Ultraviolet rays don't just bronze sunseekers on the…

Ultraviolet rays don't just bronze sunseekers on the beach. Underwater, they can give hammerhead sharks a suntan. And worse—give fish skin cancer. So says a study in the journal PLOS ONE. Researchers caught 136 coral trout in the southern Great Barrier Reef. Fifteen percent of them had black lesions on their skin: melanoma. Pathogens, toxic 1 or UV rays can all cause melanoma. But DNA tests ruled out the presence of pathogens. And the fish were caught in the pristine waters of a marine sanctuary, so 2 wasn't to blame. Turns out, the trouts' cancer cells looked just like those of fish who'd been hit with UV radiation in the lab. So the researchers 3 that sunshine was the culprit. Makes sense, they say, because these trout live near the world's biggest hole in the ozone layer— meaning more 4 to UV rays. Another recent study, this one in the journal Science, says the severe storms 5 by climate change could punch new holes in the ozone layer, upping our dose of radiation on land and at sea. And that's no fish story.