# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's that time of year when manatees, the slow-moving aquatic mammals of the southeast coast of North America, start to migrate south into warmer waters-and often run into trouble.

In Florida, many of the languid giants-also called sea cows-are killed each year in boating collisions. (See also: " Record 829 Manatee Deaths in 2013 Puzzle Scientists.")

That's why November is also Manatee Awareness Month, which just this year became official in the state of Florida. Governor Rick Scott issued a proclamation to protect the state's official mammal as a "distinctive, valuable, and beloved natural resource."

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the American manatee-also known as the West Indian manatee-as vulnerable, with less than 10,000 individuals of that species left in the wild, according to its website. The population in Florida is estimated at 4,831, according to Save the Manatee. The manatee is a sirenian-an order of aquatic mammals that includes three species of manatees and their Pacific cousin, the dugong.

The ocean's largest herbivore, sirenians are also notable as the creatures that have long fueled mermaid myths and legend across cultures. Below we take a look at some of the most fascinating fables.

"Their Faces Had Some Masculine Traits"

Christopher Columbus, in his first journey to the Americas, caught a glimpse of three "mermaids" off the prow of his ship, writing in his journal:

"On the previous day [8 Jan 1493], when the Admiral went to the Rio del Oro [Haiti], he said he quite distinctly saw three mermaids, which rose well out of the sea; but they are not so beautiful as they are said to be, for their faces had some masculine traits." (Voyages of Columbus 218)."

Indeed, manatees and dugongs are both known to rise out of the sea like the alluring sirens of Greek myth, occasionally performing "tail stands" in shallow water. (See " Severe Scurvy Struck Christopher Columbus's Crew.")

With forelimbs containing five sets of fingerlike bones, and neck vertebrae that allow them to turn their heads, it's possible that manatees could be mistaken for humans from afar.

Following Columbus's expedition to the Americas, sideshows in Europe advertised "recently discovered" mermaids from the new world, often a deceased sirenian.

"A short time back, the skeleton of a mermaid, as it was called, was brought to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the island of Mombass. This was allowed to be submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society, when it proved to be the Dugong ... It was, if I recollect right, about six feet long: the lower dorsal vertebrae, with the broad caudal extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination; whilst the fore legs, from the scapula to the extremities of the phalanges, presented to the unskillful eye an exact resemblance to the bones of a small female arm." -Description of a mermaid in England's Magazine of Natural History.

Lady of the Sea

Thousands of miles from the seas Columbus sailed, the dugong-found in the Pacific Ocean-had been living in legend for centuries.

In 1959, 3,000-year-old cave drawings depicting dugongs-the word translates to "lady of the sea" in the Malay language-inside Malaysia's Tambun Cave were discovered. (Watch video: " Arabian Sea Cows Going Hungry?")

In Palau, a Pacific nation that extends across 340 islands, the dugong plays a central role in traditional ceremony and lore. Stories of young women transformed into these gentle grazers endure, and wooden storyboard carvings illustrate dugongs aiding fishermen lost at sea.

Olympia E. Morei, director of the Belau National Museum, says that "Palauans respected their environment and all the living things in that environment-trees, plants, all the animals and birds. We believed that dugong was once a human, according to the legend."

The animal's population across its range remains unknown, but up to 15 animals are likely killed in Palau each year for food, according to the Etpison Museum's Dugong Awareness Project.

"If the dugong were to be extinct [in Palau], we would, as a people, lose our connection to our environment and to our tradition," Morei said.

Without stronger conservation efforts, the gentle creatures that once inspired fantastic mermaid myths will themselves be consigned to mere legend.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's that time of year when manatees, the slow-moving aquatic mammals of the southeast coast of North America, start to migrate south into warmer waters-and often run into trouble. In Florida, many of the languid giants-also called sea cows-are killed each year in boating collisions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
History of Aquariums

Antiquity

In the Roman Empire, the first fish to be brought indoors was the sea barbel, which was kept under guest beds in small tanks made of marble. Introduction of glass panes around the year 50 allowed Romans to replace one wall of marble tanks, improving their view of the fish. In 1369, the Chinese Emperor, Hóngwǔ, established a porcelain company that produced large porcelain tubs for maintaining goldfish; over time, people produced tubs that approached the shape of modern fish bowls. Leonhard Baldner, who wrote Vogel-, Fisch- und Tierbuch (Bird, Fish, and Animal Book) in 1666, maintained weather loaches and newts.

Nineteenth century

In 1836, soon after his invention of the Wardian case, Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward proposed to use his tanks for tropical animals. In 1841 he did so, though only with aquatic plants and toy fish. However, he soon housed real animals. In 1838, Félix Dujardin noted owning a saltwater aquarium, though he did not use the term. In 1846, Anne Thynne maintained stony corals and seaweed for almost three years, and was credited as the creator of the first balanced marine aquarium in London. At about the same time, Robert Warington experimented with a 13-gallon container, which contained goldfish, eelgrass, and snails, creating one of the first stable aquaria. He published his findings in 1850 in the Chemical Society's journal.

The keeping of fish in an aquarium became a popular hobby and spread quickly. In the United Kingdom, it became popular after ornate aquaria in cast iron frames were featured at the Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1853, the first large public aquarium opened in the London Zoo and came to be known as the Fish House. Philip Henry Gosse was the first person to actually use the word "aquarium", opting for this term (instead of "aquatic vivarium" or "aqua-vivarium") in 1854 in his book The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. In this book, Gosse primarily discussed saltwater aquaria. In the 1850s, the aquarium became a fad in the United Kingdom. Tank designs and techniques for maintaining water quality were developed by Warington, later cooperating with Gosse until his critical review of the tank water composition. Edward Edwards developed these glass-fronted aquaria in his 1858 patent for a "dark-water-chamber slope-back tank", with water slowly circulating to a reservoir beneath.

Germans soon rivaled the British in their interest. In 1854, an anonymous author had two articles published about the saltwater aquaria of the United Kingdom: Die Gartenlaube(The Garden House) entitled Der Ocean auf dem Tische (The Ocean on the Table). However, in 1856, Der See im Glase (The Lake in a Glass) was published, discussing freshwater aquaria, which were much easier to maintain in landlocked areas. During the 1870s, some of the first aquarist societies were appearing in Germany. The United States soon followed. Published in 1858, Henry D. Butler's The Family Aquarium was one of the first books written in the United States solely about the aquarium. According to the July issue of The North American Review of the same year, William Stimson may have owned some of the first functional aquaria, and had as many as seven or eight. The first aquarist society in the United States was founded in New York City in 1893, followed by others. The New York Aquarium Journal, first published in October 1876, is considered to be the world's first aquarium magazine.

In the Victorian era in the United Kingdom, a common design for the home aquarium was a glass front with the other sides made of wood (made watertight with a pitch coating). The bottom would be made of slate and heated from below. More advanced systems soon began to be introduced, along with tanks of glass in metal frames. During the latter half of the 19th century, a variety of aquarium designs were explored, such as hanging the aquarium on a wall, mounting it as part of a window, or even combining it with a birdcage.

Circa 1908, the first mechanical aquarium air pump was invented, powered by running water, instead of electricity. The introduction of the air pump into the hobby is considered by several historians of the hobby to be a pivotal moment in its development.

Aquaria became more widely popular as houses had an electricity supply after World War I. Electricity allowed artificial lighting as well as aeration, filtration, and heating of the water. Initially, amateur aquarists kept native fish (with the exception of goldfish); the availability of exotic species from overseas further increased the popularity of the aquarium. Jugs made from a variety of materials were used to import fish from overseas, with a bicycle foot pump for aeration. Plastic shipping bags were introduced in the 1950s, making it easier to ship fish. The eventual availability of air freight allowed fish to be successfully imported from distant regions. In the 1960s metal frames made marine aquaria almost impossible due to corrosion, but the development of tar and silicone sealant allowed the first all-glass aquaria made by Martin Horowitz in Los Angeles, CA. The frames remained, however, though purely for aesthetic reasons.

In the United States, as of 1996, aquarium keeping is the second-most popular hobby after stamp collecting. In 1999 it was estimated that over nine million U.S. households own an aquarium. Figures from the 2005/2006 APPMA National Pet Owners Survey report that Americans own approximately 139 million freshwater fish and 9.6 million saltwater fish. Estimates of the numbers of fish kept in aquaria in Germany suggest at least 36 million. The hobby has the strongest following in Europe, Asia, and North America. In the United States, 40 percent of aquarists maintain two or more tanks. (The Wiki)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
History of Aquariums Antiquity In the Roman Empire, the first fish to be brought indoors was the sea barbel, which was kept under guest beds in small tanks made of marble. Introduction of glass panes around the year 50 allowed Romans to replace one wall of marble tanks, improving their view of the fish.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's that time of year when manatees, the slow-moving aquatic mammals of the southeast coast of North America, start to migrate south into warmer waters-and often run into trouble.

In Florida, many of the languid giants-also called sea cows-are killed each year in boating collisions. (See also: " Record 829 Manatee Deaths in 2013 Puzzle Scientists.")

That's why November is also Manatee Awareness Month, which just this year became official in the state of Florida. Governor Rick Scott issued a proclamation to protect the state's official mammal as a "distinctive, valuable, and beloved natural resource."

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the American manatee-also known as the West Indian manatee-as vulnerable, with less than 10,000 individuals of that species left in the wild, according to its website. The population in Florida is estimated at 4,831, according to Save the Manatee. The manatee is a sirenian-an order of aquatic mammals that includes three species of manatees and their Pacific cousin, the dugong.

The ocean's largest herbivore, sirenians are also notable as the creatures that have long fueled mermaid myths and legend across cultures. Below we take a look at some of the most fascinating fables.

"Their Faces Had Some Masculine Traits"

Christopher Columbus, in his first journey to the Americas, caught a glimpse of three "mermaids" off the prow of his ship, writing in his journal:

"On the previous day [8 Jan 1493], when the Admiral went to the Rio del Oro [Haiti], he said he quite distinctly saw three mermaids, which rose well out of the sea; but they are not so beautiful as they are said to be, for their faces had some masculine traits." (Voyages of Columbus 218)."

Indeed, manatees and dugongs are both known to rise out of the sea like the alluring sirens of Greek myth, occasionally performing "tail stands" in shallow water. (See " Severe Scurvy Struck Christopher Columbus's Crew.")

With forelimbs containing five sets of fingerlike bones, and neck vertebrae that allow them to turn their heads, it's possible that manatees could be mistaken for humans from afar.

Following Columbus's expedition to the Americas, sideshows in Europe advertised "recently discovered" mermaids from the new world, often a deceased sirenian.

"A short time back, the skeleton of a mermaid, as it was called, was brought to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the island of Mombass. This was allowed to be submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society, when it proved to be the Dugong ... It was, if I recollect right, about six feet long: the lower dorsal vertebrae, with the broad caudal extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination; whilst the fore legs, from the scapula to the extremities of the phalanges, presented to the unskillful eye an exact resemblance to the bones of a small female arm." -Description of a mermaid in England's Magazine of Natural History.

Lady of the Sea

Thousands of miles from the seas Columbus sailed, the dugong-found in the Pacific Ocean-had been living in legend for centuries.

In 1959, 3,000-year-old cave drawings depicting dugongs-the word translates to "lady of the sea" in the Malay language-inside Malaysia's Tambun Cave were discovered. (Watch video: " Arabian Sea Cows Going Hungry?")

In Palau, a Pacific nation that extends across 340 islands, the dugong plays a central role in traditional ceremony and lore. Stories of young women transformed into these gentle grazers endure, and wooden storyboard carvings illustrate dugongs aiding fishermen lost at sea.

Olympia E. Morei, director of the Belau National Museum, says that "Palauans respected their environment and all the living things in that environment-trees, plants, all the animals and birds. We believed that dugong was once a human, according to the legend."

The animal's population across its range remains unknown, but up to 15 animals are likely killed in Palau each year for food, according to the Etpison Museum's Dugong Awareness Project.

"If the dugong were to be extinct [in Palau], we would, as a people, lose our connection to our environment and to our tradition," Morei said.

Without stronger conservation efforts, the gentle creatures that once inspired fantastic mermaid myths will themselves be consigned to mere legend.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's that time of year when manatees, the slow-moving aquatic mammals of the southeast coast of North America, start to migrate south into warmer waters-and often run into trouble. In Florida, many of the languid giants-also called sea cows-are killed each year in boating collisions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. Home

2. Ocean Life

3. Invertebrates

4. Corals and Coral Reefs

Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. They teem with life, with perhaps one-quarter of all ocean species depending on reefs for food and shelter. This is a remarkable statistic when you consider that reefs cover just a tiny fraction (less than one percent) of the earth's surface and less than two percent of the ocean bottom. Because they are so diverse, coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the sea.

Unfortunately, people also pose the greatest threat to coral reefs. Overfishing and destructive fishing, pollution, warming, changing ocean chemistry, and invasive species are all taking a huge toll. In some places, reefs have been entirely destroyed, and in many places reefs today are a pale shadow of what they once were.

Animal, Vegetable & Mineral

Corals are related to sea anemones, and they all share the same simple structure, the polyp. The polyp is like a tin can open at just one end: the open end has a mouth surrounded by a ring of tentacles. The tentacles have stinging cells, called nematocysts, that allow the coral polyp to capture small organisms that swim too close. Inside the body of the polyp are digestive and reproductive tissues. Corals differ from sea anemones in their production of a mineral skeleton.

