Into the Abyss: Incredible Shrinking Cups Marine biologists and ocean scientists are somewhat of a tribe unto themselves. They spend weeks and months in cramped conditions aboard research vessels, doing science that’s a bit unlike any other science, and drinking enough to make Jack Sparrow proud. So it’s perfectly natural that their tribe would have some unique customs. I discovered one of those today: Sending styrofoam cups to the bottom of the ocean as souvenirs.  When exploring deep ocean trenches and thermal vents, it’s usually a robot or a high-tech manned submersible doing the dirty work. The Cayman trough (where the top cup went) is home to some of the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents. At around 5,000 meters deep, the cup experiences nearly 500 times the pressure we experience at sea level. And since styrofoam is a foam made of air pockets inside a hydrocarbon polymer, it compresses under the added weight! The bottom cup began as a normal-sized drinking utensil. But after it went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (the world’s deepest point), it returned the size of a ketchup packet. The pressure down there is about a thousand times higher than at the surface! It reminds me of a song … (Squashed cups via Southern Fried Science and imgur)
Zoom Info
Into the Abyss: Incredible Shrinking Cups Marine biologists and ocean scientists are somewhat of a tribe unto themselves. They spend weeks and months in cramped conditions aboard research vessels, doing science that’s a bit unlike any other science, and drinking enough to make Jack Sparrow proud. So it’s perfectly natural that their tribe would have some unique customs. I discovered one of those today: Sending styrofoam cups to the bottom of the ocean as souvenirs.  When exploring deep ocean trenches and thermal vents, it’s usually a robot or a high-tech manned submersible doing the dirty work. The Cayman trough (where the top cup went) is home to some of the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents. At around 5,000 meters deep, the cup experiences nearly 500 times the pressure we experience at sea level. And since styrofoam is a foam made of air pockets inside a hydrocarbon polymer, it compresses under the added weight! The bottom cup began as a normal-sized drinking utensil. But after it went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (the world’s deepest point), it returned the size of a ketchup packet. The pressure down there is about a thousand times higher than at the surface! It reminds me of a song … (Squashed cups via Southern Fried Science and imgur)
Zoom Info

Into the Abyss: Incredible Shrinking Cups

Marine biologists and ocean scientists are somewhat of a tribe unto themselves. They spend weeks and months in cramped conditions aboard research vessels, doing science that’s a bit unlike any other science, and drinking enough to make Jack Sparrow proud. So it’s perfectly natural that their tribe would have some unique customs.

I discovered one of those today: Sending styrofoam cups to the bottom of the ocean as souvenirs. 

When exploring deep ocean trenches and thermal vents, it’s usually a robot or a high-tech manned submersible doing the dirty work. The Cayman trough (where the top cup went) is home to some of the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents. At around 5,000 meters deep, the cup experiences nearly 500 times the pressure we experience at sea level. And since styrofoam is a foam made of air pockets inside a hydrocarbon polymer, it compresses under the added weight!

The bottom cup began as a normal-sized drinking utensil. But after it went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (the world’s deepest point), it returned the size of a ketchup packet. The pressure down there is about a thousand times higher than at the surface!

It reminds me of a song …

(Squashed cups via Southern Fried Science and imgur)

What would 25 feet of sea-level change actually look like? According to worst-case climate models (meaning “what would happen if we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the rate we do today”), our grandchildren and great-grandchildren could experience a world with remarkably higher sea levels. Up to 25 feet higher.  Using data from a New York Times interactive feature, Nickolay Lamm made a collection of photos showing us just what that might look do to tourist destinations. io9 has even more, including Miami Beach and the Washington Monument. The saddest part of these future-shock photos is that tourist destinations will be the last of our worries. This means entire cities could be at risk, from New Orleans to Los Angeles to London. And outside of industrialized nations, with their levees and engineers, more than 40% of the world’s population lives in coastal regions at risk of Earth-changing floods. 
Pop-upView Separately

What would 25 feet of sea-level change actually look like?

According to worst-case climate models (meaning “what would happen if we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the rate we do today”), our grandchildren and great-grandchildren could experience a world with remarkably higher sea levels. Up to 25 feet higher. 

Using data from a New York Times interactive feature, Nickolay Lamm made a collection of photos showing us just what that might look do to tourist destinations. io9 has even more, including Miami Beach and the Washington Monument.

The saddest part of these future-shock photos is that tourist destinations will be the last of our worries. This means entire cities could be at risk, from New Orleans to Los Angeles to London. And outside of industrialized nations, with their levees and engineers, more than 40% of the world’s population lives in coastal regions at risk of Earth-changing floods. 

