 |  |
|
120 Gallons Network and Partner Sites: www.reefiki.com | www.reefs.org | www.120gallons.net | www.advancedaquarist.com Help support the podcast and blog if you enjoy it! It might not cost you anything. Click here to learn how. Your purchases through clicking the above advertisers directly support 120 Gallons |
Please take a moment to complete our survey |
Only closer inspection reveals the dolphin's rear end is entirely prosthetic.
Winter, an Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin, lost her own tail after being caught in a harsh crab trap.
She was found at just two-months old in 2006, floating in distress off the coast of Florida.
Read Full Article: Winter the dolphin gets bionic tail - Telegraph
For most people, the idea of concrete blocks replacing coral reefs might seem far-fetched. But for a group of marine scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, it is just what the doctor ordered. Sturdy enough to last, yet porous enough to be implanted with corals, concrete is the basis for an innovative technique that may help save coral reefs in the Red Sea from further destruction from overzealous divers.
According to leading experts, more than 25 percent of the world's coral reefs have already been destroyed. The causes are varied, and they include pollution, global warming and irresponsible fishing, but another large factor is uncontrolled and careless tourism. And perhaps more alarming is the fact that although coral bleaching (the most obvious sign of sick and dying coral) has been happening since at least the turn of the last century, most of the dramatic damage has occurred over the last 20 years.
The Red Sea has a reputation for being one of the most spectacular places to dive, and Eilat attracts thousands of vacationers a year, most of whom come to dive and snorkel in the coral reefs. But the very attraction they come to enjoy is suffering from the intensive tourism, and more and more of it is disappearing every year.
ver the past decades there have been many stories in the media about the plight of the Great Barrier Reef.
In the '60s and '70s we all heard that the Great Barrier Reef was about to be consumed by that voracious predator, the Crown of Thorns Starfish.
In the '80s and '90s, the principal threats turned out to be sediment runoff, to nutrients, over fishing and general habitat destruction.
For me, an ancient marine scientist who has spent thousands of hours diving on the Great Barrier Reef these past 40 years, each of these threats has been of concern. But nothing comes close to the devastation waiting in the wings at the moment.
Very likely you have a feeling that dire predictions about anything almost always turn out to be exaggerations. This view is understandable. Once I also would have thought it ridiculous to imagine that the Great Barrier Reef might have a limited future as a consequence of human activity. It would have seemed preposterous that the greatest coral reef on Earth, the biggest structure made by life on Earth, could be mortally threatened by any present or foreseeable change.
Read Full Article: The plight of the Great Barrier Reef - On Line Opinion - 7/5/2008
He drives them like cattle along a fenceline of billowing, fine-mesh net—butterflyfish, damsels, yellow tangs. Slowly pumping his fins through the current, fisherman Neil Dart glides over the reef, pushing the small school into a corner of his carefully laid net. As they dart against the silvery barrier, he scoops them up one by one with a hand net, gently transferring them to small baskets for their long journey to the strange world above.
Fifty feet overhead, Dart’s compact aluminum boat, the Hawaiian Glacier, bobs in the Kona surge. On board, two big tanks hum with circulating sea water, hundreds of neat compartments inside waiting to be filled with the day’s catch, like a watery jewelry box.
Read Full Article: Full Tanks and Empty Reefs - Honolulu Magazine - September 2006 - Hawaii
The coral reefs in the tropical western Pacific are at the brink of one of the most spectacular and significant nights in their annual life cycle.
By the light of April's full moon on Sunday or, quite likely a night or two after, corals will be mating en masse.
Along the length of the island archipelago that makes up the Republic of Palau, millions of coral colonies will simultaneously release billion upon billion of eggs and sperm into the dark waters.
An hour or so after sunset, each spawning coral will discharge showers of sex cells, packaged in orange and pink blobs.
They will rise to the surface in such huge numbers that they may form oily slicks metres long.
If the sea conditions are right, spawn slicks can coalesce to be large enough to be visible from space.
