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Virtual Visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium

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Leafy Sea Dragon Phycodurus eques These sea dragons eat small shrimp-like animals known as mysid shrimp. They can be found in South and Western Australia and have an average size of 11.8 inches but have been known to reach up to 19.6 inches. This animal eats in a unique way, it uses its tube-like mouth like a drinking straw by slurping up prey once they come near. Sea dragons can eat thousands of mysid shrimp in one day. The conservation concern for these animals is that the seagrass and seaweed beds where these animals live in Western Australia are threatened by pollution and excessive fertilizer runoff. In effort to help this population grow, The Australian government allows for one brooding male to be collected each year. The hatchlings are then to different places around the world for education and research programs. Male sea dragons carry the females eggs until they hatch just like male seahorses do. The main difference though is that sea dragons do not have a pouch...
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Fisheries: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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Orange Roughy ( Hoplostethus atlanticus ) is a fishery that can be found in New Zealand where the fish are caught using bottom trawls. These fish live in the deep ocean, specifically seamounts and deep-sea coral reefs.   There are four current impacts/concerns for this fishery right now. The first one is negative impacts on the fisheries due to the fact that the orange roughy has a longer lifespan. They take 20 years to fully mature causing them to reproduce at a slower rate and be more vulnerable to over fishing. The next problem that has resulted from this fishery is bycatch of various species. These species include black and smooth oreos as well as the black cardinalfish. The black and smooth oreos also have a slower growth rate like the orange roughy. The biggest bycatch concern for this fishery is coral bycatch where deepwater corals and sponges are destroyed. The next issue puts into question the effectiveness of the management of the fishery under New Zealand’s Quota Ma...
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Diving With Sharks! ... almost During our virtual reality experience at the Addlestone Library our class went diving with sharks. The videos featured various species of sharks including hammerhead sharks, nurse sharks, and great white sharks. These sharks were shown in various ways for each video. In the video that featured the great white sharks, we were viewing the shark from within the cage. By being inside of a cage instead of free diving implies that this species of shark is stronger and more dangerous than the other species of sharks we saw. In the Mythbusters shark video, you out in the open on an artificial reef surrounded by thirty or so sharks. The sharks would swim pretty much right up to you but never harm you. I believe these various videos were chosen because it shows the two ways sharks can be viewed; viscous, strong, and dangerous or predators who would rather avoid humans and not attack. Image from title photo from the video "These Shark Cage-Dive...
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Human Biases

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Human Biases Humans, without knowing it, often have bias over some animal species vs others such as having bias over a dog instead of a coyote. There are four different types of bias; availability heuristic, confirmation bias, believability bias, and framing effect. Availability heuristic, or availability bias, is the tendency to have something immediately come to mind when viewing or talking about something in specific. Belief bias is the tendency to judge an argument based on how believable it is instead of the actual facts. Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret information that supports their beliefs and reject any information that may contradict or disprove it. Framing Effect is drawing different conclusions based on how the same information is presented.   Great White Shark, photographed by Jim Abernethy, Nat Geo What is the first thing that comes to mind when you see this picture? Do you think of negative or positive adjectives? When people think of...
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Mace Brown Museum Blog

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Armored fishes lived during the late Cambrian-Devonian period and was split into two different groups. Ostracoderm which means shell-skinned and placoderm which means plated skin. The placoderms had armor like plates on their head and thorax leaving the rest of the body naked. A prime example of this type of fish is the Dunkleosteus.  The Dunkleoteus terrelli was a top predator known as an arthrodire from the Devonian period. These animals reached about 33 feet in length and weighed up to 4 tons. Their teeth are not actual teeth, they are in fact razor-sharp bony plates. Their teeth were self sharpening and never stopped growing. The Dunkleosteus bite was predicted to be the most powerful before the Megalodon shark came about in the Cenozoic period. Eight thousand pounds per square inch is the predicted power of this creatures bite. The oldest evidence of fish was found in Cambrian rocks in China from about 530 million years ago. These fossil are from the Ordovicia...
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