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cmcclain | December 15, 2006
I like maps...a lot. I get excited about GIS and the monthly map insert in National Geographic. A great map awakens the explorer in me. So when I saw the new map from CSIRO, I was torn.
The map is brilliant, maybe too brilliant. The map shows the locations of offshore minerals near Australia. Copper, gold, silver, tin, topaz, tungsten, coal, bauxite...and diamonds. Why the recent interest in mining by India, Australia, Canada, and others. Mineral prices are high. The news is that the metal in a penny and a nickel are worth more than $0.01 and $0.05 respectively. The release of this…
cmcclain | December 15, 2006India has developed devices to search the depths of the ocean - to as deep as over 5,000 meters (5 km)
Yeah!...
for economic exploration, joining a league of nations that are developing such capability to exploit ocean wealth.
Booo!
'Once fully tested, we will be able to demonstrate and study what is available at depths of 5,000 metres and more. This will help us know how the mineral wealth can be exploited,' said Dr M.A. Atmanand, project director at NIOT.
Exactly what we need another Nautilus!
In an attempt to replace this with something better out of India I differ to Mujhse Dosti Karoge!
cmcclain | December 15, 2006
It is well known that ~70% of the earth's surface is covered by water. Of this, 90% lies beyond the continental shelf and is greater than 200m with 79% is greater than 1000m. However, scientist now know that the deep sea comprises a variety of habitats such as methane seeps, seamounts, hydrothermal vents, etc. (I will discuss these different habitats in more detail in a later 25 Things You Should Know About the Deep Sea). So this idea can be restated to be more precise. The largest habitat on earth by volume is deep-water pelagic systems or by surface area the soft-bottom benthos (mud,…
cmcclain | December 14, 2006Everyone is going on about being a crazy historical figure but I want to be a pirate!
What kind of pirate am I? You decide!You can also view a breakdown of results or put one of these on your own page!Brought to you by Rum and Monkey
pharyngula | December 14, 2006We have more internecine warfare going on at scienceblogs: in this case it's a matter of casual sexism. Should someone be surprised at pretty girls reading science fiction, or even being nerdy?
As someone who has been immersed in the nerd culture of the university since the mid-1970s and has also hung out in the science-fiction culture even longer (anyone remember Escape Books in Seattle? Been to Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven in Minneapolis?), and is a heterosexual male who usually notices the hot girls, I will say with great emphasis, NO! In my generation, women in biology were a minority, but…
grrlscientist | December 14, 2006
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On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents, daily
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tags: newborn, misidentification. weird facts
cmcclain | December 14, 2006[The Archaen] was collected at Axial Volcano on the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of Washington and Oregon. Fixing nitrogen at 92 C [198F] smashes the previous record by 28 C [82F], a record held by Methanothermococcus thermolithotrophicus, an archaeon that was isolated from geothermally heated sand near an Italian beach and fixes nitrogen at temperatures up to 64 C [116 F].
The critter is also from close to the good ol' U S of A as opposed to eurotrash from an Italian beach. Story from Newswise.
cmcclain | December 14, 2006Sure there is the destruction of marine habitats issue. Or maybe you prefer not to eat fish from the deep because they are oily, nasty, poop bottom feeders. Those are two fantastic reasons, but there is a third-child labor.
But many poor Pakistani families rely on incomes from their children to get by. UNICEF estimates there are 3.6 million working boys and girls under age 14 in Pakistan, mostly engaged in carpet-weaving, brick-making, agriculture and deep-sea fishing.
Luckily, the people at the U.N. don't think that a child's hands provide a certain je ne sais quoi to the abyssal fish…
cmcclain | December 14, 2006The Scientist has a great write up about deep-sea biologists Victoria Orphan and Shana Goffredi.
Victoria Orphan wanted to be a marine biologist ever since kindergarten. She even wrote it down in a Dr. Seuss book called My Book About Me. It still sits in her childhood bedroom, which she had painted to resemble a deep-sea scene.
