4 Things about Gannets and Boobies
	1. Gannets and boobies are coastal seabirds famous for their dive for fish. They have been thought to be related to the pelicans, but DNA analysis revealed that their closest relatives are the snakebirds and, more distantly, the cormorants. The oldest known relative of the gannet is the Odontopterix, which lived 50 Ma ago; its relatives had wingspans of 6 m (20 ft). The Plotopteridae were a type of wingless gannets resembling penguins tha ... [read more >>]
	12 May 2008, 11:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Whales Conquered the Oceanic Abyss
	Toothed whales represent the diving champions of all air-breathing animals. Sperm whales dive at depths of over 1,200 m (3,600 ft) for more than an hour, while Cuvier’s beaked whale (a type of toothed whale) holds the record for diving amongst any sea mammal - 1,900 m (6,330 ft), that translate into 190 atmospheres, for one hour and 25 minutes. The bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon) can dive for periods of 2 hours, at depths at 495 m (1,650 ft ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 04:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Brown Algae, the Cause of British-Like Cloudy Coasts
	Clime can be modeled by living organisms. For instance, it is a well known fact that more rain falls over a forest than over other areas. Termites and ruminants (cows and sheep) release huge amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse effect gas, in the atmosphere. A new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) and carried out at The University of Manchester shows that large quantities of seaweed in coa ... [read more >>]
	07 May 2008, 03:35GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

8 Things about Penguins
	1. Since always, penguins have posed a huge issue for taxonomists. No one could say which group of living birds was closest to the penguins, because of their peculiar traits like the wing turned into a flipper and their oddly shaped feathers, which are uniform and resemble small stiff scales. For long, this made biologists place them in their own order, isolated from other birds. However, the DNA era cleared it all and, to the surprise ... [read more >>]
	05 May 2008, 09:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The 1,089 Pound (490 kg) Colossal Squid Is Defrost for Analysis
	This is one of the most sounding victories of cryptozoology. For long, the giant squids were thought to be just legendary creatures, the kraken of the northern sagas. Later on, the individuals washed ashore helped change this view. In recent years, fishermen even began to capture individuals. The one caught in February 2007 is the largest of all them. A New Zealand fishing crew accidentally captured the animal off the coast of Antarctica, ... [read more >>]
	30 April 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Algae and Light
	The water, sea water in particular, is the realm of the algae. Algae represent the generic name for several groups of inferior aquatic plants that make photosynthesis. Thus, they require light in order to live. Part of the sunlight is reflected on the surface of the water. As we go deeper, the intensity of sunlight decreases, as the light is absorbed by the water and the bodies that are to be found inside it. Of the light spe ... [read more >>]
	29 April 2008, 11:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Pearls Are Made
	Pearls are the only gemstones of organic origin and the second most valuable after diamonds. Given this, it’s no wonder that pearl fishing, even if dangerous and exhausting, is an occupation widely spread on tropical coasts, from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and Panama. The "producers" of pearls are some of the oyster species, like Pteria margaritifera. The origin of the so much desired gem i ... [read more >>]
	29 April 2008, 10:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Sea Reptiles
	Nowadays, the seas belong mainly to fish and sea mammals. But during the Mesozoic time, the sea was a reptilian realm. There are very few reptiles living in the sea now compared to the times of the dinosaurs. 1.Today, there are seven species of sea turtles. They appeared during the Jurassic period (200-150 Ma ago), thus they lived most of their evolutionary time together with the dinosaurs. The largest living chelonian is ... [read more >>]
	21 April 2008, 11:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sea Level Will Be Higher by 1.5 m (5 ft) at the End of This Century
	The sea level rise is well understood in the current conditions of global warming. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting fast. But it seems that we are largely unaware of the dimension of the phenomenon, as a new research presented at the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna, Austria, this week, shows that by the end of this century, sea level could be by 1.5 m (5 ft) higher than now. Among other factors, this new calculation has ... [read more >>]
	18 April 2008, 03:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sea Breeze Can Kill You
	A seaside cure may actually harm your health nowadays. A new research published in "Nature Geoscience" shows that we are in fact exposed to ozone smog on the coastal areas. The team led by James Roberts, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, has employed a newly developed technique called mass spectrometer that can assess the levels of n ... [read more >>]
	09 April 2008, 03:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Camargue: Wild Horses and Flamingoes
	A protected area with multiple functions, Camargue Regional Park was created in 1970, in the department Bouches du Rhone, for protecting various bird species, wetland ecosystems and to find viable methods of exploiting the natural resources without degrading it. In 1990, the 85,000 hectares of the park were labeled as "Biosphere Reserve" by UNESCO, being a model of how humans can cohabit with wildlife. The park generally over ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 16:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Story of Carthage
	Phoenicians made one of the most powerful maritime nations of the Mediterranean. No doubt, their most powerful colony was Carthage, in northern Africa, in today’s Tunis, founded in 814 BC by Elissa, the sister of the king Pygmalion of Tyre, after her husband Acerbas was assassinated. Frightened for her life, Elissa and her suite fled and landed on the Cape Bon, a place on the North African shores, oriented towards Sicily, delimiting the tw ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 08:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

