Shipwrecks feel magical. Lying silently in the deep, these alluring vessels attract the attention of scuba divers around the world. Sometimes eerie, always intriguing, wrecks allow divers to interact with moments from history. Unfortunately, wreck diving has many risks that might not be apparent to untrained divers. Learning to manage these risks is one of the main reasons that rigorous training is required to dive shipwrecks safely.

A cartwheeling spider, a bird-like dinosaur and a fish that wriggles around on the sea floor to create a circular nesting site are among the species identified as the Top 10 New Species for 2015. Two animals -- a frog that gives birth to tadpoles and a wasp that uses dead ants to protect its nest -- are unusual because of their parenting practices. Also on the list are an animal that might surpass the new species distinction to be an entirely new phylum, a 9-inch walking stick and a photogenic sea slug. Rounding out the top 10 are a coral plant described as endangered almost as soon as it was discovered and a red-and-green plant used during Christmas celebrations in Mexico.

With measured precision remotely operated vehicles D2 and Seirios are lowered into the deep blue waters of the Caribbean. Ready for the unknown, they begin the descent through the water column to the seafloor hundreds of meters below.

February 18 marked the beginning of NOAA’s first expedition for this year – Océano Profundo: Caribbean Trenches and Seamounts – with the express purpose of exploring little to unknown regions around Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. (For more information visit my previous article Exploring the Ocean with the Okeanos Explorer or visit OceanExplorer.noaa.gov). The expedition was divided into three parts where one and two consisted of 24 hour mapping with the Okeanos’ multibeam sonar around the EEZ of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The third leg, just recently concluded, scheduled 20 dives with D2 and Seirios in order to capture visual footage and explore deep water habitats. During this leg days on the Okeanos were full, exploring by day and mapping at night.

With the help of the Catlin Seaview Survey, Google has added more underwater locations to its “Street View“.

Google put the first marine images up in September 2012, with dives in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii. Now it covers 16 more countries, including the Galapagos, Monaco, Bermuda and Mexico. It really is a fantastic way to gauge potential dive sites before visiting a country. And it isn’t just for fun. The seaview survey will make ocean change plainly visible for all to see.

Cold fins, warm heart? Strange but true, scientists say.

In a discovery that defies conventional biology, a big fish that lives deep in the Pacific Ocean has been found to be warm blooded, like humans, other mammals and birds.

Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) determined that unlike other fish, opah generate heat as they swim and distribute the warmth throughout their entire disc-shaped bodies by special blood vessels. Special "counter-current heat exchangers" in their gills minimize heat loss, allowing the deepwater predators to keep their bodies several degrees above the water temperature 250 feet down.