Lifecycles are always fascinating. In the great winter storm of 2008, huge waves overwhelmed the Kalk Bay seafront. Underwater, scenes of devastation were everywhere. Smitswinkel Bay’s reefs were stripped bare. That December, a plankton soup swept into the bay. Mussel larvae must have... Read more »
It was interesting to note the degree to which a lowly, and to all intents, uninteresting little critter managed to grab some media attention during November 2011. There were various, internet articles and radio interviews. The reason for the interest was the extreme rarity of the event in... Read more »
The legendary island of Atlantis sank into the sea in a day, if we are to believe the Ancient Greeks. It was a place of many wonders. In the seas around Cape Town, wonders are as normal as wonders can be. Where else are doomed tropical visitors like lionfish and turtles, fugitives from Antarctic... Read more »
Ghostpipefishes are the closest relatives pipefishes and seahorses have. They are small, somewhat eccentrically shaped animals, resembling pipefishes, albeit rather flam-boyant ones. The six species described so far in the family have all been classified in a single genus, Solenostomus, which have... Read more »
Pipefish are the slightly less comical version of their close cousins, the seahorses. Instead of the cute mounded seahorse tummy, pipefish are sleek and snake-like. Their heads are however straight from the seahorse stable, being horse-like and having a snout of varying lengths, depending on the... Read more »
September 2011
Probably the first thing noticeable about surgeonfish is how cute they are. That slightly downturned mouth combined with large, bewildered looking eyes add up to that innocent kid-in-school-who-always-got-bullied look. But the second thing to notice about the surgeonfish is that they are no... Read more »
August 2011
Even glamorous starlets need help to look their best and, sometimes, to stay healthy. And so it is with many reef fishes. On tropical coral reefs, groups of cleaner shrimps set up shop in desirable overhangs and advertise their services, some species by antennae waving and other species simply by... Read more »
July 2011
Some say coral reefs are the only living structures visible from space. Whether this is true or not, they can certainly be massive. The Barrier Reef off Australia runs for over 2 600km and all of it has been made by the action of tiny individual corals building together to form the hard colonial... Read more »
June 2011
Seals on land are ungainly, smelly and faintly comical as they lumber about on rocks or splash clumsily into the waves. In Cape Town they also feature as victims of spectacular shark attacks, clutched helplessly in the jaws of a magnificently breaching great white. But seals are much more than this... Read more »
May 2011
No doubt as evolutionary adaptations go, the shell must rank as one of the clever ones. The ancestral gastropod is thought to have been a shelled burrower, creeping through ancient sands in search of slower prey. It wouldn’t have been like the elegant spiral wonders we see today, but was... Read more »
Refer advertisers and earn 5% of adspend! More »
Tuesday, 01 November 2011 in reply to Taste_KalkBay
Thursday, 29 September 2011 in reply to VeldandFlora
Thursday, 29 September 2011 in reply to SurferChick_25
Wednesday, 28 September 2011 in reply to RuggaWorld
