778 results
- Earth
Clipping the Fin Trade
New research and policy developments aim to curb the wasteful and gruesome practice of killing sharks solely for their fins.
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Breathless: Reef fish cope with low oxygen
A coral reef may look like a high-oxygen paradise, but the first respiration tests of fish there show an unexpected tolerance for low oxygen.
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19096
The Japanese have developed an “artificial shark-fin machine” that produces a product quite similar in texture to the real thing. It’s being used in restaurants in Hong Kong. Let’s hope people’s tastes change before it is too late for the sharks. P.W.L. KwanBoston, Mass.
- Earth
Dead Waters
Coastal dead zones—underwater regions where oxygen concentrations are too low for fish to survive—are mushrooming globally, threatening to transform entire ecosystems.
- Ecosystems
No Way to Make Soup—Thirty-two tons of contraband shark fins seized on the high seas
Something looked suspicious. This former swordfishing vessel, out of Honolulu, was clearly heavy with cargo when discovered by U.S. law-enforcement officials 350 miles off of Acapulco, on Aug. 13. A boarding team found no fishing–just shark fins. However, under a new federal law, transporting fins collected by another fishing vessel constitutes illegal “fishing.” US Coast […]
- Humans
Rare animals get U.N. protection
Several types of whales, river dolphins, the great white shark, and an unusual camel are among animals designated to receive new or heightened protection under a United Nations treaty.
- Earth
Catch Zero
It generally has taken less than a generation for modern, industrial-scale fishing, once deployed in a new plot of ocean, to exhaust the vast majority of the sea’s edible bounty and leave behind decimated ecosystems and depleted economic opportunities.
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Getting an Earful: With gene therapy, ears grow new sensory cells
Scientists have for the first time coaxed the growth of new sensory cells within the ears of an adult mammal.
- Paleontology
Mosasaurs were born at sea, not in safe harbors
Newly discovered fossils of prehistoric aquatic reptiles known as mosasaurs suggest that the creatures gave birth in midocean rather than in near-shore sanctuaries as previously suspected.
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Beast Buddies
As researchers muse about the evolutionary origins of friendship, even the social interactions of giraffes are getting a second look.
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Baby talk goes to the dogs, and cats
Acoustic differences in the "baby talk" that mothers use with their infants and with family pets support the notion that adults use this form of speech to teach language skills to their babies.
- Earth
Mercurial Effects of Fish-Rich Diets
In the spring of 2000, one of Jane M. Hightower’s patients had been concerned about hair loss, so the internist referred the woman to a specialist in her building. That dermatologist probed the woman’s medical history but could find no explanation. That is, until she suddenly recalled a radio broadcast about mercury poisoning in people […]
