{"title":"The Biology of Marine Snowflakes","authors":"Colleen A. Durkin","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-040523-021832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-040523-021832","url":null,"abstract":"Organic detrital particles drift and sink through all ocean waters. This marine snow mediates the global carbon cycle by sequestering carbon in the deep sea and fuels ocean ecosystems by feeding deep-sea organisms. These global processes are ultimately controlled by the collection of events that occur at the scale of individual marine snowflakes. These particles are incredibly diverse, with physical characteristics and compositions determined by the myriad processes that lead to their formation and transformation over time. When that diversity is classified, we can calculate the quantity of carbon that particles transport to the deep sea. Each marine snowflake is a microcosm, with distinct organisms and metabolisms concentrated within the organic matter of a particle. Resolving the biology of individual marine snowflakes is possible through innovations in physical collection and the development of autonomous imaging platforms. Accounting for particle-specific biology generates major advancements in ocean biogeochemistry and ecology.","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144639894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Alpheus to Zooxanthellae: Probing and Protecting the Dizzying Diversity of the Ocean","authors":"Nancy Knowlton","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-071124-121335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-071124-121335","url":null,"abstract":"For over 50 years I have studied corals, coral reefs, and reef-associated animals. Although much of my work was underpinned by genetics and I have dabbled in theory, I am a natural historian at heart. The many topics I pursued reflect in part what sparked my fancy but were also greatly shaped by a series of chance events, unexpected data, and unplanned opportunities. Many of the findings and ideas for which I am now known were initially met with skepticism and rejection—success required stubborn faith in my intuitions and convictions and the support of many assistants, collaborators, mentors, and leaders. Watching the sudden loss of the reefs that dazzled me as a graduate student and the subsequent steady decline of ocean life around the world has driven my interests in conservation and communication, and in the end, perhaps surprisingly, made me focus on the positive.","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144533149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Gulf Stream: Its History and Links to Coastal Impacts and Climate Change","authors":"Tal Ezer","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-040224-120037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-040224-120037","url":null,"abstract":"The Gulf Stream (GS) is possibly the world's most widely recognized oceanic feature—from encounters by Spanish sailors in the 1500s, to Benjamin Franklin's charts in the 1700s, to early observations by Stommel and other in the 1900s. Today, modern undersea observations, satellite data, and computer models have revealed the GS's complex nature, though some challenges remain. This review provides an overview of past and recent studies of the GS, with a focus on links between the GS, extreme weather events, climate change, and coastal impacts. Examples of those links include a potential slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the GS that could increase coastal flooding, and hurricanes that disrupt the flow of the GS and cause posthurricane coastal sea level rise. A better understanding of the role of the GS in the Earth's system will help in the prediction of future climate change.","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":"246 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.3,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144503618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Annie Mercier, Steven W. Purcell, Emaline M. Montgomery, Jeff Kinch, Maria Byrne, Jean-François Hamel
{"title":"Revered and Reviled: The Plight of the Vanishing Sea Cucumbers","authors":"Annie Mercier, Steven W. Purcell, Emaline M. Montgomery, Jeff Kinch, Maria Byrne, Jean-François Hamel","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-032123-025441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-032123-025441","url":null,"abstract":"Sea cucumbers paradoxically suffer from being both highly prized and commonly disregarded. As an Asian medicine and delicacy, they command fabulous prices and are thus overfished, poached, and trafficked. As noncharismatic animals, many are understudied and inadequately protected. Despite presenting a rich diversity of life histories, members of this broad taxonomic group (class Holothuroidea) are often managed simply as “sea cucumbers” in fisheries worldwide. One cannot imagine fishes (class Pisces) being given the same universal treatment. Yet this may happen for species of sea cucumber that differ on the same fundamental level as tilapia and tuna. As more sea cucumbers reach an endangered status and wild populations become depleted to the point of collapse, critical questions arise about the relevance of established conservation and governance strategies. This article reviews the main threats faced by exploited sea cucumbers, outlines conservation and governance effectiveness, identifies gaps in knowledge, and explores management and research perspectives in the context of climate change and booming fisheries crime. We stress the perilous state of harvested sea cucumbers globally and the urgent need for action.","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142987634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thibaut Caley, Antoine Souron, Kevin T Uno, Gabriele A Macho
{"title":"Climate and Human Evolution: Insights from Marine Records.","authors":"Thibaut Caley, Antoine Souron, Kevin T Uno, Gabriele A Macho","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-032223-031306","DOIUrl":"10.1146/annurev-marine-032223-031306","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The relationship between climate and human evolution is complex, and the causal mechanisms remain unknown. Here, we review and synthesize what is currently known about climate forcings on African landscapes, focusing mainly on the last 4 million years. We use information derived from marine sediment archives and data-numerical climate model comparisons and integration. There exists a heterogeneity in pan-African hydroclimate changes, forced by a combination of orbitally paced, low-latitude fluctuations in insolation; polar ice volume changes; tropical sea surface temperature gradients linked to the Walker circulation; and possibly greenhouse gases. Pan-African vegetation changes do not follow the same pattern, which is suggestive of additional influences, such as CO<sub>2</sub> and temperature. We caution against reliance on temporal correlations between global or regional climate, environmental changes, and human evolution and briefly proffer some ideas on how pan-African climate trends could help create novel conceptual frameworks to determine the causal mechanisms of associations between climate/habitat change and hominin evolution.</p>","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":" ","pages":"23-53"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141581582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Emily F Eidam, Nina Stark, Jaap H Nienhuis, Molly Keogh, Jeff Obelcz
