“You feel lucky punk? Well, do you?”

I still dream of having my own cuttlefish army one day.  Until that happens, I’ll settle for making weird hand gestures at the aquarium.

After a couple minutes, one smallish cuttlefish turned red, grabbed a shrimp that was in the tank as a snack for the cuttles, and pushed the shrimp up against the glass in front of my hands. It seemed to be offering it to me. Then a larger cuttlefish turned white, grabbed the shrimp from the smaller one, and the big cuttlefish then repeated the effort to push it through the glass to me! The small cuttlefish turned gravel patterned, shot a jet of water out, and went to hide behind a tank decoration.

(link)

Disturbing news about the state of the coral reefs in the Carribean.  They’re flat:

You know those underwater pictures of pretty branched coral rising up from reefs in the Caribbean? Well that lovely coral is all but gone. Not disappearing, gone—on more than 75 percent of coral reefs in the Caribbean.

(link)

“OK people. Nothing to see here”

This is the best story I’ve ever read about reefing.  I’m sure every reefer who’s sold frags in a parking lot out of the back of his car has felt the same way.  I’m still waiting for the police helicopter to land in my backyard ready to bust me for my ‘grow house‘.

When I told the cop about “reefers” my meaning was not related to marijuana or date-rape drugs. Really, my friend and I were only involved with the reef-keeping community, which is an upstanding and rewarding hobby! The cop stared at me blankly and then stuck his radio near his mouth.

(link)

For me, two of the highlights of the expedition are the following.  The first was this video showing some deep water coral.  The coral looks like gorgonia, but I don’t think it is.  I love the tiny critters living among the branches.

Deep water zoas have nothing on this coral.

The second highlight was the video on bottom trolling trawling.  It shows how destructive the practice is to underwater life.  It’s not sustainable and needs to stop.  The barren patches of ocean floor are especially poignant.

Since today is world ocean’s day it’s only fitting that a project get underway to discover cold water coral off the cost of British Columbia.  Living Oceans Society will be sending an expedition in the deep water.  Not a whole lot is known about cold water coral, but they’re recognized as an important part of the ecosystem.

From the site:

Living Oceans Society is excited to announce the launch of our Finding Coral Expedition on June 8th. The expedition will use two mini subs to explore deep sea corals in Hecate Strait and the Queen Charlotte Basin. The subs will be piloted by Jennifer Lash, our Executive Director, and a blue ribbon science team who will dive to depths of up to 500 meters to gather evidence of corals, associated species, and damage from human impacts.

Well, its time again to do a post about the MACNA festival. If you are not in the know, MACNA is the Marine Aquatic Conference of North America. Its the biggest North American industry-driven, elbow greasing conference that allows all types of people to experience the hobby on a whole new level.

This year it is going to be in Atlantic City, NJ, a place where gambling meets reefing. It will be three days of madness, excitement, and free-for-all. You do have the time to purchase your tickets, as it is held on September 25th, 26th, and 27th. But, the tickets will go up in price as the dates near.

This years speaking engagement list includes Anthony Calfo, Bob Fenner, Frank Marini, Martin Moe, Scott Fellman, Jake Adams, and much more.

If that’s not enough, there will be raffles, and exhibitions, and fun activities presented by the industry leaders.

So buy your tickets, head to NJ, and look for us roaming around. It would be fun to meet you all. Plus it will be easy to spot us, two guys wearing our Fragd.it gear!
See you all in September!

Their coral collection, as usual, was abysmal.  Not so much from the selection, even though there was very little to choose from, but from the coral’s health.  Everything was bleached out.  There was a scolymia that could have been beautiful if only it wasn’t bleached and starving.  You could see its skeleton through its flesh.

This.  Only not so alive.

In their live rock tanks, they threw dying SPS.  I spoke to one of the guys in charge about some dying SPS and if I could take them home and try to rescue them.  He said that they had just come in on a shipment and he wants to “see what they would do”.  I could have told him what they’ll do…die.

There’s so much waste in this hobby.  I don’t want LFS to add to it.  The thing that keeps popping into my head is a Top Chef episode.  Stay with me here, it’s good stuff.

The point of the show is to cook the best dinner using preset ingredients.  In this particular episode, the head Chef, Tom Collichio had this reaction:

the head judge commented that Gene’s overcooked and poorly executed red snapper “bummed him out” because, as a chef, he feels you are supposed to “honor ingredients.” He was actually visibly disturbed by the fact that a fish died in vain for Gene’s bad dish. It was sincere and honest, and I loved it.

“If my alkalinity is 8dhk and I want to bring it up to 11dkh, then I need to balance my calcium at 440ppm…”

There’s a lot of parallels between cooking and reefers.  There’s a lot of death in both industries, but I like the idea of “honouring ingredients”.  Do you honour the ingredients of your tank?  Does your LFS honour theirs?

Honouring your aquarium means doing the best to take care of the livestock, while knowing that you’re walking a fine line between life and death for your charges.  If something dies, don’t just say “Oh, well” and buy a replacement.  Stop.  Reflect.  Make changes if necessary.  Slow down.  Mourn things that have died.

So, with that in mind, Eddie has me thinking.  Today he’s he wrote about exporting coral.  I found this to be the most poingnant:

While on the topic of aquaculture, let’s have a look at the false notion that keeping frags and promoting frags, even captive grown frags are deterring wild coral collection. The idea is good but again is flawed. Here is a typical example. A nice wild echino soon to be the “new watermelon chalice” is collected from the wild. It is sent to a wholesaler in the US. The coral gets picked up by a smart guy that specializes in fragging. He knows the value of this coral. I don’t blame the guy, to make money, I would do the same. So he cuts up the precious colony into many parts. Even glues them on a plug and let’s them heal. Then he smartly calls it a special name and starts to market it. The demand skyrockets.

