Living in the Middle of Nowhere: Creatures of the Sand and Rubble
If you watch a group of scuba divers as they begin a dive, you likely will see them enter the water and make a…
Marine Life
Defense Mechanisms: How Marine Creatures Avoid Predation
In the marine world, one of the fundamental challenges for many creatures is to eat and not get eaten. Early on in life most…
Spiny, Slipper, Regal and Rock: The Secret Lives of Lobsters
Say the word lobster and you will likely get a variety of reactions ranging from kids who smile from thinking about some of their…
Many Arms, Many Feats: The Cephalopods
Imagine what life might be like if you were a sea creature that could squeeze your body through a hole not much larger than…
Follow the Food Chain: Making Sense of the Chaos on a Coral Reef
I’ve never tired of watching student divers return from their first open-water experience. Their enthusiasm is always contagious, and you couldn’t shut them up…
Underwater Propulsion: A Tale of Tails
After almost every dive someone immediately begins to try to describe a fish they saw. The first questions they are asked in response are…
Strange Relations: A Look at Unlikely Undersea Pairings
After almost every dive someone grabs a reference to try and identify animals they saw. Upon flipping through the book and finding the perfect…
Small Critters With a Big Story to Tell: The Shrimps
Some are extraordinarily colorful and equally animated. Others are drab or transparent and hard to see. Some are active cleaners. Others are scavengers. Some…
Reefs in the Deepfreeze: Understanding Cold Water Corals
In the fall of 1974 I made my first dive on a Pacific coral reef. But unlike what you might imagine, it didn’t take…
The Quick and the Deadly: A Look at Underwater Life in the Fast Lane
Ask a group of football, basketball, soccer and baseball coaches what attributes they fear most in their opponents and look for when they build…