{"title":"Arctic Continental-Shelf Sediment Dynamics.","authors":"Emily F Eidam, Nina Stark, Jaap H Nienhuis, Molly Keogh, Jeff Obelcz","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-040423-023827","DOIUrl":"10.1146/annurev-marine-040423-023827","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sediments covering Arctic continental shelves are uniquely impacted by ice processes. Delivery of sediments is generally limited to the summer, when rivers are ice free, permafrost bluffs are thawing, and sea ice is undergoing its seasonal retreat. Once delivered to the coastal zone, sediments follow complex pathways to their final depocenters-for example, fluvial sediments may experience enhanced seaward advection in the spring due to routing under nearshore sea ice; during the open-water season, boundary-layer transport may be altered by strong stratification in the ocean due to ice melt; during the fall storm season, sediments may be entrained into sea ice through the production of anchor ice and frazil; and in the winter, large ice keels more than 20 m tall plow the seafloor (sometimes to seabed depths of 1-2 m), creating a type of physical mixing that dwarfs the decimeter-scale mixing from bioturbation observed in lower-latitude shelf systems. This review summarizes the work done on subtidal sediment dynamics over the last 50 years in Arctic shelf systems backed by soft-sediment coastlines and suggests directions for future sediment studies in a changing Arctic. Reduced sea ice, increased wave energy, and increased sediment supply from bluffs (and possibly rivers) will likely alter marine sediment dynamics in the Arctic now and into the future.</p>","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":" ","pages":"435-460"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141861750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joanna J Waniek, Helena Osterholz, Helena C Frazão
{"title":"A Global Inventory of Natural and Synthetic Estrogens in Aquatic Systems.","authors":"Joanna J Waniek, Helena Osterholz, Helena C Frazão","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-032123-025855","DOIUrl":"10.1146/annurev-marine-032123-025855","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Estrogens are a group of endocrine disruptors that are recognized as a threat to the world's ecosystems and are easily transported through aquatic systems from mainly anthropogenic sources. To illustrate this growing problem, we have compiled a global overview of measured concentrations of natural and synthetic estrogens restricted to freshwater systems (lakes, rivers, and lagoons) and marine coastal and open ocean environments, focusing on estrone (E1), 17β-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), and 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2). We found that the cumulative risk quotient is high at 65% of 400 sampled sites, highlighting that estrogen pollution is a major environmental concern. Our investigation revealed that almost no information is available on the concentration levels of E1, E2, E3, and EE2 for the open ocean areas. However, their occurrence in all systems, including open seas, suggests that estrogens are not completely degraded during transport to and within the environment and may be more persistent than previously thought.</p>","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":" ","pages":"511-536"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141539018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The State of Marine Social Science: Yesterday, Today, and into the Future.","authors":"Ana K Spalding, Emma McKinley","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-121422-015345","DOIUrl":"10.1146/annurev-marine-121422-015345","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Rapidly changing ocean conditions are resulting in changes in marine species and across entire ecosystems that, in turn, affect communities and individuals who rely on these resources for their livelihoods, culture, and sustenance. Marine social science, an emerging field that embraces diverse methods to understand human-ocean relationships, is increasingly called on to contribute to transdisciplinary ocean science that can inform the evidence-based policy and management needed to address these changes. Here, we review the state of marine social science as a growing field of study. First, we outline the history of marine social science, including the emergence of the field and the social science disciplines and community it encompasses. We then discuss current marine social science research themes as a framework to understand key ocean issues, which is followed by a commentary on the future of marine social science research.</p>","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":" ","pages":"143-165"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141581666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scott C Doney, Wiley H Wolfe, Darren C McKee, Jay G Fuhrman
{"title":"The Science, Engineering, and Validation of Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal and Storage.","authors":"Scott C Doney, Wiley H Wolfe, Darren C McKee, Jay G Fuhrman","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-040523-014702","DOIUrl":"10.1146/annurev-marine-040523-014702","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Scenarios to stabilize global climate and meet international climate agreements require rapid reductions in human carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) emissions, often augmented by substantial carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere. While some ocean-based removal techniques show potential promise as part of a broader CDR and decarbonization portfolio, no marine approach is ready yet for deployment at scale because of gaps in both scientific and engineering knowledge. Marine CDR spans a wide range of biotic and abiotic methods, with both common and technique-specific limitations. Further targeted research is needed on CDR efficacy, permanence, and additionality as well as on robust validation methods-measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification-that are essential to demonstrate the safe removal and long-term storage of CO<sub>2</sub>. Engineering studies are needed on constraints including scalability, costs, resource inputs, energy demands, and technical readiness. Research on possible co-benefits, ocean acidification effects, environmental and social impacts, and governance is also required.</p>","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":" ","pages":"55-81"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141494390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Viruses Shape Microbial Plankton Microdiversity.","authors":"Francisco Rodriguez-Valera, Christopher Bellas","doi":"10.1146/annurev-marine-040623-090847","DOIUrl":"10.1146/annurev-marine-040623-090847","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>One major conundrum of modern microbiology is the large pangenome (gene pool) present in microbes, which is much larger than those found in complex organisms such as humans. Here, we argue that this diversity of gene pools carried by different strains is maintained largely due to the control exercised by viral predation. Viruses maintain a high strain diversity through time that we describe as constant-diversity equilibrium, preventing the hoarding of resources by specific clones. Thus, viruses facilitate the release and degradation of dissolved organic matter in the ocean, which may lead to better ecosystem functioning by linking top-down to bottom-up control. By maintaining this equilibrium, viruses act as a key element of the adaptation of marine microbes to their environment and likely behave as a single evolutionary unit.</p>","PeriodicalId":55508,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Marine Science","volume":" ","pages":"561-576"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141478010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}