What comes of a scientific cruise once researchers return to port? In my first article (Scripps research on biofuels motors close to home__Part 1), readers traveled with me on Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s R/V Sproul as I helped carry out...

There’s nothing like getting stabbed in the back, although for polyclad flatworms it’s one of the facts of life. Not just literally but figuratively, too, because stabbing is integral to the way they reproduce. Polyclads stab and get stabbed (called...

I’ve been gazing at a pair of boobies. Not that kind! I mean subtropical brown booby seabirds (Sula leucogaster) loafing on the bluffs and paddling in the sea in what I consider my territory. Mind you, I’m not a bird dog kind of dog. Aeronautical...

From my many years of scuba diving, I’ve found countless debris cast off or lost by humans to the underwater world. Landfill items include the gross (used adhesive bandages, condoms), the “no-surprise-there” (flip-flops, sunglasses, fishing...