With help from their cousin Harry, eight-year-old twins Ella and Ethan discover who is illegally taking coral from the reefs near their aunt and uncle's beach house on the shore of Australia's Coral Sea.

LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.

A series of photocopiable activity files that provide opportunities to help develop active learning and critical thinking skills.

In recent years an increasing number of studies have been published reporting observations of adapted behaviour and shifting species ranges of plant and animal species due to recent climate warming. Are these `fingerprints' of climate change? An international conference was organised to bring together scientists from different continents with different expertise but sharing the same issue of climate change impact studies. Ecologists, zoologists, and botanists exchanged and discussed the findings from their individual field of research. The present book is an international collection of biological signs of recent climate warming, neither based only on computer models nor on prediction for the future, but mainly on actually occurring changes in the biosphere such as adapted behaviour or shifts in the ranges of species. `Fingerprints' of Climate Change presents ecological evidence that organisms are responding to recent global warming. The observed changes may foreshadow the types of impacts likely to become more frequent and widespread with continued warming.

Our oceans are changing. Elevated greenhouse gases caused the increase of Earth’s average temperature (or global warming) and contributed to what we now know as climate change. This in turn has a big influence on the oceans and the organisms that live in them. Given that oceans are changing so rapidly, how are marine organisms affected by this? Can they adapt? How can we study those adaptations? Where should we start? In between Africa and Asia, in the Middle East region, lies a vast mass of seawater connected to the Indian ocean by its southern end. This water body is called the Red Sea, some say because of the presence of a reddish-brown cyanobacteria in its waters, others say because red was the color representing “south” (of the Mediterranean civilization) in ancient times. Its location makes it a unique environment with high temperatures and salinities (the amount of salt dissolved in water), creating a complex environmental gradient from north to south in its more than two thousand kilometers of length. Despite these harsh, almost alien conditions, the Red Sea is home to large green mangroves and seagrass meadows, more than a thousand species of fish (many of them unique to the Red Sea), hundreds of species of corals and countless invertebrates. At the microscopic level, we make new discoveries every day so that our knowledge on the diversity of bacteria, microalgae, and viruses is constantly increasing. But if it is so difficult to sustain life in the Red Sea, how do all these organisms still prosper in it? This is one of many questions scientists are trying to answer by studying how abiotic factors such as temperature, salinity and nutrients of the Red Sea can affect its organisms (or biota). Moreover, due to its extreme conditions, the Red Sea can also act as a unique laboratory to study and learn about the future impacts of climate change on ecosystems: it represents a time machine that allows us to look into the future of tropical oceans and lets us understand how organisms thrive in environmental extremes. The aim of this collection is to explore the current knowledge we have on the Red Sea biodiversity and its adaptability to environmental change. From coral reefs and the mutual beneficial relationships (symbiosis) between organisms, to seagrasses and brine pools, we aspire to learn how life can find a way to flourish even when the odds seem to be against it. More importantly, by understanding the present conditions of the Red Sea, we might be able to predict how organisms from other regions will adapt to fast changing climate.

LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.

This 2002 book provides a cultural and ecological history of European impact on the Great Barrier Reef.

El Niño is a meteorologic/oceanographic phenomenon that occurs sporadically (every few years) at low latitudes. It is felt particularly strongly in the eastern Pacific region, notably from the equator southwards along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru. The El Niño is a component of the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) which accentuates the intimate and causal connection between atmospheric and marine processes. Obvious manifestations of El Niño in the eastern Pacific are anomalous warming of the sea; reduced upwelling; a marked decline in fisheries, and high rainfall with frequent flooding.The 1982/83 El Niño was exceptionally severe, and was probably the strongest warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean to occur during this century. The warming was intense and spread over large parts of the Pacific Ocean and penetrated to greater depths than usual. Many eastern Pacific coral reefs that had exhibited uninterrupted growth for several hundred years until 1983 were devasted by the disturbance and are now in an erosional mode. Marine species were adversely affected. The consequent depletion of the plant food base resulted in significant reductions in stocks of fish, squid etc. This led to a mass migration and near-total reproductive failure of marine birds at Christmas Island.Emphasis in this volume is placed on disturbances to benthic communities; littoral populations; terrestrial communities and extratropical regions.

Coral disease is quickly becoming a crisis to the health and management of the world’s coral reefs. There is a great interest from many in preserving coral reefs. Unfortunately, the field of epizootiology is disorganized and lacks a standard vocabulary, methods, and diagnostic techniques, and tropical marine scientists are poorly trained in wildlife pathology, veterinary medicine, and epidemiology. Diseases of Coral will help to rectify this situation.

"A journey into the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef, as experienced by explorers, scientists, and artists"--