petnoyer | July 22, 2008
The view from my desk in the kitchen is a sunny garden near the bay, but Tropical Storm Dolly is moving slowly west from 200 km off the coast here in the Gulf of Mexico. I am "in the Cone", but seem to be sidestepping the projected landfall as Dolly veers slightly southwest. The one question on my mind, though, is how and will this tropical storm intensify?
I know about Jack Diddly to tell you much about hurricanes, but my oceanography professors at HRI/TAMU-CC are seasoned professionals, so I can share a few things. Yes, that's "oceanographers" plural. Last year we had a reading class with…
kevin z | July 22, 2008From BBC News:
"A lobster that could be up to 100-years-old has been handed to the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth by a local fisherman.
The crew of the fishing boat named the lobster Mad Jack and discovered it weighed in at 12lb 9oz (5.7kg)."
His claw is as big as my freaking head! Read more at the link above, also contains a video story (still below).
kevin z | July 21, 2008Squishables! (via Bora).
There is nothing more adorable than a girl and her snail.
Is that Oswald? Oh wait, its the Deep Sea News token cephalopod squishy! Hi There!
Peter is a little in touch with his sensitive side though. He might prefer some furry mammal like a whale or something dumb like that.
Even on land, whales are swimming in a sea of plastic...
petnoyer | July 21, 2008
The supermarket in Corpus Christi is jammed and classes are cancelled the day after tomorrow at Texas A&M Universe in anticipation of Hurricane Dolly's landfall sometime Wednesday. Thinking of making bumpers stickers. We're about 100 miles north of the projected landfall destination in Brownsville, TX.
Stay tuned as I put away the kiddie pool and take down the wind chimes in anticipation of this projected Category 1 or 2 hurricane. What should I do? Pack up the family and retreat to Austin? Or stay put, and ready the camera? I just dunno.
kevin z | July 21, 2008The Blue Economy points to a supplement in The Guardian about "Cities at Sea". They depict the Lilypad cities in addition to homes that rise and fall with river flood levels in the Netherlands (see story in der Spiegel). One other project, meant for the open ocean, is the Freedom Ship.
Originally designed as a floating city capable of housing up to 60,000 residents, it ran into financial trouble in 2002. 3,000 people had signed up to live aboard in what was advertised to be a"luxurious "endless retirement cruise", free of taxes and government pressures". But the idea has been reborn as an…
cmcclain | July 20, 2008
During the Cretaceous our mammalian relatives were small and puny. They wandered around and tried not to become a warm snack for the reptiles that ruled the day. Insects began to diversify to eventually become the diverse group we now know and occasionally dip into chocolate. In the seas, rays, sharks, and all the bony fishes began to dominate and replace the way cooler cephalopods. Large marine reptiles still roamed the seas as opposed to just a lake in Scotland. The continents were still relatively close but rock n' roll, drugs, and women were soon to split them. The Atlantic was a…
kevin z | July 19, 2008This ship is EVERYONE's ship. Make it a reality!
Find out more at The Beagle Project, follow their blog, buy the shirt and donate a couple bucks!
petnoyer | July 18, 2008
The internet's abuzz about this photo of a surfer in Smyrna Beach, Florida (the sharkbite capitol of the world). Is it real or is it Photoshop? An article from London's Evening Standard has the most extensive coverage found so far. The blacktip apparently leapt from behind the surfer while a camera snapped away. The shark was discovered in the "digital darkroom".
Why is it important to the deep sea? Because we share these oceans with all kinds of thinking, feeling, swimming, and leaping creatures. That's the moral of the story.
Hat tip to Clark Thompson with a shout out to the 2-1-5, and my…
kevin z | July 17, 2008Why are we encouraging this behavior!! Doesn't everyone know that in the future they will rise out of the oceans to destroy us????
petnoyer | July 17, 2008
World Wildlife Fund has an entertaining new website called WaveForward where you can "discover your inner fish" by answering a few questions about where you vacation, what movies you watch, and what you like to do at parties. You can also learn more about Sustainable Seafood and Healthy Ecosystems. Check out the feature story "Buyer Beware" in the Coastal development section.
I was totally psyched to learn that my inner fish is a Hammerhead Shark, and that I am...
