Fish and aquatic news

“Perhaps part of the reason the males are so likely to cheat is that females never punish males”, marine scientist says.

Male Labroides dimidiatus cleaner fish punish females that bite instead of clean (thus driving off the bigger fish) but females never punish males for doing exactly the same thing.

The Bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) lives on coral reefs where it feeds by removing parasites and dead tissue from the skin of larger fish. Most of the time the wrasse provides bigger fish with a valuable service, but sometimes the tasty mucus in front of the cleaner turns into an irresistible temptation, prompting the wrasse to bite off a mouthful. This is naturally not appreciated by the bigger fish and a cleaner wrasse who can’t control his or her urges will have to watch the big fish take off in a jiffy, taking all the nutritious parasites with it.

When a male fish notice a female fish scaring off the big fish they are cleaning together he will promptly punish her for her injudiciousness. This might seem altruistic, but the male fish is actually pissed off at her for making his dinner swim away.

“The male’s dinner leaves if the female cheats,” says Nichola Raihani from the The Zoological Society of London who has been studying Labroides dimidiatus together with research partner Redouan Bshary.

“By punishing cheating females, the males are not really sticking up for the clients but are making sure that they get a decent meal,” Raihani explains.

Raihani believes true altruism is rare.

“When you see something that looks like it’s altruistic, if you look hard enough, there’s normally going to be a benefit somewhere down the line for the person that’s doing that supposedly altruistic act,” she says.
Interestingly enough, a female fish that has to watch her dinner swim away because a male wrasse couldn’t leave the mucus alone never punishes the culprit.

“The males are less well behaved than the females a lot of the time but perhaps part of the reason the males are so likely to cheat is that females never punish males,” Dr Raihani told the Science podcast.

Males tend to be larger than females and this might be why the female finds it safer not to discipline him. All Bluestreak cleaner wrasses start out as females and in a group of 6-8 wrasses you will never find more than one male. If the male dies or is removed from the group, the strongest female will change into a male and take his place.

The wrasse study has been published in the journal Science.
You can download the podcast here: http://podcasts.aaas.org/science_podcast/SciencePodcast_100108.mp3

Out of the estimated 5.5 gigatonnes of carbon emitted each year by human activities, about 1.8 percent are removed from the air and stored by echinoderms such as starfish, sea urchins, brittle stars and sea lilies. This makes them less important “carbon sinkers” than plankton, but the finding is still significant since no one expected them to catch such a large chunk of our wayward carbon.

The new discovery is the result of a study* led by Mario Lebrato**, PhD student at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science. The work was done when he was at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and affiliated with the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES).

“I was definitely surprised by the magnitude of the values reported in this study, but [the study’s] approach seems sound, so the reported numbers are probably fairly accurate,” says palaeoceanographer Justin Ries of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ries also points out that these important creatures might be affected by ocean acidification.

“If the echinoderms end up being disproportionately susceptible to ocean acidification then it’s conceivable that the dissolving of echinoderm-derived sediments will be one of the earliest effects of ocean acidification on the global carbon cycle,” he explains. “In fact, maybe it already is.”
The body of an echinoderm consists of up to 80% calcium carbonate and according to the Lebrato study these hard-shelled animals collectively capture 100 billion tons of carbon each year.

“The realisation that these creatures represent such a significant part of the ocean carbon sink needs to be taken into account in computer models of the biological pump and its effect on global climate“, says Lebrato. “Our research highlights the poor understanding of large-scale carbon processes associated with calcifying animals such as echinoderms and tackles some of the uncertainties in the oceanic calcium carbonate budget. The scientific community needs to reconsider the role of benthic processes in the marine calcium carbonate cycle. This is a crucial but understudied compartment of the global marine carbon cycle, which has been of key importance throughout Earth history and it is still at present.”

The study has been published in the journal ESA Ecological Monographs.

* Mario Lebrato, Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, Richard Feely, Dana Greeley, Daniel Jones, Nadia Suarez-Bosche, Richard Lampitt, Joan Cartes, Darryl Green, Belinda Alker (2009) Global contribution of echinoderms to the marine carbon cycle: a re-assessment of the oceanic CaCO3 budget and the benthic compartments. Ecological Monographs. doi: 10.1890/09-0553.

