petnoyer | April 21, 2008Gaelin Rosewaks was one of a dozen people who changed my ideas about what it means to live an inspired life when I dropped out of the film business after ten years in Hollywood, and enrolled in the summer session at Duke University Marine Lab looking for a way to turn my life around, get back to school, and become involved in things that really mattered.
Now, Gaelin's off to the Bering Sea probably for the third or fourth time, she's loving it, and she's blogging about it at Global Ocean Exploration. She's definitely one of my heroes. Everything seemed fascinating simply by virtue of the fact…
petnoyer | April 20, 2008Leighton Rolley, a systems technician on the "world's most advanced research ship" the RRS James Cook, used a remotely operated vehicle capable to 5000 m depth to plant the Welsh dragon flag in the waters of the Galapagos, in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, according to BBC News. The shipboard team unfurled the biodegradable Welsh flag at 3500m.
The ceremony was not specifically part of the mission, apparently. Cardiff University researchers were on board conducting marine seismic work (using air guns) and collecting rock samples using the ISIS rock drill. The RSS James Cook website hosts…
kevin z | April 18, 2008Banksy is a prolific street graffiti artist from England who recently made the cover of Science magazine. His work often points out life's ironies and carries a political or societal message. For more from Banksy, click here. More of his art can be seen in the Flickr pool.
More under the fold...
petnoyer | April 18, 2008
Lophelia pertusa is a framework building scleractinian coral found between 200 - 1000m in the Gulf of Mexico and around the world. Suspension feeding galatheoid crabs are typically associated with Lophelia thickets and bioherms. Their chelipeds are outstretched to capture particulate organic matter from the water column. Notice the marine snow 'falling' in the background. The coral framework provides habitat to numerous associated species of fish and invertebrates. Special thanks to Dr. Ian MacDonald from TAMU-CC for contributing the picture.
Tune in for Coral Week April 27- May 3 at Deep…
kevin z | April 17, 2008Guess who is the Encyclopedia of Life's biodiversity of the week?? The cuttlefish!!
Diver: "awww wookit da purdy wittle squidy!"
Cuttlefish: "Who you calling a squid punk? Why you backing off? I thought you might want to "cuttle" a bit... thats what I thought..."
Hat tip to Michael Barton, FCD.
kevin z | April 16, 2008Teuthologist Dr. Steve O'Shea and Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the colossal squid. Photo credit: Kathrin Bolstad
Monster squid hunter extraordinaire Dr. Steve O'Shea will be dissecting giant and colossal squids and it will be webcasted LIVE from Te Papa Museum in New Zealand. It will be an event-filled week as Dr. O'Shea and his squidaliscious team of crack experts unlock the mysteries of deep sea squids, starting with the thawing!
"Thawing the frozen squid is the first challenge. There have been many suggestions (inlcuding 462 suggestions from the public!) about how to carry out this process…
cmcclain | April 16, 2008
The good news is...more ocean!
Svetlana Jevrejeva of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, UK, says a new, more accurate reconstruction of sea levels over the past 2000 years suggests that the prediction of a an 18-59 centimetre rise by 2100 made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is wildly inaccurate. Meeting at European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna, Austria, this week, researchers including Jevrejeva said in a statement that the pace at which sea levels are rising is accelerating. They predict they will be 0.8-1.5 metres higher by next century.
I managed to find…
petnoyer | April 16, 2008Did you know that Evel Kneivel was an "Ecodaredevil" before he started jumping cars and canyons? He hitch hiked from Butte, Montana to Washington, D.C. in the cold of winter to help save elk from slaughter in Yellowstone Park.
That's one reason J Nichols dreamed up the Ecodaredevil award for his Earth Day presentation at Duke University in Durham, NC at 6pm in the Bryan Center on April 22.
Miss Krysten Knievel, daughter of acting daredevil Robbie Kneivel, will receive the first inaugural "Ecadaredevil" award following what promises to be an inspired lecture and presentation. Check out J's…
petnoyer | April 15, 2008Mark your calendars for the last few days of April because the tentacles are gonna hit the fan here and across the blogosphere from April 27 to May 2 when Deep Sea News asks readers "how deep is your love" for corals. This is 2008, the International Year of the Reef! But we're gonna try to squeeze it all into one big Coral Week between April and May, kinda like an online tropical vacation from work ... or something.
You may have noticed we celebrated International Polar Year just last month. Yes, it's true, it's other years, too... the Year of the Rat, the Year of Sanitation, its all…
kevin z | April 15, 2008According to CNN.com, the Nisshin Maru, a japanese whaling ship, returned from the "field season" with only half its intended sample size for its scientific whaling.
