petnoyer | August 28, 2007
Poor Aussies in Sydney got nailed by a giant mixture of salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed that whipped up into a froth by storms off Queensland. The giant sea foam buried beaches and buildings, and stretches for 30 meters out into the Pacific. The kids are apparently playing in it, trying to surf it, and dancing about having a good old time.
Read about it and see more pictures of Cappucino Beach here at the Daily Mail .
petnoyer | August 28, 2007The Census of Marine Life on Seamounts (CenSeam) project released Newsletter No 8 earlier this month. Visit their website to download this and other editions. This particular issue is one of their most extensive newsletters ever, featuring interesting stories and articles about:
-A photographic image collection and analysis workshop in Great Britain
-MBARI's open-source Video and Annotation Reference System (VARS)
-The deepwater "fish spas" of the Kermadec-Tonga Arc
-Longline sampling for deep-sea fishes on seamounts near the Azores
-A new online data portal from Global Biodiversity…
petnoyer | August 27, 2007Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to more dissolved CO2 in the world's oceans. In turn this will increase the hydrogen ion concentration in seawater, and lower pH from pre-industrial levels (8.179) to present day levels (8.104) in a process known as "ocean acidification". Note that even projected pH levels of 7.824 in 2050 are still above neutral. Regardless, many scientists are concerned that calcifying marine organisms like corals, mollusks, echinoderms and coccolithophores will be vulnerable to dissolution under the projected 'less alkaline' regime.
A new study…
petnoyer | August 24, 2007
Between the online game with the ROV and this movie from YouTube, you'll be sure to get no work done today.
This "Fish Guys" movie is a very funny short film about graduate pursuits in museum collections from the 48 Hour Film Project. That means the whole thing was conceived and produced within 48 hours. The script is based on a journal article, and it works, believe it or not!
Directed by Trey Stokes. Filmed on location at LA County Natural History Museum.
cmcclain | August 24, 2007BBC has a great game for the kids or those young of heart. Yeah I pretty much have lost a few hours of my life to this. You control a submersible and your goal is to explore.
cmcclain | August 24, 2007I don't buy it but...
In an issue of Superman released early in 1943, the superhero protects American navy ships from deep-sea creatures under the control of a Nazi agent. Superman manages to defeat the creatures and their master when the whistle used to control the monsters breaks and they turn on him.
I know a lot of deep-sea creatures, a few are even my friends, and this is just slander.
cmcclain | August 23, 2007From NG: Despite its delicate, decorated appearance, this jewel squid was found 1,650 lung-crushing feet (500 meters) beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. Scientists on a recent deep-sea expedition found the squid, called Histioteuthis, along with an abundance of other species thought to be very rare, if not unknown, elsewhere. Jewel squid are known for their mismatched eyes, one of which is larger than the other to scope for prey in the deep's darkness. More pictures here...
cmcclain | August 23, 2007Don't blame me for not pointing it out sooner, but I have only seen Titanic once and as I recall it was an excruciating experience. Luckily, Leonardo is redeeming himself (more later). The Russian expedition planting a flag on the Arctic floor seems to be plagued with further controversy. Recently, video and movies distributed among media outlets apparently contained footage from the blockbuster movie (above). Who uncovered this? Media?
Nope, a 13 year old Finnish boy with a DVD player.
You can see the video in all of its embarrassing glory here.
cmcclain | August 23, 2007
A giant squid arrives on Italy's shore intact...reporters at scene report Cioppino needed more garlic.
First step purchase 500 gallons of formalin...next step order special-made tupperware measuring 30 feet.
Yiddish proverb...Small children disturb your sleep, big children your life...takes on new meaning as a 7 foot baby visits Mote Marine Lab
petnoyer | August 23, 2007So I'm buzzin' through the internet looking for inspiration towards a logo for a new project from the Harte Research Institute when I stumble upon this website touting the wonders of "Neptune Krill Oil" (NKO) - "the purest combination of phospholipids, antioxidants, omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9 fatty acids." Hail distraction. Consider this a companion piece to Craig's "Why don't all whales have cancer", below.
The sweetly monikered krill-oil product from Krill Bill claims a 15:1 ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids, compared to 3:1 ratio for fish oil fatty acids. That's an impressive…
cmcclain | August 21, 2007
Knowing my fascination with body size variation among organisms , Peter sent a link along for a new paper, "Why don't all whales have cancer? A novel hypothesis resolving Peto's paradox." Included in the email was a gentle prodding to post on this unique paper.
