The survey revealed coral “hotspots,” and found that a new coral habitat suitability model could help predict where corals are likely to occur.

The exploration, the first to look for corals and sponges in the area in decades, is helping researchers develop a computer model to determine where other coral hotspots might be found.

More than 70 deepwater canyons, ranging from 330 to 11,500 feet (100 to 3,500 m) deep, exist along the Northeast's continental shelf and slope. Few are well-studied, and many are likely home to as-yet-undiscovered life forms.

The deep-sea coral and sponge habitats observed in the canyons are not like those found in shallow-water tropical reefs or deep-sea coral habitats in other regions

Lionfish have no natural predators and are taking food and habitat from native fish that are important to the local ecology and economy. Lionfish are now found in waters from North Carolina south to Florida, the Caribbean, and all Gulf of Mexico states.

This new manual, Invasive Lionfish: A Guide to Control and Management includes the best available science and practices for controlling lionfish in marine protected areas, national parks, and other conservation areas.

False killer whales in the “Hawaiʻi Insular Stock” (animals found within 76 nautical miles of the main Hawaiian Islands) are being killed in Hawaiʻi-based longlines at nearly twice the sustainable rate, contributing to a 9 per cent decline in the population each year since 1989.

Currently, the Hawaii stock is estimated at 270 whales and the Northern Gulf of Mexico stock at 1040 whales.

Documentation of lung collapse and estimation of the depth at which collapse occurs has been difficult and only obtained in a few species.

Researchers led by Birgitte McDonald at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography netted a female adult California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), anaesthetised the animal and fitted it with loggers to record oxygen pressure in its main artery and the time and depths to which it dived.