marine-biologists

"You can go for hundreds of meters along the and see nothing. But then you’ll get to a and it will be a garden of exotic creatures. The vents are like the . The seawater percolates down through cracks caused by earthquakes, and then it comes up through these underwater chimneys. There are lots of ores there like copper, gold, silver, and s. There’s so much life there, and it’s very different from what we’re used to seeing. Whenever scientists go down, we almost always find new creatures."

"ecosystems have stimulated decades of and hold promise of mineral and genetic resources that also serve societal needs. Some endemic taxa thrive only in vent environments, and vent-associated organisms are adapted to a variety of natural disturbances, from tidal variations to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In this paper, physicochemical and biological impacts of a range of human activities at vents are considered. , albeit at a local scale, based on our current understanding of ecological responses to disturbance. Natural recovery from a single mining event depends on immigration and larval recruitment and colonization; understanding processes and dynamics influencing life-history stages may be a key to effective minimization and mitigation of mining impacts. Cumulative impacts on of several mining projects in a single region, without proper management, include possible species extinctions and shifts in community structure and function."

"in the late 1970s led to the discovery of at s. More recently, sulphide deposits containing . In addition to metal-rich ores, hydrothermal vents host ecosystems based on . Although there has been considerable effort to study the biology and ecology of vent systems in the decades since these systems were first discovered, there has been limited attention paid to conservation issues. Three priority recommendations for conservation science at hydrothermal vent settings are identified here: (i) determine the natural conservation units for key species with differing life histories; (ii) identify a set of first principles for the design of preservation reference areas and conservation areas; (iii) develop and test methods for effective mitigation and restoration to enhance the recovery of biodiversity in sulphide systems that may be subject to open-cut mining."

"and their were discovered in 1977. While the hot-water springs were predicted to occur at s, no one expected to find them colonized by exotic invertebrate faunas. Accustomed to a view of the deep sea as a food-limited environment, the puzzle of how lush communities could be maintained provoked biologists into a flurry of research activity. ... As field programs multiplied and more vent communities were discovered, biogeographic patterns in the distribution of faunas became apparent and ecological issues of requirements, , and began to be addressed. associated with diverse settings, from and s to . Massive bacterial blooms triggered by the release of nutrients during a volcanic eruption, rapid colonization of new vents by invertebrates, and burial of extant vent communities by lava flows demonstrate the dynamic nature of hydrothermal systems. Perhaps the most provocative consequence of the discovery of seafloor hydrothermal vents is the ."

"Effects from small plastic debris and sorbed chemicals may not be additive and future research is needed to identify the nature of the risks from this combination of s. It is likely that the risk to an will vary by type and size of plastic debris, which may affect its ability to concentrate chemicals from ambient water ... and in s … Risks may also vary over space and time due to the concentration of hazardous chemicals available for ... and the length of time the debris has interacted with ambient water and sunlight. of plastic increases surface area, and may enable greater accumulation of hazardous chemicals. Such complexity begs the initiation of research programs and risk assessments that are ecologically relevant ..."

"Over the last decade, it has become indisputable that small plastic debris contaminates s and wildlife globally. Of concern is that this material, which is ingested by hundreds of species across multiple trophic levels, is associated with a complex mixture of hazardous chemicals. Models, laboratory exposures, and field studies have all demonstrated that plastic debris can act as a source for hazardous chemicals to bioaccumulate in animals. This has been demonstrated with several plastic types, including , (PVC), , and , and for several different organic chemicals, including s, s, , , and . What remains less certain is the ecological importance of this transfer, i.e., the relative contribution of plastic as a source of chemicals to wildlife relative to other sources. ... Further research is warranted to better understand the mechanisms by which plastic-associated contaminants transfer to organisms and if the chemicals are biomagnified in higher trophic level animals leading to ecological consequences or even human health effects via consumption of contaminated seafood."

