Author: Emmett Duffy
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Top Ten Sea Monsters (OK, make it a dozen)
We couldn’t have done this better ourselves. Meet the “12 most bizarre and frightening sea creatures“, courtesy of Asylum UK. This is so good I had to reproduce it: The planet Earth is full of scary stuff. Not just like the threat of bird-flu and unemployment, but even scarier things like angry bears and bity…
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The Sea Hag: Ugliest creature on earth?
As marine biologists we consider it our solemn duty to celebrate and sing of the beautiful and charismatic animals that live beneath the waves (see for example here and here). But every now and then one has to face the fact that some animals are, well, just plain disgusting. Alas, not everyone can be a…
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Post oil: Can rigs become reefs?
As ocean oil rigs run dry, the nemesis of many environmentalists may produce a silver lining. Defunct oil rigs are popular dive spots in the Gulf of Mexico and other areas (such as the Celebes Sea) because of the rich communities of reef life and fishes these structures attract on otherwise sandy bottoms. They are…
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Whale culture dispersed by traveling minstrels
New research shows that the legendary songs of humpback whales evolve rapidly as they’re spread throughout the world’s population by traveling males whose new songs are adopted by listeners along their migration routes. Male humpbacks have a highly stereotyped, repetitive, song that functions in sexual selection, either through mate attraction or male “social sorting”. Males…
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Global change, big animals, and how marine ecosystems work
[Here’s my review, recently published in the Quarterly Review of Biology, of an excellent new book on the complex structure and dynamics of marine ecosystems and their responses to ongoing climate change. ] The scarcity of large vertebrates in graduate oceanography curricula has long perplexed new students and other naifs, given the centrality of fishing…
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Coming to America: Massive Debris Patch From Japanese Tsunami
From the Voice of America: U.S. researches say a huge amount of debris from remnants of Japan’s coastal towns swept away in last month’s tsunami is moving across the Pacific Ocean and could reach the United States in the next few years. University of Hawaii researchers are projecting that the first batch of debris, including…
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How not to save the environment: sharks as biofuel
[Following is verbatim copy of a post from our cryptically named friend “WhySharksMatter” (aka David) at the Southern Fried Science blog. I’ve heard some pretty hair-brained ideas for getting the fossil fuel monkey off our backs, but this one is definitely a contender for the most bizarre as David explains ]. How not to save…
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Sea monster sparks tsunami panic
Not this again . . . THIS deep sea monster sent people running for their lives when it was reeled in on a Taiwanese beach. The 12ft yellow ribbonfish reportedly sparked tsunami panic because of its size. The species is normally found only in deep waters, but was hooked on a line off the coast…
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The search for intelligent life
[Thoughts inspired by an hour spent with a wild dolphin in the Whale Rider country of North Island, New Zealand. The terrain is very beautiful – dramatic craggy coastlines, gorges through the mountains cloaked in Paleozoic vegetation, tree ferns everywhere, in the dim shade everything covered with mosses, liverworts, brilliant little coral-colored fungi, delicate creepers,…
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Life and death of a real sea monster
No, this is not Nessie, or any of the other dubious beasts reported by sailors who got a bit too deep into the grog. This is a real live Sea Monster — well, OK it’s a real dead one. And has been for 150 million years. But it may be the biggest marine predator that…