Sea Monster

Tag: biodiversity

  • Cuba journal: Top predators on the reef

    Happy World Oceans Day everyone! Wow, it’s hard to compete with Helen’s whale shark story for a close encounter with an awesome sea creature! Since it’s still fresh in my mind, I’ll go with an experience from our recent trip to Cuba. At the risk of giving you a case of elasmobranch overload, this features…

  • Communing with ocean life makes you kinder

    We’ve all heard about the dark side of violent video games. But is there a bright side to virtual reality?  Personally I’m not a big fan of video games (I appear to be in the minority among modern Americans) but I was intrigued by a recent study that addressed this question using the Wii game…

  • Cuba journal: Goliath

    I’ve been around the block a few times, and dove on quite a few reefs over the years. On most reefs  in the Caribbean — make that the West Atlantic generally — you’d be hard pressed to see a fish big enough to feed 2 or 3 people. But our last week spent in the…

  • When Scientists were Poets. And artists.

    Ah, those were the days. Back when scientists were not just technicians tickling keyboards and gingerly thumbing pipettes filled with tiny volumes of nucleic acids — but the Poets of Nature. Like the ancient druids, our forebears in the profession were often consummate Renaissance Men (indeed, they were mostly men in those benighted times, though…

  • Forum on fish, food, and people

    Editor’s note: The following discussion, which more than one participant called “extraordinary”, began after  Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington published an op-ed “Let us eat fish” in the New York Times on 14 April 2011, and  John Bruno of the University of North Carolina (and my Co-Editor at SeaMonster) replied here at SeaMonster.…

  • Whales converge on the Big Apple

    At least seven species of whales — including the rare and endangered Atlantic Right Whale and the world’s largest animal, the Blue Whale —  have been recorded singing at an “open mike night” (actually many days and nights) in the waters of New York harbor and Long Island Sound by researchers from Cornell University’s Bioacoustics…

  • Causing explosions crustaceanologically

    Marine biologists generally aim to publish research in fancy-pants journals read by other science geeks. And that’s all good. But what a thrill to see our favorite critters — from bone-eating worms to eviscerating sea cucumbers to narwhals — in a book of poetry! I’ve just received this wonderful new book of poems for all…

  • Smile! It’s a beautiful day on the reef.

    No it’s not the Joker, nor one of the Insane Clown Posse. This is the actual face of a real live parrotfish, up close and personal. These abundant herbivores use their toothy beak to munch algae from the reef, thus keeping the substrate clean for baby corals to get a foothold, but also eroding the…

  • Social shrimp: Discovery of new species and a new family tree

    Of all the wondrous creatures of the sea, only a small handful of inconspicuous shrimps have risen to the pinnacle of social life shared by the ants and honeybees with their large, organized, and cooperative colonies, the condition known as “eusociality”. Because of their retiring habits—making their homes in tunnels within living sponges—and the devilish…

  • A letter from your mother on Earth Day

    Hello to all of my human inhabitants, This is your mother, the Earth. Yes that’s right, the planet you live on. I thought I’d get in touch with a message in honor of my special day (thank you, BTW, I never miss an excuse for a good party), and the SeaMonster was kind enough to…