The genus Pseudanthias is growing at a rate of at least one new member per year as the reefs of the Pacific continue to drip feed us with brand new, never before seen species. In 2013 we saw the appearance of the…
Australia
Turbinaria bifrons is the rarest stony coral you’ve never heard of
Turbinaria bifrons is quite simply unlike any coral anyone has ever seen, and it is perhaps one of the rarest stony coral species in the aquarium hobby. When we say T. bifrons is rare we don’t mean rare as in a strain…
Google Street View of Great Barrier Reef officially released
A little over two years ago, we learned Google, in conjunction with Catlin Seaview Survey, had the ambitious plan to map the Great Barrier Reef and allow anyone to take a “Street View” look at this majestic location. Last week, Catlin…
Get to know some unique, free-living and “walking” corals
Disc corals have gotten incredibly popular over the last few years for their ability to have extremely brilliant colors, a single polyp & corallite which is hard to propogate, and because they are just that cool! However disc and tongue corals…
Green Acropora solitaryensis being exported from Australia
Acropora solitaryensis was once the name of an Acro so exalted, merely uttering its name around reefers would be a cause for silence. Back when all we had were fuzzy sticks, the plating Acro was the holy grail of SPS…
Sousa sahulensis is a new species of Australian humpback dolphin
Sousa sahulensis is a new species of Australian humpback dolphin which was recently described from what is now a pool of four species of the marine mammals. Fore nearly two centuries questions existed about the exact nature of the population…
Quarter million crown of thorns starfish eradicated by new injection method
The news about the natural reef environment can be so overly bleak, it’s nice to hear some progress coming out of Australia that bodes well for the future of the Great Barrier Reef. The Crown of Thorns starfish, Acanthaster placi,…
New Tridacna species, one of these Maxima clams is not like the others
There’s a new species of Tridacna giant clam that scientists have just “discovered” but guess what? Us reefers saw and noticed a unique clam species many years ago. The new Tridacna sp. has not been formally described but was discovered in…
Friday Smorgasbord: Old seas, strange fish and 3D maps
It’s Friday and here is another edition of our weekly smorgasbord of weird, wacky and interesting. Starting off is the discovery of a 100-million-year-old ocean found under the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. US Geological Survey (USGS) hydrologists drilling discovered what…
Not True To Name – a variation of the red tailed flasher wrasse, Paracheilinus rubricaudalis, found on the GBR
The Flasher Wrasses, like their cousins the Fairy Wrasses, epitomize what a great, reef-safe marine fish really is. One of the newest species on the block, Paracheilinus rubricaudalis or the Redtailed Flasher Wrasse described by Randall and Allen in 2003,…