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Sep 12 2012 - 11:02am
Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. They teem with life, with perhaps one quarter of all ocean species depending on reefs for food and shelter. This is a remarkable statistic when you consider that reefs cover just a tiny fraction (less than one percent) of the earth’s...
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Jul 24 2012 - 2:26pm
As a consumer, you can choose what kinds of seafood to buy. Some species are in good supply and make excellent choices. Others have declined dramatically due to overfishing or environmental factors. Choosing those can add to the problem.
So choose wisely. Buy sustainable seafood—seafood...
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Feb 28 2013 - 3:37pm
Jellyfish and comb jellies are gelatinous animals that drift through the ocean's water column around the world. They are both beautiful—the jellyfish with their pulsating bells and long, trailing tentacles, and the comb jellies with their paddling combs generating rainbow-like colors. Yet though...
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Jul 24 2012 - 1:41pm
Deep below the ocean’s surface is a mysterious world that takes up 95% of Earth’s living space. It could hide 20 Washington Monuments stacked on top of each other. But the deep sea remains largely unexplored. Dive down 650 feet (one monument or 200 meters), and you notice that light starts fading...
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Oct 15 2012 - 1:44pm
Welcome to Moorea, a tiny, isolated island in the middle of the vast Pacific. Moorea is 132 square kilometers (51 square miles) of tropical ecosystems – from jungle and wetlands to beaches and coral reefs – with no major landmasses for thousands of miles. While it may look like the perfect vacation...
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Jul 24 2012 - 1:02pm
Mangroves are survivors. With their roots submerged in water, mangrove trees thrive in hot, muddy, salty conditions that would quickly kill most plants. How do they do it? Through a series of impressive adaptations—including a filtration system that keeps out much of the salt and a complex root...
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Jul 24 2012 - 11:45am
Today, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in our atmosphere are the highest they've been in 15 million years. It's the cumulative impact of an ever-expanding population -- 7 billion people and rising -- and an ever-increasing thirst for energy, requiring 24/7 electricity, factories, cars, trucks, planes...
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Feb 27 2013 - 9:38pm
Around 100 million years ago, grass from land adapted to live and reproduce while submerged in seawater—the modern-day seagrasses. This sea invasion by land plants happened four separate times, resulting in four unrelated families of 50-60 total seagrass species, which can be found on the coast of...
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Jul 24 2012 - 3:07pm
The Gulf oil spill is recognized as the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Within days of the April 20, 2010 explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people, remote underwater cameras revealed the BP pipe was leaking oil and gas on the ocean floor...
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Dec 5 2012 - 12:15pm
It may be the last place you’d expect to find corals—up to 6,000 m (20,000 ft) below the ocean’s surface, where the water is icy cold and the light dim or absent. Yet believe it or not, lush coral gardens thrive here. In fact, scientists have discovered nearly as many species of deep-sea...
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