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The Last Bonaire Brain Coral

by | Feb 14, 2017 | Conservation, Reef, Science

Good morning all, you can ask any seasoned diver who has been to Bonaire or the Caribbean in the past 10 years “what did you think about the reef on your last dive” and they will all say, “it’s not the same reef as we remember”. Due to years of massive tropical storms, overfishing, dragging nets and anchors, trash and runoff from shore our poor coral reefs are disappearing right before our very eyes and there is little we can do to stop it. On my last trip to Bonaire a few weeks ago I spent more time underwater shooting dying or dead corals than I did photographing fish or coral reef scenes, I must say it’s very alarming. I found colony after colony of wiped out endangered Staghorn coral and only a few brain corals like this one in the shallows, 14 years ago they were quite abundant. 

Let’s Talk Corals: Rock Anemones!

by | Feb 11, 2017 | Corals, Reef, Video

For this episode, we traveled to Plant City, Florida to speak to our friends at ACI Aquaculture about one of the hottest animal of 2016 and 2017, rock anemones! Exploding in vibrant in colors and extremely easy to keep, these anemones have become must have animal for...

Sting Ray Fossil, Heliobatis Radians

by | Feb 8, 2017 | Invertebrates, Reef, Science

Good morning friends, Aimee, the three dogs and yours truly just returned from the annual 2017 Tucson Gem and Mineral show. Now that I have spent years underwater I find myself more attracted to the underwater fossils more than ever and when I found this rare sting-ray I of course went crazy and had to photograph it! This was a large ray measuring around or close to 24 inches from top to bottom and cost around $10,000, more than I had with me… We spent days walking around looking at gems, minerals and fossils from all over the world but most pieces were way out of our budget, I think Aimee ended up with a sterling silver ring with a tiffany jasper (lavender) cabochon and I bought a colorful tripod bag from Tibet.  While in Tucson I went out to help the SDMB association “Sonoran Desert Mountain Bike” help build a new trail at Star Pass which should be open sometime this year. I got up early two mornings in a row at 7:00 and rode the bike “burrrrrrrr” to Star Pass and met a group of around 40 other volunteers and worked swinging a pick for four hours each day, it was super fun and very rewarding.

Salty Confessions: Procrastination Never Pays in Reefkeeping!

by | Feb 5, 2017 | Reef, Science

Ignoring a protein skimmer in need of maintenance could make you pay later! Regular SWS readers know that CC and I always emphasize the importance of staying on top of routine maintenance chores so small problems don’t develop into big ones. Great advice for a hobby in which only bad things happen quickly, right? Unfortunately, my recent failure to follow my own “sage” advice nearly led to disaster. Allow me to set the stage: Over the holidays, my wife, Melissa, and I had to ready our house for a large family get-together. Because we’re generally messy and disorganized people who like to procrastinate, that meant major cleaning and decluttering in the last few days prior to the gathering. On the first day of our cleaning odyssey, I was vacuuming around my reef system (situated in the living room) and noticed that the protein skimmer was in need of a tear-down and cleaning. Specifically, the volume of water discharging from the skimmer was greater than usual and the water level in the reaction chamber was higher than normal—both tell-tale signs that the air-intake was getting clogged.