Showing off: Red-eyed Tree Frog, startled from its sleeping spot in the mid canopy. Usually these nocternal frogs fold in all colorful parts in the daytime while resting. Only when disturbed, they show all their color, in order to scare off would-…
Careful look: Summary: Not only is the Red-eyed tree frog an icon for biodiversity and beauty of tropical rainforests – it has also an interesting breeding behavior recently revealed. Home to the canopies of lowland rainforests between Mexico and…
A dead juvenile albatross rests in the sands of Midway Atoll where each year as many as 200,000 chicks – about 40% of the total on this island - die before they get a chance to take flight. Chicks are often inadvertantly fed plasitic bits by their…
A group of tourists stopping by Midway Atoll during a battlefields of the Pacific cruise become enthralled by one of hundreds of thousands of juvenile albatross that fledge on the island before heading off to a lifetime spent at sea. Human impact can…
A red snapper, one of the top predatory fish on the reefs of Palmyra Atoll. Overfishing, with new technologies that arm industrial fleets with sonar, satellite data and global positioning systems, has declined the population of big fish by 90% over…
Champ Warren shovels a haul of cannonball jellyfish into the hold of a converted shrimp trawler. Georgia white shrimp have been overfished but "jellies" are thick due to a lack of predators and an abundance of algae. They are exported to China and…
Bleeding from the nose is one of the indicators that a manatee has died from breathing or eating sea grass tainted with brevetoxin.The potent neurotoxin blooms off the West Coast of Florida. Manatees are classified as "threatened with extinction"…
The Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, California is frequently overrun by a California sea lions suffering from domoic acid poisoning. The sea lions pickup the toxin by eating anchovies or sardines contaminated with pseudo-nitzschia, which…
Midway Atoll is a major rookery for white terns, albatross and several other species of birds. In a landmark effort for habitat preservation, President Bush recently declared the atoll part of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument, the…
Fast growing algae coat a bronze sculpture called Christ of the Abyss, a diving tourist attraction, along with coral reefs throughout the Florida Keys. Scientist Brian Lapointe estimates a billion gallons of sewage makes its way into the ocean each…