Shallow water corals that live in warm water often have another source of food, the zooxanthellae (pronounced zo-o-zan-THELL-ee). These single-celled algae photosynthesize and pass some of the food they make from the sun's energy to their hosts, and in exchange the coral animal gives nutrients to the algae. It is this relationship that allows shallow water corals to grow fast enough to build the enormous structures we call reefs. The zooxanthellae also provide much of the green, brown, and reddish colors that corals have. The less common purple, blue, and mauve colors found in some corals the coral makes itself.

Coral Diversity

In the so-called true stony corals, which compose most tropical reefs, each polyp sits in a cup made of calcium carbonate. Stony corals are the most important reef builders, but organpipe corals, precious red corals, and blue corals also have stony skeletons. There are also corals that use more flexible materials or tiny stiff rods to build their skeletons-the seafans and sea rods, the rubbery soft corals, and the black corals.

The family tree of the animals we call corals is complicated, and some groups are more closely related to each other than are others. All but the fire corals (named for their strong sting) are anthozoans, which are divided into two main groups. The hexacorals (including the true stony corals and black corals, as well as the sea anemones) have smooth tentacles, often in multiples of six, and the octocorals (soft corals, seafans, organpipe corals and blue corals) have eight tentacles, each of which has tiny branches running along the sides. All corals are in the phylum Cnidaria, the same as jellyfish.

Reproduction

Corals have multiple reproductive strategies - they can be male or female or both, and can reproduce either asexually or sexually. Asexual reproduction is important for increasing the size of the colony, and sexual reproduction increases genetic diversity and starts new colonies that can be far from the parents.
ASEXUAL REPRODUCTION
Asexual reproduction results in polyps or colonies that are clones of each other - this can occur through either budding or fragmentation. Budding is when a coral polyp reaches a certain size and divides, producing a genetically identical new polyp. Corals do this throughout their lifetime. Sometimes a part of a colony breaks off and forms a new colony. This is called fragmentation, which can occur as a result of a disturbance such as a storm or being hit by fishing equipment.
SEXUAL REPRODUCTION
In sexual reproduction, eggs are fertilized by sperm, usually from another colony, and develop into a free-swimming larva. There are two types of sexual reproduction in corals, external and internal. Depending on the species and type of fertilization, the larvae settle on a suitable substrate and become polyps after a few days or weeks, although some can settle within a few hours!

Most stony corals are broadcast spawners and fertilization occurs outside the body (external fertilization). Colonies release huge numbers of eggs and sperm that are often glued into bundles (one bundle per polyp) that float towards the surface. Spawning often occurs just once a year and in some places is synchronized for all individuals of the same species in an area. This type of mass spawning usually occurs at night and is quite a spectacle. Some corals brood their eggs in the body of the polyp and release sperm into the water. As the sperm sink, polyps containing eggs take them in and fertilization occurs inside the body (internal fertilization). Brooders often reproduce several times a year on a lunar cycle.

Coral Growth

(Owen Sherwood)

Reefs form when corals grow in shallow water close to the shore of continents or smaller islands. The majority of coral reefs are called fringe reefs because they fringe the coastline of a nearby landmass. But when a coral reef grows around a volcanic island something interesting occurs. Over millions of years, the volcano gradually sinks, as the corals continue to grow, both upward towards the surface and out towards the open ocean. Over time, a lagoon forms between the corals and the sinking island and a barrier reef forms around the lagoon. Eventually, the volcano is completely submerged and only the ring of corals remains. This is called an atoll. Waves may eventually pile sand and coral debris on top of the growing corals in the atoll, creating a strip of land. Many of the Marshall Islands, a system of islands in the Pacific Ocean and home to the Marshallese, are atolls.

It takes a long time to grow a big coral colony or a coral reef, because each coral grows slowly. The fastest corals expand at more than 6 inches (15 cm) per year, but most grow less than an inch per year. Reefs themselves grow even more slowly because after the corals die, they break into smaller pieces and become compacted. Individual colonies can often live decades to centuries, and some deep-sea colonies have lived more than 4000 years. One way we know this is because corals lay down annual rings, just as trees do. These skeletons can tell us about what conditions were like hundreds or thousands of years ago. The Great Barrier Reef as it exists today began growing about 20,000 years ago.

Where are Reefs Found?

Corals are found across the world's ocean, in both shallow and deep water, but reef-building corals are only found in shallow tropical and subtropical waters. This is because the algae found in their tissues need light for photosynthesis and they prefer water temperatures between 70-85°F (22-29°C).

Cities of the Sea

(Klaus Jost, jostimages.com)

Reefs are the big cities of the sea. They exist because the growth of corals matches or exceeds the death of corals - think of it as a race between the construction cranes (new coral skeleton) and the wrecking balls (the organisms that kill coral and chew their skeletons into sand).

Corals also have to worry about competitors. They use the same nematocysts that catch their food to sting other encroaching corals and keep them at bay. Seaweeds are a particularly dangerous competitor, as they typically grow much faster than corals and may contain nasty chemicals that injure the coral as well.

Corals do not have to only rely on themselves for their defenses because mutualisms (beneficial relationships) abound on coral reefs. The partnership between corals and their zooxanthellae is one of many examples of symbiosis, where different species live together and help each other. Some coral colonies have crabs and shrimps that live within their branches and defend their home against coral predators with their pincers. Parrotfish, in their quest to find seaweed, will often bite off chunks of coral and will later poop out the digested remains as sand. One kind of goby chews up a particularly nasty seaweed, and even benefits by becoming more poisonous itself.

Threats

Global

The greatest threats to reefs are rising water temperatures and ocean acidification linked to rising carbon dioxide levels. High water temperatures cause corals to lose the microscopic algae that produce the food corals need-a condition known as coral bleaching. Severe or prolonged bleaching can kill coral colonies or leave them vulnerable to other threats. Meanwhile, ocean acidification means more acidic seawater, which makes it more difficult for corals to build their calcium carbonate skeletons. And if acidification gets severe enough, it could even break apart the existing skeletons that already provide the structure for reefs. Scientists predict that by 2085 ocean conditions will be acidic enough for corals around the globe to begin to dissolve. For one reef in Hawaii this is already a reality.

Local

Even activities that take place far from reefs can have an impact. Runoff from lawns, sewage, cities, and farms feeds algae that can overwhelm reefs. Deforestation hastens soil erosion, which clouds water-smothering corals.

Coral Bleaching

"Coral bleaching" occurs when coral polyps lose their symbiotic algae, the zooxanthellae. Without their zooxanthellae, the living tissues are nearly transparent, and you can see right through to the stony skeleton, which is white, hence the name coral bleaching. Many different kinds of stressors can cause coral bleaching - water that is too cold or too hot, too much or too little light, or the dilution of seawater by lots of fresh water can all cause coral bleaching. The biggest cause of bleaching today has been rising temperatures caused by global warming. Temperatures more than 2 degrees F (or 1 degree C) above the normal seasonal maximimum can cause bleaching. Bleached corals do not die right away, but if temperatures are very hot or are too warm for a long time, corals either die from starvation or disease. In 1998, 80 percent of the corals in the Indian Ocean bleached and 20 percent died.

Protecting Coral Reefs

There is much that we can do locally to protect coral reefs, by making sure there is a healthy fish community and that the water surrounding the reefs is clean. Well-protected reefs today typically have much healthier coral populations, and are more resilient (better able to recover from natural disasters such as typhoons and hurricanes).

Clean water is also important. Erosion on land causes rivers to dump mud on reefs, smothering and killing corals. Seawater with too many nutrients speeds up the growth of seaweeds and increases the food for predators of corals when they are developing as larvae in the plankton. Clean water depends on careful use of the land, avoiding too many fertilizers and erosion caused by deforestation and certain construction practices. In the long run, however, the future of coral reefs will depend on reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is increasing rapidly due to burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is both warming the ocean, resulting in coral bleaching, and changing the chemistry of the ocean, causing ocean acidification. Both making it harder for corals to build their skeletons.

Collections

The coral collection housed at the National Museum of Natural History may be the largest and best documented in the world. Its jewel is a collection of shallow-water corals from the U.S. South Seas Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842-one of the largest voyages of discovery in the history of Western exploration. The expedition brought back many unknown specimens that scientists used to name and describe almost all Pacific reef corals. These are known as type specimens in the collection. Altogether, the collection includes specimens of about 4,820 species of corals, and about 65 percent of those species live in deep water.

Research

Carrie Bow Cay Field Station

In the late 1960s, several Smithsonian scientists set themselves an ambitious goal: understanding the inner workings of Caribbean coral reefs. To study this complex ecosystem, they needed a field station where they could conduct research in one location, from multiple disciplines, over a long period of time.

The ARMS Project

It's not very colorful. And it's not made of coral. But by mimicking the nooks and crannies of real coral reefs, this Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure (ARMS) attracts crabs, shrimps, worms, urchins, sponges, and many other kinds of marine invertebrates.

Smithsonian Scientists

Dr. Nancy Knowlton

Besides holding the Smithsonian's Sant Chair for Marine Science, Dr. Knowlton currently serves on the Pew Marine Fellows Advisory Committee, the Sloan Research Fellowship in Ocean Sciences committee, and the national board the Coral Reef Alliance. She is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, winner of the Peter Benchley Prize and the Heinz Award, and author of Citizens of the Sea.

Dr. Stephen Cairns

When he was 10 years old, Stephen Cairns lived in Cuba and collected sea shells. That's when he decided to become a marine scientist. Today he is a research zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, focusing on the diversity, distribution, and evolution of deep-water corals-both fossil and living. Deep-water corals live up to 4 miles deep in cold, dark waters. So Dr. Cairns conducts much of his field work on oceangoing research vessels and in deep-sea submersibles. Dr. Cairns has published about 150 papers and books, in which he has described more than 400 new species of deep-water corals. He assures us there are still many more to be discovered.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Home Ocean Life Invertebrates Corals and Coral Reefs Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. They teem with life, with perhaps one-quarter of all ocean species depending on reefs for food and shelter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Text:

In Indonesia, an underwater paradise was once decimated by illegal and unsustainable fishing. Now, it's thriving again. See the success story of CI's work in the Bird's Head Seascape in this virtual-reality film.
Visit 'Valen's Reef'

Billions of people depend on the ocean for their food and livelihoods. Learn more abut our approach to protecting millions of acres of ocean - and supporting the communities that depend on it.
Learn more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Text: In Indonesia, an underwater paradise was once decimated by illegal and unsustainable fishing. Now, it's thriving again. See the success story of CI's work in the Bird's Head Seascape in this virtual-reality film. Visit 'Valen's Reef' Billions of people depend on the ocean for their food and livelihoods.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With its gaping mouth, needle-sharp teeth, and slightly startled expression, the black sea devil anglerfish seems tailor-made for the spotlight.
And in fact, one particular female got her close-up on November 17 when researchers got footage of this rare anglerfish-the first time this species has been filmed alive and in its natural habitat-off of central California. (See also rare footage of the deep-sea oarfish.)
A team using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in the Monterey Bay Canyon spied this 3.5-inch-long (9 centimeter) black sea devil about 1,900 feet (580 meters) deep. The scientists were then able to bring her up to the surface alive-no mean feat-and have been monitoring the fish ever since.

Bruce Robison, a deep-sea ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, has brought up sea devils from the deep before, but never with an ROV. "It came up in absolutely perfect condition," he says.

Having a living animal to study is telling scientists so much more than they could ever have gotten from the dead, preserved specimens floating around various research facilities, Robison explains.

"One of the first things that we got back from ichthyologists was astonishment at how [the fish] uses its dorsal fin to swim," he says. "Nobody had ever seen that."

The anglerfish also appeared to be breathing more than expected, given its build, Robison added.

Right now, this anglerfish lives in a special darkroom that looks more like a walk-in freezer than a sterile laboratory. But the insulated walls and lack of lighting simulate the dark, chilly habitat the black sea devil normally calls home.

Robison and colleagues are waiting for the fish to settle before studying it further.

Once she acclimates, Robison hopes to figure out whether sea devils can sense electromagnetic fields, as do sharks. Sea devils would be good candidates because they have such poor vision, the deep-sea ecologist says. (Related: " Sawfish Snout Has Sixth Sense, Splits Prey in Half.")

The fish have a lure at the top of their head, and he'd also like to find out whether the fish continuously keep the light on, or if there's a pattern to the illumination.

Very little is known about black sea devils, which belong to the genus Melanocetus. Scientists aren't even sure how long they live.

Perhaps the fish's most prominent feature-made famous in the Disney/Pixar movie Finding Nemo-is the lure. This modified fin glows at the tip, and the sea devil uses it to attract prey. ( See more pictures of deep-sea creatures.)

This particular specimen had eaten a black dragonfish and what looked like a deep-sea smelt prior to capture, Robison says. She coughed up remnants of both when they put her in a tank on the research ship.

Sea devils are also known because the males are parasites. The females can grow to about the size of a baseball, but the males are much smaller and incapable of existing on their own for long, Robison says.

So the males have to find a female as soon as possible. "Once he finds her, he bites on and their tissues fuse," he explains. The male provides sperm while the female sustains him.

The sea devil Robison captured didn't have any attached males. But on other species of anglerfish with parasitic males, Robison has seen as many as 11 males hanging off of one female. (See pictures of other species of rare deep-sea anglerfish.)