Peto's paradox is that cancer is fundamentally different across mammals. If all mammalian cells have an equal probability of developing a mutation leading to cancer, all else being equal, then larger sized organisms with more cells should have a higher incidence of cancer. Equally, because larger organisms are longer lived then the…
cmcclain | August 21, 2007As predicted, the bandwagon is rolling. Steven Milloy, of the ironically titled junkscience.com, writes in the Canada Free Press about us "alarmists". One study questions one aspect of global warming and the whole theory is thrown out.
Why is it when someone highlights a real problem they are labeled an alarmist? ...Mr. Smith I don't mean to cause you grief but the the cancer has spread...Well Doctor I believe your an alarmist so I am ignoring you.
Steven ends his article with "Does it really make sense to regulate first and ask questions later?" as a direct rebuke of the Precautionary…
cmcclain | August 19, 2007Some new waves, pun intended, are being generated this week concerning the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). You are already familiar with the MOC as the ocean conveyor belt. To refresh your memory, the MOC is a thermohaline current, so named because currents are forced by differences in temperature and salinity both influencing the density of water, i.e. a density-driven current. So to explain the MOC, we will follow a single water mass and we'll call him Timmy.
We'll start with Timmy in the equatorial Atlantic. Here, Timmy is warm and salty, like a pirate. The Gulf Stream is a…
cmcclain | August 19, 2007Imagine 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 natural electrolytes that are essential for the body and are easily absorbed..."with a "clean, rich taste that quenches your thirst and replenishes body, mind and spirit"? Of…
cmcclain | August 16, 2007Hat tip goes to Kiki, who pointed out a recent article in Wired, U.S. Readies for Polar Warfare (Updated). There you have it...Canada is amping up its military presence in the Arctic and so is the U.S. In an recent announcement titled Technologies for Persistent Operations in High LAtitude Regions (POLAR), Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for new technology and operation concepts that would give our forces the advantage.
The article also points to the 2001 symposium report Naval Operations in an Ice Free Arctic that you can download as handy pdf. The obvious…
cmcclain | August 16, 2007To nice to save till tomorrow, Kevin sent along a "old" submersible chapter from Hill's The Sea from 1963. The chapter itself is authored by Dietz and covers bathyscaphs and other deep submerisbles for oceanographic research. You can read and see more of the Trieste here.
cmcclain | August 15, 2007And two the highest bidder goes Papua New Guinea's government, mineral rights, and everything else is up for sale in this huge mid-year blowout sale. Over at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets (the only blog I read more than mine) a great article about PNG's impending fall.
Somare [the re-elected PM] said he will probably continue granting exploration licenses to mineral and fossil fuel mining companies, 15 of which were issued in the past 5 years.
One of those was to Nautilus Mining.
cmcclain | August 15, 2007In the race for the Arctic there is Canada, United States, and Russia all staking claim on the increasingly accessible Northwest Passage and the mineral rights for the region. You have Canada building up a polar fleet and Arctic bases at the cost of several billion dollars. You have the Russians planting flags on the polar floor in sham expeditions which has Russian experts divided on the implications. Now it is the U.S. who is pursuing the Arctic.
NOAA's Office of Coast Survey, in partnership with the University of New Hampshire's Joint Hydrographic Center and the National Science…
petnoyer | August 14, 2007How many times have you seen pallets of bottled water coming off the forklift at the grocery store, and felt your stomach turning in disgust? Never? Not once? That's not enough! You should be sick. When you see soccer coaches and construction workers throwing cases of little plastic water bottles into the back of their SUV, your stomach should turn. Bottled water is sooo not sexy.
Bottled water is plastic-wrapped with more bacteria than regular tap water, and less fluoride, according to university researchers. More than 60 million gallons of petroleum are used annually to make the 38 billion…
petnoyer | August 13, 2007It's a good thing marine biologist Buki Rinkevich and his colleagues at the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Station decided to test the effects of detergents on corals before using them to clean up an oil spill.
The researchers reported recently in Environmental Science and Technology that millimeter sized coral fragments succumbed to the detergent before the oil itself. The detergents and the dispersed oil droplets all proved significantly more toxic to the coral than crude oil, causing rapid, widespread death or stunted growth rates, even at doses recommended by the…