Label: Oceans

March 8, 2011

Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" was taken at the opening of the Grand Aquarium in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park. Although it looks as though these tiny fish are about to become lunch for the humongous Grey Nurse Shark swimming behind them, these fish actually work as a team.

The small fish are pilot fish, and they eat fish lice, little crabs, and blood sucking worms that live on the skin of the shark. The pilot fish suck on the shark’s skin and keep it clean, and in exchange, the shark doesn’t eat them. This is also a smart way for the pilot fish to avoid other predators, because most of their enemies are careful to stay away from sharks.

 There have even been reports of smaller pilot fish swimming into a shark’s mouth a cleaning away bits of food caught between its teeth…..like living dental floss!

Photo courtesy of MSNBC.com’s “Animal Tracks”

February 15, 2011

A Pennsylvania student named Marissa wrote this week with an unusual question. "I was wondering, what is your favorite fish? Mine is the Blobfish."

I happen to love fish. My favorite fish is known as "The Ram." Its scientific name is Epistograma ramarezi, and it is a dwarf cichlid. Cichlids (pronounced SIH-clid) are freshwater fish found in the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia, somewhat similar to our North American sunfish. The ram is a beautiful little fish that swims around with a great deal of determination. It is gorgeous when it is in breeding condition - a sparkly blue and red. I used to have tropical aquariums and I bred these fish and sold them. So now you know that I really like fish!

If you want to see Marissa’s favorite, the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), you can find a photo in my Science Dictionary under the definition of DEEP.....which might tell you something about where these very unusual creatures live!

February 11, 2011

Scientists have discovered that baby crustaceans - lobsters, crabs, shrimps, and barnacles - can hear, and they listen to underwater noise to protect themselves from predators.

Even though these baby shellfish are only the size of the flea, they have a hearing system that lets them hear grunts, smacks and gurgles made by fish and other larger creatures that would otherwise eat them.

Coral Reefs are the big "cities" of the ocean - teeming with fish and other marine life. "The coral reef is like a ‘wall of mouths’ to these animals, so when they hear noise, they avoid it," says Dr Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Bristol. "Otherwise, they’d always be eaten by fish."

Why does the fact that a tiny shellfish is able to hear matter to us? Humans make a lot of noise in the ocean, from boat engines to activities like dynamite fishing and deepwater drilling. If our loud noises mask the crucial natural sounds near coral reefs, vulnerable larvae will be in danger of being consumed by larger predators. Why should this matter? Humans are part of the web of life on our planet Earth. Each kind of life is like a single strand in the web. By itself, no one strand may seem so important. But all the strands make up the web and the weekness of one strand weekens the entire web.

Photo: AustralianMuseum.net

January 4, 2011

Sea turtles are the last of our world’s ancient reptiles, and have been swimming the seas for more than 200 million years, since back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. But in just the last few decades, hunting, coastal development, fishing and pollution have reduced their populations to dangerously low levels, to the point that sea turtles are now endangered. That is why many of us, including our young environmental reporter Alana G., were very worried about the fate of the sea turtles when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in the Gulf last year.

The very good news is that the rescue efforts were quite successful. NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), the Gulf states, many nonprofit partners and the Gulf fishermen teamed up to rescue more than 400 sea turtles from oiled waters and take them to aquariums and other facilities for de-oiling and rehabilitation. Marine biologists even moved more than 25,000 sea turtle eggs to Florida’s Atlantic coast, so that the hatchlings would make their way from their sandy nests to clean water. More than 96 percent of the 400 sea turtles brought into rehabilitation have survived, and most of them have already been returned to the wild. This is great news!

Unfortunately, scientists also learned something disturbing from the Gulf oil spill. Most of the dead turtles that turned up on the beaches did not have oil on their bodies and necropsies (that is what you call the autopsy of an animal) showed that they were in good health prior to their death. It appears that the majority of these 600 turtles died from drowning, after being trapped in fishing gear.

So now a new effort begins, to make fishing equipment more "turtle proof" in the Gulf, where five of the world’s seven species of marine turtles live. In order to protect this species and get them off the endangered list, NOAA is considering establishing a rule requiring fishermen to use TEDs (Turtle Excluder Devices). These escape hatches allow sea turtles to swim out of the shrimp skimmers so they don’t drown. As NOAA and the states continue to assess the natural resources damaged by the spill, we are gaining a much clearer picture of what we need to do long-term to protect these glorious, ancient creatures. 

December 18, 2010

This tiny marine snail has a unique way of protecting itself. When it feels threatened, it lights up its plain, yellowish shell and emits a bright, neon green light. It probably makes it appear larger than it is to potential predators. In a laboratory experiment, scientists found that the snail lit up when confronted by crabs and swimming shrimp.

The snail, Hinea brasiliana, is a type of clusterwink snail that is typically found bunched up in groups along rocky shorelines. The green glow results from a phenomenon known as bioluminescence - or light made by living animals (pronounced "bio-loom-i-NESS-ens"). The most familiar example of bioluminescence is the firefly, which is actually a beetle. Fireflies use the flickering patterns of light to attract mates.

 Photo: Dimitri Deheyn / SIO / UCSD 

August 11, 2010

There’s a fascinating story in today’s Science News.

An international team of scientists and a British University are building a new computer program that they believe will enable them to identify every great white shark on the planet. The University of Bristol is developing software that will automatically recognize and record individual dorsal fins of the most powerful predators that cruise the world’s oceans - the individual fins of great white sharks are as identifiable as our human fingerprints.

