Linwood Pendleton of the Nicholas Institute has an interesting post up about Marine Spatial Planning. Will it (___) The Ocean?
- save
- privatize
- prevent fishing in
- your favorite expletive
Arthropoda discusses how mantis shrimp see circular polarized light. Very cool stuff. CPL is very rare in nature yet these courageous crustaceans are just plain awesome yet again (crustaceans rule! *high fives*)
Christopher Taylor at Catalogue of Organisms, catalogues the sad, sad story of Physeter, the sperm whale. What’s in a name you may ask? EVERYTHING!
Its a shark! Its a sub! Its a 16.5 foot submarine that looks like a great white shark and leaps 12 feet out of the air TO CRUSH YOU!1!!!!!111! Jesus$#&@christ can’t we feed Africa or something?? Awesome or Awful? You decide!
The Echinoblog has a really cool discovery. A sea urchin that eats… wood??
It Eats Wood!!! (aka Xylophagy!)
So, upon collection and preservation, they opened the specimens up and looked at the guts-and lo and behold! The guts of these critters were FILLED with wood!!
The Daily Beast is reporting on how fishermen are asked to not report seeing “softball to coconut sized” tar balls and oil plumes. Disgraceful. If there is one thing you CANNOT do, is try to silence ole deckhands, fishermen and roughnecks! They don’t give a damn about your policies.
Some very troubling news about seals washing up in the UK with deep corkscrew-shaped evisceration (warning: link does contain one graphic picture of an eviscerated seal). This would be a great opportunity to some investigation with crittercam for the National Geographic Society. I don’t think it is propeller damage but that possibility is certainly still on the table. While seals twist as they swim and turn underwater, I find it hard to image they could eviscerate themselves like in a consistent corkscrew-shaped pattern. The UK has been at the forefront of wave and tidal energy generation. It is a possibility these seals may be damaged by the underwater turbines. They might get caught in the turbine propellers and twist to free themselves. This needs prompt, in-depth, scientific investigation. These seals may be the tip of an iceberg. (Please do yourself a favor and DO NOT read the pathetic comments)
Heh, I remember seeing that semi-submerisible jetski in the 90s on Discovery. I suppose you will need one of these to fly around behind it.
The seal cases look in the wrong place for wave & tide – wave will be on the west coast, and the places mentioned aren’t the usual tidal power suspects.
BTW, I wouldn’t trust the Mail as a newspaper, but the same story is reported elsewhere too.
Thanks for the tip on the Mail. I have them in my feed because they have a separate science and tech feed. Most of their reporting is fairly subpar though…
Could it be intakes for aquaculture? I know nothing of the lay of the land over there.