Editor’s Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the fourth blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com RV ATLANTIS [...]

Editor’s Note: Scuba instructor and underwater videographer Drew Wheeler  is traveling on board the Algalita Marine Research Foundation’s 50-foot Ocean Research Vessel, Alguita, on a two-month voyage to sample and study portions of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Subtropical Gyre (aka "Pacific garbage patch"). Wheeler and the rest of the Alguita crew left [...]

Editor’s Note: Scuba instructor and underwater videographer Drew Wheeler is traveling on board the Algalita Marine Research Foundation’s 50-foot Ocean Research Vessel, Alguita, on a two-month voyage to sample and study portions of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Subtropical Gyre (aka "Pacific garbage patch"). Wheeler and the rest of the Alguita crew left [...]

Editor’s Note: Scuba instructor and underwater videographer Drew Wheeler is traveling on board the Algalita Marine Research Foundation’s 50-foot (15.2-meter) Ocean Research Vessel, Alguita, on a two-month voyage to sample and study portions of a 10-million-square-mile (25.9-million-square-kilometer) oval known as the North Subtropical Gyre (aka "Pacific garbage patch"). Wheeler and the rest of the Alguita [...]

Editor’s Note: Scuba instructor and underwater videographer Drew Wheeler is traveling on board the Algalita Marine Research Foundation’s 50-foot (15.2-meter) Ocean Research Vessel, Alguita, on a two-month voyage to sample and study portions of a 10-million-square-mile (25.9-million-square-kilometer) oval known as the North Subtropical Gyre (aka "Pacific garbage patch"). Wheeler and the rest of the Alguita [...]

Tens of thousands of whales were slaughtered each year for decades from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, in the service of lighting city streets, painting ladies’ lips and providing multitudinous other modern conveniences. This monomaniacal hunt led many species to the brink of extinction. But recent research has suggested that gray whale (Eschrichtius [...]

Researchers have been visiting locations in the western North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea for more than two decades to better understand the large patches of plastic that have formed there. Although the mysteries surrounding exactly how the plastic gets to these locations, where it comes from and what impact it’s having on marine life [...]

As harbingers of ill fate in maritime lore, albatross have, themselves, come to be an indicator for modern-day oceanic pollution. Snatching up floating and near-surface food, Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) in especially trash-strewn tides now pick up a more dangerous repast than they are accustomed to. "With increasing amounts of marine debris, what once may [...]

Everyone knows by now of the versatile sports cameras by GoPro. People are capturing interesting videos with them across the spectrum of sports, day-to-day life, and even science. Mark Peters went out fishing for Albacore Tuna west of Santa Monica, CA, and had made a clear torpedo casing to hold his GoPro camera beforehand. The [...]