Manta Rays are known to occasionally breach the water surface and splash down, presumably to remove parasites. Once in a while, many Manta Rays can gather and show off their aerobatic skills in some kind of aerial display that we don’t even understand. Rarely is a human with a camera around to capture the show, but that’s exactly what you’ll find in a recent article at the Daily Mail.
The squawk boxes are talking about 2010 perhaps being the hottest year on record and it is no secret that the oceans will be at the front lines of the effects of global climate change. A recent study lead by Boris Worm looked at how patterns of biodiversity in the ocean differs between the warm and cooler regions of the oceans and how warming seas will rearrange the sealife that we depend on for food and for tourism. No one is preaching that the end is nigh, but we can expect some of corals and fish to shift their natural ranges. A Wired article succinctly covers the study.
In a similar vein, with the oceans changing faster than we can study them, it is imperative that we can learn about environmental changes when they happen. In a recent TED presentation, oceanographer John Delainey proposes that we wire the ocean with a multitude of sensors and webcams that will allow us to monitor our changing ocean in real time.
On a lighter note, Cherry Corals has recently listed a small colony of “Rainbow Crush Chalice“, basically an amazing orange Echinophyllia that has developed some amazing patterns and colors in the last year it spent in one of their customer’s tanks. Fancy name and the heavy blue lighting aside, this is one beautiful and brilliant piece of chalice coral. At $1000 for the colony the piece s prohibitively expensive for any individual to purchase but this would be a really neat specimen for a reef club to invest in, and divy up amongst their members.
And finally, leave it to Chinese aquarists to seek out some of the weirdest mutants of marine life; while Americans are all over the weirdos that have weird colors and patterns, in Asia and Hong Kong particularly, the misshapen and more grotesque reef fish specimens are highly prized and offered a great life in captivity. This video shows a young emperor angelfish which appears to have it’s tail incorporated into the posterior dorsal fin. So basically this emperator doesn’t have a tail.
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