What's news at AIMS in 2008   The 'What's news at AIMS' pages contain press releases and general news items about AIMS, its research, its people, and related items of interest.           Media Release AIMS contracted for baseline environmental study of WA's Scott Reef The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) will undertake a baseline environmental study of Scott Reef, off Western Australia’s Kimberley coast about 430 kilometres north of Broome. The project is funded by Woodside Energy on behalf of the Browse Joint Venture. The study, which will cost at least $25 million over four years, will provide a comprehensive understanding of biodiversity, oceanography and ecosystems on and around Scott Reef. Full media release    Media Release First Australian CReefs expedition underway this week Knowledge of life on coral reefs will be boosted from this Wednesday (2 April 2008) when a team of scientists led by AIMS heads for Lizard Island, north of Cairns, for the first CReefs Australian expedition. CReefs Australia, funded by $3.4 million over four years by the giant Australian resources company BHP Billiton in a deal brokered by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, will address important questions about the diversity of coral reef associated species including how many species live on reefs, how many of these only live in this habitat, and how this diversity responds to human induced disturbance. Full media release    Media Alert March 27, 2008 All media are invited to the official launch of the first Australian CReefs expedition, next Monday (31 March). Read media alert    Media Release Corals in the Keppel Is region form new heat-beating partnerships In the first observation of its kind, a coral community in the southern inshore region of the Great Barrier Reef is showing signs of adjusting to higher sea surface temperature by quickly changing its main algal partners to types that can better cope with the heat. An AIMS field study near Miall Island, part of the Keppel group of 15 islands on the southern Great Barrier Reef off the Queensland coast near Rockhampton, has revealed a remarkable feat of acclimatisation; the only time such an event has been observed in natural conditions on a coral reef. Full media release    Media Release Reef fish lose their way as environment turns hostile Environmental stresses, including warmer and more acidic seawater, may be affecting the development of the ear bones in young reef fish, causing the fish to get lost at sea during a crucial stage of their development. Research by fish ecologists Dr Monica Gagliano (AIMS and James Cook University) and Dr Martial Depczynski (AIMS, Perth), with Dr Stephen Simpson from the University of Edinburgh and James Moore from JCU in Townsville, has found that fish with asymmetrical ear bones struggle to return to the reef. Full media release    Media Alert March 6, 2008 All media are invited to visit AIMS on Tuesday 11 March to meet scientists participating in a workshop on the growing issue of ocean acidification. Read media alert    Media Release Alarm bells as evidence of slowed coral growth on the GBR emerges Worrying signs that warmer seawater combined with a possible change in the ocean’s acid balance may be curtailing the growth of an important reef-building coral species have been documented by a research team from AIMS in Townsville. The paper, published in the journal Global Change Biology*, points to a 21 per cent decline in the rate at which Porites corals in two regions of the northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have added to their calcium carbonate skeletons over the past 16 years. Full media release    Archives AIMS news and media releases - from October 1996 to December 2007