Zooplankton in the Nile: diversity under threat from dams | IGB

BBC Two - Secrets of the Brain, Series 1, Episode 1

Jim Al-Khalili reveals how the staggeringly complex human brain evolved.

Deep-sea mining waste threatens life and food webs in  ocean’s dim “twilight zone”

When the waste released by mining activity enters the ocean, it creates water as murky as the mud-filled Mississippi River

First study of its kind finds deep-sea mining waste threatens life and foodwebs in the ocean’s dim “twilight zone”

A new study led by researchers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa published today in Nature Communications is the first of its kind to show that waste discharged from deep-sea mining operations in the Pacific’s biodiverse Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) could disrupt marine life in the midwater “twilight zone” — a vital region 200-1,500 meters below sea level that supports vast communities of zooplankton, tiny animals that serve as the ocean’s basic food building blocks. Specifically, it finds that 53% of all zooplankton and 60% of micronekton, which feed on zooplankton, would be impacted by the discharge, which could ultimately impact predators higher up on the food web.  

Industrial mercury emissions from Asia traced to open ocean zooplankton

Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) have traced the atmospheric journey of industrial mercury emissions from Asia into the open ocean food web. The new study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, shows that more than half of the gaseous mercury emitted from Asian sources oxidizes into Hg²⁺, a reactive and bioavailable form of the pollutant.