Sea Monster

Tag: coral reefs

  • All Reef Creatures Great and Small

    In a follow up to our interview with Prof. Charles Sheppard about his latest expedition to the Chagos Archipelago, here is PhD researcher Catherine Head in an exclusive Seamonster guest post giving us a glimpse of the incredible hidden word of coral reef cryptofauna. Chagos for me is what it’s all about, it represents why…

  • Fungia up close

                          I took this close up photo of the coral Fungia last week off the central Pacific island of Raiatea while on an amazing cruise on the SSV Robert C Seamans with SEA Semester.  I used  the incredible new Olympus Tough camera.  Those are tentacles you can see protruding from the…

  • Mark Hixon’s lionfish Tedx

    This is a talk by Marine Ecologist and reef fish ecology expert Dr Mark Hixon of OSU.  I love it!  Mark and I apparently have a lot in common.  I love my job too.  But the special knowledge it gives you – the painful and needless loss of the ocean’s biodiversity – can be a…

  • Lifestyles of the species-rich and famous

    Below is a guest post (her first!) by Dr Emily Darling, about one of the 17 chapters of her PhD dissertation: The ongoing loss of coral cover and flattening of reef architecture is leading to dramatic and drastic changes for coral reef ecosystems. But not all reef-building corals are affected in the same way. We…

  • coral reefs of Fiji – amazing

    relax and enjoy [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne0oSoQIbQI&[/youtube]  

  • Drew Harvell’s Palmyra diary

    My friend, colleague and post doc mentor Dr Drew Harvell of Cornell Uni is on Palmyra Atoll, a tiny coral island in the central Pacific.  Drew is leading a coral disease workshop and doing field work on this very pristine coral reef.  I’m jealous!  She is blogging about her work and experiences here.  See more of…

  • Opinons on the GBR coralapocalypse

    There is no shortage of opinions about what the GBR coral loss reported Monday (De’ath et al 2012 in PNAS) means and what we should do about it.  Below is a guest post by William Precht.  Bill is based in south Florida and recently left the NOAA program to go back to consulting, primarily on coral…

  • Exploring Bloody Bay wall

    A winner from the Blue Oceans Film Festival. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRjUt4AH7Lk&[/youtube] Compass Light Productions- David Conover, Mish Morgenstern, Peter Neill Exec Prod. A neuroscientist, marine geologist, and an underwater photographer each pursue their own questions at Bloody Bay Wall on Little Cayman Island.  We see how the diversity of reef life provides practical solutions to diverse human…

  • The GBR is losing coral even faster than assumed

    The GBR is losing coral even faster than assumed

    Elizabeth Selig and I took a lot of heat when we published a paper in 2007 (Bruno and Selig at PLoS One) in which we found the state of western Pacific reefs in general and the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in particular was much worse than assumed: The results of our analysis of 6001 quantitative…

  • The coral jungle – from The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau

    One thing that inspired me to become a coral reef biologist is this episode of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuUNVISSpKA&[/youtube] This episode first aired in the spring of 1968 when I was only 3, so I must have seen a rerun.  Like practically every marine scientist of my generation, waiting for “The Undersea…