** mlebrato13 [at]googlemail.com

Below you will find my review of the Reef One  60L/16 gallon BiOrb. The orb was provided to me by the company, but this is not paid advertising space. If I’ll end up hating the orb, you’ll know about it. Other companies that are interested in having their product reviewed here are welcomed to contact me, provided that they understand that giving me something for free doesn’t guarantee a positive review.

BiOrb 60 Classic Collection review – setting it up
I am going to start by saying a few words about Reef One. Reef One develops aquarium products sold in more than 20 countries. Their goal is to be innovative and offer new exiting products, and as a part of this quest they have developed a line of small aquariums and BiOrbs of which I will review the BiOrb 60.

This is an initial review based on my experiences of setting up the BiOrb. It will be followed by a second review when I have had the aquarium up and running for a few weeks and know how it works over time.

The BiOrb arrived as a big package in the mail; 60 cm x 60 cm (24 cm x 24 in). The parcel contains everything you need to setup a simple, basic beginner aquarium. You get a 5 stage internal filter, ceramic media, air pump, plug top 12 volt transformer, halogen light unit, water treatment, plastic plants and even some fish food. The equipment is plastic but does not feel cheap or tacky and can be used in most settings without looking out of place.

Included in the package is a manual on how to setup the tank, and I personally find the manual easy to understand and follow. It should allow even a beginner aquarist to set up his or her first aquarium without much ado. If you are an experienced fish keeper, you are probably already familiar with the steps of the manual that doesn’t specifically pertain to the orb itself.

As mentioned above, the BiOrb comes with its own filtration system. It is designed to promote biological filtration and is surprisingly quiet. Unlike many other filter systems, this one won’t be a problem in the bedroom or office. Since I haven’t had the BiOrb running for very long I don’t know if the filter system works well or not; I will get back to it in my follow up review.

The filter is designed to allow you to setup the BiOrb as a marine tank if you get the marine tank conversion kit, but I decided to set it up as a freshwater tank for this review because I believe that more people will use it for freshwater. After all, the quantity of freshwater aquarists vastly outnumbers that of marine fish keepers. If you decide to set it up as a marine tank it will give you the option to keep marine creatures that aren’t suitable for normally rectangular aquariums. Jellyfish are for instance prone to get stuck in corners, something that won’t be a problem in a sphere shaped tank like the BiOrb.

The BiOrb can be put to together in a short amount of time, but you should nevertheless wait at least a week or two before you add the fish since you need to cycle the aquarium first. This is true even if you use the included water treatment from Reef One or any other type of starter kit – regardless of what the bottles or the staff of your local fish store might say.

The tank looks good at once after it has been setup and I have at this point not found any problems with it. It seems like a good product at this point. The only thing I might complain about is that the advanced LED light that simulates real daylight isn’t included in the standard package, but that would on the other hand make the package more expensive and for most beginner aquarists the included halogen lights will suffice.

I must however admit that I might be a bit hesitant to buy this product myself for one reason and one reason alone: the price. Sure, it is a nice product, but you could get a larger tank for the same price – or the same size for a lower price – if you went for a regular rectangular or square tank. In other words; the BiOrb is a fine tank but at £164.99* it is a pricy choice. Is it worth the money? Well, that’s up to you and will depend on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a low-cost beginner tank, than no, I wouldn’t recommend the BiOrb. If you on the other hand have some extra cash to spend and are in the market for a sleek orb that fits your interior design in a highly visible space like your living room or corporate office, than yes, this might be the right one for you.

You can read more about Reef One and their product line on their webpage, where you can also order their products.

*£164.99 is 264 USD or 183 Euros.

If you’re an environmentally conscious golf enthusiast you probably cringe at the shear notion of playing golf near the shoreline or practise your swing onboard a yacht or cruise ship where the risk of your balls ending up in the ocean is high.

To remedy the problem with awol golf balls polluting our oceans, Barcelona based golf ball manufacturer Albus Golf has created a 100% biodegradable and non-toxic golf ball filled with fish food. According to the company, the outer part of the ball will biodegrade within 48 hours after ending up in the water, giving the oceanic fauna free access to the tasty fish food inside.

Around the globe, more and more costal regions outlaw the use of ordinary golf balls near the shore since they have a tendency to end up in the ocean where their durable plastic materials live on “forever”. Our ever increasing production of plastic and other materials that are difficult to break down have caused the formation of five enormous trash vortexes in the ocean; areas to where sea currents bring the floating debris we throw into our oceans and waterways each day. The largest of them, the Great Pacific Trash Vortex, currently covers an area twice the size of the continental U.S.

