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Thanksgiving is one of those uniquely American holidays – a time for thankful reflection and Olympic-style feasting. With the holidays right around the corner, are you salivating over the thought of aromatic turkey and gravy yet?

Now what if you swapped that bird out for something a little different: lionfish.

If this sounds drastically unconventional, consider that the first pilgrims of Plymouth, Massachusetts partook in an impressive seafood medley as part of their inaugural dinner: lobster, eel, clams, mussels, and even the occasional fish pie.

Lionfish, colloquially termed the “turkeyfish”, are not only delicious (their meat boasts a buttery taste and flaky texture), but they also pose one of the greatest threats as an invasive speciesto the southeast coast of the United States, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico. 

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thanksgiving lionfish turkey turkeyfish conservation invasive

Until very recently oceanography was a field dominated by men. A seafaring career, oceanography was still influenced by the superstitions of ship life; a woman on board was considered to bring bad luck. It may come as a surprise then, that one of the most influential oceanographic cartographers (mapmakers) of the 20th century was a woman, and she achieved such status without even stepping foot on a boat.

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Let’s get our hands dirty for Women’s History Month by celebrating the women scientists working on understanding the impacts of the Gulf Oil Spill:

  • Lexi Temkin explores the links between the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and human health.
  • Nancy Rabalais studies “dead zones"—areas of low- or no-oxygen water along the seafloor that suffocate most animal life in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Uta Passow studies the movement of carbon into and around the ocean in the “biological carbon pump.”

Photo Credits: Top: Flickr User James Davidson; Bottom: Justin E. Stumberg/U.S. Navy

Source: ocean.si.edu deepwater horizon gulf oil spill oil spill oil spills womens history month women in science science marine science ocean science ocean gulf of mexico

The terrible beauty of glaciers melting and oceans rising: Daniel Beltra’s aerial photographs reveal the human impact on nature:

The fluorescent, milky swirls in the photographs above might look like computer-generated imagery, but this is what Daniel Beltrá saw last July when he flew in an airplane 1,000 feet above Iceland’s rivers. The whitish streams in the otherwise crystalline waters are glacial sediments, traces of the 11 billion tons of ice vanishing from the island nation each year as a result of global warming. 
The Spanish-born Beltrá has also photographed ice sheets in Greenland and sea ice at the Poles. “All these projects look at the affects of global warming,” he says. But this latest set of images is especially striking. “In Iceland, the melting glaciers look different than anywhere else.”

See more photos at Smithsonian.com.

Photos by Daniel Beltrá

glaciers climate change sea level sea level rise photography nature aerial photography
For the first time, scientists have caught rare pillar corals in the act of reproducing! NPR: “The moment came “three days after the August full moon, 100 minutes after sundown,” she says. So the next time they spawned, Marhaver was in the water...

For the first time, scientists have caught rare pillar corals in the act of reproducing! NPR:

The moment came “three days after the August full moon, 100 minutes after sundown,” she says. So the next time they spawned, Marhaver was in the water waiting, and saw what looked like a cloud rising from the reef. 
“They’re very flamboyant,” she says, “it’s quite obvious what they’re up to.” 
The divers frantically collected sperm and eggs. 
“You’re running around underwater with flashlights and tarps and doing hand signals and (carrying) collection tubes,” Marhaver says. “It’s beautiful to see. We scream through our scuba regulators and snap millions of photos and breathe our air tanks down really fast.” 

They were also able to collect eggs and sperm from the pillar corals to breed them in the lab so that they can raise coral “seedlings” and plant them in the wild.

Why is saving coral important? Find out at our Corals and Coral Reefs page.

Photo Credit: Joe Berg/Way Down Video/Mote

Source: NPR corals coral reefs conservation nature wildlife science scientists reproduction ocean oceans marine biology