Category: Ocean Critters
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Seahorse with dangerous underwear
We’re celebrating our first year of Seamonstering and I want to get things started with my very first post from April 16th last year, featuring one of my favourite seahorse illustrations. A seahorse with underpants decorated in hand grenades? Another with a shi shi hairdo? Well no. These cartoon seahorses are in fact festooned in…
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Glowing transgenic sushi
It feels a like a flash back to the heyday of black lights and lava lamps, but cutting edge transgenic technology has paved the way to fluorescent sushi. This stuff isn’t available in supermarkets (yet), but all you need is a few pet zebra fish, genetically tweaked to contain the Green Fluorescent Protein GFP (or as…
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And for my next trick… inflatable corals
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtr1R1jpfb0[/youtube] Pim Bongaerts from the University of Queensland came up with the idea of bringing a solitary mushroom coral into the lab, covering it in sand, and filming it trying to escape. Here it is, puffing its way out. Ingenious and beautiful. Question: does it make whooppee cushion noises as it does it? (they don’t mention…
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Brian & the Southern Right Whale
I recently chatted with award-winning underwater photojournalist Brian Skerry for the latest edition of the Naked Oceans podcast (which looks at Art and the Oceans). His pictures have appeared in National Geographic Magazine since 1998 and having spent more than 10,000 hours underwater he had heaps of amazing stories and excellent advice to share. But with only…
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Sand bubbler crabs eat sand, make art
I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent many hours on tropical beaches gazing at the crazy patterns of tiny sand footballs left behind by crabs. Here’s a neat up-close video on them doing it. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6449515[/vimeo] Big HT to Treehugger – head on over there for…
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Cuttlefish are cool
Yes they are. But don’t just take my word for it. Click & listen below to seahorse expert Heather Mason Jones from the University of Tampa making her pick of the oceans inhabitants for “Critter of the Month” in the latest episode of the Naked Oceans podcast. Cuttlefish are cool – Naked Oceans
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No-one likes a mucky reef
Joshua Drew from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, picks his top ocean dweller for the “Critter of the Month” in the recent, Christmas episode of the Naked Oceans podcast. Joshua Drew on cleaner wrasse – Naked Oceans
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The story of seahorses – what happened next? (Final part)
In the third and final installment of my series of posts continuing the story of seahorses following the publication of my book Poseidon’s Steed, there is one more advance in the world of seahorse science I want to mention – followed by the answer to a question I get asked quite a bit: what happened to the…
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The story of seahorses – what happened next? (Part 2)
Continuing my series of posts this week that picks up the story of seahorses where my book, Poseidon’s Steed left off, here is an update on the international trade in seahorses: Illegal seahorse trade rages on A study by Vincent Nijman showed that between 1998-2007, around 16 million seahorses were exported from Southeast Asia (along with millions…
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The story of seahorses – what happened next? (Part 1) Spoiler alert!
Writing a book about seahorses gave me a wonderful opportunity to shine some light into the obscure lives of these fascinating little fish. But of course, the thing about books (at least the old fashioned, paper kind) is that they fix events at a certain point in time when in reality the story carries on. In…