Achilles Tang

Top Ten Obvious Things Pointed Out by a Non-Reefkeeper That Should Have Been Obvious... View the full article

Modern Reef Aquariums View the full article

The first study of how individual wandering albatrosses find food shows that the birds rely heavily on their sense of smell. The birds can pick up a scent from several miles away, researchers have found. Wandering albatrosses fly for thousands of miles across the ocean, usually gliding a few feet above sea level. Floating carrion, especially squid, make up a large part of their diet. View the full article

An ocean odor that affects global climate also gathers reef fish to feed as they "eavesdrop" on events that might lead them to food. DMSP is given off by algae and phytoplankton, microscopic one-celled plants that float in the ocean. Release of DMSP usually indicates either that tiny animals in the plankton are feeding on the algae, or that massive growth of algae -- an algal bloom -- has occurred. Once released from the ocean into the atmosphere, derivatives of DMSP promote cloud formation, so clouds reflect more sunlight back into space and cool the Earth. View the full article

American eels are fast disappearing from restaurant menus as stocks have declined sharply across the North Atlantic. While the reasons for the eel decline remain as mysterious as its long migrations, a recent study says shifts in ocean-atmosphere conditions may be a primary factor in declining reproduction and survival rates. View the full article

May I ask what the hell are you doing as your job? Millionaire Globetrotter? Where else in the world have you NOT gone to???

The midges that periodically swarm by the billions from Iceland's Lake Myvatn are a force of nature. At their peak, it is difficult to breathe without inhaling the bugs, which hatch and emerge from the lake in blizzard-like proportions. After their short adult life, their carcasses blanket the lake, and the dead flies confer so much nutrient on the surrounding landscape that the enhanced productivity can be measured by Earth-observing satellites. View the full article

Scientists have discovered an Antarctic fish species that adopts a winter survival strategy similar to hibernation. The Antarctic 'cod' Notothenia coriiceps effectively 'puts itself on ice' to survive the long Antarctic winter. View the full article

SRC's new TOTM!!!

This is amazing! How did you take the fry photo?

Biologists examining ecosystems similar to those that existed on Earth more than 3 billion years ago have made a surprising discovery: Viruses that infect bacteria are sometimes parochial and unrelated to relatives in other parts of the globe. It's surprising because bacteria are ubiquitous on Earth, and both they and the viruses that affect them were long believed to be cosmopolitan, having similar genetic histories across the globe. View the full article

How well ocean reefs recover from the growing damage caused by warming sea temperatures depends both on how much the tiny coral polyps can eat, and how healthy they can keep the microscopic algae that live inside their bodies. New research may change the way scientists look at this symbiotic partnership, shifting it from a case where the polyps function only as landlords to one where the tiny creatures actually nurture their algae. View the full article

Bacterial communities endemic to healthy corals could change depending on the amount and type of natural and man-made dissolved organic matter in seawater. Healthy corals naturally exude a surrounding mucous layer in which a complex population of bacteria exists. Recent studies have indicated that some coral diseases may be linked to community shifts in this bacterial population. View the full article

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species announced trade quotas governing the export of wild sturgeon and their prized caviar eggs from the Caspian Sea. The Pew Institute for Ocean Science has analyzed the quotas, which are re-set each year, and has determined that beluga caviar quotas are virtually unchanged from 2007 and do little to halt continued population declines. View the full article

Scientists are reviewing unusual environmental conditions in the Pacific Ocean as the likely culprit for the dramatically low returns of Chinook and coho salmon to rivers and streams along the West Coast of the United States in 2007. View the full article

Is it a soft coral? Looks like shrunken xenia or mostly probably a carnation/tree coral ie Dendronephthya sp. 2nd thoughts - could be a Cladiella sp. ie. finger leather coral as they are typically gray-white with brown polyps.

Why don't you drop in to our sponsors forums? You can buy most of your equipment there without fuss? Most of them are accessible easily by cab if you don't drive. Cheers AT

Best to use a refractometer for accuracy. Have two salinity meter types to cross check each other. Only then will you get peace of mind about your salinity levels.

Scientists have developed a research method that relies on a zebrafish's lateral line -- the faint line running down each side of a fish that enables it to sense its surroundings -- to quickly screen for genes and chemical compounds that protect against hearing loss from some medications. View the full article

Sharks and other marine animals find food using a similar search pattern to the way people may shop, according to one of the largest analysis of foraging behavior attempted so far -- and the first such analysis of marine predators. The animals' behavior seems to have evolved as a general 'rule' to search for sparsely distributed prey in the vast expanse of the ocean. This rule involves a special pattern of random movement known as a Levy Walk, where the predators use a series of small motions interspersed with large jumps to new foraging locations. This increases the chance of finding food, however widely scattered it might be. View the full article

Archaeologists have discovered of one of the largest dinosaur-era marine reptiles ever found -- an enormous sea predator known as a pliosaur estimated to be almost 15 meters (50 feet) feet long. The 150 million year-old Jurassic fossil was discovered on the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, at 78 degrees north latitude, approximately 1300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole. "Although we didn't get the entire skeleton, we found many of the most important parts, including portions of the skull, teeth, much of the neck and back, the shoulder girdle, and a nearly complete forelimb (paddle)" said one of the researchers, "Amazingly, the paddle alone is nearly 10 feet long." View the full article

One of my rocks fell.

Welcome back, old friend! Nice natural scaping!

The rise of oxygen and the oxidation of deep oceans between 635 and 551 million years ago may have had an impact on the increase and spread of the earliest complex life, including animals. Today, we take oxygen for granted. But the atmosphere had almost no oxygen until 2.5 billion years ago, and it was not until about 600 million years ago when the atmospheric oxygen level rose to a fraction of modern levels. For a long time, geologists and evolutionary biologists have speculated that the rise of the breathing gas and subsequent oxygenation of the deep oceans are intimately tied to the evolution of modern biological systems. View the full article

The majority of non-native fish introduced to freshwater habitats around the world actually do more good than harm, according to a large study. The lead researcher believes that environmental changes to freshwater ecosystems will inevitably have implications on the distribution of native freshwater fish with a growing reality that we will increasingly depend upon non-native introductions, especially as aquaculture production increases. View the full article