Depressing need
Once on the surface, the packages burst open, liberating eggs and sperm for fertilisation.
Countless free-swimming coral larvae then develop and three or four days later, a few will have survived long enough to make it to the sea bed.
Read Full Article: BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Catching corals' spectacular moment
What does a coral reef look like 50 years after being nuked? Not so bad, it seems. Coconuts growing on Bikini Atoll haven't fared so well, however.
Three islands of Bikini Atoll were vapourised by the Bravo hydrogen bomb in 1954, which shook islands 200 kilometres away. Instead of finding a bare underwater moonscape, ecologists who have dived it have given the 2-kilometre-wide crater a clean bill of health.
"It was fascinating – I’ve never seen corals growing like trees outside of the Marshall Islands," says Zoe Richards of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Australia.
Richards and colleagues report a thriving ecosystem of 183 species of coral, some of which were 8 metres high. They estimate that the diversity of species represents about 65% of what was present before the atomic tests.
The ecologists think the nearby Rongelap Atoll is seeding the Bikini Atoll, and the lack of human disturbance is helping its recovery. Although the ambient radiation is low, people have remained at bay.
Read Full Article: Nuked coral reef bounces back - earth - 14 April 2008 - New Scientist Environment
Much to the excitement of marine ecologists, new coral reefs have been discovered in Shanyuan Bay (杉原灣) off Taitung, a local biodiversity researcher reported on Monday.
"The Shanyuan Bay coral reefs span a broad area of water and contain a wide diversity of coral strains," said Chen Chao-lun (陳昭倫), an associate researcher at Academia Sinica's Research Center for Biodiversity.
"Coral communities can be found in waters 1km off the coastline at a depth of 8m to 10m," Chen said, adding that the coral reef located closest to the coast is only 50m away from the shore.
Chen surveyed waters in Shanyuan Bay earlier this month as part of a study of coral reef habitats in eastern coastal regions.
He recorded 110 coral strains, roughly one-third the total number of species documented in Taiwanese waters. Among them, 94 were stone corals, 11 were soft corals and five were polyp corals.
"The number indicates that Shanyuan Bay's coral diversity is similar to that around Green Island," Chen said.
Shanyuan Bay, just off the coast from Taitung City, also boasts a dense and diverse cornularia coral community in which a wealth of fish, shrimp and shell species live, a phenomenon not seen in the Kenting and Green Island areas, Chen said.
A mature, well-developed polyp coral community also exists in 3m to 5m-deep waters in the bay, another rarity for Taiwan, Chen said.
Most encouraging was that a stem of Oulophyllia bennetthae coral was discovered in the bay, Chen said, adding that it marked the first time that the coral strain normally seen in the Indian Ocean had been recorded in Taiwanese waters.
"Although this coral species is spread over a wide area, the frequency of its appearance is very low," Chen said, adding that the existence of the 1m high, 60cm-wide coral underscores the diversity to be found in Taiwan's coral communities.
Chen's study coincides with a UN global coral reefs survey, as this year has been designated the International Year of Reefs to enhance public awareness of the importance of protecting coral reefs and their ecosystems.
New Coral Reef Discovered Taipei Times - archives
The development of coral reefs is independent of coral species diversity, scientists from UK and USA have found.
In a study published in a recent issue of the journal Science, Kenneth Johnson, Jeremy Jackson and Ann Budd compared changes in coral diversity and reef development within the tropical western Atlantic over the past 28 million years using new and published fossil and stratigraphic data.
Even though coral diversity on Indo-Pacific reefs is 10 times higher than on Caribbean reefs, the rates of carbonate production and reef growth are similar.
Read Full Article: Reef development independent of coral diversity | Practical Fishkeeping magazine
Scientists have confirmed that reef specialists suffer more when corals decline by studying damselfishes (pomacentrids) in the Great Barrier Reef.
The study by Shaun Wilson, Scott Burgess, Alistair Cheal, Mike Emslie, Rebecca Fisher, Ian Miller, Nicholas Polunin and Hugh Sweatman examined habitat use and specialization of pomacentrids, and determined which species are susceptible to declines in coral cover due to disturbance induced by crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci).