Throughout December, hundreds of sea lions vanished from the San Francisco bay area only to show up later in the Oregon Sea Lion Caves. The Oregon Sea Lion Caves are a connected system of sea caves and caverns located along the Pacific coast of Oregon and a popular hangout for sea birds such as the tufted puffin, pigeon guillemot, Brandt’s cormorant, and various types of gulls. The caves are also an important wintering home for the Stellar Sea Lion and – to a lesser extent –the California Sea Lion.

“We’re seeing the sea lions coming up this way from California because of the feeding. If the cold water fish move north to find colder waters, the sea lions have to eat and they follow the fish wherever they go,” says Sea Lion Caves General Manager Dan Harkins.

So, how can the cave staff know for sure who’s a visitor from California and who isn’t? Apparently, sea lions have dialects; just like us humans.

“We can identify them by the sound of their voice. They have a barking noise rather than a grumbling or a growling that Stellers do,” says Harkins.

The Sea Lion Caves were first explored in 1880 by local resident Captain William Cox. On a calm day, the captain entered the grotto through the western channel in his small boat. During a later expedition he was reportedly marooned due to stormy weather and had to survive by shooting a sea lion and eating its flippers. In 1887 Captain Cox purchased the land from the State of Oregon and the cave system has been privately owned and managed ever since.

Thousands of dead octopuses have washed up on a beach in northern Portugal. So far, no one has been able to explain what’s happened to them.

According to BBC News the incident is being called “an environmental disaster”, but the truth is that at this stage, we do not know if this is an environmental disaster or not. What we do know is that the dead animals cover a 5-mile stretch of Portugal beach near the city of Vila Nova de Gaia in the Porto District; a district chiefly know for storing and aging the celebrated Port wine.

Portuguese authorities have issued a statement warning the public not to eat the carcasses.

BBC News has posted a video from the scene:

The red snapper population living in the Gulf of Mexico is showing signs of recovery, according to new information obtained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States (NOAA).

“The update showed harvest levels were still a bit too high in 2008; however, scientific projections are promising for 2009, indicating that the stock may improve enough to support higher harvest levels,” said Dr. Bonnie Ponwith, Southeast Fisheries Science Center director for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “This is very exciting news and is evidence of how science and management can work together to protect our natural resources.”

In response to a rapidly dwindling red snapper population, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council began restricting red snapper fishing in the mid-1980s and in 2007 a catch share program was implemented for commercial fishermen.

“This has been our most challenging fishery issue in the Gulf of Mexico to date,” said Dr. Roy Crabtree, southeast regional administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “The Gulf Council deserves a lot of credit for making some very difficult decisions and commercial and recreational fishermen deserve equal credit for complying with the regulations to help this species recover.”

The red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico is managed separately from the population living along the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and eastern Florida. In December 2009, NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced a temporary rule to protect the red snapper along this coastline as the population is in poor condition, much like the Gulf of Mexico population used to be. The temporary rule will become effective today, January 4th.

For more information please see the NOAA News Release.

A few years back scientists became aware that Amazonian manatees (Trichechus inunguis) migrate from shallow to deep water each year, starting in October or November when the dry season makes the water level decrease in their favoured habitat. A team of Brazilian and British researchers now claim have found out why these mesmerizing creatures undertake a perilous journey to get to a habitat that doesn’t have much to offer food wise.

By studying manatees living in the Mamiraua and Amana Sustainable Development Reserves in north-western Brazil, the team found out that if the manatees wouldn’t move, the animals would be become stranded in the shallow water and exposed to predators such as caimans and jaguars.

“Amazonian manatees migrate to a habitat that doesn’t offer easy living conditions in order to flee from a habitat that becomes inhospitable,” says team-member Dr Eduardo Moraes Arraut from the National Institute for Space Research in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

A dangerous voyage
In order to reach deeper waters, the manatees must pass through narrow bottlenecks in the landscape where they easily fall prey to predators – including humans. Hunting manatee is illegal in Brazil but the local people have a long tradition of eating the meat.

Once the manatees reach their destination, it isn’t much of a relief either. Due to a lack of aquatic plants in their new home, they are forced to go without food for several months.

“When you have two options that are not good, you choose the one that is less bad,” Dr Arraut explains, adding that the harshness of the low-water conditions surprised him.

