In the past, I would have categorized myself pretty much as a hard-core-Darwin-loving-Greenpeace ecologist...let's save the environment by creating marine reserves, no-take zones, and sanctuaries. We'll limit fishing in most areas and give the living marine resources a chance to recover even if it takes decades. Why can't people see what they are doing to the environment and do something to stop it? A lot of my views have gotten a rude awakening recently...

I think it's hard for many of us to i… Continue

what would make a super fish?

Chapter twelve continues with the destructive fishing techniques by introducing muro-ami. Muro-ami was pretty interesting, if you ask me. Little kids scaring fish into a net with ropes and stuff. Sounds like fun. That is, until you realize the destruction caused by the weights at the bottom of the scary ropes. The weighted ropes would smash into coral and other sessile organisms at the sea floor and basically kill it all off. The poor things didn't stand a chance. It's really very surpris… Continue

I found the first four chapters of “The Enchanted Braid” to be very interesting and informative. I enjoyed reading about the history and nature of the coral reef. Darwin’s adventures sucked me in and made me wonder. When Darwin described how he found sea creatures on the mountainside in the Andes I was intrigued. ‘“[A]t the height of a few hundred feet old-looking shells are numerous,” he wrote, “and I found some at 1300 feet.”’ (26) I was somewhat confused after reading this so I pulled out my… Continue

Chapter 12 to me was about hope. The hope of saving the coral reef fish and the reef itself. The Apo Scenario uses the concept of “sustainable use.” In other words “fishing is off limits!” Scientists blocked off a 20 acre reef on the Apo island in 1982. By 1993 the density of the fish had increased near… Continue

I don’t want you to think that all I’m going to do is complain, but one thing I have to say is that as I read this, I couldn’t help but space off. It was full of thousands of facts that just bore me out of my mind at points. To me, this seemed strange, because I’m the kind of person who loves to learn things. The more I learn, the more intrigued I get, or at least that’s how it normally is.

Maybe, it’s that I really have no connection to this book yet, other than the fact that I am in a Marine… Continue

Holy crap! Check this guy out: http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2009/barreleye/barreleye.html

The barreleye fish lives in the mid-pelagic region and has a transparent head shield that houses a roving eye that moves in the fluid filled cavity!!! I am continuously amazed by the adaptations that have evolved and we humans (a.k.a. evolutionary-newborns) had no idea they existed! We think we're so cool for bui… Continue

Personally I love the way the book started, with a quote; a quote that doesn’t really strike a definite key but it plays an amazing tune. It was made by Baba Dioum: “In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we were taught.” I makes absolute sense, most people haven’t even been to the ocean let alone understand it. People are incapable of understanding life beyond their secure dry land, they don’t understand the ocean th… Continue

Sea turtles are cool.

Osha really seemed to connect a lot personally in this chapter. In fact, the entire chapter reminded me a lot of our own blog posts. It must have been him explaining how he tried to stop the beast of a turtle from returning to the water by straddling it and digging his feet in the sand, only to be pulled along with it as if he were merely another barnacle attached to its shell (long sentence!). Whatever it was, it allowed me to connect personally too. Only not through my o… Continue

Awe: 1. n overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like. 2. power to inspire fear or reverence. 3. fear or dread. Now in the way Osha puts it, the only appropriate response when confronted with a coral reef is awe. But which definition is he using? Could it be number one; just in sight of the beauty of what is the epitome of life completely overwhelm you and consume you with every word, th… Continue