Read Full Article: Reef specialists decline when corals suffer | Practical Fishkeeping magazine
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Unusually large waves churned by an Atlantic storm system have littered the beaches of Barbados with broken coral in what could be a sign of damage to reefs across the region, a scientist said Sunday.
Read Full Article: Giant waves break up Caribbean coral - Yahoo! News
ScienceDaily (Mar. 21, 2008) — While rabbits continue to ravage Australia’s native landscapes, rabbit fish may help save large areas of the Great Barrier Reef from destruction.
The reason, say scientists, is the same in both cases – both rabbits and rabbit fish are efficient herbivores, capable of stripping an area of vegetation. However, in the case of the Reef, it is the vegetation that is the problem – and the rabbit fish, the answer.
“When a coral reef is weakened or damaged through human activity such as climate change or pollution or by a natural disaster like a cyclone, the coral will usually recover provided it is not choked by fast-growing marine algae,” explains Professor David Bellwood of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University
March 19, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. is developing software to help scientists study the ocean to learn more about undersea volcanoes, weather patterns, global warming and even where they think life on Earth may have started.
As part of the Trident Project, sensor arrays are being constructed off the western coast of Canada and in Monterey Bay off the California coast. The plan, according to Debbie Kelley, a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, is to set up sensor arrays in oceans around the world that will feed data to scientists on water currents, temperatures, fish stocks and undersea seismic activity.
Despite the ocean depths and harsh conditions, the toughest part of the project may be handling the deluge of information the project is starting to produce -- terabytes of data daily today and even more expected as the project grows.
Read Full Article: Microsoft helps scientists study oceans, volcanoes and life's start
The world's coral reefs are under threat. Overfishing, unsustainable tourism, coastal development, pollution, the global aquarium trade and climate change are having a devastating effect on these fragile ecosystems, according to the International Coral Reef Initiative.
In Mexico and across the world, the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs are under threat from human activity.
The group has designated 2008 as International Year of the Reef in a bid to publicize the reefs' precarious predicament.
Meanwhile fellow conservation group, Nature Conservancy, warns that if destruction continues at its current rate, 70 percent of the world's coral reefs will have disappeared within 50 years.
A report released in January by the World Conservation Union concluded that hurricanes and rising sea temperatures in 2005 -- the hottest year since records began -- caused large-scale examples coral bleaching, in which corals lose the essential algae that coat their surfaces, devastating more than half of the Caribbean's reefs.
But human activity at ground level is having an equally damaging effect, says Paul Sanchez-Navarro, Director of Centro Ecologico Akumal, an organization that monitors the impact of development on the reefs that thrive off the coast of Mexico's Quintana Roo province. Pollution spilled into the sea by the thousands of hotels on the Mexican Riviera is "stressing" the coral reefs.
Barely two weeks since its soft opening last February 29, the Manila Ocean Park, Metro Manila’s newest landmark, has been drawing in tourists and city residents who are curious to experience being surrounded by countless fish species.
But it’s not all just fun at the oceanarium.
The park’s owners also promise to do serious conservation work other than raising environmental awareness:
§ banning endangered species in the park unless captive-bred in accredited farms;
§ promoting coastal resources management in communities where some species exhibited in the park are taken from;
§ reducing energy use in the park’s operations;
§ doing research on endangered and threatened species;
§ being transparent about the park’s operations with independent environmental auditors.
LONDON (Reuters) - Two dominant coral species have built a good chunk of the Caribbean reef, and their ability to grow quickly may help the region's coral reefs keep pace with rising sea levels caused by global warming, researchers say.
The staghorn and elkhorn corals grow about 10 times faster than any other in the Caribbean and reproduce in part by breaking into bits for easy ocean spread.
Ken Johnson, who led the study published in the journal Science, said researchers had found that the staghorn and elkhorn coral were not that important until about 1 million years ago, when half the Caribbean coral species went extinct.
