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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
via The Scientist:
Image of the Day: Limber Seahorse
CT scans of a seahorse show its bony plates, which slide past each other as the animal bends, allowing it to be hard and yet flexible.
Jacobs School of Engineering
abluegirlLandmarks on the Dorsal fin of a shark.
These features can be used to identify different shark species. The inability to ID shark species via their fins has been an argument used to exemplify that the trade in shark fins can’t be regulated by species.
Dr. Demian Chapman and the Pew Environment Trust show us that that simply is not an excuse anymore, and have made a guide to prove just that. An just in time for CITES, where three types of shark are up for listing.
1. Porbeagle
2. Oceanic White Tip
3. Hammerhead Sharks ( I say this because if one of the three species are listed, the other two will be by proxy because their fins look too similar to distinguish)
Fins from 14 large-bodied shark species make up roughly 40% of the global fin trade. The oceanic whitetip and three hammerheads in this guide are included in this group and were estimated to constituted 7-9% of traded fins in 2000. Shark fin traders in Asia visually sort fins from these species into specific trade categories using the shape and color of the fin.
[…]
This guide is intended to help enforcement and customs personnel in the provisional identification of the first dorsal fins of these five shark species. In law enforcement situations, this could provide probable cause to hold questionable fins, so that expert opinion could be sought or genetic testing could be conducted to confirm the field identification.
Check out the online ID guide here.
These sharks are proposed for listing in CITES Appendix II. This means trade would still be allowed, but under tighter regulation that should ensure the products are coming from a sustainable source. Therefore it is vital to be able to identify their fins.Science might not always mean Conservation, but Conservation is built on good science.
University of California’s unofficial favorite sea slug poised to make a comeback
After almost four decades of absence from local waters, a special sea slug appears to be making a comeback, and marine scientists at UC Santa Barbara are eagerly anticipating its return.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-university-california-unofficial-favorite-sea.html#jCp
The mantis shrimp is one of the most incredible creatures found in our oceans. Over millions of years, it has equipped itself with an arsenal to rival that of any other organism, besting the limits of human technology on more than one front.
Firstly, it packs the biggest punch of any predator, with a sophisticated muscle mechanism allowing acceleration in excess of 102,000 m/s2 to be attained and a speed of 23 m/s from a standing start, about the acceleration of a .22 calibre bullet. Because they strike so rapidly, they generate cavitation bubbles between the appendage and the striking surface.The collapse of these cavitation bubbles produces measurable forces on their prey in addition to the instantaneous forces of 1,500 newtons that are caused by the impact of the appendage against the striking surface, which means that the prey is hit twice by a single strike; first by the claw and then by the collapsing cavitation bubbles that immediately follow. With this ability to create extreme low pressure behind it’s extended arm, causing the water to spontaneously boil, no prey stands a chance. This action releases intense energy, enough to break sheets of glass. Even if the initial strike misses the prey, the resulting shock wave can be enough to kill or stun the prey.
Additionally, the mantis shrimp has the most sophisticated and extensive eyes of any known creature. With their unique shape and composition, the shrimp can see in most directions simultaneously, as well as observing more of the spectrum than us humans, both at the infra-red and ultra-violet ends.
Oh and it looks fucking beautiful.
The Deepest Point of the Mariana Trench is Teeming with Life
A robot sent to the the very bottom of the Mariana Trench has confirmed that even the deepest parts of the ocean are teeming with microbial life. The Challenger Deep was previously thought to be too hostile an environment for life to exist, but this provides evidence that extremeophile bacteria can exist in the near-freezing temperatures, immense pressures and complete darkness of the deepest ocean trenches.
Scientists sent a specially designed robot 11 km down to the floor of the Challenger Deep. This robot was equipped with sensors that allowed it to measure oxygen consumption in the sediment on the seafloor, a metric that is considered to be an indicator of life. They found a surprisingly high amount of oxygen consumption, indicating that the seafloor of the Challenger deep was teeming with micro-organisms, which feed off the waste products and decomposing matter that descend from ecosystems higher in the water column.
Read more @ Smithsonian.com and BBC Science.
There Are Whales Alive Today That Are Older Than Moby Dick!
Eskimo hunters, whaling off the coast of Alaska, discovered 19th century stone and metal harpoon tips embedded in the blubber of bowhead whales. That means these relatives of humpbacks and other baleen whales were dodging harpoons as far back as the 1870’s!
Of course, Herman Melville published Moby Dick in 1851, so dating harpoons just means they were born sometime before 1879. Biologist Craig George decided to use a technique that measures certain protein chemistry in the whales eyes (basically as whales age, their eyes accumulate certain amino acids) to date them more accurately.
The result? There are likely bowhead whales out there that are more than 200 years old! That makes them older than any known tortoise, and perhaps the oldest animal on Earth! Check out more at Smithsonian.
They still don’t have anything on trees when it comes to age, though.
ikenbotStarfish feeding on a dead whale.
For the actual video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG17TsgV_qI
(via freshphotons)
A light microscope image of a purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) egg after fertilization is shown here. The outer circle area is called the vitellien layer. Purple sea urchins may be found on rocky bottoms and grazing intertidal and subtidal waters. They feed primarily on algae and brown kelp.
Image credit: Dr. Douglas Chandler; from Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences Ask a Biologist website
At up to 36ft in length, the oarfish is the largest bony fish known to science and is thought to be responsible for many sea serpent legends. Although it lives in tropical and temperate waters worldwide, the oarfish is rarely caught or seen alive. Little is known about its behavior.
