Around this time last year, a flurry of media coverage was directed at the exciting “discovery” of a large coral reef ecosystem found lurking in a very unexpected location—the mouth of the Amazon River.…
Joe Rowlett
Recent Content
Okeanos Is Back With A Weird Purple Squid
The Okeanos Explorer is back in action and busily probing the Gulf of Mexico’s silted ocean floor. In the first few dives we’ve been treated to some impressive crustaceans, like the nightmare-inducing blind lobster Acanthacaris caeca and the gigantic red and white squat lobster Munidopsis spinosus.…
The Orange Conger-moray Is An EELusive Beauty From The Deep
Conger-morays are a weird little family (Myrocongridae: Myroconger) that few have ever heard of and fewer still have had the good fortune to see alive. The handful of species in this group are of considerable interest to taxonomists, but, for anyone else, these eels stand out most for their extraordinary colors.…
The Severe Health Risk Posed By The Caribbean Condylactis Anemone
There is a great disparity in the relative strength of sea anemone stings. Many of the smaller species are quite harmless to man (e.g. Phymanthus, Exaiptasia), while some of the larger-bodied groups can produce painful blisters (e.g.…
Rhodactis Mushroom Corals Are Surprisingly Deadly
The Green Hairy Mushroom Coral is a common sight on Indo-Pacific coral reefs and shows up regularly in aquarium exports, but, while it might seem harmless enough, within its slimy tissues lurks something sinister.…
Xenia Does NOT Contain Palytoxin
Q: What happens when you combine a misinformed aquarist and a few lazy journalists?
A: Poorly researched articles claiming that Xenia contains palytoxin.
In late March, British aquarist Chris Matthews attempted to remove an overgrowth of Xenia from his live rock, apparently by manually scrubbing the coral with a brush outside of his aquarium.…
Stupid Aquarist Releases Blue Xenia & Clove Polyps In Brazil
The presence of some new invasive soft corals has just been reported in the West Atlantic, and, more likely than not, it’s an aquarist that’s responsible. Brazilian researchers were conducting a coral survey last October along the reefs south of Rio de Janeiro when they unexpectedly stumbled upon two species common to the aquarium trade: Blue Xenia (Sansibia sp.)…
How To Identify The Caledonian Anemonefish
The Amphiprion clarkii complex is overflowing with unrecognized species-level biodiversity, and one of the more attractive examples can be found in the Southwest Pacific, primarily around the islands of New Caledonia and Vanuatu.…
Palytoxin Cures Cancer?
Palytoxin sure has been getting a lot of bad press lately. Last week, there was the widely reported story of a British family, along with four firefighters, who had to be hospitalized following exposure.…
The Nicest White Tang Ever.
Here it is, the best looking “white tang” that has ever been collected… a perfect contrast of vibrant yellow fins set against a stark white body. The effect is like a reverse fried egg. Most of the time when we see this mutation in Zebrasoma flavescens it results in an unusual piebald asymmetry, sort of like a piscine vitiligo.…