"Research on (small particles of plastic <5 in size) has long focused on their largest sink: the ocean. More recently, however, researchers have expanded their focus to include freshwater and terrestrial environments. This is a welcome development, given that an estimated 80% of microplastic pollution in the ocean comes from land ... and that rivers are one of the dominant pathways for microplastics to reach the oceans ... Like other , such as s (PCBs), microplastics are now recognized as being distributed across the globe. Detailed understanding of the fate and impacts of this ubiquitous environmental contaminant will thus require a concerted effort among scientists with expertise beyond the marine sciences."

"For decades we have learned about the physical hazards associated with in the , but recently we are beginning to realize the s. Assessing hazards associated with plastic in is not simple, and requires knowledge regarding s that may be exposed, the exposure concentrations, the types of s comprising the debris, the length of time the debris was present in the aquatic environment (affecting the size, shape and fouling) and the locations and transport of the debris during that time period. Marine plastic debris is associated with a ‘cocktail of chemicals’, including chemicals added or produced during manufacturing and those present in the marine environment that accumulate onto the debris from surrounding . This raises concerns regarding: (i) the complex mixture of chemical substances associated with marine plastic debris, (ii) the environmental fate of these chemicals to and from plastics in our oceans and (iii) how this mixture affects wildlife, as hundreds of species ingest this material in nature."

"are secreted by the of all ns and only cnidarians. Of the three categories of cnidae (also called cnidocysts), s occur in all cnidarians, and are the means by which cnidarians defend themselves and obtain prey; s and s are restricted to a minority of major . A cnida discharges by eversion of its tubule; venom may be associated with the tubule of a nematocyst. About 30 major morphological types of nematocysts are recognized, but no single nomenclature for them is accepted."

"The 25 species of ' and one of ' (family ) are obligate s of 10 species of facultatively symbiotic sea anemones. Throughout the tropical Indo-West Pacific range of the relationship, a fish species inhabits only certain of the hosts potentially available to it. This specificity is due to the fishes. Five fishes occupy six sea anemone species at , , Australia. harbors P. biaculeatus, A. melanopus and A. akindynos. ... ns cleared of symbionts disappeared within 24 h, probably having been eaten by reef fishes. Entacmaea, the most abundant and widespread host actinian at Lizard Island and throughout the range of the association, is also arguably the most attractive to es. I believe its vulnerability to predation was a factor in its evolving whatever makes it desirable to fishes. Experimental transfers pitted fish of one species against those of another, controlling for ecophenotype of host, and sex, size and number of fish. Competitive superiority was in the same order as abundance and over-all host specificity: P. biaculeatus, A. melanopus, A. akindynos. At least three factors are necessary to explain patterns of species specificity — innate or learned host preference, competition, and es."

"... when you take into account that third dimension of depth, then 97% of the volume of living space on Earth is made up by ocean."

"More than two centuries have passed since 's discovery. passed from American to French, then to hands, but it was never colonized, perhaps because it was too remote even by Pacific standards. It was briefly a U.S. Naval air command base in World War II and the debris of conflict still liter the islands and lagoons. But underwater, it remains much as Fanning described it. Palmyra is one of the last places on this planet where shallow water marine life is still as varied, rich, and abundant as it was in the eighteenth century. A diver stepping into the seas around this today is able to take a trip back in time to an age when fishing had not yet touched life in the sea."

"patterns were used to map dispersal routes of from 18 sites in the . The sites varied, both as sources and recipients of larvae, by an order of magnitude. It is likely that sites supplied copiously from “upstream” reef areas will be more resilient to recruitment overfishing, less susceptible to species loss, and less reliant on local management than places with little upstream reef. The mapping of connectivity patterns will enable the identification of beneficial management partnerships among nations and the design of networks of interdependent reserves."

"Obviously, terrestrial mining does have very serious and significant impacts. But, largely speaking, they are much more controllable in a terrestrial setting. They are much more visible — so that third parties can verify them and make sure that mining companies are adhering to . Whereas, they would be far harder to see and verify and attribute to individual mines in the deep sea."

"I knew the moment that I put my head underwater in a coral reef in that there was no other career possibility for me."

