by AquaNerd | Jul 10, 2016 | Conservation, Corals, Fish, Photography, Reef, Science, Travel
The first time I dived on Raja Ampat’s reefs, I didn’t know where to look first. The profusion of colors and the seeming chaos of the Indonesia reef’s appearance — not a single straight line to be seen — provided a total contrast to the orderly, human-built world we usually inhabit topside.
<![CDATA[ #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } ]]> MORE: Hunting down the world’s oldest art in South Sulawesi, Indonesia Photos and video struggle to ever do Raja Ampat’s reefs justice. They just can’t fully capture the all-encompassing sense of the reef’s by AquaNerd | Jul 8, 2016 | Conservation, Fish, Reef, Science
Researchers in Texas have discovered an extremely rare, eyeless catfish once thought only to exist in Mexico. A pair of the endangered Mexican blindcat (Prietella phreatophila) was discovered in the depths of a limestone cave at Amistad National Recreation Area near Del Rio, Texas. The pair has since been moved to the San Antonio Zoo. “Since the 1960s, there have been rumors of sightings of blind, white catfishes in that area, but this is the first confirmation,” Dean Hendrickson, curator of ichthyology at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a press release. “I’ve seen more of these things than anybody, and these specimens look just like the ones from Mexico.” The Mexican blindcat is a species that grows no more than 3 inches by AquaNerd | May 22, 2016 | Fish, Reef, Science
It looks like three men may have killed one of the world’s rarest fish known as the Devil’s Hole Pupfish. This species of Pupfish fish exists in no place on earth except Devil’s Hole in Death Valley National Park, NV. The National Parks Service is investigating and they are offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to these men’s arrest and conviction. Authorities suspect on April 30th the intrusion left one of the critically endangered pupfish dead. The exact cause of the fish’s death is unclear. But at the last count in April, there were only 115 Devils Hole pupfish left in the world, the National Park Service said. “Video footage recorded this man walking on the shallow shelf, potentially stressing and by AquaNerd | May 17, 2016 | Fish, Reef, Science
A drone hobbyist in the waters off the coast of Australia has captured footage of a pod of false killer whales chasing and killing a juvenile shark. As you can see from the video the shark, typically considered to be an apex predator, didn’t stand a chance against the “wolf pack”. [embedded content] When an amateur drone hobbyist in Australia took his remote-controlled aircraft to the skies, he didn’t expect to see anything like this. The video shows a pod of false killer whales, a type of dolphin, chasing down a juvenile shark in crystal clear water. The aerial footage taken off the coast of Cronulla, a Sydney suburb, offers a glimpse into the behavior and feeding behavior of false killer whales. Rarely by AquaNerd | May 7, 2016 | Conservation, Fish, Industry, Reef, Science
Vancouver Aquarium marine scientist Laura Borden holds up a piece of kelp found in shallow waters in Howe Sound on Monday. (Rafferty Baker/CBC) Scientists with the Vancouver Aquarium were on the water last week looking closely at how a serious decline in the Sea Star population in the waters in Howe Sound near West Vancouver is impacting the rest of the marine ecosystem. Scientists first started noticing a decline in Sea Star populations in 2013 and the cause for the decline is what is know as, Sea star wasting disease. “It was really striking to see the wasting sea stars. They kind of lose their internal body pressure, they develop lesions, they start to fall apart, drop their arms, so it’s really quite gruesome,&rdquo
