From CNN...President Bush will announce Monday he is lifting an executive order banning offshore oil drilling, the White House said. If President Bush can persuade Congress, more oil rigs like this one off Canada could appear off U.S. shores. If President Bush can persuade Congress, more oil rigs like this one off Canada could appear off U.S. shores. The move is largely symbolic because there is also a federal law banning offshore drilling. Bush has been pushing Congress to repeal the law passed in 1981.
Show your support for the destruction of whales! T-shirt design is officially sanctioned by the governments of Japan, Norway and Iceland. Get yours now at Busted Tees.
We should be decimating whales right now! They are obviously vicious killing machines, bent on doing evil and destruction.
Basking sharks are heavily exploited from the shark-finning industry. The damage is compounded by the fact we know so little about their distribution in the sea. As a copepod mass-consuming filter-feeder, they follow and seek out their preferred prey. Previously, only 11 basking sharks have been tagged. None of which ventured passed the continental shelf into deep water. Mauvis Gore and colleagues provide the first evidence of the longest distance and deepest dives of a transatlantic migrating basking shark. Image copyright Chris Gotschalk, Wikipedia Commons. Using satellite tags, Gore and…
When global warming raises the sea levels and wipes out most of the large cities of the world. We can rest assured that our floating lilypad cities will protect us and form a utopic society where we will all wear togas and be peaceful prosperous people celebrating scientific achievements. Until the aliens come and destroy us that is. Check out this concept floating city, from the Daily Mail: "The 'Lilypad City' would float around the world as an independent and fully self-sustainable home. With a lake at its centre to collect and purify rainwater, it would be accessed by three separate…
It seems that Microsoft Excel* doesn't know how to average. Or am I missing something? I showed to the lab postdoc and we both we were wide-mouthed. How can I be confident that simple Excel commands are producing the correct results? This is pretty important since I am composing a table of mean abundances (per collection) for 55 species for nine factor levels for publication! The rest seemed OK, but I'll need to spot-check on Monday to remain confident. How did I figure out there was a mistake? One cell had a mean that was an order of magnitude higher than should have been possible with my a…
Chad Widmer, an aquarist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, just released a brand spanking new book on jellyfish aquarium maintenance. I volunteered under Chad (with their penguin exhibit) many years ago and shadowed him as took care of the Aquarium's jelly collection (doubtfully he remembers me with all the other volunteers). He literally had rows and rows of jellys, from the sea nettle, Chrysaora quinquecirrha to the flower hat jelly, Olindias formosa, and many others. At $25.95 (212 pages), I'm sure this book is going to be worth every penny! Chad knows his stuff and has many years experience…
Photo by Dr. William Precht. A recent study published in Science Express by Dr. Kent Carpenter of Old Dominion University and a consortium of nearly thirty coral reef ecologists has determined that one-third of coral face increased extinction threat due to climate change and local anthropogenic influences. Carpenter refers to the current problem as "the human meteor"; in reference to the meteor impacts that helped send the dinosaurs hurtling towards extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Era. At that time, one third of extant coral species went extinct along with dinosaurs. Online colleague…
Thanks to Jives, our New England correspondent, for bringing this to our attention! My favorite is below, a couple more under the fold. Click here for more.
In case you have been sleeping all day, flounders have been flopping all over the place! The maestro of science story-telling, Carl Zimmer, has produced in my opinion one of his finest posts ever at his new blog at Discover Magazine. Head over there now, don't delay!, to understand the evolution of one of the weirdest fish out there in Dawn of the Picasso Fish. Then go to Mystery of Mysteries where Adrian Thysse, FCD posted a really cool video of flounder development. You can actually see the eyes migrate to the top of the head! Fish are weird. Then round off your flatfish fun with Ed Yong's…
RIP Bob, RAM, delicious ahi No Tuna, Yes Cry No Tuna Yes Cry No Tuna Yes Cry Hey there fisherman, don't throw in your gear No Tuna Yes Cry Said I remember when Fishy used to swim In every part of every ocean Ransom Myers studied large fish Showed us all declining populations Good fish we had Good fish we lost Now will they be going away? In this bright future we can't forget our past So stow your gear away and Not Everything is going to be all right Fish are smaller each and every night Not Everything is going to be all right Fish are smaller each and every night Not Everything is going to…
Mr. Slybird has the latest and greatest Linneaus' Legacy carnival up at Biological Ramblings. It is an awesome blog carnival highlighting taxonomy, systematics, and biodiversity posts. They are looking for hosts for next month and beyond. Sign up and be a part of history in the making!
Unfortunately not in the way I hoped. You may already know this but it is worth reiterating because it seems to keep coming back to the surface. McCain and Bush are recommending a plan for offshore drilling. Once again this will not make a difference, especially where we are feeling it most--in our pocket books. First, the current supply of drilling ships will put a seven year hiatus on any offshore oil making it to the market. Second, our offshore oil reserves are insufficient to meet our consumption for more than a handful of years. These are not my opinions, not a liberal or…
Darren Naish has some excellent posts up to commence Sea Monster Week at Tetrapod Zoology. Check out the tadpole-like Hook Island sea monster and the duck-billed elephant monster of Moore's Beach, Santa Cruz. Make sure you tune in all week!
Blue Economy has the latest edition of the Carnival of the Blue up! Take a look around the Blue Economy website. This is the first time I had seen it and there is a lot of quality posts their! I added them to the RSS feed and look forward to keeping up with them. (p.s.-beware of stealthy ninja hydromedusas...)
Students from the New York City Home Educators Association (NYCHEA) took second place behind Blue Hills Technical High School in the 2008 NE Regional ROV Design Competition sponsored by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) project. Winners advanced to the international competition on June 26 at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, where NYCHEA rallied to take first place! This unique technology based competition challenged students to design and operate a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in a pool-based exercise that simulates a descent to 2500 m depth to survey and sample a…
In the department of amazing photojournalism projects we have The Whale Hunt by Jonathan Harris. "The Whale Hunt is an experiment in human storytelling. In May 2007, I spent nine days living with a family of Inupiat Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost settlement in the United States. The first several days were spent in the village of Barrow, exploring ramshackle structures, buying gear, and otherwise helping the whaling crew to prepare for the hunt. We then traveled by snowmobile out onto the frozen Arctic Ocean, where we camped three miles from shore on thick pack ice, pitching…
I unbeknown to me, St. Brendan apparently does not cover pirate attacks. No that protection is afforded by St. Albinus of AngersAlbinus had a big heart (as saints tend to have) and couldn't resist a call of distress. He used church money to free hostages from pirates. Obviously, pirate attacks aren't very common today, but in the 10th century, St. Albinus came in handy for the people of the walled town of Guerande. They had gotten word that pirates were on their way to attack the village and immediately started to pray to St. Albinus. The attackers were mysteriously deterred and the town…
That is the advertising campaign of the National Aquarium in Baltimore. I LOVE their new ads. You can even make your own aqua faces! Here is one I made using the aquafaces creator.
"The United States faces unprecedented environmental and economic challenges in the decades ahead. Foremost among them will be climate change, sea-level rise, altered weather patterns, declines in freshwater availability and quality and loss of biodiversity." So says a group composed of the heads of both NOAA and USGS in a recent issue of Science. NOAA, covering the atmospheric and oceanic realms, has a budget of approximately 4 billion employing 12000 employees, while USGS, in charge of the earthen and freshwater realms, is sitting at 1 billion with 8500 employees. Though NASA oversees…