Hotter oceans are bad for just about everyone. They can destroy coral reefs, cause fish to move to new ranges, and rev up monster hurricanes. There are problems for octopuses as well. Adults of some species aren’t getting as big as they used to, for example. And a recent study found that the still warmer waters we’ll see in the future could cloud t…

The ocean floor is turning into a dumping ground. A recent study found that millions of tons of plastic litter the bottom of the world’s oceans and seas. About half of that debris sits in shallow waters near coastlines. And a lot more is expected to settle in the oceans over the coming decades. The world generates millions of tons of plastic every …

Some strange holes pockmark the bottom of the North Sea. They can be anywhere from a few feet to hundreds of feet wide. But all of them are about four inches deep. That doesn’t match the kinds of pits produced by geological processes or ocean currents. Instead, a recent study says they were created on porpoise. Scientists have known about the pits …

If you live near the coast, few words are scarier than these: Category Five. That’s the classification for the most powerful hurricanes. The storms have maximum sustained winds of at least 157 miles per hour. And their potential damage is catastrophic. They can flatten houses, bring massive storm surges, and cause heavy rainfall well inland. In rec…

Scientists in Australia are trying to paint the sea floor red. They’re giving a helping hand to the red handfish—one of the most endangered fish on the planet. The fish is only three or four inches long. It’s named for the fins on its sides, which are shaped like small hands. In fact, the fish uses those fins to walk along the ocean floor—it seldom…

A massive hailstorm blasted northeastern Spain a couple of years ago. It lasted only 10 minutes or so. But it produced the largest hailstones ever recorded in the country—the size of softballs. It might have been kicked up a couple of notches by another type of “weather” event—a marine heatwave. The storm roared to life on August 30th, 2022. It cau…

Many gardeners use clam shells as decorations. But not many garden the clams themselves. Yet clam gardens can yield more clams than untended shorelines, provide more species diversity, and even protect the clams from the acidity in today’s oceans. Clams were gardened as early as 4,000 years ago by the people of the Pacific Northwest, from Alaska to…

Life along the American coastline has been getting more perilous. Earth’s warming climate is causing a rise in sea level, an increase in major hurricanes, more marine heatwaves, and many other problems. That costs time, money, and lives. And things are expected to get even worse in the decades ahead. A new national climate assessment, issued in lat…

Thresher sharks are some of the “snappiest” fish in the oceans. They have an oversized tail fin that looks like a scythe—and is almost as deadly. A shark “snaps” the fin like someone snapping a towel in a locker room, stunning its prey. And a recent study worked out some of the details on how the shark does it. Threshers are found around the world.…

It may sound surprising, but many mountains are hiding from us—some of which may be more than a mile high. Scientists are finding more of them all the time, though—at the bottom of the sea. A research cruise in 2023, for example, found four of them in the Southern Ocean. The scientists were studying the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which circles …