cmcclain | July 11, 2007*note Global Warming is VERY BAD and title is sarcasm.
Flashback to 1992, it's early in the morning and a decrepit high school teacher stands before a class discussing the finer points of history. In the back row sits a smart ass, me, not listening and telling himself why should a future marine biologist pay attention in history class. Fast forward 15 years and the marine biologist wishes he remembers more about the discussion on the Northwest Passage. Unfortunately, all that runs through my brain are Charlie Brown's teachers.
If you are like me and bit foggy on the Northwest Passage…
cmcclain | July 11, 2007A potential new record holder for the largest giant squid washed ashore in western Tasmania. The individual came in at 550 lbs (250 kg) and stretched 26 ft (8 m) from head to the end of its severed tentacles. The specimen was extremely damaged and might measure longer. In the standard metric of body size of sea giants, the school bus (SB), this would measure about 0.9 SB. "It's a whopper," Genefor Walker-Smith, curator at the Tasmanian Museum, told the Reuters news service. Interestingly, giant squid rarely, if ever, was ashore on the western Tasmanian beaches being more common on the…
cmcclain | July 10, 2007
Readers probably know by now I am skeptical of Nautilus Mining's commitment to the conservation of the deep ocean. They are currently poised to begin large-scale mining efforts with a bus-sized ROV off extinct hydrothermal vent chimneys off Papua New Guinea. This week 2000 tribe members from Bagabag Island urged the government to put end to exploration and mining on the seabed in a paid advertisement in the national paper. In the piece they voiced
their frustrations and absolute disgust over the manner in which the provincial and national governments have issued license to Nautilus Minerals…
petnoyer | July 9, 2007 Even if you're not pregnant, you have to be worried about toxic mercury levels in fish.
Mercury is a highly reactive heavy metal that's present in raw fish, like sushi, and in canned fish, like tuna. Exposure to toxic levels of can cause damage to the nervous system and the renal system, but long term exposure at lower levels hardens arteries by inactivating antioxidant mechanisms.
In fact, high mercury content can diminish the cardiovascular benefits of fish consumption, so eating fish may not benefit your health after all (Guallar et al, 2002, N Engl J Med).
So how safe is your sushi?…
cmcclain | July 5, 2007
Near my ol' neck of the woods, a boat captain photographed this albino bottleneck in Calcasieu Lake, an estuary off the Gulf in southwestern Louisiana
cmcclain | July 5, 2007You ask and we deliver. A reader requested video of the Lamalera Sperm Whale Hunt. I immediately dispersed DSN whipping boy and now blogger extraordinare to the remote island. He quickly filmed the fisherman just 30 minutes ago and uploaded this video to at Google.
cmcclain | July 5, 2007Lamalera fisherman do things the old fashion way. They track down a 75ft-long sperm whale in two small hand-made boats and battle the beast with duri flensing knives and spears. Yeah that's tough.
The whale, called Koteklema by the locals, provides numerous resources for the village.
The villagers blame lack of harmony between different clans for their lack of [recent] success. "If there is no peace among us, there will be no good whaling," said villager Anna Bataona...The people believe in the harmony between life in the sea and the island. Peace on the land makes for good hunting from…
petnoyer | July 5, 2007
A team of marine biologists, geologists, and oceanographers studying chemosynthetic communities around hydrocarbon seeps aboard the Deep Slope Expedition 2007 research vessel RV Ron Brown successfully recovered a time-lapse camera from waters more than 2000m deep in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Life goes on in chemosynthethic communities when we're not there," says Dr. Ian MacDonald of Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. "We have to wonder what happens outside of the brief snapshot in time when we were there exploring."
Dr. MacDonald will use the information "to understand how the physical…
cmcclain | July 5, 2007
From the Honolulu Star Bulletin...
What appears to be a half-squid, half-octopus specimen found off Keahole Point on the Big Island remains unidentified today and could possibly be a new species, said local biologists. The specimen was found caught in a filter in one of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority's deep-sea water pipelines last week. The pipeline, which runs 3,000 feet deep, sucks up cold, deep-sea water for the tenants of the natural energy lab.
Actually, Richard Young, one of the world's leading cephalopod experts, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa states the…
cmcclain | July 3, 2007The Mining Journal reports on statements by Nautilus representatives at the Numis Mining Conference with respect to criticism levied in Science.