Frogfish: The Ocean’s Disguise Artists
Biomimicry is one of evolution’s most mind-blowing avenues of adaptation. It’s one thing to adapt thanks to maxing out the biological limits of speed, or selecting for the ever-longer, better-feeding necks of giraffes or the ability to use a new, untapped food source at the bottom of the ocean. But to become another life form? It shows us that natural selection is not only a powerful force, but also a delicate one, fine-tuning things like colors and patterns like only the finest human artists can.
Above are three examples of frogfish biomimicry, a family of fish that separately mimics algae, sponges and even sea urchins. They evolved these costumes as a way to avoid predators and become better predators themselves. Check out an in-depth post about frogfish biomimicry at Why Evolution is True (wait until you see them eat!), and if you want more here’s a whole website (Comic Sans warning!) dedicated to frogfish camo.
These guys even give Peeta Mellark a run for his money:
Transparent-Headed Fish
First described in 1939, the unusual Pacific barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) is instantly recognisable by the transparent, fluid-filled dome that curves over its head like the cockpit of a fighter jet. The two green spheres within are actually the fish’s tubular eyes, while the dark capsules in front are the fish’s olfactory organs, responsible for smell. The barreleye lives in inky depths of over 600 metres, where sunlight fades to darkness, and its eyes have adapted remarkably. They’re so sensitive that they can detect faint silhouettes of prey passing overhead, and their green pigments are thought to filter out sunlight, allowing the barreleye to focus on its preys’ bioluminescent glow. It’s long been thought that these eyes are fixed, so the fish only has a tunnel-vision view of whatever is above its head, but researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have shown that the eyes can rotate around 75 degrees, from a vertical to a horizontal position. Along with its large flat fins, this amazing vision allows the 15 cm fish maneuver precisely and capture prey with its small pointed mouth. Interestingly, the barreleye shares its deep-sea habitat with many kinds of jellies, including the siphonophore, which grows to over 10 metres and trails out thousands of stinging tentacles like drift nets to capture prey. Researchers think that one of the barreleye’s feeding methods is to carefully manoeuvre among the siphonophore’s tentacles to steal its prey, and the transparent dome shields the fish’s eyes from the stinging tentacles.
(via ikenbot)
NORTHEAST PACIFIC SEA NETTLE
Chrysaora fuscescens
Size: Up to 30 inches in diameter with mouth arms trailing up to 16 feet.
Habitat: Coastal waters of the northeast Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea.
Fun Fact: These distinctive golden-brown jellies swim against ocean currents with their oral arms and tentacles extended to capture planktonic prey floating by, including crustaceans, snails, fish eggs and larvae, and other species of jellies.
(via ikenbot)
Devoted Deep Sea Squid Mama
Parental instincts aren’t exactly common place in the invertebrate world. Squid typically die after spawning, leaving orphaned squidlets to fend for themselves in the big bad ocean. But as in all of biology, there are exceptions.
Check out this incredible image of a mama squid tending to her (approx. 360) eggs — only the second species of brooding squid to be discovered, ever!
Man, the deep sea is cool. Cephalopods are also cool.
This paper was just published. Imagine how many more cool squid are down there.
“Go home Beluga; you’re drunk!”
You may have heard the other day that there was a Beluga that taught itself to mimic human speech sounds. I use the word “speech” lightly, because it sounds more like that time Doug was trying to learn to be a ventriloquist for the school talent show*. Named NOC (No-See), the beluga had figured out how to make sounds octaves below normal beluga squeaks. Apparently, this is no easy task, and while dolphins have been taught to make human-like sounds, cases of spontaneous mimicry has never been seen before.
But there’s bad news: At the time of publication this past Tuesday, the whale has been dead for five years now. Just goes to show, you can’t hurry science. Sorry NOC.
Babbling Beluga
‘Liquid Robotics’ wants to fill the ocean with robots.
Liquid Robotics have developed the ‘Wave Glider’ - a wave powered, autonomous marine robot able to stay afloat indefinitely, collecting and transmitting data. It uses a floating platform similar to a surfboard on the ocean surface, which is covered with solar panels, sensors, and radio equipment as required for each mission. Below the surface, a tethered sub takes advantage of wave motion to translate that energy into forwards movement for the platform - check out the cool explanation here.
The company is about to send four Wave Gliders on an unmanned crossing of the Pacific Ocean. The gliders will initially all set off from California to Hawaii, before breaking into pairs and travelling on to Japan and Australia, collectively covering 34,000 nautical miles in an expected time of over 300 days.
The data gathered by the Gliders will be provided free of charge and in real-time, to the world’s scientists, educators, students, and the general public. When they reach their final destinations, the Wave Gliders will have earned a Guinness World Record for the longest voyage completed by an unmanned ocean vessel.
Wave Gliders have already collectively covered over 100,000 miles in testing, and survived events like Hurricane Isaac. The company is now on the look out for a market beyond scientists and oceanographers. The continuous, real time data could give shipping companies more information on their routes, or could gather intelligence data for the military - they are silent and should be undetectable by radar.
Currently a Wave Glider costs US$200,000 to buy, or can be leased for $1,000 to $3,000 a day.
*Update - it seems the Gliders are underway! Register here to see the data from the voyage in real time.
(via 8bitfuture)