Modern technology and ancient knowledge
In order to learn more about the elusive manatees, the international research team asked local inhabitants about the movements of the manatees, and placed modern radio tracking devices on 10 individual manatees. What they found was that the Amazon landscape forces the manatees to migrate through a type of narrow lakes known as rias, a type of submerged river valleys.

Dr Arraut now wishes to track manatees in other parts of the Amazon to find out if they are facing similar obstacles as the populations in Mamiraua and Amana.

The findings have been published in the Journal of Zoology.

http://www.zsl.org/info/publications/

A gentle giant
The Amazon manatee is one of the smallest species of manatee but can nevertheless reach a length of 9.2 ft (2.8 m) and weight 800-1200 lbs (360-540 kg). It is only found in the Amazon River basin, in the countries Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Guyana and Ecuador.

During the high-water season (mid-May to late June), the Amazon manatees live in quiet lakes (so called varzeas) that form within river flood plains in the Amazon. In this hospitable environment, they feast on aquatic plants and typically consume 8% of their weight in greens each day. For a manatee weighing 800 lbs, that means 64 lbs – almost 30 kg!

Picture is depicting a manatee in Florida (not an Amazonian Manatee)

Scuba divers are threatening the survival of the infinitesimal Pygmy seahorses found on the coral reefs around Sabah’s east coast islands in Malaysia.

Sabah, a Malaysian state situated in the northern part of the island of Borneo, is home to two species of pygmy seahorse Hippocampus bargibanti and Hippocampus denise. Both species are fairly widespread in South East Asia and are found on coral slopes from southern Japan and Indonesia to northern Australia and New Caledonia.

Barely five years ago, the pygmy seahorses were discovered at popular Sabah divespots, such as Bodgaya, Mabul and Pulau Sipadan, and since then dive operators have brought large numbers of scuba divers to see the tiny creatures. In some of the most popular spots, over 100 divers can be seen exploring the reef simultaneously and this puts a lot of stress on the reef and its inhabitants.

Photographing divers have for instance been spotted breaking off sea fans – the natural habitat of the pygmy seahorses – and moved them just to get a better angle for their pictures.

In an effort to improve the conditions for the seahorses, marine biologist Yeong Yee Ling of the Universiti Malaysia Terengganu has held a two-day seminar about how to behave when scuba diving in seahorse habitat. The seminar was attended by 57 participants, including representatives from most of the 15 dive operators based in Semporna. Sabah Parks, the conservation-based statutory responsible for conserving the scenic, scientific and historic heritage of the state of Sabah, was also involved in the event.

“Our hope is that the discussions from the seminar would eventually be synthesised into a code of conduct for divers. We are thankful the dive operators have been supportive of this effort,” said Yeong, who has been researching pygmy seahorses for the past three years.

The seminar was funded by the Shell Malaysia’s Sustainable and Development Grant.

The 11 year old snakehead involved in a year-long legal battle with the state Department of Environmental Conservation died Wednesday last week.

Owner Chris Deverso said he stuck his hands in Rocky’s tank when he noticed the fish struggling around 9 p.m. “By the time I found him, it was already too late,” he explained. A water test carried out by Deverso revealed nothing unusual and there aquarist had not noticed any signs of disease.

Deverso said snakeheads can reach an age of 10-15 years in the wild.

Since 2004, it is illegal to keep sneakheads in New York. In June 2009, Deverso was finally given a permit to keep Rocky provided that he kept the aquarium locked.

Deverso is now looking for a taxidermist to have the body preserved.

“This isn’t a goldfish you get at the fair and flush down the toilet,” he said. “I’ve got 11 years of stories with him. I want him to always be with me, to always be talked about.

For more info on Rocky, read our earlier post “Death sentence might be revoked for New York snakehead”.

“It was hard not to laugh underwater and flood your [scuba] mask,” says biologist Mark Norman who, together with fellow researchers from Melbourne’s Museum Victoria, photographed an octopus crawling along the ocean floor off the coast of Indonesia with two coconut shell halves suctioned to its underside.

After finishing its journey, the octopus reassembled the coconut and squeezed itself into its homemade and very well camouflaged hiding spot.

The Australian research team also encountered 20 veined octopuses carrying coconut shells nearly twice as big as their 8 cm bodies.

Using tools is generally regarded as a sign of mental sophistication and octopuses are considered to be among the most ingenious creatures on the planet. They are the only invertebrates which have been conclusively shown to use tools, and research involving maze and problem-solving tasks has unveiled that they have both short- and long term memory.

