WaterNotes

Oh those beautiful armored catfish. When they aren’t invading Florida’s ecosystems and causing me headaches as a naturalist (don’t release your Plecostomus!), they are rather lovely and highly varied creatures swimming natively within the Amazon floodbasin. And the Amazon, as we fish-nerds well know, is one of nature’s hot zones for fish evolution. As a [...]

Few things are as adorable as loggerhead hatchlings.  This little one’s hotfoot-scurry to the sea was captured by Lisa Morse, working in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area (via Marine Photobank). Loggerhead nests abound on the east coast of Florida. During a long beach walk today I was thrilled to count dozens – leading to hundreds [...]

One of the most interesting partnerships I’ve ever seen captured on film… a labrador retriever and a bottlenose dolphin, frolicking in a bay.

Mission Blue talks are still slowly leaking out over on TED.  The latest is from cartoonist Jim Toomey, of Sherman’s Lagoon, one of my all time favorite strips just behind the misadventures of Calvin & Hobbes.  Toomey’s take on conservation for the oceans has been more and more evident in recent years, and you can [...]

I love sidewalk chats and presentations for impromptu on-the-ground teaching. They’re especially effective when you have a live animal in your hands. Over the years I’ve been lucky to hold and present many different species, particularly reptiles, including the lovely and colorful Mali Uromastyx. The other day, while holding a Mali, I had quite the [...]

Plastic Pollution Coalition has a brilliant guerilla-style grassroots campaign unfolding in Vancouver at the moment. Plastic Manners is also providing coverage and reactions from the public on the giant plastic six-pack ring found entangled across several of the marine-themed statues that grace the city.  I find the campaign brilliant and inspiring.  It’s hard to deny [...]

I have a problem.  A jargon problem. As in, I love jargon.  Cephalic scoops.  Pineal glands.  Zygomatic arches.  Harpacticoid copepods.  Ziphiidae.  Eutrophication.  Nitrogenous waste.  Circadian rhythms.  Photosynthetically active radiation levels.  Catadromous and anadromous fishes! And on, and on, and on. I often forget that if I’m going to use a scientific term when teaching that [...]