Melissa Gaskill

Joined: Jul 16, 2014

Independent journalist Melissa Gaskill covers science, the environment, and adventure travel for a variety of print and online publications and is the author of two books: A World-Wide Travel Guide to Sea Turtles and Best Hikes with Dogs: Texas Hill Country and Gulf Coast. She enjoys kakaying, hiking, scuba diving and anything to do with the ocean, and can be found @MelissaGaskill.

A green sea turtle swims in the waters off Maui.

Bubble curtains have the power to decrease underwater noise.

The formations that give the park its name could vanish as soon as 13 years from now.

NOAA Fisheries Service scientists disentangle a young North Atlantic right whale off the coast Florida.

Getting tangled in lines and nets can be deadly for whales—and it's a global problem.

Poachers are using scientific papers to help find their targets.

Step away from the bread.

Fat Cat via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0

We adore them too. Really. But this is a major problem.

8. You could call it an aquatic highway.

3. Spring is when a young oyster looks for love.

TX68 appeared to have a four in 1 billion chance of hitting Earth. That may sound like a long shot, but the odds were four times higher than the threshold NASA has set for potentially hazardous objects.