The three orders which comprise the extant marine mammals exhibit a wide range of behaviors, varying social structures, and differences in social information use. Human impacts on marine mammals and their environments are ubiquitous; from chemical and noise pollution, to marine debris, prey depletion, and ocean acidification. As a result, no marine mammal populations remain entirely unaffected ...

Microplastics (plastic debris smaller than 5mm) represent a growing concern worldwide due to increasing amounts of discarded trash. We investigated microplastic debris on sandy shorelines at seven locations in a northern Gulf of Mexico estuary (Mobile Bay, AL) during the summer of 2014. Microplastics were ubiquitous throughout the area studied at concentrations 66-253× larger than reported for ...

Ingestion of marine debris is an established threat to sea turtles. The amount, type, color and location of ingested plastics in the gastrointestinal tracts of 55 sea turtles from Pacific longline fisheries from 2012 to 2016 were quantified, and compared across species, turtle length, body condition, sex, capture location, season and year. Six approaches for quantifying amounts of ingested plas...

As far back as 1870, i.e., about 150 years ago, Jules Verne described the accumulation of debris in the convergence zone of the North Atlantic Ocean in his famous novel entitled “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.” Many scientific reports have addressed this topic since and our main concern today is the ever increasing volume of marine litter invading the oceans in various and complex ways....

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on virgin polystyrene (PS) and PS marine debris led us to examine PS as a source and sink for PAHs in the marine environment. At two locations in San Diego Bay, we measured sorption of PAHs to PS pellets, sampling at 0, 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. We detected 25 PAHs using a new analytical method with comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography couple...

[1] Strontium and neodymium radiogenic isotope ratios in early to middle Eocene fossil fish debris (ichthyoliths) from Lomonosov Ridge (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 302) help constrain water mass compositions in the Eocene Arctic Ocean between !55 and !45 Ma. The inferred paleodepositional setting was a shallow, offshore marine to marginal marine environment with limited connect...

Counts of adult male northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) are obtained each year on St. Paul Island and semi-annually on St. George Island as a factor of population monitoring. In 1995, counts were obtained from 11 to 16 July. A total of 5,154 harem and 8,459 idle adult male seals were counted on St. Paul Island. On St. George Island a total of 1,242 harem and 1,054 idle adult males were co...

As the USSR fell apart and independent countries took its place, minorities across Eurasia found themselves stranded in nationalizing states. This article focuses on one of these “beached diasporas”: Georgia’s Armenians. Through a mixed-methods approach, consisting interviews with activists sociolinguistic experiment administered to adolescents (N = 529), we uncover differences among Armenians ...

Much attention has been paid to the impacts of plastics and other debris on marine organisms, but the effects of plastic on terrestrial organisms have been largely ignored. Detrimental effects of terrestrial plastic could be most pronounced in intensively human-modified landscapes (e.g., urban and agricultural areas), which are a source of much anthropogenic debris. Here, we examine the occurre...