A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything

Came across this fun new book that alludes to, among so many other interesting natural history morsels, our research on fish “pee”. Here are some quick excerpts: “… fish ecologist Jacob Allgeier spent years working out just how much coral reefs rely on fish pee. The practical side of his work … involved catching hundreds of fish species and carefully placing them one by one in plastic bags of seawater … Allgeier estimated that when reefs are depleted of their fish, they’re starved of up to half of the nutrients available in healthier, fish-rich, urine-rich habitats.”

And we made fun of our Abaco fish pee guy for years – He is hitting the big time now!

About the Author: Craig Layman

My lab’s interdisciplinary pursuits provide for a multi-faceted understanding of environmental change in the coastal realm. We are ecologists, asking questions that span population, community, ecosystem and evolutionary sub-disciplines. We often use a food web based perspective, exploring top-down (e.g., predation) and bottom-up (e.g., nutrient excretion) mechanisms by which animals affect ecosystem processes. All of our efforts are framed within a broader outreach framework, directly integrating science and education, using approaches such as this website.