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A new study on the lifespan of the Greenland shark has established that this fish may be the longest-lived vertebrate on Earth. While marine biologists have long suspected that this species of shark had a long lifespan — one individual, caught twice, with each catch more than a decade apart, had shown growth of less than a centimeter per year — researchers had no definitive way of dating individual specimens, as dating fish involves counting the layers in their bones. Sharks, on the other hand, have cartilage skeletons that don’t exhibit this layering, making dating them difficult.
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Researchers at Harvard University have built a light-sensitive, self-propelled artificial machine-organism, in the form of a tiny robot stingray. The project was done in an effort to test the feasibility of making hybrid replacement organs for human patients, such as bioartificial hearts, that could use natural muscle motions to function, as opposed to the electrical operation that today’s prosthetics require.
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The double-whammy of global warming and a record-breaking El Niño are having yet another detrimental effect, killing massive amounts of sea life off of the coast of Chile. Being blamed is an algal bloom that is choking the waters of the Pacific, killing fish such as cuttlefish, salmon and sardines, and may be responsible for the deaths of over 300 whales that washed ashore last year.
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One of the growing problems on our oceans is the proliferation of garbage floating on the surface, plaguing not only shorelines but also forming into large patches of debris in the open ocean. This impacts not only aquatic wildlife, but also people that enjoy the water, including a pair of Australian surfers, Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski. The duo got fed up swimming through trash-filled water, and devised a device that filters that garbage out of the water.
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