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Marine Life Series: Intro to Algae
Algae are the dominant photosynthetic organisms found in marine ecosystems. They may be tiny planktonic organisms, comprised of merely a single cell, or clusters or strands of a few dozen cells. These...
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Marine Life Series: Anatomy of a Snail Shell
All snails belong to the phylum Gastropoda (literally "stomach-footed"). Nearly all are covered with a single spiral shell. Given that there are around 75,000 species around the world, plus several...
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Marine Life Series: Megalodon
Thirty-three years ago a young upstart director named Steven Speilberg made what is now viewed as the first summer blockbuster movie. This film made stars of Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider and Robert...
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Marine Life Series: Sand Dollars
Most people know the sand dollar as the dried, white "shell" found in craft stores and gift shops. What you are seeing is simply the test, or skeleton, of a once living animal. Sand dollars are related...
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Marine Life Series: Cassiopeia
In Greek mythology, Cassiopeia was the beautiful and vain wife of Cepheus, an Ethiopian king. Cepheus and Cassiopeia had a daughter, Andromeda, who was to be wed to the hero Perseus. Cassiopeia, at the...
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Marine Life Series: Albino Rock Crab
Last Friday you guys voted overwhelmingly for Hermit Crab Basics as this week’s MLS topic. Unfortunately I’ve been dealing with the flu all week so I haven’t been up for doing the research. I’ll tackle...
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Marine Life Series: Aristotle's Lantern
[This diary was first posted to Daily Kos on August 11, 2006.]Sea urchins are Echinoderms, spiny-skinned animals related to starfish and sea cucumbers. Echinodermata is a rather small phyla of animals...
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Marine Life Series: Hermit Crab Basics
Hermit crabs are found all over the world in shallow waters and are one of the more familiar coastal animals. Although they have an exoskeleton, as all crustaceans do, this protective covering only...
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Marine Life Series: Hermit Crab Reproduction and Torpor
As we saw last week in the diary Hermit Crab Basics, hermit crabs have abandoned a crustacean's typical total exoskeleton body coverage in exchange for the security of living inside an old univalve...
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Marine Life Series: Hermit Crab Symbionts
This is part III on hermit crabs. Hermit Crab Basics is here, and hermit crab reproduction is here.Tonight I’d like to focus on hermit crab symbionts. Symbiosis is a relationship between unrelated...
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Marine Life Series: Hermit Crabs and Exotic Species
Generally the introduction of a non-native species of plant or animal into an ecosystem is a destructive event. Whether they be rabbits or poisonous cane toads introduced to the Australian outback or...
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Marine Life Series: Mermaid’s Purses
While beachcombing it's not uncommon to come across the strange thing pictured above mixed in among the various beach debris. This is the empty egg case, or "Mermaid's Purse", of a Skate.Fish are...
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Marine Life Series: Squid Egg Mops
Squid are free-swimming mollusks, and like their close relatives the octopods, they are intelligent, predatory, fast-growing and have a depressingly short life span usually lasting merely a year.The...
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Marine Life Series: Coconut Crabs
Arthropods, including crustaceans, insects and arachnids, are by far the largest group of animals that exist on Earth, comprising over 80% of all known species of animals. And the single largest...
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Marine Life Series: The Blue-eyed Scallop
[This diary was originally posted to Daily Kos on August 25, 2006.]The Bay Scallop (Aequipenctin irradians) is a Molluscan maverick. The species has succeeded by breaking or bending the rules of...
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Marine Life Series: Lionfish Invasion
[Last Monday night's broadcast of NBC News, Brian Williams was scheduled to run a story on the introduction of these fish to the U.S. This essay was originally published to Daily Kos on October 7,...
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Marine Life Series: Giant Conger Eels
This diary was originally posted to Daily Kos on September 6, 2006. Normal diary schedule should resume starting next week. Sorry for the absence this summer.A while back I posted a diary on the...
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Marine Life Series: Exploring the Surface of an Asteroid
In the coastal marine environment countless species of algae and invertebrates use various methods of attaching to firm substrates to eke out their living. Think about anytime you’ve visited the...
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Marine Life Series: Moon Snails and Sand Collars
Snails are members of a class of mollusks known as Gastropoda. The word is derived from the latin words for stomach and foot. So, these are "stomach-footed" animals, and I can't think of another...
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Marine Life Series: Pipefish
Pipefish are distinctive little fish that resemble seahorses stretched out straight. Like seahorses they snap up their prey using a long tubular snout, have a body covered in bony plates and brood...
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Marine Life Series: Dumbo Octopus
Science loves order, breaking down the world into categories, subcategories, levels and classifications. Every element on earth is neatly placed in numerical order from 1 to 113 on the periodic table...
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Marine Life Series: Short-spined Brittle Stars
We’ve discussed sea stars in this series before, but so far I haven’t touched on the group of Asteroids known as brittle stars. They also go by "serpent stars", for reasons which will be made clear...
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Marine Life Series: Bait Balls
Animals have evolved various methods of preventing predators from eating them. A fish that can change the color of its skin to blend in with its surroundings will be less likely to be killed than...
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Marine Life Series: A Worm Named Eunice
Most annelids are small creatures that live under the soil or sea bed. They feed by tunneling through the sediment and ingesting everything they come across, digesting the organic material and passing...