About Bermudas and the Bemuda Triangle
	The Bermuda Triangle turned famous because of the publicity made around the disappearance of sea and aerial ships recorded in an area of the Atlantic Ocean, the Sargasso Sea, located east of Florida’s shore, including the archipelagos of Bermudas, Bahamas, and the islands of Haiti and Puerto Rico. Many believe t ... [read more >>]
	03 April 2008, 09:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Sex
	The phrase "sex is one of the oldest professions" has got a scientific proof. A recent research published in the journal "Science" describes the oldest known animal "caught in the act." This ancient sexual encounter occurred amongst 565-Ma-old tubular invertebrates called Funisia dorothea. Funisia fossils were found in 2005 on an ancient seafloor in South Australia. The 0.3 m (1 ft) tall ropelike animals were ... [read more >>]
	03 April 2008, 02:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Dolphins Cannot Swim Faster: It Hurts
	Dolphins are considered the fastest sea mammals. Smaller dolphins reach 35-40 km (22-25 mi) per hour, but the orca or killer whale, that is in fact the world’s largest dolphin, reaches 54 km (33 mi) per hour, which is a lot in the water. The question is: why not faster? The answer is given by a new research publi ... [read more >>]
	01 April 2008, 03:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sharks Can Predict Storms
	Sharks gained their dominance in the seas owing to their formidable teeth-jaws, speed and senses. For hunting, sharks are endowed with keen sight, olfaction and hearing (they pick up sounds from 2 km (1.2 mi) away). The lateral line helps them detect vibrations produced by a struggle in the water, like the convulsions of a ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 07:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A 62-Million-Year-Old Marine Crocodile
	Crocodiles are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs (if we exclude birds). Surprisingly or not, they evolved from land animals, fact revealed for example by their longer hind limbs. The first crocodiles during the Triassic (early Mesozoic) even ran on two feet! Now, a Brazilian team has described in a study published in the "Proceedings of The Royal Society B" a pointy-muzzled crocodile that could have dominate ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2008, 05:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest and Most Complete North American Loch Ness Monster
	One group of huge marine reptiles that dominated the seas during the dinosaur eras (Jurassic and Cretaceous, 200 to 65 Ma ago) was represented by the plesiosaurs, long-necked small-headed carnivore animals with flippers resembling those of the sea turtles. These were the animals that inspired the legend of the Loch Ness monster. Now, one of the oldest North American plesiosaurs, belonging to a completely new lineage in this group, has ... [read more >>]
	25 March 2008, 04:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Sacred Sharks
	Sharks are amongst the least understood creatures. A complex mythology depicting the shark as a mystical animal emerged in many cultures. Polynesian myths and legends talk about Kauhuhu, the shark god, which lives in a deep submarine cave or palace that cannot be seen by anybody. Up to 11 shark-gods are found in the Hawaiian mythology. Kamohoali'i was the most worshiped of the shark gods, being the older and favored brot ... [read more >>]
	15 March 2008, 07:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Flowers That Are Not Plants: Sea Lilies
	Sea can be as deceptive as a mermaid. There are sea anemones or sea cucumbers, and none of them are plants. There are even sea lilies, only that these "flowers" are related to starfish, sea urchins and... sea cucumbers. Crinoids or sea lilies amaze us through their diversified shapes and colors. Sea lilies are amongst the oldest living creatures. Many live stuck on coral reefs, that's why some call them coral f ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 16:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Dolphin Saves Stranded Whales
	Real cases of people saved from drowning by dolphins are known from ancient Greek and Roman stories to the legends of the Polynesians and Maori of the New Zealand. There were cases of dolphins which defended shipwrecked people swimming in the water from shark attacks, till rescue ships appeared. But this behavior is a time record ever: Moko, a New Zealand bottlenose dolphin, saved two stranded pigmy sperm whales (Kogia). "Before M ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 07:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Mega-Tsunami Could Strike Mediterranean Anytime!
	Don't think that tsunamis are something connected only to the Indo-Pacific areas and that summering on the Mediterranean shores is safe. A mega-tsunami devastated eastern Mediterranean in 365 A.D. And this could repeat. A new research published in "Nature Geoscience" has detected the geological fault off the coast of the Crete Island (Greece) that could have slipped, causing the mega earthquake responsible for ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 05:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Brain Implants, Inspired by Sea Cucumber
	One day, diseased brains may be cured. And I'm not referring to going to a shrink or taking pills. The sea cucumber skin has been the inspiration for a new material that may treat Parkinson's disease and other damages of the nervous tissue. This material could rapidly change from rigid to flexible and vice versa. The new research published in the journal "Science" describes the new material that could act ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 06:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A White Killer Whale!
	The killer whale, or orca, is one of those animals with an unmistakable color pattern that cannot fool even an uninitiated person. But now, researchers have taken pictures of a white killer whale near the Aleutian Islands (western Alaska). The beast of the myths turned into reality. "I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it. It was quite neat to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a biologist a ... [read more >>]
	08 March 2008, 05:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Ready for the Deadliest Catch?
	Fishing is an activity well suited for relaxation on a weekend afternoon. Or so everybody thought before watching Deadliest Catch, a Di ... [read more >>]
	28 February 2008, 04:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Largest Reptile Sea Monster Ever: 15 m (50 ft) Long!
	This seems to be the most extraordinary reptile of the seas to have ever existed. Measuring 15 m (50 ft) in length (as much as a humpback whale) and possessing teeth the size of cucumbers, the giant marine reptile lived 150 million years ago and it was first encountered in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago located just 800 mi (1,300 km) from the North Pole, by a team led by Jørn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway. In th ... [read more >>]
	28 February 2008, 02:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

