Photo by Arthur Kingdon, source: guardian.co.uk

The 2010 British Society of Underwater Photographers annual prize has been awarded to Arthur Kingdon for his photo of a rare black face benny fish. The competition is judged by The Wildlife Trusts in England and Ireland. “Photographers are urged to capture the essence of ‘living seas’ – the colourful, diverse and often surprising wildlife and habitats found around UK coasts.” —Source, The Guardian

Click here to see a slideshow of other amazing underwater photos. There’s some really cool stuff!

A Tub Gurnard - Photo by wwarby

Scientists are doing research on the language of fish! Shahriman Ghazali, a researcher in New Zealand, started listening to the sounds made by fish two years ago. He isolated different species and listened to them with a microphone. It turns out some of them, like the Gurnard, a winged fish in the north of New Zealand, make grunting noises that change throughout the day. Other nocturnal fish (the Bigeye) made popping sounds that Ghazali compared to morse code and were used for a variety of potential reasons: “It was possible they made sounds in response to divers approaching, and that other fish used sound for functions including communicating and orienting themselves around reefs.”

But then I read this quote from Ghazali: “Goldfish have excellent hearing, but excellent hearing doesn’t associate with vocalization – they don’t make any sound whatsoever.”  And now I’m sad.

Photo by Nataraj Metz

I always knew that coral was alive, but I never imagined it as a baby, or as a group of babies, swimming around in the ocean, away from their reefs. But that’s what happens. Baby coral, in their larval form (which, according to Science Daily looks like “an egg with hairs”) search their surroundings to find a nice coral reef to settle in and grow up. The question is, how do they find their new home?

In a recent study published in PLoS ONE, Dutch scientists have discovered that coral larvae do this by using sound. It is not clear how they detect sound, but it is very important to understand how they operate in order to help maintain the world’s threatened coral reefs.

Read the Science Daily article.

Image by Lab2112

It had long been wondered whether the animals in the ocean; whales, fish, even jellyfish, could have an effect on the movement of waters. In July of 2009, Kakani Katija and John Dabiri from the California Institute of Technology did an experiment that showed just how jellyfish moved water around. The shape of the waters’ movement was not what they expected, and plays a role in of ocean mixing.

See a video and learn more about it here

I'm not sure exactly which zebrafish they're talking about, but this picture is a pretty one of "zebrafish". Photo by Saspotato

Zebrafish have the ability to grow back missing parts of their hearts, or at least that’s what a new study in the March 25 issue of Nature implies. “…researchers working at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona (CMRB) identified a fish heart cell population that is the source of this astonishing healing feat, a finding that could provide insight into how mammalian hearts might be coaxed into repairing themselves after injury brought on by heart attack.”

Source: Underwater Times

A very good question. The book releases in the U.S. April 17, click on the image to pre-order it from Amazon.com

Until now, people have considered fish to be on the lowest end of our food chain, and because of that they are fished with surprising cruelty. Perhaps because of their aquatic environment and lack of warm blood and fur, the human theory has generally been that fish are not as clever as mammals, they have no memories and they don’t feel pain. Victoria Braithwaite, professor of fisheries and biology at Pennsylvania State University has written a new book titled: “Do Fish Feel Pain?” and finds that, basically, yes, they do. In 2003 Braithwaite herself determined that fish indeed feel pain and discomfort, and other studies have proved that even goldfish can have good memories, and male cichlids are known to observe fighting patterns in a future rival before taking him on. They have much in common with other vertebrates, including humans, why should we still think of them as plants? This will surely get the fishing enthusiasts up in arms, I can’t wait to see what happens.

Source: Daily Mail

Do Fish Feel Pain? published by Oxford University Press, releases March 25 in the U.K. and April 19 in the U.S.

photo by Nemo's Great Uncle

Lake Tanganyika has its own type of clownfish, and though they are smiling, they don’t look much like Nemo. Still, we couldn’t help but share that the January issue of National Geographic Magazine features a lovely article about the often orange and white marine clownfish, discussing, among other things, their strange cohabitation with anemones. It’s definitely worth a read, and as we’ve come to expect from National Geographic, there are some beautiful photos.

Click here to go to the article.

Source: LikeCool

Not too much to say here, except “I want to buy these for Gam!”