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Marine Life Series: Christmas Tree Worms
Last week we briefly discussed the two types of annelids. Most terrestrial species belong to the group known as Oligochaetes and include the common earthworm. In the marine environment annelids tend to...
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Marine Life Series: Camouflage
Camouflage is a vital adaptation used by many different types of both aquatic and terrestrial animals. Normally we think of an animal blending in with its surroundings to protect itself from predators,...
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Marine Life Series: Flounder’s Twisted Skull
Last week we looked at how several marine animals used camouflage to protect themselves from predators. In that essay I mentioned that a flounder is not flattened top to bottom, as stingrays are, but...
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Marine Life Series: Andre the Harbor Seal
In 1982, as a senior in high school, I had an opportunity to take part in an internship program at a public aquarium in Connecticut. Part of my responsibilities was the daily feeding of the three...
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Marine Life Series: Byssal Threads
The main form of protection for bivalves is the hard pair of shells that envelop and seal closed the soft body inside. But having this defense isn't quite enough to protect them from the many predators...
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Marine Life Series: Raising Seafoals
At any given time I have about ten or fifteen lined seahorses. This species (Hippocampus erectus) is one of the very few coldwater-tolerant varieties in the world. This particular type of seahorse is...
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Marine Life Series: Northern Pufferfish
There are just under two hundred species of animals known as pufferfish. Nearly all are marine and most are found in tropical seas. In New England we have only one species, the Northern Pufferfish...
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Marine Life Series: The Coolest Fish on Earth
If you consider a "profession" to be something one does in exchange for money, then technically I’ve been a professional marine biologist since I was fourteen years old. I’ve never had any other job....
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Marine Life Series: Understanding Krill
The raised stone at the apex of the arch pictured above is the keystone, and in historical architecture is considered so important that it is often decorated with a lion’s head, family seal or other...
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Marine Life Series: Psychedelic Frogfish
It’s always exciting when science discovers a new species of plant or animal sharing our planet. Most of these discoveries tend to come from remote rain forests or the deep ocean. What’s really...
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Marine Life Series: How Tube Feet Work
Sea stars, sea urchins and most other members of the phylum Echinodermata move along the ocean bottom using structures known as tube feet. These tube feet, called ambulacrae in science-speak, are...
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Marine Life Series: The Peacock Flounder
This will be an unusually short entry in this series, but I wanted to introduce you to an absolute master in the art of camouflage. While all species of flatfishes are very good at blending in with...
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Marine Life Series: Sargassum Fish
Out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is a roughly million-square-mile area known as the Sargasso Sea. On the surface of this sea is an enormous mat of entangled, floating algae, kept in place by a...
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Marine Life Series: Coral Bleaching
As the term suggests, coral bleaching is the whitening of living coral colonies, a phenomenon associated with anthropogenic changes in the animal’s habitat which lead to the weakening of the colony’s...
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Marine Life Series: Reflex Amputation
Most people are familiar with a lizard’s ability to drop its tail off at will. Also known as autotomy, reflex amputation is an adaptive behavior developed by a wide range of organisms as a means of...
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Marine Life Series, DK GreenRoots: Responsible Shrimp Buying
As a marine educator I’ve become acutely aware of the threat posed by overfishing. In fact, I’m rather distressed about it considering that continuing our current rate of depletion of this resource...
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Marine Life Series: Expat Sargasso Community
Although like most people I’m not all that thrilled about the damage caused by hurricanes and tropical storms when they landfall, I’m guessing that unlike most folks I eagerly await the arrival of one...
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Marine Life Series: The Red Knot
Twice each year shorebirds along the eastern seaboard migrate thousands of miles between North and South America. In the fall they head south to their wintering grounds, and then return to their...
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Marine Life Series: Paul the Octopus is a Fraud
I did an hour-long phone interview with CNN last night. They were looking for an alternate explanation for the "psychic octopus" named Paul. Paul lives in a German aquarium and has become famous for...
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Marine Life Series: Ruby on NOVA
It's been a long time, way too long a time, since I've posted an MLS diary. But PBS ran an episode on animal intelligence, and they asked me and Ruby the octopus to star in it. So, I thought I'd share.
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Marine Life Series: NRN Invitation
Five years ago I attended Netroots Nation in Chicago. It was the highlight of that year for me (although in that same year my dog died, a long-term relationship ended and my son moved out, so the bar...
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SFCityGuides.org Palace of Fine Arts Tour
SFCityGuides.org - It was started by the SF Public Library by a librarian to give tours to visiting dignitaries of the City Hall building. 2 cool things about them, the Tours are free, and the...
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Marine Life Series: Commercial Fisheries Kickstarter
The Biomes Center commercial fisheries exhibit.
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Marine Life Series: The History of Oyster Farming
Harvesting oysters in New England goes back to way before colonial times. Although today oysters are harvested mainly for food, back in the 1700’s they were collected for their shells. Limestone, vital...
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Marine Life Series: Shame-faced Crabs
If there’s one crustacean that can be described as tank-like, this is it. The body is compact, the exoskeleton incredibly hard and the claws have evolved to form a perfect fit to cover the entire face....
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Marine Life Series: The Blue-ringed Octopus
I’ve owned fourteen octopuses over the years, and the most depressing part of bonding with these incredibly intelligent animals is their short life span. My local ones only live for about a year. I...
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