Author: Helen Scales
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Ningaloo Reef gets World Heritage status
My 19th birthday was definitely one to remember. I spent the day swimming with whale sharks off Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia (Back then I was living in Exmouth for a few months working with a whale shark research group). At one point there were two whale sharks swimming around in circles, checking each other…
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Things you can learn from a live shark
Following on from my post on the global phenomenon that is shark-spotting, I found a couple more papers about why it’s good to keep sharks alive… and not just for tourists but for scientists too. University of Miami researchers have been looking into…
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Shark spotting – a global perspective
I still remember the first time I saw a shark. It was in Belize, on Turneffe Atoll. I’d been waiting for it for weeks, keeping my eyes peeled for fins, until finally there it was – a great big nurse shark, snoozing peacefully on the seabed, 10 meters below me. It was every bit as…
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How the Census of Marine Life got started
Last year saw the climax of a ten-year effort to discover as much as possible about life in the oceans. It was the first census of marine life but it was more than just a very big fish-counting effort. It was an amazingly ambitious endeavor which turned out a menagerie of species new to science,…
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Shark fishing in Madagascar
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/5897559[/vimeo] Here’s another movie by filmmaker John Slayer, this time with an insight into the shark fisheries of Madagascar.
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Emperor penguin takes a wrong turn
This beautiful picture is an emperor penguin that’s pitched up a long way from home. It took a wrong turn and ended up on a beach in New Zealand. It was found by local resident Christine Walker who said: “It was out of this world to see it…
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Why pufferfish puff
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkXhC7yzISI&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] Okay, so I admit this is a river story but I can only imagine similar things go on in the sea. And it just goes to show how blowing up like a beach ball is a really effective way of seeing off predators. HT to Practical Fishkeeping for the link.
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Underwater beetle – but not the insect variety
I’m not a great car fan, but I’ve been in love with the cute curves of VW beetles for a long time (and perhaps one day I’ll get one). And I’m completely in love with this new art installation by Jason de Caires Taylor. It’s called Anthropocene, it’s installed on the sea bed 8 m…
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It’s blue footed booby day – get your blue shoes on
Founded by the Galapagos Conservation Trust, today is the day to celebrate all that is brilliant about blue footed boobies. So, get out your best blue shoes (or socks) and be a booby for the day. (These are one of my many pairs of blue shoes – yes blue is my favourite colour, and yes,…
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Using Skype to explore the deep sea in realtime
There’s so much we still don’t know about what lives at the bottom of the sea. Just go look and you’ll find heaps of new species and weird things going on that you’d never have imagined. But how to make the most of scientists’ knowledge for exploring the depths? These days, you don’t need to…