WaterNotes

Jeremy Jackson covers some of the most pressing issues in marine habitat conservation – not just coral reefs – and I especially like his thoughts on biological pollution.   This is definitely one TED talk worth listening too all the way to the very end, where he offers up some food for thought on our [...]

Coral spawning events are thought to be triggered by lunar and tidal cycles but they’re also vastly influenced by the temperature of the water. High sea surface temperatures (or SSTs for you acronymaniacs) stress out corals and stressed animals aren’t generally in the mood for love and reproduction. The Baums Laboratory at Penn State University [...]

How did I miss this news?! In 2008 three new species of seahorse were described! The smallest of the three: Hippocampus satomiae, from scattered areas within Indonesian reefs near Derawan, the Lembah Strait (of northern Sulawesi), and northern Borneo. Florida boasts H. zosterae, known as the dwarf seahorse, clocking in at the size of a [...]

Chris Stallings of Oregon State University published a paper in PLOS One this past week that took a close look at predatory fish populations in Caribbean coral reef habitats over varying levels of human population density (and resulting impact from so-called artisanal fishing). The findings are consistent with reports that we’ve seen before: where there [...]

Margaret Wertheim and her sister started creating crochet reefs as a response to the overwhelming press of climate change back in 2005. Earlier this year at TED she demonstrated these reefs and gave a beautiful explanation of the special geometry that helps create corals and other underwater denizens as well as crochet arts. Her talk [...]

Black band disease of corals is a continuing issue in the long term survival and stability of reefs. Researchers working in Eilat, within the Red Sea, published an intriguing paper today that highlights the transmission of the disease throughout a season by closely observing the spatial patterns of infection. Not only did they show that [...]

Macroalgae, in recent years, have become a suspected reservoir of coral disease ever since the 2006 study where small corals placed in plastic containers had 100% mortality rates within 48 hours. After the din from the research, aquarium, and hobby community died down, people questioned if it was the methods in the experiment that killed [...]