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Kingfisher 5000ltr Per Hour Marine Aquarium Fresh Water Koi Pond Filter Pump by Bonnington Plastics
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City approves Clearwater Marine Aquarium's expansion plan
The Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s expansion plans have received approval from the city’s Community Development Review Board.About 800,000 people visited the aquarium last year thanks in part to “movie stars” Winter and Hope, the dolphins.Aquarium officials said they need more room.“There’s a problem with cars parking off-site right now, parking in the street, parking in off-site lots, also people walking across the street to come see us, that’s the issue we’re trying to resolve,” said David yates, CEO, Clearwater Marine Aquarium.The aquarium plans to double the facility on its current lot from about 60,000 square feet to about 130,000 square feet.Tanks for Winter and Hope will grow to 1.4 million gallons and a 440-space parking garage will be added.Some Island Estates homeowners attending the meeting said it’s catching them by surprise.“We are bitterly disappointed at the action of this board. To say we were properly advised as homeowners and were included as partners in this is absolutely untrue because we found out about this last Monday, which gave us three business days to respond and a holiday weekend in between,” said Vera Guinan.Residents said the aquarium has outgrown the neighborhood and they’re worried about large crowds and traffic if it expands.“The people that were in the know, that knew this was going on, were not the residents of the island and those are the people who are going to be the most affected,” said Skip Shepherd.Aquarium officials counter that the new plan will actually keep people from trying to park in the neighborhood and keep them on the aquarium’s property instead.“We’ve had a long-standing relationship with Island Estates for many, many years. So this is a big issue. We’re in a residential area. We understand the concerns. But we listen very carefully. For the last few years, I’ve heard a lot about the issue of taking the impact we make outside our facility and put it back on the lot, so we’re doing that right now,” said Yates.The aquarium decided against a plan to build a new, more expensive facility in downtown Clearwater and expand at its current location instead.Yates estimates the expansion will cost less than $50 million.
City approves Clearwater Marine Aquarium"s expansion plan
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Joseph R. Geraci, expert in marine mammal medicine and National Aquarium official, dies
Dr. Joseph R Geraci, a scientist and veterinarian who was a leading expert in marine mammal medicine and aquatic wildlife conservation, died of cancer Thursday at his Leesburg, Va. home. The former Otterbein resident was 77.
A former official of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, he was professor in the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Department of Pathology. He was proponent of teaching aquarium visitors about sea life and the issues affecting it.
In his four decades in the field, Dr. Geraci led research teams from the Arctic to the tropics to study the health of marine mammals and their environment.
Born in Lawrence, Mass., he was the son of Michael Geraci, a telephone lineman, and his wife, Josephine, a homemaker. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree and master’s degree at Suffolk University and was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. He earned a doctorate at McGill University at its Institute of Oceanography in Montreal. He also studied ichthyology at New York University.
From 1973 to 1995 he was a professor at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College and directed its marine mammal program. He was a clinical professor at Tufts University from 1994 to 1996..
He had advised the International Whaling Commission and government agencies in Canada, Spain, Brazil and the United States.
“He had a extraordinary compassion for the animals and the ecosystem in which they lived, but also he had an astounding compassion for those he worked with,” said Glenn Page, a friend and president of SustainaMetrix. “He had an exceedingly high expectation for everyone, including himself.
“He had a smile that inspired you,” Paige said. “It would light up the room. Behind that smile was an inspiration that would bring the very best out of you.”
In 1997 Dr. Geraci moved to Baltimore and became the National Aquarium’s deputy executive director. Baltimore Sun reporter Frank Roylance wrote in a lengthy profile that “Geraci has led investigations of marine mammal deaths in Canada, the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, including the 1987 probe of the deaths of more than 700 bottlenose dolphins along the East Coast.”
At the time of his appointment in Baltimore, Dr. Geraci said he wanted to make the aquarium’s visitors feel closer to the Chesapeake Bay.
“There’s a lot we can do, because we have such a wide audience, to expose visitors to some of the exciting things happening on the bay, and to help them understand the role we all play in the health of the bay,” he said in 1997.
