This time of year, Shedd Aquarium biologist Melissa Youngquist can be found in the woods, sloshing through ponds in search of signs of amphibian life.

The Great Lakes was named a global “Hope Spot,” joining the Galapagos Islands, the Great Barrier Reef and the Bering Sea as a place identified as critical to the health of the ocean.

With a NASCAR street race set to take place outside their front doors, Chicago’s lakefront museums have had to shift gears and adjust operations in advance of the big event July 1-2.

Researchers at Northwestern University found that people who live directly next to Lake Michigan or along one of the major interstate highways running through Chicago are regularly exposed to more air pollution than residents in the rest of the city.

Researchers from Shedd Aquarium and Chicago-based Urban Rivers teamed with counterparts in Boston and Baltimore and confirmed that floating wetlands can improve water quality and provide vital habitat.

If you like a little salsa with your fish, Ritmo del Mar at the Shedd Aquarium might be the event for you. The adults-only evening will combine Latino music and cuisine with the aquatic life and cityscapes of the Shedd.

“This is providing the means for us to collaborate not only within the Chicagoland area but to really make a difference in biodiversity hot spots across the globe,” said Chuck Knapp, vice president of conservation research at Shedd Aquarium.

The area around Bubbly Creek was once a wetland, until the channel became choked first with sewage and then animal waste from the Union Stockyards. Now the wetlands, with a twist, are making a comeback.

Shedd researcher Karen Murchie has been singing the praises of suckers for years in service of drawing more attention to the overlooked fish. Now the broader scientific community is taking note. 

Nearly a dozen baby Blanding’s turtles — a state-listed endangered species — were recently released into the swampy waters of a Cook County forest preserve wetland.

We all knew that Granddad, the Shedd Aquarium’s long-lived Australian lungfish, was an old-timer. Now, five years after he shuffled off to the big fish tank in the sky, Granddad’s true age has been revealed.

Members of the SailGP international yacht racing league have converged on Chicago for an upcoming competition, but before taking their catamarans onto Lake Michigan this weekend, the athletes piled into canoes and helped install native aquatic plants along the Chicago River's banks.

The Shedd Aquarium recently welcomed a group of lumpsuckers, a fish that’s weird in so many ways, it’s hard to know where to start.

Anchored a mile off Navy Pier, Chuoy the Buoy fills a Chicago-sized gap in shoreline monitoring. Swimmers, boaters, anglers, researchers and meteorologists alike will benefit from data collected close to the city’s lakefront.   

A trio of measures introduced at Wednesday’s Chicago City Council meeting would allocate a total of $2.5 million toward habitat and open space improvement projects.

Back in the 1980s, the number of fish species found in the Chicago River could be counted on a single hand. Today, that number is up to 60 species, an increase in diversity that can be directly attributed to a decrease in wastewater pollutants, according to a new study from the Shedd Aquarium.