Saltwater Science

03/29/2025

Saltwater Science is still here. New updates and collaborations coming soon and possibly a youtube channel. Stay tuned.

02/28/2025

Saltwater Science is a South Carolina Ocean biology and coral aquaculture consultant. Inquiries can be messaged or emailed.

Hello new ones 👋

10/01/2022

The Pistol Shrimp grows to only 1.2–2.0 in (3–5 cm) long but has a disproportionately large claw, longer than half the shrimp's body.

05/15/2022

Weissman Lab postdoc Chiara Anselmi won second place in the inaugural Andrew Olson Scientific Image Awards, for her spectacular image of a colony of the marine colonial chordate B. schlosseri, composed of 13 individual zooids sharing a circulatory system: "Connected Consciousness in an Undersea Egalimind”.
Learn more:
https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/announcing-winners-inaugural-andrew-olson-scientific-image-awards?utm_source=Stanford+ALL&utm_campaign=f107d07c16-int_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c042b4aad7-f107d07c16-55001486

01/28/2022

Here’s one button you don’t want to push: the blue button (Porpita porpita). While it looks like a jellyfish, it’s actually a colony of hydrozoan polyps! It has two main parts: the center “button” and the hydroid strands. The inch-wide center button is filled with gas and is crucial to keeping the organism afloat. The tentacle-like structures are the hydroid colony, which catches passing zooplankton for nourishment. The end of each “tentacle” has stinging cells that can cause minor irritation to human skin.
Photo: Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC-BY-SA-4.0, Wikimedia Commons

07/17/2021

For the first time, scientists have seen stony coral cells engulf dinoflagellates - single-celled, photosynthetic algae that are crucial for keeping coral alive. The researchers cultured endoderm-like cells from the stony coral, Acropora tenuis. Around 40% of coral cells incorporated the algae in ar...

05/27/2021

The coral reefs of Florida have seen a long steady decline for more than 100 years and a lot of research and effort has been done to try understand the root causes of this degradation and how it can…

04/12/2021

03/05/2021

David Morris encounters rare optical illusion known as superior mirage while out on coastal stroll

11/20/2020

: November 20, 2020: Pucker up! This juvenile boxfish, 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) long, was collected by a bluewater diver in the top 30 meters (98 feet) of the Celebes Sea water column.
Full caption: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/multimedia/daily-image/media/20201120.html

11/11/2020

Hey Marvel/DC,
If you're reading this, you should check out the female blanket octopus as inspiration for your next superhero. About the size of a bedsheet when mature, she spends her life "flying" through the open ocean (instead of lurking around the seafloor or a den like other species of octopus). She's equipped with the superpower of camouflage and has a special tool in her utility belt. Immune to the sting of jellyfish, she is known to rip the tentacles off jellyfish—like the Portuguese man o' war—and carry them as her own personal weapons. ZAP! BOOM! POW! You wouldn't even have to provide a cape; she already has one, which she can detach in the face of danger. (Imagine the plot-twist-y escape scenarios you could write!) Anyway, we'll be waiting by the phone for the development meeting. Have your people call our people.
xox OceanX
📸: instagram.com/steven_kovacs_photography