Dr. Geraci was fascinated with aquariums throughout his life. He had also been curator for the New York and Montreal aquariums. He was president of the Mystic Aquarium from 2005 to 2006.
“Trim and athletic-looking, Geraci seems a bit caged in his aquarium office — a modest cubicle with a million-dollar view of the Inner Harbor,” the 1997 Sun article said.
Dr. Geraci discovered that the aquarium had some issues. “He found the seals’ health was being propped up with salt pills and antibiotics, but they still showed signs of stress,” The Sun wrote. “Geraci had the aquarium replace their pool’s fresh water with a colder synthetic sea water.”
He said in 1997, “There is no collection of seals anywhere that is in better condition.”
He also faced other issues. “In 1991, a dolphin struck one of the beluga whales, which died. Geraci encouraged the aquarium’s decision to send the belugas on permanent ‘breeding loan’ to Sea World in Texas. Beyond the risk of injury, the two species simply weren’t designed to cohabit, he said.”
Under his scientific guidance, the aquarium’s Marine Animal Rescue Program cared for numerous stranded animals, including turtles and pygmy sperm whales. Many were returned to their natural habitats.
“While we rehabilitate them, we can use the opportunity to educate visitors and write a powerful conservation message,” he said in 1997. “One of the clearest came from Inky, a pygmy sperm whale rescued in 1994. Inky was found to have a digestive blockage caused by plastic trash and balloons it had eaten.”
Dr. Geraci called the National Aquarium in Baltimore “the biggest classroom I’ve ever taught in.” He said that while he wanted Aquarium patrons to have a pleasant visit, he also wanted them to learn something about the bay, its physics and chemistry.
He was appointed to the National Academy of Science’s Committee to study the effects on marine mammals of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Joe was a warm, down-to-earth scientist,” said Mark Donovan, a friend and colleague. “He saw the best in everyone and thought that everyone had something to offer. I recall many lively conversations with him. … He was as comfortable in the opera hall as he was aboard an ocean research vessel.”
Dr. Geraci has wrote and co-wrote more than 120 journal articles, seven books and 21 book chapters. He was the founding editor of the journal Marine Mammal Science.
Plans for a memorial service at the University of Maryland School of Medicine are incomplete.
Survivors include his wife of 10 years, Laurie Allen, a wildlife biologist; a son, Michael Geraci of Ontario, Canada; two daughters, Johanna Geraci and Karen Geraci, also of Ontario; a brother, Philip Geraci of Arizona; and six grandchildren. An earlier marriage ended in divorce.
jacques.kelly@baltsun.com
Joseph R. Geraci, expert in marine mammal medicine and National Aquarium official, dies
The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Aquarium Fish & Fish Care: A Definitive Guide To Identifying And Keeping Freshwater And Marine Fishes
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The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Aquarium Fish & Fish Care: A Definitive Guide To Identifying And Keeping Freshwater And Marine Fishes
Volunteers key in marine rescues
OCEAN CITY, Md. — Chuck Erbe knew dinner was over as soon as he saw the number on his ringing cellphone. There was a baby whale in distress. He told the waiter at Mio Fratello on Fenwick Island to bring a box for the pasta and headed for the quick change of clothes and the badge that waited in his truck.
By day, Erbe is a mild-mannered 72-year-old property manager, handing out pool passes and chasing down lost TV remotes for rental houses along the Delaware-Maryland coasts. But several times a week, he and his wife Ellen, a librarian, become marine animal rescuers, part of a vast East Coast network of volunteer first responders for the finned and flippered.
“They’re pretty used to us rushing out of restaurants around here,” Erbe said.
That night, the emergency was a motherless minke whale calf, just weeks old, beached off a backwater of Assawoman Bay. Ocean City firefighters were already on the scene, towing the animal to a marina where Erbe could reach it as tourists crowded around.
“I just held it” as he waited for a veterinarian to arrive, Erbe said. “I wanted it to know it wasn’t alone.”
