philippajacks.co.uk

My feature for Australia and New Zealand magazine on eco-volunteering in the Antipodes is in stores now….

Thanks to Biosphere Expeditions, Conservation Volunteers, Reef Check Australia and everyone else who helped out!

Click here to read it as a PDF

A story about aquaculture on a North Carolina news site gave me food for thought. The journalist visited a research facility which is developing methods of artificially cultivating saltwater fish (aquaculture has been used more for freshwater fish to date).

In many ways, I think aquaculture sounds like a sensible idea.

• Natural fish stocks around the world are now dangerously low because of overfishing. By farming fish in giant tanks, we can reduce the pressure on

I attended a brilliant series of lectures last weekend, as part of Biosphere Expeditions’ 10th anniversary celebrations. Biosphere Expeditions is a conservation organisation which runs scientific research projects on which lay people can volunteer.

In the afternoon, we heard about big cat conservation Tessa McGregor, who heads up Biosphere’s snow leopard project in the stunning Altai Mountains of Central Asia. We also heard from Chris Gerrard of the Wildlife Trust who set up the Great Fen Project in Cambridgeshire (see my… Continue reading

I was pleased to hear that Cancun has devised an underwater museum as a new tourist attraction. Not because I thought the world necessarily needed an underwater museum (more on that later) but because this is good news for the threatened coral reefs in the Cancun area.

The massive expansion of tourism over the last 40 years has led to the rapid decline in the quality of the… Continue reading

I’ve just been reading an update on efforts in Egypt to make the Red Sea the first plastic bag-free zone in the country.

Discarded plastic bags were causing the deaths of birds, turtles, dolphins and other marine creatures which swallowed or became entangled in the rubbish blown out to sea. I’ve dived the Red Sea a couple of times and been disappointed to see litter – it really makes your heart sink… Continue reading

As another aside, here’s a pretty cool video of a whale shark eating.

[Click to see video]

As an aside to yesterday’s aquarium blog…I love this story I dug up about an octopus in a German aquarium which has been juggling with the hermit crabs in his tank. He also short-circuits the tank’s lights every night, and throws rocks at the glass.

I know that shows he’s bored and I don’t agree with him being in there, but if the hermit juggling footage was on YouTube,  I’d probably watch it… Continue reading

Something else of interest in Japan – Okinawa is home to Churaumi Aquarium, the second biggest aquarium in the world. I’m not keen on seeing animals in captivity but it was part of my press itinerary so I went along to check it out.

It really is gigantic – 77 different tanks, and the main one measures 8 by 20 metres, containing nearly two million gallons of water. The star attraction is four massive whale sharks, up to 8 metres long.

The sharks were beautiful (and seemed happy… Continue reading