kevin z | April 2, 2008So Kallen over at the Biojournalism blog goes on a diatribe about great Echinoderms are, blah blah blah regeneration blah blah blah pentaradial symmetry. She then asks of her readers:
Tell me how snails are really cool, please?
OK, I'll tell you! Craig has already mentioned the coolness of the radula, how some snails can parasitize echinoderms, the backing of the Google Fight, and there huge range of sizes. He must have thought that was enough, maybe Kallen wasn't paying attention.
Mollusks also can harbor endosymbiotic bacteria that permit them to live in environments like hydrothermal vents…
kevin z | April 2, 2008CNN.com reports:
"Those favoring the removal say the sea lions are damaging salmon runs listed under the Endangered Species Act and protected at great expense.
The states estimate the sea lions eat up to about 4 percent of the spring chinook run as it schools at the base of the Bonneville Dam to pass through fish ladders en route to upriver spawning grounds.
The Humane Society contends the animals are only a small, although visible, pressure on the health of the runs and that the required "significant negative impact" hasn't been established."
cmcclain | April 2, 2008If you can tolerate the obvious Echino-bias, personally it makes me want to puke, the latest Circus of the Spineless is up over at from Archaea to Zeaxanthol. Word on the street is that all Mollusk contributions were deleted.
In a very unsurprising post from I'm A Chordata, Urochordata!, there is another post voting for the chordates. Personally, I think the Google results are faked. Try running that search with mammals and birds removed. Please! Like anybody cares about tunicates.
cmcclain | April 1, 2008Why Craig? Why Craig would you be posting about buses?
Monterey police are investigating to find out how an empty tourist bus managed to roll away from its parking spot Saturday afternoon and crash into the front wall of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.The 40-foot Coach USA bus rolled downhill on David Avenue, about a block and a half away from the aquarium. Along the way it knocked down several street signs and hit the front end of a car. The bus also sideswiped an office building before ramming into the aquarium. The crash caused major damage to the front of the bus and the corner of the aquarium…
cmcclain | March 31, 2008A species of holothurian, Pannychia, swarms a whale fecal mound in the abyssal Pacific.
When Miriam visited me last week at MBARI, we discussed over lunch my current "great" hypothesis. Every scientist has them...these are the hypotheses that are high on creativity but lack quantitative data to test them. Usually, the hypothesis is a "big idea", virtually untestable, and the only support is anecdotal. It's more of a thinking exercise rather than a formal hypothesis. Anyway my current "great" hypothesis is that food limitation in the deep sea drives adaptations that you would never see in…
cmcclain | March 31, 2008Well it was only a matter of time before Miriam added the tunicates. Let me say that it has become crystal clear to me today what is occurring. This whole battle pits the protostomes vs. deuterstomes. The protostomes must rise up and defeat the evil empire and unjustness that is deuterstomes.
To refresh your memory or bring you up to speed, the deuterstomes are basically a superphylum that encompasses the echinderms, urochordata, chordata, and hemichordata. What do these groups share in common? First, they are extremely uncool and to cheer for them makes you uncool. Second, during the…
cmcclain | March 30, 2008
$10 is all you need to give if we all pitch in. We are currently only at 2484% of funding the two classrooms mentioned in the last Just One Thing Challenge. SixTen of you have already donated and you guys totally rock. But the rest of you need to cough up some money!
If your an academic scientists reading this you should feel particularly guilty. If you don't donate, you can't ever complain again about how your undergraduates don't even know basic concepts like benthic and pelagic (or read or write or tie their shoes). If you are John or Joan Q. Public you forfeit your right to…
cmcclain | March 30, 2008
I don't study hydrothermal vents. I rather enjoy the deep muddy ooze, and its organisms, that comprise much of the earth's surface. Not that I don't like vents, I just like the soft bottoms better. I have been often asked what I think the coolest thing about the deep sea, marine biology...and hydrothermal vents is. I guess people expect some Cousteau-esque answer where I describe being in a wet suit riding at top speed on a Zodiac chasing some charismatic vertebrate where I am poised to jump on its back with a satellite tag. Needless to say people are often disappointed with my answers…
cmcclain | March 29, 2008
The battle royal is on with several bloggers choosing colors. The whole thing got started when Sheril at the Intersucktion state "No contest! Cukes would eat squid for breakfast" implying that somehow echinoderms were better than Mollusks. The whole thing got started when this guy, who seems to be a fan of plants, was "joking" about which was cooler. I personally don't find any of this a joke. Mollusks are cool and I've banked my career on it. Bora also wants to start something, but thankfully I realize he is just confused.
