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!
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.
I like things in the deep! I think about them when I sleep. It does not matter if they're red or blue, swim or crawl. Because I am banking my career or whether they're big or small! Seriously though if you ever read just week's worth of DSN, you will know my serious affinity to body size extremes in animals. Over at Evolutionary Novelties, there is a great post that should have occurred here on the giant ostracod Gigantocypris.
...and where it goes...how it got there..its trials and tribulations. This week in carbon sequestration theater we explore Little Petey Carbon and (sing out loud) Ollll' Mannnn Rrrriverrrr. Rivers are major transporters of material to the oceans and on into the deep. Below are estimates from Schlunz and Schneider's (2000) of just organic carbon flux (as opposed to total material). The numbers are fluxes in 10^12 g or 1,000,000 tons per year. That's lot of carbon! Certain events like typhoons can amplify the amount of sediment that is carried out to sea. New research appearing in Geology…
...is now up at Sea Notes, the wonderful little blog of the mighty Monterey Bay Aquarium
Lifeguards in the Mediterranean have a new problem, and they have overfishing, pollution, and global warming to thank for it. Stinging jellyfish invaded beaches off Barcelona a few weeks ago injuring 300 people and sending 11 to the hospital, reports the New York Times. Now patrol boats skim the water with nets and lifeguards post red and yellow flags to warn of approaching swarms. These jellyfish near shore are a message the sea is sending [to] us saying, 'Look how badly you are treating me' - Dr. Josep-Maria Gili, a jellyfish expert from the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish…
For those who care what blathering I have to espouse, my friend Peter Buckland of the blog Forms Most Beautiful, interviewed me regarding my work in the Deep Sea, my views on atheism and religion, evolution, science communication and tattoos. Peter is a nice guy who is doing a PhD in education at Penn State studying the Evolution/Intelligent Design-Creationism issue in schools covered the Dover Trial for the newspaper Voices in Pennsylvania. If you enjoy reading about science and evolution in politics and issues in atheism, I recommend bookmarking his blog!
ScienceBlogs has a new blogger in town! I'm excited about Built on Facts. Matt is a graduate student in physics at Texas A&M who blogs on all things physics-ey. He writes very well and is easy to follow. Go there, say hi, put his feed in your blog aggregator or bookmark him, and see a BFR! (Big Freaking Rocket)
OK, for the penguins out there reading Deep Sea News, don't get any ideas! My favorite kid's channel Noggin has a moose that sings songs in between TV shows, instead of commercials. I'm glad we gave up our TV service, everything is on YouTube these days!
Peter Ward is the man. I became acquainted with his work through reading is papers on the rise (and fall) of mollusks through time. His research on mass extinctions is seminal. You also got to love his inordinate fondness of Nautilus!
(image credit: Birgitte Wilms, National Geographic) (image credit: David Doubilet, National Geographic) National Geographic says it best,"Perpetually pouting with vermilion lips and probing with a hornlike proboscis, the shortnose batfish (Ogcocephalus nasutus) is not known for its grace. Most often it is seen half hopping, half lunging across the seafloor like an awkward amphibian. The "nose" acts as both shovel and fishing lure."
...it's a sea demon! Actually its a pteropod, a shell-less gastropod, and even crazier it is a simultaneous hermaphrodite.
...the ocean is our final frontier. Besides if we need to explore it before it is overfished, mined, covered in trash, or a sink for all our excess carbon. Mars can wait. Of course I say this in partly in jest. I mean I don't want to start another Volcano War. A country like the United States should worry less about being a military leader, outspending all other countries 20 to 1. If we outspent the rest of the world 18 to 1 that would be enough for both space and deep-sea exploration.
If you have been following the story of Andrea Marshall and the manta rays off Mozambique you may notice she responded to questions in the comments section yesterday to tell us she's working with elasmobranch expert Leonard Compagno to sort through "10 generic and 25 species synonyms, mostly without type specimens" in order to figure out whether she has a new species (or two). Ocean Revolution co-director Tim Dykstra contacted Deep Sea News, too, thanking us for highlighting the outreach and communication model the Whale Shark and Manta Research Centre has embarked upon. I called the science…
BBC News reports:"Less than a month after it was put in orbit, the ocean-mapper Jason-2 has returned its first pictures to Earth. From an altitude of more than 1,300km, the spacecraft is now feeding back data covering nearly the entire globe. Jason-2 is set to become the primary means of measuring the shape of the world's oceans, taking readings with an accuracy of better than 4cm. The information will be crucial to our understanding of both sea level rise and changing ocean currents. (snip) Its key instrument is the Poseidon 3 solid-state altimeter. It constantly bounces microwave pulses…
When I was a kid, I was infatuated with Legos. Who am I kidding? I am still infatuated with Legos! Imagine when I realized that my love of oceanography and my long ignored love of Legos could be combined. Below the fold are some wonderful examples of what $1000 worth of Legos and too much free time can yield. You can see more of these here, here, and here. All this reminds me several years ago when I spotted a Lego Technics set that was of Alvin. As a poor graduate student I didn't purchase it, a decision I regret weekly. Does anybody remember this or know where to get one?
Thanks to Michael Barton, FCD we would have almost forgotten to honor the anniversary of William Beebe's birth. He lived from July 29, 1877 to June 4, 1962. Here is a little info:"William Beebe was an American biologist, explorer, and writer on natural history who combined careful biological research with a rare literary skill. As director of tropical research for the New York Zoological Society from 1919, he led scientific expeditions to many parts of the world. He was the coinventor of the bathysphere, a spherical diving-vessel for use in underwater observations. In 1934, with Otis Barton,…
West Coast politics are hot. Senator Ted Stevens of the four seas of Alaska (Chukchi, Bering, Beaufort, and the Pacific) was indicted for false statements while the Governators of California, Oregon and Washington launched a historic action plan to address challenging ocean and coastal management issues along the Pacific Coast of the United States. From the Ocean Public mailing list: The action plan released today is the result of three states working side-by-side to identify problems and develop a comprehensive action plan to solve them. It commits three states to collaborate closely with…
SEED Magazine has put my article up on their website! Go there and take a read. Let me know what you think or address any questions, comments and concerns below!
... in a freshwater lake. I know, its not the deep sea but it is deep and it involves ocean-going submersibles! Lake Baikal is pretty interesting in its own right though. Its home to one fifth of the worlds liquid freshwater, hundreds of unique flora and fauna including the Baikal Seal and was declared a UNESCO World heritage Site in 1996.BBC News reports:"Russian news reports said two manned mini-submarines successfully plunged 1,680m (5,512ft) to the lake's bed. The mission is part of a two-year plan aimed at conserving the ecosystem of Lake Baikal, which contains about one-fifth of the…