Something strange is happening in the South Australian seas. Someone’s not turned up for their party. Around this time of year the Australian giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama) gather along the South Australian coastline between False Bay and Whyalla to mate and spawn. Why has it happened? Have they found a new place to get together? Or, are there so few of them now that it’s a big deal to see three or four in the one place? Will they come back? Is it natural, or something us humans have done?
Posts Tagged ‘Marine’
Anorexia when you’re pregnant? Sounds like an oxymoron unless you’re a sea krait!
Sea kraits (Laticaudine) are sea snakes. They’re front-fanged (proteroglyphous) venomous elapid snakes and are common through much of the Indo–Pacific region. When they’re pregnant, the females stop eating! Seems like a strange thing to do when you need energy and nutrients to make eggs.
Why would they do that?
Francois Brisçhoux, Xavier Bonnet and Richard Shine set out to find out why by studying two of these kraits; Laticauda laticaudata and L. saintgironsi, on small islets in the Lagoon of New Caledonia. What a cool field site
Glaucus atlanticus a beauty at eating those marine stingers
Along the beaches of Queensland and Northern New South Wales, northerly winds often bring with them blue bottles or Portugese man o’ war jelly fish. The blue bottle (Physalia physalis) is a small jellyfish (Siphonophora) with a powerful sting. Sometimes know as a marine stinger it can inflict a nasty sting when its tentacles wrap around the tender skin of your torso or thigh. But the blue bottles have other things on their cnardarian minds…there is a predator out there and a beautiful one at that
Fish kill in south east Queensland: Natural or man made?
Recent fish kill in south east Queensland near Bribie Island related to development and building works.