7 Things You Did Not Know About Seals
	1. Seals are of two types: eared seals (sea lions and fur seals) and true seals (earless seals). Scientists thought the eared seals and walruses had a common origin with bears and dogs from an ancestors that lived on northern Pacific shores, while genuine seals had a common origin with otters, in the northern Atlantic, 14 million years ago. Still, DNA analyzes showed that all seals have a common origin. 2. Sea lions can gallo ... [read more >>]
	27 February 2008, 09:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Only Living Sea Lizard: Marine Iguana
	There is only one true living sea lizard: the marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus), a native of the Galapagos Islands. Despite their terrific look, with short snout, black eyes, large mouth and the crest of spikes (which are in fact soft at touch), long, flattened and powerful tail, long, sharp claws that give them an aspect of Mesozoic monsters, these lizards are peaceful vegetarians. They dive and eat algae and weeds from the sea bott ... [read more >>]
	26 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Most Northern Reef in America
	Biscayne National Park is located at the southeastern extremity of the North American continent, in southeastern Florida. It comprises 750 km²(300 mi²) of islands, clear waters, reef corrals and mangrove forests, preserving Biscayne Bay, one of the top scuba diving areas in the United States. The zone was declared a National Monument in 1968 and turned into a National Park on June 28, 1980. 95 % of the surface of the park is l ... [read more >>]
	26 February 2008, 09:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

