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This year’s global Earth Day theme is “planet vs plastics”, and calls for the rapid phase out all single-use plastics.

91��������’s Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab led a team of researchers that mapped the population density of North Atlantic right whales worldwide to predict and help avoid harmful, even fatal, exposure to commercial fishing and vessel strikes.

Marine Protected Areas must be flexible and responsive, not absolute

The vast size of the ocean makes tracking human activity there challenging, but a new study provides a startling glimpse of how extensive this activity has become in recent years and how much of it occurs outside of public monitoring.

Meet the Stapleton Lab, learn more about its research focus, a postdoc's experience in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

Shineng Hu is a climate scientist specializing in using observations, theory and climate models to better understand the relationship between global ocean and atmospheric movement, especially as that relationship indicates and informs climate change.

Meet the Hu Climate Dynamics Lab, learn more about its research focus, a PhD student's experience in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

Gulf War Illness (GWI), which affects approximately 250,000 U.S. veterans, has been found to significantly reduce the ability of white blood cells to make energy and creates a measurable biochemical difference in veterans who have the disease. The finding comes from a physician who noticed GWI symptoms paralleled those of mitochondrial diseases. Analysis revealed significantly lower levels of extracellular acidification and oxygen consumption in the white blood cells of veterans with GWI.

Juliet Wong is a global-change biologist, specifically interested in how climate change affects marine ecosystems and their organisms, working to predict biological responses for improved resilience to adverse environmental events. Wong presented “Organismal Responses to Climate Change in the Sea” at the recent faculty research symposium, describing several ongoing studies on coastal marine invertebrates.

As rising global temperatures push Arctic icecaps into retreat, large and small sea creatures and the commercial fishing boats that follow them are migrating northward.

A new study on the impacts of prenatal exposure to toxic metals linked to artisanal gold mining and other sources in Madre de Dios, Peru, finds that mercury has no direct effect on a newborn’s birth weight or gestational age. It’s a different story, though, for lead, which may also be released by mining operations but more likely is consumed when people eat wild game that inadvertently still contains small bullet fragments.

In recent years, “30 by 30” has become a rallying cry in international marine conservation. It’s the idea that to safeguard marine biodiversity and limit environmental damage caused by future sea-floor mining and other industrial-scale human activities, we need to place at least 30% of the world’s oceans within marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2030.

91�������� scientists have received a five-year, $2.6 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to study molecular mechanisms that can help our bodies fight respiratory inflammation caused by air pollution.

Analysis indicates ingested microplastics migrate into whales’ fat and organs

Greg Merrill, a PhD student in the University Program in Ecology, recently shared insights into his research focus, the Nowacek Lab, the impacts of his research and what he has learned working in the lab.