Sea Monster

Category: Ocean Science

  • Belize field log 3: Journey to the center of the reef

    [The third installment in our New York Times “Scientist at Work” field log.] Collecting shrimp is a complicated business. I am not as seasoned as my colleagues, but I quickly learn how tedious it can be. After taking a photograph and estimating the volume of a sponge, we have to locate every shrimp inside. Synalpheus…

  • Will this be the end of the Aquarius Reef Base?

    Next week a team of aquanauts including Sylvia Earle will live and work underwater for 6 days inside “America’s Inner Space Station” aka the Aquarius Reef Base. It’s the world’s only undersea research station and its future is looking shaky – unless new funding is found the station will be closed. In an effort to…

  • Biodiversity and the battle for Planet Earth: The graphic novel

    [Editor’s note: It’s been a big month for the science of biodiversity and an exciting time to be a part of it. Last week, Nature came out with its issue commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Rio meeting that first put biodiversity on the world’s radar screen and spawned the Convention on Biological Diversity. The…

  • Online Encyclopedia of Life hits a million pages

    The Encyclopedia of Life has hit a million pages!  From ScienceDaily: The Encyclopedia of Life has surged past one million pages of content with the addition of hundreds of thousands of new images and specimen data from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Launched in 2007 with the support of leading scientific…

  • Happy Birthday Genie Clark

    Today is Eugenie Clark’s 90th Birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY GENIE! To celebrate I’m reposting my story about meeting my shark hero last year.  They say never meet your heros, but after meeting one of mine I can thoroughly recommend it. During my recent visit to Mote Marine Labs in Florida I had the chance to meet Eugenie Clark –…

  • Impacts of biodiversity loss rival those of climate change and pollution

    Current estimates suggest we are now, or soon will be, in the grip of earth’s sixth mass extinction of species. This is of course a tragedy in many ways—but will it really affect us in any substantial way? With the thundering hooves of all the other apocalyptic horsemen bearing down on us—global warming heating, hypoxic…

  • Going with the flow – on a planetary scale

    We tend to think of ocean currents – when we think of them at all — as stately, slow-moving rivers in the sea, as I believe Ben Franklin himself first referred to the Gulf Stream. But in reality the patterns of water movement across the earth’s surface are extraordinarily complex. Nothing gives you a more…

  • The first men to reach the bottom

    With the news that James Cameron is set to be the first person in 52 years to venture to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, here’s a piece of news footage from the first time people went down there (complete with fantastic musical backing track). [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBFdGQ0QIco[/youtube]

  • James Cameron could make history in a submarine

    The media is buzzing today with news of James Cameron’s upcoming solo journey into the Challenger Deep. At 35,768 ft (more than 6.7 miles!) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, it’s the deepest spot on Earth. He broke a solo depth record yesterday during a test dive. Jacques Piccard and Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh,…

  • New study finds ocean acidification reduces coral recruitment

    Hardly a week goes by without a new study being published that documents another negative impact of ocean acidification on ocean life. Now a new paper by Chris Doropoulos (Doropoulos et al 2012) from Ove Hoegh-Guldberg’s lab at UQ reports findings of an experiment suggesting that acidification can even reduce coral recruitment. Crazy! Coral “recruitment” is…