porodermalinger

[porodermalinger]

An oceanic whitetip shark. From Evolution (2018).

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Rainbow Boa (Epicrates cenchria), family Boidae, Brazil

photograph by Paulo Mascaretti

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Tiger shark!

this fellas fuckin eat. they so very fuckin eat

they are the only sharks that are shaped like that (s q u o r e) and it makes them look even more like sea puppies

they have weird mouths AND weird stomachs (they can. they can take it out)

so we've got a fucking weird fella who will eat anything. literally. sounds so shark to me

9/10 such a sharky shark

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@sphyrna-mo-chara

Zebra shark time

*muffled screaming in the background* (THEY. ARE.. SO FUCKING. PRETTY)

apologies for the disturbance, now back to our regular shark rating schedule

a carpet dude with fins that look so much softer than other sharks due to Round™

the name is dumb. I will never get over it, but they are so beautiful. looking at them cleanses the darkest pits of my soul and i think that’s a very sharky trait

10/10 shark, would cry if i see one irl

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Amphibian migration season is coming this spring. Remember to drive slow!

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Having a much older, much more experienced person tell you you're doing well in your shared hobby is better than crack, especially when the hobby tends to be 80% retired ppl. Like, hell yeah I'm gonna get a good grade in birdwatching and I'm not even 50. Child prodigy moment

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GUESS WHAT... another little critter! A little mousey bird, if you will.

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Arctic wolf running off with the photographer's hat By: Lucyan David Mech From: Natural History Magazine 1989

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my local birds 🌞 posted early on patreon ✷ prints

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See you later alligator

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i entirely forgot to upload my piece for @swimonzine ! have a greenland shark to end your year and please check out the zine ♥

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hey how arent we talking about Pelecus cultratus more? What the fresh flying fuck is that lateral line

you good? you alright bro???

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reblog this to remind the person you reblogged it from that theyre loved

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I keep reading that 90-99% of the world’s coral reefs is set to disappear by 2050, and recently I’ve read that they’re set to simply go extinct by 2100. Is that true?

Hi Anon!

You've hit on a topic that has really weighed on my heart for a long time. While climate change is a big focus of this blog, the environmental issue that I started my career in, and the one that often hits me hardest, is the loss of species and ecosystems.

To lose an entire species that took millions of years to evolve is a terrible loss—to lose the entirety of one of the most diverse and beautiful ecosystems on the planet is an almost unfathomable tragedy.

While I am extremely hopeful that a lot of damaged ecosystems and species will be able to rebound and adapt with the right protection and support, for a long time I couldn’t see a world where coral reefs would be able to survive—because even in the rosiest emissions scenarios, ocean warming would pass the threshold that they could withstand.

However, recently our understanding of that seems to be evolving. The bad news is that there is probably no future where coral reefs are not irreversibly altered by climate change—we will definitely lose coral species and many reefs as they are now and that is still deeply awful. The good news is there is increasing evidence that coral reefs as an ecosystem can survive in an altered but still biodiverse and beautiful form for future generations.

This study from the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology created simulated coral reefs containing a variety of common coral species as well as all the other organisms found in reef ecosystems and exposed them to different levels of warming and acidification for two years. Based on prior models and research, it was expected that all the corals would die and the mini reef ecosystems would collapse…but they didn’t. After two years, coral cover was reduced and there were changes in the amount of calcification in the corals, but the altered reef still supported high levels of biodiversity.

There have also been increased observations of coral surviving or even doing well in warming situations where they would be expected to be totally wiped out. Efforts are underway to study those reefs to see if those conditions can be replicated elsewhere, but the big takeaway seems to be pointing towards the idea that if we remove other more immediately controllable stressors from coral reefs—things like overfishing, physical damage, pollution, etc.—some or even many of them will be able to survive the warming effects of climate change.

Our understanding of how to maintain coral in human care and regrow damaged reefs in their natural habitat is also increasing at a very fast pace. This means that there is a good chance that we can keep coral species that would otherwise be driven to extinction alive either in human care or more protected areas and potentially return them to their native habitat once we have controlled other threats.

I don’t want to sugarcoat things—coral reefs are in a tough spot with regard to climate change and many big, iconic reef ecosystems will probably be unrecognizably altered. I do not want to downplay how heartbreaking that is. But life finds a way and the consensus seems to be moving in the direction of coral reefs not being as doomed as was previously thought.

If you want to learn more about this I would highly recommend this podcast from How to Save a Planet:

As well as this recent very cool interview between Hank Green and the executive director of the Coral Reef Alliance, Heather Starck (the interview starts at 2:17):

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Making this post for no reason other than to announce to the world how much I fucking LOVE hagfish

They bring me so much joy. They occupy one of the coolest ecological niches. They are one of the few remaining members of an ancient lineage of jawless fish. They are the only animals (THAT WE KNOW OF) to have a skull but no vertebral column.

Conclusion: hagfish (and their relatives the lamprey) are FUCKING COOL and I think we should spend more time thinking about them.