"Roberts is a and an occasional columnist for the '. His command of research is prodigious, and his generosity with example is prodigal. He is good on the big picture, but he understands even better how to burnish an argument with gleaming detail. ... Roberts has a way of bringing marine disaster closer to home. The long summer vacation of British parliamentarians is not a reward for their legislative labours but a consequence of the , in which a choked with sewage and refuse became so vile that parliament's windows were hung with sheets soaked with bleach. ... He is good on the horrors of oil spills but he points out that the Gulf of Mexico's fishing fleets kill more marine life in a day than 's notorious ' disaster did in months. Oil companies are easy to demonise but the biggest source of oil pollution is either run off from land or directly injected by the two stroke engine of the recreational boat: the floating fuel and oils concentrate on the surface, poisoning the eggs and hungry larvae of hundreds of species."

"There are few better guides to the glories of s than Callum Roberts. Reef Life is a vibrant memoir of the joys, as well as the grind, of a research career beginning in the 1980s that has spanned a golden age of coral reef science. It is also a fine introduction to the ecology of reefs and the existential threats they now face. Roberts is well equipped for the task. He is chief scientific adviser to ', and has given us two of the best books in the last 15 years about the ecology of the sea and its fate in human hands: An Unnatural History of the Sea and Ocean of Life. Roberts revels in the details of life on a coral reef."

"It is the aim of science to co-ordinate all observable phenomena within a single natural order and it is its faith that such is possible. Hence the basic objection to acceptance of the supernatural. If the scientific stand is justified, then everything, whether of matter, energy, mind or spirit, belongs to one vast scheme—it is all one and every part has meaning in relation to the whole. This is as much a tenet of faith as any other belief, but it forms the working hypothesis of all real scientific endeavor. As a basis for action or inquiry it is worth pushing to the limit...If facts or phenomena, in whatever field, fail to fit in, then we modify or rebuild our conceptions until they do, on the assumption that they belong and that there is no separate pigeonhole for mystic revelation and no possibility for arbitrary intervention by any powers that be. If this brings the divine down to earth, so much the better for earthly inhabitants."

"Imagine one of Australia’s foremost jellyfish specialists, a robust scientist with an encyclopaedic knowledge of jellyfish taxonomy and a deep understanding of their place in the . Now make them enthusiastic, unashamedly and female. This is Lisa-Ann Gershwin. Dr Gershwin this year was named one of The Science Show's Top 100 Australian Scientists, along with greats such as Sir FRS, Sir FRS, and Professor FRS. Her road to science has not been a smooth one though. ... Lisa-Ann describes her neurodivergence as central to her science and who she is. While it has been a source of joy as she has been able to immerse herself in the details of jellyfish taxonomy and ecology, it has also come with difficulties."

"Jellyfish as a group holds some astonishing records. The world's most venomous animal is a jellyfish, the Australian Deadly Box jelly-fish (', page 50). The largest invertebrate discovered in the twentieth century is a jellyfish, the so-called Black Sea Nettle (', page 114)—thought it is practically a toy compared to the lion's mane jellies of the North Atlanta (' spp., page 52), which can reach three meters (ten feet) across the body and drag tentacles nearly 30 meters (100 feet) long. One jellyfish helped scientists win the Nobel Prize (page 198). Another grows ten percent of its body length per hour (page 208). And the world's first known case of true biological immortality was discovered in the diminutive and aptly named Immortal Jellyfish (', page 74)."

"s are nothing new. In fact, fossil evidence shows us that jellyfish have been blooming for hundreds of millions of years. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, it became fashionable for naturalists to report all sorts of odd and unusual events from the natural world. The early issues of the and others like it are full of such interesting tidbits. One such report described ' as so abundant in , Germany, that an oar pushed down between the jellyfish remained standing upright ( 1880). Today, just about any bay or harbor has Aurelia shoals so dense that one may wonder whether there is actually enough water between each jellyfish for it to obtain enough oxygen to survive."

