Fish Thinkers nine most popular Instagram posts of 2018
At the end of each year we take a quick look back at our blog and social media stats, to see what people were particularly interested in (e.g. see 2017 in review). Here is the 2018 roundup: Continue reading
The eastern blue devil (Paraplesiops bleekeri). Just one of the fantastic photos in the paper by co-author John Turnbull: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
In our recently published paper, we suggest that the depth range of many reef fish, including the rare and protected eastern blue devil fish, is being systematically underestimated due to sampling bias. We used remotely deployed video samples and recreational fisher observations, to provide examples of fishes living at depths much deeper than the depth range they are ascribed based on the scientific literature. Continue reading
Fish Thinkers six most popular Instagram posts of 2017
At the end of each year I like to put up some customary navel gazing i.e. a review of the Fish Thinkers year. It is a summary mainly as a record for myself as I find it useful to look at our blog and social media stats and see what people are particularly interested in. Although there is also the odd chance someone else is vaguely interested—since people have brought up parts of the review before, I guess a few people are anyway. Here is the 2017 review: Continue reading
Dr Andrew Chin is based at the Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture – James Cook University and is the current president of the Oceania Chondrichthyan Society. He is also the Programme Director of Shark Search Indo-Pacific, a project that I personally find incredibly interesting and have been following closely. Andrew stopped by Fish Thinkers to give us the inside scoop on Shark Search Indo-Pacific in the guest post below: Continue reading
Damien Vella is Senior Horticulturist at the Botanic Gardens and does a great job of sharing natural history moments he encounters throughout his life on his instagram account. He has a particular skill for taking events from the backyard and telling a story that weaves in the underlying ecology in a fascinating way. He also shares one of my deep interests-that is creating habitat in backyards (Even better that it is the aquatic type).
Below is his guest blog discussing backyard habitat ponds… Continue reading
This is an updated version of what has been one of our most read blog posts. There are new grants added, details updated and its now in date order so its easier to see which ones are close to submission date. It does have an Australian focus but there are some international ones as well, we hope to add to those down the track. Continue reading
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Receiving a small grant can make or break many honours and post-grads research. I’ve talked to a few honours students lately that needed funding for what I thought was interesting research but without funds their project couldn’t run. With that in mind I thought that I should share a list of grants I’ve had sitting on my hard drive (and that I will add to if I see useful grants down the track) that may help fund small projects. Continue reading
by Dr Pascal T Geraghty
Declining fish stocks and increasing fishing capability worldwide have placed an ever growing emphasis on the need for responsible fishery and species management at appropriate spatial scales. To achieve this, delineating the discrete breeding groups (or populations) of a target species within a given geographical area is of utmost importance. This is particularly challenging in the marine realm, however, where population boundaries are dictated by cryptic barriers to dispersal, a species’ potential for travel and reproductive behavioural traits. Nevertheless, genetic techniques have become an invaluable tool for uncovering population structure in exploited marine creatures.
Demersal longline shark fishing in northern NSW waters as observed during 2008/09. Photo: Dr Geraghty.
Follow the link below to watch our first youtube video! Make sure to watch in HD. It’s a short edit of my trip to Lord Howe Island to survey the marine parks fish populations using baited remote underwater video systems. More videos coming soon so stay tuned!
A great summary by Ben Gooden on Geoff Clarke’s research examining the impact of urbanisation on salt marsh snails. It was a lot of fun hanging out counting snails in the mud, especially along the shores of Lake Illawarra (we saw some weird things). Make sure you head over to Ben’s blog for more interesting ecological posts!
The preliminary results are now in: urbanisation at the landward boundary of coastal salt marshes is associated with a two-fold reduction in the density of molluscs inhabiting adjacent coastal salt marsh. Our results found, however, that despite this reduction in overall molluscan abundance, urbanisation had no effect on the number of different mollusc species (i.e. richness) present in adjacent salt marshes.
The overall aim of this project was to examine effects of shoreline urbanisation on the unique molluscan fauna within endangered salt marsh of south-eastern Australia. My student, Geoff Clarke did a stellar job with this project, counting and identifying over 7,500 individual snails from six species, most of which are restricted to salt marsh or similar vegetation that borders estuaries and coastal embayments.
Geoff surveyed 9 ‘urbanised’ and 9 ‘forested’ (which he termed natural) reference sites across three embayments (see accompanying satellite images). Each site consisted of a…
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