Courting the Octopi The mating behavior of the Abdopsus aculeatus octopus, noted here for its sheer oddity. That’s a male up there, joined to the female by his spermatophore-delivering leg, being pulled along the sea floor as he continues to deliver his genetic information for as long as he can hold on. The slightly adorable/slightly pod-people result is in the bottom photo, a set of growing octominis attached to the mother. Check out a step-by-step explanation of this unique dance and more photos from Dr. Roy Caldwell at Tonmo. It’s truly rare and remarkable that something like this was captured in such detail. Bravo.
Zoom Info
Courting the Octopi The mating behavior of the Abdopsus aculeatus octopus, noted here for its sheer oddity. That’s a male up there, joined to the female by his spermatophore-delivering leg, being pulled along the sea floor as he continues to deliver his genetic information for as long as he can hold on. The slightly adorable/slightly pod-people result is in the bottom photo, a set of growing octominis attached to the mother. Check out a step-by-step explanation of this unique dance and more photos from Dr. Roy Caldwell at Tonmo. It’s truly rare and remarkable that something like this was captured in such detail. Bravo.
Zoom Info

Courting the Octopi

The mating behavior of the Abdopsus aculeatus octopus, noted here for its sheer oddity. That’s a male up there, joined to the female by his spermatophore-delivering leg, being pulled along the sea floor as he continues to deliver his genetic information for as long as he can hold on. The slightly adorable/slightly pod-people result is in the bottom photo, a set of growing octominis attached to the mother.

Check out a step-by-step explanation of this unique dance and more photos from Dr. Roy Caldwell at Tonmo. It’s truly rare and remarkable that something like this was captured in such detail. Bravo.

explore-blog:

At 200 meters, we leave the Photic Zone and enter the first layer of the deep sea – the Twilight Zone. At this depth, there’s less than 1% of the sunlight at the surface, the pressure has increased twentyfold, and the temperature has dropped to 4º — but we find a world of extraordinary beauty.

Oh, amazing planet. Mesmerizing excerpt from BBC’s The Deep Sea. (↬ Doobybrain)

Your daily dose of “wow” …

Reminds me of this quote:

“We know more about the surface of the Moon and about Mars than we do about [the deep sea floor], despite the fact that we have yet to extract a gram of food, a breath of oxygen or a drop of water from those bodies.”

That’s from Paul Snelgrove, who created the Census of Marine Life, an effort to catalogue the incredible biological diversity in our oceans. Check out Snelgrove’s TED talk on the project to find out why it’s so important that we learn about the living treasures buried in and at the bottom of our seas.

Underwater Aliens Sylvia Earle once called coral reefs “…a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet.” The water that falls on our heads and crops, the air we breathe, even that calm afternoon breeze, it’s all fed by the oceans. Coral are one of the cornerstones of marine life, acting as both architectural and biological anchors of shallow ocean communities. Felix Salazar gives us good reason to pause and consider their well-being with his beautiful collection of macro photos of coral (full gallery at the link). Life beneath the waves is already pretty foreign to us as it is, and it only becomes more alien when viewed up close.  But it’s not alien. These coral are here, on Earth, and their health helps define the health of the whole planet. We’ve got to save them. (via io9)
Pop-upView Separately

Underwater Aliens

Sylvia Earle once called coral reefs “…a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet.” The water that falls on our heads and crops, the air we breathe, even that calm afternoon breeze, it’s all fed by the oceans. Coral are one of the cornerstones of marine life, acting as both architectural and biological anchors of shallow ocean communities.

Felix Salazar gives us good reason to pause and consider their well-being with his beautiful collection of macro photos of coral (full gallery at the link). Life beneath the waves is already pretty foreign to us as it is, and it only becomes more alien when viewed up close. 

But it’s not alien. These coral are here, on Earth, and their health helps define the health of the whole planet. We’ve got to save them.

(via io9)

Source: io9.com

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.
Pop-upView Separately

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.

