Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
There's a whole series of these animations from RG studios posted at YouTube, including Polar Bears hang gliding, playing golf, and on vacation in Easter Island. We would like to think they can rest easy now that they're listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), but environmental groups are claiming that loopholes in the ESA would still leave them unprotected against their biggest threat; global warming caused by man-made pollution.
It feels strange to rejoice the listing of polar bears to the Endangered Species Act, because its nothing to be happy about, really. They are now officially in danger of extinction. I would be more ecstatic if they were being removed from the list, actually. But ESA is a powerful legislative weapon to address the root causes of extinction.
No, I'm not talking about ice retreat due to climate change, I'm talking about exogenous chemical pollution accumulating in the Arctic that causes female polar bears to grow a penis. The condition is known as imposex.
Imposex also occurs in mud snails and dog whelks exposed to tributyl tin (TBT), a chemical antifoulant used to prevent invertebrate build-up on boat hulls. TBT is regulated in most countries, but the rules generally apply to large vessels, not small ones. I tracked it down in North Carolina estuaries and marinas one summer, cracking dozens of Ilyanassa obsoleta shells from sites near Duke Marine Lab to find the tell-tale sign.
Another pollutant, polybrominated diphenyls, or PBDEs, have recently been found in the fatty tissues of polar bears, especially in eastern Greenland and Norway's Svalbard islands. Thus far, Alaskan-American polar bears exhibit relatively low levels of PBDE.
...compounds similar to the PBDEs have contributed to a surprisingly high rate of hermaphroditism in polar bears. About one in 50 female bears on Svalbard has both male and female sex organs, a phenomenon scientists link directly to the effects of pollution.
Do you support the proposal to create a Marine Monument in the northern islands? Do you enjoy the slogan "You'll love how deep we go" as much as us? Do you find it absolute and utter bull-honkey that the CNMI legislature resolved to oppose the formation of marine reserve on unfounded grounds? Then help out Angelo to create the second largest marine no-take zone in the world!
I'm asking of you dearest deep sea readers to go over to the Saipan Tribune, CNMI's daily newspaper, and scroll down the front page to the poll and click "YES". RIGHT NOW! The poll will be in place until the end of the week.
They're at it again. Conservation group Greenpeace is accusing the crew of japanese whaling ships of "embezzling" whale meat from the whale "research". CNN reports:
The environmental group said "large-scale embezzlement" was allowed as an "open secret" by the Institute of Cetacean Research in Japan. The body oversees Japanese whale hunts, which are done in the name of "scientific" research.
The institute has previously accused Greenpeace and other organizations of "harassment" for interfering with Japanese whaling voyages.
The environmental group said that 12 members of a one whaling ship sent out at least 47 boxes of whale meat after they returned to a Tokyo port.
At the press conference, Greenpeace showed one box that it said contained about 52 pounds (23.5 kilograms) of salted whale belly meat worth up to $3,000.
Thats a lot of money for some whale! Like dealing drugs on the street. Can you imagine?
"What are you in for"
"Dealing in whale meat..."
Hugh Bradner died this week at the age of 92. Bradner was a prominent physicist and professor emeritus at the Scripps. He worked on the Manhattan Project and later designed instrumentation for the fusion bomb. He was one of the first Americans to make a deep dive using SCUBA.
Interestingly, Bradner is probably not best known for is contributions to physics but rather as the scientist that invented the wetsuit. From Wikipedia...
In 1951, UC Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner had the insight that a thin layer of trapped water could act as an insulator. He sent his ideas to Lauriston C. "Larry" Marshall. Marshall was involved in a U.S. Navy/National Research Council Panel on Underwater Swimmers.[8] It was Willard Bascome who suggested neoprene as a feasible material. However, Bradner and Bascome were not overly interested in profiting from their design and never marketed a version to the public; nor did they patent their design. The first written documentation of Bradner's invention was in a letter dated June 21, 1951
But if you know your wetsuit history two others are also credited with invention. Run down here. Jack and Robert O'Neil (yes that O'Neil) created that first designs for a neoprene wetsuit that they later marketed. Bob and Bill Meistrell also started experimenting with neoprene around 1953 and later formed the company Body Glove.
"That's got to be the longest-standing argument in surfing," says Matt Warshaw, a San Francisco-based surf historian....
"We developed the surf suit. I just know we did it," O'Neill says from his oceanfront home in Santa Cruz.
