Tag: science
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Jackson the elephant seal takes an 18000 mile stroll
Legend has it that back in ancient Greece, some guy named Pheidippides ran 27 miles (technically 26 miles and 385 yards) to alert his general that the Persians had been defeated at the battle of Marathon. Then he dropped dead from the exertion. He was of course considered a hero and the run is immortalized…
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How to lie with statistics
Alright, I’m on this science thing again. Having spent my entire adult life applying rigorous logic to find out how things happen in the real world of cause and effect, I have this annoyance issue about people (Presidential candidates, for example) just making stuff up out of thin air. Now, at last, I understand how…
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Ignoramus Nation
All of us here at SeaMonster are scientists of one stripe or another. Science is largely responsible for revealing the world of wonders we celebrate, illuminating the weighty issues we debate, heck even for designing the surfboards we ride. But science — which is nothing more or less than applied, rationale thinking — is under…
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Silky seabugs
As a long-time afficianado of the amphipod crustaceans I’ve come to terms with being alone in a crowd, having as it were a more rarified taste in biophilia than the average whale-hugger lover of sea life. Sure, they’re submicroscopic, sometimes pesky (crawling into your ears while working underwater, for example), and often devilishly difficult to…
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Marine biodiversity: The tip of the iceberg
Who doesn’t love whales, beautiful fishes, octopuses, corals — even sharks? You know that we do here at SeaMonster. But those charismatic megafauna, as they are rather cumbersomely known in the conservation science-geek community, are only the tip of the biodiversity iceberg. Down in the jumbled rubble on the floor of the reef, among the…
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Underwater robot time machine: SeaMonster interviews Dr. Mark Patterson
In the sultry late summer of 1781, General Cornwallis, Commander of British forces in Virginia, was holed up in Yorktown building fortifications to secure a deep-water port for the Royals, and thus control of the strategically critical Chesapeake Bay. General Washington, in consultation with French allies, dispatched a French fleet to stop them, a…
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The real faces of science
I know you’re busy. But this will only take a moment of your time. Really. And afterwards you will feel buoyed, empowered, brighter, stronger, smarter, more luminous. Well, relieved anyway. These, my friends, are Women Scientists Making Faces. And some of them work at sea. Watch out Hollywood movie stars, they’re coming after ya. Roll…
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Ice Day
When I was a young girl, a snow day was a rare and glorious thing. Here at Palmer Station, it seems like every other day is a snow day – or, more specifically, a snow-and-ice day. It’s springtime, which apparently means: wind. Whiteness. Generally unpredictable yet predictably cold weather. The winter sea ice broke up…
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Flying South for the Winter: I’m Going to Antarctica!
I write to you from a ship in the middle of the ocean, somewhere off the tip of Chile. Later tonight, my boat will be in the Drake Passage: notoriously the roughest seas on Earth. I left my home in North Carolina on Tuesday, and some 30 hours later I was standing on a pier…