Shore Buddies webblog
Wisdom Wednesday 6/10/20
The Harlequin Shrimp is a small but vividly colored resident of the coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific. The species only grows to about 5cm (2 inches) long. Thanks to their brightly patterned shells, they are sometimes also called painted shrimp or clown shrimp. They can also be recognized because of their large flattened claws. They may stay in monogamous male-female couples over relatively long periods of time. The mated pairs share territory and prey – and they have been noted to be territorial against other shrimp. Once the pair finds a suitable home within the reef, they are known to stay within the area for months or even years. The pair mate after a female molts, and can produce anywhere from 100 to 5,000 eggs per breeding season.
Wisdom Wednesday 6/3/20
And maybe the most bizarre fact of all.. One individual tiger shark found itself in the middle of a murder mystery! In April 1935, Coogee Aquarium in Sydney, Australia was looking for a big fish to occupy its newly-built pool. On a fishing trip off Coogee beach, Bert Hobson snared a 13-foot tiger shark for the aquarium. The shark was a big hit at the aquarium, but it didn’t last very long. Seven days after its arrival, it got sick and vomited up a bird, a rat, some nasty-looking brown goo—and a human arm, which had a rope tied around its wrist and a forearm tattoo of two boxers. An amateur boxer named James Smith had recently gone missing, and he had the exact same tattoo on one arm.
Wisdom Wednesday 5/27/20
All seven species of sea turtles are listed as threatened or endangered. This is a reflection of the growing issues surrounding coastal development and ocean conservation. To help ensure that sea turtles have a future in our oceans, the South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Care Center™ aids sick and injured sea turtles in partnership with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR).
Wisdom Wednesday 5/20/20
Sea robins are good swimmers but they also can use their pectoral fins to “walk” along the bottom of the ocean, looking for prey. The sensitive fins let the fish feel things they encounter and they can be used to move and manipulate small objects. It also uses its head as a shovel to dig down and uncover small sea creatures to eat. Sea robins will eat just about anything they can find, including segmented worms, crustaceans, shrimp, squid and mollusks. Sea robins vibrate their swim bladders to make a croaking sound that is easy to hear when the fish are lifted out of the water. They head for the bottom and quickly burrow into the sand when threatened, leaving only their eyes and a bit of their heads exposed.
Wisdom Wednesday 5/13/20
“The Marine Mammal Center has been conducting research on marine mammal diseases since 1975. Because animals in our care offer a unique opportunity to perform blood and tissue analyses, The Marine Mammal Center has become a leading resource for researchers and scientists to turn to for answers about marine mammal care, medicine and health data. Every marine mammal patient we treat provides a never-before-seen glimpse into human medical conditions.”
Shore Buddies supports rescued wildlife during the COVID-19 shutdown. Many animal care facilities are struggling with providing continuous care for their patients. Shore Buddies decided to partner with 4x organizations and DONATE 100% of PROFITS for the treatment of those animals in these troubling times. One of those organizations is The Marine Mammal Center! Every purchase of Sammy the Seal goes to helping these seals!
Wisdom Wednesday 5/06/20
Tasmanian Blenny fish are odd looking fish that bring joy to the reefs with a large head, a blunt snout with a steep profile, and a large frilled tentacle over each eye. Tasmanian Blennies are pale brownish to dark brown or bluish-grey with a pattern of irregular bars and blotches on the sides, and two dark bars radiating from below the eye.
Wisdom Wednesday 4/29/20
It’s not a jellyfish! The Portuguese Man o’ War may look like a bloated jellyfish, but it’s actually a siphonophore—a bizarre group of animals that consist of colonies made up of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of genetically-identical individual creatures.
Wisdom Wednesday 4/22/20
Not much is known about the Spiny Devilfish, but what is known mostly revolves around it’s spines. It has poisonous spines on the dorsal, anal and ventral fins. This fish is predominantly well camouflaged (and so easy to miss) and lies buried up to the eyes and mouth, waiting for prey to swim by to ambush by lunging forward and inhaling their prey with their large mouths.
Wisdom Wednesday 4/15/20
Probably the most remarkable fact about the Jewel Fish, however, is the relationship of the mated couple, which comes as close to a “married life” in the full sense of the word as can be found among fish.
Wisdom Wednesday 4/8/20
This venom is more toxic than of any land animal. It is said that the venom of this octopus could kill 26 adults in just a few minutes. There is no antivenom for treatment.
Wisdom Wednesday 4/1/20
Many have dark bands across their eyes and round, eye-like dots on their flanks to confuse predators as to which end to strike and in which direction they're likely to flee.
Wisdom Wednesday 3/25/20
Puffer fish vary in size from one inch long pygmy puffer, to a two feet long freshwater giant puffer. The main feature, common for all puffer fish, is ability to ingest huge amounts of water, which increases their body size and turns them into odd-looking ball-like creatures. The most elastic part of their body is skin on the stomach area. When puffer fish ingests water, skin on the stomach expands several times of the normal size of the fish. The quick transformation scares predators.