Water science news, explainers, and statistics covering freshwater, hydrology, lakes, rivers, groundwater, ice, and Earth’s connected water systems.
Video cameras lowered to the floor of Challenger Deep found a small and strange animal cast. Footage from a site 10,908 meters below the surface recorded shrimp-like crustaceans called amphipods. It also showed elpidiid holothurians, a type of sea cucumber. The same seafloor held giant xenophyophores. Those organisms look animal-like from a distance, yet they…
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A study in Global Change Biology led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers reports that industrial fisheries have been taking large midwater fishes from the ocean’s twilight zone for decades. The work brings attention to animals that sit between tiny deep-sea fish and famous predators such as tuna. They are regularly caught by commercial gear,…
Eighty-eight islands and islets spread across Guinea-Bissau’s coast, then seem to enlarge as the sea pulls back. A July 17 NASA Earth Observatory release uses a Landsat 8 image to show that daily transformation in the Bijagós Archipelago. The image was acquired on November 28, 2025, by the satellite’s Operational Land Imager. At relatively low…
A 2026 study in Nature Communications finds signs that the Arctic’s freshwater routes are changing. The observed signal is a rise in dynamic sea level north of Greenland, in the eastern Last Ice Area. The authors say that change has helped steer a larger share of recent liquid freshwater export toward Fram Strait. Their climate…
