cmcclain | December 28, 2006Dolphins & silly little monkeys...thier smatter than you think. Actually...dolphins are dangerous and monkeys throw poo. Luckily, the latest addittion to Sb, Developing Intelligence, has a handle on intelligence. I guess I won't expect too many post on the GOP or "Intelligent" Design.
cmcclain | December 28, 2006The BBC higlights a January expedition of Southampton Oceanographic Centre's (SOC) ROV Isis to the Antarctic. The project is to explore the sediment and organisms of Marguerite Bay. SOC aquired Isis in 2003 from a colloboration with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). Isis is largely based on WHOI's Jason II and has the typical equipment you would expect out of an ROV, high resolution cameras, manipulators arms, and various add tools for specific tasks.
cmcclain | December 27, 2006Peter McGrath, one of the project's founders, brought my attention to the Beagle Project. The goal is to build a replica of the Beagle and sail it in 2009 along Darwin and Fitzroy's original route. The mission appears to be threefold: public outreach, education, and science. One of the scientific goals is a biological assessment of the changes since Darwin's original observations. A blog is also kept for the project . Should be interesting to see how this project develops with the potential for education and research. My only criticism it that a project goal should be torment…
cmcclain | December 26, 2006I love being out to sea, 2 months on a research vessel is heaven. I eagerly read about projects like Freedom Ship and Trilobis and await the days I can shed my terrestrial dwelling. I tried to convince my wife that we should live in an houseboat...we still live on land. With forward politics and Hydropolis and I may be moving to the middle east.
From the industrious Prince of Dubai, who brought the eighth wonder of the world-the Palm Jumeirah, comes the world's first underwater luxury hotel. The key here is luxury...this is no rennovated research shack like the Jules Underwater Hotel.…
petnoyer | December 26, 2006My favorite thing about Christmas is the stories. To me, the holiday comes wrapped in pictures, histories, tales, and yarns just like the gifts setting under the tree. The feast begins after Thanksgiving Day as networks broadcast animated snowmen, elves, and reindeer. Classic stories like Miracle on 34th Street and Christmas Carol make the season great. Even now, when my family gets together, someone brings a Christmas story to read aloud. We tried everything from classics to limericks.
It would be nice to tell a Christmas story here at Deep Sea News. Its a challenge if nothing else. I…
cmcclain | December 25, 2006You may remember from high school or college chemistry that temperature affects the rate of chemical reactions. A reaction between two molecules can only occur if those two molecules collide with sufficient energy (collision theory). Heating causes molecules to gain energy, increasing their velocity (kinetic theory). A higher velocity increases the probability of two molecules meeting thus increases the reaction rate.
In the oceans, temperature decreases with increasing depth with the deep sea usually around 3-4ËC. Whereas this basic pattern holds, regional differences in current…
cmcclain | December 24, 2006At one of this holiday's events, someone asked when I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist. It was college when I realized I could make a living by 'playing' in the ocean. However, I have always wanted to explore new frontiers both intellectually and physically. A quote from my favorite movie of all time from an explorer's heart,
"You don't like coconuts! Say, brainless, don't you know where coconuts come from? Lookit here - from Tahiti - Fiji Islands, the Coral Sea!"
He pulls a magazine from his pocket and shows it to her.
"A new magazine! I never saw it before."
"Of course you never.…
cmcclain | December 24, 2006
The series continues! Chris Mah and Peter's recent and wonderful posts have goaded me into next segment of the 25 Things You Should Know About The Deep Sea (the last post in this series links to all the previous). The beginnings of deep-sea science in the late 1800's was dominated by two ideas about deep-sea life, the azoic and living fossil hypotheses. The later of these was the abyss sheltered animals through previous extinction events and general catastrophes leading to a repository for fossil taxa. Louis Agassiz and T.H. Huxley, both scientific leaders of the time, were hopeful to…
cmcclain | December 23, 2006I personally love doing this series because it allows me to explore and solidify a variety of ideas I mull over on daily basis. Previously in this series I have discussed the difficulty of sampling, the variety of habitats, linkages to the oceans surface, body size, conservation, undiscovered species, biodiversity, unexplored regions, the large spatial extent, and the very definition of the deep sea. For #11 in the series I will discuss who the movers and shakers are in deep-sea environments going all the way from fish to bacteria. We typically think of the deep-sea benthos (seafloor habitats…
cmcclain | December 22, 2006
How separated is Architeuthis and Kevin Bacon you ask?
As you might remember although the Giant Squid had some cameos in previous B movies, it really was not until 1954 in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that Mr. G. Squid hit the big time. In this movie, the Giant Squid shared the screen with Kirk Douglas who played Ned Land.
Kirk Douglas was in Tough Guys (1986) with Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach was in Mystic River (2003) with Kevin Bacon
cmcclain | December 22, 2006I declare today all Kraken day! I bet Kevin Bacon is happy. In case you have not got your fill, browse these old post for fun.
Kraken Attack in Virginia
Known and documented attacks of the Kraken.
