Sea Monster

Tag: coral reefs

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Coral Spawn: The Movie

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnDJvhgPn8o[/youtube]

  • More of the Chagos underwater world

    [vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/17274137[/vimeo] Here’s another movie clip from filmmaker Jon Slayer that catches a glimpse of the Chagos Islands’ beautiful coral reefs. There’s also some great top-side footage of hermit crabs, sea birds, and a moray eel in a shallow tidal pool catching, wrestling with, and swallowing a crab.

  • Tropical islands disappearing as a result of coral mining and sea level rise

    Decades of indiscriminate collection of corals — including by researchers — from the Indian Ocean’s Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve may have resulted in two low-lying islands slipping beneath the waves.  The loss of islands and associated reefs has been exacerbated by rising sea levels and industrial pollution, and poses threats not only to the…

  • A coral reef time machine

    Great video about work by Dr. Karl Castillo (a post doc in my lab) and my UNC colleague Dr. Justin Ries on the effects of ocean temperature and acidification on coral growth and survival. You can read more about their research here and here. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvy7hFhiMZU[/youtube]

  • 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…

  • Can marine reserves limit coral loss?

    My former PhD student (now at Conservation International) Dr. Elizabeth Selig and I recently published a paper in PLoS One (Selig and Bruno 2010) on the effectiveness of marine protected areas in preventing coral loss. The study indicates that MPAs can, on average, reduce coral losses and in some cases promote coral growth. This is…

  • An antidote to gloom ‘n’ doom: Ocean chill

    The Blue Planet set to music. Lean back . . . [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jema_dTA8wM[/youtube]