Hundreds of Pacific walruses came ashore to a barrier island on Alaska's northwest coast, the earliest appearance of the animals in a phenomenon tied to climate warming and diminished Arctic Ocean sea ice.

The colourful Portuguese man-of-war is more commonly seen in warmer waters. Their painful stings can be fatal to some.

Shawn Steward of Oxnard, Calif., had a once-in-a-lifetime catch last week in the Channel Islands. Steward caught a 90-pound opah, which is very rare to this area.

State park rangers and a contractor have buried a gray whale carcass that washed up on the beach at Sand Lake Recreation Area south of Tillamook.

The warm periods are linked with storms that penetrate into the Arctic from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and bring the temperature up by as much as 30 C in the middle of winter.

“Our shipping monitors clocked another cruise ship going at excessive speed near Pond Inlet,” posted Baffinland Iron Mines on their Twitter account Sept. 22. While the maximum speed was agreed at nine knots in some passages used by the cruise ships, one ship in particular, The Hanseatic from Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, was clocked at almost 16 knots, nearly twice the velocity. It’s the second time this month the cruise line has been clocked in excess of the speed limit agreement.

Herschel Island has seen a lot of people come and go. The Inuvialuit have used the place, known as Qikiqtaruk in Inuvialuktun, for at least 1,000 years.

Aerial shots of what appeared to be remnants of an oil spill in the Essequibo River has turned out to be huge beds of sargassum seaweed which is now a

‘I’ve never seen that before in my life’

Karen Dunmall, a biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said pink salmon normally prefer warmer waters than the Arctic has been able to provide. But with the Arctic warming at up to three times the rate of the rest of the world, its waters are becoming more approachable for newcomers like this species.

Discovery prompts fear that melting ice will allow more plastic to be released back into the oceans. Traces of 17 different types of plastic were found in frozen seawater.

For years, researchers thought an infectious pathogen was behind sea star wasting disease. A new study found that multiple species of bacteria deplete oxygen from the water effectively suffocating sea stars. These microbes thrive when there are high levels of organic matter in warm water and create the low oxygen conditions.

A humpback whale spotted off Bremer Bay late last week is believed to be the earliest sighting ever of the species on WA’s south coast. Humpback whales are usually spotted of WA's south coast in late March or early April. The whale's early appearance has prompted concerns from scientists about the lack of food stocks in Antarctica.

Scientists are at a loss to explain one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.