While working on a few posts about camouflage in fish, I came across a fascinating news release about just how black deep sea fish can be. The research, led by scientists from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, found sixteen unrelated species of fish with skin so black [...]
I've just completed a post about Lionfish and their status in the Mediterranean and I thought I might look at a few other species of note that have made the journey from the Indo-Pacific region to the shores of Europe and North Africa. When the Med was connected to the Red Sea and the [...]
According to a new study, Lionfish are now well-established in the waters around the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. It is only eight years since Lionfish (Pterois miles) were recorded off the coast of Cyprus. Since then, according to research carried out by teams including scientists from [...]
A recent study in the journal Current Biology has used historical data on over three hundred marine species to demonstrate a trend towards species abundance declining at the trailing (what the team call equatorward), edge of their range and an increase in abundance at the species’ poleward [...]
A little while back I shared some images of mangroves growing adjacent to the Red Sea. Here are some more from this harsh, tough, and yet functioning habitat. Mangroves are not common along the Red Sea coastline, a figure of around 2,700 square kilometers has been quoted, to include the [...]
It may come as a surprise to you that you can tell an awful lot about the past from shells, and not just the recent past either, but the late cretaceous. Research published in the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology looked at the growth rings in a fossil shell – a relative of [...]
Research published in the journal Current Biology has documented how floating plastic debris becomes covered in marine organisms and ends up giving off scents which are similar to turtles’ normal foodstuffs. Just some of the plastic I collected on a beach in the Med "We found that [...]