Hit the link for more.

Also, please no Top Chef spoilers.  I haven’t watched the finale yet.

Sylvia Earle‘s call to arms is this year’s TED winner.  Her talk, interspersed with stunning photography is inspiring to anyone who has ever dipped a toe in the ocean.

She makes mention of her foundation Deep Search Foundation; a worthy cause if you’re looking for charitable donations.

Here’s her talk.  It’s about 15 minutes, and is worth every second.

Its always great to stumble upon a site that encourages marine conservation within the reefing industry. Of course there are a multitude of ways for one to practice helping out the reefs, but encouraging at home fish or invert breeding is the best start. This is where we find MarineBreeder.org. A site with a positive conscious that pushes breeding tips, contests, and new ideas forward.

I suggest you all go there for a good read if you have any intention of pursuing breeding your marine fish /invertebrates or obtaining captive raised fish.

Almost a year ago, nearly all the stringrays at a Calgary Zoo exhibit died by what was now being called a lack of dissolved oxygen.  At the time it was big news.  Even the police were called in to determine if it was sabotage.

Everyone one of us has lost livestock and most good honest aquarists don’t take it lightly.  We act as quickly as possible to minimize the deaths.  We take the loss hard and make updates to our system so that it doesn’t happen again.  Sometimes we buy things that shouldn’t go in our tanks and we learn a hard lesson.  There’s some hard lessons for aquarists to take from the Calgary Zoo.

However, this incident smacks of arrogance and now all that’s left is the finger pointing.  To me, it seems like everyone from the supplier to the Calagary Zoo staff are responsible.  Let’s take a look:

“Because this was an established zoo, we assumed there was a certain level of expertise that comes with handling these types of animals,”said Marty Tanner, president of Florida Marine Aquaculture.

“We had to assume . . . that there was a certain level of expertise with the life-support system and with their personnel, their veterinarians. We supply these animals to a lot of zoos and aquariums in the United States and overseas;we’ve never had this issue before,” said Tanner.

So, the supplier, Florida Marine Aquaculture isn’t claiming responsibility.  They’re content assuming and counting the money from the transaction.  I don’t know, but I’m guessing 41 stingrays added nicely to his bottom line last year.

It’s time for a change in the climate of the hobby.  Suppliers, and for most of us that’s our local fish stores, need to start being responsible for what they’re selling to people.  There needs to be accountability for the lives that we’re taking responsibility.  Stores are too comfortable selling anything to anybody with a credit card.

You want to recreate a replica of the aquarium from Finding Nemo?  Well, hold on there.  There’s a few things you should know about.

Finding Nemo: responsible for the deaths of hundreds of talking clownfish.

These comments from the Zoo president make me think that more deaths are coming:

The Calgary Zoo, clarifying Tuesday that a lack of dissolved oxygen likely killed the rays last year, said it isn’t planning on changing its practices and is confident it can care for animals by referring to outside advice.

Zoo president Clement Lanthier and Cathy Gaviller, the zoo’s director of conservation, education and research, told reporters that they knew as early as November that low levels of dissolved oxygen were probably the cause of death.

“I think we need to be very frank here. Our main expertise is not in fish at the Calgary Zoo. This is something that we want to expand. We have a responsibility to connect Calgarians not only to land animals but also what is going on in the ocean. We will continue to go there,” Lanthier said.

There are some good reefers out in Calgary.  I hope the Zoo speaks to them.

That’s why when I see a journalist such as Andrew Bolt say something like “Reefs refuse to vanish“, I get testy.  The blog points at a few articles as evidence, including quoting himself.

One argument Bolt uses against global warming causing coral deaths is that apparently cool weather kills coral too.  that there was a massive cool off period which caused a bleaching event.  Every good reefer knows that it’s not so much the temperature as it is the stability.  Heck, there are experiments to test coral’s ability to tolerate climate change.

This flies in the face of the report released last week titled “1/5 of Coral Reefs Lost Due to Acid-Filled Oceans”

Rising temperatures from greenhouses gases are the latest and most serious threats to coral, which are already being damaged by destructive fishing methods and pollution, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Blow hards like Andrew Bolt need to help the situation rather than exacerbating it.

A man on the island of Pulau Weh off the coast of Sumatra is rebuilding the reef after the Tsunami of 2004 destroyed it.  It sounds like he’s fragging coral, but on a larger scale than you or I are used to.  I’m not sure that 1″ by 1″ frags would do all that well here.

I love stories like this.  He lives amongst the reefs and loves them enough to not take them for granted.

From the article:

The best system he has found is to make concrete moulds using a bucket and then embed a plastic bottle or tube so that it sticks out of the top of the concrete.

When these are set he drops them by boat onto the shallow sandy sea bed and leaves them there for a month before starting to transplant coral to them.

“This allows time for any chemicals present in the concrete to dissipate so that they don’t affect the new coral growth,” he said.

“It is just like gardening; I cut a little bit of coral from the healthy reef on the far side of the island and bring it to my new reef. I am careful to only take a little from here and there so that I don’t affect the healthy eco system.”

He then uses cable ties to attach the transplants to the plastic tubes so they are not dislodged by tides or currents.

We swam out to inspect his new reef and the results were quite stunning.

The areas that are now over 3 three years old are completely covered with coral and fishes with virtually no remaining sign of the concrete bases. He has already replanted in excess of 200 square meters of coral with over 26 different species.

Link.

I wish I had 200 square meters of coral.  I’ll keep dreaming.