TFH Magazine Blog » Aquatic News

First-Ever Underwater Lectures

Shari Horowitz — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:14:38 +0000

Unique university lecture held 18 metres underwater Students at the University of Essex have taken their lectures to a whole new level – 18 metres under the sea in remote Indonesia to be precise. The ground-breaking underwater marine biology lectures were the first of their kind, revolutionising the teaching, educational and learning experience during dives [...]

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Hips Evolved From Fish?

Shari Horowitz — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:47:05 +0000

New research has revealed that the evolution of the complex, weight-bearing hips of walking animals from the basic hips of fish was a much simpler process than previously thought. Tetrapods, or four-legged animals, first stepped onto land about 395 million years ago. This significant change was made possible by strong hipbones and a connection through [...]

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Endangered Cichlid Needs a Mate

Shari Horowitz — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:42:46 +0000

Aquarists at ZSL London Zoo are launching an urgent worldwide appeal to find a female mate for the last remaining males of a critically endangered fish species. The Mangarahara cichlid (Ptychochromis insolitus) is believed to be extinct in the wild, due to the introduction of dams drying up its habitat of the Mangarahara River in [...]

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Small Fish Can Beat Big Fish

Shari Horowitz — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:13:56 +0000

Fish win fights on strength of personality When predicting the outcome of a fight, the big guy doesn’t always win, suggests new research on fish. Scientists at the University of Exeter and Texas A&M University found that when fish fight over food, it is personality, rather than size, that determines whether they will be victorious. [...]

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Why Pulse Corals Pulse

Shari Horowitz — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:51:16 +0000

Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have discovered why Heteroxenia corals pulsate. Their work, which resolves an old scientific mystery, appears in the current issue of PNAS. One of the most fascinating and spectacular sights in the coral reef of Eilat is the perpetual motion of the tentacles [...]

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A New Way to Save Endangered Fish

Shari Horowitz — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:58:10 +0000

Newcastle Researchers Leapfrog Ahead in World-First University of Newcastle researchers have successfully developed a method to freeze frog embryonic cells in a world-first breakthrough that could slow the threat of extinction to hundreds of frog species. The researchers have separated, isolated and frozen the embryonic cells of an Australian Ground Frog (the Striped Marsh Frog, [...]

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Dancing Sea Lions

Shari Horowitz — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:17:22 +0000

Researchers Document Sea Lion’s Synchronized Head Bobbing to ‘Boogie Wonderland’ Newswise — WASHINGTON – Move over dancing bears, Ronan the sea lion really does know how to boogie to the beat. Video Credit: Pinniped Lab A California sea lion who bobs her head in time with music has given scientists the first empirical evidence [...]

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Giant California Sea Cucumber Uses Anus as Second Mouth

Tsing Mui — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:19:27 +0000

Most kindergarteners can tell you that an animal eats with its mouth, not its butt. One species of sea cucumber, however, didn’t appear to get the memo: Scientists have discovered that the giant California sea cucumber (Parastichopus californicus) actually uses its anus as a second mouth. Scientists already knew that the marine invertebrate, which lives [...]

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Monitoring Vanishing Marine Algae With Your Smartphone

Tsing Mui — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:15:06 +0000

Two weeks ago, a group of sailors off the coast of New Zealand leaned over the side of their boat, dropped a contraption into the Pacific Ocean and watched it disappear. Using an app they’d downloaded to a smartphone, they logged a reading from the underwater device, along with their GPS location and the water [...]

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Robotic Fish Incorporates Lateral Line Sensing

Tsing Mui — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:11:47 +0000

Researchers writing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A say they have developed a new robotic fish that has lateral line sensing capabilities. The FILOSE team members have spent four years investigating fish lateral line sensing, which is a sensing organ found in aquatic vertebrates used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding [...]

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