Coral Week is ON for April

Mark your calendars for the last few days of April because the tentacles are gonna hit the fan here and across the blogosphere from April 27 to May 2 when Deep Sea News asks readers "how deep is your love" for corals. This is 2008, the International Year of the Reef! But we're gonna try to squeeze it all into one big Coral Week between April and May, kinda like an online tropical vacation from work ... or something.

You may have noticed we celebrated International Polar Year just last month. Yes, it's true, it's other years, too... the Year of the Rat, the Year of Sanitation, its all happening ... who keeps this stuff straight, anyway? Doesn't matter now. Call it a special time in history.

Zooilogix, Malaria and Bedbugs, Oyster's Garter, and The Intersection have signaled their intention to play, and that's terrific. We're looking for more! Please join us by sending your material (to me, at tamucc dot edu) or by simply writing about corals that week. A general outline for the event is below the fold.

So, what's a reef? Technically, it's something big and shallow enough for a ship to hit. But we can argue about that. One thing you can count on for sure is that you won't see a lot of crying and whining about global warming and spilt debris at this website... unless someone else writes it. Which could happen.

The last thing we want is for your eyes to glaze over with well trodden stories of doom and gloom. Instead, we'll try to host 2-3 interesting and provocative posts a day with little known facts about deep coral ecosystems and their associated fish and invertebrates and hopefully we'll link to many more stories about corals in general. Dear lurker friends, please contribute. You make it special. We love to hear from you.

The core of the event will be a series on five ways deep corals are similar to shallow corals. We also plan to toss a few posts about global hotspots of deep coral diversity, ocean acidification and global warming, recent literature, and upcoming conferences. Plenty of pictures and videos will be on hand to make you laugh and capture your attention. Maybe you'll even find something interesting about cuttlefish, octopus middens (anyone?) or the lysocline (help!). I dunno. We'll see. Please join us.