petnoyer

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October 3, 2007
Frederick "Ted" M. Bayer, 85, a retired Smithsonian curator in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology and one of the world's leading experts on marine invertebrates, passed away earlier today after a long illness at Washington Home in Washington, DC. Dr. Bayer published over 130 papers and books…
October 2, 2007
Imagine this at the Weather Channel. The announcer is sitting on a beach waiting for a wave that comes once every four hours. He sits there eight hours, at least, to notice the wave roll in twice. To formulate a testable hypothesis about the periodicity he sits in the chair for a week. To…
September 30, 2007
The Carnival of the Blue thing has really come together lately thanks to Mark Powell, the power of the blogosphere, and a dedicated online ocean public that includes you. Go see the latest line up of stories at Shifting Baselines-"the cure for ocean amnesia". Where else you gonna upload your…
September 24, 2007
Researchers used stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen on old and new parts of the shells of 44 Bahaman green turtles (Chelonia mydas) to examine changes in sea turtle diets between their juvenile and elder stages. The results indicate green sea turtles spent their "lost years' in the deep ocean…
September 20, 2007
CK tells me that The Scientist magazine is taking an online poll about your favorite life science blogs. The link to place your vote is here. There's no legitimate way to bribe you for your vote without raising questions of impropriety, so instead I will attempt to coerce you with insidious logic…
September 7, 2007
Clips from the BBC series Planet Earth Ocean Deep episode have found their way to YouTube. The clip embedded above starts in a deep (guessing 750m) gorgonian field on a Northeast Pacific seamount, and moves to follow a foraging nautilus that migrated into a shallow water reef by night, from ~400m…
September 5, 2007
Part one of four in a series about Greenpeace recent manned submersible expedition to two of the largest submarine canyons in the world, the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska. One of the core principles taught to me and other students at Duke's Nicholas…
September 5, 2007
Part two of four in a series about Greenpeace recent manned submersible expedition to two of the largest submarine canyons in the world, the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska. So, why would an environmental organization like Greenpeace go to the trouble…
September 5, 2007
Part three of four in a series about Greenpeace recent manned submersible expedition to two of the largest submarine canyons in the world, the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska. The following exclusive interview was conducted by Deep Sea News over email…
September 5, 2007
Part four of four in a series about Greenpeace recent manned submersible expedition to two of the largest submarine canyons in the world, the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska. The following exclusive interview was conducted by Deep Sea news over email…
September 5, 2007
The Corpus Christi Caller Times reported Monday that a record number of Kemp's ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempii) nests were found this year on South Texas beaches, making the Padre Island National Seashore the hottest nesting spot for sea turtles in the United States. To give you an idea of…
September 4, 2007
Seafloor mining continues to gain popularity in response to discoveries of diamond beds off Namibia and mineral deposits off Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. Today the Cape Business News announced another player bidding for these deep riches, the Cape Town based Marine and Mineral Projects. The…
August 31, 2007
Let's make Friday a special occaision here at Deep Sea News. Last Friday we posted a geeky fish video and an online video game, along with the usual photo. Folks were so thankful for the entertainment that our gross national product probably dropped by one millionth of one percent. We should make…
August 30, 2007
A microscopic baby octopus was collected in plankton samples from a 2005 expedition to the Sargasso Sea. National Geographic posts more photos at their website here.
August 30, 2007
Think of the changing seasons around you, and the way plants and animals respond to these changes. Trees change color in response to decreasing light levels. Birds migrate, and bears go into hibernation as winter approaches. So, we wonder, what are the seasonal cues in the abyss? Are summer days…
August 28, 2007
Poor Aussies in Sydney got nailed by a giant mixture of salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed that whipped up into a froth by storms off Queensland. The giant sea foam buried beaches and buildings, and stretches for 30 meters out into the Pacific. The kids are…
August 28, 2007
The Census of Marine Life on Seamounts (CenSeam) project released Newsletter No 8 earlier this month. Visit their website to download this and other editions. This particular issue is one of their most extensive newsletters ever, featuring interesting stories and articles about: -A photographic…
August 27, 2007
Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to more dissolved CO2 in the world's oceans. In turn this will increase the hydrogen ion concentration in seawater, and lower pH from pre-industrial levels (8.179) to present day levels (8.104) in a process known as "ocean acidification".…
August 24, 2007
Between the online game with the ROV and this movie from YouTube, you'll be sure to get no work done today. This "Fish Guys" movie is a very funny short film about graduate pursuits in museum collections from the 48 Hour Film Project. That means the whole thing was conceived and produced within…
August 23, 2007
So I'm buzzin' through the internet looking for inspiration towards a logo for a new project from the Harte Research Institute when I stumble upon this website touting the wonders of "Neptune Krill Oil" (NKO) - "the purest combination of phospholipids, antioxidants, omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9…
August 14, 2007
How many times have you seen pallets of bottled water coming off the forklift at the grocery store, and felt your stomach turning in disgust? Never? Not once? That's not enough! You should be sick. When you see soccer coaches and construction workers throwing cases of little plastic water bottles…
August 13, 2007
It's a good thing marine biologist Buki Rinkevich and his colleagues at the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Station decided to test the effects of detergents on corals before using them to clean up an oil spill. The researchers reported recently in Environmental Science and…
August 10, 2007
"Holy jumping jellyfish, Batman. Watch out! That thing's heading straight for us." "Not to fear, young ward. That's Enypniastes sp., a swimming sea cucumber." "A pelagic deposit feeder, I should have known..." "...from the cape alone. You can access the video from Deep Slope Expedition 2007 at the…
August 7, 2007
It stands to reason that a place blessed with the mountains, beaches, and emerald forests along the Olympic Coast of Washington State in Pacific Northwest should be equally beautiful, productive, rich, and wonderful on the continental shelf just offshore- 200m or 300m below the tideline. The…
July 18, 2007
What is Frazier to Cheers? What is Laverne and Shirley to Happy Days? Like one situation comedy spins off another, DSN pinch hitter Kevin Zelnio spins up a new blog over at blogspot called The Other 95%. Kevin's title refers to the invertebrate phyla, which make up 95% of the animal kingdom, but…
July 9, 2007
Even if you're not pregnant, you have to be worried about toxic mercury levels in fish. Mercury is a highly reactive heavy metal that's present in raw fish, like sushi, and in canned fish, like tuna. Exposure to toxic levels of can cause damage to the nervous system and the renal system, but long…
July 5, 2007
A team of marine biologists, geologists, and oceanographers studying chemosynthetic communities around hydrocarbon seeps aboard the Deep Slope Expedition 2007 research vessel RV Ron Brown successfully recovered a time-lapse camera from waters more than 2000m deep in the Gulf of Mexico. "Life goes…
June 28, 2007
Scientists from around the world will attend a meeting in the Galapagos Islands at the end of June to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the deep-sea hydrothermal vent system. The meeting will address recent issues in vent science, including plans to mine remnants of these…
June 25, 2007
Score one for Oceana and the New England Fisheries Management Council. Actually, score them fifteen. The two groups recently announced they have laid the foundations for designating 15 deep-sea canyons off the coast of New England as Habitat Areas of Particular Concern in an effort to build a more…
June 19, 2007
Bathymetric image of the Nazare Canyon off the coast of Portugal. Photo courtesy of the BBC. The BBC has released a short news piece on an underwater expedition to the Nazare canyon off of Portugal expedition by their ROV ISIS, (a ROV talked about previously on DSN). One of their discoveries thus…