cmcclain | March 26, 2008Via Rick, news on the wire is that the deepest spot in the ocean may soon be included in a marine monument.
As mentioned earlier today, my Saipan colleague Angelo Villagomez is leading the charge on the creation of a new marine monument in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The proposed monument would in part recognize the significance of the Mariana Trench, which at a depth of 6.8 miles is the deepest part of the world's oceans, and the deepest location on the surface of the Earth's crust.
The deepest part of the ocean, and deepest part in the earth's crust, is Marianas…
kevin z | March 25, 2008
This is the second song in my brand new series Deep Sea Ditties. Wait! How can it be the second if the series is new?? The first song has been here all along! It is the Deep Sea News theme song (top left icon, says DSN theme song). Every Once in a while I will write and record a song about the deep sea and post it here for you all to laugh at. Its my way of making up for the fact that I failed at being a rockstar years ago. It also is the start of my second free album, Deep Sea Ditties (the first being Spineless Songs at The Other 95%, see sidebar). I got a little inspiration to break out…
kevin z | March 25, 2008
Life isn't always rosy for a top predator in the ocean. For there is always a predator that higher up the food chain trying to chase you down and make you its next meal! And that top-most of predators are humans. As we continue to overfish our seas, fish cannot reproduce fast enough to keep up with consumer demand.
The Pew Trusts have established the Conserve Our Ocean Legacy website to build a "broad national effort to build support for ocean and fish protection." There is much good information, but the real kicker is their game, Ocean Survivor! Designed to raise awareness for the dangers…
cmcclain | March 25, 2008
At Kevin's request this week I focus on the Turtle, the first American submarine. Its 1776, with the American Revolution in full swing and on September 7 the world's first submarine attack occurs.
The Turtle was the invention of David Bushnell, a Yale graduate who also invented the time bomb. The egg-shaped Turtle was a one-person submarine totally barely 7 feet in diameter operated under human power. Bushnell needed to solve several yet encountered engineering issues to design such a submersible (i.e. a watertight, pressure-proof hull; variable ballast; vertical and horizontal…
cmcclain | March 25, 2008
As part of the MNHN's current Abysses exhibitions, based largely on Clare Nouvian's elegant book, you can choose and pilot your own submersible over at the their website. I choose the Trieste which handled a little rough on corners around hydrothermal vents.
petnoyer | March 24, 2008
American space and satellite technologies provide valuable services to our global society and important contributions to global environmental monitoring. In a way, the whole world depends upon the United States global observing system of geopositional and environmental satellites to monitor storm systems, FEDEX packages, vessel traffic, and ice cover. Few people appreciate these services, but they are enabled by our democracy, specifically by the Freedom of Information Act, which stipulates that any taxpayer funded enterprise must be made publicly available upon request. NOAA and NASA take…
kevin z | March 23, 2008The Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the Rady Business School of University of California, San Diego, have joined forces to create a degree program the world has never been witness to before! Nature Career's reports the new joint Oceanography PhD/MBA (Master of Business Administration) promises "... to unearth novel economic solutions to ecological problems such as fisheries collapse" and quotes Scripps ecologist George Sugihara,
"Management and policy are bumping up against business concerns, and having credentials in both worlds will give an individual that much more gravity."…
cmcclain | March 23, 2008The recent Invertebrate Wars reminded me of spectacular, but often ignored, group of gastropods. The parasites! This is a group that I have totally geeked out on in the past. In my previous work I have focused on the Ptenoglossa likely a paraphyletic or polyphyletic group, established originally of unspecified rank by Gray (1853). It is generally agreed upon that the group is above the level of family and generally is defined as a suborder (Bouchet & Rocroi 2005). The group includes usually includes the families Cerithiopsidae, Triphoridae, Janthinidae, Epitoniidae, Aclidae, and the…
cmcclain | March 23, 2008I've discussed Nautilus Mineral here at DSN previously. In the past, I have been admittedly biased against the company and their operations to mine the deep. Here I will try to provide a less biased viewpoint. My goal is simply educate the public on Nautilus's current operations, what concerns have been raised about these operations, and what unanswered questions remain.
Nautilus Mineral The Company.
