Unleash the Dragons! (Seadragons, that is.)

8232It’s not often that a new species is discovered almost 100 years after it was first collected and described. But we’re in a new age of taxonomy powered by new genetic and anatomical imaging tools.

While researching the two known species of seadragons as part of an effort to understand and protect the exotic and delicate fish, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego made a startling discovery: a third species of seadragon.

Using DNA and anatomical research tools, Scripps graduate student Josefin Stiller and marine biologists Nerida Wilson of the Western Australia Museum (WAM) and Greg Rouse of Scripps Oceanography found evidence for the new species while analyzing tissue samples supplied by WAM. The researchers then requested the full specimen as well as photographs taken just after it was retrieved from the wild in 2007. They were further surprised by the appearance of the newly identified animal. The color was a bright shade of red and vastly different from the orange tint in Leafy Seadragons and the yellow and purple hues of Common Seadragons.

Stiller, Wilson, and Rouse gave their new discovery the scientific name Phyllopteryx dewysea, also referred to as the “Ruby Seadragon.”

Watch Unleash the Dragons! as Stiller shares the secrets of this newly described specie of seadragon and how it was discovered.

Understand Climate Change – and What You Can Do About It

Learn more about climate change with new programs that examine its impact from a variety of perspectives. Discover how humans and climate interact and affect one another, learn what you can do to reduce greenhouse emissions, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the Pope’s call to protect the environment.

8232Climate Change, Consumerism and the Pope with Daniel Kammen and Jennifer Granholm

After being summoned to the Vatican to advise on climate change, Dan Kammen of UC Berkeley shares an insider’s view on what inspired Pope Francis to issue such a passionate plea to protect the earth in Laudato Si, his 2015 encyclical on the environment. As a practicing Catholic, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm praises the Pope for presenting “human ecology” as a moral issue in this lively exchange with Kammen and Henry E. Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

Watch Climate Change, Consumerism and the Pope with Daniel Kammen and Jennifer Granholm.

8232What Are You Going to Do About It? The Effect of Uncertainty on Climate Change Policy

Taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions imposes costs now in order to avoid potentially very large costs from more severe climate change in the future. Steve Polasky, Professor of Ecological/Environmental Economics University of Minnesota, reviews major sources of uncertainty and how that alters the choice of optimal climate change policy. He discusses current debates on how best to frame climate change policy, and whether it should be framed as setting limits on greenhouse gas concentrations to avoid potentially catastrophic damages or as an application of benefit-cost analysis.

Watch What Are You Going to Do About It? The Effect of Uncertainty on Climate Change Policy.

8232CARTA: Human-Climate Interactions and Evolution: Past and Future

According to earth scientists, paleontologists, and scholars in other fields, the planet has entered a new geological phase – the Anthropocene, the age of humans. How did this transition of our species from an apelike ancestor in Africa to the current planetary force occur? What are the prospects for the future of world climate, ecosystems, and our species? This symposium presents varied perspectives on these critical questions from earth scientists, ecologists, and paleoanthropologists.

Watch CARTA: Human-Climate Interactions and Evolution: Past and Future.

The Amazing Diversity of Fishes!

8232The aquatic world presents the widest diversity of habitats, so it’s no surprise that fishes have come to present the widest diversity of vertebrate species.

From the darkest depths to tropical shores, there are more than 33,000 species of living fishes, accounting for more than half of the extant vertebrate diversity on Earth.

For years, Curator of Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Marine Vertebrate collection, Phil Hastings, has been immersed in the systematics and phylogeny of fishes, their marine biogeography, and the ecology and behavioral evolution of fishes, and takes you on a tour of what makes this most diverse array of animals.

Watch The Amazing Diversity of Fishes.

Browse more programs from Perspectives on Ocean Science.

Sharks Without Borders: A Binational Effort to Study and Conserve Threatened Shark Species

8232Sharks have been around, essentially unchanged, for 400 million years. Their size, power, and massive jaws fill us with terror and fascination. And even though sharks kill fewer people than dogs each year, media coverage and movies of shark attacks have portrayed them as insatiable killing machines.

They may rule the ocean, but sharks are vulnerable. They grow slowly, produce few young, and are exceptionally susceptible to overfishing. Sharks are being depleted faster than they can reproduce. This threatens the stability of marine ecosystems around the world. A healthy and abundant ocean depends on predators like sharks keeping ecosystems balanced.

Sharks migrating between California and Baja California, Mexico, are threatened by commercial fishing activity in both countries. Join Scripps shark expert Dan Cartamil as he explores the ecology and behaviors of these fascinating animals, and discusses the issues relevant to the sustainability of our local shark populations.

Watch Sharks Without Borders: A Binational Effort to Study and Conserve Threatened Shark Species.

Browse more programs in the Perspectives on Ocean Science series, taped at Birch Aquarium at Scripps since 2001.

Stories in the Ice

27845Much like the rings of a tree can tell us about its particular history, air bubbles trapped within large bodies of ice reveal secrets about our past climate and atmospheric composition.

Scientists can extract a wealth of information by drilling thousands of meters down into earth’s massive continental ice sheets and extracting ice cores. By examining the cores, they can go back in time to periods much colder and considerably warmer than today.

Jeff Severinghaus from Scripps Institution of Oceanography describes how he delves into earth’s climate past and what he’s learned. “Humans have changed the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels and you see that very clearly in the ice core records,” he explains. While we may not see dramatic climate changes during our lifetimes, our grandchildren most certainly will.

Don’t miss this eye-opening look into our past — and our future.

Watch Stories in the Ice: What can past climate tell us about our future?

Browse more videos from Perspectives in Ocean Science.