As many of you know, MACNA 2013 was held at the Westin Diplomat, which sits rather proudly on the beach: the same beach where hundreds of assorted turtles nest each year. In fact, Florida beaches host 5 different species of turtles, Loggerheads being the most common,...
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The Show tanks of MACNA 2013 (part 2)
Earlier I posted a few examples of the plethora of show tanks at MACNA 2013. Below are a few more examples of the range of displays. Some vendors went large, with huge displays, excellently aquascaped and full of fish, others went minimalist with nano systems- and all...
The Show Tanks of MACNA 2013 (Part 1)
Once again another great MACNA has come and gone, and this one will surely go down as one of the best there was. Everything from the organization, the speakers, the vendors and the venue was truly exceptional, and like every MACNA before it, the vendors bought their A...
Evidence of Gulf Corals impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil Spill
In the media last week there were numerous reports detailing the damage sustained by deep water corals in the Gulf of Mexico, purportedly from the spill of crude oil into the waters from the Deepwater Horizon Drilling platform. A recent report, published by the...
ReefRoids from Poly Labs. Superfood for filter feeders?
Reef-roids is a new take on the filter feeder foods available on the market. It is specifically formulated to have a particle size in the 150-200 micron range, which the manufacturers, Polyp Labs, suggest is the best size for most filter feeding corals out there....
I’m a Wrasse-aholic. Can anyone help me?
I just found myself ordering a bunch of wrasses for my reef and realized that I have a problem. Maybe admitting it in public may be the first step to recovery. It all started with a seemingly innocuous small yellow fish. When I say yellow, I mean insanely bright...
Prismacanvas Brings Aquatic Art to Life.
Several years ago I had the pleasure of meeting PrismaCanvas artist Kaitlyn Cameron. At the time she showed me a few pieces of art she had done including a most exquisite declivis butterfly as well as a few other small pieces she had been commissioned to do. It was...
Im a Clownfish! Hear Me Roar!!!!
So, during my daliances in the scientific literature I came across a title of a new paper that I just had to read. This manuscript, published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, entitled, “Interspecific variation of calls in clownfish: degree of similarity in closely related...
Octopus are able to edit their RNA in reponse to the environment!
We all know octopuses are really cool, but new research has shown that the really cool octopuses are really cool indeed. Or, to put it more clearly, octopus that live at cold temperatures are able to alter their genetic material to allow them to adapt to this harsh...
Were Marine Diatoms the Inspiration Behind Hitchcock’s “The Birds”
The Birds is a 1963 film depicting the crazed and unprovoked attacks of sea birds on the residents of a small coastal village (Bodega bay in California). One of the key features of the movie is the apparent suicidal attacks of the birds as they fly headlong into...