Did you know there are lakes within the oceans? The photo above shows a rippled lake, lapping against a sandy shore, surrounded by salty deposits and eroded coral formations. What might NOT be readily apparent is that this lake is underwater. Off of the coast of the Yucatán peninsula, in the Gulf of Mexico, there exist a number of undersea brine lakes. Way back in the Jurassic, the Gulf of Mexico was a shallow, mineral-rich sea. For a time, it was cut off from the ocean and dried up, leaving loads of salt deposits behind. Many years later, as the ocean reformed and the geography continued to evolve, we were left with the Gulf that we see today. Some of those salt deposits remained buried, a valuable commodity to be later mined by us humans. One particular salt dome along the Gulf, Avery Island, is the tasty origin of Louisiana’s famous Tabasco sauce! But much of that salt remains buried deep under ocean sediments. When it is exposed, super-salty brines are formed, far saltier than seawater. And just like the deadly brinicles that send starfish scurrying for their lives beneath the Antarctic ice, these super-concentrated salty pools are denser and heavier than the seawater around them. So they “sink”, forming lakes within the ocean devoid of all but microbial life, slowly lapping salty waves onto the ocean shore around them. Check out more at Ocean Explorer.
Pop-upView Separately

Did you know there are lakes within the oceans?

The photo above shows a rippled lake, lapping against a sandy shore, surrounded by salty deposits and eroded coral formations. What might NOT be readily apparent is that this lake is underwater.

Off of the coast of the Yucatán peninsula, in the Gulf of Mexico, there exist a number of undersea brine lakes. Way back in the Jurassic, the Gulf of Mexico was a shallow, mineral-rich sea. For a time, it was cut off from the ocean and dried up, leaving loads of salt deposits behind. Many years later, as the ocean reformed and the geography continued to evolve, we were left with the Gulf that we see today.

Some of those salt deposits remained buried, a valuable commodity to be later mined by us humans. One particular salt dome along the Gulf, Avery Island, is the tasty origin of Louisiana’s famous Tabasco sauce!

But much of that salt remains buried deep under ocean sediments. When it is exposed, super-salty brines are formed, far saltier than seawater. And just like the deadly brinicles that send starfish scurrying for their lives beneath the Antarctic ice, these super-concentrated salty pools are denser and heavier than the seawater around them. So they “sink”, forming lakes within the ocean devoid of all but microbial life, slowly lapping salty waves onto the ocean shore around them.

Check out more at Ocean Explorer.

Coral Reef Eye Candy

Who needs Finding Nemo 3D* when the real thing is so much better? Take a moment to TGIF and watch this collection of coral reef footage shot around Fiji and Tonga. These exotic forms and immeasurable beauty are an always-needed reminder to the awesome power of evolution.

In case you missed it yesterday, you can help catalog the upper Atlantic coast’s marine species with Seafloor Explorer, a citizen science game/project from the Galaxy Zoo folks.

*I’m still gonna see it, no matter how great this video is :)

(via Deep Sea News)

Source: deepseanews.com

Coral: Rekindling Venus

(For World Oceans Day)

Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, but support 25% of marine life. Our changing climate puts their very existence in question, threatening to leave bleached skeletons where an ecosystem once stood. Artist Lynette Wallworth has assembled a planetarium work called Coral: Rekindling Venus to draw attention to the beauty we stand to lose.

The title is an allusion to the worldwide collaboration seen in measuring the Transit of Venus in the 18th century (and the film premiered on the 5th, along with this year’s Transit). We need the same global cooperation today to save our reefs. See where it’s playing here, and find out more about the project here.

(via CultureLab)

Source: newscientist.com

Happy World Oceans Day! They cover most of our planet. They are home to the vast majority of life on Earth, much of which we haven’t even discovered. They are mostly unexplored, mysterious dark depths teeming with curiosities. They are the sites where new parts of our planet are born. They are our oceans. And many of them are in trouble. Find out how you can help here. If you’d like to spend your day filling your brain with ocean facts (you know you do), there’s a simply amazing tidal wave of knowledge over on Twitter at the #oceanfacts tag today. Go learn ya somethin’. Bonus: To celebrate World Oceans Day in a particularly beautiful way, revisit this Van Gogh-esque NASA visualization of the ocean’s currents: Perpetual Ocean.
Pop-upView Separately

Happy World Oceans Day!

They cover most of our planet. They are home to the vast majority of life on Earth, much of which we haven’t even discovered. They are mostly unexplored, mysterious dark depths teeming with curiosities. They are the sites where new parts of our planet are born.

They are our oceans. And many of them are in trouble.

Find out how you can help here. If you’d like to spend your day filling your brain with ocean facts (you know you do), there’s a simply amazing tidal wave of knowledge over on Twitter at the #oceanfacts tag today. Go learn ya somethin’.

Bonus: To celebrate World Oceans Day in a particularly beautiful way, revisit this Van Gogh-esque NASA visualization of the ocean’s currents: Perpetual Ocean.