Taking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by stashing it in the ocean seems like a good idea, but it could backfire if tiny marine animals called zooplankton get extra hungry.
The baleen whale fossil at Museums Victoria Research Institute.
Eugene Hyland, Museums Victoria
In the deep, dark ocean, sunlight-deprived bacteria turn to different sources of energy: dissolved hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
Deep sea sponges and other creatures live on and among valuable manganese nodules like this one that could be mined from the seafloor.
ROV KIEL 6000/GEOMAR
Mining nodules from the deep ocean seabed could provide the metals crucial for today’s EV batteries and renewable energy technology, but little is known about the harm it could cause.
On 3 July 1970, France carried out the “Licorne” nuclear test on the atoll of Muroroa, French Polynesia.
Creative Commons
In Europe, a large-scale war could cause the Baltic Sea to freeze over and severely compromise food security – potentially for decades and even centuries to come.
We could sink more carbon in the ocean to fight climate change, but should we?
Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
From planting mangroves to dumping minerals in the ocean, there are lots of ideas for ocean carbon dioxide removal – and even more questions.
Roaming the ancient seas eons ago, the megalodon shark eviscerated its prey with jaws that were 10 feet wide.
Warpaintcobra/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Mountains can’t be created without lubricant, and 2 billion years ago that lubricant was graphite produced by the carbon broken down from layers of dead plankton on the ocean floor.
Global transportation and logistics forecasts suggest conflicts could increase by as much as 1,209 per cent by 2050.
(Shutterstock)
A recent survey of top executives at companies that operate at sea found environmental reporting practices were not a top priority and put the health of the marine environment at risk.
Bubble-net feeding is when whales blow bubbles from their nose to encircle their food, trapping their prey into a tight ball. A citizen scientist was the first to capture this behaviour in Australia.
Looking a bit like enlarged woodlice, ancient trilobites crawled along the seabed and had an exoskeleton made of calcite — nature’s version of a suit of armour.
We recorded the largest number of bigfin squids ever seen in one area. Before this, this rather elongated creature had only been spotted a dozen times across the globe.
Jaime Bran/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
This newly discovered ancient monk seal is challenging previous theories about how and where monachine seals evolved. It’s the biggest breakthrough in seal evolution research in about 70 years.