I tried to clear the matter up for Sheril and others…
cmcclain | March 29, 2008
Jim has decided that he will join the darkside for the Invertebrate Battle Royale. That's fine! We wouldn't want someone with such poor cognitive processes on our team. Jim's attack centers on the idea that the Aristotle's Lantern is cooler than the radula.
Now I just cannot stand for this. Especially after reading about how the molluscan radula is deemed one of the reasons this phylum is so cool compared to the echinodermata. I'm sorry, but Craig must not be thinking clearly. The radula? A spiky ribbon makes molluscs cool? Please. Don't waste your time, Craig. If we're going to be…
kevin z | March 29, 2008Sometimes we just need a little help to get by in life. A nudge, some encouragement or a simple pat on the back will suffice. Being stuck to a rock is not a real good way to avoid predators, unless that rock can move. Symbioses between sea anemones and snails have been well known for over a century, yet it is not entirely clear where the lines are drawn in this relationship. Are the anemones just happening to settle on the backs of snails as they would any hard substrate or is the anemone mafia running some protection racket?
In the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology…
kevin z | March 28, 2008Catherine Brahic reports on some interesting new research in an online article at New Scientist:
""There are certain limits on swimming speed that are imposed irrespective of power," explains Iosilevskii. One of these is the frequency at which the swimmers can beat their tails to propel themselves forward.
The other is the formation of microscopic bubbles around the tail, a phenomenon known as "cavitation". According to Iosilevskii and Weihs, for animals such as dolphins that have nerve endings in their tails, cavitation can be the most important limiting factor.
The bubbles form as a result…
kevin z | March 28, 2008To piggy back on Peter's ice sheet-o-mania posts today, Marsha Walton reports at CNN.com what it means to the animal life in the Antarctic when an ice shelf collapses:
" Another warming ocean event that scientists are studying closely is the migration of king crabs. Marine remotely operated vehicles have captured photos of these giant crabs on the Antarctic Slope, where underwater land starts to rise up to the southernmost continent.
It's the first time in tens of millions of years that these predators have appeared that close to Antarctica.
Crabs and other marine invertebrates die when the…
petnoyer | March 27, 2008Spring is in the air. Spring Break is upon us, and the mind begins to wander... to the poles? Well, yes, because the Antarctic is calving enormous glaciers and researchers are predicting a seasonally ice-free Arctic by the year 2030. Break out the kayaks and suncreen. It's "Wild on, Nuuk."
The news wire is full of stories about the rapid melting of the Wilkins Ice Shelf 1000 miles south of South America. If the warming trend continues, the folks on the Patagonian coast of Argentina will be watching icebergs float off their coast just like the Kiwis in the video below. Check it out. Can…
petnoyer | March 27, 2008
New Zealanders impress me at nearly every turn. I mean, when was the last time your local news station sent out a reporter by helicopter to land on an Antarctic iceberg floating by offshore? The guys in this video are from the Otago Daily Times. One of the intrepid chaps sums it up nicely,... "all my life I wanted to go to the Antarctic, now the Antarctic's come to me."
petnoyer | March 27, 2008
Isn't it ironic that the International Polar Year falls on the year with the least Arctic ice cover? The North Pole is now literally on thin ice. Scientists are predicting a seasonally ice free Arctic by 2030. The image above illustrates the changing extent of Arctic sea ice over the last fifty years, from 1953 to 2005. Median Arctic ice cover has dropped from 8 million sq km to less than 6 million sq km over the last 20 years, down to nearly 4 million sq km since 2004.
The graphic is lifted from an article by J. Stroeve et al called "Arctic sea ice plummets in 2007" in the weekly…
kevin z | March 27, 2008... the northern and southern hemispheres.
Scene from Strange Wilderness. Click here for hilarious movie trailer.
cmcclain | March 26, 2008
I've already addressed the difficulty of doing experiments in the deep sea which ultimately leads to their rarity. I also mentioned given the costs and risks of doing something so crazy like an experiment in the deep sea makes funding scarce for such projects. I'm not bitter at all that NSF reviewers chose not to fund me twice....no not at all...I won't even mention it. Moving on!
Luckily scientists like David Thistle value such an approach and find creative ways to fund and carry out such a project. Thistle et al. report on a similar study to the Gallucci et al. study we reported on…
cmcclain | March 26, 2008
Rick's comments
Lots of free press on trench science from Manny, Moe, and Jack Craig, Peter, and Kevin on Deep Sea News
got me thinking about what an oceanographic expedition with all three of us onboard would be like. I imagine it would be a LOT like this.