-
-
Recent News
- How Healthy are Mediterranean Rocky Reefs?
- Coral reef fish ‘help protect jobs’
- Scientists say 90% Shark Loss at Populated Pacific Islands
- Tassled Scorpionfish is Creature of the Month
- Foreign Office Advises Against Travel to Southern Philippines
- Mauve Stinger is Creature of the Month
- Lawsuit Seeks Plan for Most Endangered Large Whale in World
- Catch Younger Fish says IUCN
- ‘Electronic Eyes’ Watch Tuna Fishing
- Deadline approaching for International Underwater Photography Competition
-
Links
-
Topics
Acropora anemone Antarctic cleaner fish climate change Corallium rubrum creature of the month dead zone deep sea deep sea fishing environment EU extinction fishing giant mussel global warming Great Barrier Reef Heron Island jellyfish killer whale leatherback turtle marine reserve night dive Ningaloo Reef ocean acidification orca parrotfish pink coral Pinna nobilis red coral right whale SCUBA News seafloor sealife seamount sea urchin soft coral squid submarine robots table coral Taiwan tuna turtle World Heritage list wrasse
marine biology Archive
-
How Healthy are Mediterranean Rocky Reefs?
Intense exploitation over millennia has depleted Mediterranean Sea species from the large to the small. What would a ‘healthy’ Mediterranean rocky bottom look like? There are no pristine sites (i.e. undisturbed by humans) left in the Mediterranean against which to compare the health of current ecosystems. SCUBA divers surveyed the rocky reefs throughout the Med, from Morocco to Turkey. -
Coral reef fish ‘help protect jobs’
Jobs, ecotourism and diving industries can benefit from having a diverse supply of weed-eating fish on the world’s coral reefs, scientists say. Despite their small size, relative to the sharks and whales that often get more attention, herbivorous fish play a vital role in maintaining the health of coral reefs, which support the livelihoods of 500 million people worldwide, according to a study published this month in the journal Ecology. -
Corals in trouble by middle of this century
Nearly one-third of CO2 emissions due to human activities enters the world's oceans, making them less alkaline and affecting calcification of corals. By the middle of the century, corals at the Northern edges of the tropics will be in trouble with the Hawaiian island reefs will be among the first to feel the impact. -
Creature of the Month: Yellow Saddle Goatfish Work Together
Yellow saddle goatfish are a common site on the reefs of the Red Sea. A team of scientists from Switzerland though have discovered that these fish exibit very unusual behaviour: they work together to catch their dinner. The researchers claim that similar co-operation has only been identified in a handful of species – primarily mammals [...] -
Live fast and die young: same-sex sexual behaviour in a deep-sea squid
In a study published today in Biology Letters, male squid were found to routinely and indiscriminately mate with both males and females. -
Soft Coral is Reef Building
Scientists have long believed soft corals, one of the many endangered elements of marine life, are only minor contributors to the structure of coral reefs. But that’s not true, says new research from Tel Aviv University. A new in-depth analysis of reefs in the South China Sea has revealed that massive parts of the reefs [...] -
Mapping Coral Disease Clusters in the Caribbean
In the last 30 years, more than 90 percent of the reef-building coral in the Caribbean has disappeared because of a disease of unknown origin. Now, scientists from the University of Florida have used a GIS (geographic information system) to show the whereabouts of the clusters of diseased coral. Their findings, published in the journal [...] -
Scientists Warn of Unprecidented Marine Exctinctions
We knew it was bad, but it is even worse than we thought. World rushing heedlessly towards global marine extinctions. -
Jellyfish blooms move food energy from fish to bacteria
Over the last few years reports of jellyfish blooms around the world have been increasing. This is bad news for the marine food web, as the jellyfish are voracious predators of plankton, but are not readily consumed by other predators. New study shows that jellyfish shunt food energy from fish toward bacteria. -
How Life on the Surface affects Life on the Seafloor
Analysis of a comprehensive database has revealed strong links between biological productivity in the surface oceans and patterns of biomass and abundance at the seafloor, helping to explain large regional differences. The vast majority of the biological production in the world’s oceans occurs within sunlit surface waters – the “photic zone“. Through the process of [...]
