cmcclain | January 20, 2008
From the Telegraph via Neatorama...
Inventor Stephan Warge has devised a 160 sq meter kite, based on kitesurfing rigs, that can be attached to commercial ships to reduce diesel consumption. Warge figures the SkySail can reduce fuel consumption by 20% ($1600 a day). The new sail will be tested this Tuesday aboard the 462ft cargo vessel MS Beluga on a voyage from Germany to Venezuela.
You can view a great animation of the whole deployment and utilization process here.
cmcclain | January 17, 2008
At 00:48, video of the Japanese Spider Crab, or the Dead Man's Crab*, occurs and touted as the world's largest. But is it? Sure its big with a leg span that can reach several meters but it is all leg. Weight or mass wise, I would argue that the world's largest crab and modern arthropod is the Tasmanian Giant Crab.
*Called because its been seen scavenging on the bodies of the drowned
cmcclain | January 17, 2008A two-coloured lobster caught by Digby County (Nova Scotia) fisherman Edward Pothier. Tina Comeau photo
Lobster color derives from the presence of three different pigments: red, yellow, and blue. These colors typically mix to form a greenish-brown color. It is not uncommon to get a developmental error that inhibits the accumulation of red and yellow pigment, thus producing a blue lobster. Rarer is a two colored lobster. Because the two sides of lobster develop independently of each other an error can occur on one side an not the other. Most likely this occurs at a very early cell…
cmcclain | January 17, 2008This weeks Science offers commentary on the use of Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) to mitigate rising carbon dioxide levels. The author list is a dream team of ocean productivity experts who know what they are talking about. The 1 page commentary is chock-o-block full of great quotes.
The efficacy by which OIF sequesters atmospheric CO2 to the deep sea remains poorly constrained, and we do not understand the intended and unintended biogeochemical and ecological impacts. Environmental perturbations from OIF are nonlocal and are spread over a large area by ocean circulation, which makes long…
petnoyer | January 17, 2008Deep-water formation is one of the most fascinating aspects of global thermohaline circulation. Deep-water doesn't form only at the poles, though, as cold water sinks below warm. Subtropical Underwater, for example, is formed in the central Atlantic where the difference between evaporation and precipitation is highest. Dense, high salinity water sinks down to about 500m before spreading into the bathyl zone of the Caribbean Sea. So, you should ask yourself, where's my deep water coming from? And, how is it effecting my local shrimp fishery? Read the open-access, full-text article here at…
petnoyer | January 17, 2008A French court ruled that Total oil, the cargo owner in a 1999 oil spill that polluted 400km of coastline, is partially responsible for damages to the environment. The court faulted Total for "carelessness" in leasing the 23-year-old Maltese-registered vessel Erika, which had sailed under eight names and numerous owners. Despite the ship's certification, the tanker bore "suspect shadowy zones of substantial corrosion," the court said.
Also convicted were Italian company Registro Italiano Navale, which inspected the vessel; the ship's Italian owner, Giuseppe Savarese; and Antonio Pollara,…
cmcclain | January 15, 2008
New research by Bornemann et al. in Science this week indicates that warming periods might actually promote ice growth. Using forams from core samples taken on the deep ocean floor off South America, the researchers reconstructed temperature records for the Turonian (93.5 to 89.3 millions years ago). Despite a relatively balmy 35 degrees C tropical sea surface temperature, the glaciation events took place (evidenced by the a positive d18 O excursion in the marine limestone). Absolutely love this quote from the article (emphasis mine)
We are left with the apparent paradox that the…
cmcclain | January 14, 2008I am very excited that the new year brings an exciting opportunity for me. I was solicited, and I accepted an Academic Editor position with the open-access journal PLoS One. PLoS one invited me to join to increase the presence of ecological and marine biological studies at the journal. Many of you may have noticed my hints in the last month.
For those of you who don't know, or have a skewed view, here is what the open-access concept represents. Publications are full text, peer-reviewed articles, that occur online and can be accessed at no charge to the user. Note that these are permanent…
petnoyer | January 14, 2008 What's happening in the Science News section at the Washington Post? A recent story about bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) made me wonder exactly what's going on behind the journalist's desk. The article in question is called "Advocates hope science can save big tuna", published Dec. 24, 2007.
