The International Marine Aquarium Conference - 2008

Dr. Ron Shimek


Dr. Shimek is an invertebrate zoologist with over 35 years of experience in teaching about and working with marine and freshwater invertebrates. He has taught invertebrate zoology with an emphasis on understanding the organism's role in its environment and how that role is related to the functional morphology of the organism. His research specialty is predator-prey interactions in unconsolidated sediments, particularly the interactions involving turrid gastropods, and scaphopod mollusks. Additionally, he has been a private consultant to federal, state, local governments and private businesses on the effects of toxic pollutants, mostly heavy metals, on marine organisms and ecological communities. He has published numerous scientific articles, and been an invited speaker at eleven international or national scientific or professional symposia dealing with various of the above topics..

He has been Chairman of the Biology Department of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and Assistant Director of the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. He has also taught at the University of Washington, the Oregon State University, and the Montana State University.

Awarded the 2001 MASNA Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Marine Aquarium Hobby at MACNA 13, he has published over 90 articles which have appeared throughout the aquarium magazines published in the United States. He has been an invited speaker at national, regional, and society meetings, where he has discussed and promoted reef-keeping based on knowledge of natural systems, and rationality.

He resides in Wilsall, Montana, where he is actively investigating the suitability of different organisms for the aquarium hobby .

ABSTRACT

“Currents And Feeding In Selected Corals”

The current type (laminar or turbulent), the current velocity and the food characteristics all affect feeding success in corals. As all corals need to feed to obtain the raw materials for tissue growth, these factors directly influence the success of aquarium husbandry of these animals. In this presentation I discuss the results of my continuing research project using a small laboratory flume, or flow tank, to assess feeding success while altering the variables of current velocity and flow type. From the results of my research, it is apparent that some of the problems with maintaining, in particular, some azooxanthellate soft corals, may be effectively impossible to overcome in most of today’s reef aquaria.

 

“It Is Not As Bad As We Thought; It Is Far Worse”

Man-made environmental changes are altering shallow-water oceanic ecosystems so rapidly that the complete ecological collapse of coral reefs is likely within a few decades. Most Caribbean coral reef environments have already been altered so much that they bear no resemblance to even the stressed reefs of a few years ago. Overfishing, selective removal of “keystone” species, changes in the carbonate ion concentration and oceanic temperature increases act together to ensure the extinction of most coral reef organisms. Culturing of reef animals by aquarists presents one of the few opportunities to save some of these otherwise doomed creatures. In this presentation, I will show some of the more recent data and discuss some of our options .