Climate Change Means Fish Are Moving Faster Than Fishing Rules, Pinsky Study Says

Lobster boats anchored off Cutler, Maine. Photo: Malin Pinsky/Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Researchers say out-of-date regulatory system hasn’t kept up with the realities of global warming and shifting fish populations. Climate change is forcing fish species to shift their habitats faster than the world’s system for allocating fish stocks, exacerbating international fisheries conflicts, according to a study led by a Rutgers University–New Brunswick researcher. The study, published online in the journal Science today, showed for the first time that new fisheries …

NASA Funds Scientists’ Pursuit of the Origins of Life

Iron- and sulfur-containing minerals found on the early Earth (greigite, left, is one example) share a remarkably similar molecular structure with metals found in modern proteins (ferredoxin, right, is one example). Did the first proteins at the dawn of life on Earth interact directly with rocks to promote catalysis of life? Image: Professor Vikas Nanda/Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers

Rutgers-led ENIGMA team examines whether “protein nanomachines” in our cells arose before life on Earth, other planets. What are the origins of life on Earth and possibly elsewhere? Did “protein nanomachines” evolve here before life began to catalyze and support the development of living things? Could the same thing have happened on Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Neptune, and …

Plastic Pollution Plagues Raritan and Passaic Rivers

Beth Ravit, co-director of the Rutgers Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability, holds a jar filled with plastics collected along the Raritan River in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Photo: Nick Romanenko/Rutgers University

Rutgers-led studies find microplastics abound in freshwater environments. Generations of Rutgers students and alumni have sung lovingly about the “Banks of the Old Raritan,” but the 90-mile-long waterway is awash in microplastic pollutants, a problem that plagues many freshwaters in New Jersey. In a recent study, researchers from Rutgers University–New Brunswick and other institutions found high levels of tiny pieces of …

Max Haggblom Appointed Guest Distinguished Professor at GDEST

Max Haggblom

Distinguished professor and chair, Department of Biochemistry & Microbiology – (SEBS) – Rutgers, Max Häggblom has been appointed Guest Distinguished Professor at the Guangdong Institute of Eco-environmental Science & Technology (GDEST) for 2018. He will continue his collaboration on projects on the biogeochemical cycling of metals in soils and environmental pollution control, working with Weimin Sun (a former Postdoc in his …

Peter Strom Wins NJWEA Wastewater Hall of Fame Award

Professor Peter Strom, Department of Environmental Sciences and Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.

Peter Strom was awarded the New Jersey Water Environment Association (NJWEA) Wastewater Hall of Fame Award at the NJWEA Conference earlier this month. The award recognizes people from NJWEA who have demonstrated dedication and competitive achievement in the wastewater field. Those that enter the NJWEA Hall of Fame are remarkable, dedicated members that have made an extraordinary contribution to the …

Climate Change to Shift Many Fish Species North, Disrupting Fisheries, Study Finds

Malin Pinsky

Adhering to Paris Accord could minimize damage, scientists say.  Climate change will force hundreds of ocean fish and invertebrate species, including some of the most economically important to the United States, to move northward, disrupting fisheries in the United States and Canada, a Rutgers University-led study reports. The study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, covers the North American continental …

Earth’s Orbital Changes have Influenced Climate, Life Forms for at Least 215 Million Years

Rutgers University–New Brunswick Professor Dennis Kent with part of a 1,700-foot-long rock core through the Chinle Formation in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The background includes boxed archives of cores from the Newark basin that were compared with the Arizona core. Photo Credit: Nick Romanenko/Rutgers University

Gravity of Jupiter and Venus elongates Earth’s orbit every 405,000 years, Rutgers-led study confirms. Every 405,000 years, gravitational tugs from Jupiter and Venus slightly elongate Earth’s orbit, an amazingly consistent pattern that has influenced our planet’s climate for at least 215 million years and allows scientists to more precisely date geological events like the spread of dinosaurs, according to a …

Solar Powered Sea Slugs Shed Light on Search for Perpetual Green Energy

The sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, steals millions of green-colored plastids, which are like tiny solar panels, from algae. Photo: Karen N. Pelletreau/University of Maine

Near-shore animal becomes plant-like after pilfering tiny solar panels and storing them in its gut. In an amazing achievement akin to adding solar panels to your body, a Northeast sea slug sucks raw materials from algae to provide its lifetime supply of solar-powered energy, according to a study by Rutgers University–New Brunswick and other scientists. “It’s a remarkable feat because …

C2R2 Graduate Student Johnny Quispe Selected by ESA as a Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award Recipient

Johnny J. Quispe, doctoral candidate in the Graduate Program in Ecology and Evolution in the School of Graduate Studies, has been selected by the Ecological Society of America (ESA) as a Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award Recipient (GSPA). This award provided graduate students with the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. for policy experience and training. They learned …

DMCS and Rutgers Recreation Team up to Provide Undergrads with Scientific Diving Instruction

Rutgers' scientific diving course is one of the few such classes open to undergraduates in the United States. Photo: Cameron Bowman/Rutgers University

Scientific diving is essential to Rutgers’ – and its students’ – worldwide leadership in oceanography. This class is helping to open doors for our undergraduates. Breathing through their Scuba gear, Ailey Sheehan and her classmates dropped a new and improved lionfish trap – a hinged net that will help scientists study that invasive fish in the Caribbean – into the …