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December 18, 2012 The Ten Best Ocean Stories of 2012 | | | Share on redditReddit | Share on diggDigg | Share on stumbleuponStumble | Share on emailEmail | More Sharing ServicesMore Two market squids mating 2012 was a big year for squid science. Photo Credit: © Brian Skerry, www.brianskerry.com Despite covering 70 percent of the earth's surface, the ocean doesn't often make it into the news. But when it does, it makes quite a splash (so to speak). Here are the top ten ocean stories we couldn't stop talking about this year, in no particular order. Add your own in the comments! 2012: The Year of the Squid From the giant squid's giant eyes (the better to see predatory sperm whales, my dear), to the vampire squid's eerie diet of remains and feces, the strange adaptations and behavior of these cephalopods amazed us all year. Scientists found a deep-sea squid that dismembers its own glowing arm to distract predators and make a daring escape. But fascinating findings weren't relegated to the deep: at the surface, some squids will rocket themselves above the waves to fly long distances at top speeds. James Cameron Explores the Deep Sea Filmmaker James Cameron has never shied away from marine movie plots (See: Titanic, The Abyss), but this year he showed he was truly fearless, becoming the first person to hit the deepest point on the seafloor (35,804 feet) in a solo submarine. While he only managed to bring up a single mud sample from the deepest region, he found thriving biodiversity in the other deep-sea areas his expedition explored, including giant versions of organisms found in shallow water. Schooling sardines form a "bait ball." Small fish, such as these schooling sardines, received well-deserved attention for being an important part of the food chain in 2012. Photo Credit: © Erwin Poliakoff, Flickr Small Fish Make a Big Impact Forage fish-small, schooling fish that are gulped down by predators-should be left in the ocean for larger fish, marin

They're the second largest fish in the world, they're almost extinct, and we know almost nothing about them. At TEDxDublin, Simon Berrow describes the fascinating basking shark ("Great Fish of the Sun" in Irish), and the exceptional -- and wonderfully low-tech -- ways he's learning enough to save them. http://www.ted.com/speakers/simon_berrow.html

"Project Kaisei is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, established to increase the understanding and the scale of marine debris, its impact on our ocean environment, and how we can introduce solutions for both prevention and clean-up. \n\nOur main focus is on the North Pacific Gyre, which constitutes a large accumulation of debris in one of the largest and most remote ecosystems on the planet. To accomplish these objectives, Project Kaisei is serving as a catalyst to bring together public and private collaborators to design, test and implement break-throughs in science, prevention and remediation.\n\nKaisei means "Ocean Planet" in Japanese, and is the name of the iconic tall ship that was one of the two research vessels in the August expedition."

Special: The Tohoku-Oki Earthquake, Japan The 11 March 2011 magnitude-9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan was one of the largest recorded earthquakes in history. It triggered a devastating tsunami that killed more than 20,000 people and an ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Three research papers in the 17 June 2011 issue (published on 19 May) report on the mechanics of this megaquake and provide insights into the behavior of other very large, rare earthquakes. Science is making these research papers FREE for all site visitors. Also provided is a collection of recent news coverage of the Japan earthquake and nuclear crisis in Science and on our science news and policy blog, ScienceInsider.

"The Orangeburg Scarp, a band of hard, crusty sediment teeming with tiny plankton fossils that runs from Florida to Virginia, marks an ancient shoreline where waves eroded bedrock 3 million years ago. That period, the middle Pliocene, saw carbon dioxide levels and temperatures that many scientists say could recur by 2100. The question is: Could those conditions also result in Pliocene-epoch sea levels within the next 10 to 20 centuries, sea levels that may have been as much as 35 meters higher than they are today? The answer, say climate scientists, may lie 17,000 kilometers away in East Antarctica. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is the world's largest, a formation up to 4 km thick and 11 million km2 in area that covers three-quarters of the southernmost continent. Its glaciers were thought to sit mostly above sea level, protecting them from the type of ocean-induced losses that are affecting the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. But studies of ancient sea levels that focus on the Orangeburg Scarp and other sites challenge that long-held assumption. Not everybody believes the records from Orangeburg. But combined with several other new lines of evidence, they support the idea that parts of East Antarctica could indeed be more prone to melting than expected. "

Isles of Abundance Britain has taken another step toward designating the world's largest marine reserve around the Chagos Islands, a group of 55 coral protrusions in the Indian Ocean. The government announced the end of a 4-month public comment period on 5 March and is expected to reach a final decision by May. The Chagos contain half of the Indian Ocean's remaining healthy reefs. The waters are said to be among the cleanest on Earth, allowing corals to grow in deep water less vulnerable to global warming. The islands are located in the equatorial "tuna belt," which hosts what a Royal Zoological Society of London report called one of the "most exploited, badly enforced fisheries in the world." A total ban on fishing in the 544,000-square-kilometer zone, an area the size of France, would make it an even larger protected area than the current record-holder, the 360,000-km2 Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The Pew Environment Group has spearheaded a 3-year campaign for creation of a Chagos reserve. It would be "literally an island of abundance in a sea of depletion," says Pew's Jay Nelson. The islands are uninhabited except for the U.S. Navy base on Diego Garcia. Some 1500 Chagossians were deported to Mauritius in the 1970s for military security.