Exploration

LATEST TODAY'S CATCH

Searching for Crustaceans in the Deep Sea

Searching for Crustaceans in the Deep Sea

May 16, 2013 - 9:04AMIn this video Smithsonian research zoologist Dr. Martha Nizinski takes viewers with her as she searches for crustaceans in the deep sea. She's particularly interested in finding squat lobsters, which despite their name, are...
Feb 28, 2013 - 10:18AM
How many animals swim in the sea? It's not easy to count them all. To get a...
Jan 29, 2013 - 11:19AM
Cooks Bay in Moorea is one of the places that researchers are scouring in...

SPOTLIGHT

Biodiversity in the Baltic Sea

In the spring of 2011, a research crew from Oceana spent two months in the brackish Baltic Sea. The Baltic faces...
The Baltic Sea faces challenges from pollution, algae blooms, over fishing, and invasive species.
Nov 27 2012 - 9:51am
Researchers with the Smithsonian's Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP) collected this sea toad, Chaunax pictus, off the coast of Honduras in 2011. The team is trying to collect sea toads from around the Caribbean to better understand the group's genetic diversity and distribution.
Jul 5 2011 - 9:40am
Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean is the site of the Smithsonian's Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP). Researchers are using a submarine to study and collect specimens from the hard-to-reach deep reefs. Read more about the research in the "Summer in a Sub" blog series.
The Baltic Sea faces challenges from pollution, algae blooms, over fishing, and invasive species.
Oct 12 2011 - 4:56pm
In the spring of 2011, a research crew from Oceana spent two months in the brackish Baltic Sea. The Baltic faces challenges from pollution, algae blooms, over fishing, and invasive species. Oceana researchers gathered data, samples, photographs, and videos with the goal of proposing an...
school of bluefin tuna
Jul 8 2010 - 6:57pm
What is it like to be eyeball to eyeball with a fish the size of a Volkswagen? In this episode of the Podcast of Life, learn how a tuna fisherman and a biologist are teaming up to tag bluefin tuna, and how those tags are revealing surprises that might help save tuna from their own popularity in...
Dec 8 2010 - 7:04pm
Students from Baiona, Spain surround the Scarlet Knight in front of the television cameras.
Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
On Moorea, an island in French Polynesia, researchers are striving to complete a biocode—a DNA catalog of every life form big enough to pick up with tweezers.
Aug 16 2012 - 12:21pm
If there had been room to stand up, there would have been a standing ovation. As it was, the five of us on the submersible Curasub clapped and cheered when the first three deep-reef ARMS (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures) were successfully deployed at approximately 396 feet (120 meters). 
Jul 27 2011 - 11:07am
Dr.
Jun 22 2011 - 5:47pm
On a beach in Piña, Panama the tide is rolling out. Faint outlines of skeletal remains rise above the sand. Smithsonian scientists Nicholas Pyenson and Aaron O'Dea along with a team of students descend upon the beach. Their mission: to excavate the remains of a whale from the extinct group...
Mar 12 2011 - 7:33pm
Starksia blennies, small coral reef fish, have been well-studied for more than 100 years. But Smithsonian scientists discovered that what were thought to be three species of the fish are actually 10 distinct species from the Caribbean. Dr. Carole Baldwin, a Smithsonian zoologist and curator of...
Cold Water Diving with WHOI
Jul 15 2011 - 5:00pm
"Cold-Water Diving: Going to Extremes for Research" is a video produced by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) that shows the focus needed to do scientific work in cold water. The gear is bulkier and heavier, cold affects dexterity and capacity, and dives must be shorter yet still get the...
Welcome to the Moorea Biocode Project
Apr 21 2010 - 11:28am
Scientists journey to the isolated island of Moorea on a quest to catalog every life form big enough to pick up with tweezers—from mountaintop to seafloor. Get up close and personal with researchers in the field and see how they combine high-tech equipment and old-fashioned elbow grease to tackle...
Dec 8 2010 - 7:17pm
The robotic underwater glider Scarlet Knight crossed the Atlantic over the course of several months in 2009.
Making Aquaculture Sustainable
Jun 11 2010 - 1:13pm
Watch as Dr. Dallas Alston and a team of researchers study the effects of aquaculture at a fish farm near Puerto Rico. With careful planning and good daily practices, aquaculture can be part of a sustainable seafood strategy that helps feed people while protecting the environment.
Jul 27 2011 - 11:49am
Nine years ago I was invited by a colleague to join a research team investigating deep-sea coral habitats. I was asked to examine the invertebrates associated with these ecosystems. After my first look, I was hooked! I was fascinated by the sheer beauty and complexity of these deep-sea environments...
Dec 20 2012 - 12:15pm
My father once told me that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who believe that the world is divided into two kinds of people and those who don’t. Wherever you come down on this particular issue, it’s clear that there is a common—if not always healthy—human impulse to classify...