How to get rid of tons and tons of plastic fishing line? “He said, ‘What have you got?’ I said, ‘A lot of plastic rope. A lot.’” www.islandinstitute.org/working-wate...

The tall task of throwing away lobster rope - Island Institute

Lobstermen call it pot warp: the rope that runs from the buoy on the water’s surface down to the trap on the ocean floor. A single lobsterman may use miles of

islandinstitute.org

New paper: Detecting sea creatures from outer space. Detect a whale, and you know where it is. Detect its food, and you know where it might go next. New research by Dr. Rebekah Shunmugapandi and colleagues tracks whale prey via satellites. academic.oup.com/icesjms/arti... @bigelowlab.bsky.social

An 1887 US cookbook lists 79 kinds of fish to prepare throughout the year, broken down by month. Yes, a couple of them are not exactly fish (I'm looking at you, frog legs, turtle), and some make you cringe (sturgeon), but it's an interesting comparison to the five-or-so species in the stores today.

Worth reading.. It seems like we’re at least decades away from even a basic understanding of the effects of geoengineering

Michael E. Mann@michaelemann.bsky.social · 2mo ago

‘Termination shock’: trust our expert warnings on geoengineering’s planetary risks | New op-ed in @theguardian.com by Ray Pierrehumbert (@climatebook.bsky.social), Julia Slingo, @valmasdel.bsky.social & yours truly: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Fascinating story It’s almost impossible to get rid of rope drive.google.com/file/d/1CVHW...

The stranded mariner framing is powerful here

David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈@whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Hell of an op-Ed from @drandrewthaler.bsky.social 🧪🦑🌎 thehill.com/opinion/nati...

Postdoc opportunity

Jacquelyn Gill@jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Three weeks left to apply to our postdoc position on alpine plant resilience! Us: Three years of funding, an awesome collaborative team, a gorgeous study system, blueberry pie, unionized postdocs. You: A PhD and experience in ancient DNA, paleoecology, and/or plant genetics and genomics.

Scatter plot of the week. Very low r-squared.

Heads up on the seas... The National Science Foundation is pulling some of our major observation buoys out of the water permanently.. oceanobservatories.org/2026/05/anno...

Announcement on NSF OOI Descoping - Ocean Observatories Initiative

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has initiated descoping of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Major Facility. This plan includes the removal of all in-water infrastructure from the Ir...

oceanobservatories.org

23 right whale calves this year, the highest in almost 20 years. news.mongabay.com/short-articl...

A baby boom for North Atlantic right whales, but extinction still a threat

23 North Atlantic right whales were born this year, the most since 2009 but it's still short of the 50 births per year needed to save the critically endangered species.

news.mongabay.com

Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries advisory regarding right whales in the area www.mass.gov/doc/5126-rem...

For the last day of my Paleoecology senior capstone, students made PSA-style posters in class. For the prompt, I asked them, “what’s one idea from studying the past that will help us protect the future?” Here’s what they came up with.

For scientists, increasingly asked how we can use AI in our research…

Truthout@truthout.org · 4mo ago

Northern Cheyenne activist Krystal Two Bulls says there are 103 to 160 proposed hyperscale data centers on Native lands. The data center boom is a “modern-day iteration” of “settler colonialism,” impacts of which include noise pollution, cancers and respiratory illnesses, water depletion and more.

Here’s a list of journals that publish ocean science..🌊 Organized by non-profit vs for-profit It’s a moving target; suggestions welcome docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Ocean Science Journals

docs.google.com

"Salinity remains a largely underexplored environmental factor in understanding disease dynamics in changing marine environments". .. new review paper (with a clever title) royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

Salt in the wound: consequences of changing salinities on marine disease

Abstract. Salinity plays an important role in the physiology of marine organisms and their pathogens. As the climate continues to change, marine and estuar

royalsocietypublishing.org

A bill for funding marine carbon dioxide removal research. The name -- ReSCUE Oceans Act -- makes it sound like we'd be rescuing the oceans, but it's hypothetically the reverse. bonamici.house.gov/media/press-...