Summer is a busy time of year for marine rescue. Migrating animals are on the move, hazardous boat traffic is up and beaches are crowded with tourists alert to any wildlife on the wrong side of the sandy line that divides their realm from ours. And whenever a sea turtle washes ashore or a manatee takes a wrong turn along the East Coast, a phalanx of volunteers, government agencies and nonprofit groups is standing by to help.
The effort, loosely coordinated by the federal government, responds each year to more than 1,900 stranded marine mammals and about 2,200 turtles. Similar networks ring the country’s Gulf and Pacific coasts.
Some of the animals are quickly released. Others are sent to rehabilitation facilities such as the National Aquarium in Baltimore, which serves as the coordinator of rescue efforts in Maryland. The less fortunate are dissected by biologists and then buried in undisclosed stretches of beach. Some, like the motherless newborn baby whale that couldn’t survive without its mother, are preserved for study.
“I get emotional just talking about that one,” said Erbe, a big man with a booming voice and habit of using military time to set up a meeting, of the little cetacean that died in his arms. “But we save so many. It’s a very rewarding thing.”
In coastal communities, marine animal rescue is a local affair, in which volunteers work side by side with real first responders. Erbe has waded into the surf with police officers in full uniform to fish a hurt sea turtle from the waves. Lifeguards, who get special training, routinely provide aid to sea critters in need. Part of their job is to keep curious beachgoers back from animals that are vulnerable and dangerous.
“Dolphins have teeth and are basically a solid tube of muscle,” said Jamie Falcon, a sergeant in the Ocean City Beach Patrol.
But sometimes the crowd can help. During a bottlenose dolphin stranding in 2013, Falcon helped build a shade canopy of beach umbrellas and directed a toy bucket brigade more than 30 tourists long, keeping the animal cool and wet for hours.
In Ocean City, even dogcatchers and trash collectors are trained to help with marine strandings. Public works staffers run the heavy equipment needed to hoist a dolphin or whale into the transport truck (or to bury it). And during a hammerhead shark scare in late June, biologists in Baltimore asked animal control officers to try for a clear photograph of the animal’s dorsal fin to help them narrow down the species.
“Everything is different every day in this job,” said Barbara Wisniewski, an Ocean City animal control officer for almost 30 years.
Animal-loving property managers, teachers, lawyers and retirees (lots of retirees) make up the bulk of marine first responders. The National Aquarium has trained a corps of more than 100 civilians in marine animal welfare to respond to calls from Delaware to Virginia. The facility also sometimes takes animals rescued in Delaware and New Jersey.
Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, which oversees marine animal rescue in the Old Dominion, maintains a team of about 70 trained volunteers who staff round-the-clock on-call shifts. The team, along with aquarium staffers, responds to about 300 marine animal calls and posts more than 15,000 hours of volunteer service a year.
“There’s no way we could do this without them,” said Mark Swingle, the aquarium’s director of research and conservation.
Erbe has been volunteering in marine life rescue programs for 14 years. He came with a longtime fondness for animals and a family habit of fostering dogs and cats. “My wife always says the best thing about helping marine animals is that you can’t take any of them home,” Erbe says.
He had no experience with marine biology. But now, after multiple trainings and hundreds of response calls, he has deep insights into animal behavior (“seals can bite”) and a grasp of anatomy — inside and out. As part of the routine necropsy conducted on the animals that don’t make it, Erbe has stood inside a whale, cutting out cubes of blubber the size of ice chests.
“I’m not squeamish in the least,” he said. “That’s one of the job requirements.”
Typically, the volunteers make an initial assessment of the stranded animal’s condition, consulting remotely with the experts. For big mammals in distress, the aquarium will send a team and a truck.
Volunteers key in marine rescues
FEATURE: Turning round the fortunes of the National Marine Aquarium
Dr David Gibson became the managing director of the Sutton Harbour-based National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth. He has since turned the NMA’s fortunes around and given back its ‘national’ importance.
OLIVIER VERGNAULT went to see him at the aquarium to find out the why and the how.
