Colorful Hawaiian Fish Named in Honor of President Obama

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | December 21, 2016 02:36pm ET

Next time he's vacationing in Hawaii, President Barack Obama might just bump into his new namesake: a pink, yellow and blue coral-reef fish that researchers have named in the president's honor.

Researchers discovered the previously unknown fish species, now dubbed Tosanoides obama, during a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expedition to Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in June 2016.

"We decided to name this fish after President Obama to recognize his efforts to protect and preserve the natural environment, including the expansion of Papahānaumokuākea," the study's lead author, Richard Pyle, a scientist at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, said in a statement. "This expansion adds a layer of protection to one of the last great wilderness areas on Earth." 

Obama expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument on Aug. 26 after Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), along with conservationists and marine scientists, urged the president to protect the region's waters and marine life. The monument is now 582,578 square miles (1.5 million square kilometers), an area more than twice the size of Texas, that holds the title for largest permanent protected marine area on the planet. (The 598,000-squaremile, or 1.55 million square km, marine reserve in Antarctica's Ross Sea is larger, but that area is protected for only a 35-year period, Live Science reported in October.)

During a September trip to Midway Atoll, an island within the monument, Obama met with legendary scientist, conservationist and deep-ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, who gave the president a photograph of T. obama. The footage of the visit will be shown on the National Geographic global broadcast special, "Sea Of Hope," which will air Jan. 15, 2017.

Fishy find

T. obama is small, just 2.4 inches (6.1 centimeters) long, and it lives deep underwater, about 300 feet (90 meters) under the surface. Deep coral reefs grow at this depth, but despite the diversity of animals that live there, this so-called "twilight zone" isn't well-explored by marine biologists, the researchers said.

When scientists first spotted the small pink fish, they thought it was a Pseudanthias thompsoni (another tropical fish species), but a prominent red spot on the end of the animal's dorsal fin indicated that the fish was a previously unidentified species, the researchers wrote in the study.

Read more  

Exclusive: A Fish Called Obama—Newly Discovered Species Named for President

In tribute to his marine conservation efforts in the Pacific, scientist names new species after Hawaii-born president.

This fish will be named in honor of President Obama for his commitment to protecting nature through the expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

 

By Craig Welch

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2, 2016

MIDWAY ATOLL, Pacific Ocean—The maroon and gold creature was found 300 feet deep in the waters off Kure Atoll. It's the one fish known to live only within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, a pristine expanse of coral reefs and seamounts home to millions of seabirds, endangered turtles, endangered monk seals, and more than 7,000 species.

So scientists thought it only fitting to name this fish, in the genus Tosanoides, after President Barack Obama, who dramatically expanded Papahānaumokuākea last week, creating the largest swath of protected land or water on Earth, an area roughly twice the size of Texas.

On Midway Atoll on Thursday, with a Hawaiian monk seal watching from the beach, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle—a persistent presence in conservationists’ decades-long push to protect these pristine waters—presented the Hawaii-born president with a framed plaque of his new namesake marine species. (Read our exclusive Obama interview.)

Continued 

President Obama pledges to fight wildlife crime

Obama's wildlife crime ‘taskforce' is vital first step in battle against poachers

President Barack Obama's pledge to tackle wildlife crime and join the fight against elephant and rhino poachers is a vital first step that must be followed by the other G8 nations, say Care for the Wild.

Task force

President Obama has announced the formation of a task-force to combat the illegal trafficking of wildlife, an industry which is worth $10 billion a year and leads to crime, terrorism and national security issues.

Up to $10 million has also been earmarked specifically to help tackle poaching for ivory and rhino horn. Philip Mansbridge, CEO of Care for the Wild International, which has been running a G8 or Too Late campaign, welcomed the move:

"Elephants and rhinos are dying in huge numbers, and the scale of the poaching now means that this is a world problem, not something individual countries should have to deal with alone. President Obama's pledge and cash is a vital first step in turning international awareness of this problem into international action.

More

Secret Service investigates GIANT LIZARDS as 'potential threat' to Obama on Thailand visit

They are supposed to be prepared to handle most anything, yet a harmless lizard managed to scare the daylights out of U.S. Secret Service agents preparing a residence for President Obama's trip to Thailand.

Thai officials, however, reassured the U.S. Secret Service that the massive lizards found on the Government House grounds were not the dangerous Komodo dragons, but the harmless, lazy water lizards.

Both belong to the monitor lizard family and can grow up to 200 pounds and ten feet long.

The discovery was made after the secret service detail mistook the relatively harmless water monitors for the carnivorous komodo dragons as the team conducted security sweep inspections of home ahead of President Obama's visit that begins Sunday, the Bangkok Post reported.

while not as aggressive as Komodo dragons, water lizards can be defensive when threatened and use their tail, claws, and jaws when fight off predators.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2234474/Obama-Thailand-visit-Secret-Service-gets-scare-lifetime-discovering-giant-lizards-residence.html#ixzz2D2ja808P