Although many consider sea devils ugly and strange, these animals are amazingly adapted for their environment, Robison says. "I don't think of it as being ugly at all."
Follow Jane J. Lee on Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rare Black Sea Devil Caught on Film for the First Time

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With its gaping mouth, needle-sharp teeth, and slightly startled expression, the black sea devil anglerfish seems tailor-made for the spotlight. And in fact, one particular female got her close-up on November 17 when researchers got footage of this rare anglerfish-the first time this species has been filmed alive and in its natural habitat-off of central California.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mapping the World's (Few) Protected Seas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Gabon and the U.S. have new marine reserves, but just a fraction of the seas are protected.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Factslides a high traffic content website (over 1 million visits / month) that takes relevant and complex information from NGOs, think tanks, journals, specialized magazines and media and converts it into colorful and animated slideshows that are easy and fun to read, making the information accessible to students, teachers and curious minds for fun, research, lesson planning, and homework.

Factslides is dedicated to provide well-sourced and verified information that will help young people access the information and critical thinking skills they need to make our world a better place.

Launched in July, 2013, it has shown its facts over 1000 million times, and was selected among the Top 100 websites of 2013 by the prestigious PC Magazine, and as one of the 99 Sites That Every Professional Should Know About by BusinessInsider. It was also featured in sites such as The Awesomer, Design Taxi, I-Am-Bored.com, Neatorama, and DONG, a YouTube show with over a million subscribers.

How do I know your facts are credible? All facts are verified and well sourced. The source URL is located at the bottom of each fact.

Can I use your facts on my site / video / whatever? You sure can. Just be sure to include a link back to FACTSlides.com as your source.

I found a mistake or have a suggestion! What should I do? Contact us!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Factslides a high traffic content website (over 1 million visits / month) that takes relevant and complex information from NGOs, think tanks, journals, specialized magazines and media and converts it into colorful and animated slideshows that are easy and fun to read, making the information accessible to students, teachers and curious minds for fun, research, lesson planning, and homework.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
One-of-a-Kind Sea Creature Photos -- National Geographic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
See photos of unusual sea creatures (such as the yeti crab, frogfish, flamingo tongue snails, and more) in this oceans photo gallery from National Geographic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Text:

3 completed case studies: Brazil, Fiji, and U.S. West Coast

3 completed independent assessments: China, Ecuador, Israel

24 active independent assessments

25+ countries or regions engaged

Currently, twenty-one geographies are actively conducting assessments: Arctic, Baltic Sea, British Colombia, Canada, Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Hawaii, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Caledonia, Pacific Oceanscape, Peru, South Korea, Spain, U.S. North East (Note: some countries and regions are conducting multiple assessments.)

Another group of countries is pursuing a longer stakeholder engagement process on the way to conducting assessments, which includes the British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Madagascar & Comoros, Kenya & Tanzania, and Panama.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Text: 3 completed case studies: Brazil, Fiji, and U.S. West Coast 3 completed independent assessments: China, Ecuador, Israel 24 active independent assessments 25+ countries or regions engaged Currently, twenty-one geographies are actively conducting assessments: Arctic, Baltic Sea, British Colombia, Canada, Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Hawaii, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Caledonia, Pacific Oceanscape, Peru, South Korea, Spain, U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What Monsters have really existed in the Sea? Are there any left?

The Webster's dictionary defines the word monster as "an animal of strange or terrifying shape" and "one unusually large for its kind." By this definition, the creatures that dwell in the deep ocean are true monsters. Miles beneath the surface, where sunlight can no longer penetrate, exists an eerie world of cold darkness. This is the abyss. It is a world of strange and sometimes grotesque forms. Some of the animals here have evolved the ability to create their own light with a technique known as bioluminescence. They use their lights to attract prey and ward off predators. There are also creatures here of gigantic proportions. There are also animals here that get all of their nutrients from chemicals in the ocean through a process known as chemosynthesis. This is where the elusive giant squid hunts. It is also where the great sperm whale comes to feed on the giant squid. Here, within the waters of our own planet, lies an alien world of wonders.

Over the centuries, the oceans have given birth to many myths, legends, mysteries and events still not completely explained by mankind. Contrary to popular belief, the sailors of Columbus's day did not think they would sail right off the edge of the earth. They were, however, apprehensive about what they would find in their travels. Mistakes about marine life have ranged from inaccurate assumptions about the behavior of known species to fanciful depictions of animals that "might" exist.

Hercules battled with a hydra in ancient Greek mythology, and this imaginary animal has suffered from a rotten reputation ever since. Unfortunately, the hydra has a living relative, of sorts: the octopus. Even now, misconceptions persist about the octopus (also called the "devil fish"), and it has been doomed to play the villain in more than one B movie. Although this illustration only shows seven heads, the hydra was said to have nine, and two new ones would appear whenever one was chopped off.

Strange as it looks by today's standards, this picture of a dissected head of a giant white shark actually marked significant progress in marine biology. For years, fossilized shark teeth were believed to be tongues of serpents turned to stone by St. Paul, and hence were named glossopetrae, or "tongue stones". Niels Stensen correctly identified tongue stones as shark teeth.

Alexander Winchell suggested that, "the unexplored depths of the ocean conceal the forms of octopods that far surpass in magnitude any of the species known to science." Winchell was right on both counts.

In the 16th century, two naturalists, Rondelet and Pierre Belon, produced descriptions of animals they termed the Sea Monk, or monk-fish. Centuries later, a very talented naturalist, Japetus Steenstrup, gave a presentation in which he compared Rondelet's illustration and Belon's illustration to the likeness of a squid captured in 1853. He also took into consideration a 16th-century description of the Sea Monk by Conrad Gesner. Steenstrup made an amazing deduction: "Could we, given these bits of information of how the Monk was conceived at that time, come so near to it that we could recognize to which of nature's creatures it should most probably be assigned? The Sea Monk is firstly a cephalopod."

The Giant Squid
On a December day in 1848, the sailing ship Pekin was becalmed off the Cape of Good Hope near Southern Africa when a crew member spotted a strange creature in the water. Careful examination of the animal by use of a telescope revealed it to be snake-like, with a large head and shaggy mane.

Only two months before the HMS Daedulus had reported seeing a sea serpent in that very same region. Amid great excitement a small boat, it's crew prepared to capture the animal, was lowered into the water. The Captain, Frederic Smith, watched from a distance, with concern for the safety of his men, as the small boat approached the creature. To the Captain's surprise the animal did not move at all as the boat drew near. He was even more surprised when the crew of the boat proceeded to tow the "creature" back.

The sea serpent turned out to be a twenty foot long piece of floating seaweed with a root shaped like a head and neck. Could the Daedulus sea serpent been of similar origin?

Judging distance, size and motion of an object in the sea is extremely difficult. Objects on land can be compared to nearby trees and boulders. In the water only the waves offer a clue to scale and the size of waves vary enormously depending on weather conditions.

The movement of the waves can also suggest motion where there is none. Arthur Adams, a ship's surgeon in the 1860's, spotted what appeared to be a mysterious creature moving through the water by using lateral undulations of it's body. His ship's course was altered to intercept the animal and capture it. When they approached the thing Adam's wrote:
"By this time, however, a closer and more critical inspection had taken place, and the supposed sea monster had turned himself into a long, dark root, gnarled and twisted, of a tree, secured to the moorings of a fishing net, with a strong tide passing it rapidly, and thus giving it an apparent life-like movement and serpentine aspect."
The Daedulus affair might also be explained by an abandoned native canoe painted like a snake. L. Sprague de Camp suggested the owners of the canoe may have harpooned a large sea animal, like a whale shark, and they were either spilled into the sea when the animal surfaced under the boat, or jumped in panic when they could not cut the line dragging the canoe.

The Oarfish
One unusual, real creature that might be mistaken for a sea monster is the oarfish. The oarfish, Regalecus glesne, is a strange eel-like animal that has been measured at up to 25 feet in length. Some reports have described specimens twice that size. The oarfish is bright silver in color and has a high, bright red crest of spikes running down the back of it's snake-like body. It's strange startling appearance has led it to be identified as a monster on at least one occasion: Two men were gathering seaweed on the coast of Bermuda in 1860 when they came across a serpent-like creature stranded in the rocks. They killed it and they animal was reported as a sea serpent until a naturalist eventually showed up and identified the creature for what it really was.

An unusual species of frilled shark, Chlamydoselachus anguineus, might also be taken for a sea serpent. Like the oarfish it is eel-shaped. It has a single dorsal fin placed well back along the body which can appear as a mane. The frilled shark has an ancient history and is almost a living fossil. It would truly be a likely candidate for a sea serpent if it was only a little larger. So far the largest known frilled shark was only six feet nose-to-tale. If there is a larger relative of this animal swimming in the seas it might well be identified as a sea serpent.

In 1880 Captain S. W. Hanna netted a long eel-like shark that measured some 25 feet. While not matching the description of Chlamydoselachus anguineus exactly, it probably is a close relative and suggests there may be some giant frilled sharks in the sea that could be taken for sea serpents.

One dangerous candidate as a sea monster is the saltwater crocodile. These creatures, living in the India Ocean and the area around southeast Asia and Australia have been measured to lengths of 18 feet and weighing almost a ton. Unconfirmed reports indicate they may get as long as thirty feet. They are hungry, aggressive and often attack people.

The giant squid may account for some sea serpent sightings too. Giant squids probably qualify as sea monsters just as they are: Growing up to fifty feet long with ten arms and eyes over a foot in diameter. If the cone shaped squid head was sticking out of the water near or close to a visible arm the squid might look like a serpent head and tail from a distance. (A famous serpent sighting off of Greenland, by Hans Egede, in 1745 may be explained this way). Also a single tentacle with a club of suckers on the end might look like the head and neck of a Pleisosaur.

In 1875 the barque Pauline spotted a sperm whale with a snake-like creature wrapped around it's mid-section. The crew reported this sea serpent eventually dragged the whale down to it's death. More likely the "snake" was the arm of a large squid in battle with the whale.

Even mundane sea animals may be mistaken for sea monsters. Fish or dolphins traveling together in a line may appear as a series of undulating humps with dorsal fins. Even a mass of low flying birds skimming across the water at a distance have been mistaken for a single sea serpent.

The basking shark is one creature that is more likely to be mistaken for a sea monster after it is dead, rather than when it was alive. Basking sharks are the second largest fish in the sea and grow to lengths of 40 feet. Like the great blue whale they are harmless filter feeders with enormous mouths. The shark skims the surface of ocean eating tiny floating plankton. The water exits the shark's mouth through large gill slits on the side of the head.

Because the gills of the basking shark rot quickly after death the carcass can give the appearance of having a long, narrow neck (like a pleisosaur) without the head. Several basking shark remains have been misidentified as sea monsters.

Some sea monster reports may not involve just unusual creatures, but usual conditions. Right before a storm at sea, air of two different temperatures can form layers just above the surface of the sea. Perhaps seven or eight feet above the waves the different density of the two layers can cause light to bounce forming a mirage. In this case the mirage causes objects to be elongated, as if by a fun house mirror, vertically, but not horizontally. Seals, whales and dolphins breaking the surface under these conditions will appear as thin, tall, unknown creatures.

Norse men often spotted these creatures and took their appearance as an omen warning of an impending storm. Because of the strange atmospheric conditions, rather than anything supernatural, this warning was accurate.

The Mermaids: fact or fantasy?

Stories of Mermaids have been told for centuries, be it in the form of folklores, legends or fairy tales. Images of this creature have plagued artists and writers in their efforts to bring to life the mystery, beauty, and yes, eroticism of the mermaid to their audiences. Some still claim, even today, that they exist: see FIRST-EVER PHOTOS OF A MERMAID! Image Of Half-Woman Half-Fish Dazzles Tourists In Hawaii!

The mermaid and merman legends begin with the worship of gods as have many mythologies. This information has been divided into three different categories to help save time in your browsing and to establish simple guidelines to see different periods in the mythology of mermaids. The earliest representations and descriptions of these now well-known creatures can be traced back as far as the eighth century BC.
The Three Stages of the Mermaids Mythology

1. Merfolk as Gods - a look at the birth of the mermaid mythology and how it began as pagan water deities and supernatural female water beings.

2. Merfolk and Christianity - the role of the mermaid mythology changed significantly with the growth of the Christian Church, this is a look at how and why the myth survived when so many other pagan deities didn't and what the new role of the mermaid was.

3. Merfolk and the Rise of Science - for a long time the mermaid was believed to have existed even by educated men, with the rise of science and the Enlightenment the tides turned back to try and disprove the existence of such a creature as the mermaid. This being done the role of mermaids changed yet again.

Merfolk as Gods

The Babylonians were known to worship a sea-god called Oannes, or Ea. Oannes was reputed to have risen from the Erythrean Sea and taught to man the arts and sciences. In the Louvre today can be seen an eighth century wall-scene depicting Oannes as a merman, with the fish-like tail and the upperbody of a man.

The Syrians and the Philistines were also known to have worshiped a Semitic mermaid moon-goddess. The Syrians called her Atargatis while the Philistines knew her as Derceto. It is not unusual or surprising that this moon-goddess was depicted as a mermaid as the tides ebbed and flowed with the moon then as it does now and this was incorporated into the god-like personifications that we find in their art and the ancient literature. Atargatis is one of the first recorded mermaids and the legend says that her child Semiramis was a normal human and because of this Atargatis was ashamed and killed her lover. Abandoning the infant she became wholly a fish.

However, not all ancient water gods or spiritual personifications took on the form of a mermaid or a merman all of the time. Water-nymphs for example can be mistaken for mermaids, they are beautiful in their appearance and are also musically talented, which mermaids are well known for, be it their singing or playing of a musical instrument. Sirens too are forever being mistaken for mermaids. Even the ancient writers and medieval Bestiary writers would get the two confused or mention only one when in fact both have to be mentioned to make sense of the literatures and archaeological evidence. This is discussed again below, where one can also see the result of a siren/mermaid illustration. The Siren and the Mermaid are two separate entities, one having the upper body of a young woman and the lower body of a bird, the other the upper body of a young woman and the lower body of a fish.