Q: What is your background?
A: I was born in Airdrie, near Glasgow. I have a BSc in zoology from Glasgow University and a PhD in fish diseases from Stirling University. That was assuming that I would go into aquaculture but by the time I finished my PhD the world had moved on and that topic was old news. In the early 90s the public aquarium sector was kicking off. In 93, I joined Deep Sea World in Edinburgh as an aquarist.
Q: What’s an aquarist?
A: It’s a person who looks after the fish on a day-to-day basis. It involves feeding the fish, cleaning the tanks and some diving.
I trained as a diver and I very much enjoyed that part of the work. Within four years I was head of department. Within five years I was Curator and within six years I was running the site near Queen’s Ferry.
Q: What did you do after that?
A: I joined Blue Planet in Chester which was the second biggest aquarium in the UK. And in 2001, I was lucky enough to be given the role of Curator at The Deep, a Millennium funded project in Hull.
Q: What does a Curator do?
A: This is the manager responsible for exhibitions. For a zoo or an aquarium, he’s responsible for all the animals, the life support system which keep the animals alive and for acquisitions from other sites around the world.
My role also involved managing the team.
The Deep received £55 million worth of capital funding. After the Eden Project it is the second most successful Millennium project and it is still going strong.
Q: What made The Deep so special and different?
A: What set it out from other aquariums was that it is a lot more interactive. It was a lot more hands on. I am pleased to have been the Assistant Chief Executive of this fantastic project.
But my career was not going to move unless the Chief Executive retired or quit neither of which he had any intentions of doing so I decided to make a bold move. I looked around and secured the role of director of the Fota Wildlife Park in Ireland.
Q: How different was it from what you had done previously?
A: The biggest challenge was to go from an aquarium to a land based zoo. As a director it was about managing people and the business side of things. I was confident I had the skills to run the business and to manage teams of people but I didn’t have any experience in managing the animals.
Q: What did you do?
A: I had to get some forestry training, driving diggers and looking after not only animals but a large arboretum. I can adapt and I learn quickly. I even underwent fire arms training and became a marksman as we had to handle big animals like European Bison.
Q: How long did you stay there?
A: I was there for 18 months. I had to come back to the UK for family reasons and I found this position with the National Marine Aquarium in 2010.
The NMA was stable financially and had a small surplus as a charity. A lot of hard work had been done to secure it financially. There had been a major restructure and many staff had been made redundant.
The NMA had had to go through RDA refinancing. The NMA may have been financially stable but its reputation was absolutely rock bottom.
Q: Why was its reputation so bad?
Q: The NMA was open in 1988 but it never achieved national status. The aquarium had very little self esteem. The exhibits were poor. There was a very high turnover of staff. It was run as commercial enterprise and not as a charity. It was almost unrecognised on the international scene. Academically it did not have reputation at all.
Q: What did you do to change that?
A: My remit was not only to secure the aquarium’s financial future but address its reputation problem. It’s a job that will never be finished because you can always improve something but we are a long way down the journey from where we started.
As an organisation we’re a lot fitter and more efficient. Staff costs are under control and we are now developing a much wider range of income streams. The big challenge is the low regional population we depend on. 45% of visitors come from the local area. We have a high dependence on local population. Which is why with a 1.2m population within a 90-minute drive radius we needed to increase our reputation to attract more people. That makes us vulnerable to the weather and the vagaries of the tourism industry. Tourism is a very important sector of the economy in Devon and represents around 11% of the total economy.
Unfortunately in Plymouth, people just bypass us to go to Cornwall. In the Duchy they have a strong vision and strategy and a very cohesive sense of direction. In Devon we don’t. People don’t know what Devon has to offer. They don’t know what the product is.
Q: As an indoor attraction how dependent are you on the weather?
A: It is free to go to the beach. People thrive on the beach trade. But when it rains they come to us. The weather has an enormous impact on our business. It is 70% reliant on it. During the August Bank Holiday weekend we had 3,500 people come through the doors on the Monday because it rained. The day before it was really sunny and we only had 1,200 people. It makes it difficult to plan in term of stock holding and staff rotas. We need to diversify our income streams such as our corporate hospitality.