The project is based on the work of Swiss marine biologist Michael Scholl, founder and director of the White Shark Trust, who has spent a decade photographing over 1,500 great whites. He and his colleagues hope that once we have a record of the sharks and their territories, scientists will be able to develop a true record of how many great whites are out there and observe behaviors never before witnessed - like great whites mating or giving birth.

Look at this wonderful picture. This is Dr. Scholl trying to photograph a great white, who took a bite out of his camera!

July 23, 2010

We visited Cape May, New Jersey for a couple of days this week. I love to get out on the beach first thing in the morning, when it’s uncrowded and the marine life is feeding. We spotted a large pod of dolphins swimming less than 200 yards off shore both mornings.

Cape May - the southernmost tip of New Jersey - is a favorite destination not only for human tourists, but also for a pod of an estimated 2500 dolphins who summer there each year! You don’t need to book a "whale watch" tour. If you are vacationing at the ocean, just get out on the beach at dawn or dusk and watch the surf. You’ll be amazed at all the animal life  - birds, fish, mollusks, dolphins, seals - that you can see if you just take the time to look.

June 16, 2010

No, it’s not the purple monster from the deep. Or maybe it is. The purple or ochre sea star is common on rock shores and rocks on beaches along the west coast including the Malibu, California coast where I took this photo earlier this morning. This purple sea star (pisaster ochraceus) is on a rock covered by mussels, which is a kind of unfortunate thing for the mussels. The purple sea star is a major predator of California coastal waters, eating all kinds of mussels, barnacles, limpets and snails. 

A sea star opens a mussel by latching on to the mussel’s shell with hundreds of tiny tube feet and then simply tugging with steady pressure until the mussel shell opens. Then the star extrudes its stomach into the opened shell and digests the mussel. A mature sea star will release dozens of millions of eggs when it spawns. The eggs turn into tiny larvae which became part of the sea plankton population as they grow into mature sea stars. Even though most of the larvae are eaten before they grow into mature stars, that still leaves a LOT of purple stars to feed on mussels.

Purple Sea stars are attractive animals (at least I think so), but they are a major pest to mussel and clam gatherers. I remember a story that I heard when I was a kid about how difficult it is to get rid of sea stars. The story goes that clam gatherers were collecting sea stars from the clam beds and trying to kill the stars by cutting them up into two or three pieces and then just throwing the pieces back into the ocean waters. The problem was that sea stars are able to regenerate a lost leg or two. So each piece of sea star thrown back into the waters regenerated into another whole sea star!

June 16, 2010

OIL ON THE WATER: THE PHYSICS OF OIL SPILLS is a can’t miss interactive unit published by MSNBC.com this week. Using data from NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), they have created a series of graphic illustrations which explain "the physical and chemical processes, collectively known as weathering, that change oil’s properties and behavior after it is spilled into the ocean."

This is truly a "must see" article if you really want to understand the why of what is happening, and the complexity of the ongoing containment and cleanup efforts.

Applause for MSNBC.com and the producers/writers/researchers who put this together. It breaks a complex topic down into (tragically) simple, comprehensible pieces.

June 1, 2010

A fourth-grader wrote asking what she can do about the Gulf oil spill.

My name is Alana and I am a 4th grade student. We are currently reading the story you wrote "Wildfires." I think it is a great story. It helped us understand the positive effects that controlled wildfires can have.Although I greatly enjoyed the story,  unfortunately that is not the main reason I am writing to you today. I just read your posting on the Gulf Oil Spill. My mom and I have been following the updates. It breaks my heart that this has happened. The sea turtles are one of my very favorite animals on the planet, but I love all marine life. I was even looking into becoming a Marine Biologist when I grow up. I love science and enjoy working with animals.  I can’t believe what is going to happen the Gulf’s ecosystem. I know that I am very far away and that I am only 9 years old (almost 10) but do you have any suggestions of what I can do to help the situation? It makes me so angry but also sad that this has happened and the only thing that will help me feel a little better is to know that I am doing whatever I can to help save the animals that are still left. Do you think that the sea turtles will survive this disaster? So many have already died. : (  I know you are very busy. Thank you for taking the time to read posting.

  Sincerely,
Alana G.
"Science Rules" 

Alana, thank you so much for writing and for caring so much about the sea turtles. Like you, I have always considered sea turtles to be one of my favorite animals on our planet. They travel long distances during their lives and return to the same place they were born, where the females lay their eggs for a new generation of turtles. It is so sad that the turtles are being killed by the terrible oil spill in the Gulf. The turtles are only one of the many animals that are being affected and no one seems to know how to put a quick stop to the oil pouring out into the sea. I wish I could tell you what to do to help the situation. More than that I wish I could tell you that someone knows what to do. It seems as if the oil spill will continue for weeks and months and I just hope that the company that caused the spill and the goverrnment can control it by the end of the summer. Perhaps the best thing you and everyone else can do is to try to make sure that it never happens again. There are many conservation groups, such as The Nature Conservancy and The Natural Resources Defense Council that are working to make oil drilling safer in a variety of ways.

The peoples of this country and of other countries all share the same planet. The more people who feel the way you and I do about this terrible situation, the more likely it is that the countries of the world will put rules in place to prevent it from ever happening again.Think environmentally all your life, no matter what you decide to do as an adult. Talk about it to your friends. Read about it in books and on the web. Remain committed to the idea that...

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