Today was another ecstatic dayo f marine biology, but sadly, our last day of actual class. But on the plus side, we are going to the British Virgin Islands. Well, onto today. We began class by discussing two articles. The first was about fish that areable to “live” on land. The specific fish mentioned in the article was the blenny.(a certain kind of blenny) What was interesting about the blenny was that they move on land by wiggling their fin to literally bounce across the ground. Now you might ask how they breath on land. Well theanswer is in their skin. They absorb a large amount of oxygen through there skin. Pretty amazing. The other article we went over was my personal article. My partner and I discussed with the class the lionfish invasion in the western Atlantic Ocean. These fish were most likely released via an aquarium and the problem with them is that in their native Pacific Ocean, they had natural predators. In the Atlantic, they have no natural predators and the water temperatures are ideal. This is a real issue and outbreak that we need to address. After discussing the articles, we then went on to discussing notes. I informed the class of the mangroves ecological impact. These plants are very vital to the ocean ecosystem because they protect from erosion, filter the water from land that flows into the the ocean, provide a habitat for organisms such as vertebrates and invertebrates, and many other things. These plants have been decreasing and it is vital that werestore the population. Well it was a nice last class today. Next time I will be blogging, it will be on a small island in the Atlantic.
