Happy Friday to you all and since there are still is a few hours to go before its officially happy hour (although it is 5 o’clock somewhere), we have some interesting short posts to share to start your weekend off right. To start things off is the news that NatGeo’s show “Fish Tank Kings” is making its season two debut on Saturday, June 1, at 9 pm ET. First up on the show? Watch the team transform this VW van into a reef oasis.
[NatGeo]
This next one is important and you might have the opportunity to help save a species from extinction. The ZSL London Zoo have sent out an important appeal to all aquarists to see if a female mate can be found for the last remaining males of a critically endangered Madagascan cichlid species. The Ptychochromis insolitus is thought to be the extinct in the wild thanks to dams drying up its native habitat in Madagascar’s Mangarahara River. The zoo has the last two remaining Mangarahara cichlids in captivity but both are male. If a female can be found, the aquarists have a good chance of preventing the extinction of the species. If you have any information, contact the ZSL Zoo at [email protected].
[via PFK]
A new Antarctic fish species was accidentally discovered by Ukrainian fishermen. While on the hunt for Antarctic toothfish in the Ross Sea, the anglers reeled in three unfamiliar species that was later identified as a previously undiscovered species. Nicknamed the hopbeard plunderfish, the new fish has the scientific name Pogonophryne neyelovi. The new species is described in a study published online April 29 in the journal ZooKeys.
[via Discovery]
A Brazillian “Atlantis” might have been discovered off the coast of the South American country. A Japanese submersible came across a huge chunk of granite that was formed on dry land along with a vast amount of quartz sand 900 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro recently. Scientists feel this might be a part of a continent that sank off the coast millions of years ago and is being dubbed the ‘Brazilian Atlantis’.
[via RT]
A new deepwater chemosynthetic community was discovered by NOAA researchers aboard the NOAA Ship Ron Brown. After discovering methane bubbles, the screws submarine Jason was deployed and dove 1,600 meters deep just south of the Norfolk Canyon located 35 miles off Virginia’s coast. The expedition found vast mussel beds stretching as far as his cameras could see. The ecosystem, the first of its kind discovered of the US Atlantic coast, survives thanks to methane-eating bacteria residing in the gills of the mussels. Fish were seen swimming around the mussel beds along with sea cucumbers and lithodid crabs, but other species were absent including tube worms and galatheoid crabs that are commonly found in other chemosynthetic communites.
[via NOAA]