Norgate argued that the high percentage of copper in the seabed surrounding Papua New Guinea would mean that less 'land' would need to be disturbed to generate the same amount of copper as open cut mining. She also said that water that was brought in during the dredging process would be purified before the water was returned to the ocean, preventing toxic pollution from entering the ecosystem.
cmcclain | July 2, 2007When we picture monsters from the deep, most envision colossal sea beasts ready to drag the unsuspecting sailor to abyss. In actuality the sea beasts are at the other end of the size spectrum. Those viscous, nasty bacteria that line your digestive tract that could send you to your grave originated from deep-sea bacteria. A Japanese group report in PNAS that the two groups of bacteria share several genes allowing both to survive inhospitable habitats allowing them to flourish from temperatures between 39-158 degrees Fahrenheit.
cmcclain | July 2, 2007 More on the continuing saga that surrounds the Black Swan reported at the New Straits Times. This is going to get pretty confusing so I will provide it as sequential list time series.
Volvo launches a media spectacle that has the public looking for a sunken treasure as tie in to the festering heap of movie titled Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
Volvo hires Odyssey Marine Exploration to scout sites around Mediterranean to drop the Volvo's treasure chest.
During the scouting expeditions, Odyssey stumbles upon a ship codename the Black Swan in international waters.
Separately,…
cmcclain | July 2, 2007The French have discovered that UV radiation penetrates up to 100m deep in the waters of the southeast Pacific Ocean. They propose this might explain why surface waters in this region are poor in nutrients and a relative biological desert. As you may recall from your science classes UV degrades organic compounds including DNA. The research appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
cmcclain | June 28, 2007The Setting of the Sun Over the Pacific Ocean and a Towering Thundercloud, July 21, 2003
As Seen From the International Space Station (Expedition 7)
cmcclain | June 28, 2007In the whirlwind that is my life this summer, I have not been able read or review The Silent Deep. For a general primer on the deep sea, I often reach for and recommend Gage and Tyler's Deep-Sea Biology. Since 1992 it has been a bible for our field. However, in the last 15 years major advancements in deep-sea sciences have occurred. Koslow's book provides somewhat of an update to Deep-Sea Biology but also heads in new direction
The book is divided into three sections, 1. Early History of Deep-Sea Exploration, 2. The Ecology of the Deep Sea, and 3. The Human Footprint Across the Deep…
petnoyer | June 28, 2007
Scientists from around the world will attend a meeting in the Galapagos Islands at the end of June to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the deep-sea hydrothermal vent system. The meeting will address recent issues in vent science, including plans to mine remnants of these chemosynthetic ecosystems using deep-sea gold-diggers.
Hydrothermal vents introduced the idea of chemosynthesis as a precondition for life to a broad spectrum of society back in the late 70's when alternative lifestyles were gaining widespread acceptance. Before that time photosynthesis was the most…
cmcclain | June 28, 2007
In the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique, I justed moved above PZ. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Sure PZ claims to be the unofficial royalty of all Cephalopod. He even claims to be waiting for the molluscan mothership to land. But when it comes right down to the wire, PZ will have to address some serious questions about zebrafish. Between you and me, when it comes to the "inordinately fond of invertebrates" badge I have PZ beat. First, where is PZ's tattoo? I have one! Second, as you can clearly see in the photo below, that is Steve O'…
cmcclain | June 27, 2007 I am gone for little over a week and come back to find out I have one of the Worst Jobs in Science. Popular Science wishes to "salute the men and women who do what no salary can adequately award." Salary...I am supposed to be receiving a salary? Number 2 on PopSci's list it Oceanographer because we get "nothing but bad news, day in and day out." No seafood by 2048, no coral reefs in decades, 200 deoxygenated "dead zones" and counting, a vortex of plastic the size of Texas residing in the Pacific, ocean acidification, etc. Of course, you can go here and read more about this. Luckily the…
petnoyer | June 25, 2007Score one for Oceana and the New England Fisheries Management Council. Actually, score them fifteen. The two groups recently announced they have laid the foundations for designating 15 deep-sea canyons off the coast of New England as Habitat Areas of Particular Concern in an effort to build a more sustainable groundfish fishery.
Press release follows below from BYM Environment News.
The New England Fishery Management Council had laid the foundation to protect unique marine habitat by designating a series of canyons and seamounts from Maine to the Chesapeake Bay as Habitats of Particular…