Shana and Victoria's research centers on symbioses and speaks to the origin of multicelluarity. Their published work has been a cornerstone to a developed undertanding of methane seep and hydrothermal vent communities
cmcclain | December 14, 2006 The Portsmouth Herald discusses sexual dimorphism, specifically body size, in a cheeky sort of pop press way. This is something we never do (e.g. Man Eating Sponges). One comment has me concerned that the writer doesn't read DSN.
But in many other species, it's the female who's the big one. In fact, the Guinness Book of World Records has just included an entry for biggest male-female difference: the deep-sea angler fish, also known as the giant sea devil. It was named before anyone saw a male. Females can stretch to around five feet long but the males are about the size of flies. The…
pharyngula | December 14, 2006If you've been following our little high school drama here in homophobic Morris, Skatje has posted a summary.
cmcclain | December 14, 2006
The deep sea represents those marine environments that occur beyond the continental shelf. The average depth at which this occurs is approximately 200m, so typically we define the as those environments greater than 200 meters and extending to approximately 10,000 m (the depth of Mariana's Trench, the deepest point in the ocean).
Although the defining feature is not depth per se but rather the transition from the continental shelf to the continental slope, referred to as the shelf break. The term deep sea can be used to characterize both deep pelagic habitats, the water column greater than…
petnoyer | December 14, 2006I study deep-corals (gorgonians mostly) but I am fascinated by all things cnidarian (sea anemones, hydroids, jellyfish, corals). These are suspension feeders that filter food from the water column, so I am also inevitably drawn to dabblings in physical oceanography, and I will try to post on these whenever I can. For now, though, I think I'll use my first post at the new Deep-Sea News to spill the beans on some old trickery.
One thing you should know about DSN is that Craig keeps real strict rules on his definition of the deep-sea, so I work to find a way around this when something…
grrlscientist | December 13, 2006As if the English and Americans can't think of enough verbal insults on our own, the Germans have gotten together to offer us a few more. The Goethe Institute in Munich held a competition to nominate real insulting German words that would most benefit English cussing. The winner? Fachidiot.
It literally pertains to academics who are "idiots of their own subject," the institute said in its winner's announcement.
"The difference is that a one-track specialist still notices what is going on around him, in the world which has nothing to do with university. A fachidiot simply does not, or not…
grrlscientist | December 13, 2006
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Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
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tags: orca, shark. weird facts
cmcclain | December 13, 2006Be careful there are 9 new species of carnivorous sponges. Luckily they are all deep sea so your chances of encountering one on any day are limited. But when the squid overlords take over they may call upon the sponges for the battle. You may not be scared but Vacelet (2006) describes how these are predators with spicules that are hooked for capturing invertebrate prey. Image from Vacelet (2006 Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society).
cmcclain | December 13, 2006To celebrate the move over and the holiday season, we will be reposting the 25 Things You Should Know About The Deep Sea series. There will be one repost a day starting the 12th and going through to the 25th.
grrlscientist | December 13, 2006
The Elements.
Orphaned Image. This lovely image was sent to me in email but I unfortunately cannot find any information about it so I can give proper attribution.
cmcclain | December 13, 2006In 1872, the instructions to the captain of the HMS Challenger, the first dedicated global exploration of the oceans, read explore "all aspects of the deep sea...You have a wide field and virgin ground before you."
Nearly 100 years later, C.P. Idyll notes in his forward of Abyss: The Deep Sea and the Creatures that Live In It
"The planet earth is still largely unexplored. Nearly 3/4 of its surface covers a vast region that is almost unknown to man.
This is the domain of the sea.
Of the 197 million sq. miles of the earth's surface, 139 million sq. miles are covered by the world ocean...White…
grrlscientist | December 12, 2006I went for my intake interview at one of the "aftercare" clinics today. Originally, this appointment had been scheduled for yesterday but because I put that piece of paper into a very very safe place, I (of course) could not find it when I needed it, so I missed my appointment.
The interview itself was relatively painless, although I was very annoyed with their insistence that I "prove" my lack of an income. How the hell do you do that? This is just the same as trying to prove there are no more ivory-billed woodpeckers. What dolts.
"Well, how are you supporting yourself?" the fat lady asked…