... an extremely adapted predator that uses my oddly shaped head to increase my ability to find prey.... my vertebrae are…
cmcclain | July 16, 2008Since I saw this on Youtube I can't that clever little jingle out of my head. The short animation and music is by the obviously talented Kojiro Shishido. Check out his channel for the rest of the videos. I am also a big fan of what looks like the sea urchins eating french fries.
cmcclain | July 16, 2008The Melbourne Museum is doing the unthinkable. They are unleashing a giant, rotting, stinking, mound of invertebrate flesh upon the public (July 17th at 11:30 AEST). One better they are going to hack into with all manner of surgical instruments. I just wish I could be there to view it myself! Luckily they are streaming the whole thing shebang on the internet. Unfortunately, you will not be able to savor the aroma of several hundred pounds of preserved squid over the internet
For you in the US who have no idea how to convert 11:30am AEST to your time it is 6:30 tonight in Pacific Coast…
petnoyer | July 16, 2008
People seem fascinated by the prospect of purchasing virtual real estate at Second Life, but if you ask me, Google Earth is a better place to stake your claim. For instance, I am studying deep sea-fans, or gorgonians, in the West Atlantic twilight zone between 50-150 m. Many of these have their first description in the reports by Wright and Studer (1889) of the HMS Challenger expedition 1873-1876. This expedition is a piece of history that could come alive again in a "Google Ocean" environment.
The main difference between then and now is that 19th century biologists studied dead and broken…
kevin z | July 15, 2008Who would of thunk it? Like Mark Powell recently stated:"In the "duh" category, fish are thriving in a no-fishing zone in Australia. After looking at graphs, the 10 year old son of one of the scientists said if you stop fishing, don't you expect to find more fish? Uh...yeah."
It also appears that this surprising result is repeated in the UK as reported by BBC today:
"Five years without fishing around Lundy Island off the coast of Devon have brought a significant revival in sea life, scientists report.
Lobsters are seven times more abundant within the protected zone than outside."
DING! DING!…
kevin z | July 15, 2008Madhusudan Katti has the latest and perhaps greatest Oekologie blog carnival ever. Its HUGE and with such a great and diverse selection. Well done Madhu! Go over and check it out now and poke around his very interesting blog called Reconciliation Ecology. He has a lot intriguing posts on how humans interact with their environment.
cmcclain | July 15, 2008Admittedly, before reading the actual paper I was a little uneasy about the latest paper in PNAS by Goldberg et al. The paper describes a deep-sea basalt formation that would allow for storage of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. The area is the Juan de Fuca plate of the Oregon and Washington Coasts. The authors suggest that the areaprovides unique and significant advantages over other potential geological storage options, including (i) vast reservoir capacities sufficient to accommodate centuries-long U.S. production of fossil fuel CO2 at locations within pipeline distances to populated areas…
cmcclain | July 15, 2008
Dear readers,
I am very excited to announce that we have exceeded 1000 posts here at Sb. This was supposed to be the 1000th post but Kevin and Peter screwed everything up. But of course since we've added Kevin, DSN has come one step closer to an aquatic Three Stooges.
I wrote the first post here at Sb on December 13th of 2006. In the short time here our traffic, regular readers, and content have increased. While still focusing on deep sea discoveries, we have expanded our coverage to often include shallow water issues of conservation, general marine invertebrate zoology, charismatic…
kevin z | July 14, 2008"Like we really really want to make this film and we feel really passionate about global warming and feel really upset by it. We just don't know why."
The tone of that opening statement resonates throughout the film. Randy Olson, of the Shifting Baselines blog and Flock of Dodos fame, set to create a "global warming comedy". He wanted to understand the debate raging on between scientists and global warming skeptics. Is it a failure of scientists to communicate on the level of your everyday individual? If that statement speaks for the general non-scientific audience of the United States, then…
cmcclain | July 14, 2008This Saturday July 19, 2008 from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's Open House. If you are in central California come on out and see our shiny oceanographic toys. Yours truly will be delivering a couple of talks during the day on seamounts. If my big shiny head doesn't draw you in thing come for the giant inflatable squid. You can get more information here.
kevin z | July 14, 2008Tonight on the National Geographic Channel at 10pm EST/PST Earth the Biography: Oceans. An episode on Atmospheres is before it at 9pm. "Explore how half of Earth's water originated from the planet's inception and how the other half was deposited by comets."