The Indians, amongst their many gods, worshiped one group of water-gods known as the Asparas, who were celestial flute-playing water-nymphs.

In Japanese and Chinese legends there were not only mermaids but also sea-dragons and the dragon-wives. The Japanese mermaid known as Ningyo was depicted as a fish with only a human head; where as the Polynesian mythology includes a creator named Vatea who was depicted as half-human form and half-porpoise.

Greek and Roman mythology is often placed together as the two are very similar and it is in the literature from these cultures that one finds the first literary description of the mermaid, and indeed the mermen. Homer mentions the Sirens during the voyage of Odysseus but he fails to give a physical description. The image seen here shows an old black and white film of Homer's tale depicting the sirens in mermaid form. Ovid on the other hand writes that the mermaids were born from the burning galleys of the Trojans where the timbers turned into flesh and blood and the 'green daughters of the sea'.

Poseidon and Neptune were often depicted as half-man and half-fish but the most popular motif of the ancient world that depicts mermen was the representations of the tritons, TRITON being the son of the powerful sea-god. A detail of the vase shown and other typical triton motifs can be seen from these periods in the Art Gallery. Besides the vase is the trident, known to have been carried by the sea-god and thought to be magical, the figure of Poseidon in the film Jason and the Argonauts, 1973 is shown with the trident. Specimens of tritons in classical times were said to be found at Tanagara and Rome, according to Pausanias, it is presumed by scholars today that they were fakes, just like those mermaid remains that one could find in the later nineteenth century freak shows, but more information on these later. The Nereids, who were the daughters of Nereus and the Oceanides, who were associated with Ocean and the Naiads who lived in the fresh waters of the ancient world, while being water creatures were depicted as humans and not merpeople.

The British Isles too had their fair share of merfolk mythology. The Cornish knew mermaids as Merrymaids; the Irish knew them as Merrows or Muirruhgach and some sources write that they lived on dry land below the sea and had enchanted caps that allowed them to pass through the water without drowning, while the women were very beautiful the men had red noses, were piggy eyed, with green hair and teeth and a penchant for brandy.

The neck are to be found in Scandanavia, along with the Havfrue (merman) and the Havmand (mermaid), the neck however were able to live in both salt- and fresh-water. The Norwegian mermaid known as Havfine were believed to have very unpredictable tempers. Some were known to be kind, others to be incredibly cruel; it was considered unlucky to view one of these havfine.

The German Mythologies of mermaids are plenty. There are the Meerfrau; the Nix and the Nixe who were the male and female fresh-water inhabitants and it was believed that they were treacherous to men. The nixe lured men to drown while the nix could be in the form of an old dwarfish character or as a golden-haired boy and in Iceland and Sweden could take the form of a centaur. The nix also loved music and could lure people to him with his harp, if he was in the form of a horse he would tempt people to mount him and then dash into the sea to drown them. While he sometimes desired a human soul he would often demand annual human sacrifices. There was also a more elvin kind of Nixies that would sometimes appear in the market, she could be identified by the corner of her apron being wet. If they paid a good price it would be an expensive year but if they paid a low price the prices for that year would remain cheap. In the Rhine were to be found the Lorelei from which the town took its name. The Germans also knew the Melusine as a double-tailed mermaid as did the British heraldry as well. There is a double-tailed mermaid to be found in the Art Gallery.

Russian mythology includes the daughters of the Water-King who live beneath the sea; the water-nymph that drowns swimmers known as the Rusalka and the male water-spirit known as the Vodyany who followed sailors and fishermen.

The Africans believed the tales of a fish-wife and river-witches. What we have seen here is the beginnings of the mermaid mythology that starts with the merman depictions of water-deities and other such pagan deities. The stories of mermaids as one may think of today, were formed after the rise of Christianity.

Merfolk and Christianity

There is a theory that during the suppression of pagan deities the mermaid and other minor supernatural beings were not seen as a threat to the growth and popularity of Christian beliefs. Some writers even go so far as to believe that the Church actually believed in the mermaid mythology, and for two particular reasons; the first is that the mermaid served as a moral emblem of sin, the femme fatale label we know so well was nurtured with this form of thinking; and the second was the quality of evidence from contemporary and ancient authors on the existence of mermaids added to this 'belief' the Church found in mermaids.

The symbol of the mermaid with her comb and mirror in hand seems to first be depicted during the Middle Ages. This came to represent to the Church vanity and female beauty which could cause the destruction of men. And so the mermaid mythology turned from that of near godlike status, including the fear that the sirens brought, to one of aesthetic values. The mermaid became a focus for misogynists and as thus rather than causing fear in the laity the mermaid became even more fascinating.

The Bestiaries of the early middle ages included the siren and not the mermaid. As the two creatures became confused in popular beliefs and cultures so too did the bestiary writers confuse the two, as can be seen in the above illustration of the siren, complete with a mermaids tail. Mermaids were well known in the bestiaries of Physiologus and his predecessors, where they compiled the zoological information of 'real' animals. Mermaid were believed to exist even by the most educated men.

In 1403 a mermaid was apparently found stranded in the mud after a storm in West Friesland. She was then taken, clothed and fed ordinary food. Some say that she lived for fifteen years in capture, trying to escape constantly; she was also taught to kneel before the crucifix and spin but she was never able to speak.

Raphael Holinshed, in his chronicles of 1587 wrote that in the reign of either John or Henry II, some fishers of Oreford in Suffolk, caught a man-shaped fish, who would not or could not speak, ate fish be it raw or cooked and finally escaped after two months, back to the sea. There are detailed accounts of recorded sightings that are mostly from the 1800's that can be read in the Sightings page.

In literature the mermaid began to be used as a description of women, rather than an identification of the creature herself. The mermaid had become a metaphor! Chaucer takes the mermaid and uses her as a scholarly metaphor for beautiful but dangerous song. Shakespeare is known to have used such a device in his Comedy of Errors.

Merfolk and the Rise of Science

With the growth of science, the fantastic became childish amongst the writers of the growing educated, especially during the eighteenth century, but began to flourish again with the Romantic movement at the turn of this century. It was also the time however for the scientifically-minded to do their utmost to dispel the myth of the mermaid, claiming that all the recorded sightings were simply men who'd been at sea too long and wanting to believe, and so when a seal, porpoise, dugong or manatee was spotted from the ship they'd swear they'd seen a mermaid.

It it from the nineteenth century that the reported sightings are so numerous. The sightings page shows where the sightings were and also the accompanying reports. Prominent, well-respected people writing in prominent papers conflict with the scientists apathy to the existence of such a fantastical creature.

Children's stories are filled with mermaids again, and this time they are written down and published. The mermaid figures in art once again allowing the artist to portray the division within human nature of the "animal" sexual nature and the intellectual thinking; represented by the tail of the mermaid and that human part of her that wishes to gain a soul. This is the first period the mention of the mermaid longing for a human soul is found in the history of the mermaid. The prime example being The Little Mermaid by Hans Andersen found in the Faerietales page, where the young mermaid gains a souls through her faithfulness. The mermaid is also seen as an elemental being and other water-beings are written about, such as The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. The theme of mermaids longing for a mortal man is continued and broadened which can be seen especially in the plays of Peter Blackmore, Miranda and the sequel Mad About Men which were adapted to film and starred Glynis Johns.

It is also the time of frauds and there were many in America during the 1920's and 1930's, with the most famous one being the Feegee mermaid. Japanese freak shows too were notorious for their "mermaids", that merely consisted of the torso of a monkey and the tail of a fish stiched together and advertised as "mermaid corpses."

It is not until the twentieth century that the mermaid is tossed back and forth between those that believe, or want to believe, and those that stand behind their logic and scientific proof that a creature such as the mermaid simply cannot exist. A wonderful film of these two meeting is the film Splash, with Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks. The mermaid becomes a symbol of fun and fantasy rather than an accepted part of cultural tradition and awe. She is seen as a figure of eroticism mixed with fear of the unknown, or the animal side of her nature. It is a great marketing tool for toys, cartoons, soft-porn, and women's swim wear. No matter how the mermaid is used or what role she plays she will always retain her mysterious air. Perhaps the next move is a more feminine one, bringing back the myth of the mermaid protecting women, or the soul of the woman drowned before her natural time of death....

The Bermuda Triangle: fact or fiction?

A region of the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, where disappearances of ships and planes not only continue but continue to defy explanation. ( See Map)

"It was Halloween, 1991. Radar controllers checked and rechecked what they had just seen. The scope was blank in a spot now. Everywhere else all seemed normal. Routine traffic was proceeding undisturbed, in their vectors, tracked and uninterrupted. But just moments earlier they had been tracking a Grumman Cougar jet. The pilot was John Verdi. He and trained co-pilot, Paul Lukaris, were on a flight toward Tallahassee. Moments before Verdi's voice had crackled over the receiver at the flight center: "Uh, this is November two four Whiskey Juliet (N24WJ). I am at, uh, two five three zero zero. Request ascent two niner zero. Over."

Permission was quickly granted. The turbo jet was then seen ascending from 25,300 feet to its cruising altitude of 29,000. All seemed normal.

They were still ascending. Verdi had not yet rogered reaching his new altitude. Radar continued to track the Cougar until, for some unknown reason, it simply faded away. Verdi and Lukaris answered no more calls to respond. They had sent no MAYDAY to indicate a problem. Read-outs of the radar observations confirmed the unusual: The Cougar had not been captured at all descending or falling to the sea. Frankly, it had just vanished while climbing; it simply faded away. One sweep they were there... the next?"

Gian J. Quasar, author of Into the Bermuda Triangle says: "Approaching the subject from the back door, so to speak, free of the hype and public forum, has yielded more startling information. For instance, no more than a few disappearances of airplanes have been reported in the last 2 decades, yet mystery has struck with skillful hands. Searches of the database of National Transportation Safety Board reveal some 75 aircraft have gone missing. Projecting Coast Guard statistics on missing boats is truly mind boggling, perhaps reaching over 2,000. Often when faced with what these reports contain, I have come away badly jolted. It has caused me to revise several well-known cases, and has made it possible to present accurate accounts of what has transpired in the last 20 years. These last, I must presume, are here to the public presented for the first time since I know of no other research done in this period."

The Theories

There have been numerous "theories" (more correctly hypotheses) concerning the Bermuda Triangle; Magnetic Variation, Vortex Kinesis, Methane Hydrates, Time & Being and The Hutchison Effect. See what Mr. Quasar has to say.

"Although the Bermuda Triangle looks like just a bucket of water when compared to all the oceans of the world, it does in fact cover approximately 1,500,000 square miles, roughly 500 thousand square leagues of sea." Click here to take a journey through the Bermuda Triangle.

History of the Devil's Triangle

"The region involved, a watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, measures less than a thousand miles on any one side." ...so George X. Sand introduced the Triangle to his readers in October 1952 in a short article for Fate magazine, entitled "Sea Mystery at our Back Door." More about the history of the triangle...

Questions and Answers

If you have questions about the Bermuda Triangle they are likely answered here
Summary of Missing Planes
Summary of Missing Ships Origins of the Universe
Formation of the Earth and Solar system Bermuda Triangle Message Boards Reducing versus oxidizing atmosphere
The Appearance of Life The timetable
The appearance of Life: anaerobic heterotrophes Beginnings of Life: Khan Academy The next step: anaerobic autotrophs Energy sources for autotrophics
Did Life begin in the Ocean?
Life's first major crisis
Let's begin at the beginning...
Life's second major crisis

Big Bang roughly 10-18 billion years ago

Formulation of Carbon and higher elements in the first generation of stars
Hydrogen, Helium main elements in the early universe

Life's next major innovation

Earth roughly 4.7 billion years old

Earth's crust becomes stable by 3.9 billion years ago

Life appears around 3.6-3.7 billion years ago

The Fossil Record relating to the Origins of Life Map of important fossil locations Fossil bacterial series showing evidence of cell division Early cells arranged in a filament (Warawoona, 3.5 BYA) Stromatolites (mounds of photosynthetic cyanobacteria) 2.7 billion years old.

