Diving with goliaths
Earlier this year I came face to face with some of the biggest and quite possibly the most endangered fish I’ve ever met. For my PhD I studied humphead wrasse and spent a lot of time in their company underwater so I’m quite used to seeing big fish. But goliath groupers are massive. Like humphead wrasse, dozens [...]
How to make fish-friendly trawl nets
Dan Watson has just won this year’s James Dyson award, a student competition with the simple brief “Design something that solves a problem”. The problem Dan chose was bycatch – the capture of types of sealife that fishermen don’t want and throw back either because there’s no market for them or they have no quota for them. [...]
When I got lost at sea
A little while ago I got lost at sea and washed up in an old lighthouse in London’s docklands. As luck would have it, I found myself in a room full of people sitting on blue and white striped life rings on the floor. Turned out I was in just the right place for the [...]
A pair of seahorses for your weekend
Tomorrow I’ll talking at the Royal Institution about seahorses. In my moochings around the net for cool things to show the kids I found these awesome vids by liquidguru of a severn’s & a pontohi’s pygmy seahorse. So tiny! They come from a clutch of recently described mini-seahorses from SE Asia. (check out the enormous [...]
Argonaut pops out of its shell
This week fishermen off California snagged an unusual visitor to their temperature waters – a beautiful female argonaut. They took her to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and here’s a video of her popping out of her shell.
Seas without a shore
Tintype seahorses. Very nice. I love Chris Anthony’s images of dried seahorses and strange people in masks climbing out of the sea in his upcoming book Seas without a shore. And he’s just made his target over on kickstarter. HT Huff post.
Illegal fishing in Sierra Leone stamped out by locals
Local fishing communities in Sierra Leone have been policing their own waters and stamping out illegal fishing. EJF raised money to equip a surveillance boat with gps and camera gear to allow communities to record and report the boats, mainly trawlers, that operate illegally in protected inshore waters. So far the project has been a huge [...]
Senegalese seahorse caught on camera
For the first time ever a rare West African seahorse (Hippocampus algiricus) has been caught on camera. Kate West from Imperial College London has been in Senegal on a joint project with Project Seahorse and ZSL. During her investigations into the growing trade in seahorses from this part of the world, she spotted fishermen hauling [...]
Manta rays – the low down
Hot off the presses, a new study has just come out that brings together all that is known about manta rays and their close relatives the devil rays. Over the past few years, some incredible discoveries have been emerging from scientists around the world who are finding out more about these beautiful and mysterious beasts. [...]
Sculpture of an ocean hero
A little while ago I went to Silicon Valley to attend the SciFoo unconference at the headquarters of Google. I loved the series of sculptures around the grounds depicting ocean explorers – why ocean explorers? I’ve no idea. This is the one that most people recognized.
Lionfish – the new normal
Here at Seamonster we recently heard from marine conservation professor (and author of a great new book on the state of the oceans) Callum Roberts. He got in touch to send us a link from a website he recently found that gave a list of the “Top 10 most beautiful reefs in the world“. Nothing [...]
Finding fish in the wrong place
This gorgeous woodcut print is the work of Jenny Pope, one of my favourite printmakers. Lots of her art is available to buy on her website and she’s promised me she will soon be blogging about lionfish. But first, here are my thoughts on seeing my first lionfish in the wrong place. Before I arrived [...]
Five things I didn’t know about the ocean
My review of Professor Callum Roberts’ new book The Ocean of Life has just come out in Toronto’s Globe and Mail. This is the follow up to his first book An unnatural history of the sea (it was one of the Five Books I picked for the Browser) – it dives into the history of how we’ve stripped [...]
Will this be the end of the Aquarius Reef Base?
Next week a team of aquanauts including Sylvia Earle will live and work underwater for 6 days inside “America’s Inner Space Station” aka the Aquarius Reef Base. It’s the world’s only undersea research station and its future is looking shaky – unless new funding is found the station will be closed. In an effort to [...]
Anatomy of sea life by Jeff Wysaski
We love these brilliant cartoons by Jeff Wysaski over at pleated jeans. Head [...]
Do slomo sharks snack on snoozing seals?
This week I wrote a piece for National Geographic News about a study just out suggesting that Greenland sharks could sneak up on seals and catch them while they’re sleeping. It’s a neat study, involving putting motion-sensors on individual sharks to see how fast they swim. In fact, turns out these guys swim so very [...]
French supermarkets told deep sea fish are NOT sustainable
One of France’s biggest supermarket chains has been claiming the deep sea fish species it sells are sustainable even though they’re caught by enormously destructive bottom trawlers. A landmark ruling today bans the chain from making any further claims along these lines. It’s hoped that the decision will help put an end to practice of [...]
Breaking News: No High Seas commitment at Rio+20
According to an Oceansinc release, negotiators at the Rio+20 have already dropped any immediate promise to protect the high seas – those distant parts of the ocean beyond national boundaries. US, Canada, Japan, Venezuela and Russia have blocked relatively strong language in the conference text to protect the high seas and left Rio+20 with a decision [...]
Good news for the Coral Sea
It’s been announced that Australian waters will soon be home to the world’s second largest no-take marine reserve. Half a million square kms of the Coral Sea will be out of bounds to the oil & gas industry as well as fisheries – it will include around one third of the coral reefs in the [...]
Oceans at Rio +20
Next week sees the start of Rio +20. It’s the follow up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and hopes are high among some conservationists and scientists that this time positive change will be made for the oceans. You can keep up to date with the blue issues as they unfold at the [...]
Giant headbutting fish
The world’s biggest parrotfish – the bumphead parrotfish Bolbomepoton muricatum - have been caught on camera for the first time headbutting each other. The finding was published in the open access PlosOne (so go have a read) and as Roldan Muñoz and his colleagues point out, the only way they got to observe this crazy behaviour was [...]
New underwater sculptures from Jason de Caires Taylor
Underwater sculptor Jason deCaries Taylor has unveiled pictures of his latest works at the MUSA (the Museo Subacuático de Arte) in Cancun, Mexico. They include this stunning piece called Phoenix. As Jason says: Constructed from high strength pH-neutral cement and incorporating tensile stainless steel [...]
The Endless Summer
Check out a few digitally remastered clips from The Endless Summer and that iconic sound track by the Sandals.
