Tim: 4567 books

Incorporated in 1888, Long Beach was the nation's fastest-growing city for much of the early twentieth century. Tim Grobaty, columnist for two decades for the Long Beach Press-Telegram, looks back at the major events and compelling personalities that shaped the city's formative years. Early settlers...

Humanity is at a crossroads. We face mounting inequality, escalating political violence, warring fundamentalisms and an environmental crisis of planetary proportions. How can we fashion a world that has room for everyone, for generations to come? What are the possibilities, in such a world, of collective...

A bird's egg is a nearly perfect survival capsule--an external womb--and one of natural selection's most wonderful creations. Shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2016.One of Forbes' Best Books About Birds and Birding in 2016. Renowned ornithologist Tim Birkhead...

One topic that caught my eye was a study about the changes in the population of yellow stingrays in various parts of the Caribbean.  Why should we care about yellow stingrays? In this study, published in the scientific journal Environmental Biology of Fishes, Reef Environmental Education Foundation...

At Atlantis Dumaguete, I saw a whole host of things I’d never had the opportunity to photograph before. The mandarin fish mating dance, a pregnant mantis shrimp, a blue ribbon eel and sea snakes are the most memorable to me. Lots of pipefish, sea horses and nudibranchs live in the seagrass, which...

I have always had a fascination for Goliath groupers. When I first met them, they were called jewfish. Itʼs common knowledge that Goliath groupers were nearly wiped out by overfishing up through the 1980s. They were protected beginning in 1990, and remain so today. Nowadays I see some talk from the...

Filefish have a protruding mouth with some very sharp teeth, similar to a triggerfish. They have narrow, compressed bodies with rough spiny scales and a front dorsal fin that can be raised or lowered. When the fin is raised, it resembles a file, which some reference sources say is the inspiration...

"While I was researching goatfish for the last column, I realized there is another group I have not paid enough attention to in my reef travels. Wrasses. This is a large and diverse family. Wrasses seem to be everywhere. They are quick and colorful. Perhaps some of the most vibrant colors on our reefs...

There are a few places in the outer edges of the Florida Keys reef tract that are a whole different world. Deep French, Deep Elbow and Deep Molasses are quite different than the shallower namesakes. The contours begin around 50 feet, and usually bottom out in the 80 to 90 foot range. Nitrox is the...

"Classified as a “nuclear” species, goatfish truly play a leadership role. Other species are attracted to the substratum-disturbing foraging. And when several goatfish are involved in the fray, the groupies increase in number and diversity.Single goatfish usually have up to three “follower”...

When I’m on the reef and I want a chuckle, I look for a fish in a box. Not a cardboard box of fish like you find in the bait shop, but a body box that fits perfectly and is color matched to its occupant. I bet I have seen some sort of fish in a box on every dive. On some occasions we find juveniles,...

"While the vast majority of observations during the day are while eels are resting or on a cleaning station, a few times I have seen an eel coupled with a grouper. The first time I saw this was on the Winch Hole. A graysby came to a stop on a pile of rubble, and a goldentail came out from its lair....

Cleaning stations are an essential element in reef ecology. All three parties - cleaners, clients and parasites - are part of a big matrix that runs the gamut from mutually beneficial to intrusive or harmful. When I first began my research, I thought this would be a no-brainer. A fish or turtle pulls...

"Hogfish got their name because they root around the sea floor, like a hog roots around the barnyard. They are opportunistic feeders, like their barnyard counterparts, but feed mostly on crabs and mollusks. We have three species here: Spanish, spotfin and the big kahuna, Lachnolaimus maximus.I...