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Highlights

 
Invited Paper contributes to Food Chain Understanding

Invited Paper contributes to Food Chain Understanding

Fatty acids are essential to life, and almost every animal needs to get many of them from their diet. As such, they are great biomarkers to figure out who is eating whom in animal populations. In a new thematic issue released...
Summer Science Registration Is Open

Summer Science Registration Is Open

UT Summer Science is an exciting, inquiry-based learning experience for students entering 3rd through 8th grade.  Working alongside marine scientists from the University of Texas, students will experience science outside of the classroom. By the end of the program, students will...
Microplastic & Nurdle Literature

Microplastic & Nurdle Literature

Recently there has been increasing concerns about microplastics and nurdles on Texas and Gulf of Mexico beaches. There are two categories of microplastics: 1) primary microplastics, which are manufactured as microbeads, capsules, fibers or pellets (nurdles), and 2) secondary microplastics that...
Skinny Seagrass May Increase Hurricane Risk

Skinny Seagrass May Increase Hurricane Risk

As the saying goes ‘you can never be too rich or too thin’ unless of course, you’re a seagrass blade in Texas. In Texas, the climax species such as Thalassia, or turtle grass, are two times narrower than their relatives in...
Check out our Newsletter

Check out our Newsletter

Happy Holidays! Click the image below to read the 4th Quarter edition of Marine Science News. 
'Tis the Season for Science

'Tis the Season for Science

Shout out to students who love science! Today's Port Aransas Science Fair is a culmination of research and experimentation by 4th and 5th graders from H.G. Olsen Elementary School.  Each student designed, executed, and analyzed the results of their own science...
It’s a SWaMP Thing

It’s a SWaMP Thing

With the wind whipping through her hair, donning polarized sunglasses and a bucket full of probes, research associate, Kelley Savage is the opposite of who you’d imagine when you picture the slimy green, frightening, superhero Swamp Thing. Unlikely as it may...
Beware of the Dead Zone; it’s sucking the oxygen out of the ocean

Beware of the Dead Zone; it’s sucking the oxygen out of the ocean

Deep beneath the waves of northern Gulf of Mexico is an area so dark and devoid of oxygen that few creatures can survive. It’s the Dead Zone and every summer it grows to cover on average of over 5,000 square miles...
2020 Discovery Fellowship Application Open

2020 Discovery Fellowship Application Open

This highly selective doctoral studies fellowship is open to recent graduates with a bachelor or master of science degree. The fellowship will support an exceptional student with full tuition, competitive stipend, fringe benefits, and subsidized residential housing for five years. The...
Finding the Bad Actors in Fish Poisoning

Finding the Bad Actors in Fish Poisoning

Peering into an image of lots of brightly colored lines that look like a barcode, Dr. Deana Erdner, an associate professor the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, is on the hunt. She’s stalking dinoflagellates of the genus Gambierdiscus, to see...
Viruses in mangrove muck may be important influencer of methane emission

Viruses in mangrove muck may be important influencer of methane emission

PORT ARANSAS - Viruses aren’t just in the germy smear a kindergartener can leave on the refrigerator door; they are all around us and infect every living creature. In fact, viruses may play a big role in the amount of methane...
A Hawaiian Cruise for Camera Enthusiast

A Hawaiian Cruise for Camera Enthusiast

  PORT ARANSAS - This summer, biological oceanographer Tracy Villareal cashed in some frequent flyer miles and caught a flight to hop onboard a cruise off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. The cruise had all the promise of relaxation: calm seas,...
Fingerprinting Oil

Fingerprinting Oil

Oil is no stranger to the Gulf of Mexico and recently beachgoers have come face to face with sometimes-sticky oil remnants or tar balls. Oil can be released in gulf waters from naturally occurring seeps, or through accidents associated with man-made...
Back to School Shopping; when there’s a lab coat involved

Back to School Shopping; when there’s a lab coat involved

This week students around the country head back to the classroom. The graduate students at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute are no less immune to the headache of back to school shopping, but instead of erasers and rulers, their...
Ageless Learning by the Sea

Ageless Learning by the Sea

Quick, grandmother grab the end of the seine net. That phrase and many other unusual shouts were just a few that could be overheard during an Intergenerational Road Scholar Program hosted June 9-14th at The University of Texas Marine Science Institute....
Going to Bat for the Oceans

Going to Bat for the Oceans

June 8th was World Oceans Day and what better way to celebrate than to clean up the beach. The University of Texas Marine Science Institute and the Mission-Aransas Reserve partnered up with the Corpus Christi Hooks and the Texas Coastal Bend...
Staff Service Awards

Staff Service Awards

We'd like to wish a heart-felt congratulations to several of our staff for their service to the University. They are all extraordinarily dedicated employees who work hard to provide a valuable service to a wide variety of customers (supervisor, other faculty...
Earth Day is for the Birds

Earth Day is for the Birds

Since the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, this day has sparked hundreds of thousands of efforts to raise awareness about the nature that surrounds us. On today’s Earth Day, the Mission-Aransas Reserve at The University of Texas Marine Science Institute...
Ready, Set, Go - Global Nature Challenge

Ready, Set, Go - Global Nature Challenge

Citizen scientists have the opportunity to compete to see who can submit the most observations about nature. This is the fourth annual City Nature Challenge, and this year the communities of Port Aransas and Mustang Island can compete with counterparts over...
CCA Lends a Hand

CCA Lends a Hand

A group of 20 do-gooders from the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA), Austin Chapter were onsite at the Wetlands Education Center this past Friday. The volunteer team was part of the CCA-Austin’s effort to serve and support local communities. “We try to...