cmcclain | July 29, 2007
Get This Widget!TOPP.org
During Megavertebrate Week, DSN teamed up with several people and organizations. One of these was Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP), the same people who brought the Great Turtle Race, a sort a Big Brother of Marine Verts. TOPP is a 10-year project headquartered at Hopkins Marine Station, Long Marine Lab, and NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Center in Pacific Grove that is putting satellite tags on thousands of the Pacific' top predators. TOPP has a new website (http://www.topp.org) featuring animated maps, researcher daily blogs, downloadable widgets (like the ones…
cmcclain | July 26, 2007 Image credit: (c) 2003 MBARI, A pair of Humboldt squid hunting in Monterey Bay. Over the last five years, large, predatory Humboldt squid have moved north from equatorial waters and invaded the sea off Central California, where they may be decimating populations of Pacific hake, an important commercial fish. More on the study here at DSN.
cmcclain | July 26, 2007
No that's not real and neither are the others in the post! Argonauta Argo, National Museum& Gallery, Cardiff
Spending time at the Museum Comparative Zoology at Harvard (MCZ), a Museum of a Museum, I realize the potential for items to get lost in unvisited cabinets. This happens regularly in my own brainoffice. Eureka!
Paula Holahan, a curator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Zoological Museum, noting a series of keyholes under the exhibit cases decided to explore. After excavating the keys, she was quite surprised to find several boxes of glass sculptures of marine…
cmcclain | July 25, 2007On the wire from Oceana (Europe)...
Just a few weeks into our summer-long expedition, the crew of Oceana's Ranger experienced an intense day at sea....At the time of the incident we had filmed, photographed and recorded the positions and catch of about 80 French illegal driftnetters...Seven ships coordinated their attack by surrounding the Ranger in the Mediterranean Sea. After immobilizing our propellers, they began to hurl objects of all kind - including poisonous fish, flares and 4-letter words - and demanding the photos and videos we had collected. They even went so far as dropping…
cmcclain | July 25, 2007Growing up to two meters (six feet) long, Humboldt squid are formidable predators that hunt krill and a variety of fishes. Their normal habitat is within the tropical and subtropical waters of the East Pacific. Over the last few years, however, Humboldt squid have begun moving into cooler-water areas such as Central California.
Image: (c) 2003 MBARI
If you been keeping up here at DSN, you probably already know that Humboldt squid are invading further north up the Pacific Coast. Dosidicus gigas are voracious pack hunters occurring historically from Chile to Baja California. Occasionally, they…
cmcclain | July 25, 2007Image above: NEEMO 11 crew member works near the undersea habitat "Aquarius" during a session of extravehicular activity for the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) project. Image credit: NASANemo is some cute cuddly fish for children and Disney wallets. NEEMO on the other hand although also based in Florida is much better. NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project sends groups of NASA employees and contractors to live in Aquarius, an undersea laboratory 62 feet down off Key Largo owned by NOAA, for up to three weeks at a time. Aquarius provides a platform to…
cmcclain | July 25, 2007Scholastic.com just launched Investigate the Giant Squid: Mysterious Cephalopod of the Deep. The site is geared for children and provides numerous links and activities to learn more. Also included are teacher's resources and guide.
cmcclain | July 25, 2007I apologize about the temporary lack of entries. My beloved MacBook Pro is sick as in the doctor says "I am sorry there was nothing more we could do"...as in the farmer says "We had to put her down, she was fixin to turn"...as in the priest saying "Demons be gone!" You get the picture. Not having access to a functional computer, and Peter out of the country, expect some temporary outages here at DSN. Will post when I can.
cmcclain | July 21, 2007The phylum Porifera (sponges; "pore bearing) is divided into three classes, Hexactinellida, Demospongiae, and Calcarea. Calcarea is the oddball of the group, building skeletal elements out of calcium carbonate (like corals and snails) instead of silica. The Hexactinellids (glass sponges) of which I will focus on, are predominately a deep sea group. They are the oldest of the groups originating about 585-720 million years ago during the Snowball Earth period. During this time, soluble calcium carbonate and silica were formed by reaction with atmospheric carbon dioxide. These reactions provided…
cmcclain | July 21, 2007I am proud to announce that DSN has its own theme song now via the generosity of Kevin Zelnio. As you may remember, Kevin Zelnio used to blog here and then spun off to create The Other 95%, a wonderful blog on everything invertebrate. Peter equated this to the Frazier/Cheers spin off. I see it more as Deep Space 9 and Next Generation. You can listen to the theme song here.
cmcclain | July 20, 2007There seems to be some inherent irony in an actress speaking against bottom trawling who stared in three movies killing aliens based on deep-sea isopods*. That stated, I welcome Sigourney Weaver's contribution to the effort to end bottom trawling. Joining forces with the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition, a conservation consortium of several organizations, spoke at the UN this week in New York.