"Japan's top whaling ship returned to port Tuesday, leading a fleet that killed just 55 percent of its season target of 1,000 whales amid violent protests in the Antarctic.
The Nisshin Maru made a special stop in Tokyo so the coast guard could inspect it for possible damage sustained during clashes in which animal rights activists tossed containers of rancid acid at the whalers.
The fleet killed 551 minke whales this season, far…
kevin z | April 15, 2008As part of Earth Day festivities next week, I will be a guest with Karen of the Beagle Project and Rick of Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice and Sunsets on Jason's Cephalopodcast. This will part of a 24-hour webcastathon for Earth Day. Jason's theme for his segment is "The Other 71%" in reference to the amount Earth's surface covered by oceans.
There will also be opportunities to participate in the dialog through chat rooms while the webcast is live streaming, so I encourage everyone to tune in at 10pm GMT (6pm Eastern US time) and join the conversation! There will be more details on how to…
kevin z | April 15, 2008And blik surface graphics has them! Nothing says sweet dreams like an octopus dragging you kids teddy bear to the ocean depths.
Hat tip to Miriam.
cmcclain | April 14, 2008The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle openings, and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle…
cmcclain | April 14, 2008The unexpected warmth this weekend made diving in the cold Monterey waters just a little more tolerable. Jim on the other hand believes 50 degrees, windy, and drizzly is a reason to load up the car and head to the beach with the kids. What do you expect of someone with questionable invertebrate affinities? Jim kicks off the first beach excursion of the year to Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA.
Over at Island Rambles a post and pictures on a superpod! A superpod is a rare conglomerate of smaller orca pods that moves up and down the coast offing salmon, stealing children, tormenting…
petnoyer | April 14, 2008As Kevin Zelnio mentions below, its National Poetry Month, but little did the man know its Copycat Day in Corpus Christi, too. Isn't it great when the stars align? Kevin and I must have been riding the same bow wave because cephalopods and great poets were on our mind. I heard this yesterday from the great American poet Bob Dylan, just one of a few thousand recently acquired to my (gotta love) ITunes.
115th Dream - Bob Dylan
I was riding on the Mayflower
When I thought I spied some land
I yelled for Captain Arab
I have yuh understand
Who came running to the deck
Said, "Boys, forget the whale…
kevin z | April 13, 2008Its National Poetry Month and the deep sea has struck the creativity and imagination of many passionate people, myself and my 2 blogging colleagues here as well. Here is a poem from Rudyard Kipling.
The Deep-Sea Cables
The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar --
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world -- here on the tie-ribs of earth
Words, and the words of men, flicker…
kevin z | April 13, 2008Researchers have been very concerned about the paucity of females of Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis, an octopus inhabiting the hydrothermal vent community of the Eastern Pacific Rise. One senior, conservative squid researcher even went so far as to comment that this octopus was some part of a "queer spineless agenda." Others scoffed at his remarks and asked for a "civil union" between the fighting factions of cephalopodologists.
Finally, after hundreds of ten years, the mystery has been solved. A single female Vulcanoctopus was captured in 2004 and 4 years later has been described by González…
petnoyer | April 13, 2008
So, if the poles are slowly melting away, will icy habitats actually increase their extent as icebergs disperse to low latitudes and pack ice fractures? If you're a glacial squid (pictured above) you might see your habitat opening-up a little bit, unlucky for you because you're 'an abundant mid-water Antarctic species, and an important prey item for larger predators'.
Is Antarctica a polar desert or is every polynya an oasis? Who knows? It's the last major land mass of the world that remains to be explored. Ice edge environments are highly productive, though. Localized phytoplankton blooms…
cmcclain | April 11, 2008Probably, in response to all the trash talk I've been dishing out, pontificating on the superiority of Molluks to echinoderms, Dr. Echinoderm himself started a blog. DSN has featured Chris Mah at least a few times in the past. Chris's new venture, Echinoblog, will be "an ongoing venue for collecting and presenting perspectives, popular news, and articles on the Echinodermata!" I guess Chris has brought it!
Second up is Erin's new blog She Tells Fish Tales. It is all about the adventures of the poor in America, namely graduate students in Marine Biology. Head over and post a comment…
cmcclain | April 11, 2008
A Blob Sculpin (Psychrolutes phrictus) from Davidson Seamount. Image from MBARI.