Raven Yacht

Category: Vessels and Equipment

When I do deep-sea research, I want to do it in style. It may be salty, dirty, rough work with long hours but there is no excuse for not being civilized. That is why I always wear a three button suit and ascot. I require regular breaks with dainty cookies and espresso. We celebrate the end of the cruise with a Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame Rose '98. However, the research vessel doesn't always match my sophisticated taste. That is why I am planning to purchase the Raven Yacht when it becomes something more than a concept. No specs yet but I am sure it will be marvelous! Designed by Mael Oberkampf. Top hat tip to Toxel.

Posted by CR McClain at 9:02 AM • 1 Comments &bull

Perils of shooting IMAX underwater

Category: TGIF: Pictures & Movies

One of the best things about hot days in the summertime is you get to sit around watching movies all day. ScienCentral is offering exclusive footage and interviews from the upcoming IMAX 3D production "Under the Sea 3D" featuring cinematography's sweethearts Michelle and Howard Hall talking about what it's like to work in 50 feet of water with a 1200 lb. camera that shoots 3 minutes of film.

Howard and Michelle Hall are to me what Jacques Cousteau is to the Natural Patriot. They improved on his tradition, but don't necessarily appear to be having quite as much fun, you know, with the wine cellar aboard the Calypso, the beanies, etc.

Posted by Peter Etnoyer at 8:36 AM • 2 Comments &bull

Revenge of the Jellies!

Category: Critters

Posted by Kevin Zelnio at 8:41 PM • 4 Comments &bull

Relive The Te Papa Squid Dissection

Category: Cephalopods!

The Te Papa Squid webcast of the colossal squid dissection is now up for your long term viewing pleasure. To bad smell-o-vision still isn't a reality or you could really "live" the entire experience.

Posted by CR McClain at 9:32 AM • 4 Comments &bull

Too Hot In The Hot Tub!

Category: Seeps, Vent, & Whale Falls

Listen. I know hot water, mainly because I am always in it. A new study reports the hottest water ever recorded 464 degrees C (867.2 F). That so hot the water is in the vapor-phase supercritical region (say three time out loud), basically somewhere between gas and liquid. But doesn't water boil, i.e. go into the gas phase, at 99.97 degrees C? It does at 1 atm but at 3000 meters the increased pressure allows water to stay a liquid at higher temperatures.

Of course all of this reminds me of the classic SNL skit.

Posted by CR McClain at 9:10 AM • 3 Comments &bull

Making that deep-sea connection to mangroves

Category: Conservation & Environment

Think of an aquatic habitat as far away from the deep-sea as you can get without coming up on land, and we will find a connection to the deep-sea. River rock = settlement substrate. Kelp forest = urchin food. Beaches = spawning grounds for tuna food. Mangroves = seafood ... food.

Bumper stickers in the Carolinas say it best - "no wetlands, no seafood."

Now imagine for one moment that you actually depend on the ocean for your daily meal. That you couldn't go to the grocery store, or even a restaurant, for seafood. And, it's getting harder and harder to find your seafood. That's the story I want to tell you. It begins in the mangroves, but reaches into the deep-sea.

Read on »

Posted by Peter Etnoyer at 5:26 AM • 7 Comments &bull

New Scientist Goes Deep

Category: Carnivals & Link Love

Lots of cool stuff from New Scientist in the last week! Don't have much time to offer an analysis of them as I am down in North Carolina house-hunting. But I encourage you to "tawk amongst ya selves". Here are some wet offerings:

Giant Vacuum Cleaner Leaves Reefs Thriving

"To create the Super Sucker, biologists modified a system designed for gold dredging. Seaweed from reefs is sucked up and dumped onto mesh sorting tables on a barge. Native organisms inadvertently vacuumed are removed and returned to the reef and the seaweed is eventually used by farmers as fertiliser.
(snip)
The researchers could only remove about 90% of the seaweed, so they expected that the algae would grow back, necessitating periodic cleaning. Instead, within weeks, the remaining seaweed was gone and two years later it has still not returned."

Colliding Continents Create Havens for Life

""Temperature is certainly facilitating diversity, but if it was only temperature in the Eocene, you would have really high diversity in modern Africa," says lead author Willem Renema of the Natural History Museum in Leiden, the Netherlands.

"We realised these are distinct locations where you have major complex collisions between continents."

At the early phase of collision, Renema says, a lot of new and different habitats are created, such as rocky and sandy shores, and deep and shallow basins, all of which can accommodate a lot of different species.

The current IAA hotspot lies in the region of convergence between the Eurasia, Australia and the Pacific/Philippine Sea plates."

Arctic Ice Continues to Thin

"Christian Haas of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, and his team estimated the thickness of late summer ice at the North Pole in 2001, 2004 and 2007. They found that the ice was on average 1.3 metres thick at the end of the summer in 2007. By contrast, its depth was 2.3 metres in 2001 and 2.6 metres in 2004.
(snip)
Previously, glaciologists had measured ice thickness in spots by placing instruments directly on the ice. Records from 1991 show that the summer ice that year was 3.1 metres thick."

Hmm... I think I see a trend there!

Posted by Kevin Zelnio at 7:40 PM • 2 Comments &bull

Deep Sea Car Wash

Category: Ramblings

Angela was out documenting World Ocean Day in London last week and spotted a bit of the Deep in her neighborhood! Go check out her photos of other people celebrating the ocean in their own homes (and bathtubs!).

How do you celebrate the oceans? Do you also celebrate the deep oceans? Send me your pictures and I will post them!

Posted by Kevin Zelnio at 5:12 PM • 1 Comments &bull

Invert Pictures...TGIM?

Category: Biodiversity • Critters • TGIF: Pictures & Movies

Sometimes pictures are too cool to wait for Friday. My friend Tom K. sent these along for my enjoyment and now yours. The first is a close up of the bay scallop, Argopecten irradians, where you can clearly the ring of blue eyes that around the mantle. They are weak but sufficient to detect predators. The second is the red-footed or pygmy sea cucumber, Pentacta pygmaea, common along the Gulf of Mexico.

Posted by CR McClain at 1:56 PM • 4 Comments &bull