Study finds Table Corals are fast to grow but first to go 

Scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) have found that some fast-growing coral species on the Great Barrier Reef slow down their growth rates when they are exposed to warmer water.   The study, published in the Proceedings of…

Scientific-based approach to coral conservation will use “Assisted Evolution”

A new report was recently shared about two prominent coral reef ecologist’s plan to help out wild reefs with a hands-on approach to reef management that sounds eerily close to what we have been doing in our aquariums for decades.…

Underwater time lapse video shows the growth of a reef over 18 months

The Australian Institute of Marine Science has released a time lapse video of Davies Reef in Australia which shows this little patch of the GBR over a period of 18 months. The image quality used to compose the time lapse is not…

Corals of the World Online gets a beautiful and speedy website refresh

Corals of the World Online which replaced the indispensable CoralSearch a couple of years ago has already received a facelift of its own. The new cleaner layout has mostly familiar elements but the one thing that is greatly noticeable right…

Coral Search becomes Corals of the World online, every stony coral species now a click away (again)

Corals of the World online is a modernized version of the old staple website for coral identification, Coral Search. Before Coral Search the average aquarist would have been hardpressed to name more than a dozen species of stony corals, and…

Coral Library: San Diego Marine Aquarium Society re-engineers the AIMS CoralSearch

AIMS CoralSearch has been the go-to website for finding out what name scientists are calling that coral. If you’ve ever used the CoralSearch you know that it is slow, finnicky, prone to downtimes and simply not user friendly.  The Coral…

Aquarium rock lobsters might soon be a reality from research by AIMS scientists

Scientists working at the Australian Institute of Marine Science are looking at the prospect of raising rock and spiny lobsters artificially for the aquarium trade and for food. Like many of the giant clam farms, the AIMS scientist have struck…

AIMS to take a closer, scientific look at damage to GBR from Chinese Tanker

We all can pretty much figure out the Chinese tanker that got caught up on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef did some massive damage; exactly what the ecological damage done is the current focus of a research team led by the…

Get a free copy of “Soft Corals and Sea Fans” from AIMS

Would you like a free copy of Soft Corals and Sea Fans? The Australian Institute of Marine Science has about 200 copies to give away, for free. There will not be a second edition printed, so once these are gone,…

Coral ID from AIMS will be published online next year for free

Coral ID is the name of a compact disc which is basically the digital edition of the ultimate guide to stony coral identification from JEN Veron, Corals of the World. Covering over nearly a thousand coral species with 2500 color…