Water science news, explainers, and statistics covering freshwater, hydrology, lakes, rivers, groundwater, ice, and Earth’s connected water systems.
An exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, is a sea area beyond and next to a country’s territorial sea where the coastal state has special rights to explore, use, conserve and manage natural resources. It can extend no farther than 200 nautical miles from the coastal baseline. Other states retain important freedoms, including navigation and overflight.…
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A mesophotic coral ecosystem is a tropical or subtropical reef community living in dim, middle-depth water where some sunlight still reaches the seafloor. It typically begins around 30 meters deep and can extend beyond 150 meters, depending on water clarity. Light-dependent corals, algae, sponges and fishes form the community. NOAA’s mesophotic reef overview places these…
A bivalve is a soft-bodied mollusk enclosed by two shell halves, called valves, joined at a hinge. Clams, oysters, mussels and scallops belong to the group. Most live in water and feed by moving water across their gills, which collect oxygen and often capture microscopic food. NOAA’s bivalve overview describes roughly 9,200 species across marine…
Marine biogeography is the study of where ocean species and habitats occur, why they occur there and how their distributions change. It connects biology with maps and environmental measurements. A marine biogeographer might ask why a coral grows on one bank but not another, where a fish population shifts during warming, or which seafloor habitats…