Q: how big is corporate hospitality in term of revenues?
A: When I arrived it represented about £85,000 a year for us. Now it is £250,000. Most of it happens out of season so it is good for our cash flow. We’ve also introduced an annual pass at £13.75 for adults whereby if you come once then it’s free thereafter. There is a big advantage for customers in that they get a lot more for their money and can access the facilities all year round. It helps drive footfall and local loyalty. We also reclaim about £300,000 each year in Gift Aid contributions which helps us run the charity.
Q:What’s the attraction of zoos and aquariums?
A: They have living animals so there is always something different to see. You may not always see the big sharks but there will be other things to see. Besides animals grow and change. We have to ensure that there is something new to see.Typically we win customers at the age of four and lose them when they are teenagers. But we get them back in their 20s and for the rest of their lives. They will come back to us when they start dating, they will take their own kids or grandchildren to visit us.
Q: What’s so special about Plymouth’s aquarium?
A: We have the wow factor with the massive tanks and the rays and the sharks. We have some of the biggest tanks in the UK and some of the best native seas tanks in the country. Few aquarium focus on the native seas. They all go for coral reefs and tropical fish. It’s colourful. People are romantically attached to coral reefs. Selling the UK marine life is a lot harder. There is this perception that it’s grey, dull and cold. We need to challenge that perception. Plymouth Sound has some of the most significant marine life in Europe. It is protected on so many levels. The Tamar estuary is a marine protected zone, is a designated protected zone under EU rules as a habitat for wildlife, seagrass and offfshore coral reefs. Drakes Island is a nesting site for rare little egrets. We even have dolphins, porpoises and Basking Sharks.
It’s important that we tell that story. Which is why the first thing visitors see when they come in the local story. We have some of the best marine life in the UK with sun fish, basking sharks, seals and seahorses.
Jellyfish and seahorses fire up the imagination of people. They are also very hard to look after. It is a lot of hard work but the public love them. There is an important backstory to tell too. With so many dead zones in our oceans and seas around the world, such as the China Sea, where pollution has killed almost all wildlife, we are now catching jellyfish to eat. It’s known as fishing down the food chain. The lower down the food chain we fish the greater the impact on the environment and wildlife. In deep sea ecosystems, jellyfish represent 70% of the ecosystem. They’re not just cute. They have a huge part to play.
Q: How many visitors do you get a year?
A: About 300,000 which is more than the entire population of Plymouth. The more people We get through the doors the cheaper it gets to run the aquarium. It costs about £12,000 a day to keep the place going in term of heating and cooling aquariums, feeding the fish, paying the staff. That’s the same whether we have 3,000 visitors or 400 in the depth of winter. The reality is that for 6 months of the year we run a business at a slight loss. We have to manage our cash flow.
Q: What’s the aquarium’s turnover?
A: £3.3m up £500K since 2010. We employ about 56 full time and 25 part time staff all year round which goes up to a total of 110 during the tourist season. A lot of the seasonal staff are students. It is our policy not to use zero hour contracts because we have an obligation to our staff. The senior management team is only five-people strong because the last thing I want it is for the organisation to be bloated at the top.
Q: what are the aquarium’s main costs?
A: Salaries represent £1.2m while the cost of looking after the animals is £500K. Our energy bill is £350K. We have solar panels on the roof which help us save £15,000 a year on energyand e are looking at different energy efficiency measures. But it means serious costly investments. We are employing external consultants to see how we can run the aquarium more efficiently through solar and thermal energy sources.
Q: What sort of scientific programme is the aquarium involved in?
A: We have a large programme about sustainable seafood as part of our “Re-connect Project”. It’s about re-engaging people with seafood. The South West has some of the best seafood in the world but we export most of it to the Continent. We want people to better understand their own seafood and stimulate the local consumption. I was really pleased when we gained the Fish2Fork “Blue City” status for Plymouth. Like with FSC certified wood it’s about encouraging restaurants to sell locally sourced sea food and fish and increasing the knowledge of staff and consumers about sustainable sea food. We see it as a quality badge for the industry.
