Author Archives: Matthew Wagstaff

Corals in Motion! Time-lapse video of tropical corals

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by Matthew Wagstaff

To the untrained observer, it is quite easy to confuse a coral with other structures on the sea floor. It can be surprising at first to learn that corals are, in fact, animals just like you and me. Similar to most benthic organisms, corals move very little, and when they do, they often move very slowly. As a result, it is sometimes hard for us to grasp an understanding of the lives that they lead.

Dr. Pim Bongaerts, at the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, is attempting to do just that. As part of the ‘Catlin Seaview Survey’ of the Great Barrier Reef, Dr. Bongaerts has been capturing awesome time lapse footage of the reef and posting it to his website at: www.coraltimelapse.com. This footage has been sped up by 300-1800x, and is a great way to clearly see just how active corals actually are!

Here is some footage that his team recently shared with the BBC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbYA6uZFJ-w

Is climate change choking our oceans?

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by Matthew Wagstaff

Hiding away in the ocean section of the new IPCC report is a lesser known result of global climate change, ocean deoxygenation.  Many effects of climate change such as increasing global temperatures, rising sea levels and ocean acidification are already well-known and somewhat in the public eye, however there are many other effects that are less well-known and less understood. Deoxygenation of the oceans is one of these lesser-known effects and is being caused by a number of factors. While the acidification of the ocean is caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the deoxygenation of the ocean is mainly due to the increasing temperatures of the surface waters, which has two effects: the solubility effect and the stratification effect. From the IPCC report:

  “It is very likely that global warming will lead to [further] declines in dissolved O2 in the ocean interior through warming-induced reduction in O2 solubility and increased ocean stratification. This will have implications for nutrient and carbon cycling, ocean productivity and marine habitats (Keeling et al., 2010).” Continue reading →