The Post article reviews scientific approaches that illustrate bluefin tuna migrations to and from spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea, then notes the bluefin populations are plummeting, but finally surrenders the problem to "political will" and the federal government. This…
cmcclain | January 13, 2008Rick discusses two of my favorite things coffee and enticing sea nymphs. On the origns of the Starbucks Coffee Logo at MBSL&S.
cmcclain | January 13, 2008Via my weekly reading of the unopen access journal Science, there is an interesting story about beeswax, huge freakin' chunks of it, that occasionally wash ashore in Oregon's Nehalem Bay. At low-low tides, a wooden hull is revealed in the bay bolstering the mystery of the "beeswax wreck". A team is now investigating the wreck which they think may be a Spanish galleon that sank between 1650-1700. Why beeswax? Big trade item as the Catholic Church uses copious amounts of beeswax for its candles. More here.
cmcclain | January 13, 2008I am really surprised a new paper in Nature did not receive more press given its potential to create a shift in how we view hydrothermal vents. The new work by Tolstoy et al. (Columbia University's Earth Observatory in New York) reports on data gathered from seismometers placed over a 4 square km area in the East Pacific Rise, about 800 kms (500 miles) southwest of Acapulco. Through seismic data, tremors were intriguingly clustered around where the cold water entered the rock, the team was able to construct an image of how water circulates though vent systems.
Old Hypothesis: The pressure of…
cmcclain | January 13, 2008
Image from surfersvillage.com. Surfer catching wave at Mavericks
The Mavericks competition was this past Saturday bringing in the best dozen or so big waver surfers (invitation only!). The best word to describe someone who spanks waves reaching 20-30 feet, historically they have reached near 50? Cajones. Let us not forget the freezing water and jagged rocks. You can see all the pictures here (note picture 27!).
I mentioned in the past if if you want to know where the good surf spots are sure you could ask your local bro', or you could gather some geologist and map the…
cmcclain | January 10, 2008Given the west coast storm of the century last weekend, today's FDSP seemed appropriate (click for larger image). Via howtoons.
cmcclain | January 10, 2008I guess being called
a young ringer for Bruce Willis' John McClain character in the action-packed "Die Hard" movies
means I'm sexier than I thought. More importantly EatonWeb notes that "The result for McClain and Etnoyer is one of the more educational and enjoyable blogs at the Seed group, definitely worth the time to read regularly."
cmcclain | January 10, 2008Figure 2 from Etnoyer and Warrenchuk (2007). Callogorgia americana delta colonies with catshark egg cases attached. Depth 533 m.
ROV suction hose on the left is 15.25 cm (6 in) in diameter.
I am excited that our first post on new research for 2008 covers work by DSN's own Peter Etnoyer. 2008 also represents the International Year of the Reef making this report on the importance of deep-water corals as a shark nursery is timely. Although, there is a plethora of research documenting the vital role shallow-water corals play in providing substrate and shelter for fish (they might even teach…
petnoyer | January 10, 2008Here's another elegant headline from the Telegraph UK publication I mentioned below. You gotta love the Brits.
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
The comments section is pretty fascinating... "Interesting. Similar to my onion-model of the universe. Remove the time dimension...and you get a perfectly rational view of life." This is a compelling story about a mathematical form with 248 points called the E8 which can be described by the same equations that accounts for more of the substance of the universe than the prevailing "string theory".
If you're looking for more surf…
petnoyer | January 10, 2008You may have learned in Oceanography that wind driven surface effects are limited to the first 70m of the ocean, in what's commonly known as the Ekman layer. However, climate oscillations, even small ones, have a deeper impact on the oceans. They can influence oceanic conditions a mile below. The Telegraph UK calls one newly revealed mechanism a "freak" ocean wave because it travels underwater, with little or no surface expression. This was such a good spin I had to promote it to main title.
In reality, these are periodic Kelvin waves travelling eastward along the equator at the submerged…
cmcclain | January 9, 2008
Via Crave, I see that Underwater Technologies Center has created a Underwater Digital Interface that can keep 56 divers networked with ships or land bases up to 1,000 yards away. The unit serves as a Two-way digital text messaging communicator, Diver SOS and Remote SOS, Homing tool, Compass, and RGBM Diving computer. A cookie to anyone who can tell me where the coordinates above are from.