Bonamici, Carter, Schatz, Murkowski Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Advance Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal

We must do all we can to reduce carbon pollution, which fuels more frequent and extreme weather events.

bonamici.house.gov

Climatebase fellowship opportunities climatebase.org/fellowship?u...

Fellowship | Climatebase

The platform for climate action. Explore jobs and the organizations shaping our climate-positive future.

climatebase.org

Summer internship opportunity at the Boothbay Region Land Trust bbrlt.org/wp-content/u...

In the Gulf of #Maine, studying zooplankton offers clues on the whereabouts of the endangered North Atlantic right #whale, helping improve conservation efforts, reduce collisions with boats, and inform scientists’ understanding of #climatechange. Read more for free from @juliatilton.com👇

What can we learn from zooplankton?

Meet the researchers using the tiny crustaceans to monitor endangered whales and climate change in the Gulf of Maine.

themainemonitor.org

I saw this happen once in the Arctic. One whale keeping the entangled whale afloat for maybe 20 or 30 minutes. A rescue team arrived and managed to cut it free.

Mary Gillis@marygillis.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A few months ago I read a story about a whale that was tangled up in fishing gear and another whale tried to lift it up to the surface to breathe and then stayed with it as it died so it wouldn't be alone. I still cry when thinking about it. But hey, gotta keep taxes down for the wealthy somehow.

"at least 60% of Maine’s working waterfront was either severely damaged or completely destroyed" Writing on the storms of two years ago, Keith Carson describes how climate change has made typical storms into disasters. @maineconservation.bsky.social www.pressherald.com/2026/01/13/m...

Maine cannot accept the ‘new normal’ when it comes to storms | Keith Carson

Extreme weather should serve as a reminder to keep pushing for policies that make our communities more climate-resilient.

pressherald.com

📄Population- and temperature-dependent variation in molt phenology and disease susceptibility shape epidemiological outcomes in American lobster (Homarus americanus) doi.org/10.1093/ices... @bigelowlab.bsky.social @seascapescience.bsky.social @oupacademic.bsky.social @hbrowman.bsky.social

Population- and temperature-dependent variation in molt phenology and disease susceptibility shape epidemiological outcomes in American lobster (Homarus americanus)

Abstract. Disease and climate change are among the stressors influencing the American lobster fishery, with impacts varying across the species’ geographic

doi.org

"Our shared humanity is the bedrock of science" A good Sunday read ... redefining what it means to be a scientist a quarter-way through the 21st century aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Beyond labels: redefining what it means to be a scientist a quarter‐way through the 21st century

Click on the article title to read more.

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

After the US admin cancelled the $B Climate + Weather Disaster dataset, @climatecentral.org hired the scientists who ran it and set it back up. Now the 2025 numbers are in: it's 3rd highest year on record and highest year w/o land-falling hurricanes. More: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

This is an amazing discovery... "a tennis court-sized area absorbing as much CO2 every year as three acres of forest" and btw... "You never know what you’re going to find when you put people from different backgrounds with different perspectives into a new, interesting environment."

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences@bigelowlab.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Positively Rocking It: South Africa’s coast is home to some of the oldest evidence of life on Earth: microbialites. These “living rocks” are built by microbes that turn dissolved minerals into stone. Check out a cross-section of a microbialite on Currents: https://currents.bigelow.org/?p=1076

The Trump administration says it will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a cornerstone for American climate and weather science. I went on NPR today to explain what this could mean for climate research. Listen here:

Trump moves to dismantle a ‘global mothership’ of climate research : Here & Now Anytime

The Trump administration says it will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a cornerstone for American climate and weather science. Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Co...

npr.org

What's NCAR? and 8 ways it has helped you www.forbes.com/sites/marsha...

Today I'm sharing one of my all time favorite books, Call Me American, by Abdi Nor Iftin, who grew up in Mogadishu, Somalia and now lives in Maine, US. I've read it multiple times and will read it again. There's also a YA version. www.callmeamerican.com

"Wall-E" has a sibling... The first right whale calf of the season www.neaq.org/2025-2026-no...

2025–2026 North Atlantic Right Whale Mother and Calf Pairs - New England Aquarium

Meet this year’s North Atlantic right whale mother and calf pairs.

neaq.org