SeaMonster blog
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Aussie author speaks out for marine reserves
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBoSV2W29Do&feature=youtu.be[/youtube] Tim Winton wrote one of my all-time favourite books Blue Back, a beautiful ‘contemporary fable’ about a boy who grows up in Western Australia, spending most of his time diving and swimming in the ocean. He makes friends with an enormous fish and decides to become a marine biologist so he can learn what…
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Grouper spawning aggregations
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqnkv38iTy8&feature[/youtube]
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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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Cuba journal: Day 1 – arrival in Havana
Prologue [A few weeks ago, four of us set out for the pristine reefs of Cuba on a marine biological expedition. Following is the first in a series of daily journal entries from the trip.] Our party consisted of John Bruno and Abel Valdivia of UNC Chapel Hill, myself from VIMS, and James Kealey of…
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WOW – did you see them? they must be scientists!
[This guest post comes from VIMS graduate students Lindsey Kraatz, Sam Lake, Daniel Maxey, and Stephanie Salisbury] Have you ever walked down a street and seen someone so big, so athletic looking that you instantly thought to yourself “WOW, they must be a football player, they’re huge!”? What about a high-class businessman or a runway…
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More on the Shark Conservation Act
An analysis of the act from the amazing Southern Fried Science with some good comments here. David Shiffman is a shark expert and writes the Why Sharks Matter feature on SFS, which has the best coverage of shark conservation on the web , eg, here and here. Also watch a recent talk David gave on his shark research…
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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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Overfishing 101
Lee Crocket, of the Pew Environmental Group, has two good articles in the Huff Post about overfishing. The first Why Ending Overfishing Pays Off in the Long Run The second, Why Ending Overfishing Is Good for Both Fish and Fishermen Alike
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Shark Conservation Act of 2010
Matt Rand, Director of Global Shark Conservation at Pew, talks about the Shark Conservation Act of 2010 and shark finning. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, in 2009 “a group of shark bite victims visited 25 senators and asked the lawmakers to protect sharks and support the act and end finning, where a shark’s fins are cut off and the…
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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…
Got any book recommendations?