This fantastic video from the World Wildlife Fund in Australia is a turtle’s eye view of the The Great Barrier Reef. The sensitive ecological zone is home to almost 6,000 species.
To find out more about the level of pollution affecting turtles within the Great Barrier Reef, WWF is working on innovative project in Queensland with the support of our partners Banrock Station Wines Environmental Trust, James Cook University, The University of Queensland, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, State and Commonwealth government agencies, Indigenous rangers and local community groups.
As part of that project, the opportunity arose to very carefully fit a small GoPro camera to a turtle, to better understand the post-release behaviour of tagged green turtles. The result is this amazing video.
This week, the World Heritage Committee will vote whether to keep a strong watch over Australia until the health of the Great Barrier Reef. The decision is critical to the future protection of the Reef.
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"Born Like Stars" (2011) by Brent Hoff. Read the rest
Dude. When there's a shark hanging out, humans like you are supposed to go inside, not on top of, the cage.
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About two thousand feet (598 meters) below the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, remotely operated vehicle Hercules encountered a magnificent sperm whale. Read the rest
KQED takes a Deep Look at pygmy seahorses, recently bred in captivity for the first time thanks to biologists at the California Academy of Sciences. Read the rest
Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and independent shipwreck divers exploring the Golden Gate strait discovered two sunken ships from 1863 and 1910, with several hundreds more "forgotten ghost ships" likely still undiscovered in the area. Read the rest
The National Museum of Natural History's Sandra Raredon maintains the "fish library," a job that includes X-raying the specimens like this two-headed smooth-hound shark. Below, a small tooth sawfish and Atlantic angel shark.
"A Two-Headed Shark and Other X-Rayed Beauties at the Smithsonian"
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Absolutely breathtaking great white shark footage captured by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers using their SharkCam underwater drone near Mexico's Guadalupe Island.
REMUS SharkCam is a specially outfitted REMUS-100 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with video cameras and navigational and scientific instrumentation that enable it to locate, track, and film up close a tagged marine animal, such as a North Atlantic white shark (great white). The vehicle is pre-programmed to home in on a signal from a transponder beacon attached to the animal at depths up to 100 meters (330 feet) and in a variety of patterns and configurations.
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Mother and daughter humpback whale. A photo captured and shared in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by reader Christopher Michel. Read the rest
Australian scientists are seeking a "mystery sea monster" that likely swallowed a 9-foot great white shark. Most likely, it was an even bigger great white shark, specifically a 2-ton "colossal cannibal great white shark." Read the rest
Fabien Cousteau, grandson of Jacques, is planning to spend 31 days underwater, beating his grandfather's record by one day while also celebrating Jacques Cousteau's research. Read the rest
Silicon Valley billionaire venture capitalist and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla wants everyone to stay off Martins Beach, a lovely stretch of oceanfront south of Half Moon Bay. To that end, he is invoking The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War in 1848 and transformed California from being a chunk of Mexico to becoming part of the USA. Okay, Vinod. Whatever.
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There's an entire goddamned tumblr of this stuff and it's magnificent
. It even includes the actual species of be-googlied sea critter, and source attribution. And it's not even photoshopped! Man, the oceans are amazing. [HT: Theremina
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Photographer Daniel Stoupin created this magical time-lapse video of "slow" marine life. "Microworlds: Slow Life" Read the rest
In an older post that I hadn't seen before, David Shiffman of the Southern Fried Science explains how the ostensible success of "dolphin-safe tuna" has actually led to tuna fishing methods that are a much bigger threat to ocean wildlife
— from tuna, themselves, to endangered sea turtles and sharks. Read the rest
The name Vampyroteuthis infernalis means "Vampire squid from hell". And vampire squid are freaky looking creatures — red with cloudy eyes that can appear blue or blood red, depending on how the light hits them. But appearances can be deceiving. Turns out, the squid from hell has eating habits more in line with those of Bunnicula. The squids' entire diet is made of "marine snow" — floaty little bits of algae, poop, and bacteria.
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One does not simply sail into the Pacific Garbage Patch and clean it up like convicts on the interstate. For one thing, those pieces of plastic are much smaller than you're imagining. For another, when the plastic is that small, any attempt at filtering inevitably sucks up tiny sea life, as well
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