🚨NEW 🐟 PAPER 🚨 On this episode of unusual animal friends… @juliasaltzman.bsky.social was in the right place at the right time to record and generate an ethogram of a stingray-cobia pair, an interaction fishers have relied on to find and sight-fish for cobia! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Rainbows on parade in Coral City ✊🌈🌈🌈🦜🐟🪸🌆 #rainbowparrotfish #parrotfishjungle #parrotfishcapitaloftheworld #rainbowparade #rainbowpride #parrotfish #coral #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity

Lizardfish coming in hot!! #lizardfish #predator #ambush #fangs #teeth #cominginhot #coral #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity

So reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) can't fly, but they are VERY MAGICAL. For example, their EYES CHANGE COLOR during the year & they're one of the few large mammals that can see UV. Golden brown in summer, deep blue in winter. Let's talk about the unique visual adaptations of Rudolph and company.

👀 Funded PhD: 'Capturing stories of the coast' "oral histories are a common & widely used approach in Env History, here we seek to extend their use, to explore how such knowledges can be integrated into climate adaptation & resilience planning ..." #DeepMapping www.liverpool.ac.uk/courses/capt...

So excited to see this out! Metabarcoding shows fishes shift diets on degraded reefs; growth rates similar, condition diverged → species-specific coping strategies buff.ly/kGkEDpw @mattleray.bsky.social @nancyknowlton.bsky.social @odealab.bsky.social @sbac-manmetuni.bsky.social @stri_panama +others

Doing a PhD is - at heart - one long discussion with your mentor. The discussion changes over time - with unexpected turns and ups & downs - but through it all is a pair of people discussing a topic endlessly to make sense of it. PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!

🌊 🐟🦭🐋🐧 I have a PhD position available (4 years, start Mid-2026) at NRM Stockholm to work on the macrogenomics of sea warming. Apply here: recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a... #PhD #MarineGenomics #ClimateChange #EvolutionaryBiology #PopGen #Bioinformatics #conservationgenomics

I’m going to be honest—the vast majority of academic jobs I haven’t gotten never even told me THAT I didn’t get them, much less WHY.

I don’t smell live sharks too often, but Sharks have urea in their blood. Which means that Shark tissue in a lab setting can smell like rotting pee.

Check out our new publication on the growth rates and habitat use of nurse sharks in Biscayne Bay, FL compared to nearby Bimini, Bahamas which came out today (open access) in Environmental Biology of Fishes! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

PS Get yourself a PI that conveniently already has the data to answer random questions. Shoutout @drcatmac.bsky.social

🚨New 🦈 paper🚨 Who would have thought that only 80 km of separation across the Straits of Florida would be enough to create significant differences in age and growth of Atlantic nurse sharks? Well… now us! Curious? Open access article linked below link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New PhD opportunity - which I'm delighted to be co-supervising! 'From Catch to Kitchen: Learning from Recreational Anglers to Diversify UK Seafood Choices' www.findaphd.com/phds/project... #phd #seafood #angling #fisheries #recreationalfishing #sustainability @thembauk.bsky.social Please share!

I would like to be as unbothered as this skate. @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 880 #argentiniandeepseeps #MarineLife

Our latest research on Rice's whale media coverage is included in this 2025 wrap up by @therevelator.org: therevelator.org/this-year-in...

New paper alert! We reconstructed the diversification trajectory of sharks & rays over the past 145 myrs to answer: When did they experience major extinction events? Does age play a role in extinction selectivity? If so, does it change with extinction intensity? 👉 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

If you need a happy science story today - another piece how male dolphins who bond better with their mates* age slower @aunz.theconversation.com piece by @liviagerber.bsky.social @kjpeters.bsky.social and Lee Rollins *Aussie dolphins, so the Aussie meaning of mates 🐳🦑🧪

A new study from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and the Marine Megafauna Foundation finds that young Caribbean manta rays often swim with groups of other fish, creating small, moving ecosystems that support a variety of marine species.

📢 #PhD opportunity! Interested in #eDNA and protecting our #rivers? We are recruiting a PhD researcher to tackle a very topical challenge: Empowering citizen scientists with an eDNA toolbox to safeguard #freshwater fishes. Deadline: January 16th 2026. #PhDPosition #CardiffUniversity bit.ly/49bl4gO

You can read the open access paper here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This study adds important insight into the complexity of highly mobile marine symbioses and suggests that individual marine animals, like manta rays, may serve as important mobile habitats in their ecosystems.

