Category: Environment
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Decapitated ecosystems come back to haunt us
What happens when you cut off something’s head? In the case of an ecosystem, it doesn’t die, but transforms into something very different — and sometimes scary. A zombie, if you like. Decapitation is essentially what humans are doing to food webs throughout the world’s islands, continents, and oceans. Meaning that we’re cutting off the…
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What a marine massacre looks like
Yesterday I led a team of eight scientists and students from UNC, USFQ and the Galapagos Science Center that documented the catch aboard a vessel caught illegally long lining in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. We worked alongside a great team from the Galapagos National Park and were also assisted by the Ecuadorian Coast Guard. We identified, sexed, and measured every individual (there…
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Underwater as Outer Space
NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and a bucketful of researchers (including yours truly) rolled into a tiny town in British Columbia this week, with a 52-foot “Mobile Mission Control Center” and two submarines in tow. Our subs are helping us study a pair of lakes – in particular, some wild-looking carbonate structures in them. But…
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Breaking news: 357 dead sharks found on illegal fishing vessel in Galapagos National Park
Check back on SeaMonster or go here for updates and related posts I’m in the conference room of the Galapagos Science Center overlooking the harbor of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno on the island of San Cristobal in the Galapagos. There is a lot of commotion around a new addition to the habors fishing fleet: a rundown small ship from…
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Coral reefs get the CSI treatment
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6TqPxxvWvc[/youtube] It’s a shame Sherlock Holmes never learned to Scuba dive because he could have put his sleuthing skills towards bringing in coral reef villains. Pioneers in the field of underwater forensic investigation are the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) and the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) who are working together on the Coral Reef CSI project.…
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Florida’s tiresome tire reef
Go for a dive a mile offshore from downtown Fort Lauderdale and you might find an enormous pile of old car tires, and not much else. The original idea in the 1970s was to transform them into an artificial reef – creating homes for all…
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A Window Into Early Earth
Even though it is permanently covered in a layer of ice, Antarctica’s Lake Untersee is home to a vibrant population of photosynthetic microbes. These little guys form the incredible conical structures you see in that photo above… aren’t they surreal? The cones – called stromatolites – are actually built by layers upon layers of bacteria…
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SeaMonster love
Mark Derewicz has a nice piece at Endeavors about his rediscovery of the ocean – thanks to his son’s passion for it – and some very kind words about SeaMontser: I’m falling back in love with the ocean, and I have my four-year-old son to thank. When I was a kid, every summer my parents took…
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Breaking news: Shark fishing banned in the Bahamas!
The BBC is reporting that shark fishing has been banned in the Bahamas! About time. My lab is working on the role of sharks and other top predators in coral reef food webs and one of the few places in the Caribbean that we can go to work with sharks is the Bahamas. This ban went…
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Ove Hoegh-Guldberg on the state of the GBR
Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, has responded to Bob Carter’s recent characterization of the Australia’s Great Barrier Reef being in “fine fettle”, i.e., good health. What’s the current state of the GBR (i.e. is it really “in fine fettle”)? Despite being one of the best managed marine ecosystems…