A partial migration of adult female tiger sharks coincides with pupping season and the months of increased incidences of shark bite in Hawaii, according to a report currently in preprint in ESA’s journal Ecology.
Read MoreThis post contributed by Ashwin Bhandiwad, marine biologist and filmmaker When my colleague and good friend Austin Gallagher told me he was thinking of starting a film festival focused on science and conservation, I relished the opportunity. Austin and I are graduate students and share a passion for the marine environment. Like all graduate students, we have had many conversations…
Read MoreThe red lionfish (Pterois volitans) has decorated fish tanks, and invaded Atlantic waters, for decades. While sightings along the East Coast started popping up as early as the mid-1980s, lionfish began to spread rapidly, occupying reefs in the Florida Keys and the Bahamas in the 1990s. Since then, invasive red lionfish have been reported as far north as Rhode Island and, as of this January, tracked to the southern Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula.
Read MoreScientists develop a project to reroute water into the Dead Sea, male wasp spiders get a second chance at mating if they start with their sisters, 25% of fish in Dublin is mislabeled as completely different species and five species that cheated extinction. Here is the latest news in ecology for the third week in April.
The archerfish’s long distance spitting can fire a bug off of a branch and send it down to the water’s surface, and the nearly-blind pistol shrimp uses its gigantic claw to stun its prey with a bubble nearly as hot as the Sun. However, if the archerfish didn’t have keen eyes enabling it to detect an insect against a vegetative background, and if the pistol shrimp lacked its protective eye covers, called orbital hoods, these animals might never have developed the ballistic mechanisms that characterize them.
One hundred million years ago, Earth experienced its first great peak in biodiversity. Flowers emerged and with them pollinators, dinosaurs towered over newly evolved mammals and marsupials, the steaming jungles were teeming with newly arrived ants and termites, and the oceans were filled with gigantic, air-breathing reptiles. This was life during the Cretaceous period, Earth between two great extinctions.
Even though most of my face was covered by neoprene, acrylic glass and rubber, I could still feel the whiskers of the harbor seal rub against my skin as he repeatedly kissed my face. Believe it or not, the harbor seal wasn’t the only marine organism that was showing me the love during a morning of scientific diving in a marine reserve off the coast of Catalina Island, California.
Today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Diego, scientists participating in the Census of Marine Life (CoML) announced that the $650 million, 10-year collaboration will conclude on October 4-6, 2010 in London. More than 2,000 scientists from 80 countries have been collecting data on the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine life worldwide….
Algal blooms are a phenomenon in which algal populations in a marine area proliferate rapidly, creating a water-column shield that blocks sunlight and oxygen. These blooms are usually attributed to rises in nitrogen levels from human agriculture and industrial runoff, which fertilize the algae. But a study in the current issue of Ecological Applications shows that overfishing of top fish…
The largest population of leatherback sea turtles in the world has been identified off the coast of Gabon, Africa, and is estimated at somewhere between 15,700 and 41,400 female turtles. This seems to be a big bounceback for the endangered turtles, which are the largest living members of the sea turtle superfamily. This rough estimate was compiled during three nesting…
New movement patterns may be a sign of good news for blue whales. Blue whales have begun moving around the ocean in ways that strongly resemble their historical patterns before the advent of the whaling trade. A century ago, about 300,000 blue whales existed. But in the early 1900s, humans hunted and killed 99.9 percent of them. The population decimation…
It’s nice to have some good conservation news every once in awhile, even with caveats. North Atlantic right whales are one of the most endangered species on Earth. These mammals were dubbed by 18th-century whalers to be the “right” whales to catch because they’re huge (up to 70 tons and 55 feet long), stay close to shore, move slowly and…