The World Beneath

The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs

Richard Smith

• Publisher: Apollo Publishers
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781948062237
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Ecosistemas y Hábitats

Meet the world's most fascinating sea creatures—see the lives and curiosities of colorful fish and coral reefs—this spectacular volume has more than 300 color photos and extraordinary text from a leading marine biologist and underwater photographer, and the international expert on seahorses.

In this richly informative volume, brimming with new discoveries and more than three hundred colorful images of jaw-dropping fish and coral reefs, you'll swim in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans; you'll be dazzled in the Coral Triangle and amazed in Triton Bay. Up close you'll meet the Cenderawasih fairy wrasse, with its florescent yellow streak; the polka-dot longnose filefish; and the multicolored seadragon. There are scarlet-colored corals, baby-blue sponges, daffodil crinoids, and all sorts of mystifying creatures that change color at the drop of a hat. The whale shark is almost larger than life and the author's beloved pygmy seahorse, unless photographed, is almost too tiny to see.

The wondrous creatures inside are charmers and tricksters and excel in the arts of seduction and deception, and you'll have the rare chance to see and delight in their antics. You'll also learn what they eat, how they play, and how they care for one another, live on one another, and mimic others when they're afraid. There is also compelling insight into the naming process, which sea creatures are facing extinction, and how we can help them before it's too late.

The

World

Beneath

Arabian surgeonfish feeding on algae in the surge in the Red Sea Egypt.

The tailspot coralblenny is found only around Raja Ampat and nearby Halmahera Island. Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia.

THE

WORLD

BENEATH

The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs

DR. RICHARD SMITH

The World Beneath: The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs

Copyright © 2019 by Dr. Richard Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be sent by email to Apollo Publishers at [email protected].

Apollo Publishers books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Special editions may be made available upon request. For details, contact Apollo Publishers at [email protected].

Visit our website at www.apollopublishers.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data is available on file.

Print ISBN: 978-­1-­948062-­22-­0 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-948062-23-7

Printed in the United States of America.

For my father.

Pair of courting Pontoh’s pygmy seahorses, described in 2008. Wakatobi, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia..

Contents

Diving In

How the Reef Works

The Coral Triangle

New Discoveries of the Twenty-First Century

Things That Live on Things

The Unseemly World of Anemonefish

Pygmy Seahorses: Tales from the Stables

Parasites Rule the Reef

Colors of the Reef

Flashers and Fairies

Coral Reefs in the Twenty-First Century

Epilogue

Chapter 1:

Diving In

In the declining early evening light forty-five feet beneath the surface on a remote Indonesian coral reef, a tiny seahorse strangles another with its tail. Just three-quarters of an inch long, the diameter of a one-cent coin, and perfectly camouflaged against the windshield-sized fan-like gorgonian coral they inhabit, these creatures have a penchant for the dramatic. For my PhD research I spent six months watching and recording the antics of these mysterious and diminutive fish, collecting data on their biology and conservation—the first recorded observations of their social and reproductive behaviors. Denise’s pygmy seahorses had only been recognized by science four years previously, in 2003. Like other behaviors that occur on coral reefs every day, these skirmishes have presumably been happening for millennia. We just didn’t know to look for them.

A red sponge and divers. Wakatobi, Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Most of us hear about coral reefs and see them on nature documentaries, but unless we’re lucky enough to experience such awe-inspiring ecosystems firsthand, it can be hard to appreciate their intricacies. Exploring a tropical rain forest, you drip with sweat in a supersaturated and oppressive atmosphere waiting to spot an animal. A bird might call in the distance, the insect at your feet might unleash its high-pitched whine, and, perhaps, if you’re very lucky, and extremely patient, something larger might barrel toward you from the undergrowth. On a healthy coral reef, you can glimpse activity and life wherever you happen to look. Dozens of fish busy themselves with their daily commutes and travails.

In one hour on an Indonesian reef you will likely see over one hundred multihued and multiform species of fishes, if not double that—scrupulous cleaners, eccentric lovers, steadfast parents. The nervous cometfish pokes its marionette of a tail out of a hole, attempting to convince you it’s a menacing moray eel. Inches from your mask, a small but assertive damselfish warns you not to swim any closer to its precious algal farm. You may not know the names of all of them, but you are mesmerized: immersed in the hustle and bustle of their daily rituals.

Coral reefs continue to surprise and delight. My work has taken me all over the globe and introduced me to coral reefs in twenty-three countries. I have seen fish that wouldn’t even stretch across a dime and others that are longer than two London buses. I have seen vibrant and bustling coral gardens that stretch as far as the eye can see and I have captured the first photograph of creatures that have never before been pictured alive. Elsewhere in the ocean, I have come face to face with a warty file snake deep among the roots of a mangrove forest in Indonesia, photographed animals and behaviors in Japan that were still unknown to science, and spent hours scouring an algal-covered rock face to find an unnamed relative of the seahorse in New Zealand. My aim in this book is to share some of my passion and wonder for coral reefs and the astounding variety of creatures that call them home, while allowing those who aren’t lucky enough to experience this wonderful ecosystem firsthand a window under the waves.

Undescribed species of pygmy pipehorse from New Zealand. Northland, North Island, New Zealand.

For a long time, coral reefs have fascinated mankind. Charles Darwin mused about how these eclectic ecosystems could flourish in crystal-clear tropical waters where there are next to no nutrients to fuel their growth. Today we hear about them in the news—often, articles bemoaning their loss due to devastating coral bleaching. When corals become stressed by environmental changes, such as warmer waters, they expel their symbiotic intracellular algae, leaving them ghostly white in appearance. Coral bleaching has killed millions of corals over the past two decades. Childre...