Achilles Tang

The loss of sea ice due to climate change could spell disaster for polar bears and other Arctic marine mammals. Sea ice is the common habitat feature uniting these unique and diverse Arctic inhabitants. Sea ice serves as a platform for resting and reproduction, influences the distribution of food sources, and provides a refuge from predators. The loss of sea ice poses a particularly severe threat to Arctic species, such as the hooded seal, whose natural history is closely tied to, and depends on, sea ice. View the full article

Finally!! The whale shark appears!!!!

East Africa's Lake Tanganyika has a highly diverse fauna which closely resembles marine animals. A researcher has traced the origins of the Lake's freshwater herring to a marine invasion which occurred in West Africa 25 to 50 million years ago. The ancient freshwater capture of marine organisms may help to explain the origins of other species unique to this Lake. View the full article

Sharks in captivity avoid metals that react with seawater to produce an electric field, a behavior that may help fishery biologists develop a strategy to reduce the bycatch of sharks in longline gear. Shark bycatch is an increasing priority worldwide given diminished populations of many shark species, and because sharks compete with target species for baited lines, reducing fishing efficiency and increasing operating costs. View the full article

Increased carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is causing microscopic ocean plants to produce greater amounts of calcium carbonate (chalk) - with potentially wide ranging implications for predicting the cycling of carbon in the oceans and climate modelling. View the full article

The global Fish Barcode of Life Initiative plans to collect at least five representatives each of all 30,000 plus marine and freshwater species in the world. FISH-BOL is part of the global Consortium for the Barcode of Life, started in 2003 to barcode everything from fishes, mushrooms and flowers, to microbes, insects and animals of every description. View the full article

Songbirds feeding near the contaminated South River are showing high levels of mercury, even though they aren't eating food from the river itself, according to a new article in Science. Mercury is one of the world's most troublesome pollutants, especially in water. "The birds eat a lot of spiders... The spiders have a lot of mercury in them and are delivering the mercury to these songbirds," one of the researchers said. View the full article

Ocean Conservancy released its annual report on trash in the ocean with new data from the 2007 International Coastal Cleanup the most comprehensive snapshot of the harmful impacts of marine debris. The mission of Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup is to engage people to remove trash from the world's beaches and waterways, to identify the sources of debris and to change the behaviors that cause pollution. View the full article

Scientists have developed a new model that accurately maps where coral reefs are in the most trouble, and identifies regions where reefs can be protected best. The model is being applied in areas throughout the Indian Ocean. View the full article

Fishing activities can provoke volatile fluctuations in the populations they target, but it's not often clear why. Fishing can alter the "age pyramid" by lopping off the few large, older fish that make up the top of the pyramid, leaving a broad base of faster-growing small younglings. Biologists found that this rapidly growing and transitory base is dynamically unstable -- a finding having profound implications for the ecosystem and the fishing industries built upon it. View the full article

Deep-sea sharks have been tagged and tracked and their habitats precisely mapped in world-first research to test the conservation value of areas closed to commercial fishing. View the full article

It slept on its feeler so its bent! Nah.... nothing wrong with it!

Half a century after the last earth-shattering atomic blast shook the Pacific atoll of Bikini, the corals are flourishing again. Some coral species, however, appear to be locally extinct. One of the most interesting aspects is that the team dived into the vast Bravo Crater left in 1954 by the most powerful American atom bomb ever exploded (15 megatons - a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb). The Bravo bomb vaporised three islands, raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees, shook islands 200 kilometers away and left a crater 2km wide and 73m deep. View the full article

Terry discusses his Thailand trip a bit more as well as an upcoming article in Advanced Aquarist. View the full article

Dana reviews John Veron's books and CD. View the full article

Check to see if an event is happening in your area! View the full article

This is a review of some of the more common water flow devices used in the hobby. View the full article

Four separate spawns were collected, eggs were hatched, and larvae were reared with a success rate approaching 100%, using rotifers as a first food. These preliminary successes in rearing A. aureus suggest that members of this genus may be good candidates for commercial aquaculture. View the full article

This is not the an easy member of the genus because they are sensitive. Because of it price and rarity, make sure that the fish started to feed before you get it. View the full article

While this article cannot solve every aquarium emergency, it hopefully gives some ideas that can be implemented with little cost which may pay big dividends in saving the lives of aquarium animals. View the full article

Through the use of an automated, underwater cell analyzer, researchers and coastal managers were recently able to detect a bloom of harmful marine algae in the Gulf of Mexico and prevent human consumption of tainted shellfish. View the full article

When Charles Darwin first set foot on Patagonia, he was a fresh-faced 22-year old yet to finesse his revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection. But traveling around the tip of South America aboard the HMS Beagle--part of an epic, five-year scientific expedition--the young naturalist had his eyes opened to the immense diversity of species and landscapes. View the full article

Every year scientists discover new species of marine life from deep within the vast global oceans. Each of these new discoveries adds to the catalog of known organisms on Earth, and deepens the knowledge of ocean biodiversity. Every year collections staff and researchers discover new species of marine creatures. Some specimens set new records, such as the stout infantfish, co-described by Scripps as the world's smallest fish in 2004. Traditionally, the person who first describes a newfound plant or animal is entitled to name it, but now, Scripps is inviting the public to share in the process by naming select newly discovered species acquired by the institution. View the full article

One of the world's great wildlife spectacles is under way across Australia: as many as two million migratory shorebirds of 36 species are gathering around Broome before an amazing 10,000-kilometer annual flight to their northern hemisphere breeding grounds. But an alarming new study has revealed that both these migrants and Australia's one million resident shorebirds have suffered a massive collapse in numbers over the past 25 years. View the full article

Nano tanks can be grand even on a small scale View the full article