Baby beluga in the deep blue sea,
Swim so wild and you swim so free.
Heaven above and the sea below,
And a little white whale on the go...

Say hello to Aurora, a 20-year old beluga whale at the Vancouver Aquarium. 

Aurora gave birth to a 5 foot, 132-154lb calf at 3:39pm after a 3-hour laber--just in time for World Oceans Day!

Mark Hall is not your average marine life aficionado. Nor is he your average school teacher.   The marine biology educator tells us he was so obsessed with marine life since he was young that becoming a part of a marine life business in high school supplying marine specimens to schools and colleges nationwide, was not even a question. And it worked--Mark made enough money to pay for college.

Now the owner of the Biomes Marine Biology Center, Mark is still going strong, teaching kids about the marine world through visuals rather then typical schoolwork assignments.  What started as a mere trip to a classroom for a marine life show at 23, cemented Mark's future and he knew he wanted to impact kids for the rest of his life. Now in his 40s, he still doesn't call it a real job.

Among other things, Mark is also the creator of the Biomes Blog,which surprisingly enough no longer has a lot to do with the Center of the same name.  But while he calls his blog creation more of a "link blog", it's the Daily Kos's Marine Life Series where he gets the chance to write what he knows on marine life.

TRT had the chance to ask Mark a few questions about his marine biology experience. Here are the great things he had to say.

Or, more exactly, where are they all going to go during the next two or three months?

I'm sitting here between a large frozen lake and a small "pond" (connected to the lake with a channel) that has patches of open water on it. (The melting on the pond is probably because the bioactivity at the bottom of the pond increases water temperature.) There is a pair of mallards on the pond, and I expect that in a few weeks there will be two or three mallards and three or for mergansers, all females, and each with between six and 12 or so ducklings. These 60 ducklings will initially hang out only with their mothers, but as time goes by the mothers will overlap their feeding territories and night time roosts, and the ducklings will start to form a creche. It is even possible for a multispecies creche to form.

The New Zealand sea lion (Phocarctos hookerii) is a remarkable animal. A highly localised species operating at the extremes of their physiological limits, NZ sea lions are recognised as the world’s deepest diving pinniped (eared seal), reaching depths of up to 600m. Unfortunately they are also one of the world’s most rare pinnipeds.

Once ranging throughout New Zealand waters, their population was massively depleted in the 1800s due to hunting for their once prized blubber. Such large scale depletion brought the species to the brink of extinction leaving only small, scattered populations in the cold southern extremes of New Zealand.

GrrlScientist has something on her mind when it comes to marine life and exotic animals in general and she's making it very well known on her popular science blog: Living The Scientific Life (Scientist Interrupted.)

Here's what she has to say about taking a stand on an of-the-moment hot-button issue.

A new proposed law, House Resolution #669 (HR 669) called The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act is coming through the US Congress. This resolution is scheduled to be heard by the House of Representatives on 23 April 2009. The purpose of this resolution is to prevent the keeping and the propagation of animals that are not native to the United States that are deemed to potentially be capable of harming the economy or the environment, people, native species or their habitats

In 2004 I got hooked on Betta splendens. This small freshwater aquarium fish, found in just about every local fish store, had me completely smitten; so much so that I dedicated the following six months to learning web design so I could create Nippyfish.net: a site for the modern betta enthusiast. Five years later the site has taken off, gone through three redesigns, and expanded to include a popular blog and now has a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

What is it about these seemingly run-of-the-mill beginner fish that has me so enamored that I would rather sit down at my computer and write this article than partake in another slice of my own birthday cake? It is just that, despite having a reputation for being a starter-fish, they are anything but run-of-the mill, nor should they be considered just for beginners.

Here are my top 10 reasons why every hobbyist, newbie or old-schooler, should have a betta fish in their home.

Some of us have enough trouble finding the food we want among the ordered aisles of a supermarket. Now imagine that the supermarket itself is in the middle of a vast, featureless wasteland and is constantly on the move, and you begin to appreciate the challenges faced by animals in the open ocean.
 
Thriving habitats like coral reefs may present the photogenic face of the sea, but most of the world's oceans are wide expanses of emptiness. In these aquatic deserts, all life faces the same challenge: how to find enough food. Now, a couple of interesting studies have shed new light on the tactics used by predators as large as sharks and as small as bacteria.