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Press Release

08.30.17

Tracking down the whale-shark highway

MBARI oceanographer John Ryan and his colleagues discovered that whale sharks swim across the Eastern Tropical Pacific following fronts—dynamic boundaries between warm and cold ocean waters.

Press Release

12.15.16

MBARI’s seafloor maps provide new information about 2015 eruption at Axial Seamount

Axial Seamount, a large underwater volcano off of the Oregon coast, is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, having last erupted in 2015. At the Fall 2016 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, MBARI researchers unveiled a new seafloor map that reveals previously undocumented lava flows from the 2015 eruption.

Press Release

06.29.16

Researchers design new camera tag for white sharks

Each winter, large white sharks leave the California coast and swim halfway to Hawaii, congregating in an area known as the “White Shark Café.” By attaching a miniature video camera tag to a white shark’s fin, researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) hope to collect video footage that shows—for the first time ever—exactly what the sharks are doing out there.

Press Release

09.23.14

Big changes in the Sargasso Sea

Over one thousand miles wide and three thousand miles long, the Sargasso Sea occupies almost two thirds of the North Atlantic Ocean. Within the sea, circling ocean currents accumulate mats of Sargassum seaweed that shelter a surprising variety of fishes, snails, crabs, and other small animals.

Press Release

04.15.14

Researchers describe four new species of “killer sponges” from the deep sea

Killer sponges sound like creatures from a B-grade horror movie. In fact, they thrive in the lightless depths of the deep sea. Scientists first discovered that some sponges are carnivorous about 20 years ago. Since then only seven carnivorous species have been found in all of the northeastern Pacific.

Press Release

12.09.13

Mapping the demise of the dinosaurs

About 65 million years ago, an asteroid or comet crashed into a shallow sea near what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The resulting firestorm and global dust cloud caused the extinction of many land plants and large animals, including most of the dinosaurs.