The Fish Commandments

I’m an alien. I watch things… I listen…**pauses to listen to the dishwasher** {wirwirwirwir... sounds like Vinnie, my AI ship, when he’s content, in equilibrium…} I glance up from my fish and chips meal to inspect the blue-green painted wall of my friend's kitchen and wonder whether they considered it more blue or more green. I've observed that humans seldom agree on anything.

A while ago, in my role as a limnologist on this planet, I observed a dichotomy of human perception on ecosystem behavior that had me thinking of chaos theory. In a recent blog post I contrasted traditional equilibrium-driven views with more current views for ecosystem behavior (Creative Destruction—Another Paradox?). C.S. Holling’s model recognized ecosystems as non-linear, self-organizing and continually adapting through cycles of change from expansion and prosperity to creative destruction and reorganization.

Fisheries scientists are also shifting from the traditional single-species target approach to conservation and preservation in an ecosystem-based perspective. Scientists at the Western Society of Naturalists Presidential Symposium came up with their version of the “ten commandments” for ecosystem-based fisheries scientists to follow (Fisheries, May, 2007). Here they are:

Darwin's Paradox 2

"Darwin's Paradox" isn't just the title of my new book by Dragon Moon Press. It's a term that describes a peculiar enigma in tropical oceans. Ever since Charles Darwin described coral reefs as oases in the desert of the ocean, oceanographers were struck by a peculiar irony. Coral reefs are one of the richest ecosystems on Earth, with productivity ranging from 50 to 250 times more than the surrounding ocean; yet they thrive in crystal-clear water largely devoid of nutrients. This apparent violation of the laws of thermodynamics (high productivity in a low-productivity environment) has long puzzled scientists who coined the phenonemon: Darwin's Paradox. Well, part of the answer is the coral's shape and their efficiency in recycling nutreints like nitrate and phosphate. Any of you who have snorkeled in the tropics and seen corals will know that they have extremely rough surfaces. The rough coral surface amplifies any water turbulence at a microscopic level, disrupting the boundary layer that usually settles on objects under water, and lets the coral "hoover" up the sparse nutrients. Lots of corals also act as "landlords" to specialized algae (called zooxanthelae), which provide the coral with food (by products of photosynthesis) and, in turn, get food from the wastes created by the coral. VERY COOL isn't it? In fact, many coral communities function as both plant and animal in this symbiotic relationship. I guess it's like having your cake and eating it, too.