Short Science, November 30, 2014

It seemed like an open-and-shut case - a British beach mystery that a 10-year-old detective with some time on his hands could figure out. For the better part of a decade, hundreds of harbour porpoises washed up along the southeastern coastline of the North Sea. Their lifeless bodies were gashed with horrible injuries. The slash marks pointed some apex predator or maybe a ship's propeller. Instead, many of the deaths should be laid at the flippered feet of the grey seal, says a team of Dutch biologists. DNA found in bite wounds implicate grey seals, suggesting they may also pose a risk to humans. AFP

Measuring the thickness of Antarctic sea ice, an important gauge of environmental conditions in a time of global climate change, has proven to be a tricky task. But an underwater robot has given a nice solution. Satellite measurements can be skewed by snow, and some ice floes are simply too difficult to reach by ship, even icebreakers, to make direct measurements by drilling into them. Reuters