
WRITER Tara Haelle
For years, few scientists have devoted much time to studying Arctic diatoms, single-celled algae enclosed within a wall of glass-like silica. These bizarre organisms, after all, appeared frozen in the […]


The Marine Science Institute’s monthly column, Science and the SeaTM, is an informative and entertaining article that explains many interesting features of the marine environment and the creatures that live there. Science and the SeaTM articles appear monthly in one of Texas’ most widely read fishing magazines, Texas Saltwater Fishing, the Port Aransas South Jetty newspaper, the Flour Bluff News, the Island Moon newspaper, and the Padre Island & Port A Living magazine. Our article archive is available also on our website.

WRITER Tara Haelle
For years, few scientists have devoted much time to studying Arctic diatoms, single-celled algae enclosed within a wall of glass-like silica. These bizarre organisms, after all, appeared frozen in the […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
Dental offices and beauty salons follow strict hygiene and sanitation guidelines to prevent the spread of germs among people coming in for a teeth cleaning or eyebrow wax. But the […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
Often, scientific research confirms what scientists already suspected, but other times, science reveals a twist that no one saw coming. That’s the kind of study that recently showed how much […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
Sometimes we consider a species rare because it truly is, whether because it’s endangered or simply because it naturally has sparse populations. But other times, a species may only appear […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
Sound travels farther in water than it does in the air, and acoustics are an important aspect of daily life for marine creatures ranging from whales to coral. In addition […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
It’s been 100 years since people discovered the existence of the colossal squid, known by its scientific name Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, when a scientist found pieces of two huge squids in […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
Have you ever heard of “mosquito ringtones”? They’re phone ringtones that teens can easily hear but the frequency is too high for adults to hear, since humans naturally start losing the […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
One of the most famous symbiotic relationships in the animal kingdom is the clownfish and its anemone. Symbiosis is the close association between two different species where at least one […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
If you thought dating other humans was complicated, wait until you hear about the complex courtship behaviors of wild leopard seals. These apex predators are the second largest Antarctic seal […]

WRITER Tara Haelle
It’s harder to imagine a more hostile environment on Earth than the ocean’s hadal zone. Named after Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, the hadal zone is the deepest […]