Man's body is recovered overnight and a crocodile is shot dead after fatal attack, police say

A 57-year-old fisherman was attacked and killed by a crocodile in front of his wife while they were fishing in the Northern Territory.

The man was fishing off a bank on the Adelaide River when the attack happened, Northern Territory police say.

His body was recovered overnight on Tuesday and the crocodile believed to be responsible was shot dead.

Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service still investigating but will not rule out putting animals down

Dingoes which attacked a man on Fraser Island could be captured and put down.

A 25-year-old man suffered injuries to his head, legs and buttocks when he was attacked by three dingoes while on the beach at 10.30pm on Monday. The man was about 100m from the township of Happy Valley, which is fenced off from dingoes, and managed to escape and get to safety.

Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) is investigating the attack. On Wednesday it did not rule out capturing and destroying the dingoes.

Two dingoes which mauled a three-year-old girl on the island in 2011 were destroyed, although there were questions about the circumstances of the attack.

A fish die-off leaves chum salmon carcasses along the shore of the Kobuk River on Sunday, August 17, 2014, about 10 miles above Kiana in northwest Alaska.

For the last week, from Shugnak all the way down to Kotzebue, people are reporting dead fish washed up on the banks of Northwest Alaska's Kobuk River in astonishing numbers. The fish appear to have been healthy and unspawned. Some have mysterious white welts dotting their backs.

Carolyn Ballot, mayor of Ambler, said when she first heard about the fish, she suspected bears were pulling salmon out of the water, which is nothing unusual. But the huge number of fish washing ashore quickly became concerning. She wondered whether warm weather in the region was causing the die-off.

"There is something going on," she said.

The explanation may be somewhat mundane, though: The Alaska Department of Fish and Game suspects the die-off is related to this year's extremely strong chum salmon run, to the point that the fish are practically clogging the waterway.

Californians are seeing more than just garbage patches in the ocean - they're also seeing an unusual amount of sharks, according to KTLA 5.

Locals are reporting a noticeable spike in shark sightings off the coast of Southern California this summer. Experts believe a variety of factors are contributing to the increased number of sightings, including clearer water causing more visibility.

But the spike isn't just about more people looking for sharks. There actually have been more sharks, and experts say it's because of the weather.

The makings of a mass-level extinction event in the world's oceans appear disturbingly imminent, as marine species after marine species washes ashore on the Pacific West Coast. Ailing seals, dead fish, missing pelicans and much more are being reported in the media as scientists struggle to figure out what, exactly, is causing entire marine ecosystems to suffer and die, seemingly inexplicably.

Much of the carnage is being reported in California, where baby sea lions in distress have been washing ashore in record numbers. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that, for the second year in a row, more baby sea lions than ever are having trouble surviving after being abandoned by their mothers, the direct result of a lack of food.

According to reports, a record 367 California sea lions were admitted to the Marine Mammal Center near San Francisco between January and May, which is nearly five times the normal average. In Southern California, more than 600 sea lions, or twice the normal average, have been taken in so far this year. This is on top of the 1,600 that were treated last year.

"Sea lions are living and feeding on the same resource[s] as humans are," stated Shawn Johnson, director of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center, to WSJ. "If they are starting to have problems, that shows there could be a problem with the ocean."

A little further north, orcas and beluga whales are suffering similar fates. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says widespread pollution from oil and gas drilling has caused populations of both species to dwindle significantly throughout the past several decades.

Also suffering along the Alaskan coast are Alaskan ice seals, more than 250 of which have developed a mystery disease that often results in death. Experts have postulated that toxic algal growth along coastal waters may be to blame, and this a result of excess sun exposure due to continued ozone depletion.

"In all, the federal government has declared 38 'unusual mortality events' involving marine mammal species since 2003," wrote Jim Carlton for WSJ. "That is nearly twice the number of events recorded from 1991--when the animals were put under greater federal protection--to 2002."

Over on the other side of the country, hundreds of manatees and about 80 bottlenose dolphins were discovered stranded in Florida's Indian River Lagoon between 2012 and 2013. And in South Carolina in 2013, as many as 40,000 menhaden fish, which measure between six and eight inches in length, washed up dead between DeBordieu Beach and Pawleys Island, just one week after thousands of the same type of fish washed up along North Carolina's Masonboro Island.

One year prior, thousands of dead starfish washed up along the same beaches.

The body of a two-headed dolphin has washed up on a beach in Turkey this week.

The conjoined corpse was seen floating onto the shore in Izmir on Turkey's west coast on Monday by sports teacher Tugrul Metin.

The dead dolphin was believed to be a one-year-old calf measuring just 3.2ft in length.

It had two heads but merged to share just one tail.

Mr Metin, 39, said: 'I noticed the dolphin in the sea and watched as it washed on to the beach.

A Florida 9-year old knew just what to do when he had a too-close-for comfort encounter with a nine-foot, 400-pound alligator.

"I just immediately hit it and I let it go a little so I pry its jaw open," James Barney Jr. said.

Sitting in his hospital bed with only minor cuts, Barney said some quick thinking saved his life when he was attacked by an alligator Thursday in Saint Cloud, Fla.

"First I thought someone was just playing with me and I didn't know what happened. I reached down to go grab it and I felt its jaw, I felt its teeth," Barney said.

Two new species of extremely poisonous jellyfish have been found off the coast of northwest Australia. Irukandji jellyfish are normally the size of a fingernail, but one of the specimens is the length of an arm.

The smaller of the two is the Malo bella, which was found near Exmouth. The larger one, the Keesingia gigas, was caught in a fishing net off Shark Bay further to the south.

The discovery - which was made by Lisa-Ann Gershwin, a CSIRO scientist and director of Marine Stinger Advisory Services - brings the number of Irukandji species found globally to 16, nine of which are in Australian waters. Until now, there were only two species of jellyfish found off Western Australia.

The Keesingia gigas is the length of an arm and can cause the potentially fatal Irunkandji syndrome - resulting in pain, vomiting, nausea, and in extreme cases stroke and heart failure.

Gershwin said the existence of the larger Keesingia gigas was previously known, but until now it had never been officially classified.

"It is absolutely humungous - the body is about 30 to 50 centimeters tall and that's not including the tentacles. It's an absolute whopper of a jellyfish," she told ABC Australia.

Millions of jellyfish-like sea creatures are invading west coast beaches stretching from Oregon to California.

LiveScience reports these "by-the-wind-sailors" typically live in the open ocean but when warm water and storms draw them near the shore, the wind blows them onto beaches where they die in stinking piles.

The scientific name for these creatures is Velella velella, and they are not jellyfish; they are free-floating hydrozoans. They do not sting humans but experts say you should not touch your face or eyes after handling them.

Researchers say that each apparent individual Velella velella is in fact a hydroid colony, and most are less than about 7 centimeters long.

"They sit at the surface of the ocean and have little sails and their movement depends on which way the wind is blowing," Richard Brodeur, a fishery biologist at NOAA Fisheries' Newport, Oregon, research station told LiveScience.

A swimming trip in Schwechat, Lower Austria took a nasty turn for a family when they were attacked by a vicious beaver.

Presumably because it was defending its territory or its young, the beaver attacked a woman and her two daughters, along with their pet dog, whilst they were paddling in the Schwechat river.

Even when they ran out of the river and onto dry land it pursued them and bit their dog, taking a chunk of fur.

The family were enjoying the cool water when they saw what they assumed was a small tree trunk floating past. But as their dog sniffed it, it turned out to be an angry beaver, who immediately went into attack mode.

The mother took her children out of the water - but the beaver followed them onto dry land and thumped its tail on the ground in a threatening manner.