Category: Ocean Critters
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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…
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Herbivorous halos seen from space
Don’t mess with vegetarians – they can really leave their mark… These funky patterns were created by grazing reef critters venturing out from patch reefs in the Red Sea. Scientists spotted this phenomenon going on at the Great Barrier Reef from space using Google Earth images. Read more at Mongabay. Image downloaded from Google Earth…
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Meet the bone eating snot flower
Have a listen to deep sea biologist Greg Rouse introducing the bone eating snot flower aka the zombie worm (or Osedax, if you want to be a bit more proper and scientific about these things). Greg was part of the team that discovered these guys munching their way through whale skeletons at the bottom of Monterey…
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Beautiful sea dragons – new study counts spots
Seadragons look and sound like something that swam straight out of a book of fairytales. But they are very real. Keith Martin-Smith has been watching these beautiful creatures and taking pictures of them for 18 months in Tasmania. And he’s uncovered some of their secrets. When Tasmanian artist William Buelow Gould painted this weedy dragon in…
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Name that seamonster (and you thought British seas were boring!)
It seems it’s all the rage to get members of the public to name species that are otherwise stuck with boring scientific epithets. Latest is the UK’s Guardian who are running a name-that-species contest on their website today, including a bunch of critters than inhabit British seas. My favourite is this orange sea spider – it looks…
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Giant squid: Panda bear of the ocean?
Some people think so. Not in the sense of being cute and cuddly, of course. But in superstar potential. Think World Wildlife Fund’s iconic panda logo — who doesn’t recognize that image? A team of researchers has published a new paper in Biological Conservation arguing that ocean conservationists should take a page from WWF’s book…
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What are gelatinous plankton?
An amazing video about gelatinous plankton from MBARI. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HzFiQFFQYw&[/youtube]
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Classic film series: Barnacles tell no lies
Alright. John has broken the ice in introducing invertebrate porn to SeaMonster. So I can’t resist a shout-out out to the grandaddy of ’em all, a true classic, and a runaway favorite for best soundtrack. Ladies and gentlemen, from 1991, it’s . . Randy Olson’s Barnacles Tell No Lies! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZQE0Z2aZHE[/youtube]
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Barnacle mating (x-rated!)
Warning: the following post may contain material not appropriate for children and some adults. Barnacles have sex. And as marine biologists are fond of saying, male barnacles have the largest “boy part” relative to body size in the animal kingdom. Male marine biologists frequently attempt to increase their own genetic fitness by sharing this information with…