Category: Ocean Critters
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Divers want sharks. Guides need them…
A video from StudioUp and SharkAmigos about Angel Quimis, a Dive Master at Wreck Bay Dive Center, on San Cristobal island in the Galapagos. Angel used to be a fishermen, but decided to change professions and become a diver. He makes a really important point about the real economic value of sharks and other critters people go…
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Fish – the tool user
Used to be us primates. Then the birds, and now this. Watch your back–the lower vertebrates are getting uppity: The perpetrator was an an orange-dotted tuskfish. The deed was caught on film by Giacomo Bernardi of UC Santa Cruz. From the story at Science Daily: ‘”What the movie shows is very interesting. The animal excavates sand…
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NYT covers recent shark legislation and SeaMonster!
The NYT ran two articles – here and here – recently about shark fishing and pending legislation to reduce it. I was interviewed for the article exerpted below by Elisabeth Rosenthal because of all the coverage we have had about illegal shark fishing on SeaMonster, eg, here and here. The last 12 months have seen a…
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A Whale of A Shark
In New Guinea, the world’s largest living fish share the water with local fishermen. Lucky for us, photographer Michael Aw was ready with his camera. The giant fish is hard to study in part because it is hard to find and track. By tagging individual specimens, scientists have learned that whale sharks can log thousands…
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Sharks in the Bahamas
From Nat Geo’s Photo of the Day series by Wilfried Niedermayr. The Bahamas wisely banned shark fishing earlier this year.
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Jellyfish invasion!
Well not really. This is just a cool jellyfish I got some video of in Cuba. It looked like a spaceship dropping in on the reef for a look around. There were some tiny fish living on top of it – see if you can see them near the end of the video. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/29257089[/vimeo]
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Bisexual squid
Timed to coincide with the end of DADT (not really) is the announcement of the discovery of bisexual deep sea squid. Not that that is surprising to evolutionary biologists – same sex sex is far from unique in the animal world. Still, the mechanism of the encounter is for this species a little weird, even…
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Pushing the boundaries of dolphin communication
For all of you who dream of talking to dolphins (I know you are out there!) here is a story in the NYT: Up to now, dolphins have shown themselves to be adept at responding to human prompts, with food as a reward for performing a task. “It’s rare that we ask dolphins to seek…
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The blob, deconstructed
I tell ya. You spend your days toiling away doing clever experiments, discovering new species, burning the midnight oil to prepare inspiring lectures for skeptical college students, crafting compelling grant proposals, solving the world’s environmental problems, pushing back the frontiers generally. Typical professor stuff. But what do people want to hear about? Blobs. No, not…
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The coolest animal in the world
As a marine biologist it’s my job to understand the complex workings of our mysterious ocean planet, and to wrestle with the great questions of our time. One that has been exercising me lately is this: What is the coolest animal on earth? After considerable deliberation, I’ve made my decision. And I don’t say this…