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An oceanic mystery has unfolded with the discovery of a large crab inside a plastic bottle, with an opening far too small for the crustacean to have fit through.
The seemingly impossible discovery, made by researchers with Hiroshima University, has now revealed a new dimension to the effects of pollution in our environment, and how plastic objects can have unexpected impacts on ocean creatures.
The researchers made the curious discovery off the coast of Okinawa, Japan. Upon discovering a polyethylene Shaoxing wine bottle drifting along on the ocean surface, they soon realized that the discarded plastic container was thriving with signs of life.
Most peculiar of all was the presence of a large swimming crab within the bottle, which was obviously too have made its way inside the container through its narrow opening.
“During juvenile fish surveys in offshore waters, we happened to encounter a floating plastic bottle approximately 500 meters (about 550 yards) off Sesoko Island, Okinawa, Japan, with many juvenile fish associated with it,” said Hajime Sato and Yoichi Sakai, the authors of a new study describing the discovery.
According to Sato, “a large live swimming crab, Portunus sanguinolentus, was trapped inside the bottle.”
“The crab was clearly larger than the opening of the bottle!” Sato said.
It is no secret that plastic has been a longtime contributor to pollution in Earth’s oceans, with wide-ranging impacts on oceanic environments that include ocean creatures becoming ensnared in discarded plastic bags, dishing nets, or other plastic refuse.
Sato and Sakai say the plastic bottle they collected in July 2022 had been manufactured the previous November, and had been left uncapped, allowing seawater to enter and leave. However, it was clear that the crab they discovered within it could not have made its way in as easily as the ocean water it contained.
Unraveling this oceanic mystery required an array of biological analyses, which ultimately led them to a striking conclusion: the crab had entered the bottle when it was far smaller, and remained there, subsisting on organisms and other food sources making their way into the small plastic vessel, allowing it to grow as the bottle drifted along.
Based on DNA analysis of the crab’s stomach contents, the crustacean had recently consumed juvenile fish that entered the bottle, including specimens of the rough triggerfish Canthidermis maculate. Additional analysis also revealed the presence of the sergeant major Abudefduf vaigiensis.
Evidence of algae within the bottle indicated another likely food source for the crab, while on the bottle’s exterior, goose barnacle growth revealed the likely time the bottle must have spent drifting for these oceanic hitchhikers to become attached and grow.
The most likely scenario, according to Sato and Sakai, is that the young crab entered the bottle, where it fed on juvenile fish and algae over the course of two months, eventually growing large enough that it could no longer escape.
“Plastic bottles discarded by humans can trap crabs and prevent their escape,” the authors conclude, adding that “Similar cases have already been reported from waters around Japan, suggesting that this was not an isolated accident.”
“Through this striking example, we would like readers to recognize that objects that make our lives more convenient can sometimes have unexpected effects on small marine animals,” Sato and Sakai add, “while also appreciating the remarkable vitality of the swimming crab,” the authors conclude.
The unusual discovery was detailed in a recent study, “Swimming crab in a bottle: A two‐month drift on the ocean surface while entrapped,” which appeared in the journal Ecosphere.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
An innovative new approach to building safer, more efficient small unmanned aerial vehicles is taking a cue from nature.
Anticipating worsening turbulence due to environmental concerns in the coming years, engineers studying the unmatched hovering ability of kestrels hope to reverse engineer the secrets of their exceptional flight capabilities to help assemble better future drones.
Smaller drones, known as sUAVs, have a range of different applications that include delivery services, photography, and more. However, wind conditions can often cause turbulence that either grounds them temporarily or, when caught off guard, can lead to their destruction.
Now, a team of researchers has published their findings in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, which details an ongoing collaboration between RMIT University and the University of Bristol that seeks to overcome such issues by building drones that operate more like some of nature’s best flyers.
Specifically, the nankeen kestrel is an avian species whose amazing prowess while flying during adverse conditions still confounds researchers. To unravel the secrets of their flight, the researchers used motion capture technologies made possible in RMIT’s special Industrial Wind Tunnel facility, one of the largest such facilities anywhere on the Australian continent.
“Birds don’t rely on a single response to wind gusts,” according to RMIT researcher Matt Penn. “They constantly adjust their wings and tails to stay balanced, while the natural flexibility of their feathers and joints helps absorb sudden changes in airflow.”
“They can also sense disruptions very quickly, which allows them to respond almost instantly and maintain control,” added Penn, one of the team members who co-led the studies into how birds can cope with turbulence.
