Seafloor

New findings on emerging contaminants

...dence of altered hormone levels in marine fish. The hornyhead turbot, a common flatfish in the coastal waters of Southern California, hangs out on the seafloor where it can be exposed to a chemical cocktail discharged from nearby wastewater pipes. These chemicals range from industrial compounds to pharmaceuti...

Deep-sea Mining can Damage Marine Ecosystem

... Undersea habitats supporting rare and potentially valuable organisms are at risk from seafloor mining scheduled to begin within this decade , according to a new study by a University of Toronto Mississauga geologist. According to Joche...

Recently discovered deep-sea reefs catch the attention of the drug discovery team

...f the bottom, but until researchers make it to the seafloor in the submersible they will not be able to determ... information available, Grasmueck compares typical seafloor exploration to arriving on the bottom of the Grand...the team will use the submersible to explore those seafloor areas that appear most promising based on their so...

Seafloor in Biological News

'Barren' seafloor teeming with microbial life

Once considered a barren plain with the odd hydrothermal vent, the seafloor appears to be teeming with microbial life, according to a paper being published May 29 in Nature. A 60,000 kilometer seam of basalt is exposed along the mid-ocean ridge spreading system, representing potentially the lar...

Scientists find bacteria thriving on a feast of seafloor rock

On the deep ocean floor, microbial life is feeding on fresh volcanic rock and flourishing with greater abundance than even the most optimistic scientists thought possible. According to a study published May 28 in the journal Nature, scientists have found bacteria growing on oceanic crust in concen...

DEIMOS joins MARS and its satellite of instruments on seafloor

The planet Mars has a moon named Deimos, so it seems only appropriate that the ocean observatory MARS in Monterey Bay have its own DEIMOS. This DEIMOS, however, is an underwater acoustic package designed to monitor movements of fish and zooplankton. MARS, which stands for Monterey Accelerated ...

UMaine teams with fishermen to study affects of trawling on seafloor ecology

Working in cooperation with Maine trawler captain Cameron McLellan and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, UMaine graduate student Emily Knight and UMaine Marine Science professor Les Watling recently completed a long-term study that examines the effects of groundfish trawling on the complex ecol...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...ust beneath the fault zone. Mid-Cretaceous seafloor spreading pulse: Fact or fiction? M. Seton et al...changes was believed to be due to a rapid pulse of seafloor spreading. However, it has also been suggested tha...the world's ocean basins and obtained estimates of seafloor spreading rates and mid-oceanic ridge lengths from...

World's largest ocean observatory takes shape

...cean observatory. Using three ships and at least one ROV, the team is lowering five 13-tonne nodes and more than 400 instruments and sensors to the seafloor where they are being attached to an 800-km loop of powered fibre-optic cable laid in 2007. Led by the University of Victoria, NEPTUNE Canada pione...

Evolution: Crabs go deep to avoid hot water

...mperature as a driving force behind the speciation and radiation of a major seafloor predator; globally, and over tens of millions of years of Earth's history. ...mperature as a driving force behind the speciation and radiation of a major seafloor predator globally and over tens of millions of years of Earth's history. ...

NOAA report finds threats to California's Cordell Bank Marine Sanctuary

...tuary's offshore location and distance from major urban population centers. seafloor habitat quality was rated lower, primarily due to prior impacts from fishin...ces have been identified in the sanctuary, only 18 percent of the sanctuary seafloor has been mapped with high resolution tools that could be used to find sunke...

Fossil bone bed helps reconstruct life along California's ancient coastline

... the animal carcasses had decayed and their bones had been scattered by currents. "The bones look a bit rotten," Lipps said, "as if they lay on the seafloor for a long time and were abraded by water with sand in it." Many bones had manganese nodules and growths, which form on bones that sit for long period...

Wetlands likely source of methane from ancient warming event

...ase of methane that would send planetary warming into overdrive. Vast amounts of methane are sequestered in solid form, known as methane clathrate, in seafloor deposits and in permafrost. Cold temperatures and the intense pressure of the deep ocean stabilize the methane clathrate masses and keep methane from ...

Seafloor in Biological Technology

90 billion tons of microbial organisms live in the deep biosphere

... collected from several hundred meters beneath the seafloor of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Black S...he deep biosphere. "In general, life below the seafloor is dominated by minute monocellular organisms," ex...investigate standardized sediment samples from the seafloor using varied methods. To gain a more reliable pict...