New, advanced online publication of research by Foster and colleagues in the journal Coral Reefs explores the impacts of ocean acidification and global warming on the development of the tabling coral Acropora spicifera, an iconic species of the subtropical western...
Recent Content
Tracking the 2015/2016 El Niño Event: One of the Largest?
In the boreal (Northern Hemisphere) Spring of 2014, warm waters began to appear at the surface of the equatorial East Pacific. This appearance caused much stir and speculation about the potential development of something we have not seen in nearly two decades now: a...
Alien Zooxanthella Invades Caribbean Corals
Tye Pettay and Todd LaJeunesse at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and others have published new work that does some unique finger-pointing. The genetic lineages of Symbiodinium trenchii from the Indo-Pacific have opportunistically invaded Caribbean...
Malakula Visions
By Christopher Maupin University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, Austin, Texas. July 1st 2010, 4PM. Double check, triple check, quadruple check. Fold geologic maps. Cram everything you can fit into giant dry bags. Scam an airline into letting us board with two dry...
Scribes of the Tropical Seas
By Chris Maupin As coral reefs come under threat from a variety of different factors, something that may amaze the reefkeeping community is that corals are recording their own plight with respect to climate change impacts. Not only that, they have recognizably...
Florida DEP officials are gagged from using “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” in a sentence…
To my beloved and notably weird home state, Florida, climate change is a harsh mistress. Sea level rise, warming oceans, and acidification are all real threats to human life and economy, and the marine ecology of the state with the country's only living barrier coral...
The First Direct Observations of Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Induced Changes to Earth’s Radiative Budget
Climate change and warming of sea surface temperatures are among the most oft-cited threats to coral reef ecosystems as they currently exist. Despite the preponderance of scientific work on the issue, many, including even perhaps some in this hobby, deny most if not...
Stony corals exposed to sedimentation rapidly deplete energy stores and produce immune response
The negative impact of sedimentation on the health of hard corals has arguably reached “common knowledge” status in our hobby community. The valiant efforts and sometimes spirit crushing observations of folks like Colin Foord and company have brought sedimentation to...
On again, off again relationship: the Pacific and a 2014/2015 El Niño.
That old, vaguely familiar weather buzzword has been floating around the media in sensationalized fashion for many of the months thus far in 2014: El Niño. Following the 1997/1998 El Niño, the World Ocean experienced the worst case of mass coral bleaching ever...
While you were at MACNA: Groundbreaking study on reef recovery and coral recruitment.
A remarkable piece of research was published in the journal Science this past week, absorbed by the scientific community while you were all being enchanted by Mitch Carl's emcee repertoire. And it further points to a global coral reef realm on the razor's edge....