Giant Squid Popsicles
New Specimen of Giant Squid From Fishing Nets
Beg Your Pardon?
Father, Son, and Nephew Collect Giant Squid
I have a squid crush!
Giant Squid Overthrown As Largest Squid in a Molluscan Coup d'Etat
Deep-Sea Squids Have Sex Then Attack Canadians
Followup on the Colossal Squid
The Giant Squid is 7 Degrees Seperated from Kevin Bacon
More on The Giant Squid Caught in the…
cmcclain | December 22, 2006The new squid diva is 24ft long. How does she measure up? I just happend to have data setting on my computer to address that issue. Don't ask...I lay awake a night thinking about the body size of marine organisms. Below is a histogram of every documented Architeuthis capture before 1997 (data are from The Search for the Giant Squid).
You can see the new caputre follows slightly below the average. Molluscs (clams, oysters, scallops, chitons, tusk shells, squid, octopods, nautilus, snails, slugs) are fascinating group in general with respect to body size. Body sizes vary over 12 orders of…
cmcclain | December 22, 2006
PZ beat me to the punch (I really think he should be penalized for the time zone difference). Japanese researchers, the same group that caught the photographs in 2004, have filmed a live giant squid. The research team, led by Tsunemi Kubodera, videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it, on squid bait, off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo, earlier this month. The squid was a female juvenile of about 24ft which falls shy of the 60ft record.
CNN video is here.
Video from Reuters (best and no plugins required)
cmcclain | December 22, 2006To say sampling an environment covered by 1000's of meters of water is difficult would be an understandment. Sampling requires creativity, technology, and luck (mostly the latter). Equipment must be designed to withstand both pressure and saltwater. Both design, deployment, and maintenance requires considerable funding. Being a deep-sea scientist is perhaps a bit masochistic. So what equipment do we use?
Research Vessels-To access the deep sea you have to set sail. The ship needs to be both large and stable enough to access high seas. In addition, deploying equipment also requires A…
cmcclain | December 22, 2006Besides the typical divisions we make for deep-sea habitats based on depth, it is important to note that the deep sea is not a homogenous landscape. Rather a variety of unique habitats, each with a specialized set of organisms, create a mosaic across the seafloor.
1. Soft-bottom benthos is the largest habitat and comprises those areas generally characterized by 'soft' sediments of silt, clay, or biogenic ooze. A variety of factors (disturbance from seafloor storms and erratic currents, patchiness in food input, sediment type, and depth) can lead to a further subset of micro- and…
cmcclain | December 21, 2006Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's death (check out Joel Schlosberg's Carl Sagan Memorial Blog-a-Thon). He was brilliant at motivating the passions of the public about the unexplored. In some sense Peter and I are trying to follow in his large footsteps to enspire this same passion about the deep sea.
Perhaps a testament to his life and far reaching influence, Baross and team in 2000 named a new species of archaea, Saganella. The microbe was isolated from water near a hydrothermal vent and was found to survive from room temperature to 90C (195F).
I think, however, what…
cmcclain | December 21, 2006From Science Online...
In April 2006, Maya Tolstoy, a geophysicist at Columbia University, received some good news and some bad news during a research expedition at sea. The submarine volcano that she and her colleague Felix Waldhauser had been monitoring for years had recently erupted. This was exciting, because only a handful of other deep-sea eruptions have been detected (1), and it was the first time ocean-bottom seismometers were in place during such an event. However, two-thirds of the instruments were stuck in the new lava on the sea floor (see the figure). Would the remaining third…
cmcclain | December 21, 2006Light does not reach the deep-sea floor. This precludes photosynthesis and thus primary production (except in chemosynthetic communities like hydrothermal vents and methane seeps). The lack of primary production on the deep-sea floor results in these communities being intimately coupled to the production of food at the surface by phytoplankton. What fluxes down to the deep sea is a combination of decaying animals (from plankton to whales), fecal pellets, and photosynthetic material (phytoplankton to seaweed). This material (carbon compounds) is consumed by deep-sea species and either returned…
cmcclain | December 20, 2006
Let's face it Peter Etnoyer is a handsome devil. With my bald head and his underwear model looks we might just be the sexiest bloggers at Sb. Peter is also humble and would never sing his own praises. Thats why I didn't know that our very own Petey is the star of several wonderful videos over at Ocean Exploration. Head on over if you want to see our very sweet videos on corals and read more about Peter.
cmcclain | December 20, 2006
In one of the earliest papers on the deep-sea fauna, Mosely (1880, p.593) noted, "Some animals appear to be dwarfed by deep-sea conditions." Almost a century later, Hessler (1974) noted that "individuals of certain taxa are routinely so small that they are of meiofaunal size." Thiel (1975, p. 593) echoes these comments by noting the deep sea is a "small organism habitat." Consider that the entire collection of deep-sea gastropods from the western North Atlantic collected under the WHOI's Benthic Sampling Program (44 samples, 20,561 individuals) would fit completely inside a single Busycon…