Meistrell, in constant motion inside the dining cabin of the company's 72-foot yacht, is similarly certain and direct. "I believe we did it first. And everyone copied us," he says.
O'Neill and Meistrell have locked horns in the wetsuit business and threatened lawsuits for decades. Each revels in his insistence that the other is wrong.
Bradner, the lone non-multimillionaire of the bunch, stakes his claim with professorial precision.
"The only invention I claim in this is the neoprene wetsuit," he says. "If somebody has documentation that precedes mine, I'd like to hear about it."
I'm personally casting my greatly biased vote for Bradner, the Ph.D. who didn't make millions.
Imagine you can redesign Google's logo. What would it be? Perhaps the two o's can be portholes in a submarine that is exploring the 'l' hydrothermal vent? Google tasked K-12 students nationwide to come up with future Google logo's in the Doodle 4 Google.
Doodle 4 Google is a competition where we invite K-12 students to reinvent Google's homepage logo. This year we asked U.S. kids to doodle around the theme "What if...?"
Well, the entries are in, and we couldn't be more impressed. We received thousands of wonderful doodles, and choosing 40 finalists for the public vote had to be one of the most difficult but enjoyable jobs at Google in the past few weeks.
So the kids have done their part, and we've done ours. Now it's your turn to help out by picking your favorite doodles. Your votes will help us select a national winner to replace our usual logo on the Google homepage on May 22, 2008.
NR-1 is the navy's smallest nuclear-powered and only nuclear-powered research submarine. Launched in 1969, th 145' NR-1 (known affectionately as Nerwin) was designed for deep submergence work on the seabed ranging from recovery, repair, implantation, and observation. Given its nuclear reactor, missions on the bottom can last day limited only by consumables. The submersible possesses bunks for these extended missions. Despite this independence, it generally towed and does not stray far from a surface support ship, currently the MV Carolyn Chouest.
During extended missions, NR-1 typically has a compliment of 13 (2 officers, 8 enlisted, and 2 scientists). I believe the crew compartment is composed of 3 steel (titanium?) spheres connected together. Three 4-inch view-ports on its bottom, nineteen 250-watt gas discharge lights, eight 1000-watt, two 500-watt incandescent lights, and 16 different low light TV cameras in various locations allow multiple opportunities for observation. One key feature that makes Nerwin cooler than other than any other research submersibles is the presence of a periscope (and lets not forget that nuclear reactor!). The hydraulic manipulator arm can lift objects weight up to a ton.
NR-1 has conducted many underwater searches, underwater repair and salvage operations, including the recovery of critical wreckage from an Air Force F-14 lost off the coast of North Carolina, EgyptAir Flight 990 off the coast of New England, the Challenger shuttle in 1986, and the discovery of the USS O-12 (SS-73) and 25 other shipwrecks in a 12-hour period in a Norwegian fjord.
As Peter can attest in 2007, NR-1 was used to survey the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary and other sites in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hiriam Breakes was a Dutch pirate, the second son to the Councillor of the Island of Saba in the Netherlands Antilles. In his twenties, he stole the ship and cargo of his employers and renamed the vessel The Adventurer. Almost immediately he came upon the Chilean vessel "Acapulco" which was carrying 200,000 small gold bars. The hapless crew were all murdered in a most despicable manner, and being the Acapulco was better ship than the The Adventurer Breakes stole the ship and refitted it for piracy.
Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
Hugh Bradner died this week at the age of 92. Bradner was a prominent physicist and professor emeritus at the Scripps. He worked on the Manhattan Project and later designed instrumentation for the fusion bomb. He was one of the first Americans to make a deep dive using SCUBA.
NR-1 is the navy's smallest nuclear-powered and only nuclear-powered research submarine. Launched in 1969, th 145' NR-1 (known affectionately as Nerwin) was designed for deep submergence work on the seabed ranging from recovery, repair, implantation, and observation. Given its nuclear reactor, missions on the bottom can last day limited only by consumables. The submersible possesses bunks for these extended missions. Despite this independence, it generally towed and does not stray far from a surface support ship, currently the MV Carolyn Chouest.
NR-1 has conducted many underwater searches, underwater repair and salvage operations, including the recovery of critical wreckage from an Air Force F-14 lost off the coast of North Carolina, EgyptAir Flight 990 off the coast of New England, the Challenger shuttle in 1986, and the discovery of the USS O-12 (SS-73) and 25 other shipwrecks in a 12-hour period in a Norwegian fjord.