Current atmosphere is oxygen rich (Oxidizing)

Breaks down Organic molecules
One manifestation of this is fire

Early Earth's atmosphere was slightly reducing

Organic molecules are much more stable

little free O₂

Experimental studies of the origins of life

3.6-3.7 billion years ago: appearance of life

2.5 billion years ago oxygen-forming photosynthesis

~2.2 billion years ago: aerobic respiration

~1.5 billion years ago: first evidence of fossil eukaryotes

Recent Research

3.6-3.7 billion years ago: appearance of life

Most likely first cells were anaerobic, heterotrophic bacteria

anaerobic = does not require free oxygen

heterotrophic = does not make its own food

First used chemical energy from elements in surrounding medium
chemoautotrophs (deep-sea vents)

As this energy ran low, evolved ability to capture energy from light

Easy hydrogen donors (H₂, H₂S) used up quickly

Key innovation around 2.5 billion years

oxygen-forming photosynthesis (cyanobacteria)

Use of H₂O as a hydrogen donor

Huge amounts of toxic O₂ released

Most of the initial O₂ was locked up by iron in the oceans and soils (Banded iron formations) = rust

More O₂ from water keep coming, leading to an O₂ rich atmosphere

References

Aerobic respiration

much more efficient than anaerobic respiration

Allowed larger cells and the future potential of multicellular organisms

Stromatolites fossil from Warrawoona

Intact stromatolites present today in Shark's Bay

Early thinking on the origin of life (i.e., the first cell)

Spontaneous generation
Pasteur's experiments (1860's)

Oparin, Haldane (1920's)

Notion of a primeval soup

Key steps in the origins of life

Formation of complex organic molecules

Self-replicating systems

Protein synthesis
DNA is the genetic material, but it requires proteins to replicate

Compartmentalization: the first cell

Origins of complex organic molecules

nucleosynthesis in stars to form complex molecules

molecular clouds

A very significant fraction of the Earth's carbon came from extensive cometary bombardment on the primitive Earth

Model systems for prebiotic evolution

Miller-Urey experiment

Fox's microspheres

Cech's Catalytic RNA

The Miller-Urey experiment (1953)
Showed that complex organic molecules (amino acids) can be built up from very simple organic molecules (such as methane)
Compartmentalization: Fox's microspheres
In the 1970's, Fox showed that by heating certain proteins, microspheres form spontaneously
Catalytic RNAs

Self-cleaving rRNA

RNA can both cleave itself as well as polymerase itself

the solution to the chicken versus egg problem
don't need proteins as RNA can act as an enzyme

The first cells may have had RNA genomes

DNA synthesis requires RNA primer

RNA, not DNA used in protein synthesis

Reverse transcriptase RNA --> DNA

Group I Self-Splicing Introns
"The question of life's origins is one of the oldest and most difficult in biology. The answer, if ever known, will not be a single statement of fact but rather an extended chronology, beginning with the formation of the Earth and ending with the appearance of cellular organisms. This problem is confounded because there is little direct evidence of the events that occurred during roughly the first thousand million years of Earth's history. The oldest rocks that provide clues regarding life's origins are 3.6 x 10 ⁹ years old, and by that time cellular life seems already to have been well established. However, remnants of ancient organisms may be found in the form of "molecular fossils" within the genomes of modern organisms. One such candidate might be self-catalytic RNA molecules which can serve as hereditary molecules as well as exhibit some properties of proteins. The discovery of self-catalytic RNA of molecules has lead to a revival of interest in the idea that there was a time, before the origin of protein synthesis, when life was based entirely on RNA. One such class of catalytic molecules are the Group I self-splicing introns." - Sandra A. Nierzwicki-Bauer

Studies on the Origins of Life: The Formation of the RNA World
"The discovery of ribozymes suggests that RNA was the most important biopolymer in the first life since it can both store genetic information and catalyze reactions of other RNA molecules. One scenario for the origins of life is the formation of an RNA world from prebiotic molecules. It is postulated that RNA served as both the catalyst and the site of information storage in this RNA world which eventually evolved into the contemporary DNA and protein world. In this scenario, RNA formed spontaneously from the monomers produced by prebiotic synthesis and this RNA had the ability to catalyze its own replication.

A likely route to RNA from compounds formed spontaneously on the primitive Earth, is by their selective adsorption on a mineral which catalyzes their condensation to polymers. At Rensselaer we discovered that montmorillonite clay catalyzes the conversion of activated RNA monomers to oligomers. The role of monomer structure, phosphate activating group and mineral catalysis on the formation of RNA under prebiotic and conditions is being explored." - James P. Ferris

Photochemistry of Planetary Atmospheres and the Origins of Life
"Photochemical reactions, driven by solar UV, are believed to be the principal source of complex molecules observed in most planetary and lunar atmospheres. For example, photochemical transformations of the simple components of the atmospheres of Jupiter and Titan result in the formation of more complex organic molecules. It is proposed that knowledge of the photochemical routes by which organics are formed in other planetary atmospheres provides insight into photoproducts that were formed in the atmosphere of the primitive Earth." - James P. Ferris

Feedback & Citation

Start or join a discussion below about this page or send us an email to report any errors or submit suggestions for this page. We greatly appreciate all feedback!

Help Protect and Restore Ocean Life

Help us protect and restore marine life by supporting our various online community-centered marine conservation projects that are effectively sharing the wonders of the ocean with millions each year around the world, raising a balanced awareness of the increasingly troubling and often very complex marine conservation issues that affect marine life and ourselves directly, providing support to marine conservation groups on the frontlines that are making real differences today, and the scientists, teachers and students involved in the marine life sciences.

Join us today or show your support with a monthly donation.

With your support, most marine life and their ocean habitats can be protected, if not restored to their former natural levels of biodiversity. We sincerely thank our thousands of members, donors and sponsors, who have decided to get involved and support the MarineBio Conservation Society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Webster's dictionary defines the word monster as "an animal of strange or terrifying shape" and "one unusually large for its kind." By this definition, the creatures that dwell in the deep ocean are true monsters. Miles beneath the surface, where sunlight can no longer penetrate, exists an eerie world of cold darkness.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Giant Sea Creature Pictures, Giant Sea Creature Photos, Photo Gallery, Picture Gallery, Desktop Wallpaper - National Geographic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Giant sea creature pictures, giant sea creature photos, photo gallery, picture gallery, desktop wallpaper, from National Geographic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The world's oceans have roughly 300 times more area to support life an do the world's continents. Because greater than 75% of the deep ocean lies beneath 1000 meters, ocean depths are relatively unexplored and until recently, inaccessible. As we investigate the submarine slopes of Galápagos volcanoes we see life that no one has photographed before. The creatures that live at these depths have adapted to a way of life in one of the world's most challenging environments.

Physophora hydrostatica. A siphonophore, these animals are made up of multiple units, each specialized for a function like swimming, feeding, or reproduction. This "modular" construction allows some siphonophores to grow very large, over 100 feet in the deep ocean. Although most siphonophores live below the surface, the Portuguese Man o'War is one that rests on the surface, suspended by a gas-filled float.

The deep-sea is defined as the part of the ocean below 200 meters depth. This environment Is considered extremely harsh with temperatures of below 5 degrees Celsius, extreme pressure (2,000 meters equals about 200 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level), and no sunlight. Deep-sea animals have had to evolve, often through unusual and unique adapations, to live, reproduce, and thrive in these unique conditions.

Until the late 19th century, many people considered the great depths of the ocean too harsh to support life. As a result, it was largely unexplored. Starting in the early 1800's European scientists began to probe the depths of the North Atlantic to see if they could find life in the deep-sea. Based on some initial sampling that suggested animals lived in the deep ocean, the H.M.S. Challenger was commissioned for an around the world expedition that lasted from 1872 to 1876. It succeeded in finding diverse animal life to 5,500 meters as well as making other important discoveries. Nearly a century later, deep-sea exploration during the Danish Galathea expedition recovered animals from the Philippines Trench, at 10,190 meters.
We know that life can exist at the greatest depths in the ocean, but how have these animals adapted to these extreme environments?
Deep-sea animals have evolved ways to get around the problems associated with living below 2000m.
Given the lack of sunlight at great ocean depths, how do deep-sea animals find each other in the dark?
The lack of sun light has led to unique visual and chemical adaptations. Many fish have the ability to produce 'chemical' light, a phenomena called 'bioluminescence' by oxidizing organic compounds.

Many theories on the purpose of bioluminescence have been put forward, but it is still not fully understood. Scientists think that light might help species communicate, attract a mate or prey, or deter predators. Many deep-sea organisms have developed very large rudimentary eyes to maximize their ability to see this chemical light, like some of the shrimp collected in our rock dredges.

Some animals have developed unique ways of catching their prey. The Tripod fish, Bathypterois, developed large fin rays in its tails. This lets it 'stand' on the sandy seafloor, with outstretched pectoral fins that resemble antennae. The pectoral fins aid these deep-sea fish to feel vibrations in the water and so sense their prey as it approaches.

The immense pressure at depths below 2,000 meters can crush air spaces within humans. This is why submersibles like Alvin have a thick titanium pressure sphere where the pilot and observers sit- so they do not feel the tons of pressure as they descend into the deep ocean.

Most underwater organisms do not have any air spaces. They are made up of entirely liquid or solid material, so are not affected by pressure in these spaces. However, this poses a problem for animals that move around in the water column, how can an animal go down to 2000 meters and return to 1000 meters, or the ocean surface, without gravity making them too heavy to swim upwards?

Whales dive routinely to very deep depths. They do so by taking great gulps of air through their blow holes when they're at the surface. This air moves into the lungs, but as the whale dives deeper the pressure forces air into special sinuses filled with fatty oils. The air mixes up with these oils making an emulsion, so that it cannot be crushed.

Sharks and rays are neutrally buoyant because they have large oily livers (that float) and soft watery flesh (that sink). Some bony fishes have 'swim bladders.' These are gas cavities that constantly have gas pumped in or out as the fish moves up and down in the water column. This means they can make their bodies heavier if they want to go down, or lighter if they want to swim up. In the deep-sea species Coryphaenoides, the Grenadier fish, there is both a large swim bladder, and a large oily liver. This makes them particularly good at going between different depths.

The lack of food can a big problem for animals living in the deep-sea. In the surface waters, marine plants called phytoplankton use the sunlight to grow by photosynthesis. This is the primary source of food for many animals that live on or near the surface. As plankton dies, it sinks and becomes food for animals that live deeper in the water column. Just 1% of this food sinks to depths of 1000 meters. This is because the number of animals that live in the surface waters is high, and so much of the food is used up before it has a chance to sink into the deep ocean.

Many organisms are scavengers. They make use of the meager resources that reach these depths, such as whale carcasses, fish excreta, and dead surface plankton blooms. Many invertebrates, like amphipods, survive on the 'food-fall' from the surface, and, in turn, become prey for other larger species.

With every expedition, more species are being discovered. Yet many great mysteries still exist. Species once thought extinct have been found alive (the coelacanth fish is one example). Still other species have yet to be found alive like the giant squid, arch. As technology improves, it will allow us to more closely observe deep-sea animals for longer periods of time and certainly teach us even more about the great and wonderful adaptations that have evolved in the world's oceans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As we investigate the submarine slopes of Galápagos volcanoes we see life that no one has photographed before. The creatures that live at these depths have adapted to a way of life in one of the world's most challenging environments.

# data[].attributes.headline
Rarely Seen Shark Filmed Near Underwater Volcano

# data[].attributes.subject
Rarely Seen Shark Filmed Near Underwater Volcano

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rarely Seen Shark Filmed Near Underwater Volcano

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Watch this high-definition video of the elusive Pacific sleeper shark taken near an active volcano off the Solomon Islands.

# data[].attributes.headline
Chain of Underwater Volcanoes Discovered

# data[].attributes.subject
Chain of Underwater Volcanoes Discovered

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
During a mission to find larval lobsters, marine researchers unexpectedly found a cluster of extinct, 50-million-year-old volcanoes on the ocean floor near eastern Australia.

Credit: Marine National Facility

During a recent marine excursion, researchers searching for lobster larva unexpectedly discovered a geologic wonder: a 50-million-year-old cluster of extinct volcanoes submerged in the water off eastern Australia.

The four volcanoes are located about 155 miles (250 kilometers) off the coast of Sydney, the researchers found during the mission, which lasted from June 3 to 18. The scientists immediately recognized them as calderas, a cauldronlike structure that forms after a volcano erupts and collapses into itself, creating a crater. The largest extinct volcano measures about 1 mile (1.5 km) across and towers about 0.4 miles (700 meters) above the seafloor, the researchers said.

The cluster is a large one, measuring about 12 miles (20 km) long and 4 miles (6 km) wide, they added. [ Axial Seamount: Images of an Erupting Undersea Volcano]

The discovery will help geoscientists learn more about the geological forces that shaped the region, said Richard Arculus, a professor of marine geology at the Australian National University and an expert on volcanoes.

"They tell us part of the story of how New Zealand and Australia separated around 40 [million to] 80 million years ago, and they'll now help scientists target future exploration of the seafloor to unlock the secrets of the Earth's crust," Arculus said in a statement.

The volcano cluster, which sits about 3 miles (4.9 km) underwater, went unnoticed until now because researchers didn't have adequate tools to measure and map the deep seafloor, Arculus said.

The sonar on the old research vessel run by Marine National Facility (MNF), a research group funded by the Australian government, only had the ability to map the seafloor to about 1.9 miles (3 km) underwater, he said. A new 308-foot-long (94 m) vessel, named the Investigator, has a greater scope.

"On board the new MNF vessel, Investigator, we have sonar that can map the seafloor to any depth, so all of Australia's vast ocean territory is now within reach, and that is enormously exciting," Arculus said.

During the Investigator's latest mission, researchers were looking for the nursery grounds of lobster larvae while simultaneously carrying out a routine mapping of the seafloor.

"The voyage was enormously successful," Iain Suthers, a professor of marine biology at the University of New South Wales, said in the statement. "Not only did we discover a cluster of volcanoes on Sydney's doorstep, we were amazed to find that an eddy off Sydney was a hotspot for lobster larvae at a time of the year when we were not expecting them."

During the mission, the Investigator's crew sent data to a team at the University of New South Wales, who analyzed the information and sent back their results, which included satellite imagery. This allowed the marine crew to chase eddies created by the marine creatures they were tracking.

"This is the first time we've been able to respond directly to the changing dynamics of the ocean and, for a biological oceanographer like me, it doesn't get more thrilling," Suthers said.

The research team found juvenile fish popular among fishermen, such as bream and tailor, about 93 miles (150 km) offshore.

"We had thought that once they were swept out to sea, that was [the] end of them," Suthers said. "But, in fact, these eddies are nursery grounds along the east coast of Australia."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Chain of Underwater Volcanoes Discovered During Lobster Hunt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During a recent marine excursion, researchers searching for lobster larva unexpectedly discovered a geologic wonder: a 50-million-year-old cluster of extinct volcanoes submerged in the water off eastern Australia. The four volcanoes are located about 155 miles (250 kilometers) off the coast of Sydney, the researchers found during the mission, which lasted from June 3 to 18.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. Home

2. Ocean Life

3. Invertebrates

4. Corals and Coral Reefs

Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. They teem with life, with perhaps one-quarter of all ocean species depending on reefs for food and shelter. This is a remarkable statistic when you consider that reefs cover just a tiny fraction (less than one percent) of the earth's surface and less than two percent of the ocean bottom. Because they are so diverse, coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the sea.