Said Weaver, "The oceans that millions of people around the world depend on for sustenance and livelihood are being plundered while the world sits by and watches. Some of the oldest ecosystems on Earth…
cmcclain | July 19, 2007
Well this makes my graduation not so special. Graduates of Taiwan's College of Marine Sciences received their waterproof degrees awarded by the university president in a diving suit underwater at an aquarium.
cmcclain | July 19, 2007...to hold open the wound after I made the incision so I could remove his appendix. And that is the story of how I became the first person to perform major surgery on a submarine.
cmcclain | July 18, 2007 Peter's post on mercury generated some passionate responses. Things have quited down a bit around here so I thought I would throw a bit of gas on the fire.
Oceana released results of hair tests conducted at last year's Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo, the oldes and largest saltwater fishing tournament in the US. The result...rodeo contestants had significantly higher levels of mercury in their bodies than would be found in the general population. This study mirrors that done a mere 6 years ago in which the Press-Register showed that anglers have higher mercury levels than non-anglers. Some…
petnoyer | July 18, 2007What is Frazier to Cheers? What is Laverne and Shirley to Happy Days? Like one situation comedy spins off another, DSN pinch hitter Kevin Zelnio spins up a new blog over at blogspot called The Other 95%.
Kevin's title refers to the invertebrate phyla, which make up 95% of the animal kingdom, but receive less than 10% of the attention they deserve. They're mini-monsters, for gosh sakes. How can anyone NOT be fascinated by the spineless? Type "other 95" into google and then press "I'm feeling lucky". You've arrived at the new Desk of Zelnio.
If that's not enough to drain your coffee mug, and…
cmcclain | July 17, 2007 Problems in no certain order...
Number one problem...crude oil is now at $74 per barrel and may top out at $95 per barrel by fall. This week even the National Petroleum Council (NPC) is expected to release a report suggesting the global demand will exceed supplies in the next 25 years. Meaning your gas price at the pump is going to stay this high.
How much oil is left? The U.S. Energy Information Administration's International Energy Outlook 2007 calculates that world proven reserves of oil are 1.3 trillion barrels and projects that world consumption will rise to 118 million barrels…
cmcclain | July 16, 2007With new technology comes new opportunities. So you say your a member of the mile high club...but what about the reverse. Don't worry neither am I or most. Why? First...I only have eyes for my wife who has never been in a submersible with me. Second...well frankly I am a big guy and...well I need room to operate. Apparently the recent market of luxury subs removes at least one of these barriers.
Manufacturers of some of the world's most exclusive underwater conveyances are boasting of the sexual possibilities of submersible cabins equipped with "large panoramic viewports" that allow…
cmcclain | July 12, 2007
Not really deep sea so excuse the digression. From TNC/WWF
As demands on oceans grow, it is important to ensure that their resources are being conserved and carefully managed worldwide. A new study led by The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund (published in BioScience) -- Marine Ecoregions of the World -- takes an important step toward that goal by presenting the first-ever classification system of the world's coastal waters. This new set of classifications will help conservation scientists recognize gaps in protection and set priorities for action, such as establishing…
cmcclain | July 12, 2007Spanish police intercepted a ship belonging to US deep-sea explorer firm Odyssey on Thursday, officials said, in a row over a 370 mln eur treasure haul recovered from a sunken wreck in the Atlantic.
The Ocean Alert, which had been docked in Gibraltar until recently, was picked up in Spanish waters at about 6 am, on the orders of Spanish authorities.
The ship is to be searched, and may have committed an offence against Spanish heritage laws, the civil guard said in a statement.
An Odyssey official on board the ship was quoted on the net by the Gibraltar Chronicle as calling the boarding '…
cmcclain | July 12, 2007I guess not. In 1999, a study led by Peter Herring found evidence that noted that shrimp eyes from heavily visited vents were opaque because the light-sensing tissues had been destroyed. The potential culprit? Large megawatt lights on submersibles. A new study, soon to be published in the UK's Marine Biological Association journal finds these effects may not be detrimental to shrimp populations. According to the BBC news, the new study finds that the TAG vent site no population change was detectable when data from 1994 and 2000 were compared. This suggests that the shrimp can rely on other…