This American syndicate cartoonist is now proud to call himself a marine conservationist, too.  Thanks to the popularity of his syndicated comic strip, Sherman's Lagoon, which features marine animals under the sea trying to get along with each other, Jim Toomey is now educating himself and the rest of the world on the issues facing our marine environment.

In the mean time, his cartoon strip, Sherman's Lagoon, is distributed by King Features Syndicate and now appears in over 250 newspapers in North America and over 30 foreign countries.  That's 250 more newspapers that people will read to get to know more about the dilemmas facing our ocean and marine life (while enjoying a fun cartoon at the same time) and 30 more foreign countries that will be aware of the issues facing our marine world.

In one of our most fun interviews to date, we're proud to have had the chance to interview the creator of this well-recognized comic strip, Jim Toomey, who has plans for scuba diving, is developing a children's book, and is involved in a major grassroots campaign spreading awareness of ocean conservation.

Humans are fairly fragile organisms. Sure we live just fine on the surface of the Earth, as long as there is enough air and the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold. That means that we cannot explore the more extreme areas of our planet - or any planet - without technical assistance of some kind. Currently it's good old-fashioned engineering that allows us to delve the ocean depths or journey into space.

The science fictional approach is a bit different: instead of building machines to protect fragile human bodies, bioengineer human bodies to live in more extreme environments. While many of them might appear to be the mermaids of sailor lore, most are much stranger. Here are a few of my favorite examples:

James Blish's Microscopic Water Humans

"Webbed extremities, of course, with thumbs and big toes heavy and thornlike for defense until the creature has had a chance ot learn. Book-lungs, like the arachnids, working out of intercostal spiracles - they are gradually adaptable to atmosphere-breathing, if it ever decides to come out of the water. Also I'd suggest sporulation. As an aquatic animal, our colonist is gong to have an indefinite lifespan, but we'll have to give it a breeding cycle of about six weeks to keep its numbers up during the learning period; so there'll have to be a definite break of some duration in its active year. Otherwise it'll hit the population problem before it's learned enough to cope with it."
~ "Surface Tension"

Yep, it's true.  The European Marine Energy Centre is the only place in the entire European continent that will prototypes of renewable marine energy devices. 

The Reef Tank wanted to find out all about this amazing feat and had the chance to chat with Eileen Linklater, client relationship and marketing manager for the large scale facility, who has the responsibility of monitoring and managing contracts with developers and ensuring all goals are met. She also deals with public relations and marketing enquiries.

Yes, there's more.  Eileen is also the first person of contact for all prospective developers and visitors to EMEC.  

With all that going on, Eileen still managed to find time to answers our questions all about the Centre. 

A picture's worth a thousand words.  This could easily be Richard Ellis's motto for life and perhaps it has been to this today.  

Richard Ellis is a painter.  But not just any painter. The talent is currently recognized as the foremost painter of marine natural history subjects in America.  He's painted lots of pieces, including--get this--a 35-foot long whale mural for the Denver Museum of Natural History in 1978! I couldn't believe it, could you? 

Wait, there's more.  Richard is also a published author writing more than eighty magazine articles as well as books on sharks, whales, and the ocean. You can find out about all that he's accomplished on his official site.

Best of all, he considers himself a marine conservationist to the core and are proud to have the opportunity to ask him a few questions. 

Jennifer Frazer feels at peace when she visits aquariums and watches the fish and plants float by.  She relates it to a spiritual awakening. 

And yet, aquariums aren't even her field or specialty.

Jennifer is a plant lover and a science writer.  She's a biologist and a blogger.  And despite not knowing a whole lot about plants that live in water or owning her own aquarium, she's been kind enough to answer our questions about climate change, marine algae, marine conservation, professional aquariums, and more.

After you're done reading this very thorough (and wonderful!) Q&A, head on over to her blog, The Artful Amoeba, and read about more of Jennifer's adventures with plants.  You'll get as turned on by the plant world as we were after we read it, thanks to the enthusiasm in her voice.

Read on!

They Might Be Giants sang, "When your name is Evil that is good." Well, I'm not so sure--but in the case of John Dennehy--it works! 

John Dennehy calls himself the Evilutionary Biologist, but it's not what you think. Evil is just a stand in for Evol as in Evolution, which is this biologist's forte.  

And while he may not have as much experience with marine life and water as some of the other biologists, aquarists, and bloggers we've interviewed in Q&As past, we were certainly impressed with his interest in the subject and the way he related it to his current studies in both a broad and specific sense.  We were pleased to learn he does keep an aquarium, albeit a small and simple one, and that he is fascinated by bacteriophages, even in a marine organism sense. 

Learn all about evolutionist John Dennehy below and be sure to visit his blog: The Evilutionary Biologist for more on this "evil" man.

As a blog moderator for The Reef Tank, I have the esteemed privilege to communicate with a plethora of science bloggers, marine biologists, conservationists, and scientists.  One such person is Monty Halls, Sr., Secretary of the Shark and Coral Conservation Trust, who's organization believes there's a direct link between the deterioration in the world's coral reef systems and the decrease in the number of sharks.