Q: How is that progressing?
A: it’s doing well. Plymouth is the first city in the world to be awarded the Fish2Fork award. We’re working toward “Sustainable Fish City” status. It’s about getting both public and private sectors involved in sourcing fish sustainably like the council, the MoD, the NHS, schools and large employers. By sitting the board of Food Plymouth we’re hoping to shape the food landscape of our city.
Q: What keeps you going after all this time?
A: I love the technical challenges of running a big organisation. I really enjoy people management. I enjoying working for a charity and knowing that what we do makes a difference. That’s what keeps me interested. I work really closely with Paul Cox my Director of Conservation and Communication. He is exceptionally good at Stakeholder Managment and is able to build a coalition of the willing and works well at engaging with stakeholders. If I were just running a business it would not be enough to keep me going. But because it’s a charitable business that keeps me engaged.
Q: When not running the NMA what do you do?
A: My fiançée and I have bought a run down property on and the edge of Dartmoor. There is a huge amount of work to do up there. It’s a four-acre patch ex-smallholding which has been neglected for 25 years. We’ve already spent 18 months shaping it but there is a lot to be done.
I used to do a lot of scuba diving, golf and mountain biking but I have not done any for a while. I need to get back into doing more exercise.
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FEATURE: Turning round the fortunes of the National Marine Aquarium
UF/IFAS, Others Improving Health of Marine Life and Coastal Economies
Newswise — GAINESVILLE, Fla. – University of Florida researchers will work with other scientists to study how to make the water and marine life in Tampa Bay healthier, which in turn could help protect Florida’s offshore ecosystems and fishing economy.
Scientists with UF/IFAS are the first researchers at the Center for Conservation, part of an alliance comprised of UF/IFAS, Tampa’s Florida Aquarium, Tampa Electric Co. and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The partnership came about after Tampa Electric, a subsidiary of TECO Energy, offered the Florida Aquarium 20 acres in Apollo Beach for off-site quarantine and animal holding in 2012-13, said Craig Watson, director of the UF/IFAS Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory in Ruskin. Watson suggested the partners bring FWC aboard because the agency was looking for marine enhancement centers, Watson said.
Then TECO, the Florida Aquarium, UF/IFAS and FWC formed an alliance to create the Center for Conservation on the Apollo Beach site, he said. The site is also near TECO’s Manatee Viewing Center. The CFC will try to solve aquatic resource problems, Watson said.
“One major goal is to attract universities and other research entities to the site in an ‘open campus’ situation,” Watson said.
Enter UF/IFAS. Two new researchers are in on the ground floor of UF/IFAS’ participation: Josh Patterson, an assistant professor of restoration aquaculture and Mark Flint, a research assistant scientist in coastal and marine sciences, are now at the Apollo Beach site working closely with the state government, not-for-profit and commercial partners.
Aquaculture is the process of growing, harvesting, shipping and marketing aquatic animals and plants. Through his research, Patterson tries to figure out how to grow corals and other species and use them to restore natural areas.
Patterson gave two reasons why aquatic restoration is essential for Florida.
First, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated in 2011 that Florida’s coral reefs have an asset value of $8.5 billion and generate more than 70,000 full- and part-time jobs. Additionally, coral reefs benefit Florida by attracting tourism, providing recreational activities, enhancing fisheries, protecting the coastline, and providing ecological services.
As a veterinary epidemiologist, Flint said he’s helping identify health issues in Tampa Bay. In particular, he studies sea turtles because they provide a great baseline for health in that body of water.
While there’s no single sentinel indicator of environmental health, Flint said he’s creating a surveillance program for Tampa Bay and Florida’s waters that includes multiple species, each giving an insight into the health of an area depending on how they use their homes.
“Sea turtles live for about 100 years,” Flint said. “They live in the same area for basically their whole lives, use the same foraging areas, nest on the same beaches, mate in the same areas. This makes them a great study for seeing what is going on in Tampa Bay.”
