cmcclain
Posts by this author
July 30, 2008
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…
July 28, 2008
Russ comments in our previous post
Au contrair. The record shows that Planktos was long advocating and involved in ecorestoration not merely recently. The Way Back machine easily proves this. The strawman of Planktos that was created and the ad hominem attacks that were and are the hallmark of…
July 28, 2008
Telegraph UK is running an amazing series of photos of great white attacking a seal.
That's going to leave a mark.
July 28, 2008
Rick points out that Planktos is back. Planktos is one of those groups who wanted to fertilize the oceans with iron to sequester C02 out of the atmosphere. Both Rick and I were skeptical. Of course we weren't the only ones.This group feels it is premature to sell carbon offsets from the first…
July 22, 2008
BrianR at Clastic Detritus brought my attention to a new wonderful bathymetric map of the globe. Despite his questionable loyalty to volcanoes, Brian knows a good map when he sees one and I agree that this one is indeed beautiful. GEBCO (General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans) is an initiative…
July 22, 2008
Maria over at Green Gabbro feels that I have printed a false and malicious post for the purpose of defaming volcanoes. I cannot be held liable if the accusations are true. Maria thinks that printing a list of "all the good things volcanoes do" will be more than sufficient to make up for their…
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…
July 16, 2008
Since 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.
July 16, 2008
The 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!…
July 15, 2008
Admittedly, 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…
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…
July 14, 2008
This 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…
July 14, 2008
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…
July 8, 2008
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…
July 7, 2008
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…
July 6, 2008
Saint Brendan of Clonfert is often referred to Brendan the Voyager. He is Irish monastic saint born in 484 in Ciarraighe Luachra, near the present city of Tralee, County Kerry and died in 577. Besides founding several monasteries across Ireland, Brendan made a legendary journey.
The tale of…
July 6, 2008
Comic book artist Michael Turner passed on late last month at age 37. Although young, Turner already had an accomplished much including art for Witchblade, Fathom, Superman/Batman, and various covers for DC Comics and Marvel Comics. He was American born and southern boy heralding from Crossville,…
July 6, 2008
Sure you can do that deep scuba dive in 47 degree Fahrenheit water off the California coast. Sure you might get to see some kelp, marine life, and spectacular rock formations, but 47 is just 15 degrees from freezing. Why not dive indoors in a balmy 86 degrees? Ahh, but you wondering how you…
July 2, 2008
Being a deep-sea biologist is not all riding around in a wetsuit in a zodiac chasing down giant squid at 30 knots. Sometimes I have to pipette giant squid samples for DNA analysis. All that pipetting can give me a vicious thumb cramp. Wouldn't it be nice if someone could do it for me! Better…
June 29, 2008
The previous post reminded of this video we posted awhile back.
From Youtube: This is the largest explosive burst that was observed at the Brimstone Pit during the Submarine Ring of Fire 2006 Exploration Jason dive J2-192. There were probably even larger bursts that could not be seen, at times…
June 29, 2008
Can a volcano be explosive in the deep sea? What about violent? What about mildly aggravated?
Historically, we've assumed the answer to be no. Explosive eruptions were thought to be absent at depths below the critical point for seawater around 3000m. Combine this with the lack of evidence…
June 29, 2008
Please note that the following post is riddled with sarcasm. Those whose delicate nature cannot handle such are strongly encouraged to not read this post.
At DSN we seem to have a track record for stirring the pot when it comes to Texas T. Early on, I did this post which generated some lovely…
June 27, 2008
Hat Tip to Matt for pointing us to this post at Ectoplasmosis. Two parts beautiful and three parts disturbing you're unlikely to forget this video for the rest of the day. It somehow seems a fitting video following my previous post. It tells the story of one man's love for the giant squid...…
June 27, 2008
Craig meet Fate...Fate meet Craig...Fate you can now proceed to slap Craig in the face.
In my 2 year reign tenure at MBARI, I have literally spent a total of two months at sea off the central California coast...a day here, a week there. But of course I haven't seen a giant squid nor did I expect…
June 24, 2008
News this morning is that Nautilus Mining has signed a 25 million dollar contract with Norway's North Sea Shipping to provide a specialist mining support vessel for the Solwara-1 project in PNG. Evidence that Nautilus sees mining hydrothermal vents as profitable (and feasible) and movement ahead…
June 23, 2008
New research suggest that the songs of blue whales are becoming deeper. In in 1962, John Hildebrand found that the frequency of call was around 22Hz, below the range of our hearing, but last year had decreased to 15Hz. Hildebrand explains that frequency comes at a tradeoff with volume. He…
June 19, 2008
Rising gas prices may have one more causality, one you many not have thought of...oceanographic science. Our main tool is the research vessel, large contraptions we use to steam across the vast oceans collecting data. The R/V New Horizon from Scripps take 39,000 gallons of marine diesel.…
June 19, 2008
Sometimes research comes about that really makes my whole week. This time it is a little diddy from Lindner et al. in PLoS. We could go through all the specifics of the paper...they sequenced 100 coral species from a single family or that family is the second most diverse group of hard corals.…
June 18, 2008
Guardian Online is running a couple of responses to Wallace Broecker's call for carbon storage experiments in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Worth reading all to understand the pros and cons for yourself.
CO2 disposal in the ocean is a dangerous distraction
Deep divisions
June 16, 2008
COSMOS magazine touts itself as the providing the "Science of Everything". The last issue (21) seems to deliver with articles on space elevators, Greenland's ice sheet, Pioneer, artificial intelligence, marine protected areas, California ground squirrel, scientific ballooning, and more. On page…