Articles

01/2024

The new freezing technique could reinvigorate corals suffering from warming oceans—or even preserve human organs in the future.

07/2022

PBS NewsHour: Coral reefs around the world are in growing danger due to rising temperatures connected with climate change. But in Florida and the Caribbean, marine biologists are racing to fight a new deadly threat. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports.

06/2016

The device is so easy to use, researchers are asking for a “squidpop blitz” for World Oceans Day.
by Laurie M. Penland

05/2016

More than 315 billion pounds of plastic pollute our oceans, including the Great Pacific trash vortex, a vast patch of plastic debris that some estimates calculate as being twice the size of the continental United States.
by Alex di Giovanni

10/2014

Smithsonian photographer Laurie Penland details the exhausting, but rewarding, work of scraping invasive species off the hull of a boat.
by Laurie M Penland

05/2011

Laurie Penland has been diving for 19 years, six of them as a diving officer for the Smithsonian Institution, and yet last September she witnessed something she never had before: a plastic invasion.
by Megan Gambino

05/2011

It blew in for two solid days: a flotilla of plastic forks, soda bottles, rubber gloves, and other refuse.

12/2009

Understanding how corals reproduce is critical to their survival; Smithsonian's Nancy Knowlton investigates the annual event.
by Megan Gambino