We found that these manta rays most often associate with remoras, that symbionts generally congregate on the ventral side of their host (with symbiont-specific variation), and that symbiont communities are relatively stable over time and repeat encounters

In this study we analyzed hundreds of video encounters of the Atlantic Manta Ray (Mobula yarae) collected by the Marine Megafauna Foundation in south Florida to assess the composition and distribution of their symbiotic fish aggregates

I’m so pleased to share that the second chapter of my dissertation was just published open access in Marine Biology!

Happy Hanukkah for all of us at NSF, may the LOX last for many launches this year 🎥Jasmin Moghbeli/Instagram

"South Fork Wind, the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the US, is exceeding expectations for power generation and co-existing with the marine environment."

Nurse shark to the rescue! 🩺🦈 #nurseshark #sharksofcoralcity #shark #closeup #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity

I'm recruiting a #PhDstudent ! Deadline Feb 10th! Explore how forest management shapes peatlands, riparian zones, streams and the #biodiversity that depends on them. www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

New paper out! 🦈🥞📡 Using 4 years of acoustic tracking on 179 undulate skates (Raja undulata), we show that fine-scale movement traits (activity + space use) vary consistently among individuals but don’t align with broader philopatry patterns.👀 Full paper 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

I would, joyfully. But a chatbot is NOT my grandmother—or anyone else’s—you absolute evil ghouls.

Funded Master's position in Rattlesnake Biology at Cal Poly SLO jobs.rwfm.tamu.edu/view-job/?id... Please share!

Star of the show, after shark, the Edmund Fitzgerald hat. #GreatLakes

She’s covered in sunscreen, she’s salty as hell, and she’s loving it! 🦑🌿

To me, this begs a question I have often asked myself: why do people who seem to hate students want to be professors? If a journalist writing this story reached out to me, my response would be something like: “why on earth is this what you’re covering right now?”

PhD opportunity! "Benefits & impacts of use of light in UK #fisheries & their wider effect on the marine environment" (aka #scallopdiscos!) Supervision by me @thembauk.bsky.social Tom Davies @plymbiomarsci.bsky.social Tim Smyth @pml.ac.uk @fishtekmarine.bsky.social www.plymouth.ac.uk/study/resear...

I do this in my classes and have added additional accommodations as needed (e.g., white boards for writing out jargon for a deaf student). I think about and explain it as removing artificial barriers to student success. It’s my job to create a space where they can learn and do their best work!

ICYMI, we have a new paper out offering advice to shark scientists who want to perform policy-relevant research but don't understand the basics of science-based policymaking. Here's the press release/ lay summary. The open access paper is linked within. 🧪🦑🌍🦈

Coming back from vacation to some good news! The first baby whale of the 2025-2026 North American right whale calving season was spotted Nov 28 near South Carolina. Mom is Champagne (ID #3904) and its her 2nd documented calf. What joyful news for a species with 384 whales remaining.

If you are a shark scientist, 9 times out of 10 they’re going to ask you if you’ve been bitten by a shark.

Also: I have absolutely no problem with people conducting research that doesn’t have clear management or conservation implications. I still read and enjoy those papers! Answer the questions that excite you! But ideally, don’t assume all scientific information is automatically policy-relevant.

I am excited to share with you a new paper, probably my last of 2025. @drcatmac.bsky.social is a coauthor. Our paper presents advice for early career shark scientists who want their work to be useful for conservation and management policy. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧪🦑🌍🦈

“Reasons are for reasonable people.” Boy howdy, I wish I’d had this response in my pocket back in the days when I frequented academe!

Hot off the press, "A zero annual export quota for wild-taken specimens traded for commercial purposes" annotation has been adopted for Giant Guitarfish (Glaucostegus spp.) at the #CITESCoP20 Follow along as more updates happen live! #CITES #CoP20 #guitarfish #shark #ray #chimaera #biodiversity

The Makah have the right to hunt whale by treaty with the US. They have approval by international agreement under the subsistence whaling provisions of the International Whaling Commission. Their rights have been ignored, dismissed, and deprioritized.

Remember that when you buy wild-caught fish, fisheries which meet demanding sustainability standards are also much less likely to involve horrifying human rights abuses including forced labor.

Dear grad students, Reminder: it’s also totally fine to ignore your [uncle] who thinks your research is a waste of time and resources. You don’t owe people an explanation! They don’t have to get it! Or, as someone told me as a life-changing piece of advice: reasons are for reasonable people.

From our new #research: Of the 35 newspaper texts we analyzed (2021-2024), 60% focused entirely on Rice's whales. The remaining 40% often included the whales as an example, but in the context of some other topic. Read to find out what this means & why it matters: doi.org/10.1007/s13280-025-02265-y