Coral reefs are some of the most diverse and important ecosystems on earth. If you didn’t know that already you probably wouldn’t be here. For background on see these links (1, 2, 3). Also, reefs are beautiful and really cool (see below). However, corals are very sensitive to changes in their environment. They are especially … Continue reading
Category Archives: Marine Life
Marsh Madness: basketball meets marine science
This is my first year at UNC Chapel Hill and all around basketball is in the air. I guess that is what happens when you go to an ACC school that the has a history of being one of the best college basketball teams in the country. I’ve never seen so much excitement around a sport. … Continue reading
Love UNder the C?
For Valentine’s Day this year I decided to get a little creative. Here are 3 of my own marine science related valentine creations! Below each drawing is a short explanation of the Valentine! Explanation: There is huge sexual dimorphism between male and female anglerfish. When the male is searching for his one true love (a … Continue reading
Green Your Weekend: Map the Ocean
Our first Green Your Weekend post resulted in Congress banning microbeads, if we ignore the fact that correlation does not imply causation. We figured it only made sense to harness this blog’s obvious political influence with another easy tip to make your weekend a little greener! And because everyone’s thinking more pink than green this … Continue reading
Mystery of the “Deep-Sea Purple Sock”
In 1915 a strange new sea creature was discovered that resembled a “purple sock”. This creature was eventually named as Xenoturbella bocki in 1949, but no one really had any idea what this weird creature was (Westblad, 1949). Unable to clearly establish more information about the creature’s fit in the evolutionary tree or even its … Continue reading
Project Oratsimba
This is a guest post by Elyse Dankoski, a neurobiologist at the University of North Carolina. She recently spent 3 months in southeast Madagascar volunteering with Azafady’s Conservation Programme. This fall, I lived in a small community on the southeast coast of Madagascar called Sainte Luce. Sainte Luce is remote even by Madagascar’s standards, and … Continue reading
Fake Plastic Fish: how consumerism ruins the ocean
By now you’ve probably seen one of the many articles we have posted about plastics, recycling, and the garbage problem that plagues the world’s oceans (if not, check them out 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Ocean pollution is obviously an issue that we here are UNdertheC are concerned about. Luckily, we aren’t the … Continue reading
Homeward bound: How do organisms navigate home?
During the holiday season many people travel to visit family and friends that live across the country or even the world. But in the New Year, we must get back to our normal lives: school, work, or whatever one does in their everyday life. Humans are traditionally visual navigators and have developed a variety of tools … Continue reading
Shark Conservation in St. Maarten
Written by Emma Park. Emma is an undergraduate at UNC who spent her winter break working with The Ocean Foundation. Over part of winter break, I traveled to the eastern Caribbean to work with Hello Ocean, a nonprofit that showcases ocean conservation work through a series of online videos. I helped with the production of … Continue reading
What you need to know about Japanese Whaling
This article is a guest post by ODU undergradaute Ben Maxie. Ben works in the Barshis Lab and studies the evolution of stress tolerance in corals and other organisms. Despite an adverse but nonbinding vote by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Japan has sent a whaling fleet south to Antarctica. The fleet left on December … Continue reading