Using a "patient monitoring" device attached to a whale entangled in fishing gear, scientists showed for the first time how fishing lines changed a whale's diving and swimming behavior. The monitoring revealed how fishing gear hinders whales' ability to eat and migrate, depletes their energy as they drag gear for months or years, and can result in a slow death....

Researchers have developed species distribution models of the six dominant Hawaiian coral species around the main Hawaiian Islands, including two species currently under consideration as threatened or endangered....

Woody plant matter is almost completely digested by bacteria living in the Amazon River. This tough stuff plays a major part in fueling the river's breath. The finding has implications for global carbon models, and for the ecology of the Amazon and the world's other rivers. Until recently, people believed much of the rainforest's carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended up deep in the ocean....

How will rainfall patterns across the tropical Indian and Pacific regions change in a future warming world? Climate models generally suggest that the tropics as a whole will get wetter, but the models don't always agree on where rainfall patterns will shift in particular regions within the tropics....

The distortion of the ancient shoreline and flooding surface of the US Atlantic Coastal Plain are the direct result of fluctuations in topography in the region and could have implications on understanding long-term climate change, according to a new study....

While 99 percent of Earth's land ice is locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the remaining ice in the world's glaciers contributed just as much to sea rise as the two ice sheets combined from 2003 to 2009, says a new study....

A new study suggests that the previous connections scientists made between ancient shoreline height and ice volumes are erroneous and that perhaps our ice sheets were more stable in the past than we originally thought. The study found that the Earth's hot mantle pushed up segments of ancient shorelines over millions of years, making them appear higher now than they originally were millions of years ago....

A fish ladder is a structure that allows migrating fish passage over or around an obstacle on a river

The survival of many fish species depends on migrations up and down rivers. Among anadromous fish such as salmon, shad, and sturgeon, downstream migration is a feature of early life stages, while upstream migration is a feature of adult life. Among catadromous, like the North American eel, the opposite is true. River obstructions such as dams, culverts, and waterfalls have the potential to slow or stop fish migration. Indeed, these impediments to fish migration are often implicated in the decline of certain fish stocks.

Bivalves even make their own shells. An internal organ called the mantle secretes calcium carbonate so that as the inner invertebrate grows, the outer shell provides a roomier home.

A fish ladder, also known as a fishway, provides a detour route for migrating fish past a particular obstruction on the river. Designs vary depending on the obstruction, river flow, and species of fish affected, but the general principle is the same for all fish ladders: the ladder contains a series of ascending pools that are reached by swimming against a stream of water. Fish leap through the cascade of rushing water, rest in a pool, and then repeat the process until they are out of the ladder.

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Climate change has been impacting global fisheries for the past four decades by driving species towards cooler, deeper waters, according to scientists....

New research shows that, in recent decades, fall is the only period of extensive warming over the entire Antarctic Peninsula, and it is mostly from atmospheric circulation patterns originating in the tropics....