Bush acted to protect an area of the Pacific Ocean that is roughly the size of California. More than 7,000 species of marine life live in a chain of reefs and shoals stretching nearly 2,000 kilometers northwest from the Hawaiian Islands. That ecosystem is now a protected marine area where commercial and sport fishing will be phased out over the next five years. Visitors wishing to dive or take photographs must have a permit and no one will be allowed to remove animals or minerals. President Bush says the move...

President Bush on Thursday is expected to announce plans to create the world's largest marine protected area — a group of remote Hawaiian islands that cover 84 million acres and are home to 7,000 species of birds, fish and marine mammals, at least a quarter of which are unique to Hawaii. The proposed sanctuary encompasses the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which conservationists describe as the most intact tropical marine region under U.S. jurisdiction. "This an unprecedented win for endangered Hawaiian monk seals, green sea turtles, black-footed albatrosses, tiger sharks, the incredible reef corals in these waters, the people of Hawaii and...

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- A Port Charlotte man didn't let the big one get away. Bucky Dennis caught a 1,280-pound hammerhead shark Tuesday in Boca Grande Pass. Dennis was alone on his boat when the nearly 13 foot animal took the bait -- a 25-pound stingray. A friend on a nearby vessel climbed aboard Dennis' boat to help with the catch. Dennis said they finally got the shark on the boat after about five hours. Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

From Naval Sea Systems Command Public Affairs PENSACOLA, Fla. (NNS) -- The ex-Oriskany, a decommissioned aircraft carrier, became the largest ship intentionally sunk as an artificial reef May 17 when it was sunk approximately 24 miles off the coast of Pensacola, Fla. After 25 years of service to the Navy in operations in Korea, Vietnam and the Mediterranean, ex-Oriskany will now benefit marine life, sport fishing and recreation diving off the coast of the Florida panhandle. The 888-foot ship took about 37 minutes to sink below the surface after strategically placed explosives were detonated at 10:25 a.m. CDT. The Navy...

CASCADE LOCKS, Ore. - In his way, C404 is kind of cute, with those sea-lion whiskers, soft brown eyes and furry little head. But to many he is a sea lion either from hell _ or from Harvard. C404 has driven the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Bonneville Dam to near distraction as he and his ilk sit at the base and munch salmon gathered to continue upriver to spawn. Numerous sea lions head for the dam each spring, but C404 is in a class by himself. He has figured out how to get into fish ladders that help...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters. Researchers from around the globe are scrambling to figure out the extent of the loss. Early conservative estimates from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands find that about one-third of the coral in official monitoring sites has recently died. "It's an unprecedented die-off," said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. "The mortality that we're...

Giant squid on display at museum One of the world's best specimens of the giant squid Architeuthis dux has gone on display at The Natural History Museum in London. The colossal cephalopod was caught by a trawler off the Falkland Islands and is about 8.62 metres/28 ft in length. The species can reach a maximum size of up to 13m - five metres longer than a double decker bus. Researchers at the museum have managed to successfully preserve the squid and fit it inside an enormous 10m/30' long display case. Jon Ablett, curator of molluscs in the Museum's Department of...

NAPLES, Fla. - Manatee deaths jumped by a third in January compared with the same month last year, but exactly what killed half the animals remains unknown, state wildlife officials said. Last month, 48 of the endangered animals are known to have died statewide, 12 more than in January 2005. Half of the deaths were listed as cause unknown because the manatees' bodies were decomposed when they were retrieved, said Ken Arrison, a biologist with the state's Marine Mammal Pathobiology Lab in St. Petersburg. Officials are waiting on lab test to determine if red tide, a toxic algae bloom, was...

A giant Pacific octopus that attacked a remotely operated submarine off north Vancouver Island could have been senile or maybe just peckish, a marine biologist said Wednesday. "Large male octopuses in the last part of their lives become senescent, or senile," said Jim Cosgrove of the Royal B.C. Museum. "They get to be like humans, doddering old fools that have inappropriate behaviours such as being out in the daytime," said Cosgrove, an expert in octopus behaviour. The attack occurred Nov. 18, 2005, off Brooks Peninsula, on the northwest coast of the Island. The submarine was 55 metres deep and Mike...

Wildlife officers shot 41 pilot whales that beached on New Zealand's South Island, the Department of Conservation said. A total of 49 whales came ashore Saturday near Farewell Spit in the second major stranding in the area within two weeks. Eight died on the beaches, and the remaining animals were shot when heavy seas prevented any attempt to refloat them. "Given the hopelessness of being able to successfully refloat the whales, our prime concern was then to avoid the whales' suffering a long and painful death," Greg Napp, the department's Golden Bay area officer, said in a statement. Napp said...

A "DEAD zone" devoid of life has been discovered at the epicentre of last year's tsunami four kilometres beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. Scientists taking part in a worldwide marine survey made an 11-hour dive at the site five months after the disaster. They were shocked to find no sign of life around the epicentre, which opened up a 1000-metre chasm on the ocean floor. Instead, there was nothing but eerie emptiness. The powerful lights of the scientists' submersible vehicle, piercing through the darkness, showed no trace of anything living. A scientist working on the Census of Marine...

"Why would a tusk break the rules of normal development by expressing millions of sensory pathways that connect its nervous system to the frigid arctic environment?" says Nweeia. "Such a finding is startling and indeed surprised all of us who discovered it." Nweeia collaborated on this project with Frederick Eichmiller, DDS, director of the Paffenbarger Research Center at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and James Mead, PhD, curator of Marine Mammals at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. Nweeia studied the whales during four trips to the Canadian High Arctic. In the past, many...

THEY are called echizen kurage and they sound like monsters from the trashier reaches of Japanese science fiction. They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country’s food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place. Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy. Echizen kurage is not an extraterrestrial invader, but a giant jellyfish that is devastating the livelihoods of...

THEY are called echizen kurage and they sound like monsters from the trashier reaches of Japanese science fiction. They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country’s food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place. Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy. Echizen kurage is not an extraterrestrial invader, but a giant jellyfish that is devastating the livelihoods of fishermen...