Sea Monster

Category: Ocean Critters

  • Marine biodiversity: The tip of the iceberg

    Who doesn’t love whales, beautiful fishes, octopuses, corals — even sharks? You know that we do here at SeaMonster. But those charismatic megafauna, as they are rather cumbersomely known in the conservation science-geek community, are only the tip of the biodiversity iceberg. Down in the jumbled rubble on the floor of the reef, among the…

  • got laid

    …the first penguin eggs of the season, that is! Look at these proud parents: I am very excited. That’s easy for me to say, because unlike these penguins I don’t have to spend the next month fasting while I diligently keep my gestating baby warm, simultaneously fending off predators. It’s going to be a long…

  • Churchill polar bears

    I arrived in Churchill Canada today, to work with Polar Bears International on their Tundra Connections project – a multimedia climate change extravaganza! We went for a drive in the PBI van and saw over a dozen polar bears in an hour – some just on the edge of town. They are congregating at the…

  • Florida: haven for illegal immigrants

    OK, so strictly speaking this has nothing to do with the Sea, except insofar as the Everglades are a semi-aquatic environment that drains at some remove into salt water. Still, it involves a large cold-blooded predator exhibiting a classic ecological interaction in a vivid and, well, somewhat appalling way. Which is good enough for me.…

  • How to take care of a crayfish

    [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/31819698[/vimeo] Guest videopost by Lena Bruno (made entirely on an ipad with imovie)

  • Do the stingray shuffle

    If you happened to be listening to BBC Radio 4 today, you might have heard me searching for  dwarf seahorses in  Tampa Bay, Florida. As I’m wading about between patches of seagrass I declare that we’re all doing the ‘stingray shuffle’. The host of the radio show, Saving Species, had a good chuckle and wondered if…

  • penguin fight!

    …complete with kicking and slapping, like a good old-fashioned high school cafeteria fight. These particular Adelie penguins make their home on Torgersen Island, near Palmer Station, and build nests out of pebbles. It’s mating season here in Antarctica – the stakes are high, and choice pebbles are something worth fighting over. I’m in Antarctica! Click…

  • Sharks and grouper in Cuba

    I shot this video on Gardens of the Queen (Jardines de la Reina) reef south of Cuba in May.  This is how reef food webs are supposed to look like; most of the biomass is in the top predators.  The diver is Abel Valivia. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/29737963[/vimeo] Go here to see more of our Cuba expedition coverage.

  • London seahorses venture west

                          There’s been another seahorse discovery in the River Thames and it seems they are heading west. A couple of years ago seahorses were found in Dagenham, a suburb in east London. It came as something of a shock to find these delicate creatures living…

  • Wallace J. Nichols – the loggerhead turtle

    Blue Marbles founder and all-round ocean good guy Wallace J. Nichols appears on this month’s Naked Oceans podcast as he faces the question “If you were a marine critter, which would you be, and why?” Here’s what he had to say… [mp3j track=”Critter of the Month on the Naked Oceans podcast@http://nakeddiscovery.com/downloads/split_podcasts/11.09.11/Naked_Oceans_11.09.11_8957.mp3″]