"The was organised by the during the years 1871 and 1872 at the suggestion of the . The ship was fitted out under the direction of , at that time , and she sailed from in December 1872. The special object of the Expedition was the scientific exploration of the physical, chemical, geological, and biological conditions of the great s. In addition to a full complement of specially selected Naval Officers, the Expedition comprised a scientific staff of six civilians, under the direction of . After circumnavigating the globe, and carrying on deep-sea and other investigations in many regions of the ocean, the Challenger returned to England in May 1876, and the crew was paid off after the ship had been in commission for over three years and seven months."

"When we cast a retrospective glance at the history of , we find that nearly all the great advances in geography took place among commercial—and in a very special manner among maritime—peoples. Whenever primitive races commenced to look upon the ocean, not as a terrible barrier separating lands, but rather as a means of communication between distant countries, they soon acquired increased wealth and power, and beheld the dawn of new ideas and great . Down even to our own day the power and progress of nations may, in a sense, be measured by the extent to which their seamen have been able to brave the many perils, and their learned men have been able to unravel the many riddles, of the great ocean. The history of civilisation runs parallel with the history of navigation in all its wider aspects."

"Murray's great opportunity came in 1872 when he was appointed to the staff of the , that famous expedition, organised in , which will probably be for all time recognised as the most important in the history of oceanic exploration. Murray played a large part in the preliminary organising and fitting out as well as in the conduct of the expedition. During the four years of the actual voyage he specialised particularly in the collection and study of pelagic organisms and deep-sea deposits, but his greatest work in this connection and the great work of his life was after the return of the expedition. Owing to the failing health of the main share in organising the working out of the enormous collections fell very soon to Murray, and after Thomson's death in 1882 he became in name, as he already was in fact, responsible for this side of the work. For nineteen years Murray managed the most remarkable team of scientific workers which was probably ever brought into collaboration. , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Huxley, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , : all these, in addition to other and younger workers, contributed, and contributed of their best, to these wonderful fifty volumes which form not merely the foundation but a great part of the whole edifice of modern ."

".–During the voyage of the and subsequently, Mr Darwin made a profound study of s, and has given a theory of their mode of formation which has since been universally accepted by scientific men. Darwin's theory may be said to rest on two facts—the one physiological, and the other physical—the former, that those species of corals whose skeletons chiefly make up reefs cannot live in depths greater than from 20 to 30 fathoms; the latter, that the surface of the earth is continually undergoing or ."

"Prof. Semesi had many international contacts, and worked with scientists in the Eastern African region as well as Europe, the Americas and Asia. She was the first botany co-ordinator for the Sida/SAREC bilateral Marine Science Programme, and the programme owes much of its progress to her important input. It was while in this programme that Adelaida Semesi had the idea of producing this flora. She realised the great need and potential for seaweed research in Tanzania and understood the usefulness of a simple identification tool. During the years, she has continually inspired the work with enthusiasm and a sense for the practical. Apart from being an excellent scientist, Professor Semesi was also a very warm and special person. We who had the pleasure of working with her during these years miss her deeply."

"Our concern extends beyond the survival and protection of the single species, to the entire ecosystem the leaf oysters underpin."

"Improving our understanding of leaf oyster reefs requires more comprehensive mapping of the remaining populations and gaining a better understanding of their life cycle."

"Coral bleaching is the greatest threat to the sustainability of coral reefs worldwide and is now clearly one of the greatest challenges we face in responding to the impact of global climate change."

"There is evidence that some corals are now dying on the most severely affected reefs."

"Some coral varieties are also more heat-resistant, and a particular reef that has been exposed to high temperatures in the past may better cope with the current conditions."

"... it is obvious that creativity gives no merit in the absence of adequate basic knowledge. Accurate and undistorted knowledge is most important. It will be disastrous if one’s mind is preoccupied with incorrect or distorted preconceptions. The fundamental laws of science and chemistry are absolute and fully trustable. However, various theories, rules and hypotheses made on experiential bases are not laws; these should be trusted only with reservations, especially when studying an unusual phenomenon like bioluminescence."

"Historically and even today, women contribute a lot to the STEM industry and don't really get the credit they deserve."

