"To see the nervousness and uncertainty change to pure joy and euphoric smiles, when a person with a disability have conducted the first successful dive,... can move the most experienced diving instructor to tears”.
That´s how Flemming Thyge describes the emotion that has led him to dedicate much of his life to develop diving with disabilities worldwide.
The salp, a small, barrel-shaped organism that resembles a streamlined jellyfish, gets everything it needs from ocean waters to feed and propel itself.
In what Australian officials called an outrageous fraud, Japanese fishers probably used a series of disguises for the overcatch and international investigations have found.
The fishers described southern bluefin tuna as a different species and evaded any inspection on shore, underreported the amount of the fish they caught, and imported it as different tuna either transhipped at sea from foreign vessels or in containers. In a review that the Japanese government has vetoed from public release, investigators found the fraud extended to consumer markets.
In her new exhibition, Melt Down - Climate Change In The High Arctic, celebrated photojournalist and Arctic specialist Louise Murray highlights the dramatic melting of the ice sheets in the Arctic through a series of beautiful photographs. We have an exclusive gallery of images from the exhibition below.
Louise is a self-confessed polar nut with 15 years of experience as a professional, she spends much time plotting her next visit to the high north.
The UDI dive computer features a unique messaging feature enabling in-water communication. It also comes with a homing device that puts anyone who watched Open Water at ease. A diver in need of help simply pushes an SOS button, that immediately sends a signal to the other divers.
It has been widely known that sharks have a special sensory organ on their heads, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, which enable them to detect the very weak electrical fields that prey emit when they swim or bleed.
But now scientists have found that a gel-like substance plays a big role in this process known as electroreception, explaining why sharks pursue bloody victims, even when other easy target´s prey is around, and the gushing blood obscures the shark´s vision and smell.
North Cyprus is an ideal location for snorkelling and scuba diving, with its largely unspoilt coastline and year-round warm waters that rarely drop below 17 degrees centigrade. There are also no tides to worry about and you can enjoy one of the longest diving seasons in the world, which lasts from April through to the New Year. The island’s fascinating history spanning several empires also means there is much to explore underwater, including many exciting shipwrecks.
A study published in Nature demonstrates that fish have a natural rhythm that could help them avoid being eaten by predators
A team from the University of California led by Dr Mu-Ming Poo made the discovery during experiments with zebrafish, a type of minnow. They discovered that the larvae of the fish, which were trained to flip their tails every time a light flashed at six-second intervals, "remembered" the rhythm even after the flash was turned off.
"Our study represents important progress towards understanding the evolution and biodiversity of corals and provides a foundation for future work. Since coral ecosystems are increasingly threatened, there is a need to characterize and understand coral species in terms of interbreeding groups as opposed to nominal morphological units", said Zac Forsman, who led a team of researchers from the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology carrying out the molecular studies.
The aim of this thesis was to study the chemical communication involved in aggressive and reproductive behaviours in the European lobster (Homarus gammarus). Both male and female H. gammarus established and maintained dominance, but the sexes used different strategies for dominance maintenance.
These findings indicate that MR (Marine Reserve) protection can result in more and bigger individuals soon after the establishment of the MR. Focused comparison tests did not reveal any relationship between rock lobster (Jasus edwardsii) or blue cod (Parapercis colias) size or abundance and either age or area of MRs.
The mangrove rivulus, also known as the mangrove killifish, is native to the Americas and is about five centimetres (two inches) long.
The fish has long been studied for its many unique features. It's the only vertebrate known to naturally self-fertilize, for example. In some populations, it can become a hermaphrodite, developing both male and female parts simultaneously, to produce clones of itself.
