Always thoughtful Mark Powell of Blogfish says corals are “the canary in the coal mine”, and points out a list of political actions you can take to help preserve fragile coral reef habitats.
Commenter Jives from the The New Blue contributes two stories about the Giant Ocean Tank at the New England Aquarium. Remodeling doubled the number of species and individuals in the tank by adding a magic ingredient–a massive coral reef replica. Coral biologist extraordinaire Dr. Les Kaufman tells his story as one of the principal designers.
And finally, Lucia Malla from Uma Malla pelo Mundo in Brazil is posting more stories and pretty pictures than we have here! I wish I could read Portugese! Please go pay a visit and say “OLÁ” to our South American friends.
Here’s one of the today’s visitor maps:
Peter, thanks much for the kind words. I am a fond reader of DSN, and as a biologist and a coral reef lover, couldn’t let the opportunity of going insane about corals in front of the Portuguese-speaking audience and friends. You guys had the great idea of celebrating the reef, I just followed the good leads… :D
I can give you an overview of how was Coral Week in my blog. My audience is too diverse, so I had to start with the basics. I posted about: 1) what corals are and why they are important; 2) biodiversity in the Bikini atoll; 3) the famous coral-inhabitant Nemo and how he popularized the reef ecosystem for kids; 4) how colorful is the reef (and how the fish see these colours); 5) on Brazilian’s Labor Day, how is the survey work done in a coral reef. That’s it up to now. All pictures are from my husband’s website. He participates in surveys at the North Pacific as a marine biologist and underwater photographer.
Congratlations for you guys at DSN for the nice job done here with all the deep-sea coral info. I loved all the posts from this week.