Explainers on the physics, chemistry and biology of temperate seas — marine heatwaves, upwelling, holdfast biology, trophic cascades, eDNA.
213 articles
Marine heatwaves are ranked Categories I–IV like cyclones — but the scale measures a temperature anomaly, not wind. Here's how the Hobday system works and how to read it.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
A kelp forest's edge is not its boundary but a habitat of its own. How perimeter, patch size and geometry decide survival, diversity and restoration design on temperate reefs.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Hyperspectral sensors split light into hundreds of bands, separating kelp species, plankton groups and sediment that multispectral satellites blur together. Here's how.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Every day, ocean life sends carbon raining into the deep. How the biological carbon pump works, who drives it, and how long its cargo stays buried.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Reefs crackle, croak and rasp — and drifting larvae ride those sounds home. How the ocean soundscape works, and what human noise costs marine life.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Kelp forests photosynthesise hard — but how much oxygen do they actually produce, where does it go, and is the 'lungs of the ocean' slogan honest science?
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The Moon and Sun raise the sea twice daily, and every coast turns that rise and fall into currents, mixing and zonation. The mechanics, plainly.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
One ratio — 106 carbon, 16 nitrogen, 1 phosphorus — runs through plankton and deep water alike. What the Redfield ratio reveals about a changing sea.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
A temperate reef is stacked like a city: canopy, understory, turf and encrusting floor. Learn what drives subtidal zonation and why divers see it everywhere.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Between every kelp forest and its next generation sits an invisible, few-celled filament: the gametophyte. Its biology decides recruitment, resilience and hatchery success.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
When heatwaves strip a coastline's kelp, some reefs stay cool and keep their forests. Here's how thermal refugia form — and why they're restoration gold.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Kelp forests are mosaics of locally adapted populations. Here's what genetics tells us about provenance, resilience, and how to choose seedstock for restoration.
Dr. Elias Brandt ·
Much of the ocean goes hungry for a single trace metal. How desert dust, glaciers and hydrothermal vents decide ocean fertility — and the fertilisation debate.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
From Sentinel-2 pixels to drone orthomosaics, here's how scientists detect, map and track kelp forest canopies from space — and where the limits are.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Oxygen minimum zones are vast, naturally breathless layers of the mid-water ocean. How they form, why warming expands them, and what that means for coasts.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Storms tear kelp free and send it drifting with whole communities aboard. Inside the science of kelp rafts and transoceanic dispersal.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The science of alternate stable states on rocky reefs: how kelp forests collapse into urchin barrens, why barrens resist recovery, and how reefs flip back.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
How a handful of scientists — from Paine's starfish to Estes's sea otters — discovered that predators architect entire ecosystems from the top down.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
How kelp alternates between a visible sporophyte forest and a microscopic gametophyte generation — and why that hidden half decides whether forests recover.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The global overturning circulation, driven by heat and salt, moves water, carbon and nutrients around the planet over centuries. How the conveyor works.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
A deep dive into upwelling physics: Ekman transport, the world's great upwelling systems, how scientists track them from space, and what climate change does.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·