Unfortunately, people also pose the greatest threat to coral reefs. Overfishing and destructive fishing, pollution, warming, changing ocean chemistry, and invasive species are all taking a huge toll. In some places, reefs have been entirely destroyed, and in many places reefs today are a pale shadow of what they once were.

Animal, Vegetable & Mineral

Corals are related to sea anemones, and they all share the same simple structure, the polyp. The polyp is like a tin can open at just one end: the open end has a mouth surrounded by a ring of tentacles. The tentacles have stinging cells, called nematocysts, that allow the coral polyp to capture small organisms that swim too close. Inside the body of the polyp are digestive and reproductive tissues. Corals differ from sea anemones in their production of a mineral skeleton.

Shallow water corals that live in warm water often have another source of food, the zooxanthellae (pronounced zo-o-zan-THELL-ee). These single-celled algae photosynthesize and pass some of the food they make from the sun's energy to their hosts, and in exchange the coral animal gives nutrients to the algae. It is this relationship that allows shallow water corals to grow fast enough to build the enormous structures we call reefs. The zooxanthellae also provide much of the green, brown, and reddish colors that corals have. The less common purple, blue, and mauve colors found in some corals the coral makes itself.

Coral Diversity

In the so-called true stony corals, which compose most tropical reefs, each polyp sits in a cup made of calcium carbonate. Stony corals are the most important reef builders, but organpipe corals, precious red corals, and blue corals also have stony skeletons. There are also corals that use more flexible materials or tiny stiff rods to build their skeletons-the seafans and sea rods, the rubbery soft corals, and the black corals.

The family tree of the animals we call corals is complicated, and some groups are more closely related to each other than are others. All but the fire corals (named for their strong sting) are anthozoans, which are divided into two main groups. The hexacorals (including the true stony corals and black corals, as well as the sea anemones) have smooth tentacles, often in multiples of six, and the octocorals (soft corals, seafans, organpipe corals and blue corals) have eight tentacles, each of which has tiny branches running along the sides. All corals are in the phylum Cnidaria, the same as jellyfish.

Reproduction

Corals have multiple reproductive strategies - they can be male or female or both, and can reproduce either asexually or sexually. Asexual reproduction is important for increasing the size of the colony, and sexual reproduction increases genetic diversity and starts new colonies that can be far from the parents.
ASEXUAL REPRODUCTION
Asexual reproduction results in polyps or colonies that are clones of each other - this can occur through either budding or fragmentation. Budding is when a coral polyp reaches a certain size and divides, producing a genetically identical new polyp. Corals do this throughout their lifetime. Sometimes a part of a colony breaks off and forms a new colony. This is called fragmentation, which can occur as a result of a disturbance such as a storm or being hit by fishing equipment.
SEXUAL REPRODUCTION
In sexual reproduction, eggs are fertilized by sperm, usually from another colony, and develop into a free-swimming larva. There are two types of sexual reproduction in corals, external and internal. Depending on the species and type of fertilization, the larvae settle on a suitable substrate and become polyps after a few days or weeks, although some can settle within a few hours!

Most stony corals are broadcast spawners and fertilization occurs outside the body (external fertilization). Colonies release huge numbers of eggs and sperm that are often glued into bundles (one bundle per polyp) that float towards the surface. Spawning often occurs just once a year and in some places is synchronized for all individuals of the same species in an area. This type of mass spawning usually occurs at night and is quite a spectacle. Some corals brood their eggs in the body of the polyp and release sperm into the water. As the sperm sink, polyps containing eggs take them in and fertilization occurs inside the body (internal fertilization). Brooders often reproduce several times a year on a lunar cycle.

Coral Growth

(Owen Sherwood)

Reefs form when corals grow in shallow water close to the shore of continents or smaller islands. The majority of coral reefs are called fringe reefs because they fringe the coastline of a nearby landmass. But when a coral reef grows around a volcanic island something interesting occurs. Over millions of years, the volcano gradually sinks, as the corals continue to grow, both upward towards the surface and out towards the open ocean. Over time, a lagoon forms between the corals and the sinking island and a barrier reef forms around the lagoon. Eventually, the volcano is completely submerged and only the ring of corals remains. This is called an atoll. Waves may eventually pile sand and coral debris on top of the growing corals in the atoll, creating a strip of land. Many of the Marshall Islands, a system of islands in the Pacific Ocean and home to the Marshallese, are atolls.

It takes a long time to grow a big coral colony or a coral reef, because each coral grows slowly. The fastest corals expand at more than 6 inches (15 cm) per year, but most grow less than an inch per year. Reefs themselves grow even more slowly because after the corals die, they break into smaller pieces and become compacted. Individual colonies can often live decades to centuries, and some deep-sea colonies have lived more than 4000 years. One way we know this is because corals lay down annual rings, just as trees do. These skeletons can tell us about what conditions were like hundreds or thousands of years ago. The Great Barrier Reef as it exists today began growing about 20,000 years ago.

Where are Reefs Found?

Corals are found across the world's ocean, in both shallow and deep water, but reef-building corals are only found in shallow tropical and subtropical waters. This is because the algae found in their tissues need light for photosynthesis and they prefer water temperatures between 70-85°F (22-29°C).

Cities of the Sea

(Klaus Jost, jostimages.com)

Reefs are the big cities of the sea. They exist because the growth of corals matches or exceeds the death of corals - think of it as a race between the construction cranes (new coral skeleton) and the wrecking balls (the organisms that kill coral and chew their skeletons into sand).

Corals also have to worry about competitors. They use the same nematocysts that catch their food to sting other encroaching corals and keep them at bay. Seaweeds are a particularly dangerous competitor, as they typically grow much faster than corals and may contain nasty chemicals that injure the coral as well.

Corals do not have to only rely on themselves for their defenses because mutualisms (beneficial relationships) abound on coral reefs. The partnership between corals and their zooxanthellae is one of many examples of symbiosis, where different species live together and help each other. Some coral colonies have crabs and shrimps that live within their branches and defend their home against coral predators with their pincers. Parrotfish, in their quest to find seaweed, will often bite off chunks of coral and will later poop out the digested remains as sand. One kind of goby chews up a particularly nasty seaweed, and even benefits by becoming more poisonous itself.

Threats

Global

The greatest threats to reefs are rising water temperatures and ocean acidification linked to rising carbon dioxide levels. High water temperatures cause corals to lose the microscopic algae that produce the food corals need-a condition known as coral bleaching. Severe or prolonged bleaching can kill coral colonies or leave them vulnerable to other threats. Meanwhile, ocean acidification means more acidic seawater, which makes it more difficult for corals to build their calcium carbonate skeletons. And if acidification gets severe enough, it could even break apart the existing skeletons that already provide the structure for reefs. Scientists predict that by 2085 ocean conditions will be acidic enough for corals around the globe to begin to dissolve. For one reef in Hawaii this is already a reality.

Local

Even activities that take place far from reefs can have an impact. Runoff from lawns, sewage, cities, and farms feeds algae that can overwhelm reefs. Deforestation hastens soil erosion, which clouds water-smothering corals.

Coral Bleaching

"Coral bleaching" occurs when coral polyps lose their symbiotic algae, the zooxanthellae. Without their zooxanthellae, the living tissues are nearly transparent, and you can see right through to the stony skeleton, which is white, hence the name coral bleaching. Many different kinds of stressors can cause coral bleaching - water that is too cold or too hot, too much or too little light, or the dilution of seawater by lots of fresh water can all cause coral bleaching. The biggest cause of bleaching today has been rising temperatures caused by global warming. Temperatures more than 2 degrees F (or 1 degree C) above the normal seasonal maximimum can cause bleaching. Bleached corals do not die right away, but if temperatures are very hot or are too warm for a long time, corals either die from starvation or disease. In 1998, 80 percent of the corals in the Indian Ocean bleached and 20 percent died.

Protecting Coral Reefs

There is much that we can do locally to protect coral reefs, by making sure there is a healthy fish community and that the water surrounding the reefs is clean. Well-protected reefs today typically have much healthier coral populations, and are more resilient (better able to recover from natural disasters such as typhoons and hurricanes).

Clean water is also important. Erosion on land causes rivers to dump mud on reefs, smothering and killing corals. Seawater with too many nutrients speeds up the growth of seaweeds and increases the food for predators of corals when they are developing as larvae in the plankton. Clean water depends on careful use of the land, avoiding too many fertilizers and erosion caused by deforestation and certain construction practices. In the long run, however, the future of coral reefs will depend on reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is increasing rapidly due to burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is both warming the ocean, resulting in coral bleaching, and changing the chemistry of the ocean, causing ocean acidification. Both making it harder for corals to build their skeletons.

Collections

The coral collection housed at the National Museum of Natural History may be the largest and best documented in the world. Its jewel is a collection of shallow-water corals from the U.S. South Seas Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842-one of the largest voyages of discovery in the history of Western exploration. The expedition brought back many unknown specimens that scientists used to name and describe almost all Pacific reef corals. These are known as type specimens in the collection. Altogether, the collection includes specimens of about 4,820 species of corals, and about 65 percent of those species live in deep water.

Research

Carrie Bow Cay Field Station

In the late 1960s, several Smithsonian scientists set themselves an ambitious goal: understanding the inner workings of Caribbean coral reefs. To study this complex ecosystem, they needed a field station where they could conduct research in one location, from multiple disciplines, over a long period of time.

The ARMS Project

It's not very colorful. And it's not made of coral. But by mimicking the nooks and crannies of real coral reefs, this Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure (ARMS) attracts crabs, shrimps, worms, urchins, sponges, and many other kinds of marine invertebrates.

Smithsonian Scientists

Dr. Nancy Knowlton

Besides holding the Smithsonian's Sant Chair for Marine Science, Dr. Knowlton currently serves on the Pew Marine Fellows Advisory Committee, the Sloan Research Fellowship in Ocean Sciences committee, and the national board the Coral Reef Alliance. She is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, winner of the Peter Benchley Prize and the Heinz Award, and author of Citizens of the Sea.

Dr. Stephen Cairns

When he was 10 years old, Stephen Cairns lived in Cuba and collected sea shells. That's when he decided to become a marine scientist. Today he is a research zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, focusing on the diversity, distribution, and evolution of deep-water corals-both fossil and living. Deep-water corals live up to 4 miles deep in cold, dark waters. So Dr. Cairns conducts much of his field work on oceangoing research vessels and in deep-sea submersibles. Dr. Cairns has published about 150 papers and books, in which he has described more than 400 new species of deep-water corals. He assures us there are still many more to be discovered.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Home Ocean Life Invertebrates Corals and Coral Reefs Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. They teem with life, with perhaps one-quarter of all ocean species depending on reefs for food and shelter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the Fourni archipelago of the Greek Aegean region, towering underwater cliffs descend into the darkness of the deep sea. Marine archaeologists comb these murky depths for objects made by human hands - a ceramic shard encrusted with sea sponges, or an ancient vase that an eel has claimed for its home.

Through the centuries here, human handiwork has been absorbed by its natural aquatic surroundings, with rock and reef steadily growing around any remnants of life from early Western civilization.

The seeming improbability, then, of finding substantive artifacts in the patchwork makes discovery all the more exciting.

"You're constantly scanning in any direction," Peter Campbell, an underwater archaeologist at the University of Southampton, told The Washington Post. "There's this moment that you see something, a straight line that doesn't look natural, and your eye kind of flips over. You realize it's an ancient pot or ancient anchor, then you notice this stuff is everywhere."

While undertaking a survey of possible wreckage around Fourni last month, Campbell and his team experienced this sense of wonder an unprecedented 22 times over.

When Campbell and the expedition's co-director, Greek archaeologist George Koutsouflakis, arrived at the collection of thirteen islands and islets in mid-September, they had heard some rumblings of artifacts from ancient ships to be found in the area.

As luck would have it, they came across a shipwreck on their very first dive, which the team took to be "a good omen." Over the course of less than two weeks - the duration of their survey permit - they would have been content to find three or four wrecks in total.

After the first five days, that number hit ten. Then, on a single day, they found an additional six.

At this point, overwhelmed with the unexpected fortune, they decided to stop looking for wrecks so they could focus on adequately recording information from the ones they had already encountered. But even this decision didn't stop them from finding a few more by the expedition's end, making the sum uncovered in just 13 days an astounding 22 shipwrecks.

During this short period, Campbell and Koutsouflakis's crew of marine archaeologists, local fishermen, sponge divers and the occasional robot (read: remotely-operated vehicle) increased the total number of known ancient shipwrecks in Greece by 12 percent.

An announcement this week revealed that the survey, a collaborative effort between the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and the Florida-based RPM Nautical Foundation, yielded shipwrecks dating from the Archaic Period (700-480 B.C.) through the Late Medieval Period (16th century), including some wrecks that are more than 2,500 years old.

The small and relatively obscure region may be "the ancient shipwreck capital of the world," the release says.

While a comparable number of wrecks have been discovered in major harbor sites like Pisa, Copenhagen and London, Campbell said, this find is significant because there was no major settlement or port in Fourni, which was merely a popular passing-through point.