According to Penn and his colleagues, these birds possess a range of unique strategies that help them overcome the dangers of turbulence, which help them navigate under conditions that would cause most sUAVs to come tumbling from the sky.
To attempt to understand what makes kestrels such adept fliers, the team created a robotic replica to mimic some of their key flight movements and characteristics, which allowed the team to unravel some of the secrets to how these incredible birds perform.
“By creating a robot replica, we were able to measure how specific movements were contributing to steadiness in flight,” said Dr Mario Martinez Groves-Raines, a researcher now with the Royal Veterinary College in London, adding that precision measurements of kestrel flight that normally could not be achieved in nature were possible using the team’s robotic version.
“We uncovered several unique techniques behind the kestrel’s impressive stability,” Groves-Raines said. “Many of these techniques have the potential to improve [the] manoeuvrability of small aircraft, which encounter similar challenges to kestrels.”
“This research shows what’s possible when engineers look to nature for solutions,” added RMIT senior researcher Associate Professor Abdulghani Mohamed.
“Our findings open new pathways for designing aircraft that can better handle turbulence.”
Going forward, the researchers say they hope to apply their findings toward the construction of novel sUAVs, which can help future drones operate safely and more efficiently, much like their agile avian forebears.
Ultimately, similar engineering in the coming years may have applications that extend well beyond just drone flight, and could also help to ensure safe operations for much larger aircraft.
The team reported their findings in a pair of new studies, ‘Bridging the Gap: A Review of Gust Mitigation in Birds and Small UAVs’, and ‘Stability and control benefits of coupled wing and tail morphing in kestrel wind-hovering flight explored using a robot replica’, both of which were published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
Scientists from Arizona State University have performed computer simulations suggesting viable methods for controlling the weather by ‘nudging” systems in their development stages with proven technologies to mitigate or even completely avoid the damage from extreme weather events.
Although the new approach, which the team termed “Weather Jiu-Jitsu,” hasn’t been tested in real-world conditions, the researchers behind the new perspective paper outlining the process said it could help humans better prepare for severe weather systems by finding ways to live with nature rather than reacting to it.
When detailing their approach, ASU researcher Qin Huang and colleagues highlight the historical damage caused by extreme weather events, including floods, heat waves, droughts, and ‘freezes.’ In addition to the loss of life, estimates suggest that climate extremes caused $417 billion in damage in 2024 alone.
The paper’s authors also note that such extreme weather events “are increasing in frequency and intensity,” a trend research suggests is strongly driven by rising global temperatures. Although there have been some efforts to mitigate the effects of extreme weather, the paper’s authors write that increasing populations and continued climate change “heighten exposure to risks that conventional infrastructure cannot fully address.”
“The growing impact of weather extremes on society highlights that traditional approaches such as dams, levees, and insurance alone may not be sufficient to address the widespread consequences of these hazards,” the authors write.
To explore alternatives, the team wondered if small adjustments to burgeoning weather systems could redirect their paths or lessen their severity. In some ways, it’s like redirecting an incoming meteor to miss the Earth or hit it at a more oblique angle to lessen the impact.
“Imagine harnessing the power of nature to help steer hurricanes away from land, redirect atmospheric rivers to spread their rain safely and evenly, or defuse extreme weather patterns like heatwaves, freezes, or prolonged droughts before they take hold,” Huang and colleagues write. “It’s a vision where we partner with Earth’s own forces to create resilience, rather than reacting to disasters. We call it Weather Jiu-Jitsu.”
When detailing how the process would work, the team explained that Weather Jiu-Jitsu takes advantage of the “chaotic sensitivity of mid-latitude atmospheric dynamics to redirect destructive weather trajectories through small, precisely timed perturbations,” using forecasting models that project system paths and intensities.
“Our thesis is that Weather Jiu-Jitsu, i.e., adaptive chaos control applied to mid-latitude atmospheric dynamics, may provide a 21st century approach to managing a range of extreme weather events by nudging the system trajectories,” they explain.
Due to the challenges and risks of testing weather-control methods in real-world conditions, the researchers developed proof-of-concept computer simulations. Critically, their approach used established models of atmospheric circulation and a large-scale artificial intelligence “deep-learning Earth system” model, Aurora, designed to predict weather at high resolution.
