cmcclain
Posts by this author
December 20, 2007
This is a notice that DSN has changed names to The Davy Jones News Report. Kidding...Because of the slowness of end-o-year, deep-sea related news, I decided to end the week with a discussion, with the thanks of Wikipedia, of the origins of Davy Jones and his deadly locker, Arrgh!
NOUN: The bottom…
December 19, 2007
The buccinid gastropod Neptunea amianta (Dall, 1890) is a deep-water species found off the North American west coast. Typically boreal, the range extends as far south as Punta San José, Baja California with depths usually between 300 and 1500m. In approximately 15 years of video sampling by the…
December 18, 2007
A new study in Nature: Geoscience suggests that current estimates of sea-level rise in response to global warming are too low. Rohling et al. utilize a "combination of a continuous high-resolution sea-level record, based on the stable oxygen isotopes of planktonic foraminifera from the central Red…
December 18, 2007
Mark at blogfish is the bearer of bad news this morning. Ocean acidification is permanent, even with reductions in CO2 (like that will ever happen)."For all practical purposes, this is permanent," said Steven Emerson, UW oceanography professor. "That's not true of temperature. But with ocean…
December 14, 2007
Kevin Zelnio is at the top of my list for musicians singing about invertebrates and the deep sea. The competition is small but Kevin is king.
Unfortunately, Kevin has some stiff competition. A one man band, Pagan Wanderer Lu, is leading a project to "highlight the plight of the Giant Isopod…
December 14, 2007
Behemoth is the only word that comes to mind as I discuss, with mouth agape, about the deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu. JAMSTEC, the Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, launched a venture in 2005 to take the deepest cores into the earth's crust following the route of Nautilus…
December 14, 2007
Christina Kellogg invited me to give a seminar at the joint USGS/University of Southern Florida College of Marine Science. Overall I think the talk went well, but you can be the judge. You can view the whole talk about seamounts here in all of its glory (warning the file size is very large).…
December 14, 2007
My wife felt it important to share this with me and I feel its my duty to pass it along. 100 of these lovely cards are only $139.00 with your own text printed inside.Send a bit of whimsy to your holiday card recipients with the Jumping Dolphin Holiday Card. A dolphin adorned with red and green…
December 13, 2007
I can't think of anything worse than this...I really tried. This completely ruined two of my favorite things Christmas and the ocean.
December 13, 2007
Then Tim Flannery's rather late review of The Deep and The Silent Deep should convince you to add these to your collection.
December 13, 2007
Not just whale bones but all bones. Osedax worms are those bone-eating snot flowers, purveyor of all rotten and whale-like, masters of polyandry, and more diverse than we thought. Researchers here at MBARI placed cow bones, in constructed bone trees, on the seafloor and found Osedax fancies them…
December 13, 2007
A whole sack full of news on climate this week. Yesterday, I enjoyed an excellent talk delivered by Joaquim Goes from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. He provided rather convincing data that the Arabian Sea is undergoing an oceanographic shift. Eurasian warming is triggering a decline in…
December 13, 2007
It's a questions that has plagued the life sciences for years. In the ultimate cage match to the death who would be the winner, a humungous squid or a sperm whale? Animal Face Off on the Discovery Science will tackle that question this Friday at 7:30 pm. Moreover, for your viewing pleasure the…
December 11, 2007
How large was the black octopus
That darkened the day's peace?
Were its branches made of iron
And its eyes, of dead fire?
And why did the tricolored whale
Cut me off on the road?
Chilean poet and communist politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalt, published this poem in The Book of Questions (…
December 11, 2007
"Song of the Dredge", presented by Edward Forbes to the British Association at its annual meeting in 1839. Sung in the tune of Cream by Prince (kidding).
"Hurrah for the dredge, with its iron edge,
And its mystical triangle.
And its hided net with meshes set
Odd fishes to entangle!
The ship may…
December 11, 2007
I am currently reading Descent, the story of the Bathysphere, Beebe, and Barton. Conversing with Christina Kellogg during a recent trip and the book forced my thoughts to the technological, and often psychological feats, already accomplished and those that will continue to challenge us in order to…
December 10, 2007
In case you've been living in a hole that doesn't have internet access, something is brewing on the internet.A CALL FOR A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for…
December 9, 2007
NEPTUNE is more than just a planet...a clever acronym for the North-East Pacific Time-Series Undersea Networked Experiments. The U.S. Canadian venture is series of cable-linked seafloor observatories, purported to be the world's largest. The project will lay 3,000 km of powered fibre optic cable…
December 7, 2007
Image credit: Image: (c) 2002 MBARI / NOAA. Red octopus (Benthoctopus sp.) hunting on Davidson Seamount. Deep-water octopus often hunt snails, crabs, and other small animals on the seafloor.
December 6, 2007
An underwater restroom built into the side of an aquarium located at a cafe in Akashi, Japa
December 5, 2007
As this holiday seasons quickly approaches, I am left pondering what I would like to appear under the tree.
1. The search for a tenure-track faculty position continues. It could be going much better. A nice juicy job offer or even an interview would be fantastic.
2. The most vital piece of…
December 5, 2007
A little something to get you past the mid-week hump.
CLICK the play button. Then CLICK and DRAG on the video screen to pan across the 360° view.
Embed this video in your blog
CLICK the play button. Then CLICK and DRAG on the video screen to pan across the 360° view.
Embed this video in…
December 5, 2007
There is a nice write up in Nature about the ARGO (Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography). Argo is network of automonous floats, now numbering over 3000, that record temperature and salinity in the upper 2,000m of the water column. ARGO has greatly increased our knowledge of these factors…
December 3, 2007
Photo from the Cephalopod PageThe reason I ask is the Giant Australian Cuttlefish, the world's largest cuttlefish at 23lbs and near 4-5 ft long, may be facing a tougher future. Giant Australian Cuttlefish, Sepia apama, are confined to southern Australia between depths of 0m-100m. One of the…
December 2, 2007
The ends of Permian and Triassic periods were a very bad time for marine invertebrates. Suffering, starvations, watching loved ones die...very hard times indeed. A whole spectrum of hypotheses is out there to account for mass extinctions including giant asteroid impacts, major shifts in…
December 2, 2007
OCEANA Europe is not pleased with European Commission's proposals for 2008 shark quotas for Total Allowable Catches (TACs). Two of the species included in the proposal are both considered Critically Endangered in the North East Atlantic by the IUCN and thus Zero TAC's are needed. For the spurdog…
November 29, 2007
Look familiar? Some of you may remember that Wes Anderson parodied this in the Life Aquatic.
November 29, 2007
A mosaic of Monterey Bay from photos I took two weekends ago on the steam back to Moss Landing. Click on the image for the full size (warning: large file size)
November 28, 2007
Yes, it is! A cephalopod cookie cutter and helping to protect the oceans for just $35...that's a slice of fried gold. This holiday season, Oceana is providing a unique cookie cutters to keep for yourself or give to loved ones as incentive to help protect the oceans. Supporters can virtually adopt…
November 27, 2007
In the Pose A Question post a reader asked...
What are your (research) interests? I personally tend to find some of the more exotic deep sea communities interesting-- hydrothermal vent communities, whale falls, and life at the poles.
The simplest answer to this is the diversity and body size of…