These shipwrecks, however, illustrate just how crucial a passageway the small archipelago was for seafaring merchants of the ancient times. The storms that ravaged the neighboring islands of Samos and Icaria were so fierce that sailors often took refuge in Fourni's abundance of gentle bays. The archipelago lies along a major east-west crossing route, as well as the primary north-south path from the Aegean to the Levant.

The large number of shipwrecks found suggests not that Fourni was an uncommonly dangerous locale, but rather that it welcomed an immense volume of sea traffic over a long period of time. Campbell estimates that there was likely no more than one wreck every hundred years.

By the time scientists can reach wrecks of this kind, any organic materials - wood, clothing, bodies - have long been eaten away by their environment. A shipwreck, then, is comprised of several hundred pieces of pottery, indicating the bulk of a ship's cargo, that fan out from a distinct area.

Campbell said all the wrecks they found were from typical merchant sailing vessels and not from any warships.

"That suits us pretty well," he said. "These shipwrecks tell the story of the every day person, and we're really interested in what life was like for the average sailor in 400 B.C."

According to the archaeologist, the narrative that emerges is one of a unique marine culture, in which a global sensibility permeated not only the objects that were shipped, but also the demographic makeup of the sailing crews. These outfits were often multicultural and multilingual, and were even known to have their own "mixed" language - the singular speech of men who spent most of their lives on water.

The ships carrying the found wreckage were all following the same trade route, Campbell said. It was one that connected the North Aegean and the Black Sea region to the Levant, Cyprus, Palestine and Egypt.

While historical texts had previously given archaeologists a general idea of how merchants sailed these routes, the wreckage around Fourni allows their travels to be traced in a way that was never before possible.

"This is one of the top discoveries in terms of what it can tell us about ancient maritime trade," Campbell said. By combining terrestrial studies with close analyses of the unearthed ceramics, it will be possible to reconstruct entire itineraries of ancient voyages.

The amphoras (tall containers with two handles and a narrow neck) created back then had designs that were distinctive to their originating nation-states, so piecing together those patterns could yield quite a comprehensive understanding of the various stops that each ship made on their voyages.

While most of the artifacts remain in the ocean to preserve the encompassing natural habitat, a few are undergoing conservation treatments to prepare them for further examination. Through residue analysis, scientists may be able to draw conclusions about what the amphoras contained. (There are already hints of this in their shapes: thin necks for wine, larger necks for fish sauce.)

Campbell and Koutsouflakis's team are in the process of applying for a permit for next year's survey in the same area, where they expect to continue finding shipwrecks.

This year's excursion, however, is almost certainly an outlier.

"I don't think I'll ever get the chance again to come upon 22 shipwrecks in a single season," Campbell said. "It's really a once-in-a-lifetime discovery."
The ghostly explanation for how a man's unborn twin fathered his child Alec Cooke, the 'Evel Knievel' of the dangerous sport of big wave surfing, has disappeared

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amazing discovery of 22 shipwrecks off Greece offers wondrous glimpse into ancient life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the Fourni archipelago of the Greek Aegean region, towering underwater cliffs descend into the darkness of the deep sea. Marine archaeologists comb these murky depths for objects made by human hands - a ceramic shard encrusted with sea sponges, or an ancient vase that an eel has claimed for its home.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Deep Sea ~ Ocean biology, Marine life, Sea creatures, Marine conservation...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Found out all about The Deep Sea at MarineBio.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
ActionBioscience - promoting bioscience literacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ActionBioscience.org examines bioscience issues in biodiversity, environment, genomics, biotechnology, evolution, new frontiers in the sciences, and education. Includes peer-reviewed articles, class lessons, and educator resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
scowls communicates grunts growls defending territory toadfish noisy creatures close relatives midshipman fish birds frogs humans brain machinery vocalization primitive evolution bony fish swim bladder muscles fastest known for vertebrates attract mates defend territories brain circuit rhythmically firing neurons neuronal network larval fish hindbrain upper spinal cord brain circuitry bony vertebrates bird syrinx mammalian human larynx science

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
PHOTOS: Noisy Fish Reveal Evolution of Vocalizing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
See pictures of the toadfish and midshipman fish that share the ability to to vocalize with many other animals, from birds, to frogs, to humans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Terrifying Most Deadliest Prehistoric Sea Monsters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Make a like or a comment if you enjoy!!!!!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Travel to a world of perpetual night--the deep ocean hydrothermal vents near the Galapagos Rift where life thrives around superheated water spewing from deep inside the Earth. Discovered only in 1977, hydrothermal vents are home to dozens of previously unknown species.

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Incredible Organizations That Are Making the World's Oceans Cleaner [LIST]

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Incredible Organizations That Are Making the World's Oceans Cleaner [LIST]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
, as well as parts of South America, Europe and Japan. WHAT: A grassroots non-profit organization working to protect and preserve the world's oceans by focusing on water quality, coastal ecosystems, beach access, beach and surf spot preservation. WHERE: Mainly

HOW: Through a North America powerful activist network, people can connect and participate in coastal conservation efforts. The Surfrider Foundation has a strong social media presence to engage activists and encourage them to take part in activities such as beach cleanups or to sign digital petitions.

that works to protect and restore the world's oceans through targeted policy campaigns. WHAT: The largest international ocean conservation organization
WHERE: Based in Washington D.C with offices throughout the world. HOW: Oceana works to protect sea life affected by industrial fishing by using targeted policy campaigns focused on science combined with media, law and public pressure. The clearly defined
campaigns, in such fields as responsible fishing and preventing ocean pollution, are designed to produce identifiable policy changes within a 3-5 year timeframe.

A group of Hollywood design veterans including Avatar animator Andy Jones, as well as MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito are behind the project and Neil Young, Richard Branson and Jean-Michel Cousteau are all big supporters. WHAT: A free downloadable program that turns the Internet into a globally-connected 3D digital ocean in order to raise awareness about the world's oceans. WHERE: All over the Internet. HOW: As part of the "social digital ocean" users can explore different underwater scenes and search for

specific species that they can then purchase for their virtual ocean environment. TheBlu then directs 25% percent of the purchase price of these virtual species directly to non-profit collaborators to fund projects that support their work in the real ocean environment.

WHAT: A non-profit organization dedicated to understanding plastic marine pollution that works towards oceans free of plastic. WHERE: All over the world. HOW: Through exploration, scientific research, education, and action the 5 Gyres Institute engages communities in systemic change and encourages corporate partners, policymakers, and the general public to reduce plastic pollution.

dedicated to keeping their favorite spots free of litter. WHAT: An initiative to encourage people to leave the world's beaches and oceans cleaner than when they found them. WHO: A group of

WHERE: Based in Australia. HOW: The nonprofit's solution to transform littered beaches into pristine oases is to get beach goers to
beach lovers, environmentalists and surfers pick up three pieces of trash every time they leave the beach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Incredible Organizations That Are Making the World's Oceans Cleaner - Goodnet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
as well as parts of South America, Europe and Japan. WHAT: A grassroots non-profit organization working to protect and preserve the world's oceans by focusing on water quality, coastal ecosystems, beach access, beach and surf spot preservation. WHERE: Mainly HOW: Through a North America powerful activist network, people can connect and participate in coastal conservation efforts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Evidence suggests that the past and current ocean uptake of human-derived (anthropogenic) CO 2 is primarily a physical response to rising atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. Whenever the partial pressure of a gas is increased in the atmosphere over a body of water, the gas will diffuse into that water until the partial pressures across the air-water interface are equilibrated.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Swashbuckling History of Women Pirates

# data[].attributes.subject
The Swashbuckling History of Women Pirates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When women roamed the high seas in search of fortune, freedom, and sometimes revenge

smithsonian.com

It started with a simple question: where were all the women pirates? Laura Sook Duncombe loved Peter Pan as a child and gobbled up every book on piracy she could find. But as she read, she was forced to face the harrrrrrd truth: All of the women seemed relegated to mere footnotes and short paragraphs sprinkled throughout books about male pirates. This curiosity spurred a quest for answers-and led to her new book Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas.
Early in the book you say that no one has discovered a first-person account of pirating written by a female pirate, and that the stories are a combination of myth and fact. What challenges and opportunities did that present in your research and writing?
Few historical figures ensnare the imagination in the same way as pirates do. The rum, the talking parrots, the hats and cloaks and treasure-all make for dramatic, theatrical tales. But Duncombe's book does more than revel in the mystery and infamy of lady pirates: It contextualizes them, providing history and background on the societies they came from. Whether it's the Moroccan pirate queen Sayyida al-Hurra (who terrorized the Mediterranean during the mid-16th-century) or Queen Elizabeth I's woman sea dog, Lady Mary Killigrew, Duncombe separates the myths from the facts and considers the charm of a little-understood group of women.

"I wanted something to point at as incontrovertible truth that women are as much a part of pirate history as men," Duncombe says. Smithsonian.com talked to the author about the challenges, opportunities and surprises that came with writing about the often-overlooked women of the sea.
Did anything surprise you in the research process?
I really wanted to be as transparent as possible. I come from a legal background, so telling the truth is important to me. Pretty early on in the research, I realized there was no way I could in good conscience say "All of this happened exactly as I reported." When the best research you have is something that everybody knows is as much fiction as fact, I thought it was important to say so.

Whether or not these women lived as these stories were told, these stories have endured over the centuries. Why these stories are being told the way they are and why people care about these stories says a lot about our culture and the culture these stories come from. But anybody who tells you they have a completely factual account of pirates is trying to sell you something.
You include St. Augustine's story about Alexander the Great capturing a pirate and berating him for molesting the seas, to which the pirate replies, "How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor." Can you talk about this idea of the sea as being a place owned by everyone and no one and why that might have been appealing to women?
How many layers some of these stories went through was surprising to me. Viking women stories were passed down orally and not recorded until later by Christian missionaries. The bias [the missionaries] had for maintaining order in the church and the family meant they were presenting ideal gender roles that were beneficial to the time period. It's just the experience of wondering what these stories may have been like before they went through so many revisions. You wonder about the original intent in all of these pirate stories.

Once I started looking, it was apparent how many people had their hands on these stories and how much of history is recorded in a similar fashion. Even [when you're present for an event], everybody's got an agenda, even the people who try to present history as unbiased as possible. I don't think there's a 100 percent objective nature unless you point a video camera at something and just walk away. But even then, where do you put the camera?
Did women succeed in getting rid of those roles society had set for them?
Maritime law is still a separate branch of the law. Crimes committed on cruise ships are treated differently than crimes committed on terra firma. The idea of the sea being a place of opportunity unbounded by country is appealing. Countries who may have been allies up in Europe are now [on ships] in the Caribbean, and it's a free for all. The shifting alliances led to an explosion of piracy because everybody was out for themselves. You don't know where someone is from, you can fly a flag from a different country and pretend you're someone you're not. It's a multinational masquerade ball.

For women this was appealing because they were able to more completely divest themselves of the repressive roles that they had been cast in in their own societies. They were able to make themselves anew.
Did women have to give up their femininity to be pirates?
Some women clearly did. You've got Cheng I Sao, who commanded a fleet larger than many of the legitimate fleets of her day. We have women who commanded male pirates and were astoundingly successful. This is where I bemoan the lack of primary sources: we don't know how women felt when they were on the sea, with the wind in their hair. We don't really know what their day-to-day life was like, if they found the peace and the freedom they were seeking.
You call Cheng I the most successful woman pirate of all time. Can you talk about her code of conduct and the way she surrendered, and how these things only amplified her success?
But there's something to the fact that we know women continued to do this over millennia. That siren song of the sea does continue to draw them to it and away from their home and their lives on the shore. Somehow women keep going to sea. It's not a piece of cake to be a pirate, to be a sailor, but time after time after time, women weighed the pros and cons and did so.

Many of them dressed like women. They were not in disguise, so clearly they were able to maintain some semblance of outward femininity while aboard these ships. Grace O'Malley [an Irish pirate of the 16th century] gave birth to her youngest son on a pirate ship. I love this idea of, you've got a sword in one hand and you have a baby on your hip. Some of the pirates we're told were very pretty, but we can only guess at how much they would've used their feminine wiles. A pretty face would not get you particularly far on a ship. I'm sure they had to keep up with the men because there's not enough room on a ship for ornaments-but we only know about the ones who were caught. So there may have been scores of women who lived and died as men that we just don't even know about.

Lots of different pirates had codes of conduct that were observed on their ships. Cheng I is unique in her harshness of the penalties for the offenses and also the strict proscription of sexual activity, both consensual and nonconsensual, on- and off-board of the ship. [Raping female captives was punishable by death and even if captives had consensual sex they would still be killed.] There are some conflicting accounts of who actually wrote this code, whether or not it was her husband Chang Pao, but [the code] has been associated with her. It's interesting when you think about women lawmakers, how men and women sometimes prioritize different things when they're making the rules.
You talk about pirates from the ancient Mediterranean all the way to modern times. Is there anything that unites all these women from different cultures and time periods?
Her surrender is, to my knowledge, one of the only of its kind. She was the only one I can think of who was able to secure pensions for her crew. She was so terrifying that she basically forced the Chinese government to pay her to stop pirating.
What do you want readers to come away from these stories with?
She had to have been brilliant to do what she did. She married into a decent pirate operation but then expanded it beyond her late husband's wildest dreams. I think her calculation [with the surrender] was, the government is expecting somebody coming to them with a phalanx of burly bodyguards armed to teeth. And she comes in with a bunch of ladies. That would've at the very least been very surprising and shifted the balance to power, and forced everyone to reconsider. She was incredibly successful in her negotiations, so it was a smart gambit.
Do you have a favorite from all the women you wrote about?
They all had ships that were very different and methods that were very different. But I think they share the desire to control their own fates. And the desire for freedom from convention would unite all these women. Their hopes to escape the normal and be a part of something adventurous would tie all these women together. That's part of what calls so many people to a love of piracy today. We share that desire for adventure. Not the desire for slitting throats and plundering the high seas, but one can empathize with the desire to have a say in how their lives go.