Nautilus is based in British Columbia with extension offices currently in Brisbane and PNG. The company was formerly known as Orca Petroleum Inc. According to Yahoo Finance, Orca "…
cmcclain | March 23, 2008Snail over at A Snail's Eye View, one of the best blogs on the triple -W, casts a firm vote for the Mollusks. Snail reminds also reminds us that Google delineates a clear winner. Arthropods also suck. And just in case Peter and Kevin get a little confused and start thinking about corals. For a recap of everyone's stance...
Mollusca:
Cephalopodcast
Snail's Eye View
DSN 1, 2 , 3, & 4.
Crustaceans:
DSN (thanks to that traitor Kevin)
Not Exactly Rocket Science To Figure Out Mollusks Are Better
Echinoderms:
Dr Joan Bushwell's Refuge For Invertebrates That Suck
The Intersucktion
A Blog Around…
cmcclain | March 23, 2008
This week's challenge is help instill sense of awe in children about the ocean . Teaching our children about the ocean, creating passion and connections for it's life, is one of the most important things we can do. Educating them about the mistakes we've made may prevent them from doing the same.
For this challenge I have picked two projects with Donor's Choose. The total amount needed is just over $400. That's about $10 a piece for everyone who has signed up. The first proposal is to provide funds for materials so students in a Kansas school can prepare for an Ocean Science…
petnoyer | March 23, 2008J Nichols of the Ocean Conservancy and Ocean Revolution is a hero for the environment. He works with fishermen off Baja California to spread the word about sea turtle conservation. One of the problems he faces is the Mexican tradition of consuming sea turtles and their eggs during Lent. We covered the story last year concluding that if the Pope won't save sea turtles, supermodel Dorismar will. She's willing to try, anyway.
This Easter, J blogs about the ongoing problems for sea turtles off Baja in a post called Easter Ocean. Go check it out. An excerpt is below.
"Easter season can ... be…
kevin z | March 21, 2008Ed Yong over at Not Exactly Rocket Science ha an awesome post highlighting recent research on the unique vision of mantis shrimps. At the end of his post he (rightfully) dismisses the sea cucumber:
"Personally, I think mantis shrimps kick the crap out of sea cucumbers, but they're on a par with squid, which incidentally also use polarised light for secret communication."
This makes me slightly conflicted as someone who is describing a new species shrimp. Really, I love all the invertebrates, but like any well-meaning parent with a gazillion children, I certainly have a few that are favorites…
cmcclain | March 21, 2008In general, among Mollusks, the mouth opens into a buccal cavity. In most classes of Mollusks, the buccal cavity contains a tongue called the odontophore. The odontophore possess multiple rows of teeth called radula that chitonous and flexible. Among Mollusks the number of teeth can range from a few to over 100,000. The size, number, and arrangement of the radula also vary considerably and often used as diagnostic tool for distinguishing species. In some gastropods the radula is used in a rasping or conveyor belt fashion and be used to drill holes through hard parts of other organisms.…
cmcclain | March 21, 2008
Don't get me wrong this is pretty freakin' sweet, but echinoderms are not the only large Antarctic sea creatures.
But this is way cooler...
That is Syrinx aruanus, the Australian Trumpet, described by Linneaus in 1758. They are found Northern Australia and Eastern Indonesia and can reach sizes of about three feet in length (those above are on the smaller side). And yeah they're predators.
cmcclain | March 20, 2008More from Deepscape...
Image 61 of sandy sediments at 970m in the Faroe-Shetland Channel with stalked glass sponges (white spots top), an unidentified fish, and numerous invertebrate burrows.
kevin z | March 20, 2008
CNN reports:
"Although the vessels were once viewed as a quirky sideshow in the drug war, they are becoming faster, more seaworthy, and capable of carrying bigger loads of drugs than earlier models, according to those charged with catching them.
"They tend to be one of a kind," U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said. "They cost up to a million dollars to produce. Sometimes they are put together in pieces and then reassembled in other locations. They're very difficult to locate."
The boats are built in the Colombian jungle. They sail largely beneath the surface of the water but cannot…
cmcclain | March 20, 2008Sheril over at The Intersection seems to be confused about what the coolest invertebrate is. She goes so far as to call out PZ about his hyper-infatuation with Cephalopods. Let's face it there is no way an echinoderm, especially a holothurian, can come anywhere near the coolness of a Mollusk. There is a reason why we at DSN have a whole category here dedicated to Cephalopods and not one dedicate to our water-vascularized friends. It's just hard to get excited about a sea cucumber that either feeds on sediment muck or filters muck out of the water column and not much else. Or an organism…