The world pressures of over-fishing and pollution are already a major threat to sea life. Throw climate change into the mix and we’re reading into a whole deeper story.

With oceans covering the majority of our planet, you’d think there would be more attention garnered towards the deep blue mass of beauty that always lies just beyond.

It’s comforting, in a way, to know that we understand so very little about what thrives beneath the ocean’s surface. Science has taken us very far, but the ocean remains a world much larger than our own, that reaches places to which our imaginations can’t yet fathom.

Like all good things, Dr. John Bruno's Reef Science Corner series must too come to an end.  Yet, he leaves on a positive note, much like most of the marine biologists, conservationists, and scientists we've encountered thus far and this makes the true difference in marine conservation.  

To understand the impact of this series to The Reef Tank, please take a look at my summation and thanks to Dr. Bruno on his blog, Climate Shifts.  You can find that guest post here.

And now without further adieu...John's optimistic conclusion.

Christopher Taylor is not your average Australian environmental biology student--in fact, he's currently studying spiders, scorpions, and other arachnids for school.  So why question him about his marine life pastimes? It seems Chris has a great knowledge of the distinct relation of crabs and crustaceans to arachnids, he writes a fun blog on all subjects, and at one time, he was an avid marine aquarist--partaking in a tropical freshwater aquarium and knows a thing or two about how to maintain one.  

Read to learn Chris's interesting views on all things arachnid and aquarist.

What kind of work/studying are you doing now?

I work on a group of animals called Opiliones, also called harvestmen or (particularly in North America) daddy-longlegs (a name that I have serious quibbles with - see here.) My particular family of interest, the Monoscutidae, is restricted to Australia and New Zealand. My research is mostly very traditional desk taxonomy – I look at countless specimens, and compare and contrast. I’m due to finish in a few months, and after that – who knows?

The effects of pollution, carbon build up in the ocean, extinction, loss of coral reefs, over-fishing, and global warming is increasingly becoming more detrimental to our marine life and marine world.

Fortunately our marine ecosystems have Corey Bradshaw on their side.   As a conservation ecologist, Corey studies these ecosystems with a passion, trying to understands the interactions between plants and animals that make up these ecosystems as well as what human activity is doing to them. 

He has realized long ago that conservation and awareness is crucial to the survival of these living things and carries on the long tradition of studying and trying to understand these ecosystems at the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide in South Australia. 

I live on a quiet tidal creek that feeds into the York River, a tributary to the Chesapeake Bay in the same county where Pocahontas was born four fateful centuries ago.  My house is a short crow’s flight from the point where Englishmen first pulled up their tiny ships on the North American coast after their perilous TransAtlantic voyage and decided that this is the place. After everything that has happened across those ages it is still a beautiful place—waterbirds of all sorts haunt the tree-lined creek, bald eagles are seen occasionally.  

But that is all changing, gradually. The carbon that we in the industrialized societies are relentlessly pumping into the atmosphere threatens to do what even four centuries of human occupation couldn’t. We are going to lose this place. Jamestown and the surrounding areas will very likely be underwater when my great-grandchildren, if I’m lucky enough to have some, are grown.  

It’s now well documented that average global temperatures are steadily increasing, and the physical-chemical mechanisms responsible are pretty well understood. We’ve all heard the general story in An Inconvenient Truth, and the details can be found in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What does it mean for the marine environment and for those of us who are linked to it by livelihood or by spiritual bonds? I will focus on what it means for people around where I live, on the Chesapeake Bay, but similar challenges face most any coastal area. Let’s consider sea level rise first. 

The Rising Tide

The global ocean conservation organization has some major ocean campaigns ready for protecting the world's most vast bodies of water.  With leading marine scientists, economists, activists, lawyers, advocates, and policymakers from all over the world on its side and important projects for conservation like dirty fishing, climate change, and shark and sea turtle conservation, it's taking full charge with its campaign!

We had the amazing opportunity to speak with lead Oceana blogger and Online Editor Fellow Emily Fisher on some of the group's strongest programs and most important contributions to protect the world's oceans.  Read Emily's choice worsds below, then log onto their official site to find out how you can help!

Marine Science Fiction Earth's deep oceans have often been called the final frontier. But despite being a largely-unexplored environment that's both deadly to humans and inhabited by weirdly alien creatures, it's been woefully underutilized as a setting for science. But underutilized doesn't mean nonexistent. There are a number of excellent science fiction stories either set in the ocean or with a marine biology focus.

As an introduction to what I like to call Marine SF, I thought I'd point to some of the related short fiction that authors have shared for free online. The stories range widely in both subject matter and tone, from Peter Watts' hard science stories featuring humans modified to work deep in the ocean to Vonda McIntyre's alternative17th century natural history. There should be something to entertain almost everyone.

John Bruno kicks off another part of his Reef Science coral series, excerpting a modified version of an article he published last year on the Earth Portal about Coral Reefs and Climate Change. He covers global patterns of coral loss and several of the mechanisms through which anthropogenic climate change is contributing to this trend including coral bleaching, disease and ocean acidification.  Let him know know if there are particular topics you want to hear about.  You can reach him at jbruno@unc.edu.

Benefits/Ecosystem Services of Coral Reefs

When they are working properly, coral reefs provide human societies with massive economic benefits, aka ecosystem services, through fisheries, tourism and invaluable services like buffering from storms, estimated to be worth $23,100 - $270,000 km -2 year-1.