If someone comes away from this inspired to follow a path that they hadn't felt bold enough to pursue before, I hope these women can be role models. Not in stealing, but going after your heart's desire with everything you've got.

I say different pirates all the time because I love them all so much. I love Ladgerda, the Viking pirate who said it was better to rule without her husband and murdered him after rescuing him. His fleet was in distress after he left her for another woman. She sailed in to save the day but had a knife in her skirt and stabs him and says, ok I'm in charge now. I just think she's cheeky.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Swashbuckling History of Women Pirates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
smithsonian.com It started with a simple question: where were all the women pirates? Laura Sook Duncombe loved Peter Pan as a child and gobbled up every book on piracy she could find. But as she read, she was forced to face the harrrrrrd truth: All of the women seemed relegated to mere footnotes and short paragraphs sprinkled throughout books about male pirates.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Seven Most Terrifying Pirates in History

# data[].attributes.subject
The Seven Most Terrifying Pirates in History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Between Johnny Depp and numerous sports logos, pirates have become cartoon characters in modern culture. It's easy to forget that the real thing did exist, and that in many cases they were much more badass than the Hollywood version.

Don't take the word "badass" the wrong way; these men were unspeakably violent, often mass murderers and slaveholders. They were pirates, real pirates, not goofy caricatures. Here's proof.

greenmodels

French pirate Francois l'Olonnais really, really hated Spain. Early in his pirating days, l'Olonnais was almost killed by Spanish raiders, and instead of reconsidering his career choice and becoming a dairy farmer or something, he decided he would spend the rest of his life on an anti-Spain rampage. He let them know exactly what he intended by beheading everyone in the crew of a Spanish ship except one man, sending him back with this message: "I shall never henceforward give quarter to any Spaniard whatsoever."

That was just the beginning, though. Considering what happened next, it looks like those beheaded Spaniards were actually the lucky ones.

Having made a reputation for himself, l'Olonnais raised a pirate fleet of eight ships and hundreds of men and proceeded to terrorize the coast of South America, sacking Spanish-ruled cities, capturing treasure ships returning to Spain and generally being a huge pain in the ass to anything Spain-related. Presumably he also killed his fair share of Portuguese sailors during this time, because really who can tell the difference?

However, the situation was reversed when l'Olonnais himself, returning from pillaging the coast of Venezuela, was ambushed by a much larger force of Spanish soldiers. With his pirate buddies being blown to pieces left and right, l'Olonnais narrowly managed to escape and somehow captured a few Spanish hostages along the way. The problem now was that l'Olonnais and the other survivors needed to know which way to escape so they didn't run into more Spanish ships, which they weren't in any condition to fight. What to do?

Easy: l'Olonnais drew his sword, sliced into one Spanish prisoner's chest, pulled out the heart with his hands and began to "bite and gnaw it with his teeth, like a ravenous wolf, saying to the rest: 'I will serve you all alike, if you show me not another way.'"

While we wouldn't recommend you use this technique the next time you need directions to the nearest Taco Bell, in this case it apparently worked like a charm. The pirates escaped safely. So if you were wondering what happened to all the heads of the decapitated Spaniards we mentioned earlier ... well, let's just say the whole crew dined like kings for like a week.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia

Jean Lafitte, despite his effeminate name and Frenchness, was an honest to goodness pirate king. He led an entire pirate island in Louisiana, capturing ships and smuggling stolen goods into New Orleans. He was so successful that when the Governor of Louisiana offered a $300 price for his capture (back when 300 bucks was half the national budget) Lafitte responded by offering a $1,000 reward for the capture of the governor.

The media and the authorities painted Lafitte as a dangerously evil mastermind and mass murderer, the Osama bin Laden of the 1800s, if you will. Apparently his reputation spread across the Atlantic, because in 1814, Lafitte was approached by the British and handed a letter signed by King George III himself, promising citizenship and landholdings if he joined their side. Also, if he refused they would tear his little island to pieces, and sell it for scrap. Lafitte said he needed a few days to think about it ... and ran straight to New Orleans and warned the Americans that the English were coming.

You see, the United States may not have been a very big fan of Jean Lafitte, but Lafitte was apparently a huge fan of the U.S. of A.

Even though he wasn't American, Lafitte watched the new country with great admiration and ordered his entire fleet never to attack an American ship. The one time a pirate disregarded his order, Lafitte killed the guy himself. He was also known for treating captured crew well and sometimes returning their ships if they weren't fit for pirating. Lafitte was a hero among the people of New Orleans, since his smuggling operation allowed them to buy stuff they otherwise couldn't afford.

So how did the U.S. respond when he warned them about the English? Why, by raiding his island and locking up his men, figuring he was full of shit. It wasn't until badass future president Andrew Jackson stepped in and pointed out that New Orleans wasn't prepared for a British attack that the authorities agreed to release Lafitte's men if they agreed to assist the U.S. Navy -- which, at the time, consisted of a fraction of the ships in Lafitte's personal pirate fleet.

It's a good thing, too, because the pirates were pretty much the only reason New Orleans didn't fall to the British, which would have been a huge strategic victory. New Orleans could have given the British a place to gather their forces before attacking the rest of the country. Think about it: The U.S. might not even exist today if it weren't for this unwashed French "terrorist."

Wikipedia, airbournecombatengineer

Stephen Decatur doesn't really fall into the stereotypical image of a pirate, in that he was actually a respected U.S. Navy officer. Decatur was the youngest man to reach the rank of captain in the history of the navy, which sounds like a bullshit line of expository dialogue from an unbelievably stupid Hollywood film trailer. But in this case, it happens to be true. He was also the first American celebrated as a national military hero who didn't play a role in the American Revolution -- hell, they even put his face on $20 notes.

So how did he get to be so famous? Why, by pulling off some of the most epic (and bloody) sea raids of all time.

For example, when the USS Philadelphia was captured by Tripolitan pirates in 1803, the 25-year-old Decatur gathered a group of men, disguised them as Maltese sailors and infiltrated the enemy harbor armed only with swords and pikes. Did they recover the ship? Nope -- they overtook the entire crew without losing a single man and set it on fire just so the pirates couldn't use it. Admiral Horatio Nelson, the same man who had his arm removed so that he could get back to battle, called the raid " the most bold and daring act of the age."

But wait, there's more. Later, as Decatur was returning from seizing another ship with a crew twice as large as his, he learned that his brother had been shot while fighting the pirates. Even though the whole crew was exhausted from the latest raid, Decatur turned around and chased the enemy ship, which he and 10 other men proceeded to board.

Disregarding everyone else, Decatur, a Liam Neeson-like machine of vengeance, went straight after the man who shot his brother and killed him. The rest of the crew eventually surrendered, leaving Decatur with 27 prisoners and 33 dead pirates in a single day.

Again: he was 25.

thepirateking

Benjamin Hornigold was the Emperor Palpatine to Blackbeard's Darth Vader. While his protege went on to become the most famous pirate of all time, Hornigold went on to become a footnote in hundreds of books with the word "Blackbeard" on the cover. Still, for our money, Hornigold is where it's at, even though you've probably never heard of him before.

Getty
"No, it's OK, Blackbeard. I'll do the pirating while you stand there looking like an idiot."

Hornigold started his career of piracy in the Bahamas with little more than a few canoes. A few years later, he had a huge fucking 30-gun warship, possibly the most heavily armed in the area. This made sailing over to merchant ships and stealing their goods and booze extremely easy. So easy, in fact, that he apparently did it just for shits and kicks. Which leads us to the story that, to us, is Benjamin Hornigold in a nutshell:

Hornigold overtook a merchant ship in Honduras and the only thing he demanded was everyone's hat. He explained to the puzzled crew that his pirates got drunk and lost their hats the night before, then took off without stealing anything else.

Getty
"We only got up to the 'yo ho ho' bit."

This was not an isolated incident. Another time, a captured crew reported that Hornigold let them go having taken " only some rum, a little sugar, powder and shott."

Sadly, it looks like his crew didn't share his priorities. Hornigold always considered himself a "privateer" rather than a pirate, and to prove it he refused to attack British ships. His men didn't share this delusion and eventually deposed him, with a good part of his crew and ships going to that asshole Blackbeard. Who subsequently lost his head.

Hornigold eventually retired as a pirate, but rather than simply moving to a condo and taking up golf (or whatever the 18th century equivalent of that was), he accepted a royal pardon and became a pirate hunter -- being tasked with chasing some of the same guys he used to run with.

scribblemesomething, Wikipedia

Englishman William Dampier was a bit of an overachiever. Not content with being the first man to circumnavigate the world three times and becoming a celebrated author and scientific explorer, he also had a little hobby: raiding Spanish settlements and plundering other people's ships. All in the name of science, of course.

Pop culture demands that all pirates be toothless hobos who talk like fucking idiots, but Dampier was the exact opposite of that: he didn't just respect the English language, he actually expanded it. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Dampier's writing over a thousand times, since he provided the first written example for words like "barbecue," "avocado," "chopsticks" and hundreds of others.

Getty
Left to our own devices, we'd be eating green sushi thingies with grabby grabby sticks.

Dampier has been called the first natural historian of Australia -- he was the first person ever to describe things like the " large hopping animal" and the "midget bear with a fondness for humping trees"[citation needed]. Dampier's contribution to Western culture is so massive that Darwin based his work on evolution off of his observations and Gulliver's Travels specifically mentions how awesome he is.

His most badass moment has nothing to do with science or literature, though. In 1688, when his first trip around the world was almost over, Dampier told his crew to eat a dick and voluntarily marooned himself off the coast of Thailand, otherwise known as "the middle of fucking nowhere." He grabbed a native canoe and sailed off on his own, showing up in England three years later, completely penniless, carrying nothing but his journals ... and, um, a tattooed slave prince.

At this point he published his first book, which was an immediate success, also making a little money on the side by showing off his new friend.

adropofinkblog
Ladies.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, sailing with the navy or on a merchant vessel was a shitty, shitty job. The conditions were miserable, and if you did anything to piss off the officers of the ship, punishment was brutal and often deadly. The job was so harsh that nobody wanted to do it, so the navy and the merchants would literally kidnap people out of the ports and force them to work on their ships. Shockingly, this was later proven to not be such a fantastic way to engender the loyalty of one's crew.

"Don't let all our blade-sharpening ruin your sleep, Wikipedia
Captain."

Bartholomew Roberts (or "Black Bart") was a reluctant pirate himself, which didn't make him any less good at his job. Roberts happened to be working in a slave ship that was captured by pirates -- when the pirates "asked" the crew to join them, he looked at his measly salary and figured, "Why the hell not?" Also, there's a pretty good chance they threatened to kill him if he didn't. Roberts quickly became the pirate captain's trusted confidant because of his intelligence and navigation skills. When the captain was killed, Roberts (who had only been with the pirates for six weeks) was elected as the crew's new leader, reportedly stating " Better being a commander than a common man."

Roberts went on to become a legendary pirate on his own merits, but apparently he never forgot where he came from: After capturing a ship and before taking his pick of the booty, he would ask the captured crew whether or not they were treated well by the captain and officers. If any of the commanding officers or the captain received complaints, he'd slice and dice them to the cheers of those they mistreated. This was actually a common practice among some pirates, some of whom used more elaborate forms of punishment, like making the torturers run in circles for 10 minutes while the men stuck forks, knives and compasses into their butts.

Roberts, a civilized man, eventually forced his crew (the same crew who captured him months earlier) to agree to a strict 11-point code of conduct, including articles like no gambling for money, no women on board, lights go out at 8 p.m., keep your shit clean and " If any man rob another he shall have his nose and ears slit, and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships."

When you look at movie or TV pirate captains, they're always lucky if they have one ship and a few dozen men to follow their orders. It turns out some real-life pirates had it slightly better than that. Ottoman pirate Hayreddin "Redbeard" Barbarossa didn't just have his own fleet -- he had his own damn country.

Barbarossa started out as a legitimate merchant sailor in the 16th century, but was forced to flee the Eastern Mediterranean after backing the wrong candidate for sultan. Becoming a pirate, he started attacking Christian ships around what's now Tunisia until his enemies took his base, leaving him homeless once again. Tired of getting kicked out of countries all the time, Barbarossa went ahead and started one for himself: the Regency of Algiers (present-day Algeria, Tunisia and parts of Morocco). He did this by pledging alliance to the Ottoman sultan and getting in return enough ships and weapons to blow the shit out of whoever lived there before him.

How big of a deal did this guy become? Let's put it this way: At one point, Barbarossa single-handedly defeated the combined forces of Venice, the Vatican, Genoa, Spain, Portugal and Malta during the Battle of Preveza (1538), and by "single-handedly" we mean it was just him and 122 ships he commanded.

"Jack Sparrow can Wikipedia
eat a dick!"

For more pirate adventures, check out Yosomono at the Gaijinass website or follow him on Twitter @Gaijinass.
For more badasses you may have forgotten about, check out The Badass Roots of 5 Sissy Dogs and 6 Real People With Secret Identities Nobody Saw Coming. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed. Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infograpic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 7 Most Terrifying Pirates from History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Between Johnny Depp and numerous sports logos, pirates have become cartoon characters in modern culture. It's easy to forget that the real thing did exist, and that in many cases they were much more badass than the Hollywood version. Don't take the word "badass" the wrong way; these men were unspeakably violent, often mass murderers and slaveholders.