About 50 baleen whales live in an underwater canyon off the Florida Panhandle, making them the only resident baleen whales in the Gulf of Mexico, have long been classified as Bryde's whales. Several other baleen species visit the Gulf, but this group is the only one known to live there year-round and new tests have now shown that these whales are unlike any other of their species. Their genetic makeup makes them different enough to be considered a distinct subspecies of Bryde's — or a new species altogether.

The first symptom is white lesions that appear on the surface of the starfish and spread rapidly, followed by decay of tissue around the lesions. Eventually, the sea stars' bodies begin to break down; Limbs pull away from the sea stars' bodies and organs exude through their skin and the starfish dies within a few days.

In a paper in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, microbiologist Ian Hewson of Cornell University and colleagues present the results of genomic analysis of the virus prevalent in symptomatic sea stars.

Coral reefs make up some of the most biologically diverse habitats on Earth and face many threats such as coastal pollution, dredging and disease. However, some of their most widespread threats involve warming ocean temperatures, solar radiation and increased ocean acidification. It is from these threats that corals are finding refuge under the red mangroves.

Although humpbacks migrate between their polar feeding grounds and the warmer waters where they breed, the exact routes they take have remained a mystery. By studying the types of scars on humpback whales and how recently they were made, researchers from the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute can now determine routes the whales took before arriving in their breeding grounds off the west coast of South Africa, Namibia and Gabon.