Mark Hixon’s lionfish Tedx
This is a talk by Marine Ecologist and reef fish ecology expert Dr Mark Hixon of OSU. I love it! Mark and I apparently have a lot in common. I love my job too. But the special knowledge it gives you – the painful and needless loss of the ocean’s biodiversity – can be a [...]
Lifestyles of the species-rich and famous
Below is a guest post (her first!) by Dr Emily Darling, about one of the 17 chapters of her PhD dissertation: The ongoing loss of coral cover and flattening of reef architecture is leading to dramatic and drastic changes for coral reef ecosystems. But not all reef-building corals are affected in the same way. We [...]
Drew Harvell’s Palmyra diary
My friend, colleague and post doc mentor Dr Drew Harvell of Cornell Uni is on Palmyra Atoll, a tiny coral island in the central Pacific. Drew is leading a coral disease workshop and doing field work on this very pristine coral reef. I’m jealous! She is blogging about her work and experiences here. See more of [...]
Opinons on the GBR coralapocalypse
There is no shortage of opinions about what the GBR coral loss reported Monday (De’ath et al 2012 in PNAS) means and what we should do about it. Below is a guest post by William Precht. Bill is based in south Florida and recently left the NOAA program to go back to consulting, primarily on coral [...]
Exploring Bloody Bay wall
A winner from the Blue Oceans Film Festival. Compass Light Productions- David Conover, Mish Morgenstern, Peter Neill Exec Prod. A neuroscientist, marine geologist, and an underwater photographer each pursue their own questions at Bloody Bay Wall on Little Cayman Island. We see how the diversity of reef life provides practical solutions to diverse human needs
The GBR is losing coral even faster than assumed
Elizabeth Selig and I took a lot of heat when we published a paper in 2007 (Bruno and Selig at PLoS One) in which we found the state of western Pacific reefs in general and the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in particular was much worse than assumed: The results of our analysis of 6001 quantitative [...]
The coral jungle – from The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau
One thing that inspired me to become a coral reef biologist is this episode of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau: This episode first aired in the spring of 1968 when I was only 3, so I must have seen a rerun. Like practically every marine scientist of my generation, waiting for “The Undersea World” [...]
Seafood mislabeling in Belize
This post was co-authored with Courtney Cox, a PhD student in my lab at UNC, studying fisheries management and reef resilience in Belize. Our paper on seafood mislabeling in Belize is out in Conservation Letters (here). This paper is the fist of several from our project designed to evaluate the effectiveness of Belize’s national ban on [...]
What to do when the oceans rise
Last week I published my first book review at PLoS Biology with UNC undergraduate Lauren-Kristine Pryzant. We read and wrote about Tim McClanahan and Josh Cinner’s excellent new book, “Adapting to a Changing Environment: Confronting the Consequences of Climate Change“. We tried to bring the lessons in the book from Africa home by discussing climate [...]
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 [...]
Goodbye to Belize
[The final post in our Belize series from the New York Times Scientist at Work blog]: Tuesday, July 10 As the days tick away, so do our last hopes of finding social shrimp. We came to Carrie Bow to collect two types of eusocial shrimp, each living in colonies with a single queen and dozens [...]
Demise of reefs in Belize? Coda
[I was happy to receive a lot of comments on our most recent blog post from the field in the New York Times. Since the space available to respond to those comments on the NYT site is limited, I've elected to do so here.] Thanks to all for your comments. I have always considered myself [...]
Reef Reminiscences: The way coral reefs were
What was the world like back in the day? Are the fantastic stories all just legends? With the notable exception of Jacques Cousteau, few people were taking pictures of the undersea world a few decades ago, not only because the technology was more difficult and expensive and less available, but also because we tend to [...]
Belize field log 2012: Witness to a murder
[The fourth installment, and I'll confess my favorite, in our New York Times "Scientist at Work" field log.] Sunday, July 8 As the sun breaks the horizon, I sit in a wooden chair at the edge of the backreef, an eye on the weather horizon, gratefully sipping the first strong coffee and gauging what the [...]
Belize field log 3: Journey to the center of the reef
[The third installment in our New York Times "Scientist at Work" field log.] Collecting shrimp is a complicated business. I am not as seasoned as my colleagues, but I quickly learn how tedious it can be. After taking a photograph and estimating the volume of a sponge, we have to locate every shrimp inside. Synalpheus [...]
Belize field log 2: Social breakdown on the reef
[The second installment in our New York Times "Scientist at Work" field log.] Wednesday, July 4 Our hunt yesterday produced a good haul of shrimp species, but, alas, none of the social ones we’re searching for. I worked with my former Ph.D. student, Tripp McDonald, long into the night identifying the shrimp. Though little known [...]
Belize 2012 field log 1: Snapping Shrimps and Hidden Sponges
[Our team has just returned from a 10-day research trip to the Belize Barrier Reef, searching for social sponge-dwelling shrimp in a long-term study of these curious animals as models for understanding the evolution of altruism and cooperation. The New York Times "Scientist at Work" feature is posting updates from our field log. We reprint [...]
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 [...]
Consensus statement on climate change and coral reefs
This comes from the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium, meeting in Cairns this week. I think the statement is largely accurate, although it exaggerates threats to corals from local factors like fishing and pollution. The second phrase of the final sentence (in bold) is demonstrably false; “A concerted effort to preserve reefs for the future [...]
New science indicates climate change is the primary threat to coral reefs
Like so many other ecosystems, coral reefs are being greatly impacted by climate change. Greenhouse gases are trapping excess heat from the sun, and more than anything, are warming the oceans from tropical reefs to deep polar seas. Reef corals are sensitive to small amounts of warming. An increase of just a degree or two [...]
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 [...]
