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Watching waves crash into the shoreline can be a beautiful and mesmerizing sight. And these stunning images snapped by the world's top surf photographers show the intense power the sea can have. The dramatic pictures form part of a eye-catching new book called Amazing Waves, that is aimed at surfers wanting to learn how to ride them.

A kayaking guide and a group of tourists witnessed an incredible life-and-death fight between a massive fur seal and a giant octopus in New Zealand earlier this week. The epic confrontation took place at South Bay, on New Zealand’s South Island, on June 20, the New Zealand Herald reports. Conner Stapley, a guide with Kaikoura Kayaks, saw thrashing on the surface of the water and soon realized the large male seal was attacking the octopus. Stapley and the three tourists he was accompanying got front-row seats to the gruesome battle, which was won by the hungry seal.

It is a big ocean. Until you have been far into it, it is really hard to appreciate just how big. Bringing a ship back from Japan to Hawaii, I once went ten days without seeing another ship, either by eye or radar. That is a long time to be alone in the world, especially if you are moving in a straight line and at good speed. On the other hand, you would be surprised at how crowded the ocean can get in certain places. The Strait of Malacca, for instance, divides the island of Sumatra from Malaysia. Not only...

Earlier today, MetOcean Solutions' wave buoy in the Southern Ocean recorded a whopping 19.4 m wave. Senior Oceanographer Dr Tom Durrant is thrilled. "This is one of the largest waves recorded in the Southern Hemisphere," he explains. "This is the world's southern-most wave buoy moored in the open ocean, and we are excited to put it to the test in large seas."

The world's oceans close to being starved of oxygen - and even that could lead to mass sea life extinction which could last a million years. University of Exeter scientists fear the modern ocean is 'on the edge of anoxia' - when the oceans are depleted of oxygen. [snip] Lead researcher PhD student Sarah Baker said it was now 'critical' for modern humans to limit carbon emissions to prevent this.

A stranded great white shark caused quite a stir along the California shore on Friday. Dozens of people gathered on the cliffs of Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz to watch the 8-foot shark trapped in the shallow reef. Video from CNN affiliate KSBW then captured the still-alive shark rolling in the incoming tide — bruised and bloodied. Authorities were notified in the afternoon by someone walking on the beach that people were taking pictures of the shark — including one person in the water, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

A remote part of the Indian Ocean has become, by chance, one of the best-mapped parts of the underwater world. The ocean is vast, deep, and unexplored. When Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared three years ago this week, the search brought the ocean’s vastness into sharp relief. This is how deep and dark it is three miles down. This is how unlikely you are to spot a downed airliner in 120,000 square nautical miles of open ocean. This is how much we know about the ocean floor—less than we know about the surface of Mars. As the search dragged on...

A coalition of commercial fishing groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to challenge the creation of a national monument off the coast of New England. President Barack Obama created the monument in September using executive authority under the Antiquities Act. The monument is called the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, and it is made up of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains. The creation of the monument closed the area to most commercial fishing and has been opposed by fishing groups for months. A coalition of the groups filed their lawsuit Tuesday in federal court....

One of the world’s largest ocean circulation systems may not be as stable as today’s weather models predict, according to a new study. In fact, changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — the same deep-water ocean current featured in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” — could occur quite abruptly, in geologic terms, the study says. The research appears in the Jan. 4 online edition of the journal Science Advances.

"Have a look at that dark purple blob on the left, there." With those words, scientists aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus uncovered a marine mystery: a small purple orb tucked halfway under a rock off the coast of California. Researchers are so far stumped as to what the colorful, bumpy little ball might be. Their best guess is that it might be a gastropod (a mollusk such as a snail or slug that belongs to the class Gastropoda) called a pleurobranch — and possibly a new species.

Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The above illustration shows what would happen is all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. How...

Houston ship pilot Lou Vest has a knack for snapping pics at just the right moment

Scientists from the UK’s National Oceanography Center (NOC) have set their sights on unmasking the ocean’s ‘twilight zone’ – the area between 100 and 1000 meters deep where a small amount of the sun’s light can still penetrate. This area has proved particularly troublesome for researchers to study, as scientific instruments are typically designed to either sink to the ocean floor or float on the surface. But this elusive region is teeming with ocean life that plays a key role in keeping atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO2) levels 30 percent lower than it otherwise would be, according to the scientists from NOC....

Russia formally staked its claim Tuesday to a large portion of the Arctic Ocean that includes the North Pole, even planting a flag on the floor of the ocean below the area to exercise its control. If the United Nations committee that arbitrates sea boundaries accepts Russia’s claim, the waters will be subject to Moscow’s oversight on economic matters, including fishing and oil and gas drilling, though Russia will not have full sovereignty. Under a 1982 United Nations convention, the Law of the Sea, a nation may claim an exclusive economic zone over the continental shelf abutting its shores. If...

SEATTLE (AP) — A vast bloom of toxic algae off the West Coast is denser, more widespread and deeper than scientists feared even weeks ago, according to surveyors aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel. This coastal ribbon of microscopic algae, up to 40 miles wide and 650 feet deep in places, is flourishing amid unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures. It now stretches from at least California to Alaska and has shut down lucrative fisheries. Shellfish managers on Tuesday doubled the area off Washington's coast that is closed to Dungeness crab fishing, after finding elevated levels of marine...

Workers digging a well for underground water are dwarfed by the sand dunes of the Taklimakan Desert, 13 September 2003, outside of Tazhong, in China's northwest Xinjiang province. ================================================================================================================== Chinese scientists have discovered what could be a huge hidden ocean underneath one of the driest places on earth, the South China Morning Post reported on 30 July. The Tarim basin in northwestern Xinjiang, China, is one of the driest places on Earth, but the vast amount of salt water concealed underneath could equal 10 times the water found in all five of the Great Lakes in the US. "This is...

WASHINGTON: Extra heat from greenhouse gases has been trapped in the waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans in recent years, which may explain the so-called 'pause' in global warming observed during the past decade, according to a new NASA study. Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California, found a specific layer of the Indian and Pacific oceans between 100 and 300 metres below the surface has been accumulating more heat than previously recognised. During the 20th century, as greenhouse gas concentrations increased and trapped more heat energy on Earth, global surface temperatures also increased. However, in the 21st...

A budding tropical system may pass close enough to Hawaii to bring an uptick in gusty showers and thunderstorms as well as building seas late in the week. How significant these impacts become will depend on the track, strength and size of the system. Video - Tropical System Moving Toward Hawaii While there are several areas in the Eastern and Central Pacific that bear watching this week, one system in particular southeast of Hawaii is of the greatest concern. As of Tuesday morning, the most organized system is located about 1,300 miles east-southeast of the Big Island of Hawaii and...

A new study by MIT has revealed that the quantities of nitrous oxide (N2O), otherwise known as laughing gas, being released by the world's oceans has been dramatically underestimated. Heightened levels of N2O have the potential to seriously influence the health of our planet's ozone layer, as the gas is around 300 times more potent than the more prevalent menace of carbon dioxide emissions.

Scientists Map 5,000 New Ocean Viruses In the few decades since viruses were first found in the oceans, scientists have only been able to identify a handful of species. A new survey has uncovered nearly all the rest. Photographs by Jennifer Brum, Tucson Marine Phage LabA few of the more than 5,000 viruses discovered during the Tara Oceans Expedition. By: Carl ZimmerMay 21, 2015 In March 2011, the Tara, a 36-meter schooner, sailed from Chile to Easter Island — a three-week leg of a five-year global scientific expedition. All but one of the seven scientists aboard the ship spent much...