6 Amazing Things About Killer Whales (Orcas)
	1. The killer whale or orca is, together with the Great White Shark, the top predator of the oceans. The name of "whale" is deceptive, as this cetacean is not even a toothed whale, but a dolphin. That's right, the largest of all: males can be up to 8 m (26 ft) long and weigh up to 8 tonnes. The mouth is adorned with 50 dagger-like teeth. 2. The appreciation of killer comes from a research made in 1862, when the ... [read more >>]
	25 February 2008, 10:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Is the Killer Alga that Deadly?
	The discovery of the tropical alga Caulerpa taxifolia in the Mediterranean Sea, at the end of the '80s, triggered a great warning signal. The "killer alga" was declared "harmful for the Mediterranean ecosystem", and its rapid reproduction an "ecological catastrophe". The alga appeared to have escaped from the Monaco Aquarium. The next decade meant a fearsome fight against the killer alga: we ... [read more >>]
	25 February 2008, 08:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

6 Things About Dayaks, the Fearsome Head-Hunters
	1.The populations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and other parts of the southeastern Asia are called Malayan. These people originated in a migration of Mongoloid tribes coming from Taiwan. They first entered Philippines and from there colonized the whole Pacific and Indonesia. But before the Austronesian migration, the whole southeastern Asia was inhabited by Black people belonging to the so-called Black Asian race, now surviving in N ... [read more >>]
	23 February 2008, 02:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Was the Universal Deluge?
	The Bible tells us about the universal deluge, whose unique survivors were Noah and his arch in which he had loaded a pair of each animal species of the Earth. After 150 years of drifting, Noah landed on the Mount Ararat and life turned back to normal. The echoes of catastrophic deluges were found in many civilizations. The ancient Greeks described three deluges: one during the time of Ogyges, other one during the time of Deukalion and the ... [read more >>]
	22 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Giant Sea Spiders and Many Mysterious Creatures Detected Around Antarctic
	We are looking for new worlds on other planets, and we don't even know the worlds hosted by our own. A large array of giant mysterious creatures have been found by a recent two-month expedition in the freezing waters of Antarctica, including huge sea spiders and worms. The new specimens have been found inhabiting the Antarctic sea bed at depths of up to 6,500 ft (2,000 m). Gigantism is a common phenomenon for many abyssal animals (gia ... [read more >>]
	21 February 2008, 04:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Most Vivid Colors of the Sea: Sea Slugs
	Snails make a group comprising over 75,000 species. Most snails are marine, but they also inhabit freshwater and terrestrial habitats, even dry ones. One group of sea snails are called Opistobranchia (the translation of the scientific name means "fore gills", as these organs, when existent, are located behind the visceral mass and heart). One group of Opistobranchia is represented by Nudibranchia ("nude gills), ... [read more >>]
	18 February 2008, 10:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Largest Biological Structure on Earth
	The coral reefs form the largest biological structures on Earth. And the largest coral structure in the world is the Great Coral Barrier off the shore of northeastern Australia (parallel to the Queensland's shore), located in the Coral Sea: it is 2,010 km (1,200 mi) long and 2 to 150 km (1.2-92 mi) wide, which would cover the surface of Norway. This is a tropical paradise with sunny islands, turquoise seas and gorgeous c ... [read more >>]
	11 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Longest Journey: 647 Days and 12,774 Mi (20,558 Km), Made by the World's Largest Turtle!
	The longest migration previously known was that of the Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea), which nests in the Arctic zone, in the tundra region, and winters in the Antarctica (when there is the Austral summer). Due to this 19,000 km (12,000 mi) journey, the bird sees two summers annually and more daylight than any other creature on the planet. But this is a child play compared to what the leatherback sea turtle is capable of doing: 12,774 ... [read more >>]
	30 January 2008, 05:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

