How Climate Change Affects Marine Species, their Environments and the U.S. Endangered Species Act
By Jacob Jerome, RJD Intern Despite a frigid winter in a large portion of the U.S., global climate change is upon us and average global temperatures are increasing. Many of us think about how climate change will affect us personally, but forget that it affects marine species too, especially those that are threatened or endangered. […]
Shark Tagging with the University Of Miami President’s Council – February 22, 2014
By Jacob Jerome, RJD Graduate Student and Intern It’s never hard to get up early knowing that I’m going out on the water with the amazing RJD crew, and Saturday morning was no exception. Driving over to Key Biscayne I was excited to board the Diver’s Paradise and get the gear loaded for the trip […]
Shark Tagging with University of Miami’s President’s Council
By Patrick Goebel, RJD Intern It is always pleasant waking up to your alarm on a shark tagging day. My alarm went off at 5:30am and in no time I was on my way to Miami. I met the team around 7:30 am at Diver’s Paradise. We loaded the boat and set off to pick […]
DNA Barcoding: What is it and how can it help stranded marine mammals?
By Hannah Calich, RJD Graduate Student and Intern Prior to 2003, when someone wanted to identify a biological specimen they would examine its morphological features (such as the shape, size, or colour of specific body parts). However, identification wasn’t possible with degraded specimens. To combat this, in 2003 Paul Hebert proposed “DNA barcoding” as a […]
Phytoplankton: Small Organisms with a Massive Impact
by Heather Alberro, RJD Intern Phytoplankton, microscopic marine photosynthetic organisms, have a vastly significant role to play not only in the marine food web of which they’re part of, but also on a more global scale. Despite their infinitely small size in comparison to other marine organisms, these tiny creatures occupy an immensely important ecological […]
Marine Protected Area Connectivity
by Hannah Armstrong, RJD Intern More than 25% of the world’s fishery populations are considered overexploited or depleted, and 40% are heavily to fully exploited (Dayton PK, Sala E, Tegner MJ, Thrush S). In fact, some marine organisms have been driven extinct by human activity, while others remain close to extinction (Dayton PK, Sala E, […]