Tag: coral reefs
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Seafood mislabeling in Belize
This post was co-authored with Courtney Cox, a PhD student in my lab at UNC, studying fisheries management and reef resilience in Belize. Our paper on seafood mislabeling in Belize is out in Conservation Letters (here). This paper is the fist of several from our project designed to evaluate the effectiveness of Belize’s national ban on…
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What to do when the oceans rise
Last week I published my first book review at PLoS Biology with UNC undergraduate Lauren-Kristine Pryzant. We read and wrote about Tim McClanahan and Josh Cinner’s excellent new book, “Adapting to a Changing Environment: Confronting the Consequences of Climate Change“. We tried to bring the lessons in the book from Africa home by discussing climate…
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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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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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Goodbye to Belize
[The final post in our Belize series from the New York Times Scientist at Work blog]: Tuesday, July 10 As the days tick away, so do our last hopes of finding social shrimp. We came to Carrie Bow to collect two types of eusocial shrimp, each living in colonies with a single queen and dozens…
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Demise of reefs in Belize? Coda
[I was happy to receive a lot of comments on our most recent blog post from the field in the New York Times. Since the space available to respond to those comments on the NYT site is limited, I’ve elected to do so here.] Thanks to all for your comments. I have always considered myself…
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Reef Reminiscences: The way coral reefs were
What was the world like back in the day? Are the fantastic stories all just legends? With the notable exception of Jacques Cousteau, few people were taking pictures of the undersea world a few decades ago, not only because the technology was more difficult and expensive and less available, but also because we tend to…
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Belize field log 2012: Witness to a murder
[The fourth installment, and I’ll confess my favorite, in our New York Times “Scientist at Work” field log.] Sunday, July 8 As the sun breaks the horizon, I sit in a wooden chair at the edge of the backreef, an eye on the weather horizon, gratefully sipping the first strong coffee and gauging what the…
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Belize field log 3: Journey to the center of the reef
[The third installment in our New York Times “Scientist at Work” field log.] Collecting shrimp is a complicated business. I am not as seasoned as my colleagues, but I quickly learn how tedious it can be. After taking a photograph and estimating the volume of a sponge, we have to locate every shrimp inside. Synalpheus…
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Belize field log 2: Social breakdown on the reef
[The second installment in our New York Times “Scientist at Work” field log.] Wednesday, July 4 Our hunt yesterday produced a good haul of shrimp species, but, alas, none of the social ones we’re searching for. I worked with my former Ph.D. student, Tripp McDonald, long into the night identifying the shrimp. Though little known…