photo: Mr. T in DC via flickr A bit of a sustainable seafood smackdown is ongoing: In a new opinion piece in the journal Nature scientists from the University of British Columbia, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and other institutions have called out the Marine Stewardship Council for not doing a good job at marine stewardship. As is to be expected, MSC strongly disagrees. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Brian Gratwicke Does the intelligence of an animal factor in on your decision whether or not to eat them? Many people consider pigs to be incredibly intelligent, but they're still mostly factory farmed in often abhorrent conditions. Scientists are pushing for dolphins and other cetaceans to have non-human person status, complete with inalienable rights. But they're still hunted every year as a fish stock, as the documentary The Cove has highlighted. And what about cephalopods, a.k.a. octopuses and squid, which are known to be highly intelligent -- so...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via UCSD What happens inside a whale's head when it encounters sound? The mammals have highly developed capabilities of detecting and processing sound waves, something that helps them communicate over long distances, but which also spell their demise in an ocean filled with intense, loud human-generated noise. We've seen research that shows scientists looking into how too-loud noise can damage and even kill whales, but now r...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: eutrophication&hypoxia's photostream, Flickr Natural human optimism leads one to hope that hazardous chemicals wastes discarded by humans are broken down in the natural environment, until they are once again harmless. When scientists concern themselves with this process, it is usually to study the extent to which toxic chemicals harm the environment before they are finally degraded, or to measure the impacts of the degradation process, such as Read the full story on TreeHugger

What oil plume? Scientists have reported that the miles-long deep sea oil plume which resulted from the BP oil spill has essentially vanished, apparently eaten by microbes previously unknown to science. Also this week, an argument published by the Guardian calls for the FDA to lighten up on the regulatory process for approving genetically engineered animals; researchers have created a new kind of concrete that's made out of waste products from coal plants; and wildlife photographer Paolo Torchio discovered a mysterious "bearded" antelope in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve. This news and more in our photo roundup of the most p...Read the full story on TreeHugger