cmcclain
Posts by this author
February 25, 2007
About a year ago the Seed Mothership, sponsored an event that allowed readers to pose questions to their favorite blogger. Peter and I, before we had the mothership connection, joined up with that event. You, the readers, presented several insightful questions.
So once again, I ask you to…
February 23, 2007
During "Friday Night Discussion", aka pizza and pitchers, a question was posed. Which is prettier, Britney Spears or the Kraken?
OR
February 23, 2007
Hermit crab from a cold seep site sampled during seeps voyage on RV Tangaroa. Note the seep-associated bacterial filaments on its claws (furry-looking covering).
Image courtesy of NOAA/NIWA.
February 22, 2007
Scientists added several species of deep sea sharks on Thursday to the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) endangered Red List due to overfishing.
February 22, 2007
On the 15th, I reported about the recently sequenced genome of R. magnifica. One of the coauthors is not pleased with the papers outcome.
Actually, in reality, most everything about this paper, well, kind of sucks.
Why? Not because of the quality of research or the topic. First, Science favored…
February 22, 2007
Here are the pictures I promised yesterday of the new catch...
From Dominion Post...MONSTROUS CATCH: A colossal squid, weighing about 450kg, was caught by a longliner in Antarctica. It was barely alive when it reached the surface.
Photo courtesy of the New Zealand Fisheries department
February 21, 2007
Sweet Jesus! Several news agencies are reporting that New Zealand fisherman in the Ross Sea caught the LARGEST SQUID EVER FOUND. It's not Architeuthis dux, the giant squid but rather Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the colossal squid! The monster comes into 450kg (992 lbs). That is 1/2 ton! It is…
February 21, 2007
I asked Crissy Huffard, a cephalopod biologist, to look over Volume 3 (No. 164 of 307) of Haggis-On-Whey's World of Unbelievable Brilliance: Animals of the Ocean, In Particular the Giant Squid. Here are her impressions.
This book is slightly less biologically accurate than Life Aquatic and…
February 20, 2007
From stuff.co.nz...
Nothing gets National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientist Kareen Schnabel's pulse racing quite like deep-sea crustaceans.
Oddly creatures of the deep make my heart skip a beat too!
February 19, 2007
Via Akeakamai, I found this gem of a video from JAMSTEC's Shinkai 6500. The video shows several typical scavenging organisms, crabs, eels, and GIANT ISOPODS (Bathynomus giganteus), feeding on what appears to be a sizeable fish (maybe tuna). For scale the isopods are about 9-12 inches in length…
February 17, 2007
Why no cry? Because the government is picking up our paycheck! To further prove the economic futility of a deep-sea fishery.
Out of AAAS in San Francisco...
Rashid Sumaila and Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia in Canada recently studied the subsidies paid to bottom trawl…
February 17, 2007
This week's post, There is Plenty of Oil, generated a heated discussion about the finer points of peak oil and oil reserves. In line with oil reserves, I noted that offshore deposits are unlikely to sustain global oil consumption or even delay the oil peak predicted originally by Hubbert. Less…
February 16, 2007
First time a hagfish has been collected from a vent.
February 15, 2007
Fig. 1. A circular representation of the R. magnifica genome. The innermost circle highlights genes of special interest: cbb (Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle, red), sox (sulfur oxidation, green), dsr (dissimilatory sulfite reductase, blue), and rnf (NADH dehydrogenase). The second and third circles…
February 15, 2007
The film captured the squid, Taningia danae, in action: 1 The squid swims towards the bait; 2 It spreads its arms wide; 3 It swims around the bait, twisting its body; 4 It grabs the bait with its eight arms.
The last few days have been hell! My happy Intel Mac is sick and I have been computerless…
February 15, 2007
Proper preparation for deep-sea research requires a great deal of equipment, which can cost hundreds of thousands of money. Happily, due to government ignorance and the treachery of accountants worldwide, most equipment can be written off at tax time..."
As April approaches and I prep my taxes, I…
February 12, 2007
So we all know that seamonsters are whale wedding tackle. Joe Nickell over at the Skeptical Inquirer discusses the "Mysterious Enitites of the Pacific Northwest". Included is Cadborosaurus, the sea serpent, which Joe attributes to decaying basking sharks, odd shaped rocks, and otters swimming in…
February 12, 2007
From 120m in the North Sea. A frogfish maybe from the genus Antennarius
February 11, 2007
So if I can manage to save my next three years of salary, and not spend any money on Guinness rent, I will be really close to affording a C-Quester. Of course, it going to be a little more expensive because I am going to want all the options and acessories like:
Dome Protection
Lifting Points…
February 11, 2007
Every once in while, I read something on the internet that boils my blood. Last year it was the utter nonsense coming from the beauty industry about the benefits of deep-sea water (Which won me a Fuzzy). Now it is ramblings from Nick Szabo. Who is Szabo?
Nicholas Szabo holds a Juris Doctor…
February 11, 2007
When we talk about conserving fish stocks what do we mean? I see conservation as allowing fish to maintain healthy viable populatoons so we can maintain long-term sustainable harvest. Overfishing is the enemy not fishing. Often someone tries to convince the public that you have fisherman on one…
February 11, 2007
What does 78.1 million U.S. dollars buy you? Presidential election? A month's supply of prescription medication? Health care? A house in California?
Definitely not enough money for any of those. What it does buy is a shiney new ship from fine Norwegian shipbuilders and a visit from royalty. …
February 8, 2007
[For the 5th installment of Just Science, I asked Brian Romans a PhD candidate in the Department of Geological & Environmental Sciences at Stanford University to post on his research. You can catch his blog at http://bromans.blogspot.com/]
As we all know, the deep sea contains fantastic…
February 8, 2007
The sea cucumber, Scotoplanes globosa, at 1500m in Monterey Canyon.
Just Science Entry #4
Not giant squid or man eating sharks...megafauna, those organisms those organisms large enough to be caught in trawls or seen in photographs or video. (fish, crabs, lobsters, starfish, urchins, sea cucumbers…
February 6, 2007
From JAMSTEC, Chimney of "Blue Smoker" at a depth of 1470 m
Just Science Entry #3
Hydrothermal vents appear from ruptures in the newly created basalt along mid-oceanic ridges. At fractures the surrounding cold water penetrates the crust and mix with red-hot basalt. This mixture emerges through…
February 6, 2007
Just Science Entry #2
[For the second day of Just Science, I asked Henry Ruhl, fellow MBARI'ian and deep-sea ecologist to discuss a new project he is involved with]
Much of what we know about temporal variability in deep-sea ecology comes from only a few locations and most timeseries studies…
February 5, 2007
Just Science Entry #1
Kim didn't miss much. She went into Final Jeopardy with $15,000 and won the match by a scant $1 by correctly identifying the world's largest invertebrate (answer: "What is a giant squid?").
But was she right?
There seems to be considerable debate about this.
Steve O'Shea (…
February 2, 2007
Over at BlogCritics Magazine someone has critiqued DSN. ggwfung has not been so nice to my Sb'lings and they have in turn not been so nice back. That being said, ggwfung had some really nice things to say about us...
Deep Sea News is a partnership between Craig, a "post-doctoral fellow at the…
February 2, 2007
Alepisaurus ferox which washed up alive on the beach in front of MBARI in the spring of 2002. Tonatiuh Trejo, a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, and Jeff Drazen are holding up the specimen after dissecting it for various tissues and stomach contents. Several strandings of this…