Noisy ships and industry are impacting critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. For the world's smallest sea turtles, life in the ocean is getting pretty noisy. These relatively little turtles (on average they're still 75 to 100 pounds) mostly found in the Gulf of Mexico already face fishing gear accidents, seacraft collisions, plastic pollution, and habitat deterioration, and now excess noise may be harming the critically endangered and rare Kemp's ridley sea turtles (). We say because even though these sea turtles share waters with extremely busy shipping lanes, scientists know very little about their underwater hearing.

These gentle, 400-pound giants are splashing back from the brink of extinction. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. In an ocean conservation victory, green sea turtles () have been brought from the brink of extinction. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elevated the keystone species from Endangered to Least Concern . The global conservation organization moves species between categories once new data indicates changes in their population, threat levels, or habitat.

The LED lights reduced entanglements by 63 percent, according to a new study. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. For fishers working the inky dark night, it can be difficult to keep endangered or unwanted animals out of their nets. While lighted nets can reduce the bycatch of sharks and sea turtles, their batteries are short lived, expensive to replace, and not always easy to dispose of. The lights themselves are also heavy, can make the nets sag, and not easy for fishers to work with.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The smelly, brown seaweed can put a damper on a day at the beach at best and hinder baby turtles on their way to the ocean at worst. Only about one in 1,000 sea turtle hatchlings survive to adulthood, and might be added to their already long list of challenges . The new findings detailed in a study published in the explores the role that this brown seaweed plays on vulnerable sea turtle populations. "For sea turtle hatchlings, reaching the ocean is already a race against time - and survival. Now, increasingly large mats of sargassum are adding new challenges to this critical journey," study co-author and Florida Atlantic University biologist Sarah Milton, said in a statement .

Despite significant advancements in robotic locomotion, navigating diverse landscapes for tasks such as search and rescue in complex environments (e.g., sandy terrains, wet forests, and regolith-covered landscapes), as well as responding to mudslides and avalanches, remains a formidable challenge for robotic systems (1,2). While conventional wheeled and legged robots excel on solid ground, they often struggle on granular media such as sand, grains, or pebbles (3) due to the non-uniform and deformable nature of the terrain (4). Moreover, factors like high resistance to penetration, instability, and limited load-bearing capacity of granular terrains can impede the mobility of these robots, leading to issues such as entrapment or slippage (5, 6). In addressing the limitations of traditional wheeled and legged robots, flipper-based locomotion offers a promising alternative. This concept draws inspiration from animals such as penguins, with their agile underwater propulsion using flippers (7, 8), and seals, known for their maneuverability in both water and land (9). Similarly, the fin-based locomotion of mudskippers, effective in terrestrial and aquatic settings, mirrors the adaptability of flipper-based systems, offering parallel insights for robotic design (10,11). Drawing inspiration from aquatic and amphibious animals, we can equip robots with flexible and powerful flippers, enhancing adaptable propulsion and maneuverability in diverse environments, from aquatic to granular terrains (12-16). Among the various examples of flipper-based locomotion in nature, sea turtles are particu-2 Figure 1: Biological and robotic sea turtle hatchlings navigating diverse terrains: Sea turtle hatchling (left) and its robotic counterpart (right) are shown traversing dry sand, small and big rocks, wet sand, and vegetation, illustrating the bio-inspired robot's design effectiveness and its capability to adapt to complex environmental conditions.

AI technologies are being used in different areas like healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, teaching, security, etc. However, the use of artificial intelligence is not just confined to some businesses and industries. Artificial Intelligence is also being used for saving the environment, and saving sea turtles as well. There are different ways to help the environment, and the use of AI software for saving sea turtles is one such way to use AI for conservation. The use of AI technologies has helped in protecting and saving sea turtles eggs from the feral pigs in North Queensland in Australia.

For over hundreds of millions of years, sea turtles and their ancestors have swum in the vast expanses of the ocean. They have undergone a number of evolutionary changes, leading to speciation and sub-speciation. However, in the past few decades, some of the most notable forces driving the genetic variance and population decline have been global warming and anthropogenic impact ranging from large-scale poaching, collecting turtle eggs for food, besides dumping trash including plastic waste into the ocean. This leads to severe detrimental effects in the sea turtle population, driving them to extinction. This research focusses on the forces causing the decline in sea turtle population, the necessity for the global conservation efforts along with its successes and failures, followed by an in-depth analysis of the modern advances in detection and recognition of sea turtles, involving Machine Learning and Computer Vision systems, aiding the conservation efforts.

More and more, drones are becoming a normal part of our future. "When we first introduced the integration of computer science with aerospace engineering to create self aware drones it seemed like an alien concept, but over the last couple of years A.I. has advanced exponentially while drone development has expanded to many conservation studies," says Princess Aliyah Pandolfi, Executive Director of Kashmir World Foundation (KwF). These flying robots aid workers with daily tasks, and innovation keeps pushing technology in a direction to further help. However, drones don't always have to help people, drones can also be used to safeguard wildlife. Conservationists are chronically underfunded and understaffed, so the use of drones can give much-needed assistance.

Most of us think of tears as a human phenomenon, part of the complex fabric of human emotion. But they're not just for crying: All vertebrates, even reptiles and birds, have tears, which are critical for maintaining healthy eyesight. Now, a new study, published this week in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science, reveals that non-human animals' tears are not so different from our own. The chemical similarities are so great, in fact, that the composition of other species' tears--and how they're adapted to their environments--may provide insights into better treatments for human eye disease. Previously, scientists had studied closely only the tears of a handful of mammals, including humans, dogs, horses, camels, and monkeys.

Last week, the University of Oklahoma announced a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Overall, the NSF provided more than $100 million in investments to establish and support five artificial intelligence (AI) Institutes and education centers. The announcement detailed various ways the grant will help promote diversity throughout STEM, enable more students to research AI, and even protect sea turtles in southern Texas during potentially deadly meteorological events. "It doesn't get cold very often in Corpus Christi, but at times, strong cold fronts can decrease the temperature of the water in bays and lagunas very quickly," said Philippe Tissot, associate research professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, one of the institute's partnering organizations, in a press release. "Up to thousands of sea turtles can rise to the surface during these events, where ships can run over them."