Coral Reef Fact: The cuttlefish has three hearts, with two pumping blood to its large gills and one circulating the oxygenated blood to the rest of its body. The blood itself is blue-green in color because it possesses hemocyanin, a copper-containing protein typical in cephalopods—cuttlefish, octopuses, and squids. For more info http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/camo/ See cuttlefish on […]
Conserving these corals may offer hope for shallower, degraded reefs January 4, 2011 NOAA-funded scientists have found extensive and biologically diverse coral ecosystems occurring at depths between 100-500 feet within a 12 mile span off the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico. With the overall health of shallow coral reefs and the abundance of reef fish […]
Wednesday, 12 January 2011 06:29 Written by CBC News “We’ve estimated that for every species we know about, there’s probably another three or four that we don’t know, that have never been sampled by science,” said Paul Snelgrove, a professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Ocean Science Centre who led the group that compiled […]
Reef Fact: Consumption of Barracuda may be more harmful to humans than any potential of attack by them in the water. People often become ill from ciguatera fish poisoning after ingesting barracudas, perhaps because the reef fish that barracudas eat themselves consume algae that may contain high levels of the toxin. Learn more at http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/gallery/descript/greatbarracuda/greatbarracuda.html
Coral Reef Fact: Every Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) has a unique, pattern of light pigmented spots along the forward flanks which have proved to be effective in differentiating individual sharks, as have scars and injuries to the first dorsal fin. You can take part in the International Whale Shark Photo-Identification program. Learn more at http://www.whaleshark.org/index.jsp?langCode=en
Coral Reef Fact Mantis shrimp or stomatopods are marine crustaceans. Mantids have the strongest strike of any animal, relative to their size and the fastest of any animal. Their strike is so fast that they vaporize the water at the point of impact, causing a small implosion that stuns their prey. Watch (and hear!) a […]
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 January 2011 Researchers have tracked ‘nature’s ancient mariners’ as they spend several months traveling from Africa to South America On 2 February 2009, at 4am, a turtle known as Tika set off from the coast of Gabon, west Africa. She spent almost six months swimming across the Atlantic, a 5,000-mile (8,000km) […]
By Morgan Erickson-Davis, mongabay.com January 05, 2011 A new study investigating the ability of coral to record sea temperatures indicates that the Northwestern Atlantic has experienced unprecedented warming during the past 150 years Read the full article
Commission report warns disaster ‘might well recur’ without significant reform A request by BP to set an “unusually deep cement plug” on the Gulf oil well that subsequently exploded killing 11 people was approved by the then-Minerals Management Service in just 90 minutes, according to a presidential commission report on the disaster. Read the full […]
Reef Fact: Sawfishes are actually a type of ray. They belong to a group of fishes called elasmobranchs that includes sharks, rays, and skates. Two species of sawfish are found in FL waters; largetooth sawfish (Pristis perotteti) and the smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata) both species are officially endangered in the US. Learn more http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/sawfish Click […]