Most divers have seen them. Weird-looking crawling creatures with odd shapes, antennae and amorphous bodies and draped in pychedelic colours. We are not talking about aliens from outer space but nudibranchs. But why do they have to look so weird?

The popular anemone fishes are mostly known for their symbiosis with giant sea anemones, their interesting behaviour, and beautiful colours. But they also have another lesser known but interesting sid

Fish stocks are depleted world-wide. Over fishing, pollution and coastal development is putting the aquatic resources under strain. Eco-friendly tourism battles against the need for food. Scuba divers rage against dynamite fishing. The oceans struggle to sustain human activities. Many see fish farming as the solution to save the fish stocks and keep feeding people.

Different conservation groups have the last couple of decades brought our attention to the destruction of the world’s tropical coral reefs. These reefs are visited by millions of tourists and are the livelihood for many more millions of people. However, some of the largest coral structures in the world are found in the cold and gloomy waters of the deep-sea. These are also under increasing threat.

Across the globe, coral reefs are in peril—this is already old news. Man-made stresses—overfishing, pollution and climate change—has sent even pristine coral reefs around the world into a drastic decline causing major changes in ecosystem structure. The resilience and regenerative capacity of reef ecosystems—that is, their ability to absorb shocks, resist phase shifts and regenerate
after natural and human-induced disturbances—are being overwhelmed by these stresses causing dramatic shifts in species composition, often incurring huge economic
losses too.

What? Animals in the sea armed with missiles? And thousands of them? Yes, you’ve read correctly. No, sea lions or dolphins have not been stealing Tomahawk missiles from any of the American navy bases. But did you know that jellyfishes, sea anemones and corals contain thousands of “miniature missiles” to kill prey and sting intruders? We will look at bit closer at this missile battery mechanism here.

Ecofieldtrips Pte Ltd is a Singapore based company which employs specialist biologists to cover the biology of rainforests, mangroves, seashores and coral reefs in the unspoilt ecosystems of Tioman Island, Sarawak and Langkawi, in Malaysia. School groups from Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, UK and Ireland come annually on the fieldtrips. Fieldtrips vary in length and content- from fun filled educational trips with 11/12 year olds to in-depth GCSE, A-Level and IB survey work- depending on school requirements. The “hands on” field experience and the knowledge and experience of EFT biologists ensures a better understanding of our wonderful ecosystems and how they are interrelated. The fieldtrips support what is being taught in the classroom and it is hoped that fieldtrip experience leads to life long conservation awareness.

Probably about 90 percent of deep-sea animals are bioluminescent. Some jellies use bioluminescence as a defense, i.e. they glow when disturbed in order to light up their predators, making their attackers vulnerable to even larger animals. A few deep-sea fishes and squids have glowing organs that look like lures, but even these animals have never been observed actually using their glowing organs to capture prey.

Coral reef fishes have a life cycle that is divided in two. They begin their life after hatching with a pelagic larval phase, lasting from a week up to two months depending on the species, and ends with a benthic phase, when the fish larvae settles to the coral reef one night. For decades the pelagic phase has been a black box to researchers. Only recently has the lid to this black box been opened.

Utila is the smallest of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras, where divers go in search of whalesharks, but find much more. Being the Executive Director of The Manta Network, a global conservation organization, I was very interested in the local efforts to protect whalesharks. Patric Douglas, Director of SharkDiver.com, invited us to stay in Utila and write about his dive group’s whaleshark experiences.

Coral reef fish ecology is a new research area, probably just about 40 years old, compared, for example, to research in temperate fish ecology, which has been studied extensively for more than 100 years. Therefore, coral reef fish ecologists often have to “borrow” knowledge from what we know about temperate fishes, simply in order to establish the first research in coral reef fish ecology.
However, this sometimes causes some big “bloopers”. Such a blooper is the case regarding the swimming abilities of coral reef fish larvae.

Even before the clownfish achieved Hollywood stardom as cartoon character Nemo, most of us, divers and non-divers alike, knew about this little colorful fish nesting in a stinging sea anemone. As popular photographic subjects the symbiotic relationship between the fish and their invertebrate hosts have become one of the most well known images from the world beneath the surface. What is less known, however, is how the fish avoid being stung.

Is there any diver who has not been fascinated by the wonderful colours of reef fishes and the reefs of their habitat? Those of us who have been lucky enough to experience at first hand this interacti