Deep Sea News

Let’s make Friday a special occaision here at Deep Sea News. Last Friday we posted a geeky fish video and an online video game, along with the usual photo. Folks were so thankful for the entertainment that our gross national product probably dropped by one millionth of one percent. We should make it a tradition, out of respect for our European friends, if not ourselves.

Whatever happened to Fridays back in the American 70’s, you know, with wall posters of kitty cats hanging from a limb saying “Hang On, Baby Friday’s Coming” rather than foggy mountain vista’s saying “Inspire. Achieve”? Puhhlease. That ain’t Friday. “Get down, get down. Get down, get down…”

This week’s TGIF video comes from Marine geologist Masaaki Kimura who says he has identified the ruins of a city off the coast of Yonaguni Island on the southwestern tip of Japan. The link is here. If you dive, you’ll love it. If you don’t, you’ll wish you did.

Be interested to hear from some geologists and archeologists on this one.
Here’s some excerpts from the article.

“Judging by the design and the disposition of the ruins, the city must have looked just like an ancient Roman city,” said Kimura, a professor at Ryukyu University and the chairman of the non-profit Marine Science and Culture Heritage Research Association.

“I can envisage a triumphal arch-like statue stood on the left side of the Colosseum and a shrine over the hill,” he told Reuters Television.

A microscopic baby octopus was collected in plankton samples from a 2005 expedition to the Sargasso Sea.

National Geographic posts more photos at their website here.

Stumbled upon the site Catalogue of Organisms for those with an inordinate fondness for systematics. It’s high on the geek-o-meter which is probably why I love it so much. You got to love a site that dedicates a whole post to Gastrotrichs. Christopher as done a couple posts on deep-sea fish, the personal favorite Gonostomatidae* and the Saccopharyngiformes.

*Scroll down and see if the names in references look familiar

…of ten strangers, picked to be on the same expedition, 5 scientists and 5 evangicals working together to find out what happens, when people stop being polite, and start getting real…

A group of five scientists and five evangelical leaders began traveling together on August 25th to observe first- hand the dramatic effects of climate change on local people and on the land, ocean, plants, and wildlife of the nation’s northernmost state.

“The goal of our trip is to witness together what human-caused climate change is doing to our world,” said co-leader of the trip Eric Chivian, who shared the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize and is Director of the HMS Center. “While this collaboration may come as a surprise to some, it makes perfect sense. Both scientists and Evangelicals see life on earth as sacred and share the same deep sense of responsibility about protecting it.

Think of the changing seasons around you, and the way plants and animals respond to these changes. Trees change color in response to decreasing light levels. Birds migrate, and bears go into hibernation as winter approaches. So, we wonder, what are the seasonal cues in the abyss? Are summer days longer than winter days in the deep-sea? What’s the ocean equivalent of rainfall, anyhow?

(more…)

A great website called howtoons produces cartoon how-to guides to build a variety of thing to teach children, and adults, basics of engineering and science. My favorite is the Soda Bottle Submarine. When I am back ashore I plan on building a whole fleet and taking over the world.

Bornrich.org, which is not a site I visit often, as a list of the most popular luxury submarines. Most of these we have covered before. There is just something about the name and design of the Proteus that draws me in.

The 65-feet Proteus is exceptional and is capable of offering the ultimate in underwater luxury. It can accommodate up to fourteen divers on the fore and aft deck who can submerge with the vessel while eight people can sit inside the dry cabin for magnificent viewing.

• 

Poor Aussies in Sydney got nailed by a giant mixture of salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed that whipped up into a froth by storms off Queensland. The giant sea foam buried beaches and buildings, and stretches for 30 meters out into the Pacific. The kids are apparently playing in it, trying to surf it, and dancing about having a good old time.

Read about it and see more pictures of Cappucino Beach here at the Daily Mail .

The Census of Marine Life on Seamounts (CenSeam) project released Newsletter No 8 earlier this month. Visit their website to download this and other editions. This particular issue is one of their most extensive newsletters ever, featuring interesting stories and articles about:

- A photographic image collection and analysis workshop in Great Britain
- MBARI’s open-source Video and Annotation Reference System (VARS)
- The deepwater “fish spas” of the Kermadec-Tonga Arc
- Longline sampling for deep-sea fishes on seamounts near the Azores
- A new online data portal from Global Biodiversity Information Facility
- Creature Feature: Black Cardinalfish
- Stalked crinoids
- Traveling exhibit called “Deeper than Light”
- Scientist Profile: Tim O’Hara and his latest publication on ophiuroids
- WWF-News Zealand’s new online inventory and exhibit “Treasures of the Sea”

Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to more dissolved CO2 in the world’s oceans. In turn this will increase the hydrogen ion concentration in seawater, and lower pH from pre-industrial levels (8.179) to present day levels (8.104) in a process known as “ocean acidification”. Note that even projected pH levels of 7.824 in 2050 are still above neutral. Regardless, many scientists are concerned that calcifying marine organisms like corals, mollusks, echinoderms and coccolithophores will be vulnerable to dissolution under the projected ‘less alkaline’ regime.

A new study published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Geosystems (G Cubed) by French researchers Luc Beaufort, Ian Probert, and Noelle Bouchet uses a new method to estimate the effect of dissolution on calcium carbonate plates (coccoliths) secreted by Emiliana huxleyi coccolithophores. E. huxleyi is a cosmopolitan single celled algae responsible for a good deal of global primary production. The researchers conducted two acidification experiments, using cultured and fossil coccoliths.The results indicate that acidification does not change significantly the weight and size of coccoliths.

Link to the abstract is here.