By Brad Buck, 352-294-3303, bradbuck@ufl.edu
Sources: Craig Watson, 813-671-5230, ext. 107, cawatson@ufl.edu
Josh Patterson, 813-419-4917, joshpatterson@ufl.edu
Mark Flint, 813-419-4917, flintm@ufl.edu
UF/IFAS, Others Improving Health of Marine Life and Coastal Economies
Martin Moe publishing updated edition of The Marine Aquarium Reference — Advanced Aquarist ...
Martin Moe, Jr. is the pioneering marine biologist and fish aquaculturist that largely shaped the marine aquarium hobby (and particularly marine ornamental breeding) into what it is today. His watershed books in the early to late 1980s to early 1990s helped elevate our hobby from casual pastime to a modern science-based avocation.
Moe has written many books and articles (including articles for Advanced Aquarist). His two most notable publications are The Marine Aquarium Handbook (the all-time bestselling saltwater aquarium book covering beginner topics all the way to breeding) and The Marine Aquarium Reference: Systems and Invertebrates (the bible of advanced marine aquarists everywhere for the greater part of two decades). Both books contained huge amounts of detailed information yet are extremely easy and delightful to read (even read front to back like a novel).
In 2009, Moe released the third edition of The Marine Aquarium Handbook by updating and expanding the original publication. Now The Marine Aquarium Reference is getting the same treatment after being out of print since 2000.
Moe will release the expanded and updated edition of The (New) Marine Aquarium Reference as a five volume ebook series, with the first volume The Chemical Environment available to download now for only $5.99. To give you an idea how much new information the new volume (and series) will contain:
- The first volume (of five) is 229 pages long. For comparison, the entire original book is 512 pages long.
- The first volume is essentially the first chapter of the original book with 180 more pages of information.
- Volume contains 92 sections. “The chapters include the Marine Environment, An Aquarist’s Perspective, Water, Composition of Natural Seawater, Composition of Captive Seawater, Salinity, Methods of Salinity Determination, Specific Gravity, including conversion factors, Titration, Conductivity, Refractive Index, Salinity Levels in Marine Systems, Distribution of the Elements in the Sea, The Elements, Major, Minor, Trace, and Ultra Trace, Avogadro’s Number, Natural Sea Water, Artificial Sea Water, Trace Elements, The Role of the Elements, 49 Elements of Interest to Marine Aquarists, 11 Methods for Maintenance of Calcium and Alkalinity, Alkalinity Replacement (Sodium Bicarbonate/ Sodium Carbonate Addition), pH, Dissolved Gasses, Dissolved Organics and Nutrients, Redox Potential, and References.”
According to Smashword (where you can purchase Volume 1: The Chemical Environment), “The other four volumes are Volume II: The Physical and Biological Environment, Volume III: Elements of Marine Aquarium Systems, Techniques and Technology, Volume IV: Marine Aquarium Systems, Foods and Feeding, and Volume V: Marine Invertebrates, The Organization of Life in the Sea. These additional volumes should be available by 2015.”
Moe cautions in his preface of Volume 1: “The (New) Marine Aquarium Reference is not an ultimate, up to date, completely comprehensive reference to marine aquaristics.” And while it is true that this book series will not cover everything the modern aquarist will want to learn (especially discussions about technology and latest trends), we think Moe may be a tad too humble. 25 years ago, The Marine Aquarium Reference served as the benchmark for which other aquarium reference books have been measured by, and it looks like The (New) Marine Aquarium Reference will continue that legacy.
Author: Leonard Ho
Location: Southern California
I’m a passionate aquarist of over 30 years, a coral reef lover, and the blog editor for Advanced Aquarist. While aquarium gadgets interest me, it’s really livestock (especially fish), artistry of aquariums, and “method behind the madness” processes that captivate my attention.
Website: http://www.advancedaquarist.com.
Martin Moe publishing updated edition of The Marine Aquarium Reference — Advanced Aquarist ...
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