"My role models are Eugenie Clark (RIP) and David Attenborough, still to this day! They both brought the natural world to life for me and I cannot thank them enough for how they have shaped my views of wildlife and nature."

"To protect anything, you need to care about it, and to care, you need to know that it's there. But, not everybody has had the luxury to visit the ocean, or experience what is happening in the ocean. I hope that through my initiatives I can show large audiences the great natural beauty and astonishing wildlife that our marine habitats have. The goal of my conservation career is to have people come away with an appreciation of how important our oceans are, a better understanding of how all habitats are linked, what problems the ocean faces and what we can do to help."

"To have a healthy planet you need a healthy ocean environment. Conserving our oceans is of vital interest not only to the diverse life that calls that ecosystem home, but to humankind. If you think about it, our economy, our food sources - heck, really our very survival - all require a healthy ocean."

"My advice is get good grades, follow your passions, and try to volunteer with aquariums or museums that allow you to interact with the animals."

"I grew up wondering where the female marine biologists were, especially the Latinas, and really doubted whether I could break into a field that seemed not too welcoming for minorities. I hope by seeing me, and my work, that anyone of any background thinks, "Huh. If this girl from a tiny Caribbean island can do it, so can I.""

"Seeing great whites in their natural habitat, so different from the monsters many paint them to be, really opened my eyes to how villainized they were and made me wonder how people came to that conclusion."

"There are great discoveries yet to be made down there, fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways that we can't even yet imagine. Yet we have spent only a tiny fraction of the money on ocean exploration that we've spent on space exploration. We need a NASA-like organization for ocean exploration, because we need to be exploring and protecting our life support systems here on Earth."

"Every generation will use the images that they got at the beginning of their conscious lives as a standard and will extrapolate forward. And the difference then, they perceive as a loss. But they don't perceive what happened before as a loss. You can have a succession of changes. At the end you want to sustain miserable leftovers."

"The three decades following World War II were a period of rapidly increasing fishing effort and landings, but also of spectacular collapses, particularly in small pelagic fish stocks. This is also the period in which a toxic triad of catch underreporting, ignoring scientific advice and blaming the environment emerged as standard response to ongoing fisheries collapses, which became increasingly more frequent, finally engulfing major North Atlantic fisheries. The response to the depletion of traditional fishing grounds was an expansion of North Atlantic (and generally of northern hemisphere) fisheries in three dimensions: southward, into deeper waters and into new taxa, i.e. catching and marketing species of fish and invertebrates previously spurned, and usually lower in the food web."

"Conservation is by the people."

"Our scientists, I think the primary thing they need to do is provide them information about what's changing and why, and together with them form solutions because they know what they need to do. So working together is always the best tip."

"Indigenous and local communities are custodians of natural resources and their conservation practices are key to sustainable future.""

"The importance of this book is to show people that when you conserve water sources and wetlands you are also conserving the fishes there, with the livelihoods of those who depend on it."

"What does it do for the environment to have fish there, what does it do for the people there, why should we conserve it."

"You have to really love the work, you may hate the job but you really have to love what you are doing to stay."

"what we're really trying to do here is protect this ocean pyramid, and that ocean pyramid connects to our own pyramid of life. It's an ocean planet, and we think of ourselves as a terrestrial species, but the pyramid of life in the ocean and our own lives on land are intricately connected. And it's only through having the ocean being healthy that we can remain healthy ourselves."

"My journey to become a polar specialist, photographing, specializing in the polar regions, began when I was four years old, when my family moved from southern Canada to Northern Baffin Island, up by Greenland. There we lived with the Inuit in the tiny Inuit community of 200 Inuit people, where [we] were one of three non-Inuit families. And in this community, we didn't have a television; we didn't have computers, obviously, radio. We didn't even have a telephone. All of my time was spent outside with the Inuit, playing. The snow and the ice were my sandbox, and the Inuit were my teachers. And that's where I became truly obsessed with this polar realm. And I knew someday that I was going to do something that had to do with trying to share news about it and protect it."