As the oceans grow warmer, some species of fish change addresses. They leave waters that have grown too warm, or expand their range into waters that had been too cool for them.

 

Juvenile glass eels aren’t the most appetizing critters around. They look like short, wiggly transparent noodles, and it takes thousands of them to fill a bucket. And then there’s their other name — elvers.

 

Every year, large “dead zones” form in the Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. They form when river water loaded with fertilizer and other nutrients gushes into the Gulf. The nutrients spawn a massive “bloom” of microscopic organisms that use up much of the water’s oxygen. That kills fish and shellfish.

Stress can cut years from our lives. But for a tiny jellyfish-like organism, it’s just the opposite. Stress actually makes it age backwards — and eventually revert to its earliest stage of life. That provides a sort of immortality, as the organism produces a whole bunch of identical copies of itself.

 

It’s hard to find a meat product these days that doesn’t have a soy-based equivalent — from burgers and chicken nuggets to bacon strips and chorizo. There aren’t a lot of soy substitutes for fish, though.

Astronomers have been building observatories on mountaintops for decades. Lifting their telescopes above most of Earth’s murky atmosphere provides a clearer view of the stars.

 

Every state has a long list of official icons. The official aircraft of New Mexico, for example, is the hot air balloon, while in Hawaii, the official sport is outrigger canoe paddling.

 

Fishermen are usually trying to find ways to get fish to take the bait. When it comes to sharks, though, they’re trying to find ways to get them to leave the bait alone. And one strategy seems to have the potential to keep the sharks away: using metals with special magnetic properties.

 

If you stand with outstretched arms, it likely means you’re about to give somebody a hug. But it could also mean that you’re showing them the length of a fathom — a unit that’s been used to measure the depth of the sea for centuries.

It sounds like the start of a bad joke: What do an airplane wing and shark skin have in common? But a recent study suggests there’s a serious answer. Both of them provide a type of “lift” — one to get an airplane off the ground, the other to increase the shark’s speed.