When kept in captivity, octopuses often manage to sneak out of their tanks, e.g. to get to a nearby aquarium and devour its inhabitants at night. They are also known to board fishing boats in search of food and can open up holds to get to the cargo.

Their restricted lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn; some species live for at little as six months while others are known to reach an age of five years in ideal conditions. The males die within a few months after mating and the females pass away shortly after seeing their eggs hatch.

In some countries, octopuses are afforded legal protection not extended to other invertebrates and it may for instance be illegal for researchers to perform surgery on them without anaesthesia.

A transparent goldfish that reveals its inner organs has been developed by a joint research team of Mie University and Nagoya University in Japan.

The aim of the project was to create a transparent fish that makes it possible for researchers to study blood constituents and organ behaviour without having to dissect the animal. Unlike ordinary goldfish variants, this type has therefore been made really big and can weigh up to 1 kg. Up until now, the transparent fish of choice for researchers have been the see-through zebrafish, but this tiny fish only weigh abut 3 grams and is therefore much more difficult to study than the 1 kg goldfish.

The translucent goldfish was developed in just three years by repeatedly letting selected pale goldfish specimens mate with each other.

“Pale-colored goldfish have little commercial value, but their negative value has turned into a positive,” said Mie University Associate Professor Yutaka Tamaru.

The creation of a transparent goldfish was announced Wednesday last week at the annual meeting of the Molecular Biology Society of Japan.

An unusual road accident put traffic to a complete halt today on the E6 highway outside Strömstad on the Swedish west coast.

A truck loaded with sill herring offal dropped its smelly cargo after a tailgate had opened up as the truck passed over a speed bump. The fish offal flew out of the truck and into the grill of a passing truck, causing a complete engine failure.

No one was injured, says SOS Alarm, the Swedish Emergency Service, but the Swedish road administration expects the clean-up work to take several hours.

Herring
Herring is a fairly small oily fish native to shallow parts of the North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, including the Baltic Sea. Herring has been an important part of Swedish cuisine for thousands of years and the fish is still served year round. Herring becomes especially sough after around Christmas and Midsummer when it is served in its traditional pickled fashion and chased down with hard liquor made from grain or potatoes. Herring caught in the Baltic Sea can also be fermented for 6 to 12 months to produce surströmming. Several airlines have banned canned of surströmming on their flights, deeming the pressurized containers a safety hazard.

Female scissortail sergants allow potential mates to fertilize a small batch off eggs and then monitor their parenting skills to decide if they are good enough to deserve a full clutch.

When studying filial cannibalism* in scissortail sergeants, ecologist Andrea Manica** of the University of Cambridge noticed that some females approached a male’s nest, deposited a small amount of eggs, and then left.

This aroused his curiosity and he decided to provide the males with ceramic tiles to use as nest sites. Once a female has deposited a small clutch on a ceramic tile, Manica either left the eggs alone or rotated the tiles to move the eggs.

The tiles that were left alone turned out to be popular; two-thirds of the females returned to deposit a full clutch of eggs later. The tiles that had been rotated by Manica were much less desirable and only a quarter of the females returned to lay a new batch.

Overall, this method of testing potential fathers seems to be rather rare in the population researched by Manica. Out of 421 females, only 7.4 percent laid test eggs before depositing a full batch. Manica also noticed that the method was used mainly at the onset of the breeding cycle. Later in the cycle, the amount of eggs already inside a nest seemed to suffice as indicator.

“The female fish probably use these test eggs when they don’t have much to go by. As a strategy, to me it makes lots of sense. There are probably lots of other species that do that,” said Manica.

The Scissortail sergant (Abudefduf sexfasciatus) is a large damselfish native to coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific. Also known as the Striptailed damselfish, it can be recognized on its black striped tail and sides. In this species, the eggs are cared for by the male fish who must not only resist the urge to eat his own offspring but also be brave and skilled enough to protect them from being eaten by other predators.

The study has been published in Animal Behaviour.
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622782/description#description

* Filial cannibalism is when an adult eats the young of its own species. In many species of fish, adults won’t hesitate to eat even their own immediate offspring.

** http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/manica.html

Four new species of King crab has been discovered in the Smithsonian Collections of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Hall believes that even more species of King crab will be found in the future.
“The oceans off eastern Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean are all particularly poorly sampled,” she said. “We need to know which king crab species live where before we can fully understand their ecology and evolutionary success.”

* The University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES) at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS)