kevin z | June 24, 2008The American Museum of Natural History in NYC put up old black and white pictures in an online exhibit called Picturing the Museum. Brian at Laelaps picked out some dinosaurliscious ones. Below is one from 1937 titles "Boys examining Bathysphere, Hall of Ocean Life". I can only imagine the awe they must be feeling with only a few years earlier that hunk of metal was down in the deepest trench of our oceans. What do they think they are saying to each other? This calls for a caption contest!
Hat tip to the disperser, Michael B.
cmcclain | June 24, 2008News this morning is that Nautilus Mining has signed a 25 million dollar contract with Norway's North Sea Shipping to provide a specialist mining support vessel for the Solwara-1 project in PNG. Evidence that Nautilus sees mining hydrothermal vents as profitable (and feasible) and movement ahead to commercial mining operations imminent.
petnoyer | June 24, 2008In 1982, following years of civil unrest and economic crisis in Argentina, the Argentine military government invaded the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic in an effort to reclaim the territory from the British. This is known as the Falklands War. Nearly 900 people died in the conflict, mostly Argentines. At the time, few knew of the Falkland Islands, and fewer knew Argentina was capable of mounting an amphibious attack.
Now, 25 years later, the secret's out. It was all about oil. Plans are underway to start drilling within the Falklands EEZ. "The area might hold 60 billion barrels of…
cmcclain | June 23, 2008New research suggest that the songs of blue whales are becoming deeper. In in 1962, John Hildebrand found that the frequency of call was around 22Hz, below the range of our hearing, but last year had decreased to 15Hz. Hildebrand explains that frequency comes at a tradeoff with volume. He suggests the choice is conscious between a really loud song or one that will go really deep.
Why the change?As their numbers have slowly increased after the devastation caused by whaling, they are having to communicate over smaller distances so their songs don't need to be as loud and they can make them…
kevin z | June 22, 2008No, I'm not talking sushi. I'm talking about Japan's blockbuster sports marine invertebrate films!
Check out Kani the Goalkeeper and Calamari Wrestler below and I dare you to tell me they don't have Oscar written all over them!
kevin z | June 20, 2008
The July edition of free wallpapers from National Geographic offer yet another stunning visible display that overwhelms the senses and renders me in awe of our natural wonder. About the picture:"A thicket of tentacles belonging to Heteractis magnifica, the magnificent sea anemone, provides cover for a transparent shrimp the size of a rice grain. The sea anemone, anchored to the reef, ignores shrimp but nabs small fish and other passersby."
Hat tip to Michael Barton, FCD.
Bonus pics under the fold!
Part of a collection of amazing photoshop'ed hybrids from this unnamed site here. Below are…
kevin z | June 20, 2008
Stop motion & Music by Ryan Smith. Rendered by Chris Mcdonald.
Disturbing, but the stop motion and haunting music.. can't keep my eyes away...
Bonus beneath the fold!
GIANT SQUID PIRATE FLIPBOOK!!!! Hat tip to Squid, go there to get the details about the book and video.
kevin z | June 19, 2008Rick MacPherson posts one of his most thoughtful essays on people and oceans.
Mission Accomplished? Read for yourself and decide.
Water ice found on Mars!! NASA says "w00t"!
cmcclain | June 19, 2008Rising gas prices may have one more causality, one you many not have thought of...oceanographic science. Our main tool is the research vessel, large contraptions we use to steam across the vast oceans collecting data. The R/V New Horizon from Scripps take 39,000 gallons of marine diesel. Currently diesel in California is at an average of $4.97 per gallon. So to fill up that is going to take $193,830.00. How many gallons of fuel does a ship go through each day? On the larger ships it can be 4,000 to 4,500 gallons of fuel a day.
Can I pay for that in monthly installments?
Just a year ago…
cmcclain | June 19, 2008Sometimes research comes about that really makes my whole week. This time it is a little diddy from Lindner et al. in PLoS. We could go through all the specifics of the paper...they sequenced 100 coral species from a single family or that family is the second most diverse group of hard corals.
But all you really need to know is that this family didn't originate in shallow water but in the deep sea! After the group evolved in the deep, gathering the necessary anti-predatory equipment, they invaded the shallow water tropics at least three times. O but that was not enough! They…
petnoyer | June 19, 2008
New York Times reviews Werner Herzog's Antarctic documentary "Encounters at the end of the World" calling it 'hauntingly beautiful'. The film is set at McMurdo Station, and features 'melancholy' scientists, extended landscape shots, Weddell seals, and jellyfish.