According to the team’s research, carefully timed seeding of clouds could have major impacts on a storm’s path and intensity, noting that “nudges applied days before peak impact can shift a hurricane track to avoid landfall on a major city, weaken the peak intensity of a blocking-driven cold extreme, and reduce atmospheric river moisture transport under favorable upstream conditions.”
When testing their weather control approach on historically extreme climate events, the results were significant. For example, the team found that small, carefully timed cloud seeding operations applied in the critical days before the peak of an extreme weather event “could have shifted the track of the 2012 Hurricane Sandy by about 300 miles to miss New York City.”
The model also indicated that a similar approach could have raised the lowest temperature extremes experienced during the 2021 Texas freeze “by about 18 degrees Fahrenheit.” Similarly, the model revealed that the approach could have reduced the damaging precipitation levels associated with the 2022 atmospheric river that caused flooding in California by about 5%.
“By leveraging the atmosphere’s inherent sensitivity, Weather Jiu-Jitsu seeks not to overpower nature, but to collaborate with it: nudging storm tracks, influencing jet stream meanders, and possibly mitigating compound extremes before they fully develop,” the authors explain.
When discussing the potential impacts of controlling the weather before serious damage can occur, the study authors noted that it would be “transformative” for the planet. They also noted that controlling the weather could offer an outsized benefit to the most vulnerable people “who do not have recourse to other protections from weather extremes.”
Still, they add that demonstrating the real-world benefits of their approach to controlling the weather while accounting for “natural variability” will require evidence of tangible outcomes. The suggestion is that these metrics would include “reductions in peak precipitation intensity, flood inundation extent, and insured economic losses.”
To achieve this goal, Huang and colleagues recommended a three-stage approach. In the near term, they suggested starting with “controlled deep-learning perturbation experiments” for historical extreme events like floods and droughts, and air them with an “observational system design.” In the medium term, Huang and colleagues suggested implementing “scaled regional pilot studies” and developing a “governance framework development with WMO and UNEP.” The final proposed phase involved limited operational pilot experiments in select locations “under formal international oversight with systematic outcome monitoring.”
“We outline an argument that control over catastrophic weather extremes is imperative to reduce exposure to catastrophic events that are not mitigated by traditional physical, financial, or social infrastructure, and explore conditions under which this may be feasible,” the authors conclude. “If such an approach were successful, it could revolutionize hydroclimatic risk mitigation.”
The study “Weather Jiu-Jitsu: Prospects for atmospheric nudging to defuse the impact of catastrophic weather extremes” was published in PLOS Water.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
Poisson spots, a light phenomenon first discovered two centuries ago, have been employed by researchers at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), to produce optical skyrmions, a stable light pattern, with major implications for cutting-edge data storage research.
Published in the journal Optica, the NTU researchers describe producing small, swirling optical skyrmions using only a laser focused on a small disk, thereby eliminating the need for complex, expensive equipment typically required to achieve the same effect.
The NTU team’s breakthrough allows optical scientists to generate, control, and study this optical light phenomenon much more easily than before.
In the search for optimal data storage and retrieval methods, scientists have been considering skyrmions as a potential next-generation solution for communication and computing applications. Earlier skyrmion work required metamaterials engineered with complex microstructures, although at great expense.
“What is remarkable is that optical skyrmions can now be generated using a simple effect where light bends around an object, without relying on expensive, complex man-made metamaterials or highly specialised techniques,” explained co-author Shen Yijie, of NTU’s School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
“This could make optical skyrmions much more accessible to researchers,” Shen continued. “By lowering the technical barrier to creating and studying them, the method opens up new possibilities for scientists to study how they could be used in future optical, materials, and computing research.”
Scientists have been interested in the Poisson spot since the early 19th century, as part of the debate over whether light travels as waves or particles. When a coherent light source—in this case, a laser—strikes a circular object, a bright point appears at the center of its shadow. That bright point is what physicists refer to as the Poisson spot.
This is created by light diffraction, the bending and spreading that occurs when it moves through an object or a small opening. Nineteenth-century experiments, which produced the Poisson spot instead of the solid darkness normally expected of a shadow, were major evidence for diffraction—the wave-like behavior of light.
Skyrmions have been studied from many angles over the years, first out of an interest in particle physics and nuclear physics; then in condensed matter physics and magnetic materials research, and now in photonics.
The new Poisson spot-based system developed by the NTU team creates four distinct patterns at the same time: spin skyrmions, Stokes skyrmions, electric-field skyrmions, and magnetic-field skyrmions. Spin describes how the light rotates, while Stokes parameters quantify the light wave’s polarization as it travels.
