Tag: biodiversity
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Underwater “Paper Parks”?
From this week’s Nature: “The easiest way to create a nature reserve from a car park is simply to declare it as such. The land is then designated as protected, and counts towards the relevant government’s targets to set aside a certain amount of its territory from development. That is a ridiculous example, of course,…
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The mass extinction of scientists who study species
A great article in Wired by Dr. Craig McClain of Deep Sea News fame. Craig is the Assistant Director of Science for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, a deep sea ecologist and widely regarded as the first (and most successful) ocean blogger. We are currently in a biodiversity crisis. A quarter of all mammals face extinction,…
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Silky seabugs
As a long-time afficianado of the amphipod crustaceans I’ve come to terms with being alone in a crowd, having as it were a more rarified taste in biophilia than the average whale-hugger lover of sea life. Sure, they’re submicroscopic, sometimes pesky (crawling into your ears while working underwater, for example), and often devilishly difficult to…
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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…
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Meet Bernard the Gurnard & vote for UK marine reserves
Another cute save-the-ocean animation: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk3neAZv23Q&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] From the UK Wildlife Trusts Petition Fish campaign and the creative folks at archipelago.
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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.…
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Why do oceans matter?
Here’s why: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qojYm8JHKfE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] From One World One Ocean
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A price tag on Paradise?
How much is nature worth? We can put a price tag on a fish (say, $350,000 for a prime condition bluefin tuna in Tokyo), or even on a salt marsh if it provides a breakwater out front of the house that reduces one’s flood insurance premium. But what about the value of Nature per se–the…
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The Dead Sea isn’t so dead
Life as we know it doesn’t exactly thrive in the Dead Sea. No fish have evolved to put up with the notoriously salty waters. But weird new forms of microbial life have been discovered inhabiting a network of massive craters at the bottom of the Dead Sea. A diverse mixture of sun-worshipping and sulphide-munching bacteria have…
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Rough seas for National Ocean Policy
Last summer, to the excitement of ocean policy wonks and yawns by pretty much everyone else, President Obama unveiled a new National Ocean Policy. The basic idea was to cut through the impenetrable tangle of regulations governing marine activities like fishing, shipping, oil drilling, and conservation that have sprouted up willy-nilly in the various agencies…