Category Archives: Conservation

Threatened Sharks On The Menu In Houston

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  I had an opportunity to visit McCormick and Schmick’s sea food restaurant in Town and Country,  (Houston) and discovered that they are serving Mako Shark on the lunch menu.  Don’t eat sharks. First of all, the shark meat often contains high levels of mercury because they are at the top of the food chain.  And it’s just plain bad news… Read more »

Lionfish: Invasive Predators of the Deep

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  Native to reefs in the Indo-Pacific region, the lionfish is a member of the scorpion fish family. Growing upwards of 45 cm in length and 1.3 kg in weight, it is an aggressive, territorial species with very few predators likely due to the fact that they are venomous. Large spines located within the dorsal, anal, and pectoral fins are… Read more »

World Oceans Day: Why it Should Matter to All of Us

Did you know that 8 June is World Oceans Day? Like all days of designated observance, World Oceans Day was started to bring a yearly awareness, in this case to the state of our underwater world. Although water makes up ~70% of Earth’s surface, our seas remain one of the most unique, important, and yet unexplored parts of our world…. Read more »

Sea Otters: A Species Under Threat

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With the new challenges wildlife faces daily, it is no longer enough just to survive.  To ensure species longevity, individuals must learn to quickly adapt.  Although a lot of attention is given to the conservation of the large, iconic creatures of land and sea, it is often those species that reside in the middle of the food chain that play… Read more »

The Bottled Water Dilemma

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How many bottles of water do you drink every month?  What about in one week?  How much do you consume in a single day?  Did you know that in the United States alone, over 50 billion bottles of water are consumed annually?  And of those more than 50 billion bottles less than 20% are recycled?  But the bottled water dilemma… Read more »

The Ocean: Where Life Begins and Ends

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The ocean, for most, represents a great blue void.  It is sometimes hard to imagine that an incredible world, much larger than the space terrestrial beings inhabit, lies beyond the shoreline and below the surface.  The Censes of Marine Life, completed in 2010 by 2,700 scientists from 80 countries, identified more than 1 million species that call the ocean home. … Read more »

Shark Finning: The Global Attack on Sharks

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Used as a tasteless thickener in soup and an inconclusive cure all in Ancient Chinese Medicine, shark fin, or more specifically shark finning, claims the lives of more than 70 million sharks annually.  Think about that number for a moment; more than 70 million sharks.  Portrayed as mindless, blood-thirsty killers in Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws, sharks are persecuted not on… Read more »