Anyone besides me bothered by how little we know about sea life?

[Puffer Fish]

My concern also. I am sure the environment that Archman presents is the world he see, and I would believe what he says is true. Sadly the wisdom of Politicians can be very short sighted.

In the 50 and 60's, Panama had a huge scallop industry. Fleets of boats. Huge processing facilities. Then one day, millions of them just got up and swam away. No one knew why, or where they went. 6 years or so later, they all came back. Perhaps the single most valuable aspect to humanity is knowledge of their environment.

But in the end research follows the money.

So true, unfortunately. Much of the work done today is in the area of molecular biology... and economic uses of marine species. Of course the DNA studies are helpful in refining taxonomy in many groups. I do worry about the scientists being trained today in areas of specialty where they do not have a good understanding of the entire organism or the ecological context. Environmental work, which would further the interest in ecosystems level studies, has been underfunded in previous years. Such a shame.

 

[archman]

R.E.E.F. operates a fancy species reporting system that allows (trained or untrained) folks to submit sightings of fishes. It is super cool. One can upgrade to higher fish-ID skill categories by taking quizzes and getting checked out by "certified fish watchers". Quite a few Floridian and Caribbean recreational divers have been trained this way. The "Great Annual Fish Counts" that R.E.E.F. periodically carries out are enormously popular. Information goes into a database in Key Largo I think, and is accessible to the public. You can even look up your personal fish surveys online. Some scientists have been using this huge pile of species occurrence & abundance data to track exotic species, and monitor effects of fishing, climate change, protected areas, etc...

R.E.E.F. is rad.
Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) | Diving That Counts