After a long cold winter and amid disturbing reports that the North Atlantic may be entering a cool phase, I am very happy to report that the first tropical species of the year have made their appearance in Long Island waters.Yesterday, I was joined by an elite team...
By Todd Gardner Atlantis Marine World is a small public aquarium on the East end of Long Island, New York. Its small size is belied by a growing reputation in the aquarium world, fueled largely by its crown jewel, a 20,000-gallon living coral reef tank, created and...
By Todd Gardner and Jay Hemdal Introduction The boarfish, Capros aper is a temperate (cool) water species, usually found at depths of 40 to 700 meters. Although it is a popular exhibit species for public aquariums in Europe it is not available in the ornamental fish...
By Todd Gardner The Long Road to Settlement The reef basses, Liopropoma sp. are a group of small groupers found on tropical coral reefs throughout the world. Like other members of the family serranidae, they are hardy, disease resistant, and uninterested in eating...
By Todd Gardner The term “bottleneck” gets thrown around a lot in aquaculture. When we use it, we are typically referring to the specific problem (or at least, the most important problem) that prevents us from closing the life cycle of a species or from getting a...
Although it is not uncommon for the squirrelfish, Holocentrus adscensionis to show up in Long Island waters as a tropical stray, the deepwater squirrelfish, Sargocentron bullisi is a far less frequent visitor.In fact, the last known record of S. bullisi in New York...
Red coloration and large eyes are typical of deep-water fishes. In the Atlantic, bigeyes of the family Priacanthidae are associated with benthic habitats of the continental shelf, often in water deeper than 100 meters. Although we often find members of this family and...
I found this tiny octopus last week, clinging to a piece of sargassum weed 20 miles off the coast of Long Island, NY. I don't know if he would have survived with the schools of hungry Mahi Mahi and Triggerfish hovering just below the weed line, but he is adjusting...
If you live on Long Island and you want to hire a charter boat to take you out in search of a trophy shark, tuna, striped bass, or anything else they think they can promise, there’s no shortage of captains ready to take your money. If, on the other hand, you just want...
What can it mean that after a complete absence of lionfish around Long Island, New York, for the last three years, they have suddenly reappeared? …probably nothing. While the Indo-Pacific lionfish, Pterois volitans has continued to spread throughout the Atlantic and...