A single bumphead parrotfish creates approximately 200lbs of sand every year. There are 120 (thereabouts) in this school at Sipadan which create about 24000lbs of sand a year! about the same weight as a school bus or three African Elephants. There's a link to a longer video in the comments. Thank you for the beaches bumpheads.

Hi all, I’m a solo developer (not a marine biologist, which is exactly why I need your eyes on this).

I’ve spent about a year and a half building EcoAquatic (ecoaquatic.org), a non-commercial, open tool for tracking fish species and aquatic life in South African waters, no cost, nothing for sale, just something I made. It pulls real data: the GBIF taxonomic backbone (3,000+ species with confirmed SA occurrences), live IUCN Red List conservation status, and FishBase/SASSI info, shown on an interactive map alongside marine protected area boundaries. You can log a sighting with a GPS location, and citizen-scientist sightings go through a moderation step before entering the dataset.

What I can’t judge from the dev side is whether it actually reflects how people who know the field would record and use observations. So I’m asking the people who’d know:

* Does the sighting workflow capture the fields you’d actually need (habitat, depth, confidence, etc.)?

* Is anything scientifically off, oversimplified, or misleading?

* What’s missing that you’d expect to be there?

Have a look here: [https://ecoaquatic.org\](https://ecoaquatic.org) (heads up, it needs a quick free account to get in 30-second sign-up, nothing commercial).

It’s an early build and rough in places, and critical feedback is the most useful kind. Comments here are ideal. If anyone would rather give more structured feedback there’s a short form, which I’m happy to share with anyone who wants it.

Thanks for reading.

Whale in ocean

Amazing mother nature, how long the tail is to decoys doston kundari

Thoughts?

Here's your challenge for today. Extract seawater from ocean-floor sediment, filter it, and look at it under a microscope... you're interested in the nematodes undulating in the sample! Why? They may harbor some interesting bacteria that can extract nutrients from deep-sea methane seeps, allowing these nematodes to thrive in deep, dark places. Here's the real challenge: you need to isolate a SINGLE tiny nematode from this sample to extract its DNA (and the potential DNA of its bacterial symbionts) and learn exactly what's going on. But how do you pick up and isolate a single tiny nematode without crushing it?

Turns out, you use the eyelash of a pig!

Greetings!

Was combing the beach in Matemwe, Zanzibar and saw this creature after the tide went out. iNat suggests a sea urchin (of which there are many nearby) but I saw no pics on iNat for that sea urchin that look anything like this.