petnoyer | September 30, 2007 The Carnival of the Blue thing has really come together lately thanks to Mark Powell, the power of the blogosphere, and a dedicated online ocean public that includes you. Go see the latest line up of stories at Shifting Baselines-"the cure for ocean amnesia".
Where else you gonna upload your migration tracks for bob-tailed godwits into Google Earth (DC Birding Blog), and set yourself "strait" on the meltdown in the Northwest Passage (Island of Doubt)?
Lots of good stuff to see and read there.
cmcclain | September 29, 2007 To kick off the new badge "I'm a marine biologist and, to be honest, I kind of hate dolphins", Science Creative Quarterly has published an article about the realities of being a marine biologist. Milton states it clearly.
Just be honest with yourself. If you want to talk to dolphins you don't want to be a [marine] biologist. What you really want to do is explore your past lives, get in touch with the Cosmic Oneness and conduct similar-minded individuals on tours to Central America looking for evidence that We Are Not Alone. Our experience is that people who feel this way last about 6.5…
cmcclain | September 27, 2007The Washington Post is sponsoring the onBeing project that
is a project based on the simple notion that we should get to know one another a little better. What you'll find here is a series of videos that takes you into the musings, passions, histories and quirks of all sorts of people. The essence of who they are, who we are.
One of these videos is Chris Mah, master of all echinoderm, displaying the passion that drive his research and makes interacting with Chris a pleasure. Catch this Chris's guest post at the old DSN.
cmcclain | September 27, 2007
Yo DIC (Dissolved Inorganic Carbon), Let's Kick It! Hat tip to Christina Kellogg for pointing this out to me.
cmcclain | September 27, 2007The question is whether crops belong in your mouth or your gastank? Bioscience has a interesting article from June with National Geographic following on their heals this month. Both are very interesting and worth the read. Nash in Bioscience lays out what are the potential ill effects of moving to biofuels:
Diversion of food crops such as corn and soybeans into gas tanks
Release of greenhouse gases
Conversion of wildlife habitat into energy-crop farmland
Accelerating soil depletion
Drawdown of scarce water resources for irrigation
Spread of invasive species used as energy crops
Illusion of…
cmcclain | September 26, 2007
Tardigrades are a paradox. There are less than 1,000 species globally yet they can survive anything-temperature extremes, starvation, irradiation, dehydration, vacuums, and the pressures of the deep sea. So the obvious question is whether tardigrades can survive space.? The program is called TARDIS (Tardigrades In Space) and you Dr. Who fans will catch the reference. In the words of the TARDIS program...
Why should we send dry aquatic invertebrates into space, an environment that certainly is not normal for these animals?...One would be: to see if these animals, as the first ever, are able…
cmcclain | September 26, 2007If the title doesn't drive the Google hits in then hopefully word of mouth will. Sheril has the low down on this iconographic video of our field, red hot barnacle sex. Keep in mind that barnacles as a percentage of body length may have the largest penis in nature.
cmcclain | September 26, 2007SeaWiFS turns 10 this year. What is SeaWiFS? It is one of the most important advances of science in the last 20 years. The SeaWiFS is an instrument on a sattelite (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor) that circles the planet 14 times every day. By measuring iridescence and color, among other variables, over both land and sea we can derive estimates of primary production (the accumulation of photosynthetic biomass) over both time and space. SeaWiFS has both refined and greatly added to our understanding of global carbon cycling. Of course, there are many other areas where advances are…
cmcclain | September 25, 2007
Corsair generously sent along their 8GB Survivor Flash Drive midsummer for me to field test at the behesting of this post. Over the last few months I have done everything I can to beat this flash drive to hell. The flash drive comes in its own CNC-milled, anodized aircraft-grade aluminum case. In its case an EDPM o-ring makes the case resistant to 200m. The drive has a molded shock dampening collar that prevents vibration from impact being transmitted to the drive. Here is a list of all the things I have done to the drive and it still works.
Ran over it with my 2 Ton Jeep Wrangler...no…
cmcclain | September 25, 2007
Rick at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunset recently reviewed Kona Deep awhile back and promised to send along a bottle to taste. Previously, I made a rather bold claim...
