Living 1,000 meters underwater in Monterey Canyon are tiny critters living in the sediments of the seafloor, feeding appendages poking into the water column and their entire life cycle dependent on the quantity of “snow” raining down from the surface above. This image are the organisms found in a scoop 5 inches across and 2 [...] Read More
Coral reefs along the margin of the North East Atlantic Ocean have been devastated by bottom trawling fishing boats but researchers have found large cold water coral colonies clinging to the vertical and overhanging sides of submarine canyons 4, 429 feet (1350 meters below the surface of the Bay of Biscay. It is the first [...] Read More
As the new legislative session in Hawaii begins there are 5 new measures introduced that seek to ban outright or further regulate the marine aquarium trade in addition to at least seven aquarium-related bills re-introduced automatically from last year’s session (see post 2/2/2011). Collectively the resolutions claim “Hawaii’s indigenous and endemic aquatic species are being [...] Read More
In a new book Ichthyologists Gene Helfman, professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, and Bruce Collette, of the Division of Fishes at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, provide answers to more than 100 common and not-so-common questions, such as “How smart are fishes?” and “Do fishes feel pain?” The book also explains [...] Read More
I have some holiday gift money (some received, some left over that I didn’t spend on others) and after much thought on what to spend it on I have decided to invest it expanding my saltwater and reef keeping reference library. This decision lead me to really think about what book (or books) I feel [...] Read More
A new outbreak of Montipora White Syndrome (MWS) in Kaneohe Bay, Oʻahu is now affecting 198 colonies of Rice Corals (Montipora sp.). This outbreak comes on the heels of one in March 2010. It was estimated that over 100 colonies of rice coral died during that initial outbreak. There is grave concern that successive disease [...] Read More