SeaMonster blog
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Shrimp farming – not cool
A great piece on shrimp farming from environment 360 by Marc Gunther: Carlos Perez, a well-to-do businessman, has been farming shrimp in Ecuador since 1979. He has seen the industry boom: Ecuador exported about $1.2 billion worth of shrimp last year, and its shrimp farmers employ about 102,000 people. He has also watched as shrimp farms have…
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Lionfish: the true pirates of the Caribbean
This is a guest post by Serena Hackerott, an undergraduate in my lab. In the photo below, Serena is teaching me how to extract the tiny otoliths from a lionfish she captured. Lionfish are the first marine fish to successfully invade the Caribbean. Lionfish are “piscivores”, or predatory fish that eat other fish, native to the…
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Finding fish in the wrong place
This gorgeous woodcut print is the work of Jenny Pope, one of my favourite printmakers. Lots of her art is available to buy on her website and she’s promised me she will soon be blogging about lionfish. But first, here are my thoughts on seeing my first lionfish in the wrong place. Before I arrived…
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Extinction happens
This is why we think hunting tiger sharks and other top predators and large sea critter is not cool. They can and do so easily disappear forever. The excerpt below about the extinction of Stellers Sea Cow on Bering island in the mid-18th century is from The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts. I…
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Sharks mean business!
Every day that a shark stays alive and available for divers to catch a glimpse of, it raises an average $73 in tourism revenue. That ads up to ~ $25,000 a year and well over a million greenbacks over a life time (Gallagher and Hammerschlag 2011). [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdFe3vs5FN4&[/youtube] [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/27134578[/vimeo]
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Shark killing contests alive and well in the US
Star Island shark tournament by the numbers: Two days of fishing 156 boats ~ 1000 hunters $540,000 in prize money 94 dead sharks biggest dead shark: 422 lb thresher Meanwhile, down in Alabama at the “Outcast Mega Shark Tournament” the catch of the day was a 949 lb, 14 ft tiger shark: …
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Shark week with Kelly Slater
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/47538086[/vimeo]
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Five things I didn’t know about the ocean
My review of Professor Callum Roberts’ new book The Ocean of Life has just come out in Toronto’s Globe and Mail. This is the follow up to his first book An unnatural history of the sea (it was one of the Five Books I picked for the Browser) – it dives into the history of how we’ve stripped…
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Blue footed boobies!
From Nat Geo and the amazing blog NatureAfield by Heidi Smith. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NAKg46s1DA&[/youtube]
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Climate change: lines of evidence
A great video from the National Academy of Sciences about climate change and the science that helps us understand it and attribute global warming to greenhouse gas emissions. Great for teaching! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIUN5ziSfNc&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
Got any book recommendations?