Imagine yourself laying on a sandy beach. As you take in the supple views and iconic air, you reach for your multi-fruit, multi-liquor, multi-umbrella, tropical drink. But wait! Wouldn't you rather have a beverage "bottled and certified at the source in Hawaii...the result of this ancient water being shepherded with special care through a proprietary process that takes out almost all of the salt, but retains important…
cmcclain | September 25, 2007Sunday evening the intelligent and lovely Sheril Kirshenbaum posited a question that I have received many times. The question is always a good one because it stems from knowledge and deductive reasoning. The said question requires one to know that one of the most extreme environmental gradients is the increase of pressure with increasing depth, at the surface being 1 atm and reaching well over 1,000 atm in deepest parts of the ocean. The question(s) how do organisms survive this great pressure and what happens to organisms when you bring them to the surface? I really never get tired of…
cmcclain | September 25, 2007 Pangea Ultima: Earth in 250 Million Years?
Credit & Copyright: C. R. Scotese (U. Texas at Arlington), PALEOMAP
In 250 million years from now, my research will be a little easier. Besides the insights that I will derive from a long-term database and 250 million years of publications, my database will be extremely simplified. Instead of all those pesky categories I have for ocean/basin...Atlantic, Indian, Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean, and Pacific. My future samples will be Pacific, Pacific, Pacific, and Pacific. In the distant future all the landmasses will once again be united into a…
petnoyer | September 24, 2007Researchers used stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen on old and new parts of the shells of 44 Bahaman green turtles (Chelonia mydas) to examine changes in sea turtle diets between their juvenile and elder stages.
The results indicate green sea turtles spent their "lost years' in the deep ocean as carnivores feeding on jellyfish, before moving closer to shore and switching to a vegetarian diet of seagrasses. The new research was published in the online journal Biology Letters. Karen Bjorndal led the study. She is a zoologist and director of the University of Florida's Archie Carr Center…
cmcclain | September 24, 2007
My absence from DSN is soon to come to an end as I head back to California today. Part of my hiatus is due to this and other because of this. The Research Triangle being the epicenter of the blogging universe meant the oppurtunity to bag some fellow Sb'lings. I shared a fantastic evening with Bora, Sheril, Abel, and Anna.
cmcclain | September 20, 2007The Johnsen Lab at Duke University has several great high resolution (warning: slow loading) photographs of specimens from the Gulf of Mexico (Brine Pool, Garden Bank, Vioska Knoll, Green Canyon) between 1000 and 3000 feet. Photos are courtesy of their of the Johnsen Lab.
The crab Paralomis cubensis
The brittle star (serpent star) Ophiocreas sp.
cmcclain | September 20, 2007A spectacular entrance: The Queen Mary 2 luxury liner made its maiden call to the Port of San Francisco on February 4, 2007. Surrounded by a flotilla of ships, yachts and escorted by a San Francisco fire boat, Queen Mary 2 circled the harbor before docking at Pier 27. Six cameras were used.
petnoyer | September 20, 2007CK tells me that The Scientist magazine is taking an online poll about your favorite life science blogs. The link to place your vote is here.
There's no legitimate way to bribe you for your vote without raising questions of impropriety, so instead I will attempt to coerce you with insidious logic and campaign strategery. Look at it this way...
First of all,Craig's going to be a TV star sometime real soon, so if you vote for us now, you might get invited to his Monterey mansion with an infinity pool overlooking the Pacific.
Next, ask yourself who tips you to the hot new personal submarines.…
cmcclain | September 18, 2007CNN as an interesting article on plastic.
We now consume around 100 million tons of plastic annually, compared to five million tons in the 1950s when American housewives were just discovering the wonders of Tupperware. To put that into perspective, one ton of plastic represents around 20,000 two-liter bottles of water or 120,000 carrier bags, according to the British Web site Waste Online.
But don't think plastic is evil...
According to PlasticsResource.com, an educational Web site run by the American Chemistry Council, people have benefited from plastics. Using recycled plastic as a…