Today about 60 coral species remain.
Johnson said one reason they quickly became dominant was they may have been able to keep up with rapid sea level rise by growing quickly, Johnson said.
Fast-growing corals key to Caribbean reef: study | Environment | Reuters
That dream vacation -- diving along the Great Barrier Reef, skiing in the Swiss Alps -- could remain a dream forever if you don't get a move on.
The brilliant coral off the coast of Australia could be largely gone by 2050, says a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And the cost of snowmaking equipment in the Alps is already forcing operators to invest in more snowmaking equipment, says Forbestraveler.com.The attention lately focused on these changes, and the overall issue of global warming, has already prompted one latter-day oracle to predict we will travel differently in 2008 and beyond.
"Let's face it, Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' and the time-lapse photography were not lost on a number of people," says Ann Mack, director of trend-spotting for JWT, the nation's largest advertising agency. "And increasingly, people are wanting to see these sights of the world before they change shape or change form. As global warming is rising up the world's agenda, ecotourists are flocking to previously ignored places."
It's been called climate sightseeing, a kind of farewell tour of Earth's greatest hits. Hard data is not available -- determining exactly why people go where they do is next to impossible. But a clear interest in ecotourism, coupled with much greater accessibility to places like the Earth's poles, means more people are visiting faraway and endangered sites, whatever their motives.
The subject is full of paradoxes: The more you travel, for example, the more you're contributing to the problem that made you go to an endangered site in the first place. And some places -- Canada, perhaps Russia and other cold climes -- are likely to attract more tourists as they warm.
Read Full Article: Kansas.com | 03/09/2008 | See them before they're gone
The sighting of a rare, white killer whale off Alaska's Aleutian Islands is causing waves of excitement among researchers and whale enthusiasts.
The whale, photographed by scientists on a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration vessel, is a large, healthy male, said John Durban, research biologist with NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. "There are various things that can cause albinism and they're all associated with health problems," he said.
Read Full Article: White killer whale spotted in Aleutian seas
After witnessing the rapid devastation of a Cayman Island coral reef where he had been diving since childhood, Todd Barber was moved from horror to action.
He gave up a six-figure salary as a marketing consultant and dedicated his life to restoring the world's ocean reef ecosystems.
"I had been following this reef since I had been 14; it was where my first dive was," recalls Barber. "When that one little tiny reef was lost, that sparked something in me. If we lost one and it took that tens of thousands of years to get here, how fast is this happening?"
Barber had caught a small glimpse of a larger global issue -- the destruction of the world's coral reefs -- and it scared him. According to the Nature Conservancy, if the present rate of destruction continues, 70 percent of the world's coral reefs will be destroyed by the year 2050. Not only are they home to 25 percent of all marine fish species, but the organization states that 500 million people rely on coral reefs for their food and livelihoods.
So Barber and his father, a marine biologist and fellow diver, sat down to devise a solution to "put the reef back." What started as a basic idea to shape concrete around a beach ball led to three years of research, testing and prototyping with the help of friends and college professors.
Read Full Article: CNN Heroes: Reef restoration provides passion for diver - CNN.com
British marine experts have discovered 'Henry the Hexapus', a unique six-legged octopus, in a lobster pot off the north Wales coast.
The creature has two limbs less than normal octopi, believed to be the result of a birth defect.
The creature is now kept at England's Blackpool Sea Life Centre, where they have christened it Henry.
"We've scoured the Internet and talked to lots of other aquariums and no-one has ever heard of another case of a six-legged octopus," said supervisor Carey Duckhouse.
The British center will display Henry in less than a month.
Read Full Article: Press TV - World's first 'Hexapus' found in UK
While fish populations have been decimated by overfishing worldwide, a research team led by San Diego State University biology professor Forest Rohwer have recently found how the practice can also endanger coral reefs.
According to the team's research in the Line Islands, located in the Central Pacific, overfishing leads to an excess of microbes that kill off coral.
Read Full Article: SDSUniverse | Microbes Threaten Coral Reefs
