A marine scientist explains why she eats seafood—even octopus Conservationist Christina Hicks explains the tension between protecting marine life and depending on it for food, and how our seafood choices ripple across the world.

Is it possible to save our seas and enjoy seafood at the same time? 🐟🍴

Check out this #NationalGeographic interview with marine scientist and conservationist Prof Christina Hicks of @lec-reefs.bsky.social on sustainable seafood and protecting marine life 👇

🚨 Two funded PhDs (one int'l, one UK) - study coral restoration & corporate sustainability with us in Lancaster! Enquiries welcome, January 30, please share widely! 🚨

🪸🐠 Coral restoration (int'l): www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

🌴📊 Corporate sustainability (UK): www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

REEF CONSERVATION UK CONFERENCE: Bangor 6th December 2025

Learn more here: www.reefconservationuk.org/rcuk-2025.html

#coralreefs #conference #rcuk #coralreefresearch #marineecology #marinebiology

New paper!

‘Climate change impacts to upwelling and shallow reef nutrient sources across an oceanic archipelago’

Out now in Limnology and Oceanography @aslo.org

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

⬇️🧵

Out today! ‘Quantifying coral reef–ocean interactions is critical for predicting reef futures under climate change’ in @natecoevo.nature.com
#EcologicalOceanography #InterdisciplinaryResearch #CoralReefs #OceanicSubsidies

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

@sosbangor.bsky.social

New paper 📢 Coral reef depth zonation patterns are not 'universal' and may be disrupted by local human impacts.

We show evidence of spatially dependent effects of depth on benthic community structure across the Pacific Ocean.

🌊🧵⬇️

MOBS 1.0: A Database of Interspecific Variation in Marine Organismal Body Sizes Motivation Body size is a fundamental trait influencing an organism's life history, ecology, physiology and evolutionary dynamics. While extensive body-size databases exist for terrestrial vertebrat...

For many marine species, all we have is a name. Now, thanks to a huge effort led by @drcraigmc.bsky.social, for 85,000 species we have body size as well. Version 1 of the MOBS database is published today: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Enjoy! 🌐🧪

Rucha and Ruth on the research vessel after a day of SCUBA diving and carrying SCUBA tanks backwards and forwards (hence some damp patches on their clothes)

Javier, Laura-Li, Ruth, and Casey in the sea in their snorkelling kit during their last day of fieldwork.

Out now in Coral Reefs: 'Active and passive pathways of nutrient transfer in coral reef ecosystems'

doi.org/10.1007/s003... 🐚

Thank you to my co-authors and field friends from @lec-reefs.bsky.social and beyond for all their help bringing this piece of work together 🌊

Threats to nature in Labour’s planning bill | Letter Letter: The government’s proposals lack the safeguards necessary to preserve key ecosystems, including chalk streams and woodlands, warns Prof EJ Milner-Gulland

'Nature isn’t a “nice to have”, it’s all we have.'

BES member Prof @ejmilnergulland.bsky.social explains how part 3 the planning & infrastructure bill threatens both nature & delivery

Heading back to Glasgow tired but very content after a long, intense but absolutely fantastic week of teaching stable isotope ecology to this lovely group of scientists on the #SGSIE2025 course at the ExedraCenter

Our field is in very, very safe hands!

New paper 🚨 Our study finds that image-based CoralNet and in-water ReefBudget surveys yield similar carbonate production estimates across reefs, showing the power of photo-based analyses for scaling reef calcification estimates! 📷🪸🌊 #CoralReefs #MarineScience
rdcu.be/edXPp

🚨 New research 🚨 (and the first paper from my PhD)

How do we define good vs. degraded marine ecosystems? Our study evaluated four methods for setting ecological thresholds—and not all are equally reliable. 🌊🧵 (1/4)

a group of people are dancing in a hallway with a sign that says white water rafting Alt: a group of people are dancing in a hallway with a sign that says white water rafting

A commentary piece from me to you (...if you're an #ethologist / #BehaviouralEcologist) link.springer.com/article/10.1... #Macrobehaviour needs you! @asab.org @biorxiv-behav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @abcmicrogrants.bsky.social @besmacro.bsky.social

A thriving natural world is the foundation of economic growth and vital for health and wellbeing. Language that pits these against each other is unhelpful and deeply concerning.

Nature is not a blocker to growth.

The UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves has claimed that 'The balance has gone too far in the direction of always protecting every bat and every newt.' But how can this statement be true when the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world?🌍

Emergent patterns of reef fish diversity correlate with coral assemblage shifts along the Great Barrier Reef - Nature Communications Coral reefs have been severely affected by anthropogenic stress. Using long term data from the Great Barrier Reef, this study found temporal changes in the latitudinal diversity gradient, and stronger...

Great Barrier Reef fish reveal that large-scale macroecological patterns have changed significantly 🐟🐠

We found that changes in latitudinal diversity gradient & rising species turnover were strongly correlated with shifts in coral composition

Out now in Nature Comms www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Widespread inconsistency in logger deployment methods in coral reef studies may bias perceptions of thermal regimes Ocean warming is the greatest threat to coral reefs, prompting a need to accurately monitor in situ temperatures. Advancements in sensing technologies have led to a proliferation of temperature logger...

🚨New paper alert! Do you deploy loggers to monitor temperature in coral reefs, or any shallow aquatic environments? Do you shade them from direct sunlight? You should! 🌊🦑 journals.plos.org/climate/arti...

Excited to announce that I have accepted a role as founding Chief Editor at Ocean Ecosystems, a new journal in the Nature Publishing Group! It focuses on high impact research on marine ecology, physiology, and biological oceanography. check it out here oceanecosystems.biomedcentral.com

Birds are back - My news to me good news for dec 24 #OceanOptimism #BeyondTheObituaries

An important commentary from @nancyknowlton.bsky.social in @pnas.org about the fact that some coral reefs may persist in new degraded forms, but that this must not make us complacent. We need both local and global action now. Well worth a read....inspiring as ever: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Macrobehaviour: behavioural variation across space, time, and taxa We explore how integrating behavioural ecology and macroecology can provide fundamental new insight into both fields, with particular relevance for understanding ecological responses to rapid environmental change. We outline the field of macrobehaviour, which aims to unite these disciplines explicitly, and highlight examples of research in this space. Macrobehaviour can be envisaged as a spectrum, where behavioural ecologists and macroecologists use new data and borrow tools and approaches from one another. At the heart of this spectrum, interdisciplinary research considers how selection in the context of large-scale factors can lead to systematic patterns in behavioural variation across space, time, and taxa, and in turn, influence macroecological patterns and processes. Macrobehaviour has the potential to enhance forecasts of future biodiversity change.

For anyone newly interested in #behaviour and/or #macroecology since #BES2024, check out our paper that outlines #Macrobehaviour - a merger of the two to address challenges of rapid env change www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
Let's grow this community!

🌟Fantastic PhD Opportunity on the socio-ecological implications of declining Indian Ocean predatory fishes. With Kennedy Osuka and Kate Parr @liverpooluni.bsky.social CASE partner @cordioea.bsky.social and me @sosbangor.bsky.social #phd #SocioEcological #coralreefs
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Hi Rodrigo, I'm a PhD student studying the community ecology of motile cryptofauna on tropical coral reefs. Can you add me please? :)

Yep, sure thing! Just emailed it to you

@sosbangor.bsky.social @bangorcosepgr.bsky.social

Sure thing!

📢New Paper Alert📢 (and first chapter of my PhD!)

We show that scale matters when quantifying motile cryptofauna on tropical coral reefs 🦀

Paper in MEPS: www.int-res.com/abstracts/me...