10 Things You Did Not Know About Sea Shore
	1. The shore seems to be the edge of the continent, but that's not true: the continents continue under the sea, on a strip edging each continent, and called continental shelf. How much of the continental shelf is covered by the sea depends on how much ice is stocked in the Polar Ice. 2. Around 10,000 years ago, the polar ice caps were much larger and the sea level was much lower, so that Britain was united to Europe and Alaska to ... [read more >>]
	28 January 2008, 08:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

8 Amazing Things About the Bottom of the Oceans
	1. You may believe that Mount Everest is the tallest in the world, with its 8,848 m (29,450 ft) in altitude. Yet, it was proven that the volcano Mauna Loa from Hawaii is taller by 2,300 m (7,660 ft), if we measure it from its base on the bottom of the ocean. 2. The mapping of the oceanic bottom revealed oceans are expanding. The Atlantic, for example, grows by 2.5 cm (1 in) annually in the area of its median dorsal. In other ... [read more >>]
	18 January 2008, 07:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

5 Facts About Sea Lions and Their Relatives
	1.Eared seals originated from Enaliarctidae, small mammals that inhabited the northern shores of the Pacific 12-13 million years ago. The first known eared seal is Pithanotaria starri, a small seal which lived 11 million years ago. Males were the same size as females. Eight million years ago, the first proper seals appeared with males larger than females. Five million years ago, they crossed the Pacific to colder waters in the western S ... [read more >>]
	16 January 2008, 16:50GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

10 Amazing Things About the Real Mermaids
	1.European sailors navigating, a few centuries ago, in tropical waters could not believe their eyes: they were seeing mermaids, common in the sea folklore. The creature were fish-like from the waist beyond, had a pair of breasts in the chest area, and their flippers and heads vaguely resembled human head and arms from a distance. What they were seeing were in fact manatees and dugongs from the order Sirenia (literally meaning "mermaid ... [read more >>]
	09 January 2008, 15:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Secret Revealed: How Can Sea Mammals Hold Their Breath for Hours
	Try to hold your breath for more than 2-3 minutes, and those around you will have to call the ambulance. But the sperm whale can dive for more than one hour to depths greater than 1,200 meters (roughly 4,000 feet), with average dives of 45 minutes, to depths of 600-1,000 meters (1,968 to 3,280 feet). Elephant seals can spend up to two hours in depths over 1,500 meters (nearly 5,000 feet), but average dives last only 25-30 minutes, to depth ... [read more >>]
	20 December 2007, 03:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Records of Mekong
	The largest river in Southeastern Asia, Mekong is also the 11th-longest river in the world and the 12th-largest in volume (discharging 475 km³ of water annually). Its estimated length is 4,880 km (3,032 mi), and it drains an area of 810,000 km² (313,000 sq mi). From the Tibetan Plateau it runs through Yunnan (China), Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The name Mekong comes from Thai "Mae Nam Khong", "Mother of all ... [read more >>]
	18 December 2007, 06:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Giant Fossil Sea Monster Found in the Arctic: 13 m (40 ft) Long!
	Ancient seas were dominated by huge monstrous reptiles, like plesiosaurs, marine reptile with flipper like members, similar to those found in modern marine turtles, but with very long necks, quite similar to the monster from the stories about the seasnake. They disappeared because of the same event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. New remains of a bus-sized prehistoric huge plesiosaur found on the remote Arctic Svalbard isla ... [read more >>]
	06 December 2007, 05:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia