#ocean sciences

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The Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM) is the flagship conference for the ocean sciences and the larger ocean-connected community.

Every two years, OSM unifies the oceans community to share findings, connect scientists from around the world, and advance the impact of science.

OSM26 is co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), and The Oceanography Society (TOS).

22-27 February 2026

📍Glasgow, Scotland

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Millions of tonnes of nanoplastics are polluting the ocean

Marine plastic litter tends to grab headlines, with images of suffocating seabirds or bottles washing up along coastlines. Increasingly, researchers have been finding tiny microplastic fragments across all environments, from the most densely populated cities to pristine mountaintops, as well as in human tissue including the brain and placenta. A study published today1 reveals yet another hidden…

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Nanoplastic concentrations across the North Atlantic

Sampling The samples were collected aboard RV Pelagia during cruise 64PE480 in November 2020. Samples were taken at nine stations along a transect through the temperate to subtropical North Atlantic and at three stations positioned on the European continental shelf (Fig. 1). To enable cross-comparison between different stations, three depths (10 m and 1,000 m water depths and 30 m above the…

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Is a monster web of ocean currents headed for collapse? The race is on to find out

Eight hundred kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, the research vessel Kronprins Haakon drifts quietly through a thick pack of ice floes. The sky and sea are bathed in purple morning light as Alexandra Stephens, a PhD student at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada, pilots a drone over the frosty expanse, hunting for heat. Although it doesn’t look like it, the Arctic waters are balmy…

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Trace elements in the ocean attributed to a surprising source

Nature, Published online: 11 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01681-0 The finding that the sea floor is a source of low-abundance elements in the ocean up-ends conventional views of marine biogeochemistry. Source link

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How I’m bringing the voices of local fishers into ocean policies

In Senegal, the sound of the waves shapes daily life. From our canoes, small-scale fishers like me supply local markets with a steady source of food, in a context in which more than 282 million Africans face severe food insecurity. Globally, small-scale fishing supports about 500 million people. We do not seek to dominate the seas. We seek to coexist. Small-scale fishing, with its low ecological…

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Why we should protect the high seas from all extraction, forever

International waters, also known as the high seas, make up 61% of the ocean and cover 43% of Earth’s surface — amounting to two-thirds of the biosphere by volume. They have been exploited since the seventeenth century for whales, and from the mid-twentieth century for fish, sharks and squid, depleting wildlife. Now, climate change is reducing the productivity of the high seas through warming and…

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European Union’s strict conservation targets should guide global marine policy

The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity aims to conserve 30% of Earth’s lands and waters by 2030. But many marine protected areas are poorly managed and allow harmful practices such as destructive fishing (E. P. Pike et al. Conserv. Lett. 17, e13020; 2024). This creates ‘paper parks’ — areas that are protected on paper but lack real ecological…