OCTOPUSES are weird. This is not just because they look odd. It’s not because they’re disturbingly smart. It’s because they have a strange power. The ability to edit their own bodies. This has biologists scratching their heads. Evolution doesn’t work that way. It’s supposed to be spurred by genetic mutations — a change in DNA — that proves to be beneficial to the host.

Planet or Plastic? : Even one of the most remote places on Earth couldn't hide from the scourge of plastic trash.

A dense bloom of bioluminescent algae off the coast of southern California has lit up the Pacific Ocean with an eerie and fantastical neon blue glow, sending photographers and spectators to the beach at night in hopes of witnessing the natural phenomenon. The algal bloom, also known as a red tide, was observed this week lighting up the waves along a 15-mile stretch of coastline.

Oxybenzone and octinoxate cause mortality in developing coral; increase coral bleaching that indicates extreme stress.

Every year, more than 400,000 crabs are bled for the miraculous medical substance that flows in their veins—now pharmaceutical companies are finally committing to an alternative that doesn't harm animals.

Asia is growing. Literally. From Malaysia to Dubai, luxury developments are rising on artificial islands and coastlines. Everybody wins – except the local sea life and the fishermen who depend on it

A healthy coral reef creates quite the underwater racket. Reef croakers croak, damselfish woop-woop-woop, and clown fish sound thuds like a woodpecker at a tree. The soundscape of this now degraded reef at Lizard Island, Northern Great Barrier Reef, Australia (above), was once louder.   (Listen below to the change from 2012 to 2016.) Image: Timothy Gordon, University of Exeter.

Octopus mothers all sacrifice their lives for their young, but here, their sacrifice may be in vain. 

"There's a challenge for you — what is THAT?" Unusual deep-sea creatures seen for the first time can sometimes stump even a seasoned expert in marine biology. And in a recent video of an ocean dive in the Gulf of Mexico, an expert's off-camera exclamation revealed his surprised response to the appearance of a squid that had contorted itself into such a peculiar shape that it barely resembled a squid at all.

One strange piece of mobile DNA has spread itself throughout the oceans, claiming real estate in the genomes of clams, fish, and more

Arctic people have been communicating with cetaceans for centuries. The rest of the world is finally listening in

Scientists have long been trying to figure out how exactly our ancestors evolved from fish to land vertebrates some 375 million years ago. Now a tiny, eyeless fish that walks and climbs up waterfalls could offer some clues... By Kaitlyn Tiffany.

In Asia, there will be no fish stocks for commercial fishing by 2048 if trends continue. That's one of the projections made by four new United Nations scientific reports on biodiversity that showed the Earth is losing plants, animals and clean water at a dramatic rate.

Underwater languages at the brink of extinction. By Ed Ou, Carrie Haber, John Ford, with guests.

Researchers introduced SoFi, a soft robotic fish that can be operated underwater with a souped up Super Nintendo controller.

A small fleet of state-of-the-art research submersibles are scheduled to launch from Oʻahu tomorrow. The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute will be using the underwater vehicles to track, study, and collect ocean microbes.

Starfish and crabs among animals piled ankle-deep along parts of the North Sea coast

Did a 1970s CIA plot spark a boom in deep sea mining?

Fish poo could hold the answer to tackling the large numbers of crown-of-thorns starfish eating their way through the Great Barrier Reef. Researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville have been collecting samples to try and identify fish which eat the native starfish.

As part of its sweeping overhaul of fisheries legislation, the federal Liberal government will ban the capture of cetaceans, marine mammals like whales, dolphins and porpoises, for the purposes of captivity.