Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble

In Macbeth, Shakespeare might have been writing not about three witches, but about deep-sea hydrothermal vents. "Some say," he continued, "the earth was feverous and did shake." Indeed it did at the bottom of the sea, as scientists discovered in 1977 with the finding of the first hydrothermal vent system.

Molly Malone's Cockles and Mussels: Alive Alive Oh?

Not in the Dutch Wadden Sea. Resource exploitation and species protection can exist in the same place. So say many government policies around the world. But do those policies work when applied to marine protected areas? Those that allow commercial fishing operations are a setup for ecological disaster, found Jan van Gils of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. Results of a study conducted by van Gils and others shows that commercial fishing in a marine protected area led to the decline by 80% of at least one seabird species. The dramatic fall in seabirds parallels a bottoming out of the shellfish on which they feed.

It's "Jellyfish Season"—In Freshwater Lakes and Ponds

What do Lake Loch Lomond in Arkansas, Barrett Pit in Indiana and Clopper Lake in Maryland; Sand Bottom Lake in Nebraska, East Brunswick Park Lake in New Jersey and Weyerhouser Outlet Stream in Oregon; Peep Toad Pond in Rhode Island, Fallen Leaf Lake in California, and Lake Windjammer Sandpit in Ohio all have in common? They are home to a tiny, alien-like creature called Craspedacusta sowerbii. C. sowerbii is the only jellyfish that lives in freshwater ponds, lakes, sinkholes, quarries, and anywhere else that is more than a puddle of "unsalted" water.

These Fish Are Hot

It sounds like something out of science fiction: fish that can transmit the effects of radiation—fish to fish—without ever touching. But the fish in question is hardly fictitious. In fact, it's a summer favorite on restaurant menus from coast to coast: the rainbow trout.

Dybas, C.L. 2007. Ripple marks—The story behind the story. Oceanography 20(2):10–13, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2007.67.

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