By possessing this “four-in-one” behavior, the researchers say these expressions could provide a valuable opportunity to study skyrmion formations, variety, and interaction within a single light field.
The NTU team’s simulations of skyrmions depict them as swirls of arrows, enabling researchers to track how light’s properties change direction as it traverses the Poisson spot. The intensity, phase, polarization, spin, electric, and magnetic field vectors of light can all be manipulated by scientists to create patterns in light called topological structures, enabling researchers to control the size, shape, and behavior of skyrmions.
“In the light spot that we created, several types of optical vectors could form topological structures at the same time,” Shen explained. “These different components of light are closely connected, but they do not necessarily form identical topological patterns.”
“Being able to produce and compare several skyrmions within one system could help researchers uncover new links between light’s electric, magnetic, and other physical properties,” Shen concluded.
Going forward, the NTU team hopes that their work will help to quite literally illuminate a new path for the future of data storage and communications technologies.
The paper, “Optical Skyrmions in Poisson Spots,” appeared in Optica on June 18, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
In a major advancement for UV energy research, scientists at Kyushu University have developed a solid material that converts visible light into high-energy UV light with 1.9% efficiency, eliminating the need for hazardous solvents.
Revealed in a recent paper published in Nature Communications, the Kyushu team created precisely controlled gaps between molecules in a solid material by attaching alkyl chains to the sp³ carbon atoms of an organic molecule.
Unlike at the macro scale, where adding two separate cups of warm water together doesn’t combine their energy levels to produce a boil, at the quantum scale, combining low-energy photons can result in a single, higher-energy photon, which is essential to the new energy conversion process.
UV light may be harsh on human skin, but its high energy density makes it valuable for a variety of applications, including air purification and resin curing in 3D printing. Although ultraviolet radiation accounts for only about 6% of the sunlight that reaches Earth’s surface, only a fraction of that can be effectively harnessed. The new material developed at Kyushu University converts ordinary visible light into ultraviolet light, potentially increasing the availability of this valuable energy source.
“What we do here is ‘add together’ the energy from two visible light photons to make one ultraviolet photon. It’s a fascinating process called photo upconversion,” explained co-author Yoichi Sasaki, Associate Professor at Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering.
Triplet-triplet annihilation is a key mechanism behind photo upconversion, a process in which two excited molecules interact to produce a single higher-energy UV photon. It begins when a donor molecule absorbs light, exciting its electrons into a high-energy triplet state. That energy is then transferred to a neighboring molecule, after which the two excited states interact and combine to generate a new ultraviolet photon.
Although scientists have understood this process for years, practical limitations have hindered its widespread use. Traditionally, triplet-triplet annihilation occurs in liquids that can evaporate and often require toxic solvents, prompting the Kyushu team to search for a solid-state alternative.
“In solids, molecules are packed tightly, and the π electron clouds—regions of high electron density hovering above and below each molecular plane—can overlap,” says Sasaki. “When that happens, triplets easily fizzle out before they ever meet. Molecules must be close enough for energy to transfer but separated enough to prevent quenching of excitons.”
The researchers found their answer in dihydroindenoindenedene (DHI), an organic semiconductor. By attaching alkyl chains, they were able to precisely control the spacing between molecules, creating an arrangement that allowed efficient energy transfer while minimizing unwanted electronic interactions.
The resulting alkyl-optimized DHI demonstrated efficient energy transfer, long-lived excited states, and strong light emission, achieving an upconversion efficiency of 1.9%.
“This means roughly two UV photons are produced for every hundred visible-light photons absorbed,” Sasaki adds. “It may sound low, but it runs on natural sunlight alone. Most solid-state materials cannot realize this even at much higher light intensity.”
With its relatively easy synthesis and low material cost, the team says their work provides a crucial new solution for harnessing UV light. A patent for the material is currently pending.
The work was the culmination of the career of pioneering upconversion researcher Nobuo Kimizuka, now Professor Emeritus at Kyushu University’s Research Center for Negative Emissions Technologies, who retired 11 days after the paper was completed.
“This discovery is the culmination of over 14 years of our research,” Kimizuka said, adding that it “marks a major milestone in photon-upconversion and molecular self-assembly research.”
The paper, “Sterically Protected π-Electron Systems for Efficient Solid-State Photon Upconversion,” appeared in Nature Communications on June 23, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
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