NYT reviewer Manohla Dargis credits the director for avoiding the trappings of "casual talk about global warming and other calamities might cast shadows across this bright expanse" through artistic beauty and an "unshakable faith in human beings".
It would be thrilling to see Werner Herzog sit down with Wallace Broecker in the SEED…
kevin z | June 19, 2008The Raging Wombat of Ugly Overload brings us a tale of small fish eat bigger fish. Go there and see more pictures and get the story!
kevin z | June 18, 2008I know what to get Craig for his birthday!
From Gama-Go:
"This bag is built to last, constructed from a tough, water-resistant cordura nylon shell with a ripstop polyester interior lining and velcro closure.
Keep your gear in order with three handy front pockets under the flap and a large slip pocket on the back.
The interior features two see-through zippered pockets, three pen slots, a cell phone pouch and a detachable keychain holder.
The strap is adjustable and features a heavy-duty seatbelt-style metal buckle with brushed nickel finish designed after the GAMA-GO logo.
The dimensions are…
kevin z | June 18, 2008From CNN.com:
"President Bush asked Congress on Wednesday to permit drilling for oil in deep water off America's coasts to combat rising oil and gas prices.
"There is no excuse for delay," the president said in a Rose Garden statement.
Bush also renewed his demand that Congress allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, clear the way for more refineries and encourage efforts to recover oil from shale in areas such as the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
Bush said that the basin potentially contains more than three times as much recoverable oil as Saudi Arabia…
cmcclain | June 18, 2008Guardian Online is running a couple of responses to Wallace Broecker's call for carbon storage experiments in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Worth reading all to understand the pros and cons for yourself.
CO2 disposal in the ocean is a dangerous distraction
Deep divisions
kevin z | June 18, 2008Th Right Blue, a diving and undersea photography blog, has a fantastic story about diving in Sipadan Cave off of Borneo. Jacques Costeau dove here in the 1980s and discovered an underwater cave filled with sea turtle bones. Much like the deep sea, underwater caves are dangerous, dark environments with its own unique ecosystem.
"While Cousteau and his group conjectured that old or sick turtles may have gone there intentionally to die, our guide told us that Cousteau's original notion had been replaced more recently by a more prosaic explanation:"
(You have to go there to find out more!)
kevin z | June 17, 2008
Since PZ Myers and Bug Girl are brought up this important issue, we at Deep Sea News would like our K-12 educational systems to teach what REALLY happened to the ancient lost city of Atlantis. Faithful Deep Sea News readers are advised to wear this T-shirt in support of teaching the controversy about the variety of "theories" behind the once great Utopian city of Atlantis.
Atlantis has sunk to bottom of the Mediterranean Ocean. There is evidence!!
The inhabitants turned into mer-people (mer means ocean). There is evidence!! (also here and here) New Zealanders even sing of them!!
So while…
kevin z | June 17, 2008Spring is in the air! Its the time of year to release your gametes into the water and make baby barnacles. But wait a second, you are a permanent fixture on a rock. Can't move. What is a young, lovestruck sessile she-male to do? Well, if you are hung like a barnacle you don't really have to move that far.
Barnacles are known as the John Holmes of the invertebrate world with penises reaching up to 10 times their body size. Not all barnacles are equally endowed though. To make the situation more complicated, barnacles are hermaphrodites. Eric Charnov proposed an extension of Sex Allocation…
cmcclain | June 16, 2008COSMOS magazine touts itself as the providing the "Science of Everything". The last issue (21) seems to deliver with articles on space elevators, Greenland's ice sheet, Pioneer, artificial intelligence, marine protected areas, California ground squirrel, scientific ballooning, and more. On page 26 and 27 is my favorite article...but I might be biased since I wrote it.
The editor of COSMOS approached me a few months ago about putting together a piece on my experience as a deep-sea explorer and the novelty of deep-sea organisms. I couldn't pass up the oppurtunity to discuss my two favorite…
petnoyer | June 16, 2008The Wealth from Oceans Flagship at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) released a new report on seafloor mining Friday. The story follows on the heels of controversy about the environmental impacts of seafloor mining. Australia's EEZ is rich in submerged minerals.
According to the project leader, CSIRO's Dr Joanna Parr, the message from industry, the scientific community, governments and the social sector is clear: "This is an exciting and challenging field. All parties realise that much work would be needed to build a socially, environmentally…