Deep Beginnings

Its my first post at Discovery Channel News’ blogs. I’m very excited to be here. The Discovery Channel always had a special place in my heart. While my midwestern family was "that" family which had no cable television growing up, I waited anxiously on Sunday nights after the local news for Wild America on channel 6 and watched dozens of episodes of Nova on PBS. When I moved out on my own many years ago and finally had cable, the Discovery Channel was always heard in the background.

But this post is about beginnings, not the past. My beginnings at Deep Sea News were a year and a half ago when Craig, our fearless leader, asked me to guest write regularly for the blog. After a while, I got on board officially. Peter, Craig and I complement each well. Each of us has a deep-sea area of specialty and interests that lie outside of each other’s interests. I study the ecology and evolution of marine invertebrates (our spineless brethren) at chemosynthetic environments such as underwater hot springs, called hydrothermal vents, and areas where natural gas and oil ooze out of the seafloor, called cold seeps or methane seeps. The animals that live near these extreme deep-sea environments are remarkable in their adaptations to withstand hot temperatures, heavy metals and other toxic substances. But really, for me, it is all about discovery. This is why I feel Deep Sea News fits in so well with Discovery Channel.

Nothing has changed but our partnership with Discovery Channel News’ blogs. We will provide you with the same fascinating coverage of the Earth’s largest environment as we always have. You will still see us wax poetic on conservation issues, review books, field test gear, write deep sea ditties and spineless songs and blog on the latest deep sea research. But we have even greater things in store. We have a mission to educate, advocate, and celebrate the unfathomable awesomeness of the deep sea, and the ocean in general.

If you are a new reader, welcome and stop by often! Don’t be shy and give us lots of comments. We love answering your questions and debating the issues. Blogging is about the conversation not the orator. We hope our posts generate discussion and are not just viewed as reference material. If you are following us over from ScienceBlogs glad to see you here! Don’t forget to update your RSS feed, over there in the sidebar to the right. We are still moving in and haven’t totally "unpacked" yet. We are still working on some technical issues, none of which prevents us from giving you ALL DEEP SEA, ALL THE TIME!

12 Replies to “Deep Beginnings”

  1. Looking good so far! Although its obviously Kevin writing here I miss the little note saying who the post is from but I guess thats usually discernable from the content ;)

  2. You get first commenter on new blog award Nick! Yeah, we are still ironing out several technical issues. I expect the names to get added on very soon.

  3. And here I thought I would be the first commenter!

    *sulks*

    p.s. to both Kevin and Nick, I know this is going to come across as severely pedantic but the contraction of it is is it’s while the possessive of it is its. It’s important to get this right because a subset of your readers (myself included) tend to stumble when we come across these mistakes (especially when they’re made consistently) and this distracts us from your otherwise riveting content which we really truly want to enjoy and absorb.

  4. What should we call this new venue? Is it Discovery Channel News, Discovery News, Discovery Channel Blogs, Discovery Blogs? And where can we find a list of the other blogs that live here?

  5. I have been waiting for this for weeks. I think that your contributions to ScienceBlogs were fantastic and were a daily read for me, and I look forward to more of the same.

    Woo-Hoo!

  6. A friend asked me “what’s s better about blogging at Disco?”

    I think you know what I am going to say… “the dance floor lights up.”

  7. Whoop! First comment. Cheers for the grammar tip Karen; what a school-boy error! Thank goodness I was taught to avoid contractions all together in science writing – many a manuscript would be binned!

  8. Of course, you are are correct there Miriam. I must admit I’m a tad embarrassed to have made that mistake, given my alter ego and all. Maybe we could all just agree that I was about